Page 189 of The Alpha's Second Chance Mate

I elbowed him lightly in the ribs. “Please do. You reek.”

That got a chuckle out of him, and the smile broke apart whatever had been in his eyes before. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“I’ll make sure to scrub extra well,” he said before he went upstairs.

When he was out of earshot, Trent pointed at the stairs with a fork. “He’s gonna be a bit grumpy for a while, but this is good for him. His fighting skills had gotten worse than I’d thought. Better he knows now than to go into battle with a big head and assumptions about his strength.”

“Right,” Porter added. “An alpha is an alpha, sure, and in a fair fight against a beta or sigma, it’s no question who will come out on top. But this won’t be a fair fight, I bet.”

“Almost certainly not,” Langston agreed.

The cry of a cranky baby came from the den, and Stormy jumped up to go grab Shiloh. Langston’s eyes followed her as she went. Porter snorted but kept his mouth shut.

“Oh,God,” Stormy called from the den, a disgusted note to her voice. “She’s crapped herself. Avery, is there anyone in the guest bathroom?”

“Nope,” I called. “All clear.”

A moment later, she emerged from the den. Shiloh was screaming her head off, and a brown smear was up the back of her head.

Stormy rolled her eyes. “Blowout. It went all the way up her back. I’ll get her washed up in the sink.”

“That’s fine,” I said.

“Do you need anything?” Langston asked.

Stormy almost stumbled to a stop. “Um.” She grinned at him. “No, I’ve got it. Thanks, though.”

Langston didn’t look away until the door to the bathroom was closed. Once she was out of sight, he took his plate to the sink and pulled a beer out of the fridge.

Popping the top, he said, “I’m gonna go sit on the porch for a bit.”

Zayde, Trent, and Porter all shared a look, then chuckled.

That was it. Enough beating around the bush. I went outside to join Langston.

“Something wrong?” he asked as I closed the door behind me.

“No.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “When are you going to tell Stormy she’s your fated mate?”

Langston choked, spraying beer out of his lips. He coughed and wiped his mouth.

“What?” he gasped. The wide, panic-stricken eyes that looked back at me belonged more to a boy than a man. A kid who’d been caught jerking off by a parent.

“Relax,” I said, shoving him playfully. “Don’t have a heart attack.”

He swallowed again, then sighed as his body deflated in dejection. “How’d you know?”

“I’ve known you a long time. I’ve never—and I mean,never—seen you look at a woman the way you look at Stormy. And I’ve met a lot of your past girlfriends. The sweet ones, the bitches, the models, the actresses, and so on. It was pretty obvious.” I laughed and pointed back at the house. “All your friends see it, too. Honestly, if Stormy wasn’t so blind, she’d have noticed, too.”

“It’s a delicate situation,” he said, setting his bottle down and collapsing into one of the rocking chairs. “I… well… I did some checking on her when we first met.”

I took the chair beside him. “Are you talking about Marcus?”

He looked at me with pure misery. “Yeah. Avery, her husband has barely been gone for half a year. I can’t approach her with this now. Shit, she’s probably still grieving. I’d feel like I was taking advantage of her, and I don’t want to do that.”

“Right, but…” I stared at him like he was an idiot, even though he wasn’t. “You don’t live here, Langston. When this is all over and, God willing, Ashton is back safe, you guys are headed back across the country.”

“Hell, Avery, I know that.” He groaned. “I’m not going to ignore this. She needs to know who she is to me, but I want to take it slow. I want to get to know her so it won’t be weird when I tell her. I’d like her to be in a place, emotionally and mentally, where she can accept what I have to offer. Not only for her, but for her little girl, too.”

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