ADYEN

     I had never thought about what having a proper older sibling would be like. Sure, when I had been passed around from family to family, a lot of my foster parents had older children of their own, or other foster kids a few years older than me, but I had been on my own mostly. A lot of them also didn't seem to have any want for a family-like dynamic with someone they weren't related to.

     Now I knew my brother and all those things I had told myself I didn't need—all those sibling friendship scenes on T.V. I had rolled my eyes at—I realized that I had a deep-seated want for them that had only showed itself when Naylan and I started talking a lot.

     He was only a year and some change older than me, but I felt like I was talking to someone much older when he gave me advice and listened to my rambling about school and my relationship with Len.

     He had been the one to encourage me not to think about what my track mates would think if I was a little more open about being gay. I had told Naylan that a lot of their jokes made me uncomfortable, and he suggested that nothing would change until I stood up to that, so I did. I took a stance and told them blankly that I was seeing Len, and since then I've been conscious about being more open about that fact in public. If people asked, I stammered but managed to admit that yes, I was with him and I was gay.

     I was gay.

     There was something freeing about taking agency and openly stating a fact that I kept to myself. Being a foster kid had made me hide things instinctively. I wasn't sure which adults would be supportive and which ones wouldn't be, and there's a memory of one of my foster siblings from years back simply saying "ew" when I mentioned that a boy on television was sort of cute.

     My thoughts drifted back to Len. There was so much I wanted to tell him, but I had to be a bit careful about that. It was a good thing that Naylan and his pack had settled in an abandoned building complex close to a factory site. They were bordering territories that weren't their own but remained distant enough to not be a problem.

     My stomach knotted a bit. I knew a part of me was just making excuses not to tell him yet because I was a bit worried that he would panic or get sad about me keeping this from him for so long. He was supposed to be teaching me stuff, but I've carried those burdens to Naylan since there was less of an emotional factor to it.

     "When are you going to tell him?" Naylan asked me, making me sit up on the sofa before looking in the direction of his voice. It was a bit dark, but the light from the muffled television was enough to make out his face. I was in Naylan's place in the abandoned apartment complex. It being abandoned meant there was no running water or electricity. A few of the pack members were handy, so getting a few (stolen) car batteries to power everything from fridges, and televisions, to lamps made it possible to live there.

     My brother gave me a small smile before coming to sit beside me and handing me one of the bowls of cereal he had in his hands.

     "You were having a little conversation with yourself back there," he said, looking at the television as he took a spoonful of cereal. "You know, you'll have to tell him when you go and visit Mum in summer."

     "I know that," I sighed, nodding my head in agreement. Naylan did that mind-reading thing a lot, but I had gotten used to it.

     Talking to Naylan also meant contact with my mother. The first call was scary. I had shaken and stammered through it, but her voice was soft, and I could hear the clear affection in the way she said my name.

     We talked about dumb things like books and movies, and what she had been up to all these years. She had audibly gasped when I mentioned I was in university for architecture and was on the track team. She was very proud of me, and it was weird—that warm feeling that came from a parental figure praising you.

     "I'm glad they didn't change your name," she had said, explaining that it had been my father who had named me.

     "How about telling him on that date you two have together..." Naylan trailed and I felt my face warm up. A new ice castle place had opened, and Len kept talking about it in a way that made it obvious he wanted to go, so I suggested we did.

     "Maybe that's a good idea," I muttered, looking down at my feet in the darkness of the room. The blue light from the television illuminated Naylan's figure as he leaned forward.

     There was a tooth-smacking sound. "You really like him, yeah?"

     I shrugged, trying to play it cool even though my chest was fluttering. "Yeah," I croaked, and he laughed, making my chest flutter even more.

     I stuffed my mouth with a spoon of cereal and let myself watch the car battery next to the television as Naylan's free tangle guinea pig hopped by.

     "I don't think he'll take it badly at all," Naylan said, dropping his empty bowl on the floor before heading back to the sofa.

     "Hey," he started, after a period of silence passed by. "You know the only reason mum had to give you up was that—"

     "I couldn't survive, I get it," I said, cutting my brother off. He stared at me with eyes that had gone yellow, something that happened to Len's sometimes.

     "I just—" he started saying, opening his mouth and then closing it. He hummed to himself, and I brought up my legs before hugging them to myself. "The streets are hard, and Mum didn't know what to do. She thought that she had found her person, you know?"

     My ears perked up in interest. I had heard Naylan go on about my mother's ex, but I learned new things about him every time he was brought up. My dad—our dad had made my mum happy, or so Naylan said. He didn't talk about his biological father much. I got a sense that he wasn't a real person in Naylan's head.

     "We were really young, but I remember a bit about him—how sick he was. We couldn't afford any of that so..." Naylan paused, and I swallowed, knowing that my father had died.

     Naylan's guinea pig made a squeaking noise, distracting both of us. Naylan let out a sigh, getting up from his seat on the sofa before helping the poor thing get untangled from the wires.

     "He always does this," Naylan said, and I grinned, watching him pet the rodent. He looked dumb in his pajama pants and the hoodie that was too small for him as he smiled down at his pet. The imagery was a big contrast from when I had first seen him.

     "Hey, can I ask you something?" I asked, feeling my stomach tighten up.

     Naylan raised a brow at me. "Sure." He agreed, but he still looked a bit unsure.

     I swallowed the anxiety building up at the back of my throat. "Was your dad mum's mate?" I asked. It was something that had been in my mind for a while. I looked up, noticing that Naylan had gone a bit frigid.

     His lips twitched after a while and he let out a sigh. "No," he said. "Just some douche mum had a fling with. I still see him around when I go home," he said, and the last part shook me a bit.

     "Mum's mate isn't in Canada," he said, humming to himself. "She's a Caribbean immigrant. She still has the mate bond but it's very weak. They're never going to meet each other—"

     "Then what's the point of mates?" I asked, feeling confused. Mum's love of her life was out there somewhere, and she let her heart get broken twice.

     Naylan sighed. "You're still new to all of this. Mate bonds aren't binding, they're suggestions. Lots of wolves don't end up with their mates, especially city wolves like us—" he paused. "Well, like me. You got yourself some rural pure-blooded mate. We're all mutts here." He corrected himself.

     I froze up for a bit, not knowing what to say.

     "I have a mate. I can feel the bond," Naylan said, walking over to the sofa before sitting beside me. The furniture creaked, and the foam sunk under his weight. "But I don't know, it's not like I'm invested in looking for them. I'd much rather stay here—with my pack." There was fondness in his voice at the last part. Something I had come to realize was that Naylan really wanted a family—a community. It was something he craved and went on about.

     Where Georgiou saw a bunch of annoying thieving teenagers, Naylan saw the potential for a family. I smiled, thinking that he was a good leader so far, and would get better with time.

     But what did I want?

     I wanted very small things—a family, a boyfriend, a chance to feel like I wasn't being drowned by life.

     The whole thing with Len had started out in a confusing nerve-racking chain of events. It had felt like puberty all over again, but things were stable now, and we were getting along fine—it almost felt like we were normal university kids who were dating and figuring things out together. We were. Studying together in the library. Grabbing Pizza at Georgiou's. Playing video games with his roommates... those were all the basic things I dreamed of doing with a boyfriend. I craved that mundane normalcy, and I wanted to keep having it with Len as I grew in my understanding of myself.

     "I'm going to tell Len when we go on our date on Saturday," I announced under my breath, but I knew my brother heard me because he reached out to comb his fingers through my curls. He didn't say anything, but his gesture was enough of an acknowledgment.