Ivan hadn't been to school in two days, and his mother was starting to notice. He and Leo hadn't seen each other in over a week, and Leo's busy weekend meant that they hadn't been able to meet then either.

  The result of this was that Ivan had been so sick he hadn't been able to get out of bed most days, his body and mind aching unbearably, and his nose bleeding on a constantly changing schedule.

  He had been wondering all week how Leo had been feeling, since he always had it worse, but he hadn't bothered to ask.

  Right now he was on his way to Elder Augustine's house after he somehow managed to walk himself there at 7am with a vague excuse to his mother that he had miraculously recovered and was finally ready to go back to school.

  He knocked on the door, and Elder Augustine — wrapped tightly in a large floor-length robe — ushered him into her quaint two-storey, cottage-style house.

  He kicked his shoes off at the door, appreciating the change from cold morning air to the warmth emanating from a few heaters Elder Augustine had strewn throughout her house.

  He sat at a bar stool on her kitchen island, and she placed a mug of hot chocolate in front of him, sliding a packet of mini marshmallows towards him.

  She sat next to him with a sigh, placing down a slice of cake she was evidently planning to eat for breakfast.

  Ivan eyed the cake wearily, wondering if she had another slice for him. “That can't be good for your cholesterol.”

  Elder Augustine sent him a pejorative frown. “I'm not that old.”

  Ivan gave an unsure shrug, and she scowled, hitting him on the shoulder.

  She placed her elbows on the granite and clasped her fingers together. “So what was so urgent today? Have another secret to kind of tell me, but not really?”

  Ivan reached into his pocket and grabbed the paper that he had gotten from the hands of the corpse in the woods, handing it to her. “You ever seen this before?”

  When her eyes landed on the symbol drawn in the middle of the paper, there was an immediate twitch of her face, so slight he would have missed it if he hadn't been searching for it. She had seen it before.

  “I found out how to deal with your little fairy dust problem.”

  She slid a vial of glowing pink liquid towards him on the granite. “I found it on the elf market. It's a sort of protection against the… well, the fairy dust. It scrambles up the person's DNA for a few seconds to stop the dust from detecting them.”

  Deciding to ignore the abrupt change of topic, Ivan reached for the vial, and she calmly moved it away from him, staring seriously into his eyes.

  “But remember, whichever witch or wizard you plan to give this to needs to know that this stuff is really dangerous, okay? Once and never again, Ivan.”

  At least she suspected he knew of a witch or wizard, and not that he was one himself.

  “What if I don't tell them? Isn't that the point?” He tried to hide the bitterness in his voice, but she must have caught it, because her features softened.

  She shrugged. “Do what you want; I can't stop you. I just don't believe in killing innocent people. There's not a lot left in the world.”

  She rubbed a comforting hand on his shoulders, and Ivan winced slightly, rubbing at his aching eyes.

  He and Leo hadn't been in the same room since they saw the body in the forest, and their distance seemed to be making him worse. They needed to see each other, and it needed to be today.

  “And what's wrong today? I thought you fixed the problem with your mate.” Elder Augustine stared at him with masked concern.

  “We did.” He said through gritted teeth.

  “If you did, then you would be together more, and you wouldn’t let it get this bad.”

  “We have our own lives.”

  “Well, as much as I appreciate these unexpected visits of yours, I need to do some work now. You should probably head home and rest.” She got up from the chair.

  “One more thing.” Ivan said, recalling the conversation he had had with Cal and Rohan about the body. “Why would a witch or wizard need a large volume of blood?”

  Elder Augustine raised an eyebrow. “Is this about the body? How did you find that out?”

  Ivan shrugged.

  “Callum told you, didn’t he?”

  He glanced directly into her eyes and shook his head. She paused and narrowed her eyes at him, unsure if he was lying or not and unable to tell.

  “Anyway… there are a number of reasons. I mean, from what I've heard, most rituals do need blood.”

  “Yeah, but that much?” He had flipped through the spellbook Milena had gotten so much; he had most of the spells memorised by now, and he had never seen spells that needed more blood than you could safely find in a large rabbit — anywhere between 3 and 8 ounces. So it couldn't have been him unless he had subconsciously learnt a spell while he was sleeping, which was unlikely.

  “I've been reading some of the case files in my father's office, and I’ve never seen any with so much.”

  “Does your father know you've been snooping in his office?”

  Ivan inhaled a deep breath. She didn't usually ask so many questions. “You're supposed to be helping me.”

  He knew that using her like his own personal informant was selfish and unreasonable, and she wasn't ever obligated to do anything for him other than be his friend. But he just needed to know more, and she was the only one he trusted to tell him everything, without judging him or immediately shutting him down when she disapproved.

  “I am helping you. Stop looking. I know you're curious but…..” She sighed heavily. “Just stay away from the witch stuff, promise?”

  “Okay.” And even though it was all he had ever wanted to be able to do, he knew that this would forever be impossible.

  He suddenly felt a trickle of warm liquid dripping from his nose. He raised a fingertip to the top of his lip, and it returned coated with bright red blood. Ivan pinched his nose and accepted the tissue that Elder Augustine had offered him.

  He glanced down at the now blood-spotted floor and apologised, hoping that some of that apology would somehow be extended to their entire conversation.

  She waved him off and got up from the chair, ushering him to the door. “I'll clean it up. Just get to your mate.”

  “Thanks…again.”

  He turned and walked out into the cold, closing the door behind him and pulling out his phone. He was about to send the other boy a message when his phone buzzed in his pocket with a message from Leo.

  Ignore: Can we not meet up at school?

  Now

  Me: Where else do you wanna meet?

  Now

  Ignore: My pack? You can come to my house. It's too cold to meet outside.

  Now

  Ignore: And before you say anything, there aren't any patrols by the house, and my parents are at a meeting, so they wont be home til 8pm. I'll meet you at the border in a few hours

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Now

  — — —

  When Ivan stepped into Leo's house, he was greeted by the warmth that he often felt in Elder Augustine's house. The house was covered in mild traces of his cologne, and the evidence of his presence was already starting to soothe the throbbing in his head.

  The grey clouds outside were shrouding the house in darkness, but the living room was alight with two yellow standing lamps. Around the house, Ivan could see various photos of Leo, his parents and his extended family strewn across the walls. He was about to pick up one of the dark-haired boy as a baby, when Leo spoke from behind him.

  “Jeez. You look worse than me.”

  Ivan tipped his head. “Look again.”

  Leo gave him a mocking smile, then closed the door behind him.

  Ivan noticed five pairs of shoes discarded in the doorway and removed his own next to the pile, following Leo as he led them into the living room. They sat down on opposite ends of the couch, settling into silence as Leo put on Ghost World.

  “How'd your birthday go?”

  Leo smiled. “Great. I told my parents that my mate has a dick, and they were super thrilled.”

  Ivan didn't know what to say to that, so he remained silent, staring at the other boy curiously.

  Leo ran a hand through his hair. “They still think I'm going to be this great Alpha with a Luna and a bunch of kids and stuff.”

  He let out a humourless laugh. “They keep suggesting I walk around my pack to see if my mate is here.”

  Ivan revealed a small smile, and Leo rolled his eyes. “Not exactly excited to go on a wild goose chase, but what other option do I have?”

  They remained in silence for a while, the movie softly filling the silence, then—without looking away from the screen—Ivan asked, "Have you ever thought about telling them?"

  “About you? Not a chance.”

  “About you.”

  Leo hesitated, then shrugged. “Would you? If you were me?”

  Ivan shrugged. “Don't know.”

  He knew that in this current reality, with his current parents and in his current situation, he would have never even considered it for a second.

  But maybe in some alternate version of reality he might have. Maybe he figured it might be a good way to soften the news that their not-so-beloved son belonged to a species they despised. Maybe in this better version of reality he was just a normal werewolf.

  Leo paused the movie and then craned his neck slightly to look at Ivan, but without turning completely away from the movie. “My family aren't really big on talking about their problems. They just ignore them and pretend that everything's fine. And there's this unspoken rule that nobody's allowed to bring up that something’s wrong.”

  He turned now, fully facing Ivan. “When I was seven, there was this one cousin I used to have. He was way older than me. He had a really bad drug problem, and my parents never told me why he wasn't allowed over on Christmas anymore. It's just never been something we've talked about.”

  “They did the same with my cousin Ximena. Nobody wants to talk about her death. Half the time they act like she never existed, and it sucks, you know?” His voice was hoarse, like the pain in his heart had travelled to his vocal cords.

  Ivan gave the slightest nod. “Mine do it too. But it's hard for things not to feel wrong because it always does, you know?”

  There had never been a fabricated sense of normalcy or comfort to fall back on because tension had always been the default in their house. Like a home full of strangers.

  He had never told his friends before.

  It had always felt like something too personal to share — even with them — because as much as he knew he could tell them anything, sometimes he felt out of place.

  Rohan and Cal both had their own issues at home with their own parents, but their problems always felt so different from his own. Living in a hostile household felt out of place among Rohan complaining about how annoying his parents' hovering was because they loved him too much. Or among Cal's complaints that his siblings were noisy and in abundance and too much when Milena…

  Ivan shook his head, focusing his attention back onto Leo. “How’d she…? Your cousin.”

  Leo paused, then glanced up at him. “... A coven of witches killed her.“

  The brunette's voice was laced with hatred; the years of bitterness he had been holding compacted in that single sentence.

  Ivan felt something in him go cold.

  A feeling that always encompassed him when he heard the words ‘witch’ or ‘wizard’. He didn't know why, but him possessing the same magic they did always made him feel partially responsible for anything they ever did.

  “I'm sorry.” He finally said.

  “Me too.”

  They settled into silence again, listening to the movie, and then Ivan asked something that he had been thinking about since Leo had messaged him. “Why didn't you want to meet at school?”

  “You know you're very talkative today.”

  Ivan gave him a deadpanned stare. Leo stayed silent for a few seconds, his face riddled with something resembling guilt.

  Leo gave a noncommittal shrug. “My parents are… I guess I'm just being paranoid after the party.”

  Thoughts of Leo's text message flashed in his mind, causing a feeling of unsettling to drown him. He hadn't been entirely sure what Leo had meant by ‘Now I am’, and after he had seen the message, his mind had immediately run wild with all the different ways that Leo could have meant those words.

  He had eventually settled on the theory that Leo hadn't been having a good time at his party, and because he and Leo had gotten significantly closer recently, maybe he just meant it in a friendly, solace-seeking way.

  Or maybe he knew exactly what it had sounded like, and he was just trying to mess with Ivan.

  If he was, it was working. Ever since the party Ivan had felt on edge, overly hypervigilant of every minuscule action that Leo did around him. Every word, every anxious hand running through his hair, every subconscious jerk of his knee. Every millisecond of eye contact.

  Ivan's eyes darted away from where Leo's brown eyes were staring deeply into his own, and he felt a chill run up his arms. Whether it was from the cold or not, he didn't know.

  This had to be some creative form of psychological torture

  A buzz sounded in his pocket, and he grabbed his phone, checking the messages in his notification bar.

  Cal: Hey

  Now

  Cal: Me and Rohan are going to the arcade. I can come and pick you up in 10 min?

  Now

  Me: I'm not feeling great. Maybe next time?

  14:01

  Rohan: Really?

  14:01

  Rohan: Are you okay?

  14:01

  Me: Yeah. I'm sure it's nothing.

  14:02

  Cal: I'll bring you back ice cream from that place across from the arcade

  14:02

  Me: But I'm sick?

  14:02

  Cal: Whoever told you you can't have ice cream and be sick was lying to you. You don't have to be sick AND miserable

  14:02

  Ivan sighed and switched his phone off, placing it on the couch next to him. Between training and Leo, he hadn't been able to hang out with Cal and Rohan as often, and it was getting harder to ignore the guilt that had been slowly feeding away at him.

  Leo, who had been drumming his fingers on the back of the couch, turned to him curiously. “What was that about?”

  Ivan shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “I think we're past lying to each other. Don't you?”

  He said nothing for a second, suddenly remembering that he still had a few secrets he was keeping. “Don't know when we agreed on that.”

  “Maybe you were too busy trying to keep track of your lies to remember.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Let me see.” Leo reached over his lap to lunge for the phone, and Ivan quickly grabbed it, holding it in the air and further away from Leo.

  Leo reached his arm up even further, and when Ivan looked down at him, smiling in victory, he noticed that Leo's frame was almost completely over his body now, still obliviously reaching for the phone.

  After a while the other boy stopped struggling, and they glanced at each other, realising that their new position had brought their faces so close it would only take one slight turn. One lean forward.

  Ivan felt his heart speed up unexpectedly at the idea. The tingling in his stomach grew, and he felt a small shiver engulf his entire body.

  After only a split second had passed, Leo cleared his throat and leaned back to his side of the couch. “You want chips?”

  Ivan nodded—not meeting his eyes—and Leo got up, returning a few minutes later with a family-sized pack of Doritos.

  He slowly placed the bowl in the empty space separating them on the couch, then sat down closer than he had been before.

  Ivan turned back to the movie, his mind now unable to concentrate, when he suddenly felt Leo's foot tapping soothingly against his own. He needed to get out of there.

  Ivan turned to his foot, then glanced up at the other boy's face. Leo was staring blankly at the moving pictures, blissfully unaware while alarm bells were going off in Ivan's mind.

  He reached his hand to the bowl and was about to grab some chips when, with a jolt, a thought occurred to him. “I thought you said you didn't like Doritos?”

  Leo shrugged nonchalantly. “I don't.”

  They returned back to the movie, and all Ivan could do was fight the temptation to keep looking at Leo as the urge grew stronger and stronger.

  Eventually, he reluctantly slipped the blanket Leo had gotten him off of his body and stood up. “I should go.”

  He should have left a while ago.

  Leo kept his eyes trained on the TV, not sparing a single glance at Ivan. “Bye.”

  Then he reached into his pocket for a cigarette, and Ivan turned, walking towards the door. He grabbed his shoes, swiftly putting them on and leaving the comfort of Leo's house with a strange feeling in his chest.

  “Bye,” he whispered into the cold night air.