The Beta: Part Two (The Beta, #2)

by Avanne Michaels

Holy fuck, we really are idiots.

I turn on him and give him every single drop of outrage and grief and horror I feel. “You seriously don’t understand what’s happening right now, do you? Whether we have officially bonded her into our pack or not, she is ours. I sent you to bring her back here to me once before and you did it. Whether she consciously realized what was happening to her or not, some part of her recognized that we were bringing her home.

You didn’t even try to find her once they took her!

And we are letting it happen to her! Alone, Devon. Alone!”

I want her, and I’m bringing her home. If you refuse to bond her into the pack I’m leaving it. Fuck! If I could just… if I was an alpha I’d do it myself, but I fucking can’t. What we have put her through is unforgivable. I don’t know if I can bring her back from wherever she’s gone at this point.”

They’re all quiet after I finish my rant and I let Kaleb grip my shoulder when he reaches for me, “we’ll help her, baby. We’ll make it right. We’ll bring her back and I’ll mark her myself if she’ll let me. Neither of you are going anywhere. We’ll make it okay.”

I take a shaky breath and look up at him, “okay,” my voice is shaky and hoarse now. “But you,” I point at Devon, “I’m so fucking angry with you right now that I want to go back in there and throw up again. You should have g...

I may never forgive him for this. Kaleb has offered to help try to make it right, but it was ultim...

The nurse who is leading us has a mixture of disgust and sympathy fighting it out on her face. I agree. I feel like I’m being led to a funeral.

“We brought you...I thought…here,” Jasper says softly and places the basket of our clothes near her feet. She doesn’t immediately reach for them. When she finally looks from him down to the basket, she looks at it for a long time before tears flood her eyes.

I think she’s going to start pulling things out and scenting them, but she doesn’t. She toes the basket off the bed, scattering clothes onto the floor, and I feel it in my gut. It feels like she’s rejecting us, like she’s rejecting me.

Jasper makes a choking sound and takes off his shirt, then climbs onto the bed with her. He ignores the way she’s scooting away from h...

She looks at it for a long moment, then buries her face in it, sobbing into the material. He climbs behind her and pulls her into his lap and starts purring, it isn’t...

“It’s alright, Talia. We’re taking you home. It’s alright,” he shushes, but she only cries harder and starts shaking her head. The first words she whispers is, “I can’t. You can’t. I don’t want…” but she can’t continue. Jasper begins to rock her, “yes, we can. You can. I’m taking you home. I’ll take care of you.”

We’ll take care of her, I think to myself. We should have bonded her into the pack well before now as a beta, but now that we know she’s an omega there’s no way we’re letting her go.

If she’ll have us, that is. Considering everything, I won’t be surprised if she doesn’t want to stay with us. She is allowing Jasper to comfort her now, though, so that’s at least something.

“Talia?” Nathan starts gently, and she burrows deeper into Jasper’s chest, “Talia, we didn’t know. We really didn’t. Please, honey, let us take you home. We’ll take care of you. We’ll make everything okay.” She pins him with a look and he lowers his eyes, “I’ll make sure you’re safe. You can have my room. Anything you want, honey. We’ll take care of you.”

I keep holding my breath, waiting for her to scream or come flying off the bed, but she doesn’t. She’s stiff between them, still clutching Jasper’s shirt, but she lets them hold her.

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.

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?

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.

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...

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 t...

After the hell she put herself through to keep him safe there’s no way he’s letting her go. There’s...

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.

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,

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.

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 ...

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 diff...

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.

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.

“Why do you think she didn’t say anything once she started having spikes?” I ask, but I’m pretty sure I already know the answer. “Because I made such a big deal about her only being welcome as long as Jasper wanted her here. Because I made sure she understood the only reason we agreed to have her here at all is because she wasn’t an omega. Because she’s built her life around being a beta, and she knows that once she changes her registration from beta to omega her entire life will change.

Elizabet was hoping that Talia would find a pack to bond into; and if that pack triggered Talia’s omega awakening, all the better.

He nods, “Elizabet knew that it would take the right pack to trigger Talia’s heat deep down. She knew it would take a strong pack like ours to finally make Talia’s subconscious recognize that she was safe enough to allow her body's natural state and that her pack would be able to care for her and handle her needs. And we fucked it up.

We haven’t given her any reason to believe that we would be the right pack for her, unless Jasper is all it took.

From the moment she walked through the kitchen door they’ve had this bizarre connection. A pair of omegas being fated mates is unheard of, it simply doesn’t happen.

“I meant what I said, Devon. I’m putting my mark on her. I’m bonding her into this pack. If you have a problem with that we need to hash it out now instead of in front of her or Jasper.”

We’ll make it right, we’ll make her want to be part of us, not just part of Jasper.” We share a hard look and I know we’re on the same page.

Trent is standing on one side of them, petting one or the other of them every few seconds, and Nathan is standing at the counter beside the sink going over paperwork with a very happy nurse.

Jasper makes you happy, I can see how much you care for him. Let him love you, Talia. Please give us time to prove to you that we can take care of you.

Let us show you that we are strong enough to hold you. We don’t deserve either of you, but we showed Jasper that we take care of him, let us show you the same thing.” I take both her hands in my own and bring her fingertips to my mouth to brush the tiniest of kisses against them.

I don’t know what to do. Everything has changed so abruptly. Everything. I am constantly fighting against myself.

I want to cocoon myself in their laundry and bed sheets, and at the same time I want to shove them all as far away from me as I can get them, except Jasper. He’s the only one I can stand touching me. It is exactly as I swore to myself in the hospital, no sex unless with Jasper.

If it wasn’t for him being so patient with me, being sweet to me, I think I’d ...

I feel like I’m going crazy, and I think the men in this house are afraid of me. I’m a little afraid of myself.

she also said that having regular sex with my alphas would help that along. But I don’t have alphas. Jasper has alphas and I have Jasper; and he’s doing his best.