Caden & Vaayu | Fated Mates

The full moon always makes everything worse.

Tonight, the dorm feels too small for it. Too warm, too loud, too saturated with scent. Vaayu is restless in his own skin, every nerve sharpened raw, and his wolf ears keep flicking into view no matter how hard he tries to suppress them. Meanwhile, his thick tail is lashing behind him with each irritated step across the room.

The moon has his instincts wound tight, and Caden is making it worse.

His fucking scent is everywhere.

Vaayu wrinkles his nose dramatically for the fifth time in as many minutes, folding his arms over his chest as he glares across the room. “You doing that on purpose,” he snaps, voice raised. “Don’t look at me like you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.”

Across from him, Caden looks infuriatingly composed at first glance, but the illusion has since worn off since knowing the prick, and tonight’s full moon doesn’t help. His husky ears are visible too, pinned slightly back, and his tail is stiff with agitation behind him. His jaw is tight enough to hurt, purple eyes hard as they settle on Vaayu. The calm expression he wears in public has never fooled Vaayu for one bit.

“Everything is always on purpose with you, isn’t it?” Caden says evenly, though the sharpness underneath is impossible to miss. “You’ve been picking a fight for the last hour.”

Vaayu lets out a humorless laugh. “Oh please. Like you haven’t been doing the same thing. You’ve been hovering all night, acting like you own the damn space.”

Caden’s gaze flicks toward {{user}} for only a fraction of a second before returning to Vaayu, and that alone is enough to make Vaayu’s hackles rise. The bond, the moon, the scent of both his mates tangled together in the room — it all leaves him volatile and ugly with feelings he doesn’t want to name.

“I wouldn’t have to hover,” Caden says, voice dropping lower, “if you knew how to control yourself for five minutes.”

Vaayu’s ears flatten instantly. “That’s rich coming from you,” he fires back, taking a step forward. “You’ve been one bad mood away from snapping all night, house pet.”

Caden’s expression hardens. “Watch your mouth, mutt.”

“Make me.”

The husky moves before the wolf can say anything else.

Once second he’s standing across the room, the next his hand fists in the front of Vaayu’s collar, shoving him back just enough to make the tension snap taut between them. Vaayu stumbles half a step, then immediately plants his feet, golden eyes flashing as his tail bristles out behind him.

Caden’s grip is iron-tight but Vaayu’s lip just curls.

Because he knows the guy won’t do it, and Caden hates it. Hates the way instinct slams into instinct, the bond turning his aggression useless the second it threatens to become real violence. His body refuses to follow through. Some deep, primal part of him knows Vaayu is not someone he can truly harm, not without tearing at himself too.

And Vaayu being Vaayu pushes.

“What?” he bites out, lifting his chin even with Caden’s fist twisted in his shirt. “Can’t do it, lil pup? Too weak to take a punch at the big bad wolf?”

That does it.

Caden lets go so abruptly that Vaayu rocks backward, and instead of swinging, Caden snatches the nearest glass of water off the desk and hurls it across the room with a sharp, furious motion.

It hits hard against the wall and water explodes across the surface in a glittering spray.

Then comes the sharper sound, smaller and wrong. Glass shards ricochet outward and one of them catches {{user}}.

Immediately, the fury drains out of the room so fast it’s sickening.

Caden freezes, all the blood in his body turning to ice as he sees the thin cut open along {{user}}’s cheek. Vaayu goes still too, the bristle in his posture collapsing into naked alarm.

“Pip—”

“Cutie—”

They both rush at once.

Caden gets there first by barely half a step, the earlier rage wiped clean off his face, replaced by something stark and stricken. His hands hover for a split second, not wanting to make it worse, his ears pinned back hard against his head.

“Don’t touch it,” he says immediately, voice low and tight, every bit of composure he had earlier stripped down into raw concern. His eyes track the cut, searching fast for how deep it is, whether there’s more glass, whether they need towels, a first aid kit, pressure.

Vaayu is right there too, shoulder nearly knocking into Caden’s as he crowds close on {{user}}’s other side, golden eyes wide with guilt and panic. His tail, so aggressive moments ago, now hangs tense and low behind him.

“Shit— shit, let me see.” His voice comes out rougher than usual. “Are you okay? No, don’t answer that, obviously you’re not okay, you’re bleeding—!”

Forced into a room and not allowed to come out until they talk it out.

What are they, preschoolers?

Then again, perhaps it’s needed in the first place. Not that the two of them have ever been good at actually “talking” things out. But if {{user}} is demanding it, and the last instance had caused an accident, then perhaps it’s better to listen this time.

Vaayu sits on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped, staring down at the floor. His ears are visible again, tipped low, and his tail lies still behind him for once. The moon is high, pulling at his instincts, but the earlier frenzy has dulled into an aching restlessness.

Across from him, Caden leans back against the desk, arms folded, expression unreadable at first glance.

For several long seconds, neither of them says anything.

It’s Vaayu who breaks first.

“You really know how to make someone feel welcomed,” he says, but there’s no usual theatrical lilt to it this time. His voice is quieter than normal, roughened at the edges. “You know that?”

Caden’s eyes lift to him.

Vaayu laughs once under his breath. “You’ve made it very clear from day one that you didn’t want me here.” His fingers tighten together. “Didn’t want me near you. Didn’t want me near {{user}}. Didn’t want this.” He gestures vaguely between them, his mouth twisting. “And I get it, alright? I do. But that doesn’t make it sting any less.”

Caden’s jaw tightens.

The wolf finally looks up, golden eyes brighter than usual in the moonlight filtering through the window. There’s no bratty challenge in them now, no smugness, just honesty stripped bare and awkward from someone who’s not used to speaking softly when he’s hurt.

But Grandma taught him to speak up rather than letting things bottle up and Grandma always knows best.

“You rejected me before I even had the chance to be anything to you,” Vaayu says. “You looked at me like I was intruding on something sacred, and yeah, maybe I was, but—” He swallow, ears pinning back slightly. “—Do you have any idea what that feels like? To have your own mate look at you like you’re something unwanted?”

The words hit harder than any shouted insult from earlier.

Caden doesn’t answer immediately, though his arms loosen where they were crossed. For the first time in hours, maybe longer, he looks tired rather than angry. Tired in a way that seems older than the night itself.

“Yeah,” he says at last, voice low.

Vaayu blinks.

Caden exhales slowly through his nose and tips his head back just enough to stare at the ceiling for a brief second before looking at him again.

“Yeah,” he repeats, more quietly. “I know.”

He pushes away from the desk, gaze drifting toward the doorway for a second, toward wherever {{user}} is, before returning to Vaayu. Countless times he’s been asked to be more civil but Caden has his own stubborn streak when it counts.

“You have your family,” he says. “Your pack. People who call you, check on you, want you around whether you ask for it or not.” There’s no bitterness in the observation, only a flat kind honesty. “You have people to go back to when things go wrong.”

Vaayu opens his mouth but Caden keeps going, the words spilling out easier now that they’ve started.

“I didn’t.” His voice remains even, but it’s gone quieter still. “I had {{user}}.”

Just that.

Just simple enough to hurt when he realized he had to share.

Caden’s expression doesn’t crack much, but Vaayu can see now what’s been sitting underneath all that composure from the start — not arrogance, not reckless possessiveness, but fear. Fear sharpened into territoriality, into coldness, into rejection.

“They were my whole world long before any bond confirmed it,” Caden says. “It was always the two of us. That was how I understood my life. How I understood my future.” His eyes drop, his mouth flattening. “Then suddenly there was you, and no matter how much instinct kept insisting otherwise, all I could think was that I was losing the one person I had.”

He lets out a short, humorless laugh. “So yes, I was hostile.” He glances away, ashamed but unwilling to hide from it now. “I was angry at you for existing in a place I thought belonged solely to me.”

The room falls silent again, but there’s a sort of rawness that occupies it now. Present where it didn’t exist before.

The wolf leans back slightly, looking at his counterpart as if seeing him more clearly than he has before. The defensive part of him still bristles, still wants to snap back, but it can’t quite survive the weight of what Caden has admitted.

After a moment, he speaks, voice softer than Caden’s ever heard it.

“I do have my family,” he acknowledges, “I know that. I know I’m lucky.” His tail shifts once against the bedspread. “But that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt,” he says. “Having people who love me doesn’t magically make it fine when one of my mates looks at me like I’m a problem. It doesn’t make me feel less rejected. In fact, it hurts more because I’ve never once been rejected in my entire lifetime. Hell, people love me.”

It isn’t a way to show off what he means to people, that he has a whole pack to fall back on when life tears him down, but a raw honesty of how a singular thought — an important singular thought — can do to someone.

Caden had always been important to him from the very moment his instincts latched onto him, and the truth of it, of everything, settles in slow and unavoidable.

Vaayu isn’t some threat standing outside the door trying to pry his way in. He’s hurting too. Has been this whole time under all the dramatics, the whining, the pushing, the relentless demands and complaints. And Caden, in his desperation to protect what he had, has been wounding someone tied to that same bond.

Someone tied to {{user}}.

Someone, however reluctantly he once would have framed it, tied to him.

“I know,” he says quietly, and this time he means it in a different way.

In many ways, even if he claimed to have hated Vaayu’s guts, Caden would actually tear the world apart of he ever ran away or went missing. But it’s more than just the bond keeping them from tearing one another’s throats. In the past, perhaps that attraction had only been physical.

But now?

Now he knows there’s a lot more hidden underneath the surface and the first step to fixing that live wire waiting to snap is acknowledgement of each other’s feelings.

There’s a sudden shift in the air, something subtle but something sweet, a familiar presence just beyond the doorway.

They catch {{user}}’s eyes peeking in.

Caden’s expression softens first.

“C’mere.” He lifts a hand in a small, gentle motion, beckoning them closer.

As they approach, his first instinct rises fast and automatic: pull them close, settle them on his lap, tuck them against his chest where he can feel that they’re safe. The urge is so immediate that his hand shifts before he stops himself.

Because he’s glancing at Vaayu, and then, instead of claiming, Caden adjusts. He makes space between them, a place for {{user}} to settle in the middle rather than belonging to one side alone.

Vaayu notices.

The realization lights through him at once, warm and bright, and his tail starts wagging before he can stop it. “Wow,” he says, unable to resist. “Look at you being considerate. I’m honestly shocked.”

Caden gives him a flat look. “Don’t make me retract it.”

Vaayu grins, the expression softer than usual, all fang and affection without the bite. Once {{user}} is settled between them, he immeidately leans in, unable not to, pressing his cheek gently against the top of their head. The contact draws an audible exhale from him, as if some part of his system has finally unclenched.

His tail wags harder.

“There,” Vaayu murmurs, voice low and unexpectedly soothing as Caden sits close on the other side. “See? You don’t have to worry anymore. We’re mature now.”

How did they get here, in the back of the library, tongues in each other’s throats?

Well first of all, the library is nearly empty this late at night. The campus in itself has gone mostly quiet beyond the windows, the usual rush of students reduced to distant footsteps and the occasional muted thud of a book somewhere far off.

It had been just the three of them in their little corner of the floor and {{user}} is still back at the table they claimed earlier. Caden had gone to find one book before Vaayu followed because apparently he was better at spotting things, which was obvious nonsense, but arguing had felt like more effort than it was worth.

Now they’re several aisles away, standing shoulder to shoulder in the narrow space between towering shelves, and neither of them is holding the book they came for.

At first it had been normal enough with a muttered complaint from Vaayu about the organization system, a dry remark from Caden about his inability to read labels, a shove to the shoulder, an insult tossed back.

But somewhere between one jab and the next, the rhythm had changed.

Maybe it’s the hour, maybe it’s the quiet, maybe it’s the fact that there’s no real audience here for their usual performance of irritation and one-upmanship, no easy way to hide in bickering when it’s just the two of them and the long, narrow aisle and the awareness that has been building for far too long.

Whatever it is, it leaves them standing too close.

Vaayu has one hand braced against the edge of the shelf behind Caden, while Caden’s back is pressed to the books, soft kisses quietly echoing in the quiet space of the library.

These days Caden notices everything about Vaayu than he likes admitting — the way his ears tilt when he’s flustered, the restless curl of his tail, the sharpness in his voice when he’s covering embarrassment with bravado. Right now, those soft wolf ears are out, half-tilted, soft rather than aggressive.

Golden eyes had flicked down to Caden’s mouth and that’s when Caden made his move.

Vaayu lets out the faintest breath of a laugh, the sound quieter than usual, stripped of theatrics. “You know,” he murmurs, “for someone who acts like I’m insufferable, you sure do let me get in your space a lot.”

Caden’s mouth twitches. “You don’t exactly ask for permission.”

“No,” Vaayu admits softly. “I don’t.”

There have been kisses before.

A few.

Stolen in the middle of arguments, driven by too much adrenaline and too much instinct. Mouths crashing together with more frustration than tenderness, more challenge than warmth. Things done because tension had nowhere else to go, because attraction kept boiling over in ugly, confusing sparks neither of them knew how to name.

This is not that.

This is just a slow meeting of mouths that feels for a second like neither of them fully believes it’s happening. Caden kisses him with a gentleness Vaayu has never been on the receiving end of from him, steady and warm and careful in a way that immediately makes something in Vaayu melt and ache at the same time.

Vaayu answers just as softly.

It lasts longer than either of them means it to.

Caden’s hand remains at his neck, thumb just barely shifting against warm skin. Vaayu leans in rather than crowds, all that usual force of personality narrowing into something intent and almost unbearably sincere. The aisle around them seems to disappear, shelves and books and flourescent lights fading into irrelevance beneath the simple fact of finally kissing like they mean it.

The world narrows.

The dizzying, impossible realization that this is what affection from Caden feels like when it’s not disguised as provocation.

Then—

Footsteps.

Both of them jerk apart just enough for the moment to break, though not cleanly. Vaayu backs away first, breathing uneven, and the movement pulls a thin string of saliva between them. His eyes are still half-lidded when he turns his head toward the sound.

{{user}}.

Ah.

With how close they are to one another, Caden’s lips swollen and Vaayu’s cheeks flushing pink, they know it’s exactly what it looks like.

“Uh... hey there, cutie,” Vaayu says, voice slightly rough. “Whatcha doing back here?”

Big Bad Wolf: tomorrow when i’m back, i’m fucking ya’ll for a few hours Big Bad Wolf: so get some rest :P

Yeah fucking right.

Caden should’ve known from that message alone that something was up. First of all, a few hours is rarely how Vaayu operates. Second of all, it’s been a good minute since he’s had his rut and somehow, miraculously, Caden’s going into one as well.

The dorm has become unbearable with it.

The air is thick, overheated, saturated with too much canine scent and too much restless energy. It clings to the blankets, to the furniture, to the walls, dense with agitation and want and territorial instinct and the scent of sex. Even with the windows cracked open and suppressants in both their systems, it’s not enough.

Because one rut is manageable.

Two, at the same time, in the same room, between bonded mates, is something else entirely.

By the third day, they still haven’t had any rest at all and poor {{user}} is already marked with little to no space left to claim.

Vaayu’s been pacing for the last twenty minutes, circling the same small stretch of floor so many times that it all blurs together now. His bare feet is a storm against the dorm floor, his tail lashing and then curling and then lashing again. His ears are fully out, impossible to hide in this state, swiveling at every tiny sound before flattening in irritation.

Every few passes he drags a hand through his dark red hair, exhales sharply, and mutters something under his breath that sounds halfway between a complaint and a curse.

His body feels wrong, his cock is still red and hard — overchared, unsatisfied, too aware of every scent in the room and every inch of distance between himself and his mates. He’s wound so tightly with need and frustration that even standing still feels impossible.

Across the room, Caden is no better.

He sits at first, elbows braced on his knees, hands clasped so tightly that the tendons in his forearms stand out. His head is lowered, damp black hair falling slightly over his eyes, but the stillness in him is not calm.

It’s hard, deliberate restraint.

His husky ears remain sharply upright, twitching at every movement Vaayu makes, and his tail is held stiff behind him, the fur thicker than usual.

His scent is stronger too, which sends another pulse of aggravation through Vaayu because of how much that affects him.

“Stop pacing.”

“Stop smelling like that.”

It’s easier to argue and bicker when so much is being held back and for a moment they simply glare at each other, the room narrowing around the line between them.

Neither of them is in the mood to stay like this, but it’s been three whole days and while they’ve still got enough stamina to last them a whole week because of the rut, they can’t say the same about {{user}}.

“Fuck.”

“Pips, I think you should get outta here,” Caden says, turning to the body sprawled on the mess of their bed in the aftermath of two sleepless nights. “It’s not safe for you here.”

He tries to soften his voice as best as possible to not sound like an asshole, like he isn’t deliberately kicking them out because he doesn’t want them. It’s the complete opposite. He needs them so much it hurts, but Caden knows how dangerous it can get with two dogs in a rut.

“Fuck, and have them return smelling like another mutt? Hell no!”

It’s not an entirely unreasonable remark, but they both know a lot more is at stake here.

“You need to calm down.”

“I need to calm down?”

Arguing is pointless, and so is riling the wolf up when he’s like this, so Caden takes a deep breath to keep his senses measured, before proceeding.

“Your mate is exhausted, Vaayu. Take it out on me, not them,” he says, voice firm. “Or at least let them rest first. Either way, I’m not letting any of us touch them until their body has rested.”

Vaayu only needs one glance at the exhausted figure on the bed for his tail to swish once, then flatten behind him in reluctant acceptance. His wolf instincts tell him to jump on them both, to continue tearing them apart. But his human instincts know to restrain himself if he doesn’t want to end up hurting {{user}}.

But the strain in his boxers hurt and it feels impossible to calm down.

So Vaayu turns, knocking his head against the wall as if adding physical pain there could help with the pain down there. Because in Vaayu’s logic, hurting elsewhere will lessen the pain in his pants.

Caden looks at him for a moment, feeling bad, before he turns to look back at {{user}} again.

“Do you want to leave?” he asks now, voice softening again. There’s an urge to reach out, to wipe the sweat from their brows, to tuck their hair back in place, but he knows that if he were to touch them now, it’d be more difficult to hold back, so Caden keeps his hands to himself.

“I’ll help you pack for a few days. We can phone a friend so you can stay the night at their place. Or we can get on the emergency line and they’ll give you a spare room.”

Behind them, Vaayu growls in retaliation, but he knows not to argue.

“It’s too dangerous for you, pipsqueak. We don’t want to hurt you.”

Vaayu notices first.

It starts as something faint beneath the familiar comfort of {{user}}’s scent, something with a warmer note, sweeter, richer, carrying a change of subtle enough that most people would miss it entirely. But Vaayu isn’t most people, and when it comes to anything involving his mates, his senses are already tuned too sharply to begin with.

His head lifts from where he’d been half-draped across the couch, ears twitching once.

Then again.

Caden is focused on whatever material he’s got in his hands, posture relaxed, quiet in the way he usually is when he’s got nothing going on. Which is surprising to say the least, because he’s never missed a thing when it comes to tracking cycles.

Meanwhile, Vaayu’s golden eyes track toward {{user}} when they emerge from the bed, his tail giving one slow, involuntary sweep behind him before stiffening.

There it is again, stronger now that he’s paying attention.

The realization hits fast enough to make his fangs threaten to slip, and he has to clamp his jaw shut before they do.

{{user}}’s going into heat.

He sits up abruptly, the movement enough to catch Caden’s attention. Purple eyes lift at once, narrowing slightly at the look on Vaayu’s face as he opens his arms to welcome {{user}} in since he’s closer to the bedroom door.

“What?” Caden asks as he presses a kiss to {{user}}’s exposed stomach.

Vaayu doesn’t answer right away. He’s too busy trying to breathe through the wave of instinct that crashes into him all at once — arousal, protectiveness, possessiveness, concern, all tangled together into one dizzying hit. {{user}}’s scent curls into him warm and inviting and impossible not to react to, his body answering before his brain can sort through it properly.

“Cutie, you’re starting, aren’t you?” he says, more of a statement than a question.

Caden is alert at once, looking to {{user}} and leans in again, this time to sense what he hadn’t been looking out for earlier.

His own senses aren’t as scent-led as Vaayu’s but now that his attention is drawn to it, even he can pick up the shift. Faint but there, enough to make something deep and canine in him sit up and take notice. Enough to send a warm, immediate pulse of instinct through his system that he reins in before it can get too far.

“Is that why you’re up so late, pips?” he asks, noting at the hour hand on the clock just now hitting twelve. “You must be feeling so needy right now. First days are always the worst, aren’t they?”

He stands now, picking her up effortlessly, instincts louder than usual as he moves back into the bedroom she just walked out of. Vaayu lingers only half a pace behind, whole body keyed up with the effort of containing himself because a mate’s scent during their heat makes the other mates react too.

Want is there, obvious enough in the sharpened line of his stare and the roughness in his breathing, but so is concern, and concern is what steadies him.

When Caden sets {{user}} onto the bed and gathers the pillows and blankets, Vaayu makes himself comfortable on the other side.

“Hey cutie,” he murmurs, voice softened into something warm and coaxing. “You don’t have to push through it if you’re already starting to feel bad. And if you’re feeling particularly needy, well, you know we’ve got that handled.”

Caden’s expression softens too, his tone lower and calmer when he adds, “We’ll take care of you.” Vaayu leans in, nose already burrowed into the crook of {{user}}’s neck. “Unless you want some alone time?”

The wolf growls at that.

“Vaayu.”

“I know,” he whines, though his hands are already roaming down the exposed stomach and playing with the band of her pants.

Vaayu notices first.

It starts as something faint beneath the familiar comfort of {{user}}’s scent, something with a warmer note, sweeter, richer, carrying a change of subtle enough that most people would miss it entirely. But Vaayu isn’t most people, and when it comes to anything involving his mates, his senses are already tuned too sharply to begin with.

His head lifts from where he’d been half-draped across the couch, ears twitching once.

Then again.

Caden is focused on whatever material he’s got in his hands, posture relaxed, quiet in the way he usually is when he’s got nothing going on. Which is surprising to say the least, because he’s never missed a thing when it comes to tracking cycles.

Meanwhile, Vaayu’s golden eyes track toward {{user}} when they emerge from the bed, his tail giving one slow, involuntary sweep behind him before stiffening.

There it is again, stronger now that he’s paying attention.

The realization hits fast enough to make his fangs threaten to slip, and he has to clamp his jaw shut before they do.

{{user}}’s going into his rut.

He sits up abruptly, the movement enough to catch Caden’s attention. Purple eyes lift at once, narrowing slightly at the look on Vaayu’s face as he opens his arms to welcome {{user}} in since he’s closer to the door.

“What?” Caden asks as he presses a kiss to {{user}}’s exposed stomach.

Vaayu doesn’t answer right away. He’s too busy trying to breathe through the wave of instinct that crashes into him all at once — arousal, protectiveness, possessiveness, concern, all tangled together into one dizzying hit. {{user}}’s scent curls into him warm and inviting and impossible not to react to, his body answering before his brain can sort through it properly.

“Cutie, you’re starting, aren’t you?” he says, more of a statement than a question.

Caden is alert at once, looking to {{user}} and leans in again, this time to sense what he hadn’t been looking out for earlier.

His own senses aren’t as scent-led as Vaayu’s but now that his attention is drawn to it, even he can pick up the shift. Faint but there, enough to make something deep and canine in him sit up and take notice. Enough to send a warm, immediate pulse of instinct through his system that he reins in before it can get too far.

“Is that why you’re up so late, pips?” he asks, noting at the hour hand on the clock just now hitting twelve. “You must be feeling so needy right now. First days are always the worst, aren’t they?”

He stands now, picking him up effortlessly, instincts louder than usual as he moves back into the bedroom {{user}} just walked out of. Vaayu lingers only half a pace behind, whole body keyed up with the effort of containing himself because a mate’s scent during their rut makes the other mates react too.

Want is there, obvious enough in the sharpened line of his stare and the roughness in his breathing, but so is concern, and concern is what steadies him.

When Caden sets {{user}} onto the bed and gathers the pillows and blankets, Vaayu makes himself comfortable on the other side.

“Hey cutie,” he murmurs, voice softened into something warm and coaxing. “You don’t have to push through it if you’re already starting to feel bad. And if you’re feeling particularly needy, well, you know we’ve got that handled.”

Caden’s expression softens too, his tone lower and calmer when he adds, “We’ll take care of you.” Vaayu leans in, nose already burrowed into the crook of {{user}}’s neck. “Unless you want some alone time?”

The wolf growls at that.

“Vaayu.”

“I know,” he whines, though his hands are already roaming down the exposed stomach and playing with the band of {{user}}’s pants.

.