The story of mates was a tale as old as time, passed down from generation to generation, from father to son, from Alpha to Beta. Every pup grew up listening to this cherished story, picturing themselves in the arms of their fated one. Evan was no different.

Since he was a little child, his biggest dream had been to meet his mate. He always imagined her as a princess—blond, with long curls and bright blue eyes. Perhaps it was his mum's influence, as she read him fairy tales every night before bedtime, stories of princesses who needed saving. Naturally, little Evan imagined himself as the hero.

But by the time he was eleven, Evan realized that no grand hero story was in the cards for him. That year marked his first shift, an experience he remembered as excruciating. Bones twisted and reshaped themselves, fur sprouted seemingly from nowhere, and he stumbled through the awkwardness of using four legs instead of two. Indeed, painful but not as painful as the first look through his mate's eyes. 

He saw a soccer ball and lots of mud. More importantly, he saw a field full of boys—and only boys. In his young mind, that could only mean one thing: his mate was a boy. Poor Evan cried himself to sleep that night.

"Honestly, it’s no big deal," Angie, his best friend at the time, used to say whenever he brought it up. But for Evan, it was nothing short of a disaster. He couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of kissing a boy. To be fair, at that age, he couldn’t really imagine kissing a girl either, but at least that was something he was used to hearing about or seeing on the street.

In their community, there didn’t seem to be any homosexual couples—or at least, none that Evan was aware of back then.

"My mate can't be some stupid boy!" he argued every time she said that to him. He was a stubborn pup, always trying to prove he was right. 

"If he’s a stupid boy, at least you two will get along pretty well." Angie never took him seriously, and that only made Evan more furious about the whole mate thing.

She, even at just eleven years old, couldn’t understand why her friend was making such a big deal about having a male mate. If it were up to her, she’d choose a girl as her mate any day. Girls were smarter and more mature. They didn’t pick stupid fights or dare each other to eat their boogers like the boys in her class always seemed to do.

"Mate or not, I will never let some filthy boy mark me! You hear me? Never!" Evan shrieked. He was always a tad bit loud, but since the two of them were outside, no one paid him any attention.

The girl with pigtails just rolled her eyes thinking again about how stupid boys were. 

The funniest part of it all? Evan couldn’t have been more wrong. Fate didn’t care about gender, and sooner or later, Evan would learn to stop caring about it, too.