Page 39 of Ruthless Alpha Beast

“I don’t need help,” he retorts. “I’m an Alpha, I help others, I don’t need them to help me.”

“Oh, save me the pack stuff,” I walk and lean against the far wall. “You obviously need help, you’re still—"

I pause.

“You were going to say human, weren’t you?” He smirks.

“No,” I assert. “You’re still a person! And as a person, you need help from other people. That’s deluded to believe that you don’t.”

“You don’t know me, Tara,” he frowns. “I know that you think you have me all figured out, but you don’t.”

“All I’m saying is sleep in a bed, given the state that you’re in! You’d think I was telling you to, I don’t know, retire from your Alphaship or something.”

“I couldn’t just retire,” he counters. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Besides the point.”

Our eyes lock; we’re two stubborn people who refuse to back down. But I know thatI’mright.

“Tara. Come on.”

I shake my head. “You’re wrong, Jasper. You need to at least look after yourself.”

I remember what it was like when my grandma died, and I officially had no family left.

It’s not like my grandma could help me with many things toward the end of her life anyway; it was more me taking care of her.

Even so, just her being there and telling me to do things helped. Just knowing that I had someone watching over me, someone reminding me to take care of myself, did more than she could have ever known.

When she was gone, I learned to provide that support for myself. It wasn’t easy, but I couldn’t afford to let myself slip.

“Okay,” he sighs. “How about this? I’ll sleep in my bed since it’s so important, if you sleep there too.”

What?

I hesitate.

What’s his angle here? This feels like a trick.

“It’s not like that,” he says. “I’m just not having you sleeping on the couch. It’s not right, you’re not doing it. That’s the condition, okay?”

At this point, I’m tired.

If that’s the condition for finally getting him to listen to me, then so be it.

“Okay,” I concede. “Do you need help getting upstairs?”

He laughs. “Don’t push it.”

***

It’s strange having a man lying next to me in bed. I don’t think I’ve had that since, well, him.

And that didn’t exactly turn out well.

I’ve propped a big pillow between us, one that blocks our vision of one another, but I can still sense his presence.

If I looked hard enough, I'm sure I could see him, but I don’t dare do that. I stare up at the ceiling, wide awake, mapping the cracks in the wood.