The werewolf world was based on conventional. Sometimes there was a deviation that made a difference for them, but it happened rarely. Werewolves, or rather wolves, preferred to rely on their sense of smell. Maybe that's why they never saw something right under their noses.
Ryan was one of the outliers of the werewolf world.
People liked to tell him there was nothing indicating that your next vision was close. Ryan didn't agree with it at all. Nothing was far from the feeling your head was going to explode. His doctor (human doctor, to be specific) once told him that he was probably having migraines. He called bullshit on that. Every time the vision was coming, there was this stabbing pain in his temples that was slowly moving to his head, and suddenly he wasn't sure where it was coming from anymore.
Sometimes it took a few hours, sometimes a few days. In the longer case, it also affected the length of his next vision. Instead of thirty seconds, he could watch a whole minute. The first time it happened, he thought it was a fluke, but then it happened again and again.
Once when he was eleven, the second time when he was fourteen, and the last time last week.
He had a total of seven visions so far. Through his mate's eyes, he saw coffee, books, clouds, and similar little things. But never their face. Once, when he was fourteen, he saw something that he considered ground-breaking at the time. A signature in the corner of a picture his mate was just painting. It looked like an upside-down capital E connected with other letters that Ryan couldn't quickly make out at that moment. But he was still excited about it. It meant he was one step closer to meeting his soul mate.
His last vision only confirmed it, and Ryan was much closer than he thought.
Not that his mate looked in the mirror, he wasn't so lucky. But he saw something more. A bus station. A familiar bus station since he was used to getting off the bus at the same spot since he was a kid. His mate was in a place that meant a lot to Ryan.
The first thing he did with this realization was call his cousin, Michael, to inform him he was coming. He couldn't let them slip through his fingers, and Michael was more than happy to help.
With every other vision, Ryan started to like this person even more. They were his other half, so naturally, he was excited to meet them. He sometimes wished they would look in the mirror or go shopping and visit the changing room, or even randomly look in the puddle on the road. Anything, just so he could see their face.
They didn't do that, though. During his first vision, he was seeing books and clouds. They were reading outside, but then they looked at the sky, seeing it was going to rain soon, and closed the book. So that was his first hint. His mate liked to read and probably liked to be outside too. Well, which wolf didn't, right?
One of the qualities Ryan liked about himself was his ability to remember details. That's exactly why he managed to remember the names of the characters from the book he saw for less than thirty seconds. Of course, the next day he begged his parents to buy it for him. Thanks to this, he found out that his mate had good taste. Ryan immediately fell in love not only with the plot, but also with the whole supernatural world, and for weeks he could not put this book and other parts of the series out of his hands.
The second thing he learned to know about them was the fact they drank black coffee. No milk, just coffee, and sugar. A lot of sugar. Their mug wasn't the only one on the table, so he figured they liked to go on coffee with their friends. Friends that were possibly from North Hallson, too. So even if he didn't figure out their identity straight away, there was still a chance that he was going to see someone he'd recognize through their eyes.
At least, that was the plan.
His parents had no objections when he decided to move to North Hallson for a while. At first, he only wanted to visit but quickly changed his mind. Seeing his cousin mateless, even when he was old enough, made him do something spontaneous. So, he switched schools. He made a deal with his parents that he was going to stay in North Hallson for a year, and if he didn't find his mate, he would just move back.
Good thing he was patient and optimistic.
On the one hand, he knew that he would miss his friends and getting used to a new school was not the easiest, but the thought of his mate assured him that it would be worth it. Ryan had this romantic image in his mind from all those stories he heard about mates, and he knew he wanted it, too. He wanted something real, something meaningful. That kind of love that consumes you.
He knew how it worked in theory – mates supporting each other, trying to see each other's point of view even without visions, and giving attention to their loved ones. But he wanted to be able to feel it, too. It gave him so high expectations that he couldn't look at any human as if they could be a possible love object for him. He wanted them.
So here he was. North Hallson. The possible home of his mate, so also the home to his heart. All he had to do was find the right key to the right door, behind which endless love awaited him.