Neil hugged his arms around Lucy’s soft thumb as the massive digit stroked the side of his head in a calming rhythm that helped definitively remind him that there was no way to hide anything from this girl.

            “It’s… really not anything big,” he said, swallowing hard enough that Lucy could hear.  “I, uh… I moved out.”

            The Alpha nodded once, processing the news.  Neil’s parents and sister, all Alphas, although they’d always ensured their only Beta family member had clothes on his back and plenty of food, had never exactly treated him with the warmth Lucy thought he deserved, as his class was viewed as an unspoken blight on their family tree.

            Now that he was old enough to attend college, she’d been secretly wishing he would break free at last.  Such news, frankly, made her happier than anything she’d heard in the past month, but she didn’t want to let it show since the transition had apparently taken some kind of toll on him.  Why had he been affected so?  Wasn’t this a good thing?

            “Why now?  It’s the middle of the week.  Why didn’t you wait until a Saturday?” she asked cautiously.

            “Oh, you know,” he said with a cavalier shrug.  “Just figured it was time, you know?”

            “Where are you moving?”

            “I’ll figure that out later.  You know they have plenty of apartment openings.  Right now I’m just in one of those shelters they have for runaways for a few days,” he explained.  “It’s real comfortable.  The bed’s way better than the one I had.”

            “You mean you just moved out in the middle of the week without having a new place to go?” the Alpha pressed, her volume rising slightly.  Her thumb quickened its pace stroking along Neil’s face and shoulder.  “W-”

            “Just trying to be spontaneous, you know?  That’s what you always tell me,” he laughed, forcing more feigned joy into his voice, as he clearly sensed he’d already been caught in the lie.  He gave the girl’s thumb another reassuring pat, but it obviously wasn’t going to help matters now.

            “You didn’t choose to leave, did you?” Lucy uttered after a cold silence, the words coming out half-choked from the back of her throat.  “Did you?”

            “I… L-Luce…”

            The Alpha’s opposite hand stopped twirling around her braid, her wrist trembling, as she raised it to chin level and balled it into a fist.  Out of instinct she chewed the corner of her knuckle to quell the rapidly mounting rage.

            “Those motherfu-”

            “Hey, it’s not a big deal, really!” he blurted, leaping in over her growled consonants, as he ham-handedly injected more false chuckling into his meager defense.  He rocked from side to side while still clinging to Lucy’s finger, hoping to pull her attention fully back to him, though he knew it was a losing battle.  “I’m not a kid anymore.  It’s… it’s really okay.  I can be on my own now.”

            “That’s how you got here so fast, isn’t it?” the Alpha questioned gravely, keeping her fist pressed to her quivering chin.  “You didn’t come from home because they threw you out.”

            Neil stared up into the moonlike eyes of the caring young woman, which seemed oddly capable of focus on him in this moment even though they were unable to detect him.

            “It was bound to happen eventually.  I… know you wouldn’t say it, but I know you wanted me to leave as soon as I turned eighteen last year,” he said.  “See, it’s a good thing!”

            At last Lucy began to calm down, the shivering ceasing in her wrists.  Maybe he was right.  She exhaled heavily and rolled her thumb up to the top of Neil’s head, where she gently ruffled his hair, combing it over and over to the side.  No matter how awful those people were, they would be out of his life now.

            “Well, for starters,” she said.  “You’re not staying in some shelter that’s probably already filled with a bunch of kids where it’d be too loud to get any sleep.”

            “I was gonna go check out the apartments right after this, I swear,” he promised.  “I heard the process is really easy for Betas getting their first start.  Like, you pretty much just choose the one you want and they toss you the keys, nothing else.  Easy as pie.”

            “Nonsense.  You still need help moving your stuff in,” Lucy objected snappily.  “Until then, you’re coming home with me.  You know all I’d have to do is text my mom now and you’d have a bed set up before we even got back.”

            Neil laughed, genuinely for the first time in several minutes, and allowed himself to enjoy the soothing sensation of Lucy’s finger playing with his shaggy hair.  He did, indeed, know this to be true.

            “In fact,” she said with a sly smile.  “Why don’t we skip out on the coffee for now and just go pick up your stuff and take it back to my house?  I’ve got my big bag today, so we’ll get it all in one trip, no problem.”  She nudged a leather satchel hanging from one arm of her chair.  It was easily large enough to carry a full set of Beta furniture.

            “What if I was really looking forward to that coffee?” Neil wheedled playfully, lightly punching Lucy’s finger as it lowered itself back into his lap for an easier embrace.

            “My dad will probably brew some tonight.  And you know he makes it strong.  I think you’ll be set,” she smarmed.  “You’ll be up all night from it, and then we can finally play that trivia game we keep saying we’re going to do.”

            “I thought the point of staying at your house was to get some sleep?” he teased.

            “Well, obviously, we’re just having a slumber party then, and nobody’s getting any sleep.”

            “Sounds like a ball,” Neil confirmed with another snicker.

            “So let’s get moving, huh?” Lucy said.  Bracing her other hand against the edge of the table, she smoothly rose to her feet without jostling her passenger.  “Which shelter are you staying at?  You’ll have to lug most of your stuff out to the front door yourself, but I’ll get it for the rest of the walk home.  Promise.”

            “Seriously, Luce, the stuff isn’t an issue at all.  We can just go straight to your-”

            “You’re staaaaalling,” she sang softly with another accusing smile.  “C’mon.  Spit it out.  Where’s your stuff?”

            “I… well, it’s kind of funny, actually!  You’re gonna think I’m crazy, probably,” he said with more inflated enthusiasm, and instantly Lucy was put back on high alert.  Her whole body stiffened and she bit her lip in the corner, training all focus on the sensation of Neil’s near-feather weight in her palm.  Even as he remained seated, she could feel his knees wobbling gently against her palm.

            “What?” she drawled, wanting to get past whatever defensive non-truth was coming as soon as possible so she could get to work on piecing the real answer together.

            “I figured I’m moving out, so new start, right?  And that apartment probably at least has a couch or something.  So still going with that spontaneous thing, I kind of…” he continued, bouncing carefully between each buoyant syllable.  Neil released his grip on Lucy’s thumb and clasped his hands to his knees, trying to keep them from shaking, and knowing that the damage was probably already long-done, he made the feeble attempt anyway.  “…I kind of threw away all my stuff…”

            The Beta wasn’t the least bit surprised to find that this final lie didn’t even warrant a probing response from his highly perceptive carrier; she was clearly onto him before the first word was out of his mouth.

            Lucy’s face became stone at this final revelation, and an eerie calm seemed to pass through her, as though she’d skipped over the trembling this time and gone straight into rampage mode.  Her free hand fished in her satchel for a moment before retrieving the specialized headband Neil had crafted for her five years ago in his high school shop class, and soon the rounded implement was hugging into her hair.

            Abruptly the Beta found the hand he occupied rising higher on Lucy’s face and nearer to her ear, where a small chair was welded to the side of the accessory for him to sit in.  Knowing there would be no arguing with her at this point, Neil reluctantly scrambled out of the girl’s palm and into the seat.  He strapped himself in and nudged his shoe against her ear lobe to let her know he was secure: their normal signal.

            With her precious living cargo safely in place next to her ear, Lucy took off striding down the pathway, swerving skillfully around passerby who nearly bumped into her.  Talented as she was at using her ears to navigate, the Alpha often relied on the extra help from her friend’s pair of eyes, and never more than now as she practically broke into a jog on the rage-fueled journey to Neil’s old house.