Romer

His smile deepened, a teasing glint in his dark blue eyes. "Glad to see you have not forgotten your childhood friend"

I gasped, a flood of memories suddenly rushing back to me. Summer afternoons spent running through the woods, chasing each other by the river. Laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe. The secret treehouse we had sworn no one else would ever find. It was really , Romer. My childhood friend, the one who had disappeared when we were still kids. He had moved to a far away pack and even if we promised each other to keep in touch, but years passed by and slowly we stopped writing.

I stared at him, my heart hammering in my chest. "Romer?" I whispered, almost afraid to say it out loud. It didn’t seem possible. I thought I would never meet him again, but now look at him, he was there standing in front of me, making my body feel unknown sensations that I couldn't even understand properly.

He smiled even more at the sound of his name with his blue eyes softening, and turning into an even more fascinating shade of blue.

Tara and Cara were still frozen, their eyes going between Romer and me super fast, like they couldn’t quite process what was happening. I couldn’t blame them, I felt the same way. I wasn't even totally sure that this was really happening.

"I... I thought you moved away. You and your family..." I tried to say, still in shock with my brain not working completely.

"We did," Romer said, shrugging slightly, but his smile didn’t fade. "But now we’re back."

Before I could say anything else, Tara found her voice. "Wait, hold on a second. Lya, this is your childhood friend? Romer?" She blinked, then grinned. "Why didn’t you tell us you grew up with someone like him?"

Cara laughed, finally snapping out of her daze. "Seriously! You’ve been holding out on us, Lya."

I shook my head, still trying to catch up with everything going on. "I didn’t even recognize him..."

Romer chuckled softly, looking at me with an expression that sent my heart fluttering. "Well, it’s been a long time. But you’re still the same Lya. My little Fluff."

"Can you please stop calling me like that? Even then I hated it?"

But inside hearing him say that nickname again stirred something deep inside me. I didn’t understand it, but in that moment, I knew everything had just changed.

He looked at me intensely with those beautiful eyes and with a smirk said "You haven't changed a bit."

We sat together in the cafeteria, and we were all talking like we had been friends forever. From time to time Tara and Cara asked questions, but Romer and I were the ones talking the most. We reminding our old stories together, but also spoke of our plans for the future and laughed for small things.It was strange, despite how much time had passed since we’d last seen each other, talking to him felt as natural as breathing. It was as if no time had passed at all. It was strange, but beautiful.

Cara and Tara watched in astonishment, occasionally glancing at each other in disbelief. I could see from their faces that they were shocked I was so talkative with someone, especially a guy. Usually, I raised a high wall around boys, trying to hide my shyness I would end up looking cold and distan, making any interaction awkward at best. But with Romer, it was different. The nervousness that I usually felt didn’t exist whith him.

At one point, Tara finally couldn’t take it anymore. "Okay, I have to ask," she said, leaning forward. "When did the two of you actually meet?."

Romer glanced at me and nodded like silently asking if I wanted to answer or he should go on. I cleared my throat and started “Well I was circa five years old, and we had just moved here to Silverwood with my family. Alpha Varek personally asked my father to come here after all that happened in our old pack, so we ended up living in the area near the Packhouse. At the time I was small even for my age, and was always scared. The day we moved here Romer was playing outside in the garden and when he saw us stepping out of the car he approached”

“Well I was a bit older and wasn't used to see new faces in our neighborhood, so I had to check” he said laughing. I smiled back and continued “This super curly guy comes over and starts staring at me. His eyes were fixed on mine and he was like frozen, I obviously got nervous and yelled at him something like “what are you looking at? AndHe said something totally unexpected"

"I've never seen such beautiful eyes” said Romer.