Page 63 of The Beta: Part Two
“Jasper,” Talia says my name. I meet her eyes. “We are going to bring them home. We are going to go to the hospital to check on Devon in the morning. My mother is with him right now. He doesn’t have the balls to do anything but get better with her there.”
I try to smile for her. She isn’t being funny, she means it. And I believe her. Her mother is terrifying and fierce, which makes it even more absurd that I didn’t realize Talia is her daughter because they both give off the same intensity. “Okay. Take me to see my room?”
She raises up on her toes and kisses my cheek, then leads me by my hand up the stairs and through the huge door. Corso and the others are starting to unload the truck, but they were paying more attention to Talia and me than they were to fussing with the tarps covering all the boxes. Reid wasn’t so much as trying to hide his eavesdropping; he stood beside the truck with his arms crossed over his chest watching every word that came out of our mouths.
The phone screen virtual tour didn’t quite do this place justice. The main room might as well be a ballroom, there’s even a grand piano on a small platform in one corner. The wide staircase that leads to the second floor where the private rooms must be is straight out of a movie. Talia moves through it all like it’s nothing. It very well might be nothing to her, she doesn’t get caught up in what she calls fancy shit.
They all call nice things fancy shit. What are they going to think of living here, in this, the fanciest of shit? If they make it here, that is. Devon will probably pretend like it isn’t happening and go on about life the way he always does. Kaleb will definitely enjoy the extra space. Nathan will have the time of his life rigging up the place with all his security tech. And Trent will most likely destroy the place inside of an hour.
I miss them so much already. I can’t think of them without feeling like I’m going to throw up. I’m so afraid of what’s happening to them.
Talia leads me into a room that is twice the size of my room at the farmhouse. There is a massive bed taking up a large portion of one side of the room, with bedding that is very similar to what I had on my old bed. There is a dark stained dresser along one wall, and a night stand on either side of the bed.
“Is it okay?” Talia asks, biting her lip. When I don’t immediately answer, she rushes on, “you can have a different room if you don’t like this one. I just thought you might like it since it’s connected to mine through the bathroom. You don’t have to take this one. But Devon won’t want it, and I refuse to share a bathroom with Trent, so it will have to be Nathan or Kaleb.”
I cover her mouth with my hand, “it’s fine. Really. It’s just new.”
“We brought the bedding from the farmhouse. I’ll go get it.”
Then she’s gone before I can stop her. I walk over to the big window that is nearly as big as I am tall. I can see the fountain, and the trucks. After a minute, I watch Tala run over to Kaleb’s truck and climb up into the bed to dig and search through boxes until she finds the one she’s looking for. She drags it to the tailgate and tries to pick it up to bring inside, but Alex is there, rolling his eyes and taking it from her hands.
Talia is comfortable with these three. She has a sort of comradery with Trent and Nathan, Kaleb, too. She and Devon have what feels like a cordial agreement. But she has a completely different kind of closeness with Corso, Alex, and Reid. I know she has a history with them, but the way she is with them is very similar to the way I am with Devon and the others. If Talia had her own alphas, marked or not, these three would be hers. I suspect they’ve been hers all along, but she’s been too stubborn to accept it.
“Coming in,” Alex announces before he marches into the room with a box of familiar scents. A small sense of relief and pleasure flows through me as I register the individual notes of deep woods, sweet grass, gunpowder, and dark chocolate that make up the combined scents of my pack in this new space. “Where would you like this?”
If I were to be bluntly honest I’d tell him to dump it out on top of me, but I tell him to put it by the bed. He rolls his eyes, “you have to tell us what you really want, princess. Am I allowed to call you princess?”
“No,” Talia says flatly with her lips pressed together, “none of you get to call him that. I already told you.”
“Well what am I supposed to call him? He’s my omega. I need something more fun to call him than his name.”
“What the fuck is wrong with his name?” Maybe Talia is having a much more difficult time with everything than I thought if she’s jumping to my defense like this.
“It’s okay, Talia. He’s just trying to help,” I say and offer him a smile. “He’ll come up with a nickname of his own.”
“Term of endearment,” Alex clarifies, and dumps the box out on my new bed. “And you really do have to tell us what you need. We do pretty good at guessing, but it would be easier to take care of you if you just tell us. Anything you need, just say it. I know it’s new, and probably feels awful right about now, but we’re your alphas. We will take care of you. And,” he side-eyes Talia, “if we don’t, we’ll have to deal with her. Nobody wants to do that. Well, I might.” He wiggles one eyebrow in her direction.
“You’re obnoxious. Get out,” she says, but pinches his ass on his way out the door.
I drag both of us to the bed and start covering us in the blankets and sheets from the farmhouse.
“It always surprises me when this stuff makes me feel better,” she says. Her voice is muffled by the blanket from Kaleb’s bed that she shoved her face into.
I’m no better. I’ve got Nathan’s blanket smashed against one side of my face and Trent’s on the other. Devon’s bedding is bunched between me and Talia, and it almost feels like I can take a deep breath now.
“I can’t decide if finding comfort in dirty laundry is an omega pro or a con,” she says, taking a deep breath.
“Pro. Definitely a pro. I feel a little better now.”
She lowers the blanket from her face, but doesn’t let it go. “We have a plan. The guys don’t like it. Devon is going to fucking hate it. And Nathan would be a nervous wreck if he knew what it was. But it will work.”
This sounds promising. And exactly like something we have no business doing. It might end up being the most fun I’ve had in years.
“Alright. What’s the plan, cupcake?”
She gives me that little smile that’s only for me. “Okay, so my dads, my brother’s pack, the Dennison’s, and our alphas are going to storm the front gates of the compound. Nathan already had some intel and there’s only one main entrance, the back entrance is really just one small gate. While the alphas go hard at the front gate, you and I are going to sneak in the back, crawl into the vent system, shimmy to the holding cells, come through the ceiling and get the rest of our alphas out, make our way through the building to the front, and start taking out rogues from the back. We’ll meet in the middle and kill every single motherfucker in that compound who isn’t standing with us.”
“Oh, that’s all? Easy peasy.” I snap my fingers and roll my eyes.
