Page 62 of Shifter Omegaverse AU

“What did—” he started to ask, but his phone vibrated in his pocket.

He pulled it out, and Ruben jerked forward, coming to the edge of his seat. “I sent the text earlier, but the photo must have still been loading,” he said, as Rowan clicked into his messages and saw that Ruben had already texted the group chat.

Ruben: You’ll never believe me, so here’s a picture to prove it. I found my fated mate.

Underneath the text was a selfie they must have taken the night before at Ray’s apartment. They both looked absolutely enamored, gazing at each other like they had been together for years, not hours.

“Are you serious?” Rowan asked even though the proof was right in front of him.

It just felt like he deserved a turn to ask.

“You can follow up?” Ruben suggested, but his voice was uncertain. “That’s sort of what I assumed you would do, obviously not knowing you wanted to wait.”

Rowan stared down at his phone, hoping to get one of those elusive apologies from his brother. Somehow, he had once again found a way to steal the spotlight and make everything about him. It figured that even when Rowan, against all odds, managed to find a fated mate, to find someone who wanted to spend time with him and even slept the night in his bed, it still couldn’t compare to the Ruben Show.

His phone lit up, as text after text came in, exclaiming, celebrating, and gushing over Ray and congratulating Ruben.

It was like Rowan was seventeen all over again, his phone blowing up in his pocket as his moms and sisters texted about Ruben and his wrist, while Rowan sat alone in the championship arena. The team had gone out to dinner afterwards to celebrate, but Rowan had gone home because, despite how upset he was with his parents for leaving, he had also been worried about Ruben.

He’d arrived home to an empty house and made himself a TV dinner before going to bed. Ruben hadn’t woken him up when he got home from the hospital, and the next day at breakfast, no one had asked Rowan how his competition went or if his team had secured the sponsorship. Their alpha ma was leaving on a trip that morning and was fussing over Ruben while their omega mom lamented having to cancel a showing she had in order to look after Ruben.

Rowan had dumped his barely eaten cereal down the drain and left.

Sort of like how he wanted to leave right now.

Except, this was Milo’s—his Milo’s—apartment. He wasn’t leaving, but he sure as hell didn’t have to sit here and stew.

He stood up, ignoring Ruben’s wide-eyed look, and walked over to the counter. He started unpacking the strawberries, leftover donuts, and jam, taking care not to place any of them down too roughly, despite the way his hawk was screeching in his head.

“Did you have a good first date?” Ruben asked, his voice softer than it had been all afternoon. “I don’t need to go get eggs for their car? Or hair dye?”

Even though they were almost two years apart, they’d only been one grade apart in school due to how their birthdays fell. While this meant Rowan had spent the majority of his childhood living in Ruben’s shadow, there had been one giant perk.

Middle school had been particularly rough for Rowan. Some of the nastier boys had found out about his touch aversion and would sneak up on him and grab his arm, ruffle his hair, or poke the back of his neck. To most of the teachers, it looked harmless, but it would leave Rowan shaking for the rest of the day.

He had tried to hide it for a while. He felt like he’d caused his moms enough trouble in elementary school, when he’d needed near constant interventions. As he’d gotten older, he’d learned how to avoid the other kids, and though it meant he spent a lot of his childhood alone, it had seemed worth it at the time. None of his tricks worked against outright bullying, though. Things kept getting worse and worse until one day, Ruben found him crying in the locker room during gym class.

At first, Rowan thought Ruben was just going to pretend he hadn’t seen anything. He left the locker room to return to his large group of friends, and they didn’t speak about it on the bus ride home. The next day, however, Rowan spotted him sneaking into the showers while everyone else was running laps. Again, they said nothing to their sisters or moms about it, but the next day, when the bullies showed up with horribly dyed black hair, Ruben confronted them with his wall of friends behind him. They teased and taunted the boys for their horrible dye jobs, and they never messed with Rowan again.

“No, there’s no need to get hair dye. Or stink bombs. Or laxative chocolate chip cookies.”

Ruben laughed, a short, surprised thing. The memory was so ridiculous, Rowan couldn’t keep a small smile off his face, either. When Ruben saw it, he hopped off the couch and joined Rowan at the island.

“For the last time, I told you not to eat those cookies! They were a gift.”

“And for the last time, gifts are supposed to be good things, and they weren’t on the plate, so I thought they were extras.”

Ruben shrugged one shoulder and swiped a strawberry out of the carton. “I made too many, and it was a gift. That jackass ditched you at homecoming for one of my piece of shit friends. Seeing the two of them have to leave their finals to go shit their brains out would’ve been a great gift for you, but then you had to go and tell our moms.”

“I thought I was dying!”

“You did have a pretty strong reaction… I guess it was good that I didn’t give them the plate. If they’d eaten as many as I made, they may have ended up in the hospital, which, despite them being two-timing asshats, I guess they wouldn’t have deserved.”

“Wow,” Rowan said, avoiding looking at his brother by bringing the strawberries to the sink to wash. “I think that might be the first time I’ve ever heard you show remorse over one of your old pranks”

“Pranks? Justice? Who can say?” Ruben followed Rowan and ran his strawberry under the tap. “But I do show remorse sometimes. I apologized for last night.”

Rowan had to consciously keep his fingers from clenching around the strawberry carton. “You did.”