Kade's POV

We were all sitting in the courtyard, I think that's what they called it, as Joey and Cody taught a group of kids about the basic rules of self defense. They had set out some blue mats on the ground to cover everyone in case anyone fell or got hurt while they were practicing. Lila sat next to me with a book on her lap while Conner sat next to her, also staring at the class with me. Melissa had gone home to see her mom and dad since they were home for a few days and after this class, Cody said he would go over there to see them.

Joey was wearing a pair of basketball shorts along with a tight t-shirt that showed off his abs when he moved around. He made Cody put him in a headlock before demonstrating the proper way to get out of it, which was turning towards him to loosen Cody's arms before hitting him in the gut with the hand closest to him to stun him. He then brings the inside hand to his face where he pushes it back, which makes Cody's entire body move back, loosening the arm even more. After that, he hit him one more time in the stomach before running free and the kids clapped along with some of the parents that were sitting on the side to watch their children.

Joey clapped Cody on the back to say either 'sorry' or 'good job' before turning to the kids to say something. He made each kid come up and practice the getting out of the headlock with him, not wanting him to practice with each other in case they were too rough. I smiled as I watched him coaching a particular kid that was having trouble learning what to do and he kept working with him until he figured it out.

He let the kid go and looked up, smiling at me with a wink before moving on to the next one. Lila set her hand on my knee and I looked over at her to see her smiling at her son with a genuine face of appreciation. "He's so good with kids."

I nod my head. "Yeah, he really is."

"Did you ever imagine you would be here? You know, in a werewolf pack's camp without fearing for your life?" She asked, putting her bookmark in her book before setting it down.

I chuckle. "Never in my entire life did I imagine that I would be here right now. I didn't even imagine ever getting a boyfriend."

She gives me a confused look, bringing her knees up to her chest. "Why's that?"

I shrug my shoulders. "Let's just say that my dad wasn't all that accepting when I came out. It was pretty rough for a bit, but my mom was able to calm him down, but she doesn't know what he said to me so she doesn't see how much it really hurts whenever we talk about boys or Joey or anything like that around him."

"What'd he say?"

"He told me that he wasn't quite happy with the man I was becoming because he's a pretty masculine man, so when he saw how I turned out, he was pretty disappointed. He wants me to marry some woman and have biological kids and have the life that he had, but that's not what I want. He knows that so he tries to not be too upset about it around Mom because that'll just start something, so we both just know that he doesn't like who I am and never bring it up," I tell her and when I see her face of pure sadness, I feel the need to cry because of course this was all a lot, but I pushed it back since there were tons of people around us.

"Kade, you don't deserve that. You deserve a father who cares for you and loves you and if there was anything I could do to change that, you bet your ass I would do everything in my power to. I'm so sorry to hear that and I really wish there was something that could help him realize how wrong and disgusting that thought process is," she tells me, wrapping her arm around my shoulder.

I hear Conner clear his throat and he turns to us. "I agree, you don't deserve that. I want to say I understand what he's going through because I obviously was a little thrown off when Joey told us his mate was a man, but I learned to accept it because it was what made him most happy. So, in my opinion, you should show your father how happy you are with my son and help him realize how much it means to you for him to accept it."

I clear my own throat to remove the lump that's pushing me to cry before turning my head, fearing them see me cry. I wipe my eyes before turning back to them, pulling my knees to my chest to set my cheek on it so I'm still looking at them. "Thank you."

"Oh, sweetheart, it's okay," Lila tells me, setting her hand on my neck to lightly rub at it to ease the tension in my shoulders. "maybe one day he'll come around."

"Yeah, I hope," I whisper before looking back up at Joey, who was now walking towards us while the kids are running over to their parents. I rub at my eyes again, hoping that I don't look like a baby in front of everyone.

"What's going on?" Joey asks in confusion as he sits in front of me, turning to his parents.

"We were just talking," Lila said, giving him a soft smile. As I look at him, I realize how much I need him because I hadn't thought about how my dad feels in awhile since I've just been thinking of how happy I was with Joey. I grab his hands and pull myself to lay in his arms with my head in his chest, trying so hard not to cry.

"Hey, baby, what's wrong?" He whispers, kissing the top of my head as my fists grip his shirt in my hands. I hear Lila whisper something to him as I try to calm my racing mind as memories of my father and his work buddies drinking in the garage while talking about 'the fags of the office' start to flash through my head.

I push all of that out of my head and focus on the arms that are holding me right now. I felt like I was barely keeping it all together because of everything that was happening. It was like my body was starting to break down, like I was held together by tape and glue that represented my man. It was like he saw how broken I was and came to me and taped me back together. And yes, that is a Grey's Anatomy reference.

I look up, giving him a soft smile and he smiles back, wrapping his arms around my waist to hold me closer to his body. We sit there for a few minutes until Joey pulls me up as we all go into the quarter house. "Hey, I gotta talk to you about something."

As soon as I hear those words coming from Joey, my hands starts to shake because there are lots of bad things he could tell me. Maybe I'm not what he wanted or maybe he didn't like how close I hadn't gotten with his mom or maybe he wanted me to go home so he could be alone for a bit. I don't know, but I was freaking out.

We went into his room and onto the bed, where he reaches over to take my hands in his where he notices the shaking. "Don't worry, it's nothing bad."

I give him a confused look. "What is it?"

"So you obviously know about my wolf now, so I wanted to let you know about the full moon because that's going to be pretty serious thing dealing with us."

I think back to when he told me about the full moon when we were laying in his bed after he told me about the whole werewolf thing. "You told me that during the full moon, your wolf is in more control."

He nods his head. "Yeah, so basically, um... mating is very important to wolves and the full moon brings that out by a lot."

"What does that mean?" I ask.

"It means that if I'm anywhere near you on the full moon, it'll probably end up in us having sex and I don't know if we're both ready for that," he tells me.

I chuckle, shaking my head. "I think we're more than ready."

"I just don't want to scare you away or anything."

I chuckle again, moving forward before straddling his hips to wrap my arms around his neck. "You won't scare me away, nothing will. I'm here and I'm not going anywhere anytime soon."

He smiled, leaning up to place a soft kiss to my lips and I pull away so we don't go too far like in the bath. I hug him, pressing the side of his head to my chest since I was finally taller since I was sitting on his lap. He sighed against my shirt before pulling away to look up at me with this beautiful smile that made my heart melt into his and that's when he said it. "I love you."

My eyes widened, shocked that he had said it because I knew that we loved each other but it was like we were battling each other to figure out who would finally say it after all these chances we've given each other throughout these months. I tightened my grip on him and leaned down to connect our lips again in a soft, passionate kiss as I slid my hands down to grip his shirt. We pulled away, setting our foreheads together as he closed his eyes to just feel the moment. "I love you too."

His eyes snapped open to look into mine as he bit his lip to stop a small laugh from leaving his mouth from excitement. I set my lips over his again, too happy to say anything else at the moment.

He pulls me down to lay on the bed with him before putting the covers over us as we just spend the time in each others arms before whatever happens next happens because right now, it felt like it was just him and I. Like there was no one else in the entire world that could come between us and ruin what we have.

As soon as I think that, the door opens as we both turn to look at whoever walked in to see Cody standing there. He looks at us before backing up a little, probably noticing that it was a private moment. "Uh, sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to tell you that Elder Collins told the council about you finding your mate and that we need to have an introduction meeting soon."

Joey sits up, nodding at him. "Alright, we'll figure everything out later. Go see Melissa and her parents, don't worry about anything here."

Cody smiles at him. "I will, see you later, guys."

"Bye," Joey and I both say as he walks out with a wave. I sit up next to him before wrapping my arms around his and setting my head on his shoulder.

"I haven't explained elders to you yet, so we should probably do that since we're probably going to need to deal with them sooner rather than later," he said before starting to tell me about the elders and I decide to not tell him about how Lila already told me about them yesterday.

I let him talk on-and-on as I stared at him with an interested face even though I already knew all of this information, but I loved watching him talk about anything and everything. He rambled on as I played with one of his hands, barely listening to what he was saying to instead inspect how his face moved.

"So there's seven elders for our pack because we have about 600 to 700 members in camp. There's Collins, Raphael, Blount, Tandler, Reynolds, Stevens, and..." he said, looking down at the sheet as he tried to remember who the seventh elder was.

I decide it's finally time to spill that I knew everything that he was saying. "Oh, you forgot about Tai."

He looks up at me with a really confused look as he opens his mouth to say something before closing it. "How the hell did you know that?"

"Oh, right. Your mom already told me all of this yesterday," I say with a chuckle and his face clears before he glares at me. In a very swift movement, he grabs my wrists and pushes them down until I'm slammed against the bed while he throws his knees over my hips so he's the one straddling me now. He hovers his head over mine as he smirks down at me with a small glance of anger in his eyes.

"You knew all of that and you still let me explain it again?" He whispers, his hot breath fanning over my skin as I get hit with the smell of his mint toothpaste he used when we woke up.

"Maybe," I whisper back and his smirk grows as he moves his head down so his lips are connected to my neck as he starts to kiss the sensitive skin there. I move my head a bit to give him better access even though I knew this was some sort of punishment for letting him ramble on about elders.

I realize what the punishment is when he starts to suck on my neck and I start to kick my legs out as I gasp, but he hooks his legs around mine to stop the movement as he keeps up the suction on my neck. Last time he gave me a hickey, I had forgotten about it and didn't cover it up at school, so I was forced to deal with it because Melissa, Cody, or Joey would lend me their hoodie to make me suffer.

"Joey, no!" I yell at him as I try to get out of his hold, but his hands gripped my wrists tightly and I knew he wasn't going to let me get out that easy. Even though his lips felt so good on my neck, I didn't want to be sporting a hickey at school for the next few days because now that I know he's the alpha, it means everyone in the pack knows him, which means they also know me.

After struggling for a few more seconds, he removes his lips and hands from me and I push him off with a scoff. He chuckles, lightly tapping on the spot he had just marked. "It's cute."

"You suck," I tell him as I wipe his spit off with the sleeve of my shirt.

"Well, literally, yeah," he said and I chuckle, hating him for making me laugh when I was supposed to be mad at him. I get off the bed and walk to the bathroom to look at the freshly made hickey that's surrounded by my blushing skin and gasp when I see how noticeable it is along with how fucking high he made it, so not even a hoodie could cover it.

"Joey!" I scold him as he comes in to stand behind me. When he also notices how high it is, his eyes widen and his lips curve into another smirk.

"Oops, sorry," he tells me as he shrugs his shoulders. I turn around and hit his arm with a angriest look I can make, but it doesn't work by the way he laughs and I realize that I won't even be able to hurt him like that due to his damn werewolf strength.

"You're going to pay for this," I tell him with a glare before going over to the bed to lay down onto my stomach and hide my face in the pillow as he comes over to lay half on top of me and half on the bed.

"What're you going to do?"

I turn my head to look at him. "Maybe I'll just happen to let it slip out to your mom how awesome her son is in bed and let her handle it for me."

He chuckles, shaking his head as he leans on his elbow. "Go for it."

I scoff, lightly hitting his arm again. "You're so weird!"

He laughs again, leaning over to kiss my forehead as he wraps his arm around my waist to pull me onto my back as he pulls the covers over us again. "I know, baby."