N/C 14, for crude language.

The thing about Kevin is, he doesn't hate anybody. He doesn't hate his whining mother, his judgmentally challenged father, his hermit brother who ignored him for six years, the quality assurance guy (who curses at him six times a day to show his affections, for the record), his most recent girlfriend whom he caught smoking pot at a party and he broke up with (four years ago), his mediocre life, his marriage with his MacBook, his expensive addiction towards platinum-grade caffeine, the quality assurance girl who keeps stealing his M&Ms or even the CEO sharing his space at the moment.

The. ing. CEO. Sharing. His. Space.

As a managing director at the company with multiple degrees in business, computer science, psychology and business ad, he'd trained himself not to be judging towards the various eccentricities in this ball park of a world. But if you're a Rottweiler, you can't blame yourself for being annoyed at the Chihuahua who keeps yapping for a at your bone.

“Hey, Kevin?”

Kevin slowly counts to five under his breath and swivels his chair to face Yoochun, who was staring at his own laptop with a bemused expression on his face.

“How do you work this thing?”

Kevin takes one look at the screen, sighs and turns back to his chair decidedly. Then, he reaches for a pair of Skullcandy headphones down from above the printer, pulls them over his ears with a snap, and resumes working, his fingers flying over the keys.

“Wow, you're really .”

“It's a Powerpoint slide, Micky. I'm sure you'll figure it out.”

“Yeah, but why is there a tiny wizard guy snoring at the side of my desktop? He wasn't there last...”

Kevin stuffs a fistful of M&Ms into his cheeks and measuredly reaches a hand to his phone and conspicuously turns the volume up, drowning out Yoochun's mumbling with high notes. He allows the beat to wipe out all other noise from his brain, before retiring back into his 'blissful' confined world of proposals and offer letters.

A few minutes later, just as Kevin's about to minimise his OpenOffice window, he feels a sharp prick on his cashmere shirt, moves a hand to feel it, and feels a snagged thread smooth over his fingers. Less than amused, he slides the headphones onto his shoulder blade and turns to find Luna standing behind Yoochun's empty chair, her brother's cap gun in her hands.

“What the hell?”

“I've been calling you for ages,” she snaps, and nods towards the direction of the break room, “I think you need to talk to your intern.”

“Not now.”

“Just look at him, Yifan.”

“In a minute.”

“Now,” she nags and he feels another solid prick on his spine.

“Stop that,” he growls, “and why the hell are there thumbtacks shooting at me from a cap pistol?”

“My brother modified it, I confiscated it for personal benefits,” her finger steadied on the trigger, “just look.”

Kevin sighs, leans back on his chair, peers into the break room across the hall and barely glimpses the Sehun's parrot hair by the coffee counter, staring at a silver appliance, his lips moving intervally.

“I'll check on him in a minute.”

“Fine by me.”

“Wait,” curiosity gets the better of him and he looks up from his charts again, “what's going on with him?”

“He's talking to the toaster,” she blinks and jiggles the cap gun, aimed at Kevin and he winces instinctively.

“You're going to shoot me in the eye with that stupid thing.”

“That's not the main point,” just as Yoochin glides back into the cubicle, zipping up his pants in plain view.

“I'd avoid the second cubicle in the men's for the next two years or so,” he settled into his chair with a sigh, “Mexican changes lives.”

“Oh hell,” Kevin scrunches up his nose.

“Toast,” pause, “toast”, pause, “ING TOAST,” Sehun's voice had gradually alleviated to a frustrated yell and they hear a muffled bang as he savagely kicks the counter.

“What the...”

“PMS, gotta be,” Kevin mutters just as his phone rings.

“The toaster isn't ing voice activated, you retard,”, the branch officer – Yesung calls from his own cubicle, brandishing his sandwich irritatingly.

“Then why the hell did Chen tell me it was... ah, .”

Kevin slides the green display on his phone without looking.

“Kevin here.”

“ZiTao here, we need you to come over right now to Pemberly and identify the body.”

Dial tone.

No greeting, no consolation, no condolences, just straight to the point. And Kevin feels like his heart was going to beat straight out of his chest all the sudden. He steadies himself against the desk, his brain going fuzzy, blending all the cordial hum of his colleague's conversation into one messy rhythm before snapping his MacBook shut.

“I have to go,” he mutters to Yoochun, and before Yoochun could reply, was halfway down the corrdor, car keys jangling on his index finger.

*

Tao's POV

When the twin wolves were a couple of months old, an old zoologist whose name I had given up trying to pronounce was hired to see them. He was old. Really old, and at first, I thought that whoever had recommended him might be nuts. He was one of Kris' old mentors, who taught college somewhere down South. He was famous in his day, all over the Nat Geo, Animal Planet, Universal, BBC, Oprah, as the guy who lived with wolves.

For sixteen months, he molded a hierarchy into the siblings – which is why Kira has the knowledge of the capo di tutti capi, the mafia boss, the protector, the brains, the one who tells the other wolf where, when or what to hunt, who can hear the rhythmic change of a prey's heartbeat. Kira was born an alpha, she had it in her, and the zoologist who made her realize how valuable she was, told Kris and I (the groundskeepers) that her mother might have been one too. She is the firm disciplinarian, the decision maker, who never puts herself in harm's way.

Which is why, in front of Kira, there is always Devor. The beta and the tester all in one. He was trained to be a beta, but his natural instincts made him a wonderful tester. He's extremely vary, suspicious, who finds it hard to trust strangers. He's always the one scoping for change, scouting for something new, and he'll be positioned anywhere to make sure that at any disturbance, he'll easily alert the alpha. He's the quality control guy – he sets the standards of the pack. It may be not much of a pack – but to wolves, their pack was their family, and their family was their pack.

Devor had sent Kris to the hospital before. There was once when the old zoologist was teaching him how to enter the cage without being attacked (Kris always upset the wolves because he was too clumsy). The man had entered the cage with Kris, taking the lead, and guiding Kris towards their playing compound at the back of the cage when Kira pounced. She barreled the old man over in greeting. Because of that, Kris' attention flickered. Devor seized the opportunity and went for his throat.

I could see the pierce of his incisors into Kris' neck by the fence, I could see Kris stiffen and his fingers shake madly. I could see bullets of sweat sliding down his brow and his lips part in momentary surprise. I panicked, and almost raised the alarm. Then, I remembered.

“Don't move,” the old man grunted, unable to free himself fast enough to save Kris.

Kris didn't.

Devor let him go.

Almost immediately after his release, Kris bolted towards the zoologist, as though the man was the insurance of his safety. That was the mistake. What Devor did to Kris was his way of making sure Kris measured up, whether he was tough enough to infiltrate the pack; just because they welcomed the zoologist, didn't mean that they invited him. But he had stayed his ground when Devor tested him, that's why Devor released him. When he went for Devor's throat, he was the tester.

When Devor lunged onto Kris and bit into him arm, he was the beta. Kris wasn't just running towards the zoologist, he was also running towards the alpha – Kira.

In front of an alpha, there is always the beta. Kris wasn't as calm as he wasn before, he tried to push Devor away. Devor bit harder, refusing to let go. When Kris stopped struggling, Devor kept his jaws in Kris' arm a little longer before letting go. Kris lay there, bright red against pale flesh, his chest heaving slowly and his eyelids sliding shut until the old zoologist had finished wrestling Kira away and pulled Kris up. By then, I had already called for an ambulance with my cell.

Devor could have ripped Kris' arm off, I was certain of it. He had the power to do it, for the protection of his alpha, but he didn't. It might have because he was practically raised by Kris before the zoologist came along.

I had done nothing for Devor to earn his mercy, and that was why when I lay on the ground of the wolf pen, my heart pounding and my head throbbing, I thought that I was going to die. Devor was right above me, his jaws clamped onto my shoulder blade, as I had shielded my neck as soon as I saw him bounding towards me. It was a strong nip, not exactly painful, but it sharpened when I tried to move. The terror was real, and perhaps, that terror kept me alive that dawn. When he emitted a growl from his throat, I shrank away slightly, my face turned away from him.

He let me go. I stayed there in the dirt for what felt like an hour, until Devor nipped me on the ankle. Paralyzed with fear from my chest down to my knees, I didn't move. I was afraid that it would go for my throat again. It didn't. It nipped my knee.

Praying wordlessly, I pushed myself up with both hands as slowly as I could and it took two steps back, keeping itself in front of Kira. I heaved sweet breaths of air, my fingers scratching the soil, and as slowly as I could – sat up straight with my head lowered, as I had seen Kris do when he practiced communication with the wolves. The beta and the alpha were the highest ranking wolves of the pack, and they demand a certain amount of respect – if you didn't know your place in the wolf pen, you were very likely to be disciplined their way. Right then, I was the stranger.

Kira stood up and walked again. After about a few feet, she stopped and sat.

I followed her into the darkness pathetically, watching Devor with my peripherals and keeping my distance from him lest he decided that I was a threat after all. But he knew my scent by now, and stayed three feet away from me. When I walked, he followed; when I stopped, he circulated me.

Then, both wolves stopped. The wolf pen stretched a few acres over the grounds, connecting at the Southeast fence with Pemberly forest. The only barrier between the wolves and the wild was a ten-feet-tall barbed fence. I stared at it, puzzled and afraid, before realizing that...

They were both gone.

I spun around, bemused and lost, my heart racing and thousand thoughts rushing through my head. I wasn't worried about being lost, I was afraid of what they wanted me to...

To see.

It hit me like a hammer, and I felt cold all over. The heavy Timberland jacket felt light on me and my fingers were numb from the endo heat. I felt as though I was freezing from inside out.

Beyond the fence, splattered over the greyish-brown barks was dark liquid, dried and patched onto the solid tissues. The grass around the area looked as though someone had whirled mahogany paint all over the dew-covered greens. And between the trees, lay a long figure in black and white, spread eagle on the dark grass.

When my eyes adjusted, I could make out an open slit on his torso and helical entrails jutting out from his abdomen. The stink was abominable, the sight was worse.

And for a minute, in my faint semi-consciousness, I thought I saw yellow eyes shine out from within the darkness.

*

Kris' POV

There is a kind of belief amongst the native Americans that when a hunter and a bear has spilled each others' blood, they wouldn't be able to inflict further damage on their next encounter. The hunter wouldn't be able to shoot the bear and the bear wouldn't be able to kill the hunter.

It's nice to think that the aftermath of a near-death experience is a healthy dose of mutual respect.

a/n nice to have subbies that stick to you. :) enjoy the update!