Immediately, Damon went to argue – to tell her no, absolutely not. You may be my mother, but you don't get to decide those things. He may still live in her house despite being twenty-six, but that was pretty commonplace in the pack. There was only so much space, only so much available housing, and because everyone was financially supported to some degree by the pack, it wasn't much of a burden to let your children stick around. Plus, werewolves bonded deeper than humans. Without good reason, leaving your closest pack mates – your family – was a hard thing to do. So it wasn't like she could use that as an excuse for meddling in Damon's life like this.

And unfortunately, despite Damon's age, his parents still very much had the legal authority to dissolve his courtships, should they have good reason to do so. It was one of the many fail-safes built into the rules that governed courting and heats and relationships in general.

Don't get Damon wrong. Parents couldn't just dissolve the courtship between their adult child and someone else willy-nilly. There was a process. They had to get approval from the pack leader and sign a bunch of testament forms stating the reason for dissolving the courtship.

But parents didn't have to show their children the testament. It would be given to the pack judge to decide if the courtship could be broken off. So even if Damon asked why, his mother could refuse to say a word and he wouldn't even know until the judge made a decision.

Still, he had to give it a shot.

"Why?" he said quietly, using all his energy to keep his voice from trembling.

"I told you, sweetie," she said, just as quietly. "If you mate with him, you could end up in a lot of trouble. Trouble that – " she pursed her lips. "Trouble that goes beyond pack matters. I don't want to see you caught in the middle."

"And let me guess," Damon said, tasting something sour in his mouth. "You can't elaborate on what 'trouble' means?"

Her silence more than answered that question.

Damon gritted his teeth and got up from the couch, heading for the stairs. "Fine. Dissolve it," he said as he passed her. She followed his path, bewildered, stopping at the base of the stairs as he went up.

"Wait – where are you going?"

Damon rolled his eyes without looking back. "Maybe this is news to you, mom, but you don't need a courting claim to date someone. I'm going to Jun's house. Text me with the court details."

He fled to his room to start packing, ignoring her spluttering behind him. He didn't know what could possibly be the consequence of mating with Jun that went 'beyond pack matters.' He could see there being repercussions from Venus pack because they would have to end Jun's engagement – but Damon was an omega, and if it came down to it, he didn't think he'd mind living in Venus pack, so there was no logical reason for Venus pack to reject him as Jun's future mate.

But there was nothing 'beyond' the pack, either Ganymede or Venus, that Damon could think of that would have a vested interest in Jun's relationships. Humans didn't care – they didn't know werewolves existed. There were the witches, of course, but Damon didn't think they'd care either. Witches had their own politics and problems, and they did closely ally with both Ganymede and Venus pack, but the fate of a future mating didn't seem to be in their interests.

Though Damon could imagine Jun's sad puppy eyes when Damon told him their courtship was over, it didn't matter. Damon could date whoever the hell he wanted. And besides, he and Jun still had the heat agreement – and heat agreements could only be formally ended by the involved parties or the pack doctor in the case that the arrangement became abusive or stressful for one of the partners. Thus, a courtship really didn't matter.

Damon went around his room in a frenzy, tossing clothes into a duffel bag along with personal care items. He found the vibrator where they'd left it among the bedding and stared at it in a crisis before eventually deciding to stuff it in the bag as well.

There wouldn't be time to wash the soiled bedding, and honestly Damon wasn't sure he cared if his parents figured out what he and Jun had been doing from the scent. But he still thought it was kind of gross to leave the parts that got liquids on them where they were. If Damon ever came back here, he wouldn't want to come back to crusty blankets, so he found the worst ones and rolled them into the bag too. The poor thing was stuffed to bursting, but Damon managed to zip it up and sling it over his shoulder.

When he went back downstairs, he found his mom and dad at the base of the stairs with their heads together. His dad looked confused, his mom pale and strained, and Damon hesitated.

His mother may have been pushy when it came to Malachi, and ambiguously disapproving of Jun, but she was still his mom and she was clearly stressed about this.

...Damon wondered if maybe Haley and Peter didn't have something to do with this, for the sake of their son, but he dismissed the notion. Awful friends they may be, but they had never been able to threaten or pressure Damon's mom into anything. He couldn't imagine that she would put them before him, regardless of any threats they used. So it had to be something else.

But no one would tell him what that something else was, so all he could do was remove himself from the situation and wait to see if that 'trouble' his mom had mentioned actually came around to bite him.

His parents looked up as he descended, but he blew past them without a word, leaving the house and hoping Jun wouldn't mind an extra house guest.

...Damon was his heat partner, so they would have probably been spending most of their nights together anyway once Jun's heat started back up.

When Damon got to Jun's apartment, he felt tetchy. Very tetchy. Annoyed was almost too soft a word for it, but he wasn't really in a rage either. Just confused and slightly pissed off, so when he knocked on Jun's door and found himself being hugged by a mass of sweaty, shirtless alpha, he lightly smacked Jun's arm. Not because he wanted Jun to get off – being smothered in those pecs was pretty great, admittedly – but out of a reflex, some part of him now comfortable enough in Jun's presence to openly be the brat he'd always been, even if his brattiness wasn't currently directed at Jun.

Jun kissed Damon's nose as he withdrew and pulled Damon eagerly into the house. He didn't say anything after seeing the duffel bag over Damon's shoulder, but he could guess that Damon was going to be staying over, and Damon could see the delight in his eyes.

Despite his giddiness, Jun wasn't oblivious, and he could clearly tell Damon wasn't in the greatest of moods, so he purposefully leaned down in the entryway to make Damon meet his eyes, question unspoken but still obvious.

Damon bit his lip, unable to withstand that penetrating gaze. But Damon had to admit that there was something comforting in knowing that he couldn't hide anything from Jun. He found it hard to express his emotions most of the time, so not having to speak up and tell him that he was feeling a certain way was a relieving break.

"I'm fine," Damon said, and he meant it. "But you're probably not going to like what I have to say."