Alive // bxb

Chapter 10

Milo's POV:

"So how's school going, Milo?" Liam's mom asked politely, setting a plate down in front of me. I gulped at the size of the portions and wondered how I could get out of eating most of it. The question seemed half-hearted; she seemed to have a genuine interest in getting to know me but it was one of the most basic questions she could've asked while dancing around the topic of Liam and I being mates.

"School's good," I whispered, clenching my hands together in my lap.

"And what classes are you taking?" she followed up.

"History, Spanish, Psychology, Forensics..." I trailed off.

"Liam didn't tell me you were both in Forensics," his mom said, fixing Liam with a disapproving stare.

"What, is that a fun fact of the day?" he asked. "I don't know, do you want to see my class lists or something?"

His mother sighed, her eyes closing briefly, and I knew why she was surprised at not knowing. It was because Liam and I were mates, and mates are supposed to know everything about each other. We weren't at that point yet, and some part of me wondered... would we ever get there?

"Thanks be to the Moon Goddess," the alpha said, clasping his hands in front of him in a loose prayer-like motion and thankfully moving the topic of conversation away from me.

"Thanks be to the Moon Goddess," we all said in our normal tones. Which was, for them, rather loud, and for me, barely a mumble.

His younger sister, Paisley, started talking about her day and what she and Sage's younger brother did. "And then we went to the park, and he pushed me and then I pushed him in circles, but then someone else wanted a turn on the swing so then we went to his house," she rambled, her parents smiling and nodding.

Liam caught my eye in my peripheral vision and cocked his head to the side by half an inch or so. I smiled a bit, my smile wavering on my lips, and I felt a gentle kick, more like a nudge, really, from under the table. It was coming from his direction, so I kicked back.

'You okay?' he whispered in my head through our link. I swallowed.

'Yeah,' I replied. 'I don't feel the best,' I continued truthfully. My stomach couldn't seem to handle the sight of the portions sitting in front of me.

I caught sight of Liam nodding slowly next to me, as if putting some pieces together. Pieces of my puzzle, pieces I held close to my heart, pieces I wouldn't give away. The picture would go uncompleted without them, and would that really be such a bad thing?

I hesitantly picked up my fork and started brushing the sausage in the spaghetti off to the side, as though I was cleaning, a mindless job. Once I had a sufficiently meatless portion of the pasta, I scooped some up, leaned forward to place it in my mouth, and set the fork down, everything just as it had been a moment before. Trying to create as few ripples in the water as possible.

"The pack training session this morning went well," Liam's father, the alpha, said, nodding as he spooned a bite of spaghetti into his mouth. "Good progress. The ones who just started training this year are making good progress."

"I beat Sammy, and Kate, and Xander," Paisley said excitedly before frowning. "Jacob still beat me, though."

"That's pretty good, Paisie," Liam praised his younger sister, and I heard him nudging her foot with his under the table. She beamed.

"Were you at the session, Milo?" their mother asked in what I assumed was a desperate attempt to bring me into the conversation. Instead, I just wilted even more against the back of my chair.