A wolf is not meant to be confined.

The darkness of the night seeps through into a chamber, clouding the perception of two of the people inside. Despite the uncomfortable blackness, they stand side to side, their eyes obediently placed on the floor in front of them. They don’t dare to move a limb or show the injuries they’ve sustained, but instead, they bare it with silence and try not to let any grunt of discomfort escape their lips. Holding their hands together in front of them and keeping their heads bowed, they maintain the position as the clock in the room resounds like a soundtrack.

After a few whole minutes, some movement occurs behind the desk in front of them. Slowly, an older man with peppered hair turns in his chair, his eyes glowing a deep royal blue. The color contrasts with the black, making them seem more menacing than usual. He interlocks his hands and rests his chin atop them. His voice slithers from his lips like a cobra would from a vat, softly, yet strong.

“Do you know why I picked you to do this mission?”

Both remain silent, not lifting their heads but internally flinching at his tone.

The man continues. “You were special. You had skills and a fighting streak I could trust. You weren’t scavengers in my eyes, you were an extension of our army. You had a place in this hierarchy, a purpose. So I assigned you a mission. It was easier than all the ones given to you before. You had to kill three humans. But I put trust in you that it would be done efficiently.” He pauses for a moment to scan the males before him. “Explain to me why this mission wasn’t complete.”
 

“Two werewolves intervened, sir. They shot us and one of the humans slit my throat. Our physical conditions worsened and prevented us from-”

“Prevented you from what? Doing what exactly? You left the bodies of the two you killed behind and you let the girl get away with the werewolves who saw your faces! All the evidence that a murder was committed was left at the house, and not only that, but there’s three people out there who what you look and what you’ve done! This was a clean, simple task! It was meant to be done and over with in a matter of minutes, maybe 30, but here we are, two hour later, and a whole mission unfulfilled with more mistakes than benefits? Do you know what you’ve cost me?” The veins of his forehead are now visible and his anger is barely contained. The blue of his eyes deepen, almost turning black as he listens to what they have to say.

“We’re sorry sir, we’ll finish it once we get the chance. The girl will follow her parents-”

“You will do it the next time you see her, are we understood? She was supposed to be the easiest to kill, but now you’ve made her more powerful over you. I want her gone within the month or you’ll be the ones following her parents. Don’t you dare let personal feelings get in the way again.”
 

<> <> <> <> <> <>

“It was because of me that they killed your sister. That’s why I broke up with you. I know you hate me and I hated myself for it, I just-”

Sehun clicks off the TV, groaning as he finally puts the wretched scene to rest.

Ever since he’s came home from last night’s run, he’s been glued to the couch, flipping through useless channels until something in his mind convinced him to watch a Kdrama. Only the spirits know what compelled him to do so, but ever since, he’s had his eyes glued until he couldn’t take anymore of it.

Even though werewolves are part human and even more so when humans mate into the line, their emotions are so much more powerful, consuming, and real than those of humans. It takes werewolves longer to get over things than it does for a human to, and call them classical, but they rely on feelings more than logic. But then again, humans were never the smartest race that existed out there and that might explain why werewolf logic was stronger than a human’s.

Well, human or not, Sehun felt the boredom as much as any creature would.

He turns over in the couch to lay his head on the armrest while he opens his phone to take candid shots of his double chin on snapchat. After a few minutes, that activity gets old too.

Looking to a certain hyung, Sehun rises from the couch with a mischievous grin on his face and walks on his tippytoes like a T-rex before he situates himself behind an armchair, ready to make his strike. Slowly, Sehun’s arms creep around, reaching towards his hyung’s headphones--

“Maknae, you do know I’m a werewolf? And legally able to see? I watched you walk all the way from your couch to behind me,” Baekhyun calmly states as he slips his beats down over his ears and onto his neck.

….Maybe werewolves aren’t the smartest creatures sometimes either.

Popping a head from behind the chair, Sehun whines, “But hyung~, I’m so bored right now. Do you know when D.O and Kai are coming? Maybe they’ll save me from my hell.”

Just as Baekhyun opens his mouth to reply, a strong stench of what can only be human reaches their noses. Their nostrils flare in response to the sour-sweet smell that makes their senses tingle like when someone takes an anticipated bite into a sour patch kid or a sip of a coke full of bubbles. Suho seems to smell it too because he comes out of the kitchen where he was cooking dinner with his nose up and eyes flashing purple at a suspected threat. However, the scent probably hasn’t reached Chanyeol yet on the second floor, and it’s even more unlikely since the giant is passed out.

Baekhyun and Sehun get up from their spots and tentatively proceed to door with Suho. A few steps before the door, they stop as two other scents fill their noses, and this time, it’s two they recognize: Kai and D.O’s.

Everyone in the room freezes.

“Could it be a hunter?” Baekhyun asks Suho.

Suho dismisses the idea with a shake of his head. “They’re not supposed to cross the line because of our agreement. And they’re civil anyways. But a hunter’s scent is weaker than this one. They always mask it. This must be an actual human.”

As Suho finishes his sentence, footsteps resound on the porch steps, signaling the party’s arrival. Sehun takes a position in front of his beta and alpha, making sure to take the first blow if necessary.

But as soon as the door swings open, the situation that is revealed is nothing he expected, and clearly it’s nothing Baekhyun nor Suho thought it would be either. Their rigid defense postures drop slack in surprise and instead, their eyes widen to the size of saucers.

D.O appears right in front of them, with a human girl slung in his arms bridal style. He has multiple gauges and seems a bit dirtied, but other than that, he looks fine. Kai looks less injured than D.O with a few scratches and a tired face. But on the other hand, the girl is completely messed up. Her clothes are matted in blood, large spots of red coloring her clothing like rogue polkadots. But the injuries don’t seem final as droplets of blood trickle down her hand and onto the designer hardwood floor. Her petite body is clearly beaten up, but underneath all the bruises, she looks too pale to be healthy and is too stiff to be considered alive.

D.O ignores the glances of his pack and pushes through the crowd of shocked werewolves with a fervor, trying to walk as fast as he can to the bedrooms on the upper floor without causing the girl to bleed out anymore than she already has. He calls out instructions for materials to Kai as he goes.

Suho swallows his words for now about the human and follows s up the stairs, stopping by on the way to wake up Chanyeol.  

D.O arrives in his room in a matter of seconds, kicking the door open with his leg. A high pitched whimper sounds from Ae Sook, causing him to worry about how much longer she’ll be able to hold on. Usually, D.O is calm under this type of pressure, but dread is tossing his stomach like ocean waves at the moment. He really hopes this goes well, and he doesn’t know why, but he hopes this human will survive.

He gently lays her down on his bed, and soon enough, the white sheets start to turn red. Kai appears right next to D.O, handing him the first aid kit along with additional items.

D.O apprehends her injuries first, seeing which one needs the most attention. He picks up Ae Sook’s hand, and quickly glances over the gash before determining it to be minor. Lifting up the same arm, D.O studies the deep groove carved into the back of it like a cut into a canvas. Her shirt is clotted with the blood seeping from that particular wound, creating a messy type of outer layer to protect it. He spots multiple other cuts on the front of her body, and he doesn’t want to risk making those injuries more irritated than they already are by laying her on her front.

“Suho, can you climb up on the side of the bed behind her and once I take her shirt off, you stitch her arm?”

“D.O, take her shirt off? I don’t think that’s the best-”

“It’s either taking her shirt off or her dying. I think not dying is the better option here. Sehun, can you find me extra shirts about her size in my closet?” D.O takes control of the situation like he’s the alpha in the room, which surprises everyone, especially since he’s usually only a listener, not a director. The roles have completely switched.

Suho does as he says and gets on the bed, assuming the position on Ae Sook’s right. D.O takes out the scissors and professionally snips through the front of her shirt, closest to her shoulder. Apparently this girl was prepared for this event since underneath, a pink laced brassiere covers her torso almost to her midriff, though it has cuts and red stains on it from her being stabbed. D.O makes one more cut down the front of her sleeve which allows him to carefully peel away the fabric to reveal the gory scene that is her arm.

D.O hands over all the supplies to Suho and sets Ae Sook on her side so that she can lean against him. He uses one arm to support her and then another hand to cup the back of her head so that she stays still while Suho dresses her wound.

The sharp smell of antiseptic and alcohol reach his nose but it can’t mask the sound of Ae Sook’s slow heartbeats that resound in his ears like a gong. D.O can imagine her human heart inside her chest, getting heavier and slower with each beat as she loses blood that’s supposed to be in her body, fuelling her heart. He urges Suho to work faster, and within 5 minutes, Suho’s finished the last stitch and is working on bandaging her arm.

Once the procedure is done, Suho hops off the bed and D.O releases his grip on the girl and places her back down. He glances over her face to find that she’s sweating profusely and has closed in a thin, rigid line. Despite her lids being tightly closed, her eyes move underneath them, and it looks like she’s trying to fight something off.

“Sehun, get me a bowl of cool water and a towel,” D.O commands as he dresses all of Ae Sook’s other cuts.

Now there’s 4 members left in the room, along with a really confused and dazed Chanyeol and a half alive human girl. D.O doesn’t seem to notice Suho’s stare as his fingers flit over Ae Sook’s wounds, replacing the presence of his touch with bandaids and white cloth.

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