“Do you really think your mother is still alive?”

Onew pinned his head towards Key as they walked down the sidewalk. The streets were busy this morning with cars dashing down the gravel and horns being honked. Key tightened his grasp on his backpack strap while narrowing his eyes towards his best friend.

“Maybe this isn’t something that should be asked aloud?” He replied.

Onew sighed and shrugged his shoulders.

“I guess. But no one is around, I don’t see the harm in it. We’re barely to the school yet.”

Cautiously, Key searched around them for any “unfamiliar” figures. The thought of the mysterious man following them had been lurking in his mind ever since they woke up to get dressed. His friend noticed and placed a light arm around the boy’s shoulders.

“Don’t worry Key, I am your protector after all. Plus, like my mom said, who’d try something in the morning? I mean, I’ve officially deemed myself pretty damn cool with having the power to turn us invisible. You think it only works at night?” He upturned his lip at the thought.

“Hmmm, good question. Maybe it’s something we should ask your mom about?”

But Onew was quick to shake his head.

“Even though she says she has no secrets, I still feel like she’s still keeping some for some reason.”

Key sighed. The notion had popped up in his head as well, but he didn’t say anything.

“Well, I think my ability kind of tops yours. I mean, after all, I can take us to a different time zone.” He bragged.

“Yeah, with little to no experience of how to get there and…” Onew placed a finger in the air, “no sense of direction. You really think I didn’t notice?” He laughed.

Key couldn’t help but snag a smile too.

“Hey!” He pointed a finger back, “don’t go acting like you know how to turn invisible at will now. You’re just as clueless as me. Plus, my bad sense of direction got us to a cool place now didn’t it, all while letting us discover two new Cerberi.”

“Can’t really argue that.”

***

When they got closer to the school, they stopped their mediocre laughing and joking about things normal people wouldn’t understand. In fact, when they got into the school building, they ceased talking altogether. Just simply walked to their lockers. Like carbon copies of one another, they opened it and as Key delved deep into his, grabbing what notebooks and books he’d need for his next class, an all too familiar tone of voice introduced itself to his space.

She cleared just as he looked down, underneath his locker door. Those slender pale legs couldn’t be missed. Key rolled his eyes and closed the locker door only to find Luna standing there with an also all to familiar crooked smile plastered on her face.

“Oh good. Death has come to haunt me yet again.” He retorted.

She rolled her eyes, but the smirk didn’t falter. She even leaned her thin body against his closed locker door, blocking his way to pass.

“Aren’t you interested in what I have to say Key.” She teased.

He rolled his eyes again, exaggerating the wideness of them and uplifting his brow into an unnecessary height.

“Well, if I think about this clearly. You won’t leave if I say no and you won’t leave if I say yes. So…”

“No choice then.” She finished.

Onew lifted his brow in curiosity. He closed his locker as well and leaned against it, interested in what Luna had to say today. As if she smelled the attention, the girl turned around, sending a flirtatious smile his way.

“Onew, you still owe me that date.” She glamoured.

When the words left , Onew’s brows furrowed for a second. He’d forgotten all about the deal he’d made with the girl, let alone talking to her. The date. With everything that was going on, this date was the last thing he needed on his list of to-dos. The thought…made his heart sink.

“Right.” He murmured.

“Ya know, I thought you were going to hit me up over the weekend but I didn’t hear anything from you.”

“Sorry…family emergency.”

It was Key’s turn to furrow his brow. The way the statement exited Onew’s mouth sounded more like a question than a statement at all. But wherever her attention was, it wasn’t with the man’s reply. She quickly shrugged her shoulders and turned back to Key with that devious grin that read, there was something juicy about to happen that, of course, she had the first entail on. The boy sighed again. Rolling his eyes were starting to become a habit in the presence of Luna.

“Luna, I’m sure your little date with Onew isn’t the ‘good stuff’ you came all the way over here to tell me. What do you want and why should I care?”

She chuckled.

“You really haven’t heard, have you. It was all the talk over the weekend. This is actual news I wasn’t the first to get. A couple of people around here knew about it. Well…” she dragged out. “More so my parents’ friends. “

“Luna…please…you’re wasting my ti-”

“Apparently Minho and Taemin have a new pair of ‘cousins,’” she pinched two fingers into the air like quotation marks, “that are joining our class today. From the way my parents were chit chatting with their friends, that little….what was his name…Donghae…Dongho whatever. Well, he went with them to wherever they disappeared to over the weekend, but didn’t come back with them.”

She inched closer to the two and began to whisper.

“This is information I haven’t shared with the rest of the class. You two are the first I told, but from what I heard, they brought four new little cousin pets with them. They’re supposed to be joining our class…or at least two of them are. I think the other two are older.”

Key and Onew instantly shared concerned glances.

“And you’re telling us this why?” Key asked.

She chuckled again, flipping the side of her thin hair back over her shoulder.

“That, Key…is a good question. Isn’t it?”

She shrugged her shoulders and started to skip away. For a brief moment, she stopped and turned around, creating a little gun with her fingers towards Onew and shooting them towards his chest.

“Don’t forget to hit me up about our date.” She cooed, then off she went down the hall into the classroom.

Onew pursed his lips.

“Not looking forward to that.” He murmured.

Key nudged him on the shoulder, a little heavily.

“Ow.” The man commented, rubbing the top of his shoulder.

“Stop daydreaming about your date and pay attention to what she said. Even though…that was a little odd…even for Luna.”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard everything she said.”

“Four of them came.” Key continued. “Four. We saw two.”

He immediately lowered his voice down to whisper and scooted closer to his best friend.

“That’s two more than we saw the other night.”

“So I guess today we find out if it’s the two we saw.” Onew paused and tapped his finger against his chair. “Doesn’t it make you wonder just how Minho and Taemin’s uncles are getting away with signing off cousins to come to our school. Seems a little too simple if you ask me.”

Key scoffed.

“Please, nothing is too simple with everything we’ve been through, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a higher up Cerberi to do all the paperwork for them.”

“You think Minho and Taemin are gonna try to talk to us today?”

“That would be weird even for them. I know the four of us made a pact not to talk at school, but seeing as there’s not two, but four new Cerberi accompanying them back from their little vacation, I highly doubt they’ll even attempt to talk to us after school.”

Onew nodded.

“Good point.”

As they began to walk, a thought abruptly popped into Key’s head. He paused and pulled out his arm, forcing Onew to pause with him. The man turned and looked at his friend with a questioning expression.

“Onew?”

“Yeah.”

The echo of his best friend’s words only two nights or so ago echoed in his mind.

Kill them.

“You’re not going to do anything crazy when we see the new Cerberi? Are you? I don’t need you getting yourself hurt. We don’t know what they’re capable of.”

Onew let out a light breath and sent his friend a gentle smile.

“Don’t worry Key. I won’t jump out of my seat and attack them if that’s what’s forming in your head. I know now that some things,” he sighed, “we gotta take slowly. Like my mom said, do things so people won’t notice anything. I’m sure the whole school would figure something’s up if I just decided to rampart my body towards the new kids of the school. Plus, you’re right. I don’t know what they’re capable of. We don’t. So…let’s see then.”

***

Taemin stood, leaned back and glaring next to Minho. The two…or rather the four of them stood in the school office…again. Taemin, with his slender body and disinterested glaring, placed his hands in his pockets and stared at the two recruits they had with them: Jonghyun and Jackson. The other two, Siwon and Eunhyuk were too old to attend school, and though their uncles wanted to fake their ages in an attempt for them to connect with human people more, their features were just too mature to convince a bunch of students that they were anything but.

Taemin stretched and rolled his eyes. Jackson cocked an attitude and Jonghyun held a blank expression while observing the area.

“So…this is school huh…” He said after a while.

A secretary sat at the far end of the room at her desk, typing away at who knew what, a student sat in a chair next to the principal’s office, and the water machine created a large bubble with every passing minute. Jonghyun pursed his lips and scoffed in his throat.

“Not very…invigorating.”

“Oh…I didn’t know you knew big words.” Taemin retorted.

Jonghyun opened his mouth to retaliate, but quickly remembered who was in charge and thought otherwise. Taemin caught the draw back and smiled.

“This new leadership thingy might not be that bad after all.” He smirked.

Minho grunted and bumped him on the shoulder.

“Stop it Taemin.” He mumbled. “Now is not the time for your antics.”

The boy shrugged, his dull hair bouncing with his head.

“Gotta do something to pass the time.” He retorted.

“So…Jackson and Jonghyun,” Minho started in an attempt to change the atmosphere, “you two haven’t gone to an actual school before?”

Jonghyun opened his mouth to speak but it was Jackson who got the word in.
”No. Our packs believe in homeschooling. They don’t believe in this primitive human education. It’s only something to dumb down their population.” He swirled his hand throughout the air as he spoke. “Doesn’t really matter in our case now does it? But you two…”

“Are just learning what these slow humans are.” Jonghyun finished.

Minho sighed and looked about the office. It was a good thing the secretary, principal, and even the boy sitting on the far left of the room, couldn’t hear a word they were saying.

“Just….follow our leads accordingly when participating today. We don’t need you two making a commotion.” He finished.

“Oh gosh,” Taemin exasperated, “doing this whole little experience all over again sure does seem familiar.”

The boy turned his attention towards Minho but Minho immediately looked away. He knew what Taemin was aiming at. He was going for Donghae. Even the impulsive Cerberi was finding his cousin’s action suspicious as well and it wasn’t going to take much for Taemin to take matters into his own hands if he kept asking. He saw the look on his opposite’s face when they made their way back onto the plane with their new recruits. Ever since Donghae had walked away, Taemin had been staring, as if screaming for an answer without saying a word. And that was the last thing Minho needed right now. His trust in the Elders was still faltering, he still didn’t understand where he stood in the packs’ progress, and there were starting to be too many secrets to count. So he let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding in and nodded.

“Yeah, it sure does.” He replied.

Kai was already set and in the classroom when the four of them finally made their way through. Taemin had suggested he’d go ahead and not stick around, plus he could tell on his cousin’s face the discomfort he held in the presence of two loose cannons, aka Jonghyun and Jackson. Kai sat in the far back, their usual seats, but of course, when they made their entrance, everyone in the room paused their conversations to get a good look at the new students. That, and they always seemed to stop talking whenever Minho and Taemin came around.

Luna stood in the middle of the room with her arms wide, apparently telling a story. Her small body and long arms obviously exaggerated whatever it was she intended to spread in the classroom today, but even she stopped talking when she realized that the students’ eyes were set upon something more interesting. It was like they were new rare animals at a zoo. An old zoo with cracking walls and unexcited events. As they entered, Minho caught the on look of both Key and Onew who sat in the front, their usual spots. When the three locked eyes, the two best friends immediately looked away.

It wasn’t something…unexpected, but the way they did it, the demeanor…it gave Minho a different sort of vibe. A familiar one. One he was used to when neither of them knew each other, but why would they act that way? Or…he could just be over thinking it. They were probably questioning the presence of two new Cerberi themselves. And they had a right to. It was something, if Minho had known about it before the abrupt trip, he would have made sure to tell the two himself. More secrets were the last thing he needed on his plate, especially between him and the Tribeless. But unfortunate circumstances thought otherwise.

When Taemin looked, the two were already looking down, but both Jackson and Jonghyun had swiftly caught the reaction of these two unknown students. But they ventured their attention towards the classroom instead, inviting the curious staring and obviously thriving off the attention.

Jonghyun slipped his hands into his pockets and swaggered his way into the crowd of students. It was like he was a mob boss walking into a crowd of civilians, the way they reacted.

“You guys act like a bunch of scared mice.” He chuckled.

In the corner of his eye, he saw a free seat, particularly next to another girl who looked exactly like the one with her hands up.

“And your name?” He asked.

“None of your business,” Luna answered, but her sister put her hand in the air.

“Z.” She replied.

“Well, Z looks like we’re sitting mates, or whatever the hell you guys call this stuff.” He sat down in one movement.

“Hey! That’s my seat!” Luna exclaimed.

Jonghyun shrugged.

“Ya snooze, ya lose.”

Minho thought about saying something, interfering, but Taemin sneaked him a small shake of his head and instead the two of them walked back to their regular seats while Luna tried her best to get Jonghyun to get up. Jackson, on the other hand, went to sit across the room where another empty seat sat. Its position was directly opposite of Key and they both noticed. In fact, they locked eyes, Jackson, sending a wink his way. The boy rolled his eyes and turned back to face Onew.

The rest of the day was a little more uneventful, even more so compared to the dramatic entrance of the two new Cerberi. But there was something Key slowly began to notice, something he held to Onew’s attention when they were in the hall together, on their way to lunch.

“Onew.” He said.

“Hm?”

“Is it just me, or has Minho and Taemin been looking at us on and off throughout the day?”

In a couple of their classes, he took note the way they would perhaps lock eyes, but only for a second or if he felt like someone was looking, and turned to find either Taemin or Minho staring. But of course, Onew shrugged his shoulders. He’d been trying his best not to notice them, that the last thing he was doing was seeing if they noticed him.

“It looks like they want to say something, but the won’t. Maybe it’s because of their two new companions. Onew-”

“Yes, Key.” He complained.

“Can we skip lunch for today.”

A small growl rumbled in the depths of Onew’s stomach and he touched it with a disappointed frown.

“Key, I’m sure they won’t do anything at lunch.” He whined.

“Please. It’s not that. I want to talk to you about something, but I don’t want them to hear. No matter where we are down there, they’ll be able to use their Cerberi super hearing, ya know. Especially those two new ones and I definitely don’t trust them.”

“Fine.”

****

With the nurse’s agreement, they sat in her office on the bedding. There were no students in here since everyone seemed to be at lunch, so it was a nice solitary area. Even the nurse left to go get lunch somewhere else. Onew scooted deeper onto the long bedding stretcher and turned his body around to face Key.

“So, what was it that you wanted to talk about?”

“Well I wanted-” But he stopped.

There was…something. A twitch? A sound? Something echoing like little squeaks in his ear. Onew reached over to touch him on the shoulder but Key held up his hand.

“Wait.” He whispered.

His eyes squinted and he tilted his head to adjust the small sounds that were making their way into his hearing.

“Do you hear that?” He asked.

“Key…” Onew raised a brow, “you’re acting weird. We’re the only ones in here.”

Key’s face deepened.

“There’s…” He leaned his head some more and like a volume control, the sound began to emerge in a clear crystal.

It was…voices.

“Voices.” He stated.

“Voices?” Onew asked. “Like people talking, kind of voices?”

“Wait.” He put his finger in the air again and squinted his eyes even deeper in an attempt to make sense of the words.

“If you’re looking for them, they’re not here.” Came a voice.

“Just eat your food.”

The second voice…it was a voice that Key knew.

“Minho.” He said.

“Minho?”

“And…I think the other one…is one of those new boys.”

“Wait!” Onew jumped off the mattress and turned in front of his friend. The sudden commotion made Key jumped, like two microphones hitting each other, the sound spiked through his hearing.

“Onew!” He yelled, clasping his hands over his ears.

“Sorry, sorry,” his friend whispered. “but Key, do you get what this means. You have super hearing. You can hear them. And way further than they can.”

“Well, sit back down and let me listen if you want to know what they are saying.”

“Okay, okay.” His friend eased his way back onto the bedding and anticipated Key’s next words.

The boy tilted his head again, this time getting nothing at all. After a few seconds a little to no sound coming through, he thought Onew had ruined it, but interference started to occur. He heard the click of students’ shoes as they walked down the hallways. Soft murmurs as they talked to one another. He heard the chomp of food being eaten down in the eating area.

“I-I can’t hear them.” He sighed.

Onew touched him on the shoulders.

“Just…concentrate.” He whispered.

So Key closed his eyes this time, soaking in the sounds around him. Onew’s breathing, the way he swallowed waiting to see what Key had to say, the voices down the hallway that belonged to both student and teachers. He listened and deep down he heard that familiar voice again. Minho’s.

“Stop asking us stuff.” He said.

“So…what’s your relationship with Onew and Key?” Key tried to remember the two boys entrance this morning. It was Jonghyun who talked but that wasn’t Jonghyun’s voice right now. So…Jackson?

He began to relay the information how he heard it.

“I’m with Jackson on this one,” Jonghyun chided, “what exactly is your relationship with those two humans? Easy question, nothing serious. You think we wouldn’t notice the two of you stealing glances throughout the day. What? You got a thing for humans now or something.”

“We don’t need you two loose cannons interrupting any sense of equality that we have going on over here.” Taemin retorted. “So drop the , okay.”

“You guys sure have weird ways over here.” It was Jackson again. “You know, Eunhyuk told me about some strange scents him and Siwon got last night. Hiding anything? Something we need to know about?”

“Siwon and Eunhyuk,” Minho interfered, “had clearance to go and surveillance the woods and report back if they found anything. Scents are nothing. If they didn’t see anything, there is nothing else to say. Loads of humans attempt to go into the woods at night. See if the legends around this place are true. So know your place.”

“We know our place.” Jonghyun interrupted. “But…can’t stay like this forever. Our alpha leaders will convince the Elders that they made a mistake and everything will go back to normal. We’ll be out of your hair and out of your business. That’s what you want after all, right?”

“With that attitude, you’ll have no progress.” Minho scoffed. “You’re too abrasive and uncontrolled.”

“Says the ones with their bands still on. Tell me, what is is like…” Jonghyun’s voice went down to a whisper, “not to be able to turn. To watch every day go by and not be able to run in your true form?”

There was no reply from Minho.

“And look where that got you guys.” Taemin chimed in.

“Well, we’re here now.” Jackson commented, “and you two gotta deal with it. That also means us knowing what you know and to be honest, looks like you and your Uncles are hiding something to me. Really, now. First our problem with the Katclan and now this. Our packs don’t have secrets.”

“Well good for your packs.” Taemin retorted.

“As long as there’s no Tribeless around here.” Jonghyun sighed. “My father thought he’d encountered a Tribeless once. But it was just a stupid arrogant Cerberi who thought he could go lone wolf. Either way, the notion of Tribeless is stupid and sounds like a myth. Technically, they would be like scum to us anyway. I mean, what kind of creature goes around without a pack. Everyone has a pack. No matter what creature you are.”

He heard Minho and Taemin chuckle a little bit.

“Yeah.” Taemin murmured.

How…are when…he wasn’t sure, but Key found himself standing next to the nurse’s desk. His concentration was pulled away by the sound of Onew’s weary voice and by the sound of wood splitting. When he looked down at his hand, there was a small faint of blood showing in the palm of it.

“Key…did you hear me?” Onew eased his way over. “Are you okay?”

His voice was muffled. He continued to stare down at his hand. The corner of the nurse’s desk had dented and split a bit, with the small hint of a hand print being the culprit.

“You were right Onew. We can’t trust them. We can’t trust any of them.”