Page 10 of Big Bad Alphas

“How about stalking?” she offers.

“Guarding?” he counters, and she huffs out a laugh.

“Whatever.”

“Do you always go to work this early?” Ezra asks.

“Yep.”

“Doesn’t seem safe for you to be walking out here this early by yourself,” I comment. and she side-eyes me.

My wolf growls at me.If you push her away and she chooses Wade or Ezra instead,he warns me, and I grit my teeth.That won’t happen,I promise him.

“Have you given any thought to being one of our mates?” Ezra asks her as we walk around to the front of the bakery.

“Kind of,” she admits as she unlocks the front door.

I tense, dying to hear which one of us she’s picked.

“And?” I ask when she doesn’t go on.

She heads into the bakery, and we follow closely on her heels.

“Listen, you all seem great,” she says, and we eye each other warily. “But I don’t want to choose, and I don’t want to be fought over like a piece of meat either. So, the best solution is to be with none of you. I don’t see a possible way for this to work.”

I wince at her words, especially when she said we treated her like meat. God, she’s right. It was completely out of line. Even more so because she’s human, and she doesn’t understand the mating heat or the mating moon that will be here soon.

“I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have acted like that last night,” I apologize.

“Yeah, we were just so excited to have finally found our fated mate, and I guess we got carried away,” Wade adds.

“We won’t fight anymore,” Ezra adds.

“Yeah, instead, we can each take you out, one on one,” I say. “Then you can decide who you want to be with.”

Ezra and Wade nod along with my idea, and I smile. It feels like we’re finally getting somewhere. Now I just need to make sure that she picks me.

“No,” she says, and my smile drops.

“What do you mean, no?” I ask her.

“No, I don’t want to choose. I don’t want to hurt any of you, so I don’t want to choose. Plus, who am I to tell Fate that she was wrong? I mean, isn’t that the whole point of fated mates? I may be new to all of this, but if you all trust Fate to bring you your true loves, don’t you think you should trust the outcome?” We stare at her, slack-jawed. Our curvy little mate just shut us down, and fuck if it wasn’t the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. After a moment of silence, Emily adds, “I’ll either be with all of you together or none of you.”

She heads back into the kitchen, leaving us standing frozen at the front counter, staring after her in shock.

Share her? That’s our only option?

My wolf is no help. He starts pacing inside of me, and I frown. What the hell am I supposed to do here?

I look over to Wade and Ezra; they seem just as conflicted as I feel. I can’t imagine sharing her, but the idea of not being with her at all is too painful to even consider. She’s meant to be mine.No, she’s meant to be ours.

“Fate doesn’t make mistakes, right?” I ask Wade and Ezra.

“Right,” they say slowly.

I can tell that we’re all arriving at the same conclusion. None of us look very happy about it, but the thought of her rejecting all of us feels like a stake through the heart.

My wolf snarls inside of me.Take her any way that we can get her, he urges me.

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