Page 16 of The Jorogumo

It housed both Touya's and the headmaster's offices, and he stepped inside while I hovered in the doorway, waiting for him to check if the headmaster was in.

"He's free. You can go in," he said with a smile, and I returned it before making my way past his desk and into the open office.

Headmaster Zephyr Morrigan sat behind a large wooden desk, his arms folded on top of it as he smiled at me. The metal of his left arm gleamed under the yellow light coming from the lamps placed on the far side of the room, his light blue eyes curious as he watched me. I didn't usually have a reason to approach him like this. I was mostly a homebody, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd had an actual conversation with him.

"Hey, Haruto. What's troubling you?"

I blinked, then sighed, unsure where to start. I glanced back at the closed door, then stepped as close to his desk as I could without climbing on top of it.

Lowering my voice, I admitted, "I found my mate."

The headmaster smiled widely, sitting upright in his chair. The lamp light fell on his face, and I frowned at the dark circles under his eyes. Was he not resting enough?

I knew there had been incidents recently, things going wrong around the Sanctuary. Bits of the sky had flickered between night and day sometimes, one table had disappeared in the middle of lunch. Small things that were annoying more than anything, but I knew he was working on fixing them. He'd assured everyone he had things under control, but looking at him now, I wondered if it was at the expense of his health.

"That's great, Haruto! What are they like?"

I smiled as my thoughts turned to Liam, then realized what I'd done with a blush. The headmaster gave me a soft smile, looking utterly delighted.

"Well, I can see you like them."

Nodding, I shifted on my feet, my legs twitching impatiently. "His name is Liam. He runs a comic book store close by."

"A human, then?"

I nodded, then told him what happened today. "I told him about supes, but not that we're mates."

"Can I ask why?"

I shrugged then glanced at the desk between us, unable to meet his piercing gaze. "I didn't want to put pressure on him. We decided to go on a date before I revealed myself, and I didn't want him to think I expected a lifelong commitment from him, especially after I told him about my...limits."

"You told him you're ace?" The appreciation in his voice made me look up, and I nodded.

"That's good. And I understand not wanting to pressure him. There's no right or wrong time to tell him, Haruto. You're the only one who gets to decide when you should."

I nodded, grateful he'd said that. "I would like to bring him to the Sanctuary, if that's okay. He's very...curious."

The headmaster smiled, crows' feet framing his eyes, and I wondered if I was just imagining it or if he looked older than he had the last time I'd seen him.

"Of course. He's welcome here anytime. Though you might want to tell the others to keep the mate stuff to themselves if you're not ready to tell him yet."

I nodded, then realized that meant I'd need to tell everyone he was my mate. Ah, hell.

Liam

After Haruto left, I spent the rest of the day in sheer and utter disbelief.

The more time passed, the more I started wondering if I'd dreamed up the whole thing. Everything Haruto had told me—and shown me—seemed so farfetched, so surreal now.

While there was a lull at the store, I'd looked up jorogumos, and felt glad that Haruto looked nothing like the beings described in the articles. He'd said his kind were descended from jorogumos, so maybe that meant the ones in this article were to him what the apes were to me.

Still, I was glad he didn't want toeathumans, for one. Just their sexual energy. Which he also didn't like to eat because he was ace. I couldn't imagine what that was like for him.

I enjoyed sex as much as any other allosexual person, but the lack of it wasn't a dealbreaker for me. As long as I could have an emotional connection with my partner, I knew I wouldbe satisfied. Honestly, after the string of "relationships" I'd been in built on nothing but sex, it might be nice to be in a relationship where sex wasn't a requirement. Or the only thing that kept the relationship going.

As a pansexual man in his mid-thirties, I'd been with my fair share of people, but because of my size and the way I looked, more often than not, I got pushed into a box firmly labeled "top," and that had left me with its own bundle of issues when it came to sex.

I would've loved to just once be taken care of instead of being in charge, but I never got the chance. In my last few, very short relationships, my partners had only been interested in my body, and what I could do for them. I couldn't remember if I'd shared even one conversation with them that didn't end in sex.

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