Ivan was lying on the floor of the storage closet, with his head in Leo's lap, and he had been hovering between sleep and consciousness for the last twenty minutes.
His nightmares had gotten progressively worse lately and he hadn't slept in the last ten hours. After Leo had left his room, he had been too charged to go to sleep, so he had decided to read until, suddenly, the sun had risen and it was simply too late.
Currently, Leo was slowly running a hand through his hair and he had been attempting to enjoy the comfort of the repetition instead of focusing on how weirdly new this all still was.
“Do you dye your hair?”
Ivan tilted his head backwards until their eyes met. “What?”
“Your roots are dark. I've never noticed.”
He turned back to glancing at the wall in front of him. “Oh… yeah.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Don't know. I like it blonde." Which was technically not a lie. He did like it blonde.
"Well, you look nice.”
Ivan felt himself frown. “I've always been blonde. " Well, at least as long as he had known Leo.
“And you've always looked nice.”
Ivan turned his head backwards and glanced up at Leo, meeting his eyes. “You're being very nice today.”
“I think it's the paint fumes.”
“Just the paint fumes?”
“Yeah. There's no other way I'd think you're hot.”
He held a middle finger up and Leo snorted. The sound reverberated through Ivan's head before it concentrated itself onto his ears.
“We need a plan.”
“For what?”
“For this.”
“We need a plan for being together? Come on.”
“I'm being serious. If we don't want to get caught, we need a plan… or a guide… or whatever.”
Leo huffed and Ivan's head gently lifted and fell from the action. “Fine. Like what?”
Ivan felt reluctant to tell him that they didn't need a plan. He needed a plan, because if they were going to do this, he had to find a way to keep his secret a secret.
He reluctantly got up and turned to face Leo, sitting with his legs crossed like Leo was doing.
“Obviously we tell no one, but if we do, we need to let the other person know.”
“I'm not going to tell anyone.”
Ivan frowned to himself. “Just in case.”
He continued, “And we need to act like we did before. It needs to look like nothing's changed.”
Leo nodded. Ivan continued, "And no changing the rules. At all. We stick to them no matter what.”
Leo shrugged. “Okay then, fourth rule: you have to be less uptight.”
“I'm not up—.”
Leo put up a finger. ”Uh uh uh,” he tutted. “We said no changing the rules.”
Ivan resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Fine. Rule number 5, no dumb rules.”
“Rule number 6: no calling Leo's rules dumb.”
Ivan narrowed his eyes. “Rule number 7: no referring to yourself in the third person.”
Leo opened his mouth to retort, then he tilted his head in agreement. “Fair enough.”
Ivan sighed. “Can we just… be serious? Please?”
A conflicted look brushed Leo's face. He looked like he was tempted to make another joke, but then he gave in to whatever was stopping him with a groan. “Okay.”
“So we agree. 1) If we tell, the other person has to know. 2) We have to act like we did before and 3) No changing the rules.”
Leo nodded. “Fine. But add rule number 4. No secrets.”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Ivan inhaled a breath, then nodded. “No secrets.”
Then there was the rule that Ivan would keep in the front of his mind. Rule number 6: Don't be reckless.
— — —
“And then he got super drunk at last night's party and there's been a video circling around where he said he's super in love with April.”
After he and Leo had exited the storage closet, Ivan had gotten to English five minutes late. Except it hadn't mattered, because their teacher had disappeared, and every corner of the classroom was so filled with noise that the only clear part of Cal's sentence he had caught was April's name.
He looked up from the book in his lap with a jolt, and luckily both Rohan and Cal were angled away from him and hadn't noticed his pique of interest. “Who are we talking about?”
Rohan pursed his lips and turned around to face Ivan from the seat in front of him. “I dunno. We started talking about fruits halfway through and I got lost.”
Cal exhaled, then turned to Ivan. “Orange said it at Dragon Fruit’s party. Orange is….” Cal tilted his head to where Theo was sitting on the farthest end of the classroom adjacent to Cal's desk.
“So who's Dragon Fruit then?” Rohan's eyebrows converged. “We have way too many code names. I think we need to hold a trial for some of them.”
Ivan let out an amused huff. “Yeah and why so many fruit ones?”
Cal huffed. “Because every time I suggest a code name both of you—”
Before Cal could continue, there was a deafening bang from outside the classroom.
All noise in the room stifled and then after the last of the chatter died out, there was complete silence. Twenty-five pairs of eyes turned to the windows at the side of the classroom, waiting in silence.
“What was that?” someone asked from behind Ivan. There was a beat and then half the class rushed to the windows, pushing past bodies to be the first person to consume whatever drama waited in the hallways.
“Holy shit, look.” He heard someone shout between a surprised laugh.
Ivan walked to the door and glanced outside. Down the hallway, two boys from their grade were glaring at each other with burning heat. Their chests were heaving and there was blood splattered on their hands, across their faces and on the floor. One row of lockers had a back-sided dent that the shorter boy was peeling himself away from. The taller boy's lip was split and bleeding, and he looked ready to throw the other boy into the locker for a second time.
Ivan slipped out of the classroom, quietly moving in the opposite direction of the fight. He was fairly certain that they were both werewolves, but from where he was standing and from the fact that both of their faces were partially hidden, it would be difficult to confirm
From behind him, two teachers — one male and one female — rushed past him, completely oblivious to the fact that he was standing next to them.
Behind him, students from other subjects and grades had started peeking out of their own windows, and in just a few seconds the hall was filled with floating heads and a myriad of excited chatter that drowned out the furious yells of teachers to get back to their seats.
Ivan was standing at the entrance of one of the classes next door to theirs and he felt someone stand next to him. Leo taped a hand against his elbow then crossed his arms as they both watched the action unfold.
“What's going on?” Leo whispered.
Before Ivan could answer, there was a rush of movement, a bang, and then one of the boys was lying comatose on the floor.
He glanced at Leo, who was already turned to him, his eyes wide. They both ran.
As he got closer, he finally realised that he knew the taller guy. Declan McGregor was a boy from his pack. A senior like him who was also a year older, given he had failed senior year once already. Now, he was lying on the floor, his face layered with thin cobwebbed splatters of dark red blood as a shorter boy punched his jaw and eyes like he was trying to imbed Declan's blood into the skin of his knuckles.
Leo pulled the shorter guy off of Declan, holding back one of his shoulders, while their teacher gripped his other one. Ivan walked up to Declan and held his arm out to help the older boy up, who was slowly gaining consciousness.
Declan took his hand and got up in slow motion. And before Ivan had a second to readjust, he was lunging past him at the shorter boy. Ivan held him back and next to him he could see that Rohan—who had quickly appeared after the start of the commotion—was attempting to do the same beside him.
Declan tried his luck a second time and attempted to twist from both of their grips and in the middle of his short-lived struggle, managed to jab a bony elbow into Ivan's jaw.
“Shit,” Pain shot to his lips and jaw.
In the split second before his vision was impaired, he could swear he saw reluctant tears collected underneath Declan's eyes. Before he could begin to wonder whether or not they were related to the reason he looked like the loser of a boxing match, the female warrior who had run to the mess grabbed Declan by the upper arm and dragged him down the hallway and out of the school building.
On the other end of the hallway, Leo turned to the shorter boy and grabbed his collar, pushing him into the lockers. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Leo pushed his forearms into the shorter boy's chest, pinning him to the locker. “If this is about the packs, drop it, álvaro,” Leo whispered through gritted teeth.
“?Primero dile que cierre su puta boca!” He heard álvaro spit.
“You really need to stop talking.” Leo gritted back.
Rohan put a hand on Ivan's back. “Hey, are you okay? I can walk with you to the nurses' office.”
Ivan waved a hand mindlessly in the air, turning so Rohan couldn't see the extent of his injuries. "You can head back. I'll be there in a minute.”
He inhaled deeply and something caught in his throat, like the inside of his windpipe had been layered with sand. He coughed into the inner corner of his elbow and walked away from Rohan and the other bystanders until he turned a corner into an empty hallway. When his coughing fit finally ended, he glanced down at his arm, where a bright red slime coated his skin.
Behind him, Ivan could hear footsteps wearily walking up beside him. He quickly grabbed a tissue from his pocket and wiped as much of the blood-spotted mucus as he could before a warm hand was on his shoulder and Leo's cologne was wafting into his nose.
“Hey, are you okay?”
Ivan turned around slowly, and when Leo finally had a full view of his face, he sucked in a breath through his teeth. Ivan hadn't seen himself yet, and he frankly never wanted to, but from the way his face was aching, he knew he looked terrible.
Leo's cold hand gently touched his cheek, and he brushed his thumb over his aching jaw, touching his split lip in the process.
A sharp sting shot to the injury and he winced.
Leo quickly moved his hand away. “Sorry.”
He squinted at the injury again. “You should probably get that cleaned. I have a first aid kit in my car. Come on.”
Thank you so much for reading! I really hope that you enojoyed this chapter <3 The next few chapters will be coming out on the following days:
Chapter 31 Part I and Part I: Friday 13/03
Chapter 32: Tuesday 17/03
Chapter 33: Friday 20/03
Chapter 34: Tuesday 24/03
And then after Chapter 34, the updates will likely slow down quite a bit while I still have to write them, but they WILL come eventually.
Do you think that having rules (or a "plan", as Ivan called it) was a good idea for their relationship?
