Eunkyung felt like she was going insane. She was living in a house of 7 boys she barely knew who all believe in stupid wives tales about werewolves. There wasn’t a minute where she didn’t look around the house and see wolf pelts or someone polishing a weapon they claimed killed wolves. The whole world seemed backwards inside the house of these teenage boys who spoke like their ‘duty’ to kill werewolves put the weight of the world on their shoulders.

It was awful.

They wouldn't let her leave their sight for longer than a few minutes because she could, “be a target now that the wolfs knew that she had a relationship with the hunters.”

As a result, She had spent a week with at the clan’s house. The only time she left was to go to school with Jungkook and even then he walked her to all of her classes. She was practically their prisoner and there was only so much more she could take before she snapped. 

***

Jungkook knocked on her door, waited a moment, and let himself in her room when she said nothing. Eunkyung looked up from the book she had been reading to glared at him. 

“You know,” She started as she placed a bookmark in between the pages and shut it. “It’s rude to enter someone’s room without their permission. It’s an invasion of their privacy.”

“But you wouldn’t have let me in.” Jungkook looked down at the floor awkwardly. “And I wanted to talk to you.” 

“And?” She prompted but Jungkook just gave her an empty look of confusion. Huffing in irritation, she continued with what should be obvious. “Does wanting to talk to me give you the right to just enter my room?”

Jungkook looked visibly uncomfortable. He shifted from side to side before opening his mouth, closing it, opening it again before closing it and looking down at the ground in shame.

“Honestly, Jungkook,” Eunkyung stood up. “That’s what’s so infuriating about you! You don’t consider me at all.You do what you want and think is right.”

Jungkook started to defend himself but Eunkyung cut him off and continued to rant, her patience finally gone.

“You come to my house to study and attack an animal on my land without considering that I might now mind having wild animals on my land in the forest. You drag me away from my home and force me to stay with you even though I’m obviously unhappy about it. You keep talking about killing things even though I have made it very clear that I don’t want to hear it at all. I’ve been very patent with you this whole time because I figured at some point you had to let up and respect my opinions and wishes but you obviously are to blinded by yourself to see me.

“What’s more is,” Everything that has been bothering her the entire time she’s know Jungkook comes tumbling and she refuses to let up. “You seem so dead set on making the werewolves out to be your enemy but you’ve never once considered anything from their point of view. If they do exist, wouldn’t it be horrible to turn into a wolf every month? Isn’t that painful? And they’re an entire species. You can’t make them all out to be bad. There are bad humans and good humans. Just because you see the bad horrible things they have done doesn’t mean you know they haven’t done anything good.”

“… Didn’t you agree to come here if i didn’t hunt anything on your land?”

That was the wrong thing for Jungkook to say.

Eunkyung snapped.

She shoved Jungkook out of her room and slammed the door behind her. Stomping as she went, she grabbed all her stuff, shoved it in her duffle bag, and zipped it shut with finality.

She swung the door to the guest room open and Jungkook stood there. Eunkyung looked at him for a moment with her jaw set and eyes furrowed before stalking past him without a word. 

Jungkook turned after her. “Eunkyung. Wait.”

She stopped, only for a moment, and spoke over her shoulder. “I’m going home. Do not follow me.”

***

Storming out of the werewolf hunters’ house might not have been one of the more smart or rational things Eunkyung has ever done, but it was certainly liberating. After loosing her cool and probably her weird friendship with Jungkook and the rest of the hunters, she was truly alone for the first time in what felt like years.

And while Eunkyung was god knows where and how far from her home, she couldn’t find it in herself to be worried. As the wind blew, making the trees sway graceful to create it’s part in the melody of the forest, she wandered down the trail at the shoulder of the road. The forest was a lust green from the recent rain and if Eunkyung tread softly enough, she could sometimes hear the scampering of animals running through brush as they searched for food.

Growing up, this had been Eunkyung favorite thing about the forest. There was a protective solitude that came with the tall trees and the thick plant life, but the forest it’s self had a presence. It wraps it’s motherly arms around everyone who enters it and looks after you as you explore it’s depths. The animals were your kin and played hide and seek with you in the brush. When you lived in a forest, you were never truly alone and Eunkyung especially, appreciated this in her lonely time of morning after her mother’s death.

The babbling of a creek caught Eunkyung’s attention and she left the man made path to follow the animal’s smaller one to the source of water. Just past some rocks and bushes, it s through the wilderness and added to the forest’s song with it’s merriment. A leaf floated across it gracefully and Eunkyung watched it until it vanished around the bend. 

There was a small clump of rocks, just the right size to sit on, a small way off the path. Eunkyung carefully stepped over to them and settled onto one with the smaller amount of wet moss.

She let out a content sigh. The only thing that would make thing better was if her wolf was here to keep her company.

Eunkyung furrowed her brow when she had that thought.

Her wolf.

Even without Jungkook saying anything, it had occurred to her how odd the whole thing was. Wolves were wild animals. They lived in a dog eat dog world and yet this one had taken a liking to her. He wasn’t afraid of her when she first treated his wounds and it liked to cuddle with her like she was a member of it’s pack. It even found her when she was visiting her mother’s grave and seemed to bow to pay his respects to her.

It had only taken a week or so for him to heal up from the bullet wound. Didn’t that normally take months?

Eunkyung rubbed her arms nervously.

Even if she didn’t like it, Jungkook did have a point. Her wolf seemed to have some very human traits and was definitely smarter than most animals.

But if Jungkook was right and the wolf was a werewolf, then why wasn’t it at all aggressive like he seemed to believe they were? He was suppose to be the expert on this, right? But then again, Eunkyung did believe what she thought when she challenged him with not all werewolves were evil.

But then again, even entertaining such notion was just silly. A fictional creature could not actually exist, right? Her wolf was probably just more empathetic than most wolves. Dogs were able tell how humans were feeling, why shouldn’t wolves, their close cousin, do the same?

Eunkyung was thinking so intensely, she didn’t notice at first a cottage materialize just between the two trees she staring at vaguely.

But the cottage noticed her.

Coming from the smoking chimney, the scent of freshly braked chocolate cookies drifted over to her. It swirled around her delicately until her stomach growled and she realized she hadn’t eaten since that morning. She gnawed on her lip nervously, debating between her hunger and etiquette. It would be rude for her to walk up the a stranger’s cottage and ask for food. But the scent of cookies and the sound of her stomach grew louder and she couldn’t ignore it anymore.

Eunkyung jumped across stones in the creek to get to the other side and ran through the small clearing on the other side to the porch of the small cottage. As if sending her presence, there was a small gust of wind that blew the front door open to welcome her in.

There was something in the back of Eunkyung’s mind, telling her that it was a bad idea to go into a stranger’s cottage. But the cottage was persuasive and she ignored her consciousness for the scent of the cookies.

The small cottage was cute and homely, though very unique. There were herbs hanging to dry everywhere and exotic potted plants and scrolls and thick texts covering every available surface. The hat rack by the front door had hats and shawls and necklaces with symbolic pendents that Eunkyung didn’t know the meaning of.

But she ignored all of this and walked straight to the kitchen, follow the scent of the cookies. The various thick rugs covering the rickety old wooden floor muffled the sound of Eunkyung’s steps and the person in the kitchen didn’t turn around when she crossed the threshold.

The person turned around to quickly grab a bottle off the table and turned right back around to continue what she was doing. Eunkyung walked closer to her cautiously and looked over her shoulder to watch her work.

The girl was young, around Eunkyung’s age if not younger, and her jet black hair was woven into two braids. She wore a look of intense concentration as she carefully ladled out the strange mixture in her pot into the labeled vile she had just grabbed. After putting a cork on the vile, she set it aside and turned her attention back to the brew. 

The girl picked up the large pot with a grunt and carried it over to a drain in the corner of her kitchen. She tipped the pot over and dumped the leftovers down the drain. From a jar sitting beside the drain, she took a pitch of herbs ground up together and sprinkled them across the drain while utter an incantation. The potion lets out a faint hiss and the drain glows as if there is a fire in it’s depths. Then she chased the herbs down with a bucket of water to purify the drain and the herbs washed away with any residual magic so there won’t be any contamination.

After the process seems to be done, Eunkyung opens to speak but the girl shush her and picks up the vile with the potion in it. The girl turns around and gestures for Eunkyung to follow her. They wind through the house until they leave through the back door and walk into the girl’s garden.

The garden, from afar, looks overgrown and wild with crazy plants that seemed to have no rhyme or reason. But up close it was actually carefully organized. The mushrooms grew under large bushes with small canopies that protected them from too much light. Flowers that attracted bees were front and center to bring the sweet little bugs out. Herbs were organized and planted based on the size of leaves.Vines of all varieties grew on wooden carvings of peaceful looking woman reading books or viewing crystal balls. 

But in the corner of the garden was a sad wilted sunflower that looked down at the ground.

The girl walked purposely over to it, uncorking the vile as she went. Eunkyung followed her and watched as she emptied the vile’s contents into the soil at the sunflower’s roots. 

For a moment nothing happened.

But then the sunflower seemed to brighten and looked toward the sun again, it’s petals once again a warm, healthy yellow.

The girl let out a sigh of relief and tension in her body that Eunkyung hadn’t noticed melted away. After spending a moment watching the flower, just to make sure it was alright, the girl stood up and brushed off the soil from her skirt.

“Oh Eunkyung,” She smiled as she finally spoke. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

A/N: Today's the 1 year anniversary since I made this account! *sets off a cracker* Because of that I pushed really hard to get this chapter out today! 

Also!!!! I'm super excited to introduce a very important charcter who I've been dying to write forever!!

I won't reveal her name yet, but you'll find out all about her next chapter. She's a super interesting charcter and I'm really proud of her so I hope you all like her as much I do!

Thank you so much for being such lovely and patient readers! I'll see you all again soon!