Page 72 of In This Iron Ground
“My, Grandma, what big eyes you have,” Damien teased as soon as the guy reached him, who laughed, a mischievous spark lighting up his eyes.
“All the better to look at you with,” he replied. Damien groaned at the cheesiness. The guy laughed again. “Hey, you started it,” he said, lifting the hand not holding a drink up in defence. Damien tipped his head in acceptance.
“Damien,” he introduced himself.
“Nasir.”
“I’m surprised you can stand all the noise. And the smell.”
“You get used to it. What pack are you from?” Nasir asked. Damien had met a few visiting wolves outside of the Salgado pack when he had been back home, but he guessed asking after someone’s pack name was customary without previous knowledge of ties.
“I don’t belong to a pack,” Damien said truthfully.
Nasir’s thick eyebrows rose. “Really? That’s…I mean, your scent is clearly marked.”
“Really? Still? Well, I was fostered by the Salgado pack for years, so…”
“Wow. The Salgado pack?” he repeated, sounding impressed. Damien couldn’t help but feel pleased at that.
“Yeah.”
“I’ve never heard of a pack fostering a human child. You must be pretty special,” Nasir smiled.
Damien snorted. “It was more of a right-place, right-time situation.”
“Well, lucky them,” Nasir said.
Damien shook his head, laughing.
In the corner of the frat, a bunch of girls started cheering as another one of them shotgunned a beer. Nasir twitched at the noise.
“Want to go somewhere quieter?” Damien asked.
Nasir gave him a slow smirk. “Sure.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Damien said with a roll of his eyes.
Nasir shrugged good-naturedly. “Sure.”
They went outside, and Damien saw Nasir relax instantaneously. Damien wondered how other shifters got used to the onslaught of sensory stimuli in public places. He knew that werewolves had some control over what they focused on and how much their senses engaged on certain stimuli, but certain environments must still be overwhelming.
No wonder so many packs lived in rural areas.
Damien and Nasir sat away from the crowd, leaning against the wooden fence that penned the area in.
Damien took a liking to Nasir straightaway. He had an open, affable air about him that was easy to connect to. His eyes lit up when he talked about his pack, which resided a few states away.
“Really hard,” Nasir confirmed when Damien asked how difficult it was when he first moved away. “Like…when you’re with pack, on your pack land, you just feel so…connected. Like, your Ousía is at home, you know? You know you’re safe without having to think about it. There’s a flow to the bond that’s anchoring.”
Damien felt the old ache of want. He knew what Nasir was talking about, in a sense. That feeling of family, of home, had been foreign to him for the years after his parents died. There had been no safety, no respite. It had only made finding it with the Salgados more obvious.
At the same time, however, there was a depth to what Nasir described that Damien had only felt in dreams.
“That sounds awesome.”
“Yeah. But it makes it hard to move away. Even if you know you still have it, you don’tfeelit, you know? I mean, yeah, you still feel it, but not in the same way. You’re left a little…”
“Unmoored?”
