Page 17 of Poet & Protector

He turned his face away slightly, his jaw tight.

I braced for him to lash out again.

Without looking at me, he asked, “Was it finding out the Keepers match us with mates? Was that when you realized you were different?”

His question caught me off guard, but I only hesitated a moment before I answered.

“Yes. Pretty much. Same for you?”

“Sort of,” Nev replied. “You know how all the young Guardians were given ‘the talk’ when we turned ten?”

“Yeah.”

“Since Dax is a year older than me, he got the whole spiel first,” Nev said. “And he wouldn’t shut up about it. He was into girls even then, so the ‘someday you’ll be assigned a mate’ speech was exciting to him.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” I said. “Dax is kind of all bro all the time, yeah?”

Nev made a quiet affirmative sound. I didn’t understand why he refused to look at me. We were talking now. Did he really dislike me that much?

“Sabine got the speech, too,” he told me. “She wasn’t excited the way Dax was, but she said it might mean we could live in the same house someday and that made her happy.”

“She wanted to be your mate?” I recoiled slightly, then instantly regretted my knee-jerk response, worried I might have offended him.

But he smiled, shaking his head. “I don’t think she was paying attention to the full implications of what being mates meant. We were best friends, we still are. Things have never been good between Sabine and her parents. She was relieved she wouldn’t have to live with them forever.”

Nev was best friends with Sabine? Mean girl to end all mean girls, Sabine? I knew better than to question him about his sanity when it came to his choice of best friends, but it perplexed me. Nev might be a grumpy snob, but Sabine was vicious.

Putting all that aside, I asked, “What did you think?”

“Mostly I was confused,” he told me. “Then I told Dax about what Sabine said and he got mad and told me we didn’t get to pick our mates, the Keepers did. I asked my parents and they said Dax was right, but when I told Sabine she cried and I decided I never wanted to hear about mates again.”

“That’s how I felt when I got the talk,” I said. “I wished I’d never heard about it.”

He nodded. “The next year it was my turn to officially learn about mates. That…did not go well.”

Nev still wasn’t looking at me, but I noticed his face wasn’t turned away anymore and his body canted slightly toward mine as he spoke.

“I refused to talk to my parents, or my packmates, for a week. I especially avoided Sabine, which really upset her. She didn’t understand what she’d done wrong. I didn’t know how to tell her it wasn’t her fault that whenever I thought about being with her like that, with any girl like that, I got sick to my stomach.”

I drew a shaky breath. “Yeah.”

He finally looked at me. “I thought maybe it would change as I got older. Especially since the moment we hit puberty, Dax wouldn’t shut up about how hot Sabine was and I did not get it.”

I smiled at him. “I felt that way when Ansel told me he has a crush on Bryn.” My eyes widened when I realized what I’d said. “Oh shit. That’s a secret. Please don’t tell anyone.”

“Who would I tell?” Nev asked. “Believe it or not, my pack doesn’t spend its time gossiping about yours.”

I let that pass. “Does anyone in your pack know you’re gay?”

“Sabine figured it out before I did,” he told me. “Or at least before I fully understood who I am. I loved to read and she started lending me books with queer characters, hoping I’d catch on. I did.”

Huh. That was kind of thoughtful. I assumed Sabine was allergic to thoughtful.

“We talked about it,” he continued. “She was supportive and she encouraged me to talk to Ren, too.”

I gaped at him. “Your alpha knows?”

He nodded, tilting his head to regard me. “My whole pack knows. Yours doesn’t?”