Page 13 of The Beta: Part Two
“Trent!” Jasper barks and I snap my attention to him.
He laughs at me, “what were you thinking about instead of listening to the important shit I was saying?”
I shrug, I'll end up showing him before long, anyway.
“I was telling you that we need to figure out when she might go into her first heat, maybe get some kind of timeline. I've been handling her, and now Nathan can help; but I know that won't be enough. Her mother has been texting me since we got her home. She says that she and all her other daughters all go into heat every four to five weeks. We need to plan for Talia to go into heat every month until her system settles. She will need all of us, and even then we may come out of it needing to be hooked up to an IV drip for fluids.”
I laugh, I laugh so hard that I tear up.
He's scowling at me. He's serious.
I stop laughing. “Every month?Every month?Are you shitting me?” It's incredulous. No wonder there are so many in the Graves brood; kids and grandkids.
“Yes, every fucking month,” Devon says quietly, walking through the front door with his bat-like hearing, “and shut the fuck up about it. Don't be so loud. She's already so goddamned skittish around us I can't even look at her.”
Then I laugh again as I watch his nostrils flare wide. “Want to lick Jasper? I did. There may be a bit left on him for you to sample. Nathan didn't get any, but he got something else, didn't you, Nathan?”
Nathan is grinning and I'd accuse him of blushing if I didn't know better.
Devon looks at him with wide, accusatory eyes, “what did you do?”
Jasper pushes Devon's big thigh with his toes, “Nathan didn't do anything except stand still. Talia's going to be alright. I just wish we knew when to start looking for her to go into heat. She isn't trying to make a nest of her own, she seems very content in mine. Which is absolutely okay with me, I want to share a nest with her. I want to share everything with her. But I want to make sure she's taken care of, like she makes sure I'm taken care of. And we need to know how long you all have to convince her that she needs you.”
I exchange a look with the other alphas, but Devon says he has news, “her doctor from the hospital finally called me today. They didn't have a guess when we were leaving, but they’ve had time to run the data through their system. It looks like maybe two weeks from yesterday. It's not exact, there's no way to know for sure, but that's their guess.”
Fuck me, two weeks?
“That's not a lot of time, Devon,” I say, rubbing my chest. “I don't think we can talk her into us inside of two weeks. I've been thinking about something else, too. I don't want to bond her into the pack while she's in heat. I want to do it either before or after, so she can fully agree.”
Jasper looks like he's about to pout, but Nathan is nodding and Devon says, “I've been thinking about that, too. I agree. We shouldn't do it during the insanity of her heat. She needs to know what she's agreeing to. I'll talk to Kaleb later when he comes in from his run.”
Just then Talia calls out, “dinner!” from the kitchen and then starts for the stairs to the basement, but in a moment of perfect timing Kaleb comes in from the garage door and snatches her wrist before she can go hide in her old room while we eat the meal she made without her. She keeps trying to sneak back down there, like she can’t stand to be around all of us.
“It seems I'm just in time. Talia, did you happen to make lemonade?”
She's frozen like a deer at the top of the stairs, eyes trained on Kaleb's hand wrapped around her wrist. It's things like that that showcase exactly how small she is compared to us. Kaleb is a big man, but next to her he looks like a monster and his hand covers significantly more than her wrist.
“Talia,” he says softly, “did you make lemonade while I was out running the property?”
She blinks up at him and nods.
“Will you pour a glass for me while I go wash up, please?” he asks, and she gives him another jerky nod. He doesn't let go, but gently leads her back to the kitchen and only releases her when she's in front of the fridge, then he washes his hands in the sink instead of leaving to do it in the bathroom.
Dinner is a fresh affair of salad loaded with everything but onions, little slices of toasted bread with herb butter and a tomato-garlic spread, and some kind of cold soup that I would have never touched under any other circumstances, but when I tried it earlier before she put it in the fridge I couldn't stay out of it.
She finally banned me from sampling it when it was half gone and ran me out of the kitchen. She tries to sit at her usual seat at the island, but Kaleb is apparently making a stand. He doesn't do a thing but put her little plate of food on her lap and scrape her stool across the floor to put her sitting awkwardly above us at the table.
I watch her take a big breath, and then she moves to nudge Jasper to share his seat, which makes him enormously happy. He's all too glad to settle himself and their food in such a way that they can both eat comfortably. I want to play the make-Talia-tolerate-our-bullshit game too, so I spoon her out a bowl of soup and put a spoon in her hand and ignore her huff before I scarf down most of my food.
Everyone is quietly eating, and it isn't an awkward silence.
Yet.
I can feel something building, and I think It's going to come from Devon. It's almost always because of Devon.
At least he waits until she's eaten half of her food. “Dr. Cortez called today when you and Jasper were resting,” he waits until she's looking at him before he continues.
I already know what he's going to tell her, but Kaleb doesn't.
