Chapter Text
The night air is warm and alive with the exhaust of a thousand cars, and the vibrations of a hundred thousand voices, and the dancing of ten million particles beneath the limpid glare of the streetlights.
Broken beer bottles crunch beneath his feet beside crumpled wrappers and cigarette butts. Some of them are still smoking. Humanity flees and leaves its fresh detritus behind it like an oil spill.
It is ten thirty at night and it is the city and Jisung fucking hates it all. Stupid humans. Living in trash like complacent little slugs, squandering their time on stupidity. Fucking oneskins.
He pulls his hood low over his ears, fixes his sunglasses, bends over to pick up one of the butts. Takes out a lighter and lights up, inhaling deeply.
“Nice ass!” someone yells at him, some dumb teenage kid sitting on a door stoop. “How much for a spin?”
Jisung stomps out the cigarette. “More than you can afford.” The kid laughs, then says something obscene.
He forces himself to move on.
He likes the weight of his knife in its thigh holster and the press of his claws inside his leather gloves. If the kid didn’t have a phone on him to call for help with, Jisung would’ve lured him into a quiet side street and skinned him alive for that comment.
Meh. Who is he kidding.
He stalks along the street, angrily.
He isn’t gonna gut the kid, because he’s a coward. Scared of what the humans will do to him if they catch him quartering a body in an alleyway. Scared, scared, a fucking coward—
"Jisung.”
Jisung whips around. “Who are you, and how the fuck do you know my name?”
The kid has the nerve to smirk at him. And don’t tell him it’s a friendly smile. It’s a smirk. He knows a smirk when he sees one.
Well, you know what, kid? Fuck you.
Jisung’s gonna kill him. He can feel his eyes burn golden beneath his shades.
Damn the consequences. He’s gonna rip this little motherfucker into strips and then he’s gonna leave his remains by his mother’s front door.
He runs his tongue over his canines. “Well? You gonna answer my questions?”
The kid–less of a kid, he thinks, more of an older teen, fully grown into his brattiness, that much worse–says nothing. And so Jisung grabs him by the arm and yanks him into an alleyway, far from the damning illumination of the streetlights.
He moves to crowd the kid against the wall, reaching for his knife, breath already coming faster from the thrill of the hunt, liquid power in his veins, old instinct in his fingers–
And somehow finds himself back flat to the bricks, his knife in the other’s hand. Resting on his throat.
He swallows. “What the fuck–?”
There’s a smug look on the kid’s face. “You’re not the one who gets to ask questions right now.”
They’re standing so close that they are breathing the same air, out the lungs of one and into the chest of the other. He can see each line in his lips when they part slightly, like its in high definition. He can see his gleaming white teeth.
And the kid has fangs.
Humans don’t have fangs.
“You’re not–you’re not human, are you?”
“Bingo.”
Jisung sniffs at him. “You’re not a werewolf either, you don’t have a scent. And I can see your ears, they’re human, so not a hybrid.” He squints. “Witch? No. There ain’t no witches left.” He breathes in. His throat is scraping the blade now. So close, so very close to dying. It feels fucking good. “Fairy…?”
It’s then that he finally pins down what’s been driving him crazy. The kid does have a scent. Dried flowers and mothballs in a closet, sharp like alcohol, pouring in a glass. And underneath that, so faint that it is barely there, something Jisung knows.
The kid smells like an omega.
An omega.
Sweet and ripe and tempting, vanilla and cherries and cream. But dead somehow. Sterile, like old knowledge kept locked up in a crypt, unused and inaccessible.
But still. An omega.
But he isn’t an omega. He can’t be.
Besides for the fangs, he looks fully human, for one. Eyes clear, a normal black, no shining gold in the nighttime, not a hint of tinted lenses either. Fingers with no trace of scarring from where claws might have ripped free.
Not a werewolf, then. Another species, perhaps? He’s never heard of any other species having omegas.
Jisung hasn't smelled an omega in years. So fucking good—smells so fucking good, smells like home, like everything he’s been deprived of for the last seven years, all of it, so good—
“My name’s Minho, by the way," the not-a-werewolf omega is saying. "Lee Minho. Now, listen very carefully, okay?”
Jisung nods. There’s something deep inside of him that tells him it would be very dangerous not to nod and he listens to it.
“I’m going to put this knife away, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And you’re not going to try running away, okay?”
“...Yes.”
“Smart boy. Because I will catch you, if you do. I am more dangerous than you, and I am better armed. That clear?”
Jisung shoves his chin out. Clamps his lips.
“That clear?”
“...Yes.”
“Good.” Minho drops the knife carelessly to the floor. He meets Jisung’s questioning gaze. “What?”
“You’re just going to leave it there, for anyone to find?”
Minho shrugs. “Hell if I care.”
Jisung spends a moment being thankful he’s wearing gloves, so that there’d be no prints for police to find in the morning, and a second in utter of awe of the kid’s stupidity. Well, if he wanted to fuck himself up the ass by leaving evidence, that was his problem.
His only problem with that was that Jisung might well get implicated in it too if they were found together.
Shit, he thought. That’s all my life is. A shitty collection of shit stuff, strung over a pit of shit. Shit. Shit flying everywhere. Just–shit.
“Walk with me.” The–boy’s? Not a boy, his mind sings, not a boy not a boy not a boy—mouth does move hypnotically, pretty pink lips in a pretty face. “Come on.”
“Okay,” he says, hating himself for his easy acceptance, the way his body naturally falls in line with a motherfucking omega.
But what would be the use of resisting, he rationalizes.
He’d seen him in action before. Jisung worked best in sneak attacks, knives in unsuspecting backs. Minho right now was the opposite of unexpecting. Minho was absolutely alert. Attacking him would be suicide.
“Good!” Minho grins. “No resistance. You may be smarter than I thought you were. You’re quite reasonable for a rabid sigma.”
“I ain’t–I ain’t rabid.” His shoulders are up. “Don’t you call me that.”
“Well, what else should I call a wolf who roams the streets at night slipping knives into ribs and carving flesh to ribbons? A kindergarten teacher?”
He looks away. “I isn’t rabid, rabids have no control, I only kill humans.”
“99.98% of this city is human. That doesn’t take a lot of work.”
“Fuck you.”
“You won’t even let me take you to dinner first?”
“You think I’m some kind of joke, don’t you?”
“No,” said Minho. “I think you’re pathetic. There’s a difference.”
“If I’m pathetic, then why you laughing at me? Huh?”
Minho grinned. “Because I’m a nasty son of a bitch,” he said. “Unlike you, Mr. I-Only-Kill-Humans-And-Am-Rabid-As-Fuck.”
“No! If I only kill humans I isn’t rabid. I have–I has standards. That ain’t what a rabid wolf does.” His grammer’s getting messed up now that he’s angry. He hates how he sounds like a fool. He knows Minho’s laughing at him.
“Let’s not argue about this, please, Jisung darling. If you cause any trouble I will take you forcefully."
“Fine.” Jisung looks around, makes sure their vicinity is empty. “Now that I’m being coopera—being good, now will you tell me how you know my name? And how do you know that I’m a–a–”
“Sigma? Or a werewolf in general?”
“Yes.”
They’re still walking. Winding through alleyways with a sense of purpose, like Minho’s leading them somewhere. Why isn’t Jisung running away? Why is he following him like a docile little sheep?
“I don’t even know why I’m following you,” he grunts aloud. “Motherfucker.”
“Simple. You’re following me because I told you to, and you’re a good little boy.”
“What in the skins is that supposed to mean? What even are you?”
“Carbon, presumably. Along with some oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, calcium, and phosphorus.” He grins charmingly. “Do you know what those words mean, Jisung?”
“Yes,” Jisung says, glaring. No.
Why is the fucker smiling at him so much? It’s getting on his nerves. He grates out the question.
“Because I like to. Because it pisses you off. Because I’m happy."
“Good for you,” Jisung snipes, that same instinct that usually urges him to hunt, because hunting is survival, to run, because running means life, now telling him not to go. To stay here. That running would be suicide. “So you’re happy.”
“Yes. I’m happy.” Minho grins, showing very white teeth. “I’m also a vampire. That’s the real reason your following me. We can compel those with weaker minds when their defenses aren’t up. Not to brag or anything, but yours was very safely in that territory.”
Jisung blinks.
Minho smiles (again!) tightly, and plows on. “Before you ask: Yes, I’m immortal. No, I can’t walk in sunlight. Yes, sunscreen helps. No, I won’t risk it. Yes, I drink blood, and it’s actually quite delicious. Garlic is fine so sorry to all those who tried killing me with Italian cuisine, RIP to their souls. Crosses don’t burn me because I’m a fucking atheist, but running water will, as will salt and ashwood. Asking someone’s age is rude, but I’m beyond caring so I’ll just let you know I’m nine-hundred and thirty two. Also, no, what the fuck, I do not sleep in a coffin.”
“Um,” says Jisung again. “Wow. Okay. I wasn’t going to ask…I wasn’t going to ask your age.”
“And I appreciate that.” He stops in front of a nondescript apartment building, brick and crumbling cement. “Also, we’re here. Come on up.”
Jisung gives one last, fleeting look at the street below, bathed in aluminum moonlight and as tempting as sin.
“Don’t even think about it,” says Minho aloud cheerfully. “I will catch you, as I said before, and then I will make it very uncomfortable for you. I would rather not. But the choice is yours. Plus, now that you know I’m a vampire, I’m sure you understand just how stupid that would be.”The look Jisung gives him is sullen. “...I’m not going to run.”
“Glad to hear it!”
He’s so bouncy. Jisung wants to eviscerate him.
They climb the stairs quickly, and soon they’re perched on two patched-up old rocking chairs in a dimly lit flat, splitting a slab of meat (literally; Minho sucks the blood and then Jisung eats the flesh, it’s working quite well) and talking. Minho sits him in the chair farthest from any window or door. Jisung notes this with silent annoyance.
Minho doesn’t trust him.
(why should he trust him. Why at all should he trust him)
And that doesn’t hurt Jisung in the least bit.
(He smells so good, so fucking good.)
(Will Minho notice if he shifted his chair a little closer? Just to scent him? Just a little?)
(Of course he will. Stop being stupid, Ji.)
“I’ve been looking for you for months,” Minho says, now that the rack of meat has been polished clean, the plates stacked neatly in the kitchen. “The last werewolf left in the Eastern Seaboard. In the wild, at least.” He laughs bitterly.
Jisung freezes. “The—the last? There isn’t…The plains pack? The pack from the mountains? I can’t be the last. There are so many others.”
“Were,” Minho corrected. “Were so many others. They’re dead now. I’m sorry.”
Jisung’s eyes are wide, and they are tearless, and they burn like a thousand cuts. “Oh, god, Hyunjin…”
“Who’s Hyunjin ?”
“No one.” My love . “It’s not important.” Nothing else matters.
“Well, if they were based out of this country, they are almost certainly dead or captured. The new laws decimated the packs. Only loners had a chance at survival. But you’d know this, of course. It’s hardly a secret.”
“I knew. Just not the–” he breathes in, a shuddering breath. “Not the extent.” He’d know the city packs were gone, but he’d thought the country packs at least would be safe, in their mountain caves and forest hideouts.
Apparently not.
The new laws.
Hardly new, except maybe to a thousand-year-old vampire; seven years since the Citizens Safety Protection Act Against Shifters had been passed, and the dusk of werewolf life had turned to pitch-black darkness. Seven years was a long time. Long enough to hunt down every werewolf and murder them. Long enough to whittle at a species until only one remained. The fact that that one was him had to be fate, playing a joke on them. Leaving the lone survivor–if he believed Minho–to be the runt of the pack, the worst one, the outcast.
It was not a very funny joke.
Hyunjin.
Hyunjin had been one of the first to fall, caught in the very first raid the CSPAS enforcers had ever conducted. Jisung can still feel it at night sometimes, the gasping void of it, like a hand squeezing at his heart.
The hurt never gets less. It just goes away, until idiots come and pull it back up to the surface like ripping off a bandaid.
Idiots like Minho.
He forces his fingers to relax, breathing deep till his claws go down.
The law had been passed.
That was not Minho’s fault. The law had been passed, Hyunjin had been killed, Jisung had been blamed, and he’d ended up cast out of his own packs. Alone and excommunicated, stripped from alpha sigma status, forbidden to seek out contact.
Hungry for vengeance. Picking off humans one by one, just as humans picked off his kind.
He’d known the CSPAS was active, had been in more than a few close scrapes with it himself, but he hadn’t realized…
God . The extent.
If the vampire was telling the truth, of course.
“The only way any wolves could possibly escape was if they were alone,” Minho repeats. “Like you.”
Jisung’s sunglasses lay discarded on a small table beside him. The glow of his eyes are two cold fires in the dimness of the flat. “Wolves don’t do alone.”
“I know,” Minho says. “The only one I could find left was you. A lone wolf murdering his way through a city, leaving no traces behind.”
Jisung snaps. “If I left no traces, how the fuck did you find me?”
“Well, there were some traces left behind. If you knew what you were looking for. Eyewitness reports of a lone man leaving the scene, always wearing sunglasses, even in the nighttime. How the killings were always centered around, but never on, the full moon. There were also a couple times it was clear that someone had been using claws. At least, clear to me. The police report called it ‘a sharpened four-pronged fork.’” He grinned. “And then, of course, there was the matter of your scent. Very hard to catch, may I add–are you using dampeners?”
“CSPAS sniff that out wolf scent in an instant. Been using cologne, too, on top of that, just in case. And deodorant.”
“Nice.”
“I know.” He takes a moment to gloat. “Now, would a rabid wolf think of that? Would a rabid wolf be that logical? Uh-uh. I don’t think so.”
“Jisung. I don’t think you’re rabid. I was messing with you before.”
“Well. Don’t.”
“If it annoys you so much, I’ll stop.”
“Good.”
There’s a moment of staring each other down.
Jisung clears his throat. “So. You found me. But why did you even want to track me down? Some dumb werewolf, living on the edge, more likely to be dead my nightfall than not. You's a vampire. We ain't even—we ain't even the same species.”
Minho’s expression is closed. “There was a dead werewolf who had a very special place in my heart. ”
“And on your dick, too, no doubt,” Jisung sneers. “I know how these things work. Gay vamp discovers the self-lubricating asshole, gets his dick wet, likes it enough that he calls it love.” A horrifying thought struck him. “Is that why you–is that why you smell like an omega? Did you–did you eat him? God.”
“When I was alive,” Minho says stiffly. “I was. I was an omega werewolf. My clan lived in what you’d now call Norway and we—anyways. Not important. I was an omega when I was alive. My dick went in nowhere.”
Jisung is silent. Man had to have had a messed up life story. First a werewolf, then a vampire? Double-fucking-whammy.
“I–I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, you had no way of knowing. Anyways. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get down to business. I need you.”
Jisung’s posture stiffens. “For what?”
“Well.” Minho is the picture of relaxation. Or he would’ve been, if only his foot wasn’t rat-a-tat-tating on the floor in double time like some cheerleader marching. “The werewolf. The one that I–that was close to me. He was taken by the CSPAS nine months ago.”
Jisung thinks before he speaks. He considers sympathy. “Am I supposed to give you my congratulations or something that your favorite dick got killed when my entire species has been wiped out? Because sorry, do I have some news for you.”
Minho’s face twists and it is grotesque, all his cold beauty gone horrifying, terribly warped, like a mirror into a shadow dimension. “ How dare you,” he snarls. “ How dare you speak of my beloved in that tone. How dare Changbin’s name be sullied on your filthy shifter lips.”
And there is something so bizarrely removed about his rage that Jisung almost laughs. “Your precious Changbin was a shifter too, so explain to me how exactly I am sullying it.”
Minho stands, starts to pace, heels like hammers at the ground. “No,” he whispers, seemingly talking to himself. “No, I won’t, I won’t, I will not–” He turns to face Jisung, a fake smile pasted across his face. “Changbin was far more than a mere shifter, you see. He was with me for centuries, feeding off my blood, practically an immortal . Can your small little reptilian brain comprehend the time expanse of centuries? Can it fathom what it means to love someone for nine hundred years?”
Jisung waits this out patiently.” Yeah,” he says. “And you need me…why?”
“I need you,” he says, “For a party.”
“Uh…what?” says Jisung.
Like, full stop. What actual fuck? A party? This whole thing for a simple fucking party? Uh-uh. He doesn’t think so.
He said so, out loud. “You mean for like…an orgy kind of party? Bestiality shit or what? Fetish stuff? Because that’s not, you know. My jam.”
“No, no, nothing of the sort!” He sighed. “How do I explain this.”
“I’ll wait.”
“It’s a…werewolf party. For the owners of wolves. Illegal, of course; wolves are meant to be deported or dead. But these people are rich enough and arrogant enough that they keep them as pets.”
“Aren’t they afraid of getting, I dunno, mauled?”
Minho grimaces. “Yes, this part is a little uncomfortable. They have these collars. They use it to control them. It’s a little unpleasant.”
“Collared.” His voice comes out low. “Like they’re dogs.”
“Yes,” Minho replies simply. “Like they're dogs.”
“Oneskin lowlives.” He spits.
“Now you see why I want to stop this so badly? This party’s been planned for months; I only caught wind of it because I happen to know the organizer. He thinks I have a wolf myself. A little cub called Spot. He even helped me get a collar.”
“And of course you had to call him Spot.”
He had the grace to look ashamed. “Sorry. Anyways. I want to go there, get pictures, get names, and get them arrested. And their wolves freed,” he emphasizes. “Get them out of there before the CSPAS show up. I have an evacuation route prepared for them–it’ll take them all the way to the border.”
“Free?” Jisung scoffs. “Imprisoned and killed, more like.”
Minho chooses to ignore that. “I have everything–location, password, dress code. Collar. Everything. There’s only one thing missing.”
“An actual werewolf.”.
“Yes.”
Jisung stands with a disbelieving little laugh. “Goodbye, nice meeting you, but you’re delusional if you think I’m gonna let you trick me into getting collared like that. Uh-uh, fangface. Not today, lil wannabe Jeffrey Dahmer. That’s it? That’s your whole game? I have to say, I’m a little disappointed at such a cheap trick."
“It’s not a trick.” Minho is suddenly on his feet, blocking his way to the door, not moving.
He’s so beautiful, Jisung thinks suddenly. Not like Jinnie’s soft sleek elegance–this is younger, brighter, like rose at the height of its blood. So lovely, it hurt his eyes.
“You and I want the same things, Jisung. Justice. You’re going about it by killing random humans who had nothing to do with the law or the murders. I’m trying to go about it by actually making a difference to those wolves.”
Jisung sighs. “Look, as much as I’d love to trust you—” kill you, he means, because you're fucking annoying even if you aren’t human, and let’s be honest, his only-kill-humans rule is bullshit if someone gets annoying enough– “what’s to tell me you won’t put that lovely little shock collar on me and then leave it on me, for good? Make me your fucking sex slave or something?”
There is desperation in Minho’s eyes, but utter calmness in his voice. “I’ll let you bite me.”
Jisung freezes. “B-bite you?” he stammers. “Or like, bite you?”
“Bite me,” Minho clarifies flatly. “Mate me. Make me your bitch. Fuck me, scent me. I was an omega before I was turned, mating me should still work. As long as you do this for me, you can bite me. I know how bad it feels for a grown dominant wolf not to have a mate. I can take that away, Jisung. Please. I can’t force you into this. For it to be convincing, you have to be playing it full-heartedly, and I don’t want you to think I’m tricking you. So. If that’s what it takes to convince you, I’ll let you bite me. No omega would harm their alpha. You would know that.”
“Y-yes.” Jisung’s saliva is starting to pool, just from those words, and he fucking hates himself.
“That would–that would definitely convince me you’re not gonna sell me out.”
“Good.” Minho bares his neck. “Then do it.”
“Now?” says Jisung, and his cock is twitching his pants, the traitor.
“Right now.”
Minho is beautiful, and has a scent like fucking paradise.
And it has been so long—so long since he has last taken someone for himself. He is so, so, hungry.
He is weak. He says, “Okay.”
Minho’s neck is long and smooth and perfectly unblemished, the scar from mating his CHangbin--if indeed they had been mated at all--nowhere to be seen.
His skin is cold, though, when Jisung runs his sandpaper tongue against it, leaves a trail of wetness behind.
The vampire’s skin is thicker than an ordinary omega’s would be, tougher; his teeth face more resistance biting down, so it's harder getting deep enough to release the hormones into Minho’s stagnant dead bloodstream that would label the vampire his.
But he does, after some maneuvering.
The aftermath is awkward as the mating itself.
“About the sex part–” Minho begins uncomfortably, rubbing at the bite. “I don’t really—”
“We–don’t have to have sex,” is the first thing that comes tumbling out of Jisung’s mouth. “That’s just tradition. It’s not actually necessary. At all.”
Plus, there is a whole bunch of sunshiney feelings in his chest now when he looks at Minho. He feels softer. Nicer. He wants to hug him, but he also wants to rail into him like the world is about to end?
It's confusing.
(He really, really wants to fuck Minho.)
(He’s really, really trying not to think about it.)
(He's really, really failing.)
It makes for an awkward day for the two nocturnal creatures.
Especially because, dun dun dun, there is only one bed. It’s a big bed, to be sure; but there is only one, and they are sharing it. He and his newly mated…mate, lying side by side.
And Jisung can’t touch him, like every single one of his instincts in urging him to, begging him to. Can’t breathe him in, hold him as he sleeps.
His cock is so hard, it feels like its going to explode. He hasn’t been this hard in a long time, not since Hyunjin had died.
Hyunjin.
A pang of sadness rings through his chest.
And with his dead lover’s name on his lips, Jisung falls asleep.
And wakes up to find his rock-hard erection crammed into the crack of Minho’s ass, whom he had apparently started spooning while he was asleep.
Fuck.
He’s still half-asleep as he presses himself closer into that cool, enveloping softness, burning his face in the other’s neck.
He can hardly recall the hostility he’d felt prior to mating Minho; all that was overshadowed now by an all-encompassing desire to hold, to protect, to comfort—
To take.
You can, his sleeping mind is urging him, a primordial snake. You’re his mate now–once you start, he’ll want it to, he needs you too (! Right? Mated vampires couldn’t be that different from mated hybrids. Probably.), he won’t fight it wants you start, you can just bite his mark into submission—
He grits his teeth.
No.
You said you wouldn’t.
No.
Minho rolls into him. His fingers fist at the material of Jisung’s hoodie. His eyes are open; it’s clear he’s been up for a while, staying still so as not to wake Jisung. "We might die at the party tomorrow."
“We’re alive now.”
“I was a virgin when I turned, you know. I’ve never taken a knot as a proper omega. Never had that.”
“What exactly are you trying to say by that?”
Minho turns away. “You know what? Never mind.”
Jisung’s snakes a hand out and grabs the him by the shoulder. Rolls him over so they’re face to face. “If you want us to fuck, just ask, Minho.”
There’s a moment of horrible silence, and Jisung is convinced that he read this whole situation very, very wrong.
Then Minho says, “We’re mates. It’s normal to…want to have intimate relations.”
Jisung waits.
"There are---mating frenzies, sometimes, even. I remember those. From my old pack. Changbin would get them sometimes."
Jisung knows where this is leading. Of course he does.
They fuck, like they were always going to. And it’s mind blowing. It’s amazing. It’s everything he’s been told sex with a mate should be like.
It’s horrible.
Fake, like a dish sweetened only with stevia, or too much cologne. He bites his way down Minho’s hipbones, finishes inside his cool, tight flesh with muffled curse and claws raking through the sheets. Watches the vampire fall apart beneath him like he hasn’t had sex in a hundred years (which might actually be the case, he realizes, with a start) and it’s all-encompassing and it’s a lie.
He doesn’t like Minho.
Hell, he doesn’t even know him.
He wants him to the core of his body.
He would die for him.
That’s what it means to be mates.
It meant Minho wasn’t going to betray him, true. But that was a two way street. They were bonded now, in it for life.
In retrospect perhaps this hadn’t been the smartest decision.
He kisses his way down the vampire’s sternum, breathing in the odd scent of his skin, cold pressed flowers and warm omega and the slightly acrid smell of sex.
He tells himself it’s fake.
He tells himself it’s fake, because that will make it feel better when a knife sinks into ribs. Whether his knife and Minho’s ribs or the other way around, he doesn’t know.
The collar is too tight around his throat. And it itches. “Fuck this. Let them die.”
“Don’t say that,” Minho chides. “You know you don’t mean that.”
Jisung is silent.
“What are you looking at? Is my shirt on inside out?”
Jisung can’t keep the petulance from his voice. “You covered your mark.”
“I can’t exactly go into a wolf pet party with a mating bite visible for all to see, can I?”
“I know that. I just…I…my wolf doesn’t like it.”
“Well, your wolf will have to deal.” Minho spins around. “How do I look?”
Jisung drags his eyes downwards, and then back up again, lingering on his tapered waist, the elegant yet slightly softened lines of his body. He’s wearing formal attire, buttoned-up white shirt and an expensive looking suit, paired with a slim black tie. He looks delectable.
“Like a waiter,” he says aloud.
“Were you always like this?” Minho asks.
“Like what?
“This…this abrasive. Or did that happen later, once you were living on the streets, killing people.”
“You make it sound like I’m a monster.”
“But you are, you know.” There’s a slight smile on Minho’s plaster-white face. “So am I. I drink blood to survive. You turn into a beast at the full moon, or whenever you get angry enough. Even if we’d never lifted a hand to hurt anyone, we’d be monsters to them. The villains in every human fairy tale.”
“Fuck humans.”
“I’m sure that’s what your Hyunjin said too, as they shot him in the heart with a silver bullet.”
Jisung swallowed. “Don’t you–” he snarled. “ Don’t you dare let his name cross your lips again.”
“It must’ve hurt him terribly, you know,” Minho continued, smiling wider now. “Werewolves don’t die right away, as I’m sure you know. Beheading one will take the quickest, but even then, how the body thrashes about! But that’s fallen out of favor over the ages. The CSPAS uses a regulation 9mm silver-coated bullet. It would have been minutes till he died, maybe even hours. His body probably tried shifting, too, to heal itself. He may have even died like that, caught in between, half man and half animal. A painful way to go, to be sure.”
He’s trying to get you mad. Don’t play into him. Don’t get mad. Don’t. Get. Mad.
“Why are you doing this?” His voice came out rough. “Are you trying to get me angry?”
His new mate’s eyes were empty, bottomless black depths. “Yes.”
“Why in the world would you want me—”
“I want you to want this, just as much as I do. If I managed to find out about this party, then it won’t be long before they do, too. I want you to think about what the CSPAS will do to these wolves, if we don’t get them first. I want you to commit to this, headfirst, no backing out.”
“And if I don’t?”
Minho straightens his tie. In that moment, he is as cold and lovely as a snowglobe, locked away behind glass, untouchable. “Then it’s a good thing the collar is already on.”
The drive to the party’s location, a lodge deep in the mountains, is a silent four hours. Minho drives, while Jisung sits in the back seat and alternates between glaring daggers and staring longingly.
It was like being split even down the middle, like he’d been sliced with knife. He regretted ever walking down that stupid street where he’d met Minho. He regretted ever agreeing to let him put that collar on. At the end of the day, though his biology might be that of an alpha, Jisung wasn’t a fighter. He didn’t have it in him to willingly walk into head-on confrontations; knives in the dark and crimes beneath the moonlight were much more his speed. There was a reason he was a sigma. And it wasn’t because he was the textbook definition of macho alpha militancy.
And now he was walking, willingly (sort of), straight into the jaws of danger.
Lovely.
When the car finally grinds to a stop in front of a pair of towering, wrought iron gates, he’s more than ready. His legs are cramping, his back kills, and there’s a crick in his neck he can’t seem to get rid of. Right.
Because of his collar.
His bad mood intensifies.
It only gets worse when Minho rolls down his window and shouts something to the guard manning the gate, who then apparently unlocks it, because they swing open on silent hinges and car drives on in.
Inside the estate looks normal. Bland, even. An enormous, mostly-dead lawn split down the middle by a cobblestone road that led to a rather modest wood-and-brick manor at the far end of it. The gate may have been the fanciest part of the place.
Oneskins.
So focused on their fucking facades.
He looks forward. At Minho. “Why’s it so empty?”
The car hits a bump and everything rattles. “Why’s what so empty?”
“This place. It’s supposed to be a party, right? Are we early?” He means it innocently, just a question. Curious.
Minho’s fingers are white-knuckled on the wheel. “Yes.”
“You mean we could’ve slept in for another hour and still made it on time?”
“Sorry.”
“No, seriously, where is everyone?” he persists. “The longer we have to wait for them to all be here to bust them out, the higher the chance of us getting killed and gutted is.”
“Your point?” Minho clips, and that is when the alarm bells go off.
The collar around his neck is a choking weight and he’s suffocating, suffocating—
Relax. It’s all mental. Relax. It’s no tighter than it was five minutes ago.
He forces himself to breathe, to think, to be rational–
The car rolls on, pulling up to the manor house with a lurch and a small dust of kicked-up dirt.
Minho clicks the door open. Jisung hadn’t even realized it’d been locked.
He is in such deep shit right now.
He’s in shit up to his eyeballs.
He can feel Minho’s tension now, with the preternatural awareness of the other that biting him had sparked.
They’d reached the front door. Minho turns back to look at him. Grabs his face and Jisung thinks, this is it, this is the end, right here and right now I’m gonna die— But then his lips come down hard on Jisung’s face and he’s kissing him, hard and aggressive, shoving his tongue in Jisung’s mouth like he wants to eat him alive, hands on Jisung’s ass to pull him in closer.
Jisung is…startled, to say the least.
He bareilly has time to think before Minho pushes off him, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His cheeks are flushed, mouth red from kissing. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? For what?” He’s dizzy from the pheromones, unsteady. The effect of a mate’s pheromones were like alcohol to the system, a drug. He’d read about this.
“For this.”
He feels a needle prick into the back of his neck like the tiniest pinch.
And then nothing.
When he wakes, it is entirely dark, and he is absolutely, entirely, completely alone.
And he is strapped down to a table. He discovers this when he tries to move.
Somewhere far off, a light switches on, and footsteps make their way towards him. He opens his eyes to find a man standing over him, peering down at him with lovely golden eyes. He is holding a sharp-tipped syringe. A smile cracks the man’s face.. “Hello, Jisung,” he says. Jisung can do nothing but gape in silent horror as the syringe is emptied into his arm.
The last thought in his head before the darkness pulls him under once again is like a thunderbolt.
Hyunjin.