Page 38 of Beta and the Beast (Beastverse #2)

"Hi, I'm Sarah." I hold out my hand, but her eyes have narrowed in on the bite mark on my neck, something I'm now noticing she doesn't have on hers. Oh, joy. "You must be Jace's mom. I'm just here to help him pack up his things."

Her jaw ticks, her eyes flashing behind me to where her son is very much pressed against my back like he wishes the world would just open up and swallow him whole.

"Be fast. Greg could be home soon."

I check my phone, wondering if we went through a time vortex on our way here, and it isn't noon. Big surprise, we haven't gone through a time vortex, and we have at least a couple of hours until we need to leave. But if she wants us to be fast, we can be fast.

She leads us through the house, down the hall to a room without a door.

Instead, it has a sheet pinned to the top as a makeshift curtain.

I push through it, frowning at the state of Jace's room.

He's not the neatest kid to live with, but he's not nearly as messy as his room suggests.

Drawers are pulled out of his dresser, clothes pulled out of his closet, and the mattress on his twin bed is flipped on its side.

I glance at Jace, but he still hasn't looked up. His mother doesn't look too pleased that we're in the house, but leaves us to gather his things.

"I'll be in the kitchen. Holler before you leave so I can lock the front door."

She doesn't say a single thing to her son and doesn't acknowledge him at all.

I have to take a deep breath to focus on what's important, even if I'd like to tell this woman that she's being awful to her son for no reason other than her boyfriend doesn't like another alpha being under the same roof as him.

An alpha that hasn't even claimed her, and I doubt he's going to.

But again, none of that is why I'm here.

I'm here to support Jace, and I do that best by not fighting with his mom.

"Where do you want to start?" I ask Jace, who answers with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "Okay, grab the stuff that means the most to you first and put it in the trunk. I'll start working on clothes ."

I start grabbing various articles of clothing and stuffing them into the trash bags we brought. I thought about stopping and grabbing boxes, but Jace told me it wasn't a big deal. Seeing his stuff crammed into garbage bags makes me wish I'd pushed harder for the boxes.

I fill up one bag before he even starts moving, but once he does, he's filling up his bag.

I look over every once in a while, watching him tuck a journal into it, a picture of him and who I imagine are his sisters.

He grabs some books off his shelves and a handheld gaming device.

We work silently for a while, but it's broken when someone enters the room.

"Jace," a girlish voice whispers from the doorway.

Both Jace and I whip our attention in her direction. She's younger, maybe around twelve, and very much Jace's little sister, just based on the similarities in their features. I don't know which alpha fathered them, but his genes must've been weak, considering how much both kids look like their mom.

"Greg said you weren't living here anymore."

"I'm not, Katy," Jace says, his voice just as hushed as his sister's, so I turn my attention back to the task at hand and let them have their moment since they're trying to do it without their mother finding out. "I'm safe, though. I have somewhere to stay in the city, so I'm not far either."

"Izzy's going to be so mad she left earlier," Katy says as she steps further into the room. "Her and Mom fought this morning about you, and Izzy stormed off. She even took Mom's car."

Jace coughs to cover his chuckle at that. "Izzy will be fine, but tell her I miss her."

"Are you ever coming back?" Katy asks, moving around the room and helping Jace to grab things and stuff them into bags. "I know Greg's mean and all, but if you just don't get in his way, I think he might let you stay again."

"No, I can't come back," Jace says, a sadness in his voice that I can tell he's trying to mask. "You remember how Dad sometimes got really angry?"

I pause my movements, listening to the two of them.

Jace kneels next to his sister so he's lower than her, smaller than her, trying to look less threatening.

Katy doesn't have to respond to him because he knows she remembers.

I don't know anything about his father other than that he had a beast and that Jace doesn't like talking about him.

He has a therapist he sees at the center, so I assume they know about his father.

"Well, I have a beast, too," Jace says, his voice wavering slightly. "He's not mean like Dad's was, but he's there, and Mom and Greg don't want him around."

Katy stares down at her brother, chewing on her bottom lip as tears start to well in her eyes. "Can I meet him?"

No one is more surprised by her asking to meet Vilkas than Jace. His whole body goes still for a moment, like he isn't quite sure how to respond, but then his eyes flash gold.

"Oh wow," Katy says, her brows pinching together as Vilkas waits for her to decide how she feels about him. He's trying not to scare her, trying not to make her think that he's bad. "And you're just inside there with Jace?"

Vilkas nods, the movements sharp jerks, but they don't scare his sister. No, her mother might be scared because of what a beast did to her, and Greg might not want the competition in the house, but Jace's sister doesn't care that he's considered dangerous.

A sound from down the hall has Jace taking back control of their body. He reaches up to Katy's shoulder and urges her to leave. "When you're older, we'll hang out more. Tell Izzy I'm working on getting a new phone, but I still have her number."

"Okay, fine, but only because Mom will be so mad if she sees me in here," Katy says, her eyes darting down the hall before she scampers down the other direction and into what I'm assuming is her room.

I swallow hard, trying to figure out the best way to ask my next question. "Has Greg ever hurt any of you?"

Jace's attention snaps over to me. "No, never. He yells at my mom sometimes, but he's never touched her or any of us out of anger. He's a lot better than my dad was."

I give him a short nod, stuffing the last little bits of his clothing into a third garbage bag. He comes up beside me, crouching beside me and wrapping his arms around me again.

"Thank you for checking, though."

"Of course," I tell him, wrapping my arms around him and squeezing him once. "And we'll get you a phone on the way back home. You should've told us you didn't have one."

"No, it's not–"

I hold up a hand, silencing him as I stand and attempt to throw the bag over my shoulder. I only manage to hoist it to my waist before it falls back down, almost dragging me down with it.

"We're getting you a phone," I tell him. "I don't think legally I can help you meet up with your sisters, but I can at least get you a phone and let you guys figure it out."

Jace swallows hard again, his purr rumbling up, sounding so different than Henry's, even though they're basically the same. He's embarrassed by his reaction and covers it by grabbing two of the garbage bags and hoisting them up like it's nothing.

"Can we get pizza on the way back, too?" he asks, the scared boy he was when we came in, receding enough for him to at least find his voice.

"Yeah, I'll message Henry before we leave and see if he'll grab it from that place down the street."

"Sweet," Jace smiles, purposefully doesn't look toward the kitchen, walks through the living room to get to the front door, and stands a little taller as he does it.

I might hate what he's going through. I might wish I could fix it all and give him back the home he's having to leave.

That's not in his cards, though. So, I do whatever I can to help him while it's hard and support him when he needs it.

One day, he'll have his sisters to reach out to once they're old enough.

Until then, Henry and I will do the best we can for him.

It takes us two more trips to the car from his room to get all the trash bags, but Jace is in much higher spirits as we pull away than when we first pulled up.

I'm not surprised to see an angry alpha pulling into the driveway as soon as I start the car.

His growl vibrates across the yard, and a part of me wants to tell him to shove his bad mood up his ass, but I'm supposed to be a good example now that a kid is staying in my mate's apartment.

So, I chew on my lip, mentally flip Greg off, and pull away way too fast because he's stomping over to the car.

Jace lets out a hoot of laughter as the tires squeal, and I can't help but throw my head back and let one out, too. It isn't until we're pulling out of the neighborhood that we stop laughing, and then Jace sobers from his joy.

"Thank you," he tells me. He doesn't need to say more than that.

"Thank you," I respond, and he nods, knowing I don't need to say more either.