Page 17 of Beta and the Beast (Beastverse #2)

Henry

T he meeting with the social worker goes well.

My application to become a foster parent has made it through the first round of approval.

The next part will consist of interviews, character statements, and a background check.

Since I'm only looking to house alphas, the scrutiny on why I'm willing to foster as a single man has dropped significantly.

Not that I approve of that, but it does help my situation.

I need to talk to Lucas about our living situation.

As much as I love living with my brother, if he's in the house, he'll need to fill out all of the same paperwork I do, even if he won't be around very often.

He wouldn't have an issue with it, but I don't want to give him more on his plate.

He already helps out at the center during the day and does his workouts and fights in the evenings.

My ideal situation would be for Sarah and our landlord to let me build a wall connecting our two apartments and turn it into a larger single apartment. Considering I don't know if Sarah's ready to admit she wants me, I haven't pursued that idea other than knowing it would be perfect.

My apartment has two small bedrooms, a kitchen, a living space, and a single bathroom.

Sarah's apartment is a single bedroom with a single bathroom.

Combine them all, and we have a three-bed, two-bath apartment.

We could give the alphas staying with us some more freedom and responsibility if they were to stay on the two-bedroom side of the apartment.

It would be odd, but then again, I'm trying to prove to a beta that I want her to be my mate and convince her to house young displaced alphas with us.

The whole situation is odd. Sarah would be willing to do it, though.

She has a good heart, and I'd never house any of the young alphas I thought would be dangerous to her.

No, I'd never put her in danger. I'm also not about to make her okay with all of this if it's not what she wants.

First, I need to get her to admit that wanting to be with me might not be the worst thing in the world.

Second, I need to convince her that I want her as my mate.

Something I'm not sure she'll fully grasp since she's a beta, and they don't mate the same way alphas and omegas do.

She's seen how important mating is. Her parents and brothers are all mated, so she must know it's serious.

Third, I'll see how she feels about fostering.

Not that she needs to foster anyone. I can afford a separate house or apartment away from her.

I'd just prefer it if she were with me all the time.

The elevator door dings open, dragging me from thinking about the future I hope to have.

I'm already suspicious of why Lucas texted me to come over after I met with the social worker.

He's usually up at the gym every evening.

Okay, he's up at the gym almost all day, every day, unless he's helping out at the Young Alpha Center.

Either way, he's not usually home now, but he made a whole thing about needing to see me.

I catch her scent as soon as I step out of the elevator. It's faint, but I've been chasing it for weeks now, and I could pick it up even with the barest, briefest whiff. Sarah is here or was here. Why was she here when I wasn't?

My nostrils flare as I sniff long and hard, following her burnt, sugary smell deeper into the apartment. Lucas is standing in the kitchen, drinking a glass of water. He has a brow arched, but I don't say anything to him.

Fucker probably wanted to make sure I came back to the apartment so I would know that Sarah was here at some point. Here, alone with him. I scowl at him, but he's already switched to Remus and is waiting to see what I do. I growl low but huff and stomp down the hall.

Should kill him. He wants what's ours.

He doesn't want Sarah.

She might want him.

She doesn't want him.

I'm not entirely sure I'm right, but I'm at least fifty percent sure. Technically, Lucas and I are identical twins. I might be softer with longer hair, but we look the same apart from that, and our smells are identical.

If an omega were to scent-match me, there's a good chance she'd also scent-match Lucas. We've always been careful about and cognizant of it because it can cause issues. Thankfully, we've never had a situation with any scent-matches until Sarah came along. But betas don't scent-match.

Her scent is all over the office, especially in one of the oversized chairs on the opposite side of the desk. I don't like Lucas's scent on the one beside it. He should've been across the desk from her, far from her. I snarl at the open doorway, but Lucas hasn't followed me yet.

I bury my face in the soft fabric of the chair and inhale deeply. I'm so far past looking desperate that I don't care if anyone walks in while I do this. The only one here is Lucas, who already knows how lost I am for my little beta.

"Before you suffocate yourself," Lucas draws out his words with a laugh as I lift my face from the back of the chair. Romulus is in charge right now, but we're not about to fight anyone. If anything, he's ready to fuck Sarah until she's willing to admit she's ours.

Always ready for that.

"You should know that your beta thinks you'll find an omega and get bored of her." Lucas tilts his head to the side as he says it, watching as my body tenses and anger bubbles up to the surface.

Romulus growls, low and dangerous, but it isn't Lucas we're upset at. No, our beta doesn't trust us enough to know we want no one but her. Romulus pushes away from the chair, determined to track Sarah down and make sure she knows, without a doubt, how serious we are about her.

Lucas steps to the side, blocking the rest of the hallway except the way to the living room and the front door.

I don't even catch that he's trying to keep us from going further down the hall to his room, but Romulus does because he catches Sarah's scent leading in that direction.

He growls again. This time, it's directed at Lucas.

Lucas holds his hands up, trying to fight a stupid grin from splitting his lips. "Okay, wait, I thought you might need more of a push, but you don't. So let's ignore whatever it is you're thinking."

" Mine. She is mine. Not yours. " Romulus snaps his teeth in his displeasure, but Lucas keeps smiling. We push past our brother, not caring about whatever excuse he's trying to give us, because our beta was in his room. " Fucking piece of shit– "

" Watch it. " Remus takes over long enough to check Romulus and make sure he's not about to do or say something we'll regret.

The two beasts get along as well as Lucas and I do, which is usually a hell of a lot better than we have been ever since Sarah made an offhand comment about making sure I don't kill him.

" We should kill him, " Romulus mutters, earning us another low growl from behind us as Remus follows us into his room.

Romulus ignores our brother, his nose lifting as he takes in long inhales and starts moving around the room to figure out why exactly our mate was in here. She touched things. Touched the dresser, touched the wall, touched the bed.

" What did you do? " Romulus growls at Remus as he stands in the doorway, eyes burning bright.

Remus is enjoying himself right now. Romulus and I are in agreement that we don't like our mate being anywhere near our brother's bed, and we lunge. Does Remus grab and pin us on the ground before we know what's happening? Yeah, yeah, he does.

" Little beta thinks her alpha doesn't want her, " Remus mocks us, and it has Romulus fighting harder underneath him. " Needed you to fight. Not me. But for her. You don't want her in another's bed? Tell her. Stop wasting a good thing by being weak and frightened that she'll say no ."

" You had her in your bed, " Romulus snarls, his teeth clicking loudly.

" I did, " Remus looks up at his bed, his lips spread into a feral smile. " You should've seen the way she rubbed herself against the sheets. "

" I will kill you, " Romulus growls as his fight doubles. " I will rip you apart, limb from limb. I will disembowel– "

" Lucas told her it was your room, " Remus says.

His eyes meet ours again as Romulus closes his mouth.

" Left her alone here to do as she pleased, thinking it was your room.

" His lips press into a flat line as he flicks a look up at his bed.

" You owe me a new pillow. Unless you want me smelling your beta's cu– "

" Finish that sentence, and you're dead, " Romulus growls as though Remus hasn't made it abundantly clear he's not about to let us hurt him or his alpha. But he doesn't push it because, as much as Remus loves riling Romulus up, he knows when he's pushing it too far.

Remus pushes off of us and grabs a pillow from his bed.

One that has Romulus growling up a storm because we don't want anyone else to have that pillow but us.

He throws it at us, laughing when Romulus buries our face in it, smelling our beta, smelling the arousal she left like a present for us when she thought this was our room.

I need her.

We need her.

Romulus tucks the pillow underneath our arm, lifts our middle finger to Remus, and leaves his bedroom.

We don't need anything from the apartment.

We've slowly but surely been filling the smaller one across from Sarah's with things we need every day.

We even have a bed over there. It wouldn't be good to have a whole bunch of nesting supplies and nowhere to put them.

" Are we good? " Remus calls out when we near the front hall.

Even though Romulus is pissed at our brother for doing way too much to get us worked up enough to go and claim our beta, he still loves Remus and Lucas.

" We're good, " Romulus says, turning just enough to see that Remus is giving Lucas back control of the body. " Don't fuck with my beta again. "

Lucas holds his hands up. "Wouldn't dream of it. Now, go tell her she's yours so the rest of us can stop pretending like we don't already know you've scent-matched her."

Romulus purrs at the idea of everyone already knowing Sarah is ours. I'm the one who's more than a little embarrassed. Not that I'm surprised. Every time we're around her, we're inhaling like crazy and putting off enough pheromones that it's clear we're trying to scent someone.

We reach for the door handle, and Romulus pauses, fear tickling our hindbrain. " What if she rejects us? "

We don't turn around to see if Lucas looks like he's laughing at us for our worries.

It's not even just Romulus worried about it, either.

I'm terrified. It takes a special omega to be with a beast, and I've never known a beta to offer themselves to one.

Sure, Romulus is lazy unless it comes to sex, but that doesn't mean he isn't a major red flag to most omegas and betas in general.

"She won't reject you," Lucas says. Romulus opens his mouth to tell our brother she might, but Lucas continues before we can.

"And if she does, you lick your wounds in the apartment across the way and wait for her to tell you she made a mistake.

She wants you, but that doesn't mean she might not try to do what she thinks is safest."

" I am safest, " Romulus growls, his fingers tightening on the doorknob until our knuckles are white. " With me, she is safest. "

"With you, she would be, but she still thinks you'll scent an omega or need an omega. That's terrifying. Even omegas are taught to be careful of being with an alpha unless he marks her because there's no guarantee we won't use them and abandon them."

What Lucas says makes complete, rational sense.

Unfortunately, he's talking to Romulus right now, and the more he talks, the more Romulus is confident he's the only one who can show Sarah that we want her forever.

Even if he was willing to give me control of our body to have a conversation with Sarah, that's not happening anymore.

He's out of the apartment and heading down in the elevator, ignoring Lucas's questions about what his plan is.

Don't need a plan. He growls at me when I also start bugging him about what he expects to happen if he just walks up to Sarah with a pillow she used to masturbate underneath his arm and a raging boner. I'm going to bite her. Can't deny we want her with our mark on her neck.

And now I have to regain control of our body because if we do things Romulus's way, we're going to end up thrown in jail for claiming someone without their consent.

Leave it to Romulus to come up with the worst plan in the history of plans, and, for the first time in his life, he's actually fighting hard to keep me from controlling our body.

Calm down. I know what the little beta needs, and what she needs is some teeth in her neck.

We are so fucked.