Page 59 of Beta and the Beast
Jace follows me from the shop to the apartment. "What's going on?"
"You're staying with us from now on, so we're going to go get your stuff from your mom's house," I tell him, staying as positive as I can because he's still a kid who was kicked out of his home with nowhere to go.
He's quiet for a long moment, his head bobbing up and down like he's trying to process everything. Then he sniffles, and it breaks me a little bit. I wrap my arms around him, not caring that he's a whole head taller than me and easily double my size. He curls into me like any child would when looking for comfort, and he lets me offer it until he's ready to take on the rest of what we need to do today.
***
I knock on the door to the house about a half-hour drive from the center. It's a cute house in a nice little suburban area. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't a tidy flower bed with white daisies growing in it or a bright blue door. It's all so normal.
Jace is behind me, his head cast down, red curls covering what I'd be able to see of his eyes. I try getting him to stand beside me, but he's having a hard enough time, so I let him stand behind me. Not that there's any chance he'll be able to hide behind me and not be seen.
When his mother opens the door, it's clear where he got his looks. Her hair isn't as bright as his, but it's coppery and curly, and her pale skin has a smattering of freckles just like Jace's.
"Who are you?" she asks, a little ruder than I was expecting from someone who looks like a typical omega.
"Hi, I'm Sarah." I hold out my hand, but her eyes have narrowed in on the bite mark on my neck, something I'm now noticing she doesn't have on hers. Oh, joy. "You must be Jace's mom. I'm just here to help him pack up his things."
Her jaw ticks, her eyes flashing behind me to where her son is very much pressed against my back like he wishes the world would just open up and swallow him whole.
"Be fast. Greg could be home soon."
I check my phone, wondering if we went through a time vortex on our way here, and it isn't noon. Big surprise, we haven't gone through a time vortex, and we have at least a couple of hours until we need to leave. But if she wants us to be fast, we can be fast.
She leads us through the house, down the hall to a room without a door. Instead, it has a sheet pinned to the top as a makeshift curtain. I push through it, frowning at the state of Jace's room. He's not the neatest kid to live with, but he's not nearly as messy as his room suggests. Drawers are pulled out of his dresser, clothes pulled out of his closet, and the mattress on his twin bed is flipped on its side.
I glance at Jace, but he still hasn't looked up. His mother doesn't look too pleased that we're in the house, but leaves us to gather his things.
"I'll be in the kitchen. Holler before you leave so I can lock the front door."
She doesn't say a single thing to her son and doesn't acknowledge him at all. I have to take a deep breath to focus on what's important, even if I'd like to tell this woman that she's being awful to her son for no reason other than her boyfriend doesn't like another alpha being under the same roof as him. An alpha that hasn't even claimed her, and I doubt he's going to. But again, none of that is why I'm here. I'm here to support Jace, and I do that best by not fighting with his mom.
"Where do you want to start?" I ask Jace, who answers with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "Okay, grab the stuff that means the most to you first and put it in the trunk. I'll start working on clothes ."
I start grabbing various articles of clothing and stuffing them into the trash bags we brought. I thought about stopping and grabbing boxes, but Jace told me it wasn't a big deal. Seeing his stuff crammed into garbage bags makes me wish I'd pushed harder for the boxes.
I fill up one bag before he even starts moving, but once he does, he's filling up his bag. I look over every once in a while, watching him tuck a journal into it, a picture of him and who I imagine are his sisters. He grabs some books off his shelves and a handheld gaming device. We work silently for a while, but it's broken when someone enters the room.
"Jace," a girlish voice whispers from the doorway.
Both Jace and I whip our attention in her direction. She's younger, maybe around twelve, and very much Jace's little sister, just based on the similarities in their features. I don't know which alpha fathered them, but his genes must've been weak, considering how much both kids look like their mom.
"Greg said you weren't living here anymore."
"I'm not, Katy," Jace says, his voice just as hushed as his sister's, so I turn my attention back to the task at hand and let them have their moment since they're trying to do it without their mother finding out. "I'm safe, though. I have somewhere to stay in the city, so I'm not far either."
"Izzy's going to be so mad she left earlier," Katy says as she steps further into the room. "Her and Mom fought this morning about you, and Izzy stormed off. She even took Mom's car."
Jace coughs to cover his chuckle at that. "Izzy will be fine, but tell her I miss her."
"Are you ever coming back?" Katy asks, moving around the room and helping Jace to grab things and stuff them into bags. "I know Greg's mean and all, but if you just don't get in his way, I think he might let you stay again."
"No, I can't come back," Jace says, a sadness in his voice that I can tell he's trying to mask. "You remember how Dad sometimes got really angry?"
I pause my movements, listening to the two of them. Jace kneels next to his sister so he's lower than her, smaller than her, trying to look less threatening. Katy doesn't have to respond to him because he knows she remembers. I don't know anything about his father other than that he had a beast and that Jace doesn't like talking about him. He has a therapist he sees at the center, so I assume they know about his father.
"Well, I have a beast, too," Jace says, his voice wavering slightly. "He's not mean like Dad's was, but he's there, and Mom and Greg don't want him around."
Katy stares down at her brother, chewing on her bottom lip as tears start to well in her eyes. "Can I meet him?"
