Time had passed. We managed to get by halfway through summer and nothing terribly significant or horrible happened to either of us. It didn’t take long for me to get used to Sehun being physically intimate with me because I immediately loved all the affection he showed. I discovered this newfound love when I had my first ever “lazy day” as Sehun liked to call them.

He said he wanted to culture me with all of the movies I had never seen before, meaning any movie that he suggested that I had never heard of. So we sat comfortably in each other’s arms the entire day, remaining idle as the movies went on and on. Sehun told me that he wanted to start teaching me how to be lazy, the only purpose being he wanted to have more of these kinds of days together in the future, and to cuddle.

In the time that had gone by, Sehun’s summer courses had started. While he would stay a few hours at school, I’d spend my time in the forest doing my thing and sticking with photography. I had found that it’d been a really long time since I had gone out by myself with my camera, Sehun had always been there as my companion to learn the trade.

Sehun and I would spend time together when he finished his classes for the day. Summer classes were always easy, just long hours back to back; yet he always found something to complain about.

There were many times that I would find myself in the company of Jongin, not being too surprising since the man was Sehun’s best friend. Though I expected that Jongin was the only friend I’d be officially introduced to, Sehun had invited Baekhyun over many times as well. In all honesty, Baekhyun was quite the unusual friend for Sehun. He was just…a bit too squirrely for my taste.

Baekhyun was a few years older than us, and had not been part of my torment during the bullying days. Although our personalities may have been completely opposite from each other, there was an appreciation I had towards him for being friendly to me without having any kind of prejudgment towards me; there was no pity that I felt from him.

There was, however, an annoyance felt from me. Jongin knew there was…something going on between Sehun and I, though still undefined by official terms. Baekhyun did not know but he had a very strong inkling that there was. Sehun and I not technically being official aided to Baekhyun’s pestering.

I was able to confide in Jongin about this problem and he told me that I should bring it up to Sehun. Every time Baekhyun would say something about the closeness between me and my mate, Jongin would say talk to Sehun. Talk to Sehun, talk to Sehun, talk to Sehun. I knew that Jongin was encouraging me to do that because he liked the idea of us being officially together, but for some reason I was scared to do so.

I was scared that if things became that real, it wouldn’t last long. The ever growing fear that nothing good lasted in my life was still firmly planted in my mind, and preventing me from talking to Sehun about the title of our relationship. Along with this paranoia came another set of fears.

Not only was I worried about the good lasting, but also the bad as well. Sera had dropped off the map. I hadn’t heard about or seen her in all this time and although nothing bad had happened, part of me felt like something was going to happen. I had a strong suspicion even when there was no kind of proof she had done anything worse.

It was crowded at Sehun’s apartment today. Jongin and Baekhyun were here, hounding Sehun about the lack of food in his refrigerator. He completely ignored them and made himself comfortable right next to me on the couch. Sehun had a knowing look on his face before his hand rubbed up and down my thigh. Jongin had side-eyed us and looked back at Baekhyun, oblivious to everything.

“So how are classes going?” Jongin asked Sehun about each and every class, knowing every single class that Sehun was taking.

All Sehun did was shrug. “They’re fine.”

One by one, Jongin mentioned each class, and Sehun repeated the same thing over and over again. They were fine.

Baekhyun sat down on the couch after failed attempts to raid the food in Sehun’s apartment. “What about that one, uh, the PR class?”

Sehun’s hand immediately came off my thigh, his neck slightly twitched and from my peripheral vision I watched Jongin’s eyes go wild and wide. There was some kind of negative reaction going on from Sehun that even I didn’t know about. Clearly Jongin knew that something was wrong with this class, which started to make me doubt whether or not Sehun trusted me with problems that he had.

A vein popped out of the side of Sehun’s neck as he tried to calmly reply that class was fine too. But I’m almost positive that no one in the room believed it. He refused to say anything more and got up to leave the room, using an excuse like he needed to use the restroom.

I quickly looked over at Jongin, expecting him to fill me in but the man simply shook his head. Now I had a reason to be worried. It wasn’t that Jongin wouldn’t tell me, but he couldn’t. That alone terrified me the most.

Sehun didn’t come back immediately. He went to the kitchen claiming there were dishes needing to be washed. He said there was a load of laundry he needed to tend to. Sehun made so many distractions for himself that his friends ended up having to leave for other business, leaving me to continue to watch Sehun avoid talking about school.

He left his phone facing up on the coffee table. I wouldn’t have taken much notice to it at first, but an anonymous number lit up his screen with a text message. I was able to use my keen eyesight to an advantage, though some could have said this was snooping. I couldn’t care less to what others say because a single text message from an anonymous person confirmed that I should be very worried about what was going on with Sehun.

I’m warning you, Sehun. Someone will die.

My stomach dropped and twisted into tight unbearable knots. This was more than Sehun not wanting to talk about a certain class. This was more than just a little problem with communication between the two of us.

Sehun was still in the kitchen cleaning up whatever mess he was talking about. My eyes were locked on his phone until the message went away and another thing popped up on his phone. The lock screen wallpaper. I was so tempted to pick up the phone and have a closer look, but that wouldn’t have changed what I knew I was looking at. It was a picture of me…an old picture of me.

By old, I meant all the way back when Sehun and I went to look for the rundown train station. I was bent down, crouching to take a picture of the tracks. I remembered taking that picture, but I didn’t remember anything about Sehun taking pictures of me. This was the right kind of distraction to take my mind off of what was really going on. I shook my head and ignored Sehun’s wallpaper.

“Sehun?” I called his attention hoping that it would pull him out of this fluster he had.

“Yeah? Something wrong?” He came back into the living room and sat across from me. The distance he suddenly put between us made me feel weird. I wanted him closer.

“Maybe…that depends.” I was hesitant in bringing up a topic like this, but chose to be blunt with him to avoid answers that he could easily dodge. I must have made it obvious that something was wrong because Sehun’s expression turned so serious. “Is…someone threatening you?”

He tried so hard to hide his shock, but there was tension in his neck and his shoulders that told me one thing. He was going to lie again. He snapped. “No.”

His aggressiveness didn’t just make me worry; it also made me feel sad. It made me feel like maybe we couldn’t work things through like any normal relationship. Maybe all we were was romantic interests…not a real couple.

I continued to stare at him with glazed eyes, and he broke eye contact avoiding me at all costs. He grabbed his phone, even when I didn’t mention it in the first place. He scrolled through it and must have found whatever anonymous text message was sent to him. Putting puzzle pieces together, there were probably only a handful of people in this town that Sehun could have pissed off, but my mind was set on one: his pissed ex.

I get the fact that this is something that makes Sehun and I so alike, and I get why he got so mad at me for not wanting to tell my brother about Sera in the first place. He, just like I, wanted to handle this situation on his own. I realized this became very unhealthy very quickly. Because he wanted to handle it on his own, he chose not to tell me anything and therefore not trusting me.

I wanted to keep asking him, but he was saved by the bell of his phone. He left the room, full aware that it wouldn’t do any good in preventing me from hearing the conversation. “Hey, why did you leave?”

I clearly heard Jongin on the other line, saying something having to work at his sister’s café. Sehun talked in hush tones the entire time, saying I was still here and he couldn’t talk for long. Jongin scolded him about not telling me certain things and put it out there without my permission that Sehun should talk to me about defining our relationship.

The conversation was short and Sehun returned back to the couch in no time. I felt uncomfortable, disappointed in how quickly we went downhill. “Hey, I’m gonna go.”

I stood up and he stood up with me. “Wait, why? It’s not even dark out yet.”

I shrugged. I didn’t want to get into this kind of problem when things were going well. I knew I disappointed him because our alone time had been limited today but it was more of his problem than it was mine.

“Hye…” He pulled me into a back hug and it was the first time I didn’t want to be in his arms, when he acted like nothing was wrong yet still wanted physical affection. That didn’t seem fair. “Let me walk you home.”

I gently pulled out of his arms and headed for the door. “No, that’s okay. You have a lot of homework right?”

His arms dropped limply to his sides in defeat, the emotions he exerted was desperation. He didn’t want me to go. Behind the desperation, I saw a fear in his eyes and I was having difficulties reading what kind of fear it was. It was simple, he had more than one fear in his mind. He didn’t want me to leave him, all the way to drastic measures like leave forever, he didn’t want me to be alone, also terrified of me being alone forever.

I badly wanted to stay with him, have more time alone with just him. But if I stayed it would leave me wanting to ask him what was going on until I got an answer, and I couldn’t push him into something he didn’t want to tell me.

I felt empty as I walked back to my house completely alone. It was even more difficult as I realized that I had absolutely no one to talk to about this. I had been able to confide in Jongin about the relationship between Sehun and I but this was completely different since Jongin didn’t know what I was, what Sera was, or who Sehun was to me. I couldn’t tell Woohyun or Myungsoo obviously, because they would blow the situation way out of proportions and as usual probably lock me in. I had no one; I was stuck. All I had was my own mind and that was a dangerous, doubtful place for me.

I stayed up late that night considering all my options and how each of them would unfold, had I chosen one. The only logical thing my mind was telling me to do was leave it alone. I didn’t want to be that one girl who kept tabs on her, for lack of any terms whatsoever, mate.

I didn’t hear anything from Sehun the next morning, and by the time I was wide awake and ready to conquer the day, I knew his summer classes had already started. I walked outside and straight to the forest, which should have been normal. As I made my way through, it felt like a heavy force was trying to pull me away, out of the forest. My own conscience told me to get out, get away from this place.

As I walked deeper into the woods I began to notice the lack of wildlife around me. It was way too quiet for my liking. The desolate air was just another indicator that something was off. I listened to that gut instinct and decided to leave the forest and its eerie atmosphere.

Although things may have left off awkward between us, I headed to Sehun’s apartment and decided to stay there. That same inner gut feeling told me to be with him no matter what, and inwardly I was panicking. Why was I worried that something would happen to him rather than to me? I was technically more in danger than him.

I opened up his apartment and closed the door behind me, immediately noting the big change to his apartment among all of the little changes. It caught the eye right as one would walk into his apartment, hanging on a wall next to the window overlooking the street. A big, blown up picture of a very family white wolf hung delicately on the wall in front of me, in a frame at all. He must have added it this morning.

I took a minute to take in the entire picture, stepping closer so I could see it. The picture was perfect, the light bounced off the white fur of my skin, he angled it so you could see my entire body. Aside from that, those little details weren’t really what I was paying attention to.

I wasn’t just looking at a picture in a frame, I was looking at myself. I never had any sort of appreciation for the way I looked in my wolf form, no better thanks to the parents that made me feel that way. Being here all alone in Sehun’s apartment, looking at nothing but a picture of myself, I thought there was nothing wrong with the picture or the wolf in it. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me.

The pounding on Sehun’s door pulled me out of the admiration I was stuck in for the past five minutes. It wasn’t just a plain, nothing of a knock on the door, it sounded frantic and so did the voice behind it. “In Hye, are you in there?!”

I ran to answer the door, uneasy at how strained Jongin’s voice sounded. He looked absolutely awful, dripping in seat, having very disheveled hair from running all the way over here.

“Thank God,” He made his way inside. “Something’s up with Sehun.”

I gulped back and followed him into the living room. “What do you mean, something’s up?”

He pushed back his sweaty hair and heaved a big breath. “I mean, like an emergency. He sent me a text saying to come here and call his brother.”

“Call Seyoung? But Sehun hates his brother.” By the looks of it, Jongin already knew the relationship between Sehun and his older brother, possibly knowing more than I did.

Jongin nodded, taking Sehun’s home phone and dialing a number. “Oh, I also saw him going into the forest. I thought he was with you but…he was with Sera. She looked different than normal.”

Normally, in a human type of situation I guess whoever was in my situation would have gotten jealous. Jealousy was the last emotion that I was feeling. It was like someone punched me in the stomach, ran a block of ice across my neck and down my spine, and put me in so much pain that I was on the verge of tears. My hands were shaking, it took any strength that I had left in my to even speak. “What do you mean…different than normal?”

He held the phone in midair and tilted his head, trying to process and describe how Sera looked. “I don’t know. Maybe I was just seeing things but it looked like her eyes were a different color.”

The panic in me was fully processed, a fully developed hysteria rather than just a panic. “Jongin, stay here. Call Seyoung if you want but don’t leave this apartment, understand?”

His eyes turned dark and serious, “You’re making it sound like something bad is going to happen.”

I left my bags on the floor and started walking to the door. “Just stay here.”

I closed the door to Sehun’s apartment and started running down the stairs and outside. Once I made it to the edge of the forest, I took a deep breath through my nose to try and pick up either of their scents. My ears were focused on every single noise down to the leaves rustling above me. All I could hear was the heavy inhaling and exhaling of my own breath. Focus, In Hye, focus.

I was finally able to lock in on a foul, disgustingly sweet scent, immediately recognizing that it was Sera’s. My feet made quick movements, running as fast as they could possibly take me, as I was able to take in Sehun’s scent with hers. She had to have done something to him in order for him to follow her this deep into the forest. What began to worry me, as I knew I was getting closer to them was I didn’t hear anything. Neither of them were talking.

I found both of them standing near each other, but just standing. Sehun looked as if he were in a zombie like trance, easy to distinguish that he wasn’t in his right mind. But as soon as Sera realized that I was here, he was pulled out of this hypnosis and locked his terrified eyes on me and screamed my name as loud as he could.

Sera turned around, her glowing eyes locked on me barely a second. A blood-curdling scream passed my lips, bouncing off every single leaf, blade of grass, every inch of the forest. Everything unfolded before my eyes in agonizing slow motion, the way Sehun doubled over, eyes rolling back into his head as Sera reached out with sharpened claws. Vampires claws were sharper than knives, easy to puncture to kill, as it seemed was Sera’s only goal in bringing Sehun out here.

Her claws came out of Sehun’s stomach, stained with red. She pushed his weakened body over. This wasn’t at all about him. It was about me. The break up may have been Sehun’s wish, and she fatally hurt him, but the reason he broke up with her was because of me. This was to hurt me.

It was the protective nature that came over my entire being as the scent of Sehun’s blood filled my now enraged veins. I lost all sense of control the moment the man I was in love with was fatally injured, lying on the ground gasping for air.

I felt myself do something I wish I hadn’t, but at the same time something that I wanted to do more than anything because of her. The clothes on me seeped into my skin as fur took its place, I was bent down on all fours before I pent up all the strength in me into a pounce that force her to the ground.

I had her under me, barred teeth and all, and she had the nerve to taunt a woman in love. “What’s the matter, ?”

I paid no attention to the words she dared utter out of . I refused to let it another one of her actions get to me. She would regret the last words she ever spoke on earth. My razor sharp teeth had absolutely no hesitation ripping out and tearing it to shreds. The blood spewed out of her open neck like a water hose, and the blurry mess that it made almost blocked my vision, almost making me forget how her head just…rolled off.

I sat there. The deafening silence wasn’t enough for me. I needed to hear something, I needed to try and breathe. I needed to take. it. back. But death…was permanent, and the death of the vampire Kwon Sera was my doing. I killed her.

I slowly changed back into my human form, blood still dripping from my lips. I heard Sehun, only feet away from me, gasping and fighting for air. I ran over to him instantly and pulled his back against my chest.

“Sehun!” I shook, his eyes hooded. The tears were coming out of my eyes as well as his. His hand was pressed against the bleeding out wound in his abdomen, wincing in the pain. His breath was ragged. I could tell he was trying to hang on to everything to stay awake. I was begging him to stay awake, hysterically crying my eyes out as I helped him suppress the bleeding.

His voice strained, thickly lined with blood. “Shh….don’t talk Sehun.” I pleaded for him to save his energy, my voice barely able to speak out of the strain in my emotions. He would heal. He has to heal.

Sehun went completely limp, not moving, not breathing. Through the strain in my voice, I shook him and called out his name, God knows how many times I prayed that he just passed out. I pressed my ear against his chest and felt a faint, very very faint, heartbeat.

I cried, I wept into his shoulder begging for him to wake up. Sehun could die because of me, because I wanted to keep getting closer to him and trust him with every part of me. He was going to die because I loved him.

A pair of footsteps quickly approached the two of us; I looked up to see my brother and my cousin who must have heard me scream.

Woohyun dared to look at the bloody mess of the dead vampire. He looked at me in shock. “What…what did you do?!”

The tears wouldn’t stop falling. The blood was seeping through Sehun’s shirt, pooling through both of our hands. At this point it was running down my hand and dripping onto the ground. “Help me…” I bawled. My voice was hoarse, and I could barely get a sound out. “Please, Woohyun! Help me…”

He looked down at Sehun’s wound, so did Myungsoo. The hope in Woohyun’s eyes left. It was like he was telling me there was nothing to be done at this point, without even saying it.

I choked. “O-oh, God…” My hands moved to cup Sehun’s face, his eyes barely able to stay open. “Sehun?” It was useless, no matter how much I called him, a part of me was terrified I'd never be able to look into his eyes ever again. 

“Change him.” My head shot up to Woohyun, who was dead set on what he just said. “Change him. Make him like us.”

He meant mark him. Turn him into the very creature Sehun didn’t even know existed until a few months ago. “I-I can’t-“

“In Hye, he’ll live!” He shouted, determined to get me to make Sehun like us. The mere shouting was to get me to see it was the only way Sehun would wake up with a wound like this. He had already lost too much blood to make it to the hospital alive. The wound was deep, even with my own powers I couldn’t easily save him.

I was hesitating, with each particle in me I madly shook until sharpened teeth formed in my own mouth. I gasped for air, looking at the man in my arms that looked nothing more than harmlessly asleep. I lowered myself closer to the nape of his neck, letting my hot breaths hit his skin just before the teeth sank into the soft flesh.

Yeah....please don't kill me!!

I'm literally leaving for the mountains tomorrow for my job!! Meaning...I honestly have no idea how much free time I will have or anything like that. I'm not even sure if I'll have wi-fi O_O That being said, if the next chapter doesn't come out for a really long time then you'll know why! I HATE to leave things here, but I wanted to crank out this chapter in case I wasn't able to get another one sooner :((