LEN

     A few days ago, when Adyen had looked over at me from his crouched position at the end of his bed and said, "We're going to talk to my brother tomorrow," a pit had formed in my stomach, and some curiosity mixed with a healthy dose of fear had ensued. I wasn't sure why I had been scared. Heck, I'm not sure why I'm still scared.

     I blinked, feeling my shoulder get nudged. I turn my head to look at Adyen who's sitting beside me on the bus with a raised brow. "Is everything alright?" Adyen whispered, making me nod my head.

     "Yeah, I'm alright." I insisted, even though my voice was shaking, and my eyes couldn't focus on anything. "How far away is it?" I asked, looking out of the bus's window and changing the conversation before Adyen could ask me anything.

     "It's a bit far," he muttered, staring down at the Google Maps trail on his phone. "I told you, his pack is up at the abandoned apartment complex next to a deserted warehouse and factory," he explained.

     I hummed, remembering bits and pieces of that information. I also remember wolves from Georgiou's place mentioning that the rogue pack was straddling territory lines, just enough not to piss anyone off.

     The abandoned buildings.

     An odd place to settle, considering that most werewolves in the city just wanted to blend in as much as possible. I wondered how long it would take for the city to declare that homeless people were illegally occupying houses.

     Somewhere in between the ride, Adyen leaned on me to take a nap. Of course, I couldn't sleep after that. I stayed stiff, letting myself look at his sleeping face from time to time as the ring of the bus passing through stops filled the air. Adyen woke up a few minutes before we reached our stop, and unlike me who was nervous and panicky, he was comfortable and chatty. He kept going on about his brother, and his bright attitude was a big contrast to the gloomy scrap jungle that was the path to the abandoned apartment complex.

     As we got closer, I could spot the bright eyes of wolves in the distance. When we locked eyes they scattered, trotting about with tongues hanging low as they moved to circle Adyen and me. They were mutts of varying fur types—mixed breeds, and some small enough to pass off as dogs. I could even spot a coyote and a few wolf dogs.

     "Hey," Adyen waved, giving the black wolf that was looking at me a smile. "That's my boyfriend, he's here to see my brother today," Adyen explained. The wolf sniffed me, and then Adyen before backing away.

     Alright, go on. It said to us before herding the other wolves away.

     When they had traveled out of earshot, I turned to Adyen. "I didn't know that there were that many," I commented. I must have counted at least fifteen wolves.

     Adyen shook his head. "No, those are only the ones on patrol. There are a lot more wolves than that. I think at least a hundred?" he said, making my eyes go wide. Sure, my pack back home tittered between two hundred and fifty to six hundred depending on how many wolves decided to leave to study out of state or join another pack, but that was in a secluded reserve, not the middle of Toronto.

     "How—?" I started saying, but stopped, not sure that Adyen understood the dynamics of pack life enough to discuss this.

     "Hmm?" he asked, putting his hands into the pocket of his jean trousers and he continued on our way towards the apartment building. "How what? How they're that many?" he asked, and I nodded. "I think the spot just makes it easy to pick up new wolves, or at least that's what Naylan told me," Adyen explained.

     "You know there's barely fifty of us with Georgiou," I mumbled, ducking under a hanging beam at the entrance of the apartment. "And he's been running his pack for years."

     "Well, Georgiou and Leigh have a pizza parlor and Naylan has a whole apartment building," Adyen reasoned as I followed him through the dark hallway. It didn't look like there was electricity or any plans to fix the broken doors and parts of the floor that were eaten away by termites. My skin was crawling just being here, but one thing was clear, though, the place was huge. Maybe Adyen had a point.

     I followed Adyen through the halls and up the stairs until we got to the seventh floor. He paused, turning to look at me before gesturing me towards a door. I blinked, swallowing down the fear that was resurfacing before following my boyfriend into the room.

     I have no idea what I had been expecting, but it surely wasn't a grinning dude in a band t-shirt holding onto a rodent in his hands.

     "Hey," Naylan said, gesturing with his eyes to the plastic chairs in front of him. It's nice to finally meet you," he said, watching as Adyen and I went to take the seats he had offered us.

     We sat in silence, and I let my eyes drift down to the floor as I nibbled on my bottom lip. Naylan looked non-threatening outside his biker gear, but my wolf could still sense his, and despite his calmness, it still bothered me. Seeing such a young alpha, especially one so close to my age, was a strange feeling. The Alphas were old, greying, and mature. Not twenty and wearing Twenty-one Pilots t-shirts, so it made sense to feel the way I did around them.

     I was still tense when I felt Adyen take my hand in his and squeeze it. "Len's from Alberta," Adyen muttered, ending the silence.

     "Yeah, you told me that. Grey wolf country boy." If I didn't look up to catch the smile and curious glitter in Naylan's eyes I would have thought he was trying to mock me. "I hear packs get huge around those parts." I just stared, not replying to Naylan's words.

     "I'm thinking of visiting Alberta with him sometime," Adyen said. I think he could sense that I wasn't mentally there enough to take part in the conversation. "He also wants to join me to visit Mum," he added, and Naylan just nodded, humming as he rubbed his guinea pig's head.

     "Sounds nice, mum would like to see him," he said, and Adyen nodded.

     There was silence again. Naylan coughed, and I adjusted my position on the white plastic. I felt bad for not contributing, but I couldn't form any words.

     "Hey, I was wondering if you could get me in contact with your pack leader."

     "What—?" I said, looking up in shock.

     Naylan shrugged his shoulders. "Well..." he started, licking his lips as he rubbed the back of his neck. "If my pack is going to stay in town, we can't be on bad terms," he replied, and I just stared, not knowing what to say.

     Adyen nudged me with his elbow, making me blink before speaking up. "I think I can do that."

     I watched Naylan's features brighten. He chuckled, raising his pet rodent to his nose. "Did you hear that, Casper?" he said, letting the guinea pig nibble on his nose.

     "I think I'll step out for a bit and let you two talk," Adyen said after a while, getting up before either of us could stop him. "Talk," he said in a firm tone, sporting a small frown as he looked from me to Naylan before shutting the door close beside him.

     About a minute passed until Naylan hummed, letting out a sigh that drew my attention.

     "So..." he started, cocking his head to the side. "You don't talk much," he said in a matter-of-fact tone, raising a brow at me. Now that I was looking at him straight in the eyes, I could see the similarities between him and Adyen. They had the same lips and nose, but everything else was different—skin color deepness, hair texture, face shape, and eyes. Naylan had a more "rugged" look. His jaw was sharper, and his eyes were deep-set and sharp, not round and big like Adyen's.

     "So, when are you going to mark him?"

     I blinked, coming out of my thoughts.

     "You've not bonded, I can't sense or smell it," Naylan said in a casual tone, making my face heat up as I searched my head for words to say. If I had, to be honest, that was the last thing on my mind—mating, marking, bonding. I tried not to think about it too much. After telling Adyen to back off a bit sexually so that we could breathe and think we hadn't gone too far. We kissed here and there, and Adyen gave me a blowjob like a week ago, but that was it.

     Naylan seemed to be thinking as much as I was because he had a distant look on his face and his lips drawn in a thin line. His eyes went wide, and the words that left his mouth made me want to melt into a puddle on my seat. "You're not having sex?" he said, almost in a whisper.

     "I—" I started but couldn't bring myself to say anything more. "Yeah..." I trailed, staring at Naylan who was staring right back at me in disbelief.

     "Why?" he asked, and I shrugged.

     "I don't know..." I trailed. "We're taking it slow," I added.

     "Does Adyen know anything about getting marked?" Naylan asked me, and my shoulders slumped.

     "I haven't told him yet."

     "You should."

     I tense up. "It's still early, I think."

     "Don't you like him?" Adyen's brother asked and my eyes went wide.

     "Of course, I do," I said. Naylan frowned at me, not looking impressed.

     "Then do it soon," he insisted. "You're lucky you've found your mate, so don't stall on finalizing things," he mumbled, getting up from the sofa before wandering to the other end of the room. "Some of us are never going to meet ours."

     I sensed a bit of pain in his voice, but I didn't press him on it. I just sat in silence as I watched him put his rodent away before grabbing two cans of soda from the mini-fridge plugged into a car battery.

     "Here," he said, tossing a can at me before taking a seat on the sofa again.

     He opened his can, and the sound of air filtering out of it dotted the atmosphere. "You know, Adyen really wants us to get along, so let's do that," he said, and I nodded.

     "You got to talk more for that to happen," he offered as advice, laughing as I nodded my head again instead of using my words.

     "I'm sorry," I said, shutting my eyes. "It's the alpha thing," I mumbled, opening my eyelids to find him just nodding.

     "Yeah, I get that," he hummed, crossing his hands across his chest. "There are many wolves like us here," he said, referring to the pseudo-pack structure of city wolves.

     "I wonder if my mate will be afraid of me too," he said and I opened my mouth to say something, but the door creaked open and both of us looked in its direction.

     "Look, Adyen's back," Naylan said as casually as ever.

     "You're talking, good," Adyen said, heading over to sit on the plastic chair beside me. The discussion shifted to school, but throughout I couldn't help thinking about how different Naylan was from what I had expected. He was young, excited to be in the city, and seemed a bit desperate to form a community—he was far from the rugged troublemaker Georgiou and the other wolves had thought he was.

     I smiled to myself, thinking that they would indeed get along if I made them reach out to each other.