Episode 1: Turning Into a Pumpkin
Florence
“It’s all my fault,” Haven says, from where she’s wedged between me and the rail of the hospital bed. It's a tight fit, shoving me as far over as I can go to make room for her and her giant belly.
“How do you figure?”
“I never should have made you go on that fucking show.”
There's a brief swell of bitterness behind my ribs--one that tells me some small portion of me agrees with her--but it’s quickly smothered by guilt for feeling that way. “You didn’t make me do anything. I chose to go. I could have said no.”
She shifts and nestles further into my side, being careful to not jostle the needle and tubing coming out of my other arm. “But I’m the one who applied for you. I’m the one who talked you into going. I’m the one who had Jude write your name on the completed list of contestants.” She freezes like she hadn’t meant to say that last one. “Damn baby brain.”
I smooth a hand up and down her arm. “It's okay. I figured you’d done something like that from the beginning.”
Haven’s head shoots up. “What?”
I arch a brow and smooth her dark messy hair. She’s barely left my side since I fainted in the airport. Since I had my heart stomped on for the entertainment of the masses. “It was pretty obvious, Haves. There’s no way I would have been picked forAlpha Love Getaway, let alone a special season with the Royal Ashbourne Pack. Of course I knew.”
“Actually,” a voice says from the doorway of my hospital room, drawing our gazes to where Jude is lingering. “You were on the short list, Ren. I only had to ensure you stayed on the list.”
My heart lurches.Of course.
There wasn’t any other way for me to meet them. I likely would have never gone to Bravonne, not once my knee shattered. I never told Haven, but before everything happened with her father, I’d been invited to the Bravonne Royal Ballet in Durvain for a season.
If everything hadn’t happened with Frederick Bell, and I’d gone, I might have met them then. The ballet is often attended by the royal pack. It’s likely we would have met and scented each other.
Would they be more or less likely to pick a dancing omega as the royal mate? If they did, would the queen have as big of a problem with her, if it was a true match? If we met in the real world and not in the vacuum of a television show?
You already know the answer to that, Florence.
I do. I doubt even if they knew I was their scent match that they would have been free to choose me.
Because that is apparently what I am.
The Ashbourne Pack’s scent match.
Their fated mate.
I must be. It's the only way what the doctor told me moments ago makes any sense.
“They were going to take you no matter what,” Jude adds, shifting just a little closer with a sheepish shrug.
Haven cuddles closer to me, wrapping an arm tight around my middle, her pineapple and chili scent a bit sweeter than normal thanks to her pregnancy hormones “We never should have interfered in the first place.”
I shake my head. “You couldn’t have known, Haves. None of this is your fault… None of this happened because of you. What are the chances that I’d be… That fate would…” God. I can’t even bring myself to say it. “I mean with theRoyalPack of Bravonne.”
It's almost like fate didn’t want me to find them, putting us a half a world away from each other. But then she seems to be a vicious little thing, doesn’t she? Making Haven the fated mate of a pack of alphas who hated her father for what he did to their first omega.
Now this.
My fated pack is royalty of a country I don’t even live in.
I was set up to fail from the beginning. They were never going to choose me and now I’m going to have to live with the consequences for the rest of my life.
The door to my premium private hospital room opens and the rest of Haven’s pack comes in looking grim. I huff softly at their dire expressions.
“It’s not as bad as all that,” I tell them, even though it really is.
