Lay took a seat, slightly dizzy from holding his breath. His hands felt like they were on fire, and the only thing he could think about was how much he wanted Jinri to hug him like that again. When she was sitting there and he was holding her hand, he could literally feel his power strumming in his veins. It was more powerful than he had ever felt, as if someone had turned up the bass on a stereo, and now his power was thumping through every fiber of his body. Was this the effect of bonding to her? Then why did he feel like this was something different? Why did he feel like she was the only thing that could quell his fears and anxieties? Why did he want to protect her more than he wanted to protect his own life?

Then it hit him. He had just marked Jinri. He realized it was the cause of the sudden ability to sense Jinri everywhere. He knew that if he were blind, deaf, and with no sense of smell, he'd still be able to find his way to her. It was like a whole new world had opened up and he didn't know what to do.

He knew that so far, Luhan and Kris had both marked her. It was no surprise that Kris had, and Luhan was very close with her, so he knew it was expected for them to mark her. But he had never expected to mark her. There was no emotional catalyst to prompt it; it just happened.

"Lay hyung?"

He snapped out of his thoughts to see Kai looking at him weirdly from the door of the kitchen.

"Oh, hey, Kai," Lay replied, blinking slowly. Kai narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest.

"You okay? You look lost," Kai said. He was familiar with Lay's habit of spacing out and forgetting things; everyone was. "Did you forget something again?"

"No, no it's not that," Lay told him. He looked down at his hands and stared at them as if they were someone else’s attached to his body. "I think I just marked Jinri." Kai's eyes widened in surprise.

"How do you know?" He asked. Lay shrugged and shook his head.

"I don't know. One minute she was crying and hugging me, and the next thing I know it's like I have internal radar on her every movement," Lay explained. "Is this normal?"

"How the heck am I supposed to know?" Kai said, taking a seat at the table. "More importantly, why was she crying?"

"I don't know! Girls are confusing," Lay sighed. "She said something about how I was too nice. All I did was show her my ability on that plant over there." Kai snorted, holding back his laughter.

"She is an enigma," he agreed. "Well, you should let everyone else know about marking her. Suho and Kris will definitely want to know."

"You're right. I need to wake everyone up anyway." Still dazed, Lay walked out of the kitchen, leaving Kai to laugh about it alone.

He wouldn't have admitted it out loud, but Kai was jealous of Luhan and Kris, and now Lay. Originally, he wasn't too bothered by the fact that his brothers had marked and he had not, but the more and more he thought about it, the more and more he wanted to share that bond with Jinri.

He had never paid her much attention, but she always managed to make him look twice at her. Sometimes it was the way she responded to a question in class, sometimes it was because her scent wafted through the air and was so different than the others around her that he had to pay attention. Sometimes it was simply because she was the only thing interesting about a room, or the only person worth paying attention to because she was honest and pure and he respected that.

The day they were paired up for art class, he had been running late because he forgot his backpack in his chaotic morning routine, and had to teleport back home to retrieve it. It wouldn't have taken that long, but he was hard pressed to find an out of sight area to teleport. When he finally did arrive to class, he was already irritable. Upon hearing the assignment they were working on, Kai was hoping against hope that she wouldn't take it seriously, and just draw some random animal. When she revealed her drawing to him, he knew he over reacted. How was she supposed to know that he was actually shape shifting wolf man with the ability to teleport as he pleased? Still, he stormed out of the classroom childishly, and sulked for a while. I didn't take him long to realize how silly he had behaved, and when he happened to bump into her later that day, he gave her a smile and told he would see her later. It was a slip of the tongue; he really would be seeing her later - as surveillance while the council figured out what to do with her - but she didn't know that.

When he had responded to Kris's call that day she was possessed by a Hadrian, fear didn't even begin to touch upon what he felt when he saw her. He was frightened for her safety, this poor girl who knew nothing of this world and was caught unaware. He feared that if she had died at that moment, he would never get the chance to properly apologize for his rudeness. He would have so much regret at not getting to know her better, at paying more attention when she seemed to draw his curiosity.

The day Chanyeol got attacked; he came to her on whim. For some inexplicable reason, he knew that she would make things better. That she would be strong and tell him that things would get better. Maybe it was because she was like him; she was disconnected from the people around her because she didn't feel like they understood her situation. He, too, could never share his problems or concerns with his parents because they were only carriers. Neither were wolves, or tamers and so they simply relied on their personal experience and advice from others to raise him. He was always alone, and he found it quite fitting that he had the ability to teleport himself. When he met Suho and Kris, he couldn't believe that there were others like him that had similar feels and whom he could connect with so easily. And again, when Jinri joined their little group, he knew that she was just like him. When she hugged him that time, when she told him things would be okay, that there was nothing to worry about, he knew that he would protect this girl with his life. She was only older than him by a year, but he sensed that she had wisdom and experiences beyond her age.

Now, three weeks later, he sat in the kitchen, jealous of his brothers because he was not as close with her as he would have liked. He knew that his time would come. He knew that Jinri liked him just as much as she liked the others, and that she treated him with the same upfront attitude that she treated everyone else with.

"Hey Kai, food's here." Chanyeol's fuzzy head poked through the door and called him to dinner. A smile alighted his lips as he thought about the little family that they had formed.

Standing, he made his way to living room to enjoy his dinner.

+++++

Fingers tapped impatiently on the table as the woman waited for her underlings to enter the great hall. She was swathed in a black shawl that seemed to melt into the shadows around her and enhanced the sallowness of her grey skin. She didn’t like to be kept waiting, especially when she had to dole out punishments to those who had disobeyed her. The click click clicking of her nails against wood grew more impatient and the shadows swirled in agitation. When the two men finally did appear before her in a swirl of black mist, the clicking of her nails stopped abruptly, and they knew that they had pushed her patience too thin.

She stood from the table, her lithe form like black water flowing across the floor towards them. She stopped just two feet in front of the two men, who tried to control the urge to flee. She took some pleasure at knowing that now it was they who waited for her. She could taste the fear that poured off of them. They knew that they had done wrong and to face her now, cowering like sheep intending to beg her forgiveness only fueled her rage even more.

"I told you not to approach her!"

The two men flinched as they were met with the shrill voice. Oh how they hated dealing with her when she was in one of her moods.

"Now she knows your faces. Do you know how much work we've put into getting this far? It does not bode well if the whole plan is ruined because of you!" She slammed her hand against the table, sending a tremor that almost broke it in half. "Your insubordination may have cost us greatly." After a moment, she sighed, and massaged her temples. She sat back down carefully; while she was angry and in the mood to punish these two imbeciles, she had to keep her wits about her. It would not do if she overreacted to every little hitch in her plans. Joon and Sanghyun bowed their heads out of habit; her ire wasn't something they liked to provoke often. Being bashful was the best course of action in th