Page 8 of The Beta: Part Two
They stay like that so long that the nurse who slipped out without any of us noticing peeks back inside the room to check on things. I nod at her and she disappears back into the hallway. I look over at Devon and find him looking at Jasper like he’s never seen him before, I touch his shoulder to get his attention. I need to gauge his reaction to all of this so I can plan mine.
It’s delayed, but he does eventually look at me and I can see the war happening between his mind and his heart. He’s coming to terms with accepting a female into the pack, having another omega to take care of and protect, and sharing Jasper with more than just us. It is obvious now that a good portion of Jasper, more than we thought, belongs to Talia.
How much of Talia belongs to him, though?
How much of herself can she give us?
Devon and I have one of our silent conversations and he finally gives me a slow nod. He catches Trent’s eyes and motions to the bed with his chin. Trent carefully steps closer, “Talia, I’m going to get onto the bed behind Jasper. Nathan and I are going to make both of you feel really safe. It'll be alright, darlin,” he drawls.
He must be feeling really anxious if I can hear that much of his accent. When she doesn’t protest he climbs up over the rail and settles behind Jasper. Both omegas are sandwiched between him and Nathan, and the room fills with the warm sound of two alphas purring. Jasper is visibly affected. I can’t tell how Talia is handling it, but she’s not trying to get away.
Devon drags his gaze to the laundry on the floor and stares at it. She should have wanted the clothes. She’s been surrounded by our scents for months, she should take comfort in them. Instead, she pushed them away.
I can tell Devon is trying to work it out, but I think I know what the problem is. We’re not really hers, and Devon especially hasn’t given her any reason to find our scents comforting. She’s covered Jasper in our dirty clothes before when he needed it, so I know she understands why we brought it for her.
The problem is that scent-heavy fabric only helps an omega who has a pack. We have made it crystal clear to her that she’s only with us because of Jasper, that there’s a distinct separation, and that she is not part of our pack. We have to fix this. Even if we didn’t want her for ourselves we’d want her for Jasper. After the hell she put herself through to keep him safe there’s no way he’s letting her go. There’s no way we’re letting her go.
Devon clears his throat, “I’m going to go rearrange some things at home and get her some clothes to wear back. I thought she’d want to wear some of ours, but… I’ll get things ready. I’ll call your mother, Talia. Everything will be alright.” He reaches out to stroke Jasper’s hair but the acrid scent of fear filters from the bed.
Jasper glares at him and he jerks back his hand. Devon turns away, a stricken look in his eyes, and Talia starts whimpering and whispering but I can’t understand what she’s saying.
“Honey, we can’t understand you, slow down. Tell me again,” Nathan’s calm is infectious and her dolce scent loses the sharpest notes of fear.
“Don’t let him go,” she says so quietly I still can’t quite hear her clearly, “don’t let him, They said...they said they were going to get rid of Devon and the rest of you and take Jasper. Don’t let him go. None of you, never alone. They might be watching the house. Don’t let him go.”
Jasper starts shushing her again, and I finally break my silence, “I’ll go with him. Don’t worry, nobody will be alone. I’ll keep him safe and then we’ll be right back here.”
She’s all eyes as she nods at me and then burrows back into Jasper. “We’ll be back as soon as we can. Talia, do you want to be in Nathan’s room? You can’t stay downstairs by yourself anymore. If we’d known, you never would have been down there, or in the attic. One of us should have given you our room from the very start. What can I bring you to wear? You don’t want to wear a hospital gown out of here.”
She whispers something and Jasper sighs. “No, baby, you can’t. You’re staying in my room with me so I can keep an eye on you. No, hush. That’s what’s going to happen. And I need you to wear some of our clothes out of here, will you do it for me? It’ll feel better for both of us if you do, I need to see you in our clothes, need your scent surrounded by ours.”
She whispers something else and Trent answers her, “darlin, we don’t care about a little blood. There’s not as much as you think, anyway. You can wear Jasper’s shorts since they’ll fit better, and Nathan’s tee shirt, and Kaleb’s hoodie. You can even wear my socks if you want. We’ll carry the rest with us too, just in case. You’ll see, you’ll like it. When we get home we’ll get you and Jasper tucked into bed and we’ll all decide how this will work.”
She starts softly crying again, and I motion Devon out the door. Neither of us says anything until we get to the SUV and then Devon roars the word FUCK like it will help anything. Then he looks at me, and I haven’t seen that look on his face since the first time he saw Jasper. He’s lost, afraid, angry, confused.
“We didn’t know. She didn’t know, either. She’s registered as a beta, Devon. You can’t hide being an omega, especially not a female one. We were just too fixated on Jasper to recognize what was going on, her too. She hasn’t actually gone into heat yet, there’s no way we would have missed that. We’ll go home, move her stuff to Jasper’s room, and we’ll talk to the doctors to see if they can tell when she might go into her first heat. It’s going to be different from Jasper, I don’t know how it will affect him, but we’ll take care of her.”
He looks down, shaking his head, “what if she doesn’t want us? I can’t lose Jasper, I can’t. We’ll fall apart. I’ll fall apart. Fuck, I was so awful to her, I thought it would be better than letting her get attached to us. It was bad enough with her getting close with Jasper, but now? What if she doesn’t let us claim her? Fuck, Kaleb, what if she does? What then?”
I take a few breaths to gather my thoughts.
I’ve already been thinking about claiming Talia. I have been for weeks. Now that she’s flipped the switch to omega it will be a bit different, but it'll be fine all the same. I won’t say it out loud yet, but I’ve even had a few fantasies about us making her pregnant. Jasper might not have a knot, but he’s more than capable of knocking her up if the timing is right. It’s absolutely awful of me to be thinking about it now, but one of my hottest fantasies is watching her riding Jasper’s cock while he’s riding mine.
I scrub my hand down my face and start the vehicle, “it’ll work out, we’ll make it okay. Jasper will convince her, Nathan will help. She’ll let us claim her, and when her first heat comes we’ll all take care of her. I can’t wait to see how Jasper reacts to it. Trust me, you’ll see. It’ll be fine.”
I’m trying to give him some kind of reassurance that everything will be fine, but it all depends on how Talia handles all of it. And I’m afraid to be overly optimistic because there’s already been so much damage done.
There are fresh tracks in the driveway from tires smaller than ours, but there aren’t any unfamiliar vehicles and nothing appears to be out of place outside. The alarms haven’t been triggered and nothing seems off. Maybe someone just came to check up on us. Maybe Talia’s mother sent some of her people.
The house is as we left it, but I’m still going to ask Nathan to look through the recorded feed in the off chance that someone was here nosing around. He’s got cameras and sensors all over, inside and out, so if there’s anything to see he’ll see it. It doesn’t take me long to bring Talia’s things up to Jasper’s room. It’s not much more than a satchel of clothes, a couple pairs of shoes and boots, two books, and a shit ton of weapons.
I carry all of it up and put it in front of Jasper’s dresser. I brought up Talia’s sleeping bag, too. She might feel better having something that she’s been using for only herself. Then I feel like shit that we’ve all got these big, comfortable beds with sheets and blankets and a hundred pillows and she’s been downstairs with a fold away bed and a goddamned sleeping bag. We have so much to make up for, which reminds me…
“Devon!” I call out, “question!”
He comes into Jasper’s room with a few of his shirts draped over his arm. He puts them on the foot of the bed, he must be trying to do for Talia what he would do for Jasper. Whenever Jasper is having a hard time, he feels better with our scents surrounding him. He wears our clothes and keeps our worn, oversized hoodies and flannels nearby in case he needs them. We don’t know what Talia might do. ““Hey, so, you thought she may have been having heat spikes and covering up the scent with bleach. When we were all in the freezer when Jasper was in heat, the bleach smell wasn’t there to cover it up anymore. You didn’t say anything to Nathan or Trent, did you? Did either of them notice? Because if we all knew and didn’t do anything…”
He rubs the back of his neck and looks about as guilty as I feel, but that guilt quickly fades and turns to irritation. “No, I didn’t say shit to them and they didn’t bring it up either. You could have said something just as well as I could have, Kaleb. You noticed it, just like I did. If you want to point fingers, make sure you point one at yourself, too.”
