The next morning, we travel to the border between vampires and werewolves. Since I am too weak to even stand up by myself, Top and Soohyun offered to carry me on their back. But CL insisted on Top instead, which left Soohyun dejected. As we walk down the eerie Locus Sanguinis, as more than half of its population flew to Opimae, an owl arrives and decides to block our way.

I reach up by order of Top and get the letter it’s holding. He must’ve sent his reply after CL’s report. “A letter from YG sangjanim.” I read the writing on the envelope and the letters dissolve immediately. I open it and a parchment paper comes out. Holding it in front of me, I read, “It is safe to cross the border to the werewolves visible. Their leader, who will I maintain confidential, will welcome you upon your arrival. He told me his alliance to us after the vampires agreed to their alliance to the president.  From there, they will help you cross the border to the goblins. About the Minus, which you have informed me, the werewolves know of their existence and approves their alliance even with their existence. The leader will inform you more about this. Keep safe. Yang sangjanim.”

“More than the vampires, the werewolves are fishy.” CL comments, catching up with Top’s pace. “They regard the vampires as their enemies but even after knowing a number of vampires will be also their allies, they still want to be allies.”

“Well, both of them lived in secrecy. We don’t even know the vampire community is divided, like us. What about the werewolves? Even if they move by pack, there’s no assurance they are the same thousand years ago.” Top says, shaking his head, probably motioning us that the conversation and debate is over. “Let’s just go and ask questions to the man himself. We need to find something to ride on.”

“What about that?” I ask pointing at a distance, noticing an abandoned carriage. Top motions CL to check on the carriage, and she nods her head, taking in the order. With Seunghoon, they walk towards the carriage swiftly. CL places her hand on top of the carriage, like she always did whenever she sees things, and turns towards us. “Safe.” She shouts back, and even showing a thumb up to assure us.

Top runs towards the carriage, hastily as if I’m not a burden. The others follow suit.

CL points a finger at the carriage. “It’s a magical carriage. Raeda 308, to be exact. Made by Alliston Raeda for families that don’t fit in the Raeda 208. It can fit in everything as it expanses inside but not outside. But its machine is dead. Horses are not an option since they can’t carry this carriage.”

“I can make it work.” Seunghoon offers, looking up to the sky. “As long as the sun is up, I can move the carriage by its shadow. Though I have to be positioned outside or up, so I can see its shadow.”

Top nods. “Well then, you sit on top of the carriage. Mino go with him.” Mino and Seunghoon nods before obeying his orders, climbing the carriage. Top turns to CL and to the vampires, which was only Hyojin, Insung and Soohyun. “Go get inside.”

We all get inside the carriage, and with much trouble, I sit between CL and Top. Soohyun insists to sit beside me but CL growled at him, a ferocious mighty growl that can make anyone cower. After we’re all seated, Top knocks the ceiling and the carriage starts to move—quickly. My teeth starts chattering with the vibration.

“Faster, Seunghoon!” Top shouts by the window. “We need to be there before sunset!

I grab hurriedly both Top and CL’s hand, scared with the velocity and for my safety. The carriage, or the Raeda 308, feels like it can’t hold more than a meter distance. Its wheels and wooden ceiling keep on chattering, while the door opens every now and then. I never liked the idea of riding a horse carriage that moves very slowly, but I never even liked the idea of riding an old carriage that moves really fast!

The ride was long. According to CL’s clock, it’s already 4 in the afternoon, and there are only 2 hours left until the sun sets. I look by the front window, where the border between werewolves and vampires is visible slightly. From our spot, I can faintly see a concrete silver wall, shining incredulously with the help of the sun. Unlike the border between Vampires and Primes, it has no entrance or a door. Hanging from above, which I now can see when we’re nearer than before, are cloves of garlic. They’re far from normal, as it’s hundred times bigger than the regular ones and even from afar, smells.

Hyojin starts to buckle up and whispers, “It stinks.”

The carriage suddenly stops. Mino peers from the window and says, “This is the farthest we can go. If we go further, the vampires may faint from the exposure.” Soohyun checks his clothes and adds, “The material of our clothes can’t hold sun in the afternoon. It’s too bright.”

“Would that mean we need to break the border down?” CL asks, particularly to Top. He clenches his fist and is unable to say anything for a few minutes. I hold his hand and say, “Maybe we can.”

“How?” He asks, his eyebrows furrowing as he deeply thinks. “How can we break a border made out of silver, about a feet thick and more than a hundred feet wide, with garlic hanging from above?”

“CL has bombs.” I suggest, pointing a finger at her. “They can be timed. She said it can blew off anything within a kilometer radius.”

CL shakes her head. “That’s just a simple bomb. We need something like a mine.”

Top nods his head. “We just have to give it more high explosive, trotyl, hexogen, cyclonite and etc. After that, create a land mine.”

“We don’t have them.” CL reminds him. “And we only have the bombs.”

“How many bombs?” Top asks.

CL bobs her head as she counts and finally replies, “About ten or more.”

“Then we could just have the bombs go off in an interval in the same place.” He suggests. CL looks at him closely, her face distorted with doubt and after a few seconds, she hesitantly agrees. She always did.

Mino keeps me close as instructed by CL, ‘protecting’ me from Soohyun. Seunghoon, as per also instructed, gives Soohyun a glare every now and then. “Yah,” I whisper, now fed up. “Don’t be too harsh.”

Seunghoon turns his head around momentarily and says, “But I’m a follower of Jiyong Hyung, Noona.”

Mino agrees. “And we just don’t want anyone touching what’s Hyung’s.”

Tears start to pool in my eyes just by the mention of GD’s name but I try my best not to cry. It’s been days since I last saw him. Every day, my heart hurts like this. Whenever I see in my dreams his face in oblivion, I’m scared that his usual gentle eyes won’t come back. I’m scared that when I see him again, it’s too late to get him back.

CL runs suddenly towards us, her face and hands all grimy with oil and dirt. She sits beside me, heaving a sigh and says, “I’ll count to ten. Cover your ears if you can’t take it.”

She digs inside her pocket and takes out a remote control with twenty red buttons labeled from one to twenty. Top emerges from the other side, stooping beside Hyojin. CL clenches her teeth and complains, “Ah, seriously. I hate this guy.”

She starts to count down from ten and I clutch onto Seunghoon’s shirt if ever I suddenly fall down from the impact. “Ten.” CL finally says and presses a button.

BLAG! BOOM! BOOOOOOM!

I can’t particularly mimic the sounds but it’s loud, painful in the ears and deadly. The moment CL pushed the button, the bomb went off immediately, but it only made a decent crack on the border. Small silver stones fall down and small smoke arises. Without pausing, CL pushes another button and the bomb goes off, furthering the crack. Bigger stones now come down, but the bomb only successfully cracked a fourth of the border. But even if there’s a crack, the border seems to be endless. Even beneath the crack is silver.

“Is that titanium?” Seunghoon whispers, amazed. CL shakes her head. “That’s not titanium. It’s too dangerous to have a titanium wall. It’s just thick silver.”

CL presses two buttons at the same time and it created a mass smoke, covering the whole area. After a few minutes, the smoke cleared and the crack managed to get even further. I can see a hole about the size of a glass bottom at the center. CL pushes two buttons again, making it now 6 bombs, and she managed to get half destroyed. The upper part of the border collapses. “That’s my most precious bombs.” She wept, sighing. “They’re not your average bombs.”

“Why didn’t you let the better ones go off first?” Mino asks. CL groans and says, “That Top says we should let the lighter ones go off first. Seriously, he’s wasting all the bombs!”

“Why don’t you let the tenth one go off then?” I suggest. “Then we’ll have three more.”

“Do I have that option? If I press the tenth, the other three will be irretrievable. They’d end up under the pile of boulders.” She shakes her head and presses the remaining buttons. Based from the sound, I can guess she successfully had destroyed the border but greatly lost her bombs. After the smoke cleared, Top stands up from his spot and shouts, “Didn’t I tell you the sequence?”

“Yah!” CL suddenly stands up, clearly furious. “I was telling you to use the stronger ones first so we can have bombs left but you wasted them all!”

‘Well, I was hoping the moment I see you, you’re not fighting.”

“What?—“ CL stops shouting, her gaze fixed at someone I can’t see because he’s covered by the boulder we’re hiding behind. Top’s mouth falls and the three vampires rises from their spot. Seunghoon stands up curiously, so I don’t have any much choice to stand up too because I was holding his shirt. And the moment I see him, I immediately want I didn’t.

Before me is a man only wearing jeans, his upper half and glorified with tattoos. He’s sweaty too and downright y even with grime and sweat covering him. He pushes his hair back and breathlessly says, “I was running towards here after the border broke down. I’m Lee Donghae, by the way, the leader of the pack.”

“Wolves?” CL asks, as a reaction.

Donghae chuckles and shakes his head. “Werewolves.”

So, the place of the werewolves is the heaven for ahjummas and single women in their thirties. It’s basically a place where grimy, sweaty and muscled half- men are located. There are a few women, but I’m not interested in them. Though they’re also wearing something y. An oversized white shirt and short shorts beneath. I’m starting to think this place is overly ual.

“Yah, keep that down.” CL whispers behind me, maybe to the boys. “If that protrudes, I’m going to kill you.”

“But Noona—“

“Our place is called Locum Defunctorum. The Place of the Dead. It’s just because the moment you step inside, we’ll eat you and you’ll be one of the carcasses for the menu.” Donghae says as he leads us inside and turns around to see us. “But most of the time we call it Locus Mollit because, well, I can see something protruding in your pants and that’s the reaction everyone gets when they first get in here—unless, well, you’re a carcass.” Seunghoon and Mino tried their best to hide it.

Donghae laughs. “So you see, let’s get back to history. Unlike the vampires, the werewolves embraced being a Pax because, well, why would we kill each other? Why would we divide the pack as it already is? Besides, we’re peaceful enough. And the blood gives us something! Most werewolves die early. But with the Pax blood, they can’t.” He laughs. “And so, I’m glad to tell you all, that we’re all Paxes!”

There’s a moment of silence on our side before Top reacts. “What?”

“Well, it’s been years since the Pax blood started in our race. Since we didn’t purposely tried to eradicate it, it transferred over the years. The Pax blood mixed with the werewolf blood. And so, after a thousand years—or maybe a hundred—we’re all Paxes.”

“I don’t know what to feel.” CL comments, bewildered.

“Me neither.” Donghae agrees. “But that’s the reason you want in question to our allegiance. We’re protecting our blood and as werewolves move by pack, we clearly consider blood. Blood is thicker than water—something like that.” He claps his hand again, and I’m disturbed by how his biceps contract. “So, any more questions?”

He looks around, particularly at our perplexed faces. “None? Okay, we move tomorrow morning. It’s getting dark and I don’t want to eat you guys.”

It’s going to be a full moon as Donghae said so they might change out of the blue and not recognize us. As a precaution, he let the non-Paxes sleep in a locked room as werewolves smell by blood, they can’t eat the Paxes.

But even so, I can’t sleep. The werewolves slept outside but it doesn’t assure me that they won’t do anything. I toss and turn in the bed but it doesn’t make anything fine. In the end, I go outside for a walk. Well they did assure me they won’t kill me. I should be fine.

I look up to the sky as soon as I got outside. The moon is round and beautiful, like a crystalline or a pearl. The moon who’s as mysterious as a criminal, lurking even at daytime but never noticed. Well, that’s not a good metaphor but I’ll get better.

Several howls go off in an interval but strangely, I don’t feel scared. A werewolf walks past me after a sniff and I start to relax. They’re right about the blood.

I walk further and I hear a strange howl. But it’s not like the usual howl. It’s more like a cry. My legs carry me fast before I know it and I see a werewolf biting his own hand under a big tree.

“Wait!” I shout, getting his attention. The werewolf looks up with his blood-stained jaw and decides to show me his full set of canine teeth bathed in blood. He purrs and I run up to him.

“Look at me.” I order, holding both sides of his head and lift it up. I force him to stare at my eyes. “Don’t look at your hand and just look at me.”

The werewolf purrs sadly and his eyes brim with strange emotion. “Can you go back to human form?”

The werewolf purrs again. I take that as a no.

I look up at the sky and the clouds start to cover the moon. It’s going to rain. I look back at the werewolf and soon enough his features start to change. His hind legs turns to his legs, his upper body shows after and finally his head. And I find myself staring at Donghae’s eyes.

“I’m sorry.” He whispers before collapsing on me. His breathing is ragged and his right arm is obviously wounded—severely, as if I didn’t intercept, he could’ve destroyed his tissues.

I gingerly lay him against the tree and take off my cardigan. Then I tie it around his wound. Since it’s raining and he’s too heavy, I can’t bring him back to the house. Donghae’s breathing relaxes but he’s still in agony.

“Why are you doing that to yourself?” I ask, sitting beside him. He decides to act close and rests his head on my shoulder.

“I do that when I’m nervous.” He explains. “It’ll heal quickly.”

“It’s not because I’m scared you’ll eat me that’s why I’m going to tell you this but if you continue that habit of yours, you’ll end up killing yourself.” I tell him, sighing. “Stop that, if you still want to live.”

Donghae groans. “My family…” He breathes heavily. “…has been leaders of the pack over the years. They do this when we’re pressured but because we don’t have something to turn our stress into, we end up hurting ourselves. My father died by losing blood. My mother followed by jumping off a cliff.”

“Why don’t you—“

“I don’t want to kill anyone.” He cuts me off, swallowing and gasping. “We stopped eating humans and eat livestock animals instead. We all vowed to the Opimae Forrest not to eat monsters, wizards or humans. Peace is something you need to work hard for and peace is all we ever wanted.” He groans. “I—I can’t stand my fellow men die because of hunger because I’m responsible for it. I just stress over it. But they assured me countless of times that peace is brought when many lives are sacrificed. And I think, I’m the one who needs to die to gain peace.”

“But peace won’ be brought through suicide.”

“Nor it will by stubbornness.” He adds. “This battle at Opimae is the last resort. If we win, I want my pack to live peacefully. Not to be fed off with carcasses but with something they worked hard for.”

“You think the battle will sort everything out?” I ask, biting my lip nervously.

“Why not?” Donghae grins, laughing. “We can all live equally without differences and all of us can be Paxes. We did it. Why can’t everyone?”

“You’re right.” I chuckle, relaxing myself. The rain here is peaceful too.

“You’re not so bad. I think I like you.” Donghae whispers, laughing.

“Don’t continue. I’ve had enough men to deal with.” I reply.

“Who? That Kim Soohyun?” He snorts. “Let everyone like you if you’re likable. It’s something you get in return for being good. All decisions, after all, are up to you. If you want to reciprocate or not.”

I stay in silence.

Donghae laughs. “I like you.”

I dream of GD that night. But he can’t see me.

He’s doing something inside an enclosed room with only a door and no window. GD’s too focused that my curiosity brought me to him—or maybe that was my heart missing him. He’s writing on a piece of paper and the words are repeating. Kill everyone who gets in the way.

What way? I don’t know. But from the looks of it, he meant the way of the president. His eyes are dull and in fury, as if all it can do is kill. The whiteboard beside him were counting all the lives he killed. All of them are mundane.

Then he sharply turns his head at me. Did he notice me?

“Dara.” He whispers under his breath harshly. The love it once hold whenever he whisper my name now gone. I’m back to the old plain Dara. GD stands up from his seat and leans against the table, snickering at me. “You think you won? You think gaining the favor of the Minus and the Werewolves is enough? The Goblins have offered their help. Soon enough the wizards will too. And I’ll make sure when you come here in Opimae, I’ll be the one to welcome you.” He smirks. “With a nice, painful death.”

A/N: The last scene is a filler of GD. He'll come back!  (That was a spoiler)