Page 69 of In This Iron Ground
Hakan watched Damien carefully as he poured himself a drink and then took a chair near Hakan.
“Nightmare?” Hakan asked. Damien snorted a little at Hakan’s knee-jerk concern.
“Nah, just caught up reading,” he said. Hakan nodded and turned back to the food.
A soft silence settled. Damien watched him for a moment.
“I never thanked you,” Damien said. Hakan looked up. “For finding me, that day. When I, you know, took those pills. No, not for finding me—for looking for me. And the day I found out your parents wanted to foster me. I might not be here if you hadn’t talked to me. Or. You know. Searched for me that day.”
Hakan looked at him. His expression was deep, fathomless. “You’re welcome,” he said eventually, simply. “You…you’re doing okay, right? You’re happy? With school and, you know, Gonzalo and everything?”
“Gonzalo?” Damien laughed. “Yeah, Hakan. I’m happy.”
Hakan looked at him for a moment before smiling at him. In that moment, for the first time in months, Damien wanted to kiss him. Not as a prelude to sex but simply to show him how deep and wonderful the feeling he held for Hakan was.
Instead, Damien leaned forwards and pressed his forehead to Hakan’s bare bicep for a moment. He rubbed slightly, scent marking him, before pulling away.
Hakan’s eyes were so deep they were almost black.
“Okay,” Damien said. “Mushy time over. I’m going to bed.”
Hakan smiled. “Okay.”
“Goodnight, Hakan.”
“Sleep tight.”
**********
The next school year did not pause.
Fooling around with Gonzalo burned out with summer as they entered their last year of high school. Damien was determined to get into Eketon University. Anxiety was a constant companion, that old hiss of inadequacy, but the world around him didn’t let Damien linger. He had to move forwards, whether he believed that he could or not.
Damien spent a lot of his spare time studying with Nova and Mia. Despite the activity being so similar to schoolwork, there was something so thrilling about exploring a world he never thought existed that it could keep him engaged for hours.
It was a constant amazement to him what Mia, as Kephale, had to deal with to keep such a large and well-established pack going peacefully. It was a strange side effect of approaching adulthood to be able to peek behind the curtain. He got to witness how the dynamics of the pack affected its structure internally, and how they were constantly dealing with outside issues, be it shifters crossing their lands, negotiations with creatures who lived in the forest and surrounding areas, mishaps with witches, or a particularly gruesome account of one of the visiting necromancers getting lost when he visited the Nunn, land of the dead, without a guide.
He spent hours out in the forest with Nova. At his suggestion, they had been systematically collecting detailed information of the flora and fauna of the Salgado lands. Damien presented what they had so far to Mia and Cameron during Christmas as a surprise and Mia had been struck dumb with amazement.
“This was your idea?” she asked.
Damien had shrugged. “Yeah, well, I mean, without Nova—”
“This is amazing. You never stop amazing me, Damien.”
Damien hadn’t been able to tamp down the blush.
He went out with Gonzalo, Olive, and Koko when they could make the time. Even Olive stopped truanting as often, determined to graduate despite not wanting to go into further education. At least, not just after getting out of the straightjacket of high school.
April arrived not only with Damien’s eighteenth birthday but with his acceptance into Eketon University. He almost cried when he read the email alone in his room, hand shaking around the mouse.
He’d stumbled out of his room and Mia had immediately come upstairs to check on him, concerned about the pounding of his heart.
“What—”
“I got in. Into Eketon.”
The smile she had given him could have lit up a new moon night.
