Salmon fillets sizzled in the remnants of their olive oil slathering and the generous butter blob Casey had garnished with garlic and honey dribbles. He spooned the mix over their dinner with a teaspoon and careful concentration.

Once the fish was seared beautifully he plucked them from the pan and into bowls. He put the larger piece in Georgie’s, Georgie laughed and swapped them. Then, in the pool of melted salty, sugary goodness he tossed their veggies to cook for a few minutes.

Even in the evening chill Georgie had to puff to cool down each bite enough to put it in his mouth. Wedged back in between Casey’s knees he could lift his spork up to get his soon-to-be-mate working like bellows when he needed a break. Casey ate over him with great care when Georgie didn’t need his blowing assistance. The salmon was almost fluffy, the vegetables had a bite to them, and there was no beating butter, honey and garlic. It was delicious and Georgie fought to the very end to finish it.

The crackles of the fire seemed louder now that there was no clinking and clanking of their bowls. Or maybe it was wailing because it was dying out. They didn’t need it to stay warm, they had their fur if the weather actually turned wintery. It was beautiful to stare into, though, and comforting to feel the heat on your face when you leant in. And, of course, the marshmallow possibilities. Humans invented the treat, werewolves invented the toasting.

Georgie stroked his belly and let out a long hum in protest against his fullness. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Casey’s hand extending.

“Don’t you dare,” he groaned. “If you tickle me I’ll throw up.”

He thought about that risk for a moment. “I do have to share a bed with you tonight…”

“Have to?” Georgie twisted his neck and looked him over with scathing eyes. “You can sleep outside if it’s too much trouble.”

“Bad choice of words! I love sleeping with you! Next to you, I mean.”

“I know.” He closed his eyes, settling back against him. “I’m just messing with you.”

“So mean.” His pout was audible.

Georgie cracked a lid. “Outside is still an option.”

“I love you,” he sang sweetly.

“Prove it.”

“Huh?”

“Help me into the tent. I want to get in my jammies but I feel so heavy.”

Casey looped his arms through the backs of his knees and stood, lifting him like a sack of flour bent at the middle.

“Uuugh you’re squeezing my tummy!”

“Sorry!” He hurried to their tent, a triangular canvas they had carried with them on adventures for a decade. In a deep squat he released him and Georgie flopped forward with his head inside and the rest of him laid out on the dirt.

“I just need a minute,” he moaned before Casey could question him.

Casey waited, knees bent and butt almost to the ground, never any impatience in his body to show.

Georgie dragged himself the rest of the way inside, taking care not to bring half the forest’s dirt with him and dusting off his feet right before they crossed the threshold. The bed was made up of layers of blankets and a couple of pillows. It had fit all three of them even until they were all grown up. He rumpled the covers with his clumsy climbing and searching for his stack of clothes. They packed light although mud was inevitable. From the middle he pulled free his folded pjs and shook them out. Today’s clothes hadn’t gotten too mucky, he could get away with folding them back up into the pile. As he took the hem of his top in his hands, he realised the figure squatting in the tent opening remained. Casey was still. Eerily so.

Georgie looked to him uncertainly. Had he forgotten something? His elbows rested on his knees, his bare feet balanced him evenly, not even his abs were flexing and squeezing like they often did when Georgie found himself ogling them. He was a statue. One whose eyes followed you around the room.

“Do you intend to watch?” he asked softly. Genuinely uncertain as to whether he wanted him to or not. He wasn’t of age for acts of the downstairs department… that didn’t rid him of the urges for the gorgeous, shirtless alpha crouched through the tent flaps.

It took Casey a moment to react to the question. “I shouldn’t.” He swallowed. “I should do the washing up.” He lingered, though, drinking him in with his eyes for just a little too long. Taking what he could of him before dragging himself away.

―

Even from his place tucked up under the top blanket, knees to tummy, Georgie could hear every action outside clearly. Casey gathering water from the lake to use in the washing up bowl with splash-accompanied-stomps. The clack and clatter of his heavy-handed dunking. The slosh of him spilling the soapy water. Hissed curse words that would indicate the suds got on his shorts.

Georgie smiled at the sloping tent wall on his side of the bed. He could fall asleep to his bumbling noises, his legs were weary enough and his stomach full enough, but he kept his eyes open with stubborn determination. When Casey crept in to join him, he wanted the option to entangle himself with his radiator body.

By the time Casey finally peeled open the pair of hanging canvas pieces making up the door, Georgie’s eyes were stinging and there was nothing to see inside any more. Casey sat in the doorway and shucked off his clothes with his back to him and only the moonlight squeezing in to offer him a glimpse of his outline. His shoulder muscles bunched and flexed until he covered them with his pajama top. His bottoms were slipped on with his lower half still hanging out the tent. The modesty was appreciated by Georgie. It was really only Casey that had to struggle with the mate maturity rules. He never complained. The craving was dark in his eyes sometimes, though. It could make Georgie skittish. Like he wanted to bare his throat and bend over and submit to his-

“I forgot to brush my teeth,” Casey whispered near his head.

“I can tell,” Georgie teased.

He heard, rather than saw, him sit up with a whoosh. It was a wonder he didn’t bump his head on the low ceiling. “Really?”

“No! I didn’t do mine either. Too tired. We’ll brush extra hard in the morning.”

“Does that mean I can still kiss you goodnight?”

Georgie answered with his actions. He rolled over, swinging his leg wide and hooking it over his hip, and reached for where his neck should be. His muscle memory was getting good, he latched to the back of it and kissed him slow and easy. Everything with Casey was easy. His love for him was effortless. A seed planted at birth and nurtured for so long there was no way he could dig it back out of his heart. The roots were intertwined with his own nerves and arteries. The tickle of tentative touch along the edge of his pajama shorts rolled his hips forward without thought. He wanted his hands to sink, to take their hot grip deep beneath. His upper thighs ached for him to squeeze them, to part them and push them down flat.

Casey grumbled into his mouth, “No more. I-” He snatched Georgie’s bottom lip and pinched it between his teeth just long enough to draw a whimper from him. “I can’t.” Georgie knew it to be true from the lump growing in the other’s pj shorts, despite Casey’s best efforts to keep it from pressing into him. Georgie made no such efforts with his own boner.

He fell back, withdrawing his leg and offering Casey a little space to breathe. “Maybe a dip in the lake would cool you off.” Half in and half out of the covers, he stretched until his fingertips reached the top end of their tent.

Casey had scooted to the very edge of his half of the bed. “You have no idea what that feels like with mate maturity,” he chuckled. There was a shake to it, like he’d just crossed the finish line of another of their races. His lungs not quite able to get full capacity again yet. “It’s maddening to stop. Like I could actually just start humping your leg like a dog.”

“That would be hot.”

“Stop it,” he groaned.

“Wanna go fertilise the bushes again?”

He was silent.

“Can I watch you do it?”

He heard the shocked intake of breath and could only guess what his face looked like. To be honest, the words had rushed out his mouth before he’d really thought it through.

“Is that allowed?” Casey mumbled. “I thought those parts were off limits.”

Now he’d thrown the possibility out there, he was willing to petition for it. “I won’t touch it.”

Casey was awkward in his attempt to respond. “Yeah, but…”

“And I’ve seen it before.”

“Since mate maturity we haven’t, you know- I mean, we’ve been actually trying not to look.”

“It’s not possible to never see-”

Casey’s face snapped to the side. “Have you been secretly looking?”

“No! But-”

“Georgie!” he gasped. Serious didn’t suit him. “I’m the older one, I’m supposed to be protecting you from mate maturity until you reach it.”

“And you do a great job!” He was gentle and patient and Georgie had never once felt an ounce of pressure from him. If anything, Georgie was overly aware of how much he was hiding the struggle of being in his presence all the time. He put on a contented front for Georgie, made his jokes and light-hearted griping. It was a sense Georgie had, nothing he could present as evidence, that Casey was fighting internally near-constantly. “I’m completely innocent thanks to you!”

“Don’t say that like an accusation,” he laughed. “It’s the right thing. You’re too young.”

“So if I’m too young, what do you think about when you handle it?”

His silence was damning.

Georgie spluttered into wild cackles. “You do think of me!”

“Of course I do!” His fluster only tickled him more. “You’re my soul mate.”

“I’m only twenty,” Georgie said on a disappointed sigh. “How could you think of me like that?”

He heard him swallow. “Sorry,” he whispered.

Georgie cleared the tent’s width in one fling, finding him again in the dark and wrapping himself over his front. “Don’t say sorry! I was only teasing you!” He kissed away his own guilt, following his hairline, then his neck, his hands clung to the shoulders of his t-shirt, his thighs clamped to his hips. He was so warm Georgie could just glue himself to him. More and more kisses, maybe a little nibble-

“G-Georgie!” He stiffened, top to bottom.

Georgie stilled too. His eyes had adjusted to the dark enough to see that his were closed, squeezed shut, actually. He looked almost pained.

“Are you okay?”

“I… need to go brush my teeth.”

“What? We said-”

“I need to go.”

“Oh.” He looked back for the bump that should have been just behind his butt. Only, it had flattened again. It may just be the dark, but he almost thought he could see a stain-

“Georgie,” Casey grunted.

“Yep. Sorry.” He swung his leg back over and scurried back to his own side. It wasn’t his intention to torture him, he hoped Casey knew that. He didn’t need more of Georgie’s input right now, though, so he hid himself under the blankets and let him deal with it.

On his return, they kept an inch between them for the rest of the night.

The next day they uncovered another, much larger, buried treasure.

Of course, at first, Georgie took part in the rowing of the canoe, carved to fit three. Once the shore was all greige instead of individual stones, his oars were tucked (gingerly, so Casey wouldn’t notice too soon) under his seat and his journal retrieved from his waterproof side bag. Another human invention. Well, wolves had their version back in the day but it involved a long process, animal innards, and wax. Georgie could give it to the fur-less on this one.

Casey ploughed through the water, taking them to where the lake encroached on the forest’s end. When the trees thinned out and drew back they would be at the base of the mountains.

They expected to arrive around lunchtime, and had packed a picnic that rested under the middle seat. Cove’s seat. They would stay until dusk, then row back past their camp to the absolute other end of the lake and cover their canoe up at the bottom of a dyke for safe-keeping before trekking the last of the way back home on four feet each.

They picked up impressive speed and Casey had yet to notice he was solo-powering the boat. Fir trees that fluffily filled either side of the lake began to blur. Georgie took out his coloured pencils and did his best to remember the shades of the leaves from the day before.

He was three pages deep into his sketches and colouring before Casey peered back to check on him and found out he was shirking. He wasn’t mad. He’d never been mad at him. Georgie showed him his leaf collage and Casey complimented it until they started to veer off course and he needed his attention forward-facing again.

In the furthest distance, Georgie was starting to see what he believed were the mountain crests. They were still too far away to really tell, it could just be the shadows under clouds peeking out from atop the trees. He kept his eyes on the line, though, because eventually Borderwatch would be there.

And there it was. A little late for their usual lunch but the view more than made up for it as they reached the the shore. Georgie stared over Casey’s shoulder, open mouthed, at the incredible height and pure vastness. A thin border of trees, like a last line of defence, split the ground between sand and mountain. They were monstrously tall and thick. They left their canoe and lunch beside one, needing to see the mountains proper before anything else. On the other side, Casey let out an exhilarated laugh.

The Borderwatch range felt more fortress than mountain cluster from stood at the bottom. The ridge was surmounted by tattered flags battered by wintery winds. Icicles weaponised the lip beneath, ready to crack and spear at any disturbance. Despite the flags signalling some kind of claiming, there were no scent markers left to dictate that the craggy ascent was being actively defended as any pack’s territory.

Georgie tried to imagine climbing the sheer rock face. Cliff-nesting clans, if they ever truly existed, left no trace to make a trail of. There was nowhere he would feel safe placing his boot to even begin.

“This is…” Georgie shook his head. It didn’t feel real.

“I feel tiny,” Casey laughed. “It’s so massive!”

They hadn’t the time to stray too far, but lunch at the base of Borderwatch was enough to thrill them. They ate in near silence, simply taking it all in (and planning what to bring back for journaling) and basking in the feeling of insignificance beneath mountains that had stood before wolves.

At dusk, they dragged themselves away. Their adult lives awaited them back in the pack, unfortunately.