You realize in the middle of the way to your mom that she’s not alone. That there’s Eun, Taemin, Heejin and Minjoon with her, as well. You realize that Mabeob took them all, and that they might die today, and the thought makes you...

Incredibly angry.

You’re literally boiling with anger by the time you get to your destination, after having led Kai through the streets and through the forest. You’re the first one there, but you can feel other members of the pack approaching; for Suho, it’s easy to find Heejin just by following his werewolf senses. Same goes to Chanyeol and Eun. If they lead the rest, they’ll quickly find you and Kai.

You see people in front of you in the middle of the forest. The trees here are sparse, but it’d still be hard to engage in hand-to-hand combat, and easy to destroy a big part of it by using magic. They chose the spot well – it doesn’t give you much space to battle them.

The first person you see is Saburo. Behind him stand eight more. Six of them are holding someone else, and you quickly look at each one – your mom, Eun, Taemin, Seon, Heejin, and Minjoon.

They’re all trapped in death grips by people you don’t know, men and women, girls and boys.

There’s a little boy among them, too. He’s holding Minjoon’s hand. Minjoon’s veins are sticking out on every patch of his skin, and he’s incredibly pale and frozen in place.

You jump off Kai’s back. Kai lowers his head, his eyes completely red, and his fur ruffled; he looks like he’s about to pounce, and when he lets out a growl, you can see a few of Saburo’s people actually flinch.

“Hello,” Saburo greets, smiling kindly at you. He’s wearing a suit again.

“Protecting yourself with pawns again?” you ask, your voice similar to a hiss. Your fists are clenched, magic gathering around and inside them without your consent. You know that you can’t do anything, not when all your friends are being held.

The fear that comes with the thought of losing them is gut-wrenching.

“I told you what would happen,” Saburo says, sounding very rational. He’s serious now, his smile gone. He doesn’t take his eyes off of you. “I told you: either you join us, or your friends will die. We don’t care about humans. We don’t care whether or not they die.”

You look at your friends. Your mom looks a bit out of it. A woman with blue-ish skin is holding her, her long nails piercing your mom’s skin on her neck and forearm, and there’re thin puffs of smoke surrounding them both. The woman holding your mom must be a Djinn, and she’s making her fall asleep, slowly but surely. Your mom is probably only still up because of adrenaline in her system.

Next to the Djinn a young girl is holding Taemin. She has her claws extended, one of them touching Taemin’s neck. There’s blood trickling down his white t-shirt. When you look at her, her eyes flash blue.

A beta wolf, then.

Next to her, that little boy is holding Minjoon. He looks normal except for his completely white eyes. He has no irises and no pupils. Seeing as Minjoon is paralyzed, you take a wild guess and assume that the boy is a ghoul.

An older man is holding Eun. You guess right away that it’s a wraith, but it’s not that hard to deduct – there’s a spike sticking out of his wrist, hovering next to Eun’s neck. Eun is shaking, her lips are pursued, and she tries very hard to look like she’s not scared. She does look like she’s about to throw an angry fit, that much you can give her.

Seon is held by a man, too. He looks middle-aged, but is impossibly huge. Might be some sort of an animal chimera, even, seeing as his face looks very animal-like. Even his skin is slightly yellow. He reminds you of a lion. Next to him, Seon looks like a stick. She’s not moving, and she doesn’t show any signs of fear whatsoever. You wonder if she actually is scared.

And at the end of the row stands Heejin. She’s held by a guy who’s probably around your age, and who looks absolutely psychopathic. He’s smiling at you like a shark, and he seems to enjoy causing Heejin pain; he keeps on clenching his fingers tighter and tighter around her neck, and his mouth is dangerously close to Heejin’s ear. You can feel disgust just looking at it, so you can’t even imagine what Heejin might feel right now. The guy looks very normal. There’s no sign of magic on him. Maybe he’s just crazy and dangerous, then.

There’s two more people in that row, who stand on each side of the line. They look normal, but you guess that they’re werewolves. One of them looks like a twin sister of the girl who’s holding Taemin; that’d make her a werewolf for sure. The other girl looks confident and composed, but there’s a smirk playing on her lips, and her eyes don’t leave Kai’s wolf form.

She must be the alpha, then.

“I’ll repeat my offer for you, then,” Saburo continues. He looks very serious, like you’re indeed making business. “If you join us, we’ll let them live. We can’t promise not to hurt them, though.”

You sneer at that, looking murderous. Your magic vibrates around you, and Saburo feels scared for a short moment, especially when he sees your tattoos glowing. You’re wearing a black t-shirt, combat trousers, and black boots; your arms are almost completely exposed. There’s a baseball bat sticking out of your backpack, and it probably shouldn’t be as menacing as it is.

“Here’s where another proposition of mine comes in,” Saburo continues, tilting a little to the side and gesturing freely. “If you get a few more of your friends to join, we’ll also ensure your pack’s complete safety. No one will be able to lay a hand on them…including ourselves.”

“Really?” you ask. “And who would that be?”

“Kai, for starters,” Saburo says, motioning at Kai, his lips twitching in an almost-smile. “You’re strongest around him, after all. Sulli. We don’t have a medium yet; we could use one. The Jung siblings are a curious combination, as well. We wouldn’t get angry if you got them to work with us.”

“Work with you?” you ask. “You mean, go on a trip around the country and see how many poor people you can convince to join your petty group by threatening to kill their whole families?” you snort. “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.”

Saburo opens his mouth to argue, but his eyes snap to your right and he closes it. You can feel Suho, Tao, Kyungsoo, Luhan and Chanyeol. It’s still not even enough to fight them, and you still have your friends on the line, but it does make you feel safer. Especially when you hear Chanyeol’s menacing growl. Damn, he must be pissed. You can see Eun actually smiling upon his arrival, a tiny smirk on her face.

“Is that Mabeob?” Luhan asks, sounding disappointed. “Man, I thought there’d be more of you.”

Saburo’s jaw twitches when he hears that. He looks at Luhan like he thinks the boy is a half-wit.

“That’s only the beginning,” he says low in his throat.

“I bet he got the rest to fight for him through threats and murder,” Kyungsoo comments casually.

“Not sure how far you can go with such a mismatched group, dude,” Tao adds to that. Chanyeol and Suho are way too nervous to comment, and they look angry. Their eyes are blue, and they don’t switch back even for a second.

“If your goal truly is getting rid of humans,” you say, “then I have to worry you. With us or without us standing in your way, you won’t be able to succeed. Magic creatures are just as human as they deserve. And stronger than any of you will ever be.”

“Is that so?” Saburo asks, looking a bit sour.

“You have no idea,” you hear. You recognize Yixing’s voice. “Some of them can be so stubborn, they’ll hunt you in their death.” He steps out of the shadows and stands next to his friends, winking pointedly at Seon. Seon cracks a smile, which makes the man holding her angry; his fingers go tighter around her wrists, and Seon cringes.

Yixing’s eyes flash blue.

“They’re generally hard to get rid of,” another voice points out. It’s Kris. He stands next to Kai, his face serious. “They just never give up.”

“Can we just kill them?” the psychopath asks then. You snap your eyes at him, your fingers twitching. You accidentally gather lightning between your fingers and it cracks a little. The psychopath his lips, makes Heejin whimper by pulling her closer to himself, and looks from Saburo at you. “I’d love to see that one’s blood spilled.”

Suho lets out an angry howl and moves to attack. Kyungsoo and Luhan have to bodily drag him back into their group and hold him until he calms down; Suho’s trashing around, his eyes dark blue with anger. The people holding your friends seem amused at that, especially the psychopath.

One of the werewolves turns to look behind, and that’s when you realize that the rest of your pack is approaching from the other side. Sehun, Baekhyun, Xiumin, Min, Chen and Kris come into view, all serious and ready to kick some .

“What have we missed?” Chen asks, cracking his knuckles.

“Racism and superiority complex,” Luhan tells him.

“Ah,” Chen smiles. “Nothing new, then.”

“Is that your final answer?” Saburo asks you. Everything gets serious again, then. They have your best friends, even your mom. Some of them can make a single move and kill one of the said friends – you don’t even hope there’s some morality left in them. Saburo must’ve picked his best, most faithful soldiers. There’s no way they won’t murder for him. “No?”

You clench your fists again. You look at your mom. She’s almost asleep. You’re glad she got the Djinn to hold her; that way, she won’t remember most of what happens today. You look at Taemin, who moves his head ever so slightly, begging you with his eyes not to agree. You look at Minjoon, who’s frozen and unable to move because of venom in his veins.

What can you do?

You can try to fight, but making a false move means jeopardizing the lives of people close to you. You can join Mabeob, but you don’t even really consider that an option.

Should you?

If you joined them, even for a day or two, maybe you could destroy them from inside.

But that’s not possible. There’s no way they’d just let you in like this, and there’s no way you could one-handedly bring them all down. Besides, you don’t believe that members of Mabeob are only listening to Saburo and the spirit because of the threats he makes. There must be something different in play that makes it all possible. Mind-control, maybe. Because besides some random individuals who are crazy and evil enough to try and kill every living human on the planet, there can’t be enough passive creatures who’d just listen to some guy’s orders for the sole purpose of it.

“What’d happen if I joined?” you ask after a few seconds of silence filling the air between both of your groups. Some of the boys send you distressed looks – not because they think you’d want to be part of Mabeob, but because they must’ve thought you had a plan.

Well, you don’t.

You could try attacking each one of the people holding your friends, but Saburo is standing in front of them. He could easily notice you use your magic and create a barrier in front of them all. Outcome: your friends would die.

You could hope for a miracle: Father showing up. But it’s not his friends that are in danger, and not even his business. He never had to help you in the first place, he offered. So you can’t just demand his help, or expect him to show up. If you wait any longer in hope he shows up, your friends will die.

If you join Mabeob, who knows if it’s not a trap. Possible outcome: your friends dying.

There is one crazy possibility. All of your pack would have to move at the same exact time, all of you would have to be incredibly fast, and each one of you would have to know exactly who they’re attacking and who they’re saving

Which is nearly impossible. There’s probably ninety percent – if not more - chance that someone would die.

.

“If you agreed to join, we’d take you away from here,” Saburo explains. “Just to make sure your friends wouldn’t follow us. We’d, of course, leave these useless eggs behind,” he points at the human part of your pack, “and then you’d just have a quick chat with our boss. Easy-peasy.”

You look at each one of his men, carefully taking in their faces. Then you focus on him again.

“Can you make a promise, then?” you ask. “To not hurt them if I agree to come with you?”

Saburo grins. He’s about to say something when a voice interrupts him.

And it belongs to Taemin.

“As if,” he spats, throwing his head back and promptly hitting the girl that’s holding him in the nose.

Then all hell breaks loose, as it so does in your life, and everything happens at the same time.

When the girl holding Taemin bends away from him and grabs at her nose, Taemin turns on his heels and straight up punches her in the nose, just to finish what he started. The girl yells, staggers back, grabs at her nose with her other hand, and because she’s too busy doing that, Taemin has time to swing his leg up and kick her on the side of her skull.

She drops onto the ground like a sack of potatoes.

Almost in sync with Taemin, Seon bends her knees, grabs at the chimera’s forearms that are currently wrapped around her shoulders, and heaves him over her back. The man pretty much rolls over her back, and he’s too big to land gracefully, and way too slow to realize what’s going on.

The boys take Taemin’s single move as a cue to fight. Kai jumps. The alpha girl, who was guarding the rest of her companions, extends her claws first, then jumps up to meet him. She’s halfway when she transforms into a wolf.

An actual wolf. Just like Kai.

You see her brown fur, her long snout, and then you realize that she’s not, in fact, a wolf. She’s a coyote. Their bodies collide in the air, heavy and furry, and the sounds they start making are truly frightening; it’s like a dog fight, but louder and scarier.

And then the psychopathic guy holding Heejin says something that makes your blood run cold in your veins.

“Kill them!”

The Djinn, the ghoul, the wraith and the psychopath himself all move at the same time. A dagger slides out of the Djinn’s sleeve, the ghoul extends his claws, the wraith reaches back just to aim at Eun’s neck with the huge spike that’s sticking out of his neck, and the psychopath pulls out a ing gun.

And Saburo creates a freaking barrier surrounding them all, and is smirking while doing so.

Something inside you just snaps. Attacking you and the boys is one thing, but attacking your human friends? The ones that didn’t do anything wrong and can’t defend themselves?

Anger, like nothing you’ve ever felt, takes over completely. Your magic finally gets loose, after you’ve held it in for so long, and actual puffs of it surround you in a millisecond. You’re not sure what you want to do, but you know that you need to stop Saburo. He’s the key to all this.

And then something happens. You feel your magic bubbling in a way it never has before.

One second you’re standing outside the barrier, and the next – your whole body teleports, and you appear right in front of the psychopathic guy who looks like a shark. His eyes widen comically.

You punch him in the face and you make sure that his nose breaks to the point of no return.

Heejin drops onto her knees. You don’t have time to catch her, because you raise both of your hands, fire forming inside your palms. The shark guy looks terrified, thinking that the fire is meant for him, but no. You have more important things to deal with right now. You put your arms out, stretching them to the sides. The flames shoot up in two opposite directions, and most of the kidnappers jump away from your friends when they them.

The kidnapper that’s holding Eun doesn’t jump away, though.

You see the exact moment the wraith slashes with the spike in his wrist. You see how she falls, how shocked she is, and how the blood bubbles at her skin, and shock pretty much shuts you down. You open your mouth widely. There’s sounds of battle in the background, someone’s laugh, and Eun is on the ground, looking up at you, her hands clasped around her bleeding neck.

She’s dying.

She’s dying.

“Eun!” you hear someone scream. That voice is filled with desperation and despair. “Dal, do something! Do something!”

Eun.

The first girl to ever befriend you. The first human to join the pack. The person Chanyeol fell in love with. The one that helped you through moving to college, the one that was always there for you, the one you love like your own sister.

They can hurt you. They can hurt you, try to kill you, they can make you suffer, but they can’t hurt Eun.

Energy gathers around you and bursts. A transparent sphere of it appears around you and then spreads. Your magic explodes all around you, but it only takes the bad guys. You see Saburo trying to form a barrier in front of himself, but he’s not fast enough – your magic hits him just like it hits everyone else. The wraith, the chimera, the werecoyote. All the creatures you’re fighting get blown off the ground, sent flying into the air.

In the same second, Father appears right in front of you, his eyes serious and harsh on your face. Behind him stands Jaejoong.

“Go,” Father tells you. You don’t have to be told twice.

You disappear just to pop out next to Eun. You don’t know how you’re doing it, but your magic is a literal thunder around you. Eun’s hand is clasped around her neck, blood literally splattering from between her fingers, a waterfall of it dripping down her chest. She’s choking on it. You take her into your arms, propping her head with your palm, and you teleport again, putting all the magic and focus you have into it.

When you suddenly appear in the Jung household, all the furniture around you gets pushed away from you. It all moves at the same time. Photo frames fall off the walls, you hear some glasses breaking. Someone screams. You’re not surprised.

You’re standing in the middle of the living room, Jessica and Krystal staring at you wide-eyed. Eun is in your arms, choking on her blood, gurgling noises coming out of as she tries to breathe. Blood is dripping down her chest, neck, hands and forearms, and you feel it on your hands, cheek, neck. You can hear it dripping onto the floor, gently.

“Junsu!” Jessica screams, her voice high-pitched. She breaks into a run to get him. Krystal points at the dinner table, and you go to put Eun on top of it, feeling your magic slowly disperse. You know that the pain will soon come. Tears fill your eyes when you look down at Eun, at the desperation, pain and fear in her eyes, and you can only do as much as to put your own hand over her slashed throat, squeeze her shaking hands as hard as you can, and pray to all the gods for her live. You begin to whisper some healing spells as you stare down at her and listen to her choking; Junsu appears at her side, wrestles your and Eun’s hands away from her neck, and then puts his own hands to her wound.

You can see the energy gathering around him. You’ve never seen him as serious as he is right now. His hair rises when his magic vibrates on the surface of his skin. Eun goes completely still at first, her eyes roll to the back of her skull. In her last desperate attempt to keep herself alive, she grabs Junsu’s wrist, and squeezes so hard his skin goes white there. His hands actually begin to shine a delicate green as he tries to heal her wound. Blood is still dripping down Eun’s neck, pooling on the table underneath her.

You realize that you’re letting out desperate, squeak-like sounds in between chanting spells, and that your tattoos are completely white. Your hair is rising, too – it’s Junsu’s power. You can feel it even here, it affects you as well.

“I need more,” he grouses. He’s sweaty, and Eun is still bleeding. “There’s blood—it’s so delicate, the second I heal her, the blood opens the wound again. I need—“

You grab at the closest part of his skin, which is his forearm, and you transfer some of your magic into him.

It’s like a vitamin shot, only…well, magical.

Junsu’s hair stands up, his palms shine bright green, and he pushes down at Eun’s neck. Everything is smeared with blood. It goes on for a minute or two, just—holding. Junsu holding Eun and you holding them both.

Feels like holding on for dear life. And for Eun, it is.

*

When you disappear with Eun and Father appears in your place, the boys feel like kicking some . Mainly because these s that are in front of them right now dared to hurt one of them. They dared to hurt Eun.

Nobody. Hurts. Eun.

That’s the reason they all fight like never before. That’s why Kai brings the werecoyote down in three minutes short. That’s why Chen, even though now unconscious, manages to knock the Djinn out. That’s why the forest turns into a battle field, and everyone is fighting.

Seon and Yixing are fighting the chimera. Seon has a handgun in each hand – she always carries them around, and she’s not afraid to shoot the son of a who decided to destroy her day. She shoots him in the shoulder, then on the other, and the force of the bullets pushes the guy back. That’s when Yixing comes in. He jumps from behind the chimera, and kicks it in the face. Seon aims one of her guns down and shoots at the creature’s leg. She sees some movement on her left, so without even looking, she aims her other arm at whoever is approaching, and shoots. A second later, she hears two matching screams – one coming from a chimera, who stumbles and lands on its back, and the second coming from one of the werecoyotes. Her bullets aren’t laced with wolfsbane, which means that both monsters will soon heal, and that doesn’t give them much time.

Thankfully, Yixing is quite quick.

When the chimera trips and lands on his back – heavily – Yixing walks over to him and kicks him in the face. His entire head rolls and he goes out cold. Seon suddenly feels very aroused.

She looks up at Yixing. He feels her eyes on him, and glances up as well. The second their eyes meet, Seon gets an urge to kiss him.

So she does.

She walks over him in a couple of strides, grabs at his neck, and pulls him down into a kiss. It's hot, wet, and there's too much teeth at first, but it's everything Seon wants. She tastes blood and sweat and something that's entirely Yixing, and when she pulls away, Yixing looks like he's having a . 

He also doesn't open his eyes for a longer period of time after she pulls away. When he does, Seon raises her brows at him. 

“Took you ages,” he gasps out. Seon feels her lips quirk up in a smile; her eyebrows do that sweet puppy thing they rarely do, and Yixing goes in for another kiss, a more passionate one this time, with all the pent-up frustration he's felt from the beginning. 

Naturally, they're too busy kissing to hear or see someone sneaking up behind them, so it comes as a surprise when they hear a sudden punching sound right behind Seon's back. They both jump and look at the source of the sounds.

Kyungsoo is standing behind Seon, and from his posture Seon deduces that he's just punched someone.

Kyungsoo straightens up, flips his fringe to the side in a fabulous head whip, and looks at Seon, then at Yixing, raising his brows judgmentally. 

“All the possible places and moments to kiss, and you choose this one,” he deadpans. Seon shrugs innocently. Yixing grins.

“Jaejoong!” Kris calls, spotting the boy punching the out of the ghoul. Jaejoong looks up at him, dropping the ghoul onto the ground. It still tries to fight, but it’s too weak. Jaejoong sends Kris a questioning look. “Take them!”

Jaejoong looks to where Kris is pointing. He sees a paralyzed Minjoon, a freaked-out Heejin, and your mom. He runs over to them, tells them to grab him, and teleports away from the battlefield.

“What a mess,” Kris grouses as he looks to where Father and Saburo are. Father has put a circular barrier around them both; all the magic they’re using against each other – and there’s a lot – is trapped inside. Kris sees lightning, fire, water, some pure magical blows, ropes, everything. It’s like a snowball, and he can barely see what’s going on inside.

He looks around. The werecoyotes are still up and fighting. The Djinn is unconscious, and Seon is putting some fishing line around her, out of all things. The chimera is wrapped in it, too. The psycho guy is nowhere to be seen, and just when Kris thinks it’s over, the snowball in which Father and Saburo are fighting blows.

Father gets pushed back. He lands on his legs, swiftly, but before that he literally flies all the way back to where Kris is standing. He lands right next to him, actually. At the same time, Saburo spins a few times in the air, then his feet touch the ground and he leans forward, his fingers digging into the soil underneath him as he tries to keep his balance. He stays in that position, glaring at Father, anger visible on his face.

“I don’t want to fight you, Sung,” Kris hears him say. Kris feels his own heartbeat accelerate at the name.

Father has a name, and it’s Sung.

Speaking of Sung, he clasps his hands together, as if to pray. On his sides appear four black silhouettes – ninjas, similar to the ones Saburo has used against the pack just a few days before. Saburo does the same thing Father just did – he joins his palms like in prayer, and eight ninjas show up at his sides. Four of them jump at Father and Father’s ninjas; the other four jump at the boys that are still fighting. Before Kris knows it, there’s even more of them. He counts twelve by the time one of them attacks him.

He hits a nearby tree and almost get impaled on the ninja’s arm. Min has his back, though, and pushes the ninja away with a powerful kick.

Kai is in the middle of fighting one of the ninjas when he hears and feels another sneaking up on him. He tries to move, but the first ninja puts a whip around his neck, and his movement gets stopped very abruptly.

Pain pierces through his right hind legs, and he howls in pain when the second ninja rips his muscle there with a katana.

That’s when you decide to show up.

Kai feels a blow of air, feels your sudden closeness, and then both ninjas get pushed away from him. He falls onto the ground, a katana sticking out of his huge leg. You look around.

You’re smeared with blood. It’s covering every patch of your skin, except for the face. But your chin and cheek is red.

You push the ninjas off of Kai using telekinesis. You throw them at the ground using as much force as you can, to make it as uncomfortable for them as possible, even though you’re not sure if they even feel pain. Then you walk over to Kai and pull the katana out of his leg in a swift move.

Kai lets out a painful squeal.

“Sorry,” you say, seeing his leg bleed profusely. You swear you can feel your heart being ripped apart, seeing his pain and having just witnessed Eun almost dying. You’re tired, desperate, and adrenaline-driven; your brain is barely keeping up at this point, but when Kai looks at you with his wolf eyes, you know exactly what he’s asking. “She’s alive.”

And then you notice the wraith running away.

The wraith that hurt Eun.

That vile creaturethat almost killed Eun.

You grind your teeth, reach out towards the creature, and use telekinesis to pick him up from the ground. He lets out a yell.

You throw him at the nearest tree. Then you pick him up and you drop him onto the ground. Then you pick him up again, throw him at a tree, let him bounce off the tree and land on the grass. You can see him bleeding after colliding with some rocks on the ground.

You throw him at the ground next to you. This time his blood splatters around, hitting you in the face. It’s hot and it stinks; it’s black. It’s not a human, this one. There’s nothing human about it.

It’s a monster.

You clench your fingers, and the wraith screams in pain as his entire body contracts under your magic.

“Stop it,” you hear someone say.

Your vision blurs weirdly. That awful spike the wraith used to slash Eun’s throat with is still sticking out of his skin, still covered with her blood.

Something cracks inside that monster, and you realize that it’s his bones. The scream he lets out pierces through your ears, makes you cringe, makes you wake up. Your eyes widen at the sight of his body in front of him, at the sight of his twisted limbs and bleeding skin.

When did that happen?

The wraith cries out in pain. Then a single gunshot pierces the air, and he goes quiet, his body limp.

You realize that Seon just shot it in the head.

“Dal,” you hear.

Someone grabs you from behind. Your first reaction is to jerk and gasp; you look over your shoulder to see Sehun reaching out for you. “Calm down,” he says, his hands landing on your cheek. “Calm down.”

Your hands are shaking. There’s blood all over you. Most of it belongs to Eun. Some of it is yours. The black one is the wraith’s. Your tattoos are completely white, and your skin is buzzing with your magic.

“Calm down,” Sehun whispers, pulling you into a hug, purposely hiding your face in his own chest, so that you can’t see anything around you. Everything is still and quiet. There’s just wind rustling in the leaves around you.

“It’s okay,” Sehun tells you. “He’s dead. We’re safe. Eun’s safe. Saburo’s gone.”

You look up at him. He’s covered in blood. His t-shirt is in pieces, his face is dirty. His eyes are sad. You look around; Kai’s fur is covered in blood. The same blood that’s dripping down his mouth. The werecoyote he’s fought is lying a few meters away from him, breathing, but too tired to fight.

You try to look at the wraith, but Sehun stops you from it. He grabs your neck and wrestles your head away from that sight.

Tao is hurt. Got slashed by something. Seeing as he’s slowly shutting down, his body not responding, you guess it was the ghoul. It’s unconscious, its hands tied behind its back. It looks like a little boy who got dirty playing outside.

The chimera is letting out painful grunts. The psychopath is nowhere in sight.

“Dal,” you hear. You turn on your heels, surprised to hear Father’s voice. Right. You forgot he was here in the first place. “Saburo’s hurt. You have some time before the next attack, but it’s gonna be big, so you better prepare yourselves.”

And with that, he disappears.

Your magic cracks around you, some leftover electricity getting out. Then the pain comes, and with it – darkness. At least for the next few minutes. When you come to, you’re in your jeep, and someone is definitely speeding, and you smell of blood and guilt and pain, and you try to feel if Eun’s alive. Your tattoo tells you that she is, and that’s the only thing that keeps you conscious for the entire drive.

*
 

Half of you barrel into the Jung household, the rest stays behind to keep an eye on the bad guys who you had to take with you. You all look like you’ve been to war – covered in blood, dirt, cuts and bruises – and you find Eun the same way you left her, on the dinner table. Junsu is lying on the ground next to her, his hands covered in blood, just like the dinner table and the floor underneath it. The rest of the Jung siblings are all standing by the wall, and Jaejoong is holding Eun’s head from behind, watching her face carefully.

Chanyeol bursts out crying and falls onto his knees. You follow his lead, Kai grabbing your arm to stop you from outward collapsing at his feet.

“It okay,” he tells you.

 “We need to take Minjoon to Siwon,” you mutter. “Chen and Tao, too. We need to get Eun blood—“

“Siwon’s here. Junsu will get Eun blood.”

Your eyes are all over the place. You feel numb and guilty and out of it. You’ve never felt as bad, and you’re not sure what’s causing it. The memory of Eun dropping onto the ground with blood streaming down her chest? Knowing that you almost led to everyone dying? The awareness of the fact that Mabeob wants you, and will do anything they can to get you?

“Dal,” you hear. You notice Siwon standing in front of you.

He slaps you in the face, and it hurts like a .

It does wake you up, though.

“What the hell, Siwon?!” Daehyun exclaims in unison with Suho.

Your vision gets clearer. Your system reboots. You look up at Siwon, your hand travelling up to cover your stinging, red cheek. You stare at the man in front of you – someone you’d probably call uncle, if it wasn’t for him being such a sometimes – and you feel tears well in your eyes.

“She’s fine,” Siwon assures you. “We need you. Focused and strong. Okay?”

You look around the room, swallowing hard. Everyone’s looking at you expectantly, their eyes trusting.

“Okay,” you whisper.

Hey cuties, sorry for going MIA on you so suddenly. I just started uni and it's been hectic. I still haven't replied to all of your messages and comments, which I apologize for. I'll do that when I get the time, promise. Thank you for your patience and for not bombarding me with 'when's the update?' 'why haven' you updated' messages. Seriously, I was a bit scared I'm gonna get those after leaving you with this huge cliffhanger, but you once again proved to be the best readers on this site <3 

Thanks for sticking around! A few more chapters to go. Get ready for a ride and please be patient with me - I can't promise multiple updates in a week. I just want to be able to connect to you when this fic is ending, and it won't be possible if I'm too busy or in a hurry to finish this.

Love you!