He had me pinned down, arm pressed against my throat as he smirked down at me. He clearly wasn't trying all that hard at the beginning of the fight. He was just playing with me until I gave a quick jab that hit him in the nose and he stood there a moment, blood trickling down his upper lip as he stared at me. Then he licked at it and smiled.

Right there. That was when he got angry. When he turned serious.

I just laid there with him on top of me, limp. I won't lie I gave up right then and there. I saw that look in his eye and knew that if I said or did the wrong thing he wouldn't hesitate to break my neck as effortlessly as I'd seen his older brothers do to mutts like me who thought they had a chance to be something greater.

He told me I was nothing more than a weak mutt and I listened and I waited. Under different circumstances, I would have swung at him again but this was a formal challenge where death was a likely factor and though I'm willing to risk a few broken bones I wouldn't risk my life for it. I couldn't do that to my dad, or my brothers, or Eric and Aaliyah.

I blacked out after that. The last thing  I remember was  Damon clapping me on the back and the roaring crowd of onlookers cheering. He ushered me into his van, giving compliments that didn’t quite reach my ears.

“You, my friend, are a beast. That was just beautiful,” he said, starting the van. “We gotta celebrate. A couple of the guys wanted to go someplace and hang out.”

“Nah. I’ve got curfew and your driving is shit,” I said, rubbing my head as I sank back in my seat.

Smacking his lips Damon reached over to shove my shoulders. “Man you’re just mad what’s-his-face wasn’t here to watch.”

“I could literally care less,” I mumbled. And I could. Eric and  I came to an agreement a long time ago about this. I got over it pretty quickly at first. Plus I would always see him at my house afterward, just cause he was a worry wart like that, waiting for me.

Nodding his head Damon hummed. “Whatever you say. From what you’ve been telling me you and Eric haven’t been talking as much as you used to.”

“We kinda had a falling out about two weeks ago,” I said with a careless shrug, not really wanting to get into it. I told Damon almost everything, it wasn’t like I had anyone else to talk to.

Being gay was one thing but being a gay mutt was even worse. When it came to humans most of our kind sort of didn’t care, humans were weird and we expected nothing less of them. But with wolves it was different.

Surprisingly enough older generations of wolves were more accepting. They understood that when a young wolf gets certain urges he’ll either turn to sex or fighting to fulfill whatever needs he has. It was the younger generations who were so easily influenced by the new human laws that were slowly suffocating us that adopted this new way of thinking so it was pretty rare to come across young wolves like Damon who was so forward thinking.

“You did something stupid didn’t you?” he asked, waiting for me to explain. “You a retarded ass nigga.”

Sighing I rolled my eyes at him.

“I kinda sorta went over to his house to maybe talk about us or whatever… and we ended up in the bathtub.” I blushed at the thought of it all.

“The bathtub? Why the tub?”

“It's easier to wash away the smell of sex when you suck your boyfriend off there,” I said bluntly.

“Okay…” Damon nodded, starting to look a little uncomfortable. He always got uncomfortable whenever I got this blunt. “So you two fucked. Then why was he mad?”

“We got to fighting before the sex. I was trying to break things off with him cause he’s my friend you know and I didn’t want for things to get weird between us. I just wanted us to go back to normal but he got mad and started talking about how nothing between us would ever be normal. 'Friends don’t suck each other off on the weekends' or something like that. It was more like angry sex. He kissed me to prove some weird point but then it went too far.”

“Ya think.” Damon raised a brow at me. “Look, bro, from the looks of things it sounds like he knows what he wants.”

“What do you mean?”

“You try to break up with him and he decides to throw himself at you but whenever you express wanting things to become more serious between you two he gets scared again. I don’t think this is about you though. And hear me out before you get mad- but it’s not. He still lives with his mom and his brother. That woman can’t protect him from what would happen if he found out about the two of you. This isn’t about you it’s about Eli.” Damon pulled into a gravel driveway in front of a dilapidated house, the windows all boarded up and those that weren’t were painted black. “He’s not gonna stop lying to himself until the day he stops letting that nigga punk him out.”

That's another thing I talked to Damon about. Eli.

Eric has been noticeably better these past few weeks and Damon thinks it has something to do with the magic user he'd been seeing lately so all of his attention has probably been elsewhere. But before that on slow nights where Eric would sneak out to get away, I'd find bruises on him that were too dark and too big to be hickeys from me.

Sinking low in my seat I could feel the guilt start to eat away at me. I knew Damon was right but if things between us relied so heavily on Eric getting the nerve to finally stand up for himself then I may as well give up. Eli wouldn't leave Eric alone that easily. A challenge would be his only option and there was no way Eric would agree to that.

"Ay man, stop sitting around and come on, I'm ready to go inside. It's some cute boys in there calling your name Toby." Damon peeked his head through the window at me, a shit eating grin on his face.

"Do you have to make that joke every time we go in? I already have a sorta boyfriend situation and I don't do sorcerers," I scoffed, headed for the obviously enchanted shack. It was small on the outside but big on the inside, made to imitate many of the magic nightclubs you'd see in the cities.

Damon always tries to bring me here after wins or just when I'm upset cause there's nothing to get you in a better mood like a nice drink and a dance with some stranger. It didn't matter to me cause I'd probably end up sitting somewhere alone on a couple until it was time to go like always.