“So what did he say?”

  “That we were already acting like Beta and Alpha. He even made a joke about how we're becoming like him and your mom.”

  “Oh—really?” Amirah gave him a small smile, but the inflection in her voice told him something was off, and he could see that she was attempting—poorly—to hide a frown.

  “What's that look?” When he said this, she turned to him with a sigh.

  “I don't know. I just think—before you start objecting. We can be us, without being our parents.” She said it in her diplomatic voice. The one she used when she was telling him something she thought would upset him.

  “It was just a joke.” Leo said. She just didn't understand. Of course they had to be their parents. They had to be them to become better than them.

  “...Okay.”

  They turned back to the movie and watched in silence for a few minutes, but from the corner of his eye, he could see Amirah's eyes trained intensely on him. He narrowed his eyes on her, and she quickly turned back to the movie. What did she want to tell him?

  After a few minutes, she grabbed the remote from the low coffee table and paused the documentary, turning her body on the couch to face him.

  “No, don't pause!” Leo reached for the remote, but she dragged it away, tucking it into the cushions behind her. Leo groaned

  “We need to talk.”

  “We can talk and watch. Humans are extremely capable.”

  She gave him an unamused smile. “Oh, they are—are they?”

  He sighed and returned back to his end of the couch with a defeated slouch.

  “What's been going on with you lately?” She asked, causing Leo's mind to drift to Ivan, as it always seemed to do these days.

  Not for the first time, he felt a sudden pull to just give in and tell her everything. Lying to her at the start had been bad enough, but now he was lying to his parents as well. Hell, he was lying to the whole world, so what was one more person?

  It was a conversation he had thought about many times and one that replayed constantly in his head.

  He would start with, 'Well, I found my mate, and it's Ivan who I've hated since I could talk, and I've been kind of splitting my time between spending time with him so I don't die and trying to keep my dad from killing his pack so that he doesn't die either.'

  Then she would look at him in unguarded horror, and the scenario would briefly cut off after that.

  Truthfully, he had no idea how she would react to something as big as this. He had never entertained the idea of testing it before, because he figured bringing up gay people in any context would never not be suspicious.

  So he ignored the pull and simply shrugged, avoiding her eyes by staring at a large framed picture of her mom holding her as a toddler as she posed in a lion onesie.

  “You know you were so adorable as a baby. Did growing up change that or…?”

  “I'm being serious, Leo.” Her voice was soft. Calm. Yet there was an undertone of frustration there too. “You seem…. I don't know. Detached.”

  He turned to her. Her face was serious, and her eyes seemed… sad. “From you?”

  “I guess…I mean no.” She bit the edge of her lip. “I don't know; I can't really explain it.”

  She shifted on the couch, her shoulders slumping to match the grim expression on her face. “You're just always so busy. Busier than you ever used to be. And you keep disappearing off to Goddess knows where.”

  Ivan's pale face flashed into his mind once again. He knew that lately they weren't enemies, and as much as he joked about it, they didn't exactly feel like friends either. But the somewhere in between where their relationship was situated made him feel like he could tell the other boy anything. Like one day he would tell him everything.

  If Ivan wasn't his mate and he was the one asking Leo what Amirah was right now, would he hesitate like he was doing currently? Probably not. It felt like he and Ivan had created a bubble of protection from their collective secrets. What could have served as mutually assured destruction had developed into mutually assured trust.

  He had contemplated telling Amirah in the past. She was his best friend, and after so many years of friendship, he knew that he could trust her.

  He glanced back at her, then remembered that Ivan had been sitting in that same spot only a few days ago. When something that wasn't something but wasn't exactly nothing had happened.

  “Nothing's going on with me.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you sure?”

  He sighed deeply in an attempt to prepare himself for what he hadn't even been planning to do. He decided at that moment that even if nobody could ever know that Ivan Piotrowski was his mate, he could at least tell someone that he had found his mate. Without mentioning the blond.

  “Okay. I have to tell you something,” he said, stopping to face her and slowly sinking into the couch next to her. “But you can't freak out or anything.”

  She looked at him with a raised brow. “I figured. And I won't.”

  He let out a deep breath. It was now or never.

  “I found my mate,” he said quickly, looking away from the shocked expression on her face to stare at the picture-frame-covered walls beside her head.

  “Oh.”

  “Oh?”

  She raised her hands up defensively. “Well, I just thought you were going to say something else. Definitely not that.”

  She got up from the couch and then sat back down again, placing a hand on his arm. “Wait. Who is it? You seem unusually secretive.”

  He frowned. “I have secrets. Things even you don't know about.” He replied, pointedly.

  This caused a snort to escape her, and he crossed his arms. “I don't know what's so funny.”

  “I'm kidding. Now, tell me who this unlucky lady is.”

  “Uh, they—she’s no-one that you know.” He glanced away from her burning stare “She’s from out of town,” he added vaguely.

  She narrowed her eyes at this but remained silent. If she didn’t believe him, she wasn’t letting on.

  He could feel the heat in the room rising, and it felt suffocating, like a cloud of smoke was lodged in his throat.

  “Where did you meet her?”

  He cleared his throat. “Coffee shop.”

  “You said coffee gives you heart palpitations.”

  “I also used to tell people Michael Pe?a was my dad, so….”

  She gave an amused nod of agreement. “Is she pretty?”

  He thought about this for a second. Sure, Ivan was objectively attractive; he had been told many times by many girls—including Mei—just how much, but before then he had never really thought about it. But looking at him now, he could definitely see the appeal.

  His eyes were a deep, forest green colour, rimmed with a deep brown ring with the tiniest specks of gold sprinkled inside. His almost-white, blond hair was always a slight mess, falling languidly into his sculpted face in a messy tangle. Not that Leo had ever looked at him super closely, but these features just stood out.

  “Does it matter?” He finally replied, face heating up slightly as the images of Ivan's face were slow to leave his mind.

  She shrugged. “Of course not. I just want to get to know her. This is exciting!”

  He forced a smile, trying to match her joy, but it felt misplaced on his face.

  When she finally calmed down, she looked at him with excitement.

  Leo raised an eyebrow at her. “So what did you think I was going to say?” He asked.

  “That you… you know…. gotagirlpregnant. But it's fine, you didn't, so yay.”

  Leo shook his head with a smile. “That's insane.”

  “I don't know that much about your love life. For all I know, you could be sneaking off and dating a girl in secret.”

  Leo smiled.

  Amirah continued. “I don't know who she is, but whoever she is, I know she's perfect for you. You look so much happier.”

  Leo crossed his arms with a scoff. “No, I don't.”

  If anything, he probably looked 5 years older from all the stress of hiding, because this shit was no joke.

  Her gaze dropped to his, and she gave him a small, sympathetic smile. “Are you okay?”

  She glanced at him in worry. “You look kinda … I don’t know. Disappointed.”

  “Yeah. I'm fine.”

  — — —

  When she was finally gone, Leo let out a long-held breath, feeling the tension in his body releasing slowly.

  He grabbed his phone from the coffee table and opened his and Ivan's chat. He had been staring at the words “Happy Birthday” since Saturday, unable to remove those two words from where they were engraved behind his eyelids. They're just two words.

  He had tried to tell himself the reason he couldn't stop thinking about them was probably because it was the first time Ivan had ever said or texted them. But somewhere at the back of his mind, he knew that he wouldn't have been so obsessed if it had been anyone else. He was obsessing about it because it was Ivan's message.

  He thought about that day at his house. Something had passed between them when Leo had tried to grab the blond's phone.

  Flashes of the surprised yet content look on Ivan's face, the fact that Leo could feel the heat of Ivan's face on his own. The fact that he could see the rise and fall of his chest from the corner of his eyes. The fact that they were so close made it feel like there was nothing strong enough on the Earth that would ever be able to pull them away from that singular moment.

  And if that thing had happened, he wasn't entirely sure he would have pulled away.

  He felt his heart begin to speed up at the realisation, his palms filling with sweat. Amirah had called him disappointed.

  But was he?

  Maybe at first. But after he had gotten to know Ivan over these last few months, he was starting to realise that maybe this mate thing wasn't as bad as he had initially wanted to believe. When hating each other was safer. When it was easier to pretend that they were nothing to each other.

  But they were something, and he couldn't ignore it any more.

  He rubbed his hands over his face, sighing in defeat.

  Now, the only feeling he was sure he really felt was confusion… and maybe something deeper he was unwilling to let himself acknowledge.