Mount separate disk inside /home or symbolic link?

I have two internal SSD disks.

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, including /home, is installed on SSD1, which was set up with LVM and LUKS during install.

I set up SSD2 with LUKS (but not LVM) which is unlocked using a key file (in /etc on SSD1) during boot-up.

SSD2 contains my VirtualBox 'appliances'.

Currently, I'm auto-mounting SSD2 at /mnt/VMs with a line in fstab:
/dev/mapper/VMs /mnt/VMs ext4 defaults 0 2

But VirtualBox won't let me access anything outside of /home.

My question:
Should I

• Simply auto-mount SSD2 in /home as, say, /home/VMs
/dev/mapper/VMs /home/VMs ext4 defaults 0 2
  or
• Leave SSD2 mounted under /mnt and add a symbolic link under /home
  if so, how?

I was aiming for the link option, until I read
"When most operations (opening,reading, writing, and so on) are passed the symbolic link file, thekernel automatically “dereferences” the link and operates on the targetof the link. But some operations (e.g., removing) work on the link fileitself, rather than on its target."
in info ln, which concerned me and confused me.