Page 169 of Stolen Omega

“They’re coming back slowly but surely,” I admit. “It’s kind of nice. It feels like I opened a door that’s been locked for years, and there’s all of this amazing stuff that’s starting to spill out.”

“I’m glad it’s making you happy. You deserve that. After everything you’ve been through.”

“Well, I didn’t even know what had happened to me until I got here,” I remind him. “I thought I knew who I was, and I kind of did, but not really. It’s crazy, but I don’t have too much to complain about. I got to be the person I wanted to be.”

I’m mad at those people who pretended to be my parents, but I guess they used their influence to help me get the career I wanted. Still, I know I would have found a way to break into the music industry on my own. Maybe it would have taken longer, but I would have gotten there because there was literally nothing else I wanted to do with my life.

“You deserve to be happy, too,” I remind Dale, thinking about how conflicted he’d seemed when I ran into him on the staircase. “What’s bothering you?”

He pulls a face. “It’s a whole thing. I shouldn’t burden you with it.”

“Hey.” I take his hand and lead him back to the edge of the bed to sit down. “I’m your true mate. If you can’t tell me your troubles, who can you tell?”

“God, Zoey, I missed you so much,” he murmurs. “Zane and I didn’t hang around together much after you were gone. He got so obsessed with finding you, and I felt the same way for a long time, but by the time I was a junior in high school, it felt like he was gone, too.”

“You guys didn’t stick together.” I know that, and it makes me sad for them both.

He shakes his head slowly. “We fell apart. There was a Beta in my school who kept flirting with me, and I ended up dating him seriously for a while. We could have had something real, but he knew Zane was supposed to be my Alpha and it pissed him off too much that my Alpha wasn’t taking care of me. Then, he got into all this stuff after high school, and we kept breaking up.”

“Stuff?” I ask carefully, while I process what he’s telling me. “Do you mean …”

“Damn, that did sound like I meant drugs, right? He’s not that kind of guy. He took up rock climbing, and got his pilot’s license, bought a garage for repairing and restoring old classic cars. Life stuff. He was happier, and it felt like he kept taking me back because he could see how much I needed him. Not because he actually …” He trails off with a sigh. “Don’t get me wrong, I know he really loves me, but he deserves better. Things never felt steady between us, and that’s because I couldn’t let Zane go.”

“And this guy, the pilot, he’s the one who brought Archer and Russ here, right?”

That must be it. There’s a reason he was thinking about the guy. It’s because he’s here. It has to be.

“Yeah. Cam brought them here. He knows I’m not going back, and he knows you’re Zoey.”

“So, he knows I’m not going back either.”

“Guess he made this trip for nothing.” He flops back onto the mattress, laying down with his feet touching the floor. His hands move up to push his hair out of his face.

“Didn’t Zane tell you he was good with Cam?”

“Doesn’t mean Cam’s good with Zane,” he mumbles.

So, that’s it, then. “You didn’t talk to him?”

“We talked. A little. He’s not interested.”

Somehow, I doubt that.

He’s here, where we are, and that has to mean something.

Fated mates are pulled together by the universe.

All they have to do is be open to that.

“Where is Cam now?” I ask.

Dale sits back up slowly, groaning lightly. “Zoey, no. I can’t put him through this. He’s already been through the wringer like a dozen times with me. He told me the last time he couldn’t do it anymore.”

“Does he feel like he’s fated for you?” I ask, knowing the instant I feel his regret and longing that he’s been pining for this guy for a while.

“I feel like I was destined to ruin his life.”

“Well, he’s here and that feels like fate to me.”

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