Page 76 of The Beta: Part Three
“Fuck no. Fuck him. I'm so relieved. I don't know why seeing him and thinking about him being inside my home made me react the way I did, either here or at the restaurant Devon took me to. I'm just so glad that I don't have to think about seeing him ever again.”
“What about Seth? Does he make you react in any kind of way?” Nathan is playing with my hair now, twisting the ends around his fingers while he talks.
I sigh. “Strangely enough, no. I have no reaction to Seth anymore, other than feeling sorry for him and worrying about him. He really will turn out to be good if he has the right kind of people guiding him. I know you all hate him, I don't blame you. Thank you for trusting me enough to give him a chance to change.”
“Jasper wants to kill him,” Nathan says flatly. “He might do it one day, Talia. Please don't hate him for it. He loathes every breath Seth takes. We all do. I don't care what his reasons were. He hurt you. Then he put you in a fucking cage to wait for him to do it again. If Jasper decides to kill him I'm going to help. Please don't hate us. I don't think I could take it if you hated me.”
I lean over and kiss Nathan's cheek. “I won't hate you, I couldn't; but please try not to kill Seth. Corso really, really does not want a council position, and Seth can be turned into something good.”
Jasper comes in carrying bottles of water with Corso behind him carrying a tray of food. “I warmed it,” Corso says as he puts the tray on the foot of the bed. “Is Nathan going to make it? It sounded questionable for a minute or two.”
“I'm going to make it,” Nathan laughs. “Thank you for bringing food upstairs. I don't know if I could have walked down them.”
I lose my composure, just a little, when I take the dishes down to the kitchen a while later; but I pull it together so that I don't launch all that stress and worry at Devon. He's at the table texting, with a very strong drink by the smell of it. He looks so awful. I haven't seen him since I laid down with Nathan earlier, and I think his injuries are the sort that look a lot worse before they start looking better. “You shouldn't be working. Have you been icing your face? For fuck sake, Devon, are you alright? I shouldn't have slept for so long. I should have checked on you.” So much for being pulled together.
He attempts to raise his eyebrow at me, but the effect is ruined by the swelling on that half of his face. His lip is split so bad I think he needs at least a stitch or two on top of how ugly his eye is. He reaches for his glass to hold it to his cheekbone and I see how busted up his knuckles are. “I have ice, see?”
“That's a glass of watery, room temperature bourbon.” I grab a bag of peas out of the freezer and hand them to him. “I think you need a stitch or two. What about the rest of you? How bad is it?”
He eyes me for a second before holding the peas to the side of his face. “I'll heal faster without the stitches. I can strip down and show you all my boo-boos, but it will just stress you unnecessarily, and that's unacceptable at this point.”
“What do you mean unacceptable? If you're hurt I need to know how badly.”
Devon sets down his phone and drains his glass. “Obi has given orders that you are to be kept as calm and level as possible for the remainder of the pregnancy. He also advised that sex needs to be limited and gentle. We all thought that was a pretty big ask on his part, but we said we'd try to convince you to be less...vigorous.”
If I wasn't so worried about how many of Devon's ribs are broken I'd laugh. “We'll give it our best shot, but if I need to be fucked, one of you better do it or I might just pout. How many broken ribs do you have?”
“Miraculously, none. I'm just bruised. Reid has a theory that I agree with, especially after I saw the footage of how it was for Kaleb. The people who were attacking Kaleb and I weren't trying to kill us or they would have. They were trying to lure you out.”
I nod. I had that thought earlier before I distracted myself with Nathan. “If Jasper hadn't come in when he did I would have. My vision even changed a little around the edges. I was so afraid for Kaleb and you, and angry with Trent and Nathan for not going out to help. I was taking off the headset to come out and shoot every one of those assholes who were hurting you.”
“Did he make that sound again?”
“No, it was something different,” I say, and start putting our dishes into the dishwasher. “I'm glad, but the way he was talking affected me almost like an alpha command. I'm glad he did it. It would have been catastrophically stupid for me to have left that room.” I've been trying to process the changes happening in Jasper almost as hard as I've been trying not to think about them. I don't know what they mean. I didn't know it was possible for a male omega to make the sounds he's been making or to give what amounts to alpha commands. So far, I'm the only one affected by the commands, but I'm pretty sure we all get chills when he makes some of the sounds he makes.
“Agreed. Reid said he was making a new sound right before he shot Pratchett. His exact words were 'alarming throat clicking that crawled up his spine like a shot of ice water', so that's something. I wasn't there to hear it, but the others said that was a fair assessment.”
I lean against the counter and try not to look like I'm scrutinizing every visible mark on Devon's body, probably unsuccessfully. He looks so swollen and bruised, I can only imagine how painful it must be. The longer I look at him, the worse I feel about sleeping for hours and then having fun with Nathan and Jasper.
“Stop it,” Devon says. “Right now. You can't do anything for this,” he gestures at his face. “You needed the sleep. I don't think you feel your emotions the way other people do.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
He sighs and puts the peas on the table. “It means that we can feel what you're feeling to a large degree through our bonds with you. You feel guilty right now; but when you feel other things, both good and bad, we can feel them. How did you feel when you saw Pratchett get out of the vehicle? How did you feel knowing he was close, that he could come into the manor if he wanted to?”
“Horrible. Angry.”
“You had another panic attack like when we saw him at the restaurant. It was much more than horrible and angry. It was definitely those things, but it was a lot more. I can't speak for the others, but I felt fear more than anything else. Straight up terror, then aversion strong enough that it made me physically gag. That's what you felt like to me. If Jasper hadn't killed him this morning, I'd be out hunting him down right now.”
Huh. It didn't feel like fear. It felt like I couldn't breathe with him that close to my home, and maybe a little like I might die if he actually entered it, but that isn't fear. Is it?
Devon steeples his hands under his chin. “What are you thinking about right now, this very moment?”
“How I was feeling when I thought he might come into the manor.” Was I afraid of him being inside my home? I'm not afraid of Jonas Pratchett, but Devon is right. I had a huge reaction to seeing him at the restaurant, and I'd had another reaction to seeing him on the monitor. “I don't understand why I react to him the way I do. When I think about him I'm not afraid of him. He is nothing to be afraid of at all, just an awful man who does and says awful things. But since the auction, when he's been physically close to me, I don't know. I don't understand why it happens.”
“It's a stress response, honey. You might not feel like you're afraid of him, you probably aren't, but your subconscious recognizes him as an intense threat and that's nothing you can control. Everything with Seth happened because his father pushed and pushed until Seth caved. Seth might not have ever bonded with Jay and Derrick if his father hadn't pushed him into it. Your brain chose Pratchett as the focal point for a trauma response. Close proximity to Pratchett, and Pratchett himself, are triggers for you. It makes sense that you don't recognize him as a trigger because you've probably never actually had one before now. I hope knowing he's dead will help lessen your response to him.”
So do I. I haven’t had a reaction to anything the way I have reacted to a nearness with Jonas Pratchett. I didn't have that reaction to him at the auction, I was disgusted but I was still able to handle it. It wasn't until after I found out the role he played during my placement with Seth's pack that I had a panic reaction to him. I can't stand the idea of having an entire panic attack at the mere thought or mention of him.
