17. Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Ezra

S hadow curls up next to me in my bed, the scent of his perfume sweetening the air around us, and all I want to do is pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist. I close my eyes and wrap my arm around his warm body. Moments like this are what make life worth living.

Warm and comfortable, with my mate in my arms, I’m content.

It’s as close to heaven as I’m going to get.

“I didn’t make you pass out.”

It only seems fair to remind him I didn’t reach his goal.

I’m pretty sure my break is already over, and if we get started again, I won’t make it back to work this afternoon at all, but I can’t seem to make myself care about that right now.

He laughs. “I’m all climaxed out, so we’re good.”

“You’re sure?” I ask, knowing it won’t take much to get my energy back.

One little taste of his slick and I’ll be ready to let my cock swell up inside him all over again.

“I’m pretty sure,” he murmurs. “I’ve missed this, as much as I’ve missed all of that.”

“You won’t have to miss anything again,” I promise.

He pulls back to look me in the eyes. “How do you know that?”

“Instinct,” I admit. “Everything is about to change for the better. I was always meant to come out here, just like you were always meant to follow me. We’re here for a reason. Owen said yes despite how he feels about the city.”

“Lana,” he says, sighing softly. “She’s the final piece of our puzzle. The part that’s been missing.”

“We need her,” I agree, knowing it’s true.

She was made to be with us, like we were made to be with her.

Now that Shadow’s with me, everything feels crystal clear.

“Owen’s going to have to change his mind about the city.”

“He doesn’t like what it reminds him of.”

“Well, he’s going to have to get over that if we’re going to live here.”

It sounds impossible. I know better than anyone how strongly Owen feels about Cressidan City.

He was bitter about leaving everything behind when we met, but whatever regrets he once had, he lost them in the years that passed, burying everything under a thick layer of hatred and anger.

We are going to live here.

It’s the only way our pack gets to be with Lana.

She’s important to changing the way the academy is run.

That’s as much a part of her destiny as we are.

“You look worried,” Shadow tells me. “What are you thinking?”

“He’s not going to decide he likes it here overnight. We have to be realistic about that.”

“Once he meets Lana, though, he’ll have to realize fate brought him out here.”

“Hopefully, that’s how he’ll see it.”

I’m not sure it’s going to be that simple.

He’s going to have to deal with his past to get to a place where he can see Cressidan City differently. I know if things were reversed, it wouldn’t be an easy transition.

“Lana’s something special,” Shadow reminds me. “He’ll know this is where we’re meant to be as soon as he meets her.”

“She is, isn’t she?” I ask, making him smile.

“You know she is, otherwise, you wouldn’t have kept her to yourself like this for three whole weeks. I can’t believe you didn’t tell us you found another mate.”

He slips out of the bed, shaking his head as he starts to move around to where his clothes were discarded on the floor. He doesn’t sound mad, exactly, but he’d have every right to be.

It is kind of messed up that I didn’t tell the rest of my pack about her.

“Why didn’t you tell us, anyway?” Shadow asks, as he tugs on his underwear.

Guilt hits me instantly, and I don’t have a good answer for him.

“I don’t know. I thought I should tell her before I called to let you guys know, but we were both so busy with work, so that chance just never came up. Then I started to second guess how Owen might react, and I wasn’t sure what I should do.”

I push myself up against the pillows, knowing I’ll have to get back to work soon.

I don’t relish that thought. As much as I want to know how my patients are doing, with my mates here it feels like I should be prioritizing their needs.

“I get it,” Shadow says, as he starts to slip into his pants. “I know it’s kind of a weird situation, and you both seem to have that work-aholic hero-complex going on, but it’s been three weeks, Ezra. You could have asked us to come visit you. We could have come out here much sooner.”

Clearly, he’s hurt over my careless lack of decision making.

I’m supposed to protect him from pain, not cause it.

“I’m sorry, Shadow. I didn’t mean to keep it from you.”

“It’s a pretty big thing to keep to yourself for this long. It changes everything for all of us.”

“That’s what made it so hard to do anything about it.”

He sighs. “She has no idea she’s ours. That feeling you gave her when you met, the instant connection. She’s going to think she’s just into you because you’re an Alpha, or because she’s physically attracted to you. She’s written it off already as a crush or something.”

He’s probably right. I didn’t tell her what it meant, so she brushed it off as something less potent than a connection between two people fated to be together as mates.

I have to remind myself he doesn’t know the whole story, and that’s when I remember an important point that isn’t going to just disappear.

“There is one other thing.”

He raises an eyebrow at me. “One other thing?”

“She’s sort of already involved with someone else.”

He blinks. “What?”

“It’s not a regular relationship, and I don’t know the full details, but she has feelings for an Omega who already found her pack.”

He frowns and then his expression relaxes. “An Omega? That doesn’t mean anything. She probably just smelled her perfume and got all intoxicated.”

“No, it’s more than that. There are mutual feelings between them, despite the Omega already having a pack of her own.”

“That’s kind of strange,” Shadow murmurs. “I’ve never heard of a pack letting one of their members be with someone outside of their group.”

“She’s still fated for us.”

“Well, yeah. She is. What if she’s also fated for that Omega? How would that even work?”

“It would be complicated.”

He runs a hand through his hair, and then shrugs as he picks up his shirt.

“What do we care if she has a thing with another Omega? We all have each other, and we’ve been together for years. She might think that’s complicated.”

“Huh,” I murmur as I get out of bed.

He’s not wrong, and when I think about it, I wouldn’t care one little bit if Lana needed to be with the other Omega as well as us, as long as that other Omega was treating her right.

He looks at me as I head toward the bathroom door.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Uh, taking a shower before I head back to work?”

He might get a little possessive and demanding at times, but Shadow would never expect me to go to work covered in his scent. It would only create havoc on the wards and make me look unprofessional to my bosses. In this case, I seriously doubt he wants me to get in trouble with the woman we’re about to attempt to court.

“How long do you have, exactly?” he asks.

“I’m guessing I’m already pretty late,” I admit.

“Well, take your shower, but I’m making you eat something before you go back to work. My slick doesn’t count. You need to take care of yourself properly, and if you’re not doing that, I will.”

“There’s some stuff in the fridge. I would have grabbed something.”

“Sure, sure. I’ll make you something decent while you shower.”

He moves out of the room, and I head into the bathroom.

I’m a little sad that I need to shower so soon after we’ve been together.

Spending days doused in his scent is a luxury I haven’t allowed myself to indulge in for a very long time. It’s not smart to walk around in public smelling like an Omega, in general.

The aphrodisiac qualities of an Omega’s perfume are highly unpredictable.

It’s extra potent to his mates, of course, but other people can be affected by it and that’s where things can get dicey. I’ve no interest in riling up my coworkers, and we have way too many vulnerable patients who don’t need their senses to be spiked by the doctor who’s supposed to be helping them recover from terrible ordeals.

So, I run the water, and I do some stretches while I wait for it to heat up.

I take my time cleaning up once the water is warm, and I sit down to a meal with my mate in a T-shirt and shorts with towel-dried hair and a bigger appetite than I expected.

Thankfully, Shadow went into full Omega mate mode and cooked a bit of everything that was in the fridge for me, alongside pressing fresh oranges for juice.

It’s not something I would have made for myself, but it’s perfect.

“That was delicious,” I tell him, as I put the fork down on the empty plate.

He smiles, putting his own cutlery down at the same time. “I’m glad you liked it.”

It’s only now that we’re looking at each other from across the table that I realize I’m about to leave the Omega who broke the rules to come out to the city and visit me all alone in a suite he’ll be bored of within minutes once he has nothing to do and no one to do it with.

He gets to his feet and clears the plates.

I get to mine and throw on my scrubs while I consider the problem.

Coming to work with me isn’t an option.

Neither is waiting around for Owen.

He looks back at me. “What is it? You’ve got your worried face on.”

“I was just thinking,” I admit. “You should help Pete this afternoon. Spend some time with Lana.”

“Oh,” he murmurs, nodding slowly. “I was thinking I should probably wait around for Owen, and make sure he stays when he gets here, but I guess that won’t be until later, so helping Pete sounds like a better idea.”

I sit back down to put on my sneakers.

“I’ll walk you down to Lana’s office before I start my shift.”

“I remember where it is.”

“I’m walking you down there, no arguments.” I stand up and shake out my lab coat before I slip it on over my medical scrubs.

He smiles. “I forgot how bossy you can be.”

“Don’t tell me Owen isn’t …”

“Oh, don’t worry. He’s like a prison guard. He’s probably still wondering how the hell I got out of the house this morning without waking him.”

“I’d like to know how you did that, too.”

He laughs. He’s never going to tell.

“Let me get my sneakers. I think I left them in the bedroom.”

He moves past me, and I realize he probably should have showered.

His perfume is intoxicatingly strong right now.

I bite my tongue, because Pete will look after him and it won’t hurt to have Lana feel a strong attraction to our Omega.

He comes back into the room fully clothed.

“What?” he asks, slowing to a stop by the side of the table. “Oh, come on. It doesn’t really matter how I snuck out now, does it? We’ll be moving out of that place soon enough, so our old house isn’t going to be my prison for much longer anyway.”

He has a point, and since it wasn’t what I was worried about, I give him a smile.

“Just don’t call our home a prison, okay? It’s not, and I don’t want Lana thinking we keep you chained up or something.”

“Ooh.” Shadow smirks. “New kink unlocked.”

I let out a soft sigh as I move toward the door.

“Don’t worry, I won’t let Lana get the wrong idea about us,” he assures me.

Stepping out of the suite, I take my keys out of my pocket.

Shadow follows me out and closes the door. “You know, I kind of like it here.”

“Here, here? The academy?” I ask as I lock the suite.

“I mean, it’s kind of weird that it’s an Omega academy with a hospital ward, but your room is like the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel.”

“You hate hotels.”

“I wouldn’t if that’s what all the rooms were like.”

“Glad you approve. I don’t know what our living situation might be once Lana’s part of our pack, so try not to get too used to it.”

“Lana’s living on this floor. I doubt that a move across the corridor will be much of a big deal. It’s a no brainer. I mean, the couch in there is made for a pack. The bed, not so much, but I’m sure we can find a work around.”

“Lana has her own place outside of the academy, Shadow.”

Though it’s kind of amusing that he thinks it would be an ideal place to live.

“Well, if I was in charge of this place, I’d sell my house and move into one of those sweet luxury apartments.” He shrugs as he heads for the staircase.

I follow him down, ready to get back to my rounds.

Shadow will be fine, helping Pete look after Lana while I work.

“So, do we have to wait for Owen to get here to tell Lana she’s our mate?”

“It makes more sense to wait for him now that he’s on his way.”

He sighs. “Damn. Fine. I’ll make sure Pete doesn’t cross that line, I guess.”

“Pete knows the pecking order,” I remind him. “Just try not to mention mates.”

“I would never,” he says, acting like he’s offended.

Shaking my head at him, I don’t stay another word.

Shadow never does these things intentionally, but his impulsive streak can get the best of him.

If I talk about it too much, he’ll be more likely to focus on it if that streak rears up.

“You can make sure Pete and Lana don’t skip lunch.”

Giving him a specific task is usually the best way to occupy him, and I know Lana has been getting into some unhealthy habits. Skipping meals and working too much being the main culprits. Pete isn’t all that great at looking after himself, either.

Shadow thought I’d skip lunch, but I would have grabbed something.

Neither of those two would if they weren’t prompted.

“Ooh. That way I get two lunches. Nice thinking.”

Trust Shadow to make the most out of a simple task.

We get to the bottom of the staircase, and he skips ahead to the doors that lead out to reception. I walk quickly to catch him back up and to hold the door open for him.

He leans in and kisses my cheek. “I think I can make it across the hallway unescorted.”

I nod slowly as he steps out into the reception area, and he smiles as he turns away, heading toward Lana’s office. I watch until he steps into the office and closes the door, letting out a breath once I know he’s with Pete and Lana.

It’s tempting to want to be with them.

Having an unclaimed mate is a feeling I’m not used to.

The desire to be around Lana has been strong since the day we met.

If my work here hadn’t been quite so consuming, something might have happened between us before now. I didn’t know how to bring my mates out here, but Shadow’s right, I could have told them, and the chances are they would have come to us sooner.

If I’m honest, it felt like things were too manic before.

Now? I’m needed, sure, but I’m not the only doctor in the building.

The staff are capable. They can manage without me when they need to.

They covered for me while I took a long lunch.

No one tried to reach me while I was gone.

Everything is lining up because it’s time.

Shadow and Pete are here because this was fated.

Even Owen is on his way, and he doesn’t know about Lana.

Destiny is working on all of us.

We’re getting closer to being the whole, complete pack we were always meant to be.

I step back into the medical unit and head to the office to grab the charts for my rounds.

The sooner our final pack member gets here, the better, but in the meantime, I know how to keep myself busy.