In Hiding

            The next time you sleep with me, I don’t want you to have any excuses to fall back on.

            Kyuhyun’s words were still lingering in my mind the following morning.  I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, having tossed and turned in bed until the sky began to lighten, and then I got up and hurried off to school, hoping to avoid the alpha.  As I was finishing a quick breakfast, I could hear movement upstairs and threw my dirty dishes in the sink—something I usually gave the others hell for, since I don’t like coming home to a messy kitchen at night—and then rushed out the door before the alpha had time to come downstairs and join me.

            I still felt horribly conflicted over what Kyuhyun had said.  Our pack was full of single omegas who were finally mature enough to mate.  The pack desperately needed more mated pairs who could produce pups to repopulate after our losses from my youth.  Every available alpha, since there were so few of them, should be encouraged to mate with an unmated omega.  This was the whole reason that Leeteuk was encouraging alphas to join our pack in the first place.

            So why did I feel so relieved to find out that Kyuhyun had come back for me instead?

            A loud knock at my door finally shook my thoughts from me and I looked up from where I stood, beside my desk.  Yesung stood in the doorway, sipping his coffee.  “Busy?”

            I shook my head and he walked in. 

            “I was worried about you.  I never saw you leave the party last night, but you seemed pretty drunk,” he pointed out. 

            “I haven’t touched liquor in several years,” I admitted.  “I was a little tipsy, but Kyuhyun helped me back to the house.  I feel fine today.”

            There was silence for a moment as I arranged paperwork on my desk.  Yesung looked deep in thought and took another drink from his mug before speaking again.  He sat down on the edge of my desk and looked around, as if trying to think of how to phrase something. 

            “He makes me nervous,” he began.

            Although I already knew who he was talking about, I pretended I didn’t.  “Who does, hyung?”

            “Quit calling me hyung.  You know I don’t like that,” he lectured.  “I’m talking about the new alpha, Kyuhyun.  I noticed the way he was staring at you last night.”

            Yesung had noticed more than I hoped he had.  I was going to have to give him a little background on the situation.  “Kyuhyun came to visit our pack back when Heechul came to mate with Alpha Leeteuk.  He and I spent a lot of time together during his stay,” I informed him.  “He feels close to me because I’m one of the only people he knows in our pack aside from Changmin and his brother.”

            Yesung shook his head.  “You don’t understand what I mean.  That’s not the way he looks at you.  It’s not merely because he’s fond of you.  I honestly don’t think you should spend much time alone with him.  I’m not convinced that he’s safe.”

            I grabbed a stack of books and moved them across the room to the bookshelf against the side wall.  They belonged on the top self and I strained to shelve them, reaching up while on my tiptoes.  “Kyuhyun is completely safe, Sungie.  Trust me,” I insisted.

            Yesung walked across the room and took the book from me, reaching up to shelve it.  “You don’t know many alphas, aside from the ones in our own pack, who have always been respectful towards you,” he explained, continuing to put the books away.  “Not all alphas have noble intentions.  Wook, I think he wants to sleep with you and I don’t want to see you get taken advantage of.”

            “You don’t have to worry about that.”

            Yesung sighed.  “I know that you have been taught to fight and have better survival skills that most alphas from other packs, but that doesn’t mean that you could actually fight off an alpha if he had designs on you…and I’m afraid that Kyuhyun might.”

            “That’s not what I meant,” I said.  As it turned out, I was going to have to tell Yesung more than I wanted to or he would never calm down about the matter.  “What I mean is…Kyuhyun and I were involved when he was here seven years ago.”

            I could tell by how wide Yesung’s eyes got that he’d never suspected as much.  He probably thought I was still a .  “Involved?” he questioned.

            “We slept together,” I confessed.  “I figured I’d never see him again, so this is kind of awkward for me.  I’m not sure how I feel about him being back.”

            Yesung stopped putting books away for a moment and turned to face me.  “Did you have feelings for him back then or were you just experimenting?”

            Did I have feelings?  The answer was, I had so many feelings, I didn’t even begin to sort through them all until months after he was already gone.  Even to this day, memories of that night haunt my dreams or return with the slightest provocation.  A late summer day.  The taste of raspberries.  White wine, which was why I eventually stopped drinking it.  The smell of roses.  Had I ever even come to terms with the fact that he’d gone away?  I was still consoling myself about the fact that I would never see him again and suddenly he was back again.

            Before I could answer Yesung, I could hear two people coming down the hall.  I recognized the voices immediately as Victoria and Kyuhyun.  She was clearly taking him on a tour of the school—she was one of the teachers herself—and she paused at my door. 

            “And you know Ryeowookie already, Kyuhyun.  This is his classroom.  Good morning, gentlemen!” she said to us, smiling bright.  She was in a stellar mood.  It was obvious from last night’s party that Changmin already favored her, and she clearly like him.  And although I knew she was not interested in Kyuhyun, I felt a little uneasy about the fact she was touring the school with him. 

            Kyuhyun did not look happy though.  He looked into the room at us and nearly scowled.  I’d never gotten such a reception from him before.  He usually seemed much happier to see me.  Aside from appearing on a foul mood, he looked rather attractive.  Unlike myself, he looked as if he’d slept.  He was also dressed up for work, wearing a collared shirt and dress pants, keeping the look somewhat casual by skipping a tie and rolling up his sleeves to his elbows.  Kyuhyun looked even better than normal when he cleaned up his look, but that wasn’t beneficial for me when I was still trying to figure out my feelings for him.

            “Good morning,” Yesung pleasantly supplied back.  “Welcome to school, Kyu!”

            Kyuhyun nodded.  “Thank you,” he softly replied.

            “I don’t want to get behind, so we won’t linger.  I want to show Kyuhyun most of the school before the children arrive,” she informed us, lightly grasping Kyuhyun’s arm and escorting him away.  My eyes narrowed at the doorway, even after they’d gone.  How dare she touch him!

            Yesung turned back towards me and looked me over, then he sighed heavily and shelved the last of the books.  “You should have told me before he arrived.”

            “That I slept with him?”

            “No.  That you were in love with him.”

            I walked back over to the desk and began organizing the last of the supplies I was using for the day.  “I wasn’t sure if that’s what it was.  It was so long ago and I’d never had feelings like that before.”

            “You’re an idiot.”

            I glanced his direction.  “What do you mean?”

            He picked his coffee mug back up from the student desk he’d set it down on and headed for the door, pausing once he reached the doorway.  “You’re still hung up on him, Wook.”

            I didn’t say anything in response. 

            “He came here to mate with one of our omegas,” Yesung reminded me.

            “What if he doesn’t?” I questioned.

            “That’s why he came,” he simply said, walking away.

            My mood didn’t improve much when several unmated omegas escorted the children to school that morning instead of their parents.  The omegas were looking for any excuse to run into the new alphas and were becoming ingenious about it.  They offered to help stay and assist in the classroom as well but were politely declined by a rather nervous looking Kyuhyun, who quickly walking inside with the rest of us once the children were accounted for.

            I was able to avoid Kyuhyun the rest of the day, as his classroom was on the first level and mine was on the second.  I just remained upstairs the entire day and refused to leave, even during my breaktime.  After the children left for the day, I waited a good hour before packing up my things and heading downstairs. 

            The only problem was, the exit closest to the house took me down the hall past Kyuhyun’s classroom.  It wouldn’t make any sense to go all the way around.  If anyone caught me doing it, they would ask questions.  Odds were good that he’d already gone back to the house and I wouldn’t have to worry about running into him until I reached it.  But as I neared his classroom, I noticed that there was still light coming out from under the door of his classroom.  Was he still in?

            I walked at a steady pace down the hall, intending to walk past as fast as possible, but my curiosity got the better of me.  Somehow, I found myself stopped outside his door.  It was possible he’d just forgotten to turn the light off.  Or perhaps someone was cleaning it.  But it was also possible he was still at school.  I knocked on the door.

            “Come in.”

            It was Kyuhyun and I should have walked away.  If he was still in school, I could make it into the house without being stopped by him.  But again, I wanted to know what he was still doing at school and opened the door instead.

            He was sitting at his desk, reading through papers.  When he looked up, he seemed genuinely shocked to see me.  As well it should be.  I’d been avoiding him all day and suddenly seek him out now?  I was just as surprised as he was. 

            “Working late?” I asked.

            “A little.  Why are you here so late? I assume you would have returned home with Yesung after the kids left.”

            Yesung?  I thought about this for a moment.  When I’d last seen Kyuhyun, he was touring the school with Victoria.  They’d stopped in while Yesung and I were talking in my office.  Was Kyuhyun jealous of him?  He didn’t seem too concerned with him last night, at the party, and I’d explained to Kyuhyun that I had no feelings for Yesung.  But perhaps he was still upset when he caught us alone together. 

            “Sometimes it’s quieter in the school to correct homework than in the house.  It depends on how many people are staying there or who’s visiting.  I was worried you’d have more visitors, like you did this morning.”

            “I am, too,” he admitted, leaning back in his chair.  “In fact, Victoria was kind enough to return to school and warn me