24

“Give it up, Baek. I beat you fair and square!”

“You cheated, Kyungsoo, and you damn well know it. A tree with miraculously overgrown roots just before we finished? Ha, that’s got you written all over it!”

“This is why I didn’t want to race in the first place. I mean, you two are gonna fight about this all night at this-”

The clamor of voices died down as each pack member spied Jinri sprawled out on the couch, one leg draped across the back, and one arm hanging off the front.

“Is that even comfortable?” Sehun asked, breaking the silence. Chanyeol rolled his eyes, and stepped forward to rearrange her to a more comfortable position. The others just filed in and took whatever seats they could find, also cooling down from the long run. It must have been just noisy enough because Jinri stirred, blinking the sleep out of her eyes and peering dazedly around the room.

“You're back,” she said sleepily, stretching her arms out. “How was your run? Anything interesting happen?” She was met with silence, and furrowed her brow. She shot a questioning glance to Luhan, who was looking at her with the same peeved look the others had.

“Uh, is everything alright? I didn’t drool when I slept did I?” She looked around, waiting for a response, and finally, it was Kris who spoke up.

“What in the hell happened to you?” He asked through gritted teeth. Jinri, still confused, arched an eyebrow at him.

“I went to training, went to see Saedemia, and came back for a nap,” she explained slowly. “What do you think happened?”

“The bruises,” Xiumin spoke, his voice sharp and icy. “How’d you get those bruises.” This was yet another time Jinri thought she saw his eyes flash steel blue before returning to their original color.

“What brus-oh! You mean these,” she said, raising the edge of her shirt to reveal the spattering on bruises on her torso. “No big deal. I fell a bunch is all.” She had forgotten that she was wearing just shorts and a racer back tank, so the bruises she attained from her training session were very visible.

“It looks like you fell of a building and then down a fight of stairs!” Chanyeol, who was closest to her, exclaimed. He hadn’t noticed it when he walked in, it looked like she was wearing a weirdly patterned shirt, but as he and the others got close he could see the nasty wounds that mottled her normally blemish free skin.

“I’m fine, really,” Jinri protested. She had barely noticed them after leaving Saedemia’s house. Maybe something the witch did without her noticing made it so that she didn’t really notice the pain.

“Well, what kind of training were you doing that you come out looking like this?” Kris growled, his anger clearly not going away.

“I was training how to defend myself against your abilities!” Jinri chirped, leaning back into the couch. She propped her legs up on Chanyeol, who had finally taken a seat on the other end of the couch. “I must say, you guys have some pretty cool talents.”

“They’re dangerous. You shouldn’t have been put through that your first day of training; it isn’t fair,” Kris pressed. “You don’t even know all that we can do, and you’re barely strong enough to—”

“To what Kris? Care to enlighten me, because as far as I knew, I was the only one who knew what my body could withstand,” Jinri snapped, annoyed by his assumptive attitude. “If I could handle being possessed by a shadow creature from the depths of Hell, then I can certainly hold my own against a bunch of low-level imitations of your powers on a running course.” At everyone’s look of surprise, she pushed on, a full-blown rant taking over.

“How many times am I going to have to explain to you all that I’m not some glass doll that’s going to break with a gust of wind? Sure, I don’t have the endurance or the raw power that you all have, but I can withstand a lot, mentally and physically. And it’s really starting to grind on me how incapable you all think I am.” This last statement was met with a few looks of shame.

“We know you’re not weak, Jinri,” Lay’s calm voice said. “We just worry is all. Some worry harder than others.” He cast a pointed look at Kris, who still looked peeved, and Luhan who was very clearly restraining himself from taking her into his arms and never letting go. Jinri deflated, the fight seeping out of her. She stood and headed for the stairs.

“I’m tired, and I don’t really want to talk about this anymore,” she mumbled. “I’m going to nap some more; save whatever dinner is left and I’ll come get it when I wake up.” She disappeared up the stairs and no one dared to stop her. All eyes turned to Kris, who didn’t look in the least disturbed by what just happened.

“Way to go, Kris,” Xiumin sighed, rolling his eyes at the pack leader. “Now you’ve gone and made her mad.”

“What I said was true,” Kris defended. “No matter what she’s thinks, she’s fragile. I don’t want – no I can’t let her get hurt. It just isn’t an option anymore, in any capacity.” Kris’s eyes had traveled down to his hands, which were clenched tightly in his lap. Suddenly, Tao gasped, breaking the silence.

“You bonded with her!” the younger boy exclaimed. It seemed to strike a nerve when Kris looked up, surprised. “I mean, I thought it was weird that you were getting so testy over a few bruises, but this has to explain it. You’ve marked and bonded with her!”

“So that makes two of us,” Suho said, nodding his head. “Luhan and Kris. Makes sense for you two to go first; you have the strongest connections with her.”

“I just… this isn’t easy,” Kris sighed, looking over to Luhan. “I mean she’s my sister, so naturally, I should feel this way, but this… it’s like she’s physically tugging at a rope with me on the other end of it.” Luhan nodded his understanding.

“Will we all bond before the Howling, you think?” Sehun asked, hoping that the answer was yes. The girl currently sulking in her room was getting to be very important to him, and he wanted to be as close to her as possible.

“I don’t think so,” Xiumin said. “The energy required to Mark someone is way too much for it to just happen