Jinki’s head snapped up as he heard Minho’s voice in his head, tinted in Caleo’s easygoing but acerbic accent. His eyes fluttered as he received Minho’s last minute, hasty and stupid plan, the details appearing in his mind within seconds.

Think you can do it? Minho asked.

Jinki felt a sickness in his stomach, heavy like rock, but he nodded his head anyways.

It’ll work. Trust me. You’ve done this before. You can do it again.

Jinki had no doubt it would work but could he stomach the sight? Inhaling deeply, he realized he had no choice.

The air around them was electric, filled with tension and the anticipation of spilled blood. Jinki shifted his gaze to the man arguing with his father–Brea. He could see the strain in Xiah’s face. He could see his desire to rip the man apart, but he also understood his hesitation to do so. He didn’t know how these people tittering on the cusp of a mob would react. Yes, Xiah was Alpha but that did not mean he had absolute power over his people, no Alpha did. They were leaders not rulers. He could command and command for them to lower their swords–it didn’t mean they would.

Minho began a countdown, the numbers ticking off in Jinki’s mind. His jaw clenched and he stilled himself for the flurry of moment. He funneled Caleo’s power to his legs and Onew inched his way closer to Minho. A small ampoule slipped out of Minho’s hand and time slowed as it fell lower and lower and smashing into the ground. A red mist rose from the bits of glass and oil, surrounding the four of them and obscuring them from view.

Go!

The moment they were out of view Jinki sprang into action. Literally, He grabbed onto Minho and jumped as hard and high as he could, clearing the marketplace, the tables, the shops in a cloud of dust and red. The angle of Jinki’s jump put them over the walls of Durkhai and into the open fields and out of sight.

It’s going to work.

Later…

Jinki stood at the gates of Prae, the body in his arms, heavy. He heaved it closer to him, his bottom lip trembling as he fought back tears. He felt like he was going to vomit, the bottom of his stomach lurching but he inhaled and fought the feeling down. He continued walking. One step. Another. Another. Keep going. Don’t stop. The air was still tinted red but most of the spell had dissipated. The mob who looked on the verge of storming the gate and hunting Minho down stopped. There were armed villagers on each side of him, some bewildered, some with the anger draining from their face, some shocked at the scene. There was a woman, who stood at the lip of her shop and openly wept.

As he drew closer to the center of the mob, members of it turned around.

“Get out of my way!” he heard a voice, the sound coming closer as she shouldered her way through the crowd. Danye immerged from the throng of people, an array of emotions lashing over her face. They consolidated into shock and grief. Her hand came to .

“Wh–what’s wrong with him.” She closed the distance between them, staring down at the figure clutched in Jinki’s hands. “What’s wrong with him, Jinki?” she repeated, her entire body shaking.

“He’s…” Jinki tried.

Danye ignored him. “Wake up, Minho,” she urged. She grabbed his face. “He’s cold,” she murmured. “Why is he cold?” The look behind Danye’s gaze was so wild in disbelief and shock and Jinki tried to open his mouth to answer her but he couldn’t, he couldn’t open his mouth and say the words.

Your son is dead.

“He’s…” tried again, the words getting stuck under the lump in his throat.

“Give him to me,” she demanded. She put her hand under his knees and around his neck and tried to lift him up. Jinki wouldn’t let her.

“Danye, I can’t–“

“GIVE ME MY CHILD, YOU SON OF A !” she riposted, glaring up at him, red bleeding into her eyes. “You were supposed to protect him! With your life! He almost died trying to bring you back from the brink of death and you let this happen to him?”

Jinki ignored how her accusations stung. “Danye, please let me take him somewhere, away from these eyes. Please…”

“No!” she screamed, hysterically. “No! No! You don’t have the right to touch him, to hold him, to honor him anymore! You don’t have the right!” In her hysterics, she began to hyperventilate, her chest heaving with effort. Her eyes began to swim around in her head and she tipped backwards. Iseul rushed to her best friend’s side and caught her before she collapsed. One of the Black Flames, Junghee, came to her side to help, bringing the Toleran Alpha to a table. There was a look of guilt on her face as if she’s failed her job–a job she didn’t she had but a job she should have upheld.

Xiah approached, the look on his face was nothing short of utterly confused and helpless. “What…what happened?” he said, his gaze dropping to Minho’s cold lifeless form. “You were gone for…minutes! Less than an hour. I know I counted! What…could have possibly happened?”

Jinki turned towards the crowd, his hold on Minho’s form so tight, his knuckles turned white. “This is what your blind rage brought. The death of a shifter who would have given his life for each and every one of you. A shifter who would have bled for you, who would have fought for you, thrown everything away for you. Yet here he is. Dead.”

“B–but…he deserved it,” Brea uttered quietly. His words were hard but his voice was soft and unsure. “Right? He lied…he lied to you. To us! He…he deserved it.” He looked at Thunder, whose jaw was clenched, for support then to Gikwang, who had led the rallying cry for death but who now looked visibly ill at the sight.

“Maybe,” Jinki whispered, broken. “But I didn’t care. He made me happy, he made me a better leader, he made Prae a better Prae. He was going to help us win this war. It was prophesized. Yet, instead of having this thing, this one small, insignificant thing, that meant nothing in comparison to how amazing he was, tear Prae apart, divert its attention from something so much bigger and more lethal…he decided to end his own life. I found him…” Jinki broke off with a sob. Danye’s wail of grief was louder, guttural. Kibum’s grief was lost in the folds of Jonghyun’s robe.

“Xiah, may I please have permission to take my mate inside?”

“Yes…of course, of course.” He moved to the side. “Make way! Clear a path! Taecyeon! Junho! Help him! Changsun and Wooyoung, help clear the way. If any shifter tries to block them, snap their necks,” Xiah promised.

Jinki began the slow agonizing trip but paused at his father’s side. “Please, when she is ready, bring Danye to Minho and our bedroom. I’m sure she would like a moment alone with him.”

“Yes, Jinki…of course.”

Danye was a shifter from Toleran, the mate of a Wheph Alpha, and the mother of the Alpha Beta of Prae. She had to be flexible in her observance of customs. In Toleran, your body is burned and your ashes are honored. Dust to dust. In Wheph, people were laid to rest under a sea of flowers.

In Durkhai there was no true funeral. Family members and close friends were allowed, one by one, to pay their respects but the grieving period was short–extended grieving was seen as weak–before the village Elders arranged to have the body taken away. Danye wanted to take him home to Wheph, to his home, to be buried beside his father and sister. Minho was of Wheph, he should be buried in Wheph. Yet, his mate, his Alpha, was of Durkhai and there he would be laid to rest. She’d heard a saying once.

Traditions curved the boulder.

This was a tradition she would have to follow. It didn’t matter. He was gone. Did it matter where he was buried? 

Danye pushed the door open slowly, listening to how the steady creaking sounded so incredibly loud in her ears. The room was dark with only a single candle on a nightstand keeping absolute darkness away. She approached the bed, gazing at the white bundle at the center of the bed. They had wrapped his body in white cloth. Her thoughts flew to a time when both her children were alive, when Minjung, scared for her brother, clutched a white bundle to her chest. To think, that no matter what they tried to do to protect him, that he would still end up like this, broke Danye into pieces.

She cried herself dry and now it was the time to be brave for her son. She had to tell him goodbye with honor and composure. She reached the bed and hovered over his body. “I had so much to teach you. So much I wanted you to learn. So much I wanted to show you and now…”

Delicately, although her fingers trembled, she lowered her hand to touch the foot of the bundle. As her fingers grazed the white bandages, the corpse collapsed until it was nothing but flat white strips of fabric lying on the surface of the bed.

Danye stumbled back in horror, parted to scream when a hand clamped down over . Instinctively, she threw her elbow back into the ribs of her attacker, then put a foot to their torso and pushed them off. She jumped to the other side of the bed and slid her dagger out of its sheath brandishing it with deadly intent.

The attacker groaned a chuckle before they crawled across the floor the nightstand to grab the candle. When they held it to their face, Danye inhaled so deeply she thought she was going to choke.

The dagger fell from her hands. “M–Minho?”

He shook his head. “No, not Minho.”

Danye took a moment to digest the figure in front of her. He had Minho’s face and physique but that was about it. The Wheph triskelion etched on his forehead in bright gold gave her the answer she needed.

“Caleo?”

The wolf grinned and nodded his head.

“Impossible! Impossible,” she said quietly, her voice dark and disbelieving. “How are you here? How are you here when my son is dead?” she looked around frantically. “Where is he?”

“About a mile away at the grotto.” Her head snapped towards the door. Another figure appeared, holding a candle. He used the candle to light the lanterns along the wall. “He’s waiting,” Jinki said, a calm he couldn’t possibly feel coloring his tone.

“W–what? You…you said he was dead!” she cried. “You said that he took his own life. I saw his body!”

“He’s not dead, Danye. The body you held was Caleo’s under the guise of a cheap glamour spell. Minho said you taught him the words.”

The memory was fresh in her mind. “It’s how Iseul changed her looks in hiding. Never know if it’ll come in handy one day. The cast word is skønhed.”

“He’s alive?” she asked, her voice rough with a flourish of emotions–anger was one of them. She rounded the bed and approached him, sinking her hands deep into his shirt, yanking him towards her roughly. “Why…why did you let me think he was dead? Why would you put me through something like?” she snarled.

He placed his hands over hers. His face was contrite and heavy with guilt. “I’m so sorry, Danye. It needed to feel real, to look real to the villagers. It was Minho’s idea and I honored it. He convinced me and it broke my heart. To see his body…lifeless like that. . He thought it was the only way to keep the villagers from hunting him down, from demanding that I do more, see him prosecuted. Seeing how fast the first rumor spread, he knew this one would spread just as quickly.”

She was angry, at both her son and his mate but…

“When can I see him?” she practically begged.

“Soon,” Jinki answered, his voice calm and for this first time Danye truly saw the leader in him. Not the one who gave stern commands, not the skilled warrior, not the orator who could move a crowd with his voice. No, the one who made the decisions that saved others, saved Prae. “I’m sending you all away. Away from Prae. I need to set up a secondary seat of government for Minho and he will need people. You, of course, are one of these people.”

Danye nodded, still trying to take all of it in.

“You are one of the only people I trust him with. I know you will help us make this work.”

“Of course.” She smiled, although it was small and watery. “I am his mother after all.”

Earlier…

The moment they were out of view Jinki sprang into action. Literally, He grabbed onto Minho and jumped as hard and high as he could, clearing the marketplace, the tables, the shops in a cloud of dust and red. The angle of Jinki’s jump put them over the walls of Durkhai and into the open fields and out of sight.

It’s going to work, Jinki. Trust me.

They landed roughly on the ground, Onew positioning himself to cushion Minho’s fall. Jinki rushed to pick him up from the ground. He took a moment to check him over for injuries, for anything broken. Finding none, he removed the heavy embroidered robe he’d worn to dinner and draped it over Minho’s shoulders.

“Do you really think this is the only way?”

Minho nodded. “I remember something Elder Changmin said and it didn’t make sense until I felt the villager’s anger, saw them fall into madness. He said Prae may seem like the entire world, but it isn’t. Prae law doesn’t exist outside of Prae. It’s my own people calling for my death, Prae, itself are calling for it. I can’t stay here.”

Jinki flinched at the truth. “If you can’t stay, neither can I. We can both go. Jonghyun is capable…”

Minho smiled, sadly, trying desperately to blink away the tears that came to his eyes. “He is, but you…you are prophesized to lead.”

“So are you!”  Jinki cried out, frustrated.

“I can’t lead if I ‘m gone from this world. It’s not forever. I can find the answer to this, find the solution. I can. I have to,” he said, his voice breaking. “I have to come back to you, to lead by your side. I can’t do that if you leave, too. Prae needs you more than I do. ”

“I don’t care,” Jinki whimpered pitifully. “I was fine when I was able to get to you but…I can’t leave Prae. I can’t come to you!”

“Think of it this way.” Minho wiped away his tears and stood up straighter. “We get through this, we can get through anything.”

“Haven’t we been through enough,” he said, quietly, his grief mounting.

“We’ve been through a lot, but it is the Gods who will tell us when it has been enough”

“Will you miss me?” Jinki said, trying to force the pathetic quality out of his voice but failing. 

“Every day,” Minho answered, his voice trembling with emotion. “Every single second I am apart from you, I am going to miss you. I wish there was another way but…” Minho looked up at the moon for a long quiet moment. “Come on, we need to put this into action before the mist dissipates and they come looking for us. It takes a moment for me to get some of these spells right.”

Jinki hummed his agreement but didn’t move. He watched as the moon cloaked Minho in a wash of light. He looked ethereal, magical, majestic and powerful.

The silence stretched long before them. Jinki was trying to control himself. The desire to snatch him up and run away was unbelievably strong.

“Jinki,” Minho said, his face still angled towards the moon.

“Yes?”

“Are you mine?”

Jinki answered him by clearing the space between them in an instant and pulled Minho into him. His fingers fell into his soft locks as he brought him down for a soul searing kiss. They began to glow, the power of their respective wolves, responding to the bond between the Alpha Prime and the Alpha Beta of Prae.

Their union was prophesized. This was meant to be. They were meant to be.

Jinki pulled back and stared up at his mate’s eyes, tinted orange, purple reflecting in them. “I am yours…forever.”

Minho finally smiled. “Good.”