Mated to the Alpha and His Beta

Chapter 243
Mason
Gabriela had gone to bed. The kids were all sleeping Zane and I had taken up our posts on the front porch, not saying much. He sipped occasionally from a glass of whiskey, neat. I had one, too.
“They should’ve been back by now,” he said into the silence that had stretched out so long and thin it was like a spider web between us. Making a trap.
“My brother will make sure nothing happens to her.”
Zane eyed me. “I know that.”
“Well,” I told him amiably, “I know it, too.”
There was more silence between us, but it wasn’t as sticky.
“Are you ready for this?” I asked him after a few more minutes had passed.
“F uck, no.”
I laughed, and after a moment, Zane joined in.

“When you knew her as Katie,” he said. “Was she different?”
The whiskey in my glass tasted like smoke, and I let it roll over and around my tongue before I answered him. “I didn’t know her before she was Katie, so I can’t say if she was different than she’d been. But she was different than she is now, yeah. In a lot of ways. But in some, she’s exactly the same.”
“It was a good thing she had you,” he said quietly. “When we couldn’t be there for her.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I started, but Zane shook his head..
“Fault doesn’t matter. We weren’t there for her the way we should have been before she was sent to
Stillwood, before she became Katie. Me and Xander…we were a pair of arrogant pr icks.”
“From what I understand, you were in love with a woman who made promises she had no intentions of
keeping.” I cleared my throat so it wouldn’t squeeze tight with angry memories.
Zane raised his glass toward me. “You were in love with her, too. Seems like no matter what any of us had
planned, we were all three destined to end up with the same woman, one way or another.”
“I don’t know about love. I’d have agreed with you before, but after falling in love with Katie…with Lanie,” I amended. “Once I felt what I do for her, everything that I’d ever felt for anyone else, including Alice, just doesn’t seem like it matters too much. But maybe you’re right. The Moon Goddess had plans for the three of us we could never have guessed. I mean, what are the odds that we’d all fall for the same woman not once, but twice?”
“It sure seems like we were as destined for each other as we were for our Luna,” Zane said.
It might’ve been the nerfect moment to ask him how he felt about being my Reta too but I didn’t have the
1/2
III
words. We’d shared a lover, a bed, pups, and a mate, but even that didn’t seem intimate enough
pledge himself to me.
While I was still thinking about this, Zane got to his feet. “There they are.”
The two wolves bounded out of the forest and across the yard. Hunter carried the duffel in his mouth while Lily pranced around him in circles. She ran to the porch and put her front paws on the bottom step. Her tongue tolled out as she grinned. I felt the joy she was experiencing from the long run coursing off her in waves, and Colt pressed forward, eager to greet her.
I stripped bare in half a minute and changed. Colt joined Hunter and Lily, leaping and rolling onto his back for a few seconds before jumping up again. Blade was there, too.