The Waning Phase

            I groaned in pain as I woke up and rolled onto my back.  Apparently, Kyuhyun’s pheromones keep you from feeling pain as well, because I definitely felt worse than when I’d gone to sleep.  But it still wasn’t as bad as Kyuhyun had made it sound the morning before.  I wasn’t bleeding or anything horrible like that.  I probably couldn’t sit down for the rest of the day without wincing though.

            An arm wrapped around me and Kyuhyun pressed against my side.  He leaned in and kissed me near the bite mark, which also throbbed.  “Ow.”

            “Sorry.  I promise I’ll never bite you again,” he said, kissing my cheek instead.

            “No, don’t promise that.  Biting is kind of fun.  Just don’t leave any more marks.  One of those is enough,” I said, rolling onto my side to face him and groaning as the pain hit me again. 

            “I think you should take those pain meds now,” Kyuhyun said, getting up and reaching for the bottle of pain killers that were still sitting on the night stand. 

            “Okay.”

            “And I could run you a warm bath.  Victoria told me that that would help,” he said, handing the pills over to me and a bottle of water.

            I attempted to sit up and he eventually helped me, since I kept whining, and opened the bottle for me so I could take my pills.  I swallowed them down and then turned to look at him, giving him a quizzical look.  “You asked Victoria for advice?”

            “Well, I certainly don’t know what it feels like to take an alpha’s knot for the first time and I wasn’t going to ask one of the other guys for advice.  I’d just get stupid answers back,” he said, getting up and walking over to the bathroom door.  “Was that a yes to the bath?”

            I was sticky from lube and anyway, so I had to clean off somehow.  “Yes.”

            Kyuhyun helped me bathe and made me breakfast, but then he had to go to work.  In the normal human world, it was just an ordinary day.  I hadn’t just vowed to spend the rest of my life with a wolf, because werewolves didn’t exist in the human world.  When we got married, a year later, we did take a week off and vacationed together.  But that wasn’t an option the day after mating and everything seemed so surreal to me.  I could feel all of Kyuhyun’s emotions, I could sense his worry over me.  I also knew that he could feel my emotions and the fact that I was not hurt, but more in shellshock over everything that had occurred.  He’d calm down once he realized I was fine.

            “I’m going to take the day off, since I can’t move,” I informed him, finishing my breakfast. 

            Kyuhyun nodded.  “Will you be okay or should I take a short day?”

            I reached over and pat his hand.  “I will be fine.  I’m going to rest, but you can bring me home dinner, since I am not cooking tonight.”

            Kyuhyun smiled.  “Anything you want.”

            After he left for work, I went back to bed for a while.  I woke around lunchtime and decided to go to the Mouse Rabbit for some coffee and lunch, since it was just down the street and wouldn’t be too painful to get to.  Besides, the painkillers that Heechul suggested I pick up seemed to be working a little.  I dressed and headed out of the apartment.  Yesung grinned at seeing me and made me a large lunch to eat, insisting that I rebuild my strength.  He probably thought Kyuhyun and I would be back at it again right away, but it would probably take a few days before I felt like taking a knot again and I wondered how long it would be before my body became accustomed to it.  Although I was a human, I assumed I would adjust at some point.

            I stuffed myself until I could barely move and then took the rest of my coffee to go with me.  As I walked out of the café, I noticed someone come up beside me.

            “I’m sorry about yesterday.”

            Hyungsik.  I recognized the voice immediately and took several steps back as fast as I could, which wasn’t as fast as usual, considering my condition.  I looked back at the café doors, wondering if I was safer to go back.

            “I swear that I won’t hurt you,” Hyungsik swore. 

            “I do not know you well enough to know if you’re a man—or wolf—of your word.”

            Hyungsik nodded.  “I know you don’t, but I honestly just wanted to know you better.  I am sorry about the incident last night with your mate.  You are usually with him and I saw you walking alone without him and pounced on the opportunity to talk to you without him around.”

            “He would not like me speaking to you,” I told him.  “He thinks you are dangerous.”

            The tall wolf took a deep breath and looked away.  “I am just curious about you.  You are nearly a twin to my mate, who passed away last year.  I thought perhaps you might be a distant relative of his or something.  It’s been hard for me to let go.  Everything seemed to be going well with his pregnancy and then all of a sudden, it wasn’t.  He lost a lot of blood, his blood pressure dropped and he became dizzy, his heartrate went up, and he began to breath more heavily.  He ended up losing too much blood while giving birth and since we were in the woods at the time and far away from the city, we couldn’t get him back in time for a transfusion.  He passed away in my arms.”

            “I’m sorry for your loss, Hyungsik.”

            He nodded.

            “What happened to the litter?”

            “I went crazy, so my sister and her mate has been raising them,” he admitted.

            “Do you ever go to see them?” I asked.

            He shook his head. 

            “Perhaps that would be the best way to honor the memory of your mate, instead of chasing after me to find out if we were related.  I doubt there’s a connection.  I don’t know of any wolves in my family.  Anyway, I imagine your mate would have wanted you to keep the pups and raise them.”

            “Alone?” he questioned.

            I shook my head.  “It seems like you have a pack willing to help you.”

            “Perhaps you are right.  You even sound like my mate a little, you know.  I think, at some point, you should do some digging into your family tree and double check that you aren’t related to some wolves.”

            I nodded.  “I will.”

            Hyungsik then suddenly pulled me into a hug.  Then he walked away and left.  I felt better about the conversation and felt that perhaps I wouldn’t have anything to worry about concerning Hyungsik anymore.  And, concerning Hyungsik himself, I was absolutely right, aside from receiving the occasional letter from him with pictures of him with his four pups.  (I wrote him back as well, but I had to do that when Kyuhyun wasn’t looking.)  But when Kyuhyun got back from work that day with dinner and smelled Hyungsik all over me, I had a lot of explaining to do and learned my first lesson about alpha possessiveness and jealousy.  It was a very long night!

            The next summer, I was at a family reunion with my fiancé, telling the family about our plans to get married in the fall.  We decided to get married on our one-year anniversary.  Less confusion that way.  When I was alone for a few moments, one of my aunts, who lived outside of Seoul and I didn’t know very well, walked over to me. 

            “I noticed that you have a mark on your neck, Ryeowook,” she said.

            I touched my mark with my hand.  I thought I had covered it up well enough with my button-up shirt, but apparently it had slipped a little while talking with my relatives.  “Oh, this…it’s an old wound.”

            She leaned in closer, whispering.  “I know what it really is.  It’s a bond-mark.”

            I looked at her with wide eyes.  “What do you know about bond-marks?”

            She pulled down her high collar.  “I have one.”  There was a silvery mark on her neck—and old scar—but clearly a bite mark from a wolf if you’d ever seen one before. 

            My jaw dropped.  I was too stunned to speak.

            “And my children are all werewolves as well,” she told me.  “You probably don’t remember them—you only met them a couple times as a child—but most of them live with their father’s pack now, in the woods, down south.  My youngest, the omega, died about a year ago though, while giving birth to four pups.”

            I just about passed out when I heard her news.  We moved away from the others and talked about our werewolf mates for a while.  As it turned out, Hyungsik was not wrong.  I was cousins with his mate.  His pups were my second cousins.  After hearing the story, Kyuhyun b