Page 63 of The Beta: Part One

Nathan fixes me with a look, “Don't tell them I have cameras on them, Jasper doesn't know there's a camera in his bedroom. After the first go at him a couple years ago, I installed hidden cameras in most of the house.”

I want to be pissed that there might be a camera in my bedroom, but I like being able to come in here and check on everyone with a click of a mouse too much to be very bothered.

“You need to see something else,” I say, lips pressed tight together. “It's bad.”

Nathan nods and I hand him my phone after I pull up the email. He stares at it for a bit and then jerks it away from his face, “What the fuck? Is that...that's Talia.”

I jerk my chin at him, “Keep looking. Then tell me who sent that shit. It has to be the same person.”

I know when he comes to the picture of Talia's abused body when another growl rips through him and his eyes shoot to me.

“Can you find who sent it?”

He snarls, “I will. Give me some time. Take my phone to check the back half.”

I grab his phone and head out.

None of us find anything on the property. No tire tracks, no broken brush, no crushed cigarette butts, nothing. Our best guess is that they were farther away and used a scope.

Jasper took the news in stride since there have been previous similar situations, but Talia is still quietly fuming about it. She's sitting beside Nathan right now pouring over the pictures, inspecting every one to try to figure out the possible location of the camera based on angles; she's evidently not bothered that someone took and sent copies of her giving Jasper a blow job, or that we've all seen it.

“Tell me again what the guy looked like,” she asks Nathan for the hundredth time.

He describes the dark figure we saw in the equally dark room, again, but there's nothing more to gain from it. I want to talk to Nathan about the email, but not in front of either Talia or Jasper. “We'll check the property again tomorrow when it's light out, we can't do anything else tonight. Jasper, did you convince Talia to watch that god-awful movie with you?”

Hopefully he did so that I can get them out of here and distracted. And so I won't have to watch it. Jasper is the king of B rated horror films and I'm not a fan, but I am the only one who will sit through the damn things with him.

“He did,” Talia sounds almost excited instead of resigned. She shoots me a look that tells me she knows exactly what I'm doing and then pulls Jasper from the room, telling him to put the movie on in his room while she gets the popcorn.

Once they're out of earshot I ask Nathan, “Any luck with the email?”

His eyes harden and he pulls up another window on the screen, “Shut the door.”

I also lock it.

“I traced it back to what looks like a burner phone. You know it's fucking Seth. Who else would send it?” He starts clicking again, showing me numbers and coordinates that mean fuck-all to me.

“I'm not sure if it's him or someone in with him,” I say, “After the show Alpha Pratchett put on at the auction, anyone with access to the pictures could use them to send us after Seth. It could be an excellent opportunity for someone to use us to help themselves to his position. But you saw his face as well as I did, he wants to hurt Talia; and that could pose a threat to the pack. If I get anything else I'll let you know. I haven't mentioned it to anyone but you yet, so let's hold off on telling anyone else for now. Devon's made things hard with Talia and I'd like her to be a little less on-edge before we throw more at her.”

Nathan sighs long and hard, “I'm not going to say anything. I'm glad it's not just me who noticed it. I don't know what the right thing to do is with her, and I don't think Devon is clear-headed enough to make a good call. Me and Trent talked about it, neither of us think Jasper is going to let her go even if we wanted her gone. Hell, I'm not sure we really even want her gone anymore; not as far as Trent and me are concerned. There's something between Jasper and Talia, something deep. It's different than the bond we have with him. I wonder...maybe...could they be mates? Like, true ones? I know how rare it is anymore, especially with her being a beta, but that's the only thing my mind keeps coming back to. I don't know, but if they are, what would we do? We'd have to bond her in, wouldn't we? And then what?”

Nathan has his going-down-the-rabbit-hole voice running at full speed. With good reason, too, because I've been considering some of the same things. “I don't think we're at a point of deciding anything just yet, but we are going to have to talk about it with everyone soon. I told Devon today that he's going to have to remedy the situation with Talia because it's stressing Jasper out, and he will, you know Devon.”

Nathan nods, “Yeah, I know. I just hate that it's like this.” Then he says, almost bashfully, as bashful as a lean, six and a half foot tall alpha can be, “If she is, do you think...do you think she would be...ours, too? You know...eventually?”

That question is as weighted and terrifying as any of the other's we've asked ourselves tonight.

Would she be ours? Could she?

Would Jasper want that? Because if she's his mate, his true, biologically perfect, compatible mate, what would that do to our pack dynamic?

With most packs, it's always an alpha who finds his or her mate in an omega, occasionally a beta, and they're integrated into the pack; and most often the mate is bonded with all the joined alphas in the pack and they share mate status. Of course, it isn't the same for all packs; there are those who keep the mate bond between just the two, and only invite the other alphas to enjoy the bond during the omega's heat.

Honestly, and possibly stupidly, I assumed Jasper was our mate because our connection with him was so strong and so immediate; but after witnessing how he and Talia are together I'm doubting that assumption. Devon has the most domineering of our personalities, so it's widely assumed that Jasper is his and we all share in their bond, but we each have our own tether to our omega. Devon just felt it first.

If Talia is Jasper's mate, I really don't know how it would work. But...based on how Jasper was about her when he was in heat I'm almost confident he would want her to be ours collectively. All of this speculation is also considering only Jasper's opinions, I can't even begin to imagine how Talia might feel about it. She might be friendly with us, but that doesn't mean anything when sex and bonds are involved. I can think myself into a migraine, but all I can tell Nathan is that I don't know.

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