The moment the scent of a wolf hit Yesung’s nose, Victoria and Seungri were both standing up, turned toward the door to the pavilion. A few seconds later, a loud masculine voice screamed in agony. ‘! Donghae!’ All three shifters simultaneously thought, Seungri reacting the quickest and leaping over the benches to the center walkway and down toward the door.

Donghae heaved the attacker off him, but not before the lanky man had ripped the fabric of his wedding hanbok. ‘Well, that’s not good.’ Donghae thought, seeing the blood welling up from the cut.

Pain blossomed in his arm. “What did you do?” Donghae yelled, doubling over in pain.

The man had blood splattered all over his clothing, a feral grin on his face. He said something that Donghae identified as Japanese before the pain tripled in intensity.

The door burst open as Donghae fell to his knees, gripping his arm in pain. Seungri took one glance at Donghae and knew. Donghae had been attacked by the rogue shifter. “Where’s your companion?” Seungri sneered, hackles rising as the acrid scent of a crazy wolf burned his nose. He wished he hadn’t left the wolfsbane in the room where Donghae had gotten ready.

“Donghae!” The others rushed into the corridor. Yesung grabbed a hold of Donghae, eyes widening. “Someone go check on the Choi’s!” He yelled. “Donghae, can you hear me?”

Donghae didn’t even care that the merchant had used his name as his eyes rolled up in the back of his head, losing consciousness.

  **

Victoria gaped at the man whom they assumed attacked Donghae. “He’s a Japanese!” She screamed in Korean, not caring what the consequences were. Seungri’s hands itched, wishing he had a sword or something to threaten the attacker with. The King’s guards suddenly showed up behind the attacker, their weapons drawn.

“Donghae! Young master! Wake up!” Yesung’s voice caught the attention of others who weren’t staring down the attacker. “!” Yesung swore. “We need a doctor! Someone go get the Herb Merchant Kim!” He threw the command towards someone standing just outside his vision.

The scene was total chaos. Yesung could smell the insanity rolling off the rogue wolf in waves. Someone else had come running back to report that most of the Choi’s were fine, they’d been in a different room when Donghae had been attacked. There was no mention of Choi Sulli being ok, but at that moment, Yesung only cared about Donghae.

‘Is he…?’ Yesung knew that Cloud had relayed the question from Seungri’s feline.

‘He’s been infected.’ Yesung closed his eyes, a tightness in his chest as all breath seemed to leave his body.

“You bastard!” Seungri jerked forward, only to be held back by Victoria.

Don’t, or our secret will be exposed!” Victoria whispered so softly to Seungri that he stopped unconsciously to listen.

‘Ha, you think so…it is only a matter of time before its exposed, little witch!’ The rogue wolf snarled at Victoria in Japanese. ‘Stupid little kitty doesn’t see the chaos she’s caused by coming to this forsaken land. You bring Japanese victory with your malice!’

Victoria growled at the insults the wolf threw at her. She was glad in a sense that no one present at the moment could understand Japanese. She refused to acknowledge his taunts. Victoria didn’t want to expose the fact she could speak the language to the non-shifters in the area.

Events moved quickly as the command to subdue the attacker came down from the King, Heechul arrived before the Pack doctor, and started pulling herbs out of various places on his person, as others moved to give them space. Yesung told Heechul through his wolf what had happened.

‘Has anyone thought to look in on the bride?’ Heechul’s wolf, Chocoball asked Yesung as they worked on Donghae.

‘Someone said that the Choi’s were ok.’ Yesung had Cloud reply.

“Someone needs to go see if the Choi’s are really ok, and what they want to do since the groom is injured on his wedding day.” Heechul said to the group of people clustered about the area with nothing important to do.

Some random guard shouted he would do it, and ran off. Heechul could feel a massive headache coming on along with a sense of dread. Whomever was coordinating the shifter attacks on the innocent people in Hanyang, they knew to use foreign shifters. The minutes ticked by as Heechul managed to stop the trickle of blood seeping out from the scratch in Donghae’s arm. He knew that the younger man wouldn’t be waking up until he bonded with his wolf and shifted for the first time, but they would have to get him out safely either to another room or to the Pack’s shifting house first.

Heechul’s shoulders sagged in relief as the guard came back to tell them that the wife to be was safe and sound with her family, and that they would be ok waiting for Donghae to wake up. Yesung groaned internally, wishing the Packs’ doctor would hurry up and get there already.

“Why isn’t he waking up?” Minister Lee asked, coming to check on his son.

“We don’t know. Maybe the shock of the attack and the nerves from the wedding?” Heechul tried to give Minster Lee a decent answer. ‘No, your son will now be a werewolf and hunt for raw meat and fresh blood for the rest of his days.’ Is what Heechul wanted to retort in surprise anger. He never got angry, but the stress from the last month of dealing with new shifters, the arrival of Victoria, and his other normal life duties were starting to irritate him. ‘It’s ok.’ Chocoball was a warm comfort to Heechul, already simmering down his growing anger and dulling the headache that had come on.

It seemed forever before the Pack doctor arrived, having been at the Pack house for another reason entirely and had only gotten the message through communications with the network of shifters who worked for the Pack doctor. Once he’d gotten a grasp of the situation from both Heechul and Yesung, he quietly took aside Minister Lee and Minister Choi after a brief, but telling check of Donghae’s unconscious form. “I’m afraid that the Young master won’t wake up for a couple days at most.” He said, sounding apologetic. “I am sure he would be ok with the wedding proceeding without him?”

Minister Lee looked at Minister Choi and shrugged. There was no point to delay the celebration with just the wife, but they would have to get permission from the King and Queen first to use a substitute for Donghae, and then Sulli if she was ok with the change.

“We will have to ask His Majesty….” Minister Lee started when a call for the doctor to quickly attend Donghae reached their ears.

“Quickly, let’s get him into a private room. He may be waking up and we’ll need calm and order to reorient him to what happened.” The doctor said, giving an imperceptible nod to Yesung and Heechul, both whom hadn’t left the unconscious man’s side.

A door was flung open, and a couple other people helped lift Donghae from the floor and into the room. The pack doctor ordered supplies to be brought, including a change of clothes for Donghae. Yesung told Cloud to communicate with Victoria and Seungri to keep people away from the room as the doctor ordered no one else but the two men to stay away from the room for a bit.

“Why should we do that?” Lady Lee asked, her face still pale from the commotion.

“If the Young master wakes up and sees a crowd of people, he may get confused or disoriented from the commotion of people fussing over him.” The doctor replied, bowing in apology to the noblewoman. “I assure that you will be the first to know when he wakes up.” He said.

The door closed quietly behind Seungri as he heard the first growls of a shift in progress through the door. He glanced at Victoria, sensing that she’d heard something from the rogue shifter right after the attack. Glancing around, he sighed, seeing that no one would be within earshot as they were currently attending the King’s interrogation of the rogue wolf. “What did that smelly mutt say to you?”

“It was nothing but insults.” Victoria smiled up at Seungri, noting how light his eyes had become since she’d arrived in Hanyang. “Don’t worry about it.” She said, giving him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. The scent of worry lightened a little as Seungri nodded.

Victoria internally sighed in relief. She was afraid of what the rogue wolf had said, and wondered if any of her old Clan were in on this scheme. ‘I doubt that.’ Her feline said, sounding worried. ‘Also I decided to be known as V to the others. It makes things easier.’

The relief that V would be her feline’s new name was palpable. ‘Why do you doubt any of the old clan are involved?’ She thought.

‘The magick performed on us was done by a Japanese coven.’ V replied. ‘He must have sensed it when we came in to defend Seungri’s master.’

Victoria was careful not to let her scent give away her shock. No one knew what she’d been through in China, her official story being that she’d been born there, raised in an area that saw a lot of trading between the people of Japan, China and Joseon, which was how she’d learned Korean and Japanese.

The truth was, Victoria had been kidnapped as a child from her home in on the outskirts of the capital in China and then given the ‘gift’ of shifting before she really knew what was going on. Of course, at the age she’d been turned, seeing the people around her suddenly turn into various species of feline had delighted her, so when they’d asked if she wanted to be like the other kitties, she’d said yes immediately, not knowing what was in store for her after the change happened.

Once she’d gotten used to the pain of shifting, Victoria had then been brought to a special house where only certain beautiful women lived, and started being taught in the ways of the gisaeng, as well as the other 2 languages she knew. Her childhood had been over the moment she’d felt the pain of shifting, but the moment her ity had been sold to the leader of the Clan by the House Mother, she’d learned the true meanings behind the gisaeng teachings of avoiding unnecessary emotions. The pain of shifting had nothing on the pain she’d experienced during her first ual encounter with the leader. She’d come back to the gisaeng house 3 days after being escorted there by the second in command of the clan with cuts and bruises that had been given just a few hours before she’d been told to leave the house.

Then she’d been whipped for allowing her body to be marred in such a way, even though the cuts had healed by the time she’d been stripped and whipped by the house mother for sullying the gisaeng name. After that, Victoria had become nothing more than another gisaeng at the house, whereas before she’d been considered a gift and treated specially by the house mother. The jealousy of the other girls in the house had disappeared the moment she’d come back from the leader’s house, most of them giving her pity filled glances while others helped her with simple tasks at first because of how stiff and sore she was.

Victoria sensed that something in the room had changed while she’d been reflecting on her past. ‘Did he shift?’ She had V ask D.

‘Yes.’ The reply came back, surprise in V’s tone.

Seungri nodded at the same time V repeated D’s response. “They are saying it’s the fastest anyone’s shifted since the first Pack leader showed up in Hanyang.” Seungri whispered.

Inside the room, Yesung and Heechul both had a hard time keeping Donghae down. There hadn’t been any time for either of them to dive into Donghae’s mind to keep him calm to help the bonding process along. “I can’t believe he’s shifting this fast.” Heechul panted, sweat trickling down his face.

“Do you think he’s going loup?” Yesung asked the Pack doctor.

“Under the circumstances, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did go loup.” The doctor replied, a frown on his face.

Yesung paled. Going loup was bad. Very bad. In the normal process of a first time shift, the person already knew what he or she was getting into. This is why they’d been trying desperately to find the rogue wolf who was attacking innocent people. Most of the shifters in the Packs and Clan had willing chosen to be changed, or had been born as a shifter. Those who were unknowingly changed had a low survival rate. Going loup meant that the human had rejected the animal outright and the animalistic part of the virus that caused shifting took over the body in an attempt to survive, which caused the human mind to go crazy. Those who went loup ended up in a twisted half-human, half-animal form, claws tearing at their own skin in order to relieve the pain from the half-shift.

It hadn’t even been an hour since Donghae was attacked and he was already midway through his first shift. They wouldn’t know if he was going loup until he opened his eyes, or if he had accepted his new form and shifted completely into his animal form.

A spasm caught Yesung under the chin, knocking the man backwards, the black and purple bruise already formed. “Damn that hurt!” Yesung shook his head, collecting himself.

The doctor paced back and forth as Yesung went back over to hold Donghae’s half furry form down. Time seemed to slow again for them as they waited to see what would happen.

Another tuff of fur sprouted along what Heechul assumed was a foot. “More fur.” He called out, giving the doctor an update. If this went on much longer, the wedding would be ruined and the Lee’s would be looked at with distrust. Heechul didn’t care much for the political jockeying the nobles did on a daily basis, but he knew that the loss of Donghae would be a huge blow to the family.

Yesung’s yelp of excitement brought Heechul’s thoughts back to the task at hand. More fur had spouted…in fact…Heechul looked up at an excited Yesung as the body of a dark grey werewolf lay quietly in their arms. “He didn’t go loup.” Heechul breathed, feeling relief flooding his body.

Donghae’s new form was massive. “I think he’s bigger than Hyukjae.” Yesung murmured. “I hope he’s not stronger though….we don’t need a new pack succession so early after the Conclave.”

The doctor examined Donghae in his new form while Yesung released the younger male’s paws and slumped over, exhausted. Heechul sat quietly with the new werewolf’s head in his lap, passively the back of the younger’s head soothingly. “He shifted fine.” The doctor said. “Now he just needs to shift back.”

Heechul nodded. He leaned down and whispered into the wolf’s ear. “It’s time for your human to come back to the world. He’s needed.”

The sigh that came from the wolf huffed over Heechul’s face lightly as the body relaxed. The first return from a shift would be painful but not as long as the initial shifting took. They only had to wait a few minutes before Donghae’s body was laying there, sweat glistening off his chest from the exertion the body had been put through. “Well, the cut healed nicely.” Heechul mentioned, grinning up at Yesung, who’d started repairing the damage done to the wedding garment.

The doctor fussed over Donghae even more after he’d changed back to human form. Heechul waited patiently, telling Chocoball to inform Seungri and Victoria that Donghae had fully shifted and they were just waiting for him to wake up.

“He’s clean.” The doctor announced, putting a piece of cloth over Donghae’s ness. He then pinched a sensitive spot on Donghae’s chest, causing the young man to gasp while sitting straight up, eyes wide and hands flying up to protect himself.