Page 19 of The Beta's Blind Date

But the benefits of staying up longer to clean up this mess are better than the benefits of getting a small bit of extra sleep, no matter how needed it is.

I move around the living room, making as little noise as possible as I pick up the discarded beer cans, shot glasses, and empty bottles of liquor. I take them into the kitchen, sorting them into the dishwasher and the recycling, my nose wrinkling from the scent of the mixing alcohols as they flow into the drain before I toss the bottles.

I don’t bother to calculate how much he’s had. I know it’s enough to kill a human if it’s knocked him out cold. Our enhanced healing doesn’t prevent us from getting drunk—it just means it takes more alcohol to get us there.

I head back into the living room with a cleaning rag and a bottle of multi-purpose cleaner and begin wiping the coffee table and plank flooring to rid it of the stench of his drinks. I pause as I glimpse his hand dangling down the side of the couch, clutching the framed picture of my mom he keeps by his bed. The one of her kneeling in the garden, with dirt on her forehead, her worn overalls, and under her nails, her blonde hair windblown and messy, and a joyful smile on her face as she laughed at whatever my dad said to her when he snapped the picture.

The last picture he took of her before she died.

I slip it from his fingers and wipe it, too, cleaning off the fingerprints and smudged tears, setting it on the coffee table so I can take it down the hall with me when I head to bed. My throat tightens, and it takes everything in me to rip my eyes away from her face, to not let myself get lost in the memories my dad already drowned himself in while I was out.

“Reid?”

My dad’s voice is cracked, dry, and confused. I glance at him and find him blinking, his eyes open but glassy. He sits up and roughs up my hair, and I hold in my grimace, hold back my urge to flinch away.

“What are you doing out of bed, buddy? It’s the middle of the night. You should be sleeping.”

I swallow and close my eyes. He’s not here—he’s in the past. He thinks I am the kid version of me instead of the grown, adult werewolf I am now.

“I can’t sleep,” I say, pulling the words from memory, repeating the sentences I said so many times in those early years of my life and so many times after on nights like tonight. “I miss Mom.”

It’s not a lie, not an act. I’ve spent countless nights lying on my back, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling—the ones she put there for me because I feared the dark—trying to count the rotations of the ceiling fan so I could fall asleep, but never finding that relief.

“She’s on patrol like she always is on Friday nights. Go back to sleep, and she’ll be home by the time you wake up in the morning,” he says.

“Okay,” I reply in a whisper, getting to my feet and grabbing the picture frame and the cleaning supplies.

He’s lying back on the couch with an arm thrown over his eyes, already snoring before I make it to the hall. I tuck the supplies away and slip into his bedroom, placing the picture frame in the exact spot it’s always in on his nightstand. As though he never removed it.

As soon as the frame is out of my hands, I leave his room and head to mine across the hall, leaning against the door as I close it behind me, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes as I stand there and breathe.

I don’t know how long I’ve been there, emptying my mind of everything, when my phone buzzes against my leg.

I fumble in my pocket for it, my wolf perking up again since he knows there is only one person who would try to reach me by text instead of by mindlink.

My mate.

I mean—my wolf’s mate.

I mean Taryn.

I look at the screen, reading the message a few times.

Taryn: Is the offer for extra fighting practice and pointers still on the table?

I know it’s a bad idea, and I know I should ignore the message. I don’t know what possessed me to offer her help in the first place. But before I can gather up my common sense and delete the message and put my phone on the charger, I’ve already sent my reply.

Me: Of course. Just name a day and a time.

Chapter 7

TARYN

“You’rehomeearly.”

I roll my eyes as I enter my apartment in the packhouse, unsurprised to find Blake parked on my pink velvet couch with the TV on, a ginger beer in one hand and a piece of pizza in the other.

“Was it a bust?” she asks as I walk down the hall to my bedroom.

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