Chapter Text
The world had been divided for so long that most people no longer remembered a time when it wasn’t.
On one side of the border lived the werewolves — packs spread across wide territories of forest and field, mountains rising behind clean rivers and well-worn paths. Their houses were solid and old, built to last, filled with light and space and the quiet confidence of belonging. Food was plentiful. Water ran clear. Children were born into packs that had names and histories and land to inherit.
On the other side lived the humans.
Their cities were dense and sprawling, stitched together from tin, scrap, and concrete. The air was heavier there, the ground harder. People learned early how to barter, how to hide, how to make one meal last two days. Survival wasn’t guaranteed, only managed.
Both sides were governed by the Society.
The Society kept the peace, enforced the borders, and decided what happened when a human turned sixteen.
Most were classified and left where they were. Some were relocated for work. And some — the rarest, quietest number — were marked as Level One and taken across the border, never to return.
Among the werewolves, this was not spoken of with fear. It was spoken of with planning.
The Hamilton pack lands stretched wide, anchored by the main house at their centre. It was a place of constant, low-level motion — doors opening and closing, voices drifting through halls, the sounds of lives overlapping comfortably.
Lewis was out back, sleeves rolled up as he spoke with Jenson over a spread of maps laid across the garden table. They were discussing boundaries again — land use, patrol schedules, small adjustments that kept everything running smoothly. Seb hovered nearby, barefoot in the grass, listening more than speaking, grounding the conversation with his presence alone.
Inside, the house was alive in quieter ways.
George and Alex passed each other in the corridor, mid-argument about whose turn it was to restock the fridge in their shared apartment upstairs. Daniel’s laughter echoed from one of the side rooms, warm and loud, while Max’s voice cut in dryly beneath it. Somewhere further in, Carlos moved through the kitchen, humming under his breath as he cooked far more food than strictly necessary.
It was an easy kind of chaos. Familiar. Safe.
On uppers floor, tucked away from the noise in their own apartment, the pack house grew still.
Charles lay stretched across the couch, half on his side, half on his back, one sock missing and the other twisted around his ankle. He had a book open on his chest but hadn’t turned the page in a while. His fingers traced the same crease in the paper again and again, slow and absent.
Oscar stood at the kitchen counter, tea forgotten and cooling beside him, tablet glowing softly in his hands.
“You’re doing that thing,” Charles said, not looking up.
Oscar blinked. “What thing?”
“The staring. You get this line between your eyebrows.” Charles lifted his gaze, eyes warm, amused. “It means you’re thinking too hard.”
Oscar huffed a quiet laugh and set the tablet down. “It’s not nothing.”
“I didn’t say it was.” Charles shifted, making space as Oscar came to sit beside him. “I just said you’re thinking.”
They sat together for a moment, shoulders touching. Outside, the wind moved through the tall grass like water.
“The Society opened another caregiver window today,” Oscar said eventually. Casual. Like he was commenting on the weather.
Charles’s fingers paused on the page.
“Oh.”
“Three placements approved already,” Oscar went on. “They’re expecting more applications before the week’s out.”
Charles closed the book, resting it face-down. “They always do around this time.”
“Yeah.” Oscar nodded. “Sixteens.”
The word sat between them, heavy but familiar.
Charles rolled onto his side, facing Oscar now. “You’ve been thinking about this a while.”
Oscar didn’t deny it. “We have the space. The time. The support.” He gestured vaguely around them — the house, the land, the quiet certainty of pack life. “And if we’re going to do it, I don’t want to wait until it feels… urgent.”
Charles watched him closely. “You don’t want it to feel like obligation.”
“I want it to feel like choice,” Oscar said. Then, softer, “For us.”
Charles breathed out, slow. His tail flicked once against the couch cushion — a tell Oscar knew well. Nerves, not fear.
“They said the hospital is full again,” Charles murmured. “Temporary holding only, this time. Faster placements.”
Oscar nodded. “I saw.”
“They’re calling it an adjustment backlog,” Charles added. His mouth curved faintly, humour without mirth. “As if that makes it sound better.”
Oscar reached for Charles’s hand, thumb brushing over his knuckles. “We wouldn’t rush it. We’d take our time.”
“With them,” Charles said.
“Yes.”
Another pause. Not resistance — consideration.
“You know what it means,” Charles said quietly.
Oscar met his eyes. “I do.”
Charles searched his face, then nodded once. “Okay.”
Just that. No ceremony. No grand declarations. An agreement made in a room full of light.
Oscar picked the tablet back up.
The Society interface bloomed onto the screen, clean and pale, all rounded edges and reassuring fonts.
Caregiver Application
Household Type: Pack House
Alpha Present: Yes
Omega Present: Yes
Oscar filled it out carefully, methodically. Charles leaned against his shoulder, reading along.
A section appeared near the bottom.
Care Preferences
You may update medical and adjustment requests following placement.
Oscar hesitated — just for a second — then continued.
When he submitted the application, there was a soft chime. Polite. Final.
Application Received.
Charles rested his head against Oscar’s shoulder.
“Whoever they give us,” he said, voice gentle and sure, “we’ll take care of them.”
Oscar wrapped an arm around him, pulling him close.
“I know,” he said.
Outside, the wind moved through the fields again, uninterrupted.
The notification came through just before dinner.
Oscar felt the tablet buzz against the counter where he’d set it down, screen lighting up softly beneath the kitchen lights. He didn’t reach for it straight away. Neither did Charles.
They both knew what it would say.
Carlos glanced over first, spoon paused mid-air as he stirred the pot. “That yours?” he asked, accent warm and familiar. “You keep looking at it like it might bite.”
Oscar snorted under his breath and picked it up. Charles leaned in without thinking, shoulder brushing his arm.
Application Approved.
Placement Window: 48 hours.
Hospital Assignment: Pending.
“That was fast,” Charles murmured.
“They said it would be,” Oscar replied. He didn’t sound surprised — just thoughtful.
Daniel’s head popped around the corner, eyes bright. “Approved?”
Oscar nodded once.
Daniel grinned. “Told you. You two are basically textbook.” He disappeared again, voice drifting back down the hall. “Max! They got approved!”
“Good,” Max called back flatly. “Now they can stop brooding.”
George and Alex emerged from upstairs a moment later, argument forgotten as Alex clocked the look on Oscar’s face.
“Oh,” Alex said. “That look means paperwork went through.”
George tilted his head. “That was quick.”
Lewis stepped into the doorway then, presence alone enough to quiet the room without trying. He took in the tablet, the subtle shift in posture, the way Charles had curled slightly closer to Oscar.
“Approved?” he asked.
“Yes,” Oscar said. He straightened instinctively, then stopped himself. Lewis wasn’t the Society. He didn’t need to stand like this was a report.
Lewis nodded once. “Good. The house has room.” His gaze softened as it settled on Charles. “And you’ll have support.”
Seb appeared beside him, silent as ever, but his hand brushed Charles’s shoulder in passing — grounding, wordless reassurance.
Dinner carried on.
The conversation drifted to smaller things: patrol routes, an argument about music in the common areas, whether the guest room should finally be converted into something useful. No one lingered too long on the approval. It was noted, accepted, folded neatly into the rhythm of the house.
Later, when the plates were cleared and the noise softened into low conversation, Oscar and Charles slipped away upstairs.
Their room was quiet, lights dimmed automatically as the door shut behind them. Charles sat on the edge of the bed, bouncing his heel once, twice — energy with nowhere to go.
“Are you nervous?” Oscar asked gently.
Charles considered it. “I think… I’m aware.”
Oscar smiled faintly. “That sounds like you.”
“They said we’d be able to visit first,” Charles went on. “At the hospital.”
“Yes.”
“And we don’t have to choose immediately.”
“Yes.”
Charles nodded, exhaling slowly. “Okay.”
Oscar sat beside him, their knees touching. “We don’t have to be perfect,” he said. “We just have to be steady.”
Charles leaned into him, head finding Oscar’s shoulder easily. “I want them to feel safe,” he said quietly.
Oscar wrapped an arm around him, pressing a kiss to his hair. “They will.”
Outside, the pack house settled for the night. Doors closed. Lights dimmed. The land beyond the windows lay open and waiting, borders firm and unchallenged.
Somewhere beyond those borders, a boy was counting down the days to his sixteenth birthday, unaware that a decision had already been made.
The human side never slept properly.
Even at night, there was noise — metal clanging, voices raised in argument or laughter, generators coughing themselves awake. The air smelled like rust and smoke and too many bodies packed into too little space.
Lando knew the rhythms of it all by heart.
He moved when the guards changed, when the floodlights flickered just enough to cast deeper shadows. His feet were bare, soles toughened by years of broken concrete and scorched ground, and he knew exactly where to step to avoid the worst of it.
The bag slung over his shoulder was light. Too light.
He ducked between two shacks, heart hammering, and crouched low behind a stack of crates. His fingers shook as he reached inside, counting again even though he already knew.
Two bruised apples. A heel of bread. Half a protein bar, stale but intact.
It wouldn’t last.
He pressed his forehead briefly to his knees, breathing through the hollow ache in his stomach. Fifteen years old and built like he was still twelve, all sharp elbows and jutting bones. Hunger had a way of keeping you small.
“Move,” someone hissed nearby.
Lando flinched, then relaxed when he saw who it was — a girl about his age, eyes sharp, hair hacked short. She slipped past him, nimble as a shadow.
“They’re tightening patrols,” she muttered. “Classification’s happening tomorrow.”
“I know,” Lando said. His voice came out rougher than he meant it to. “I’m not stupid.”
She snorted. “Didn’t say you were. Just saying — be careful.”
Careful didn’t mean much anymore.
He had three days left. Every day, another group of sixteen-year-olds was gathered, scanned, and sorted by the Society. Some returned, marked and unsettled. Some didn’t.
No one talked about the ones who didn’t.
Rumours filled the gaps instead. Experiments. Work until they broke. Vanishing without explanation.
Level Ones.
Lando pulled the hood of his jacket tighter around his face and stood. “I won’t be there,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow. “You planning to disappear?”
“Yeah,” he lied easily. He’d been lying since he learned words could be used as shields.
As he slipped back into the maze of shacks, the loudspeaker crackled overhead, voice distorted and metallic.
“Attention. All citizens turning sixteen today are required to attend classification. Remain in your assigned sector until escorted.”
Lando didn’t stop walking.
His still had three days left.