When Minho finally came to after his little spat with the natives, he was surprised. He had thought, rightfully so, that the experience would have killed him. Oh, how wrong he was. He was definitely alive. The intense burning in his back would contest to that.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Minho groaned, peeling his eyelids apart and twisting as best he could to look at his back. “Oh, . Oh, God, why does it feel like I’m being stabbed?”

Minho, you’ll only make it worse if you agitate it too much, the wolf chided. He was probably in pain too.

“Oh, shut up you dumb dog. If it wasn’t for you my emotions wouldn’t be so damn volatile!”

Minho fell face first back into his… bed? No, hay. It was unquestionably a pile of hay with a greyish-blue colored deer skin or something thrown over it. This world was just… awesome.

We are the same creature, Minho. Our emotions are one and the same, for the most part.

“Oh, yeah? Then we must be defective because you shouldn’t be able to chastise me if we aren’t two separate beings.”

“Oh my word, you’re talking to the wolf,” someone guffawed.

Minho jumped and then preceded to regret it when a whiplash of pain raced up his back. his distress into the animal skin beneath him, Minho shot a glare at the man who had been eavesdropping, trying to convey his annoyance through the daggers shooting from his eyes.

“Is that anyway to look at the man who stitched you up? I could have sewn the chunk of meat hanging from you shoulder to your knee, but I didn’t. Be thankful.”

The man shuffled over to Minho and made himself comfortable on the dirt floor next to Minho’s hay pile. He was a smiley thing, thick lips stretching all the way from one blood red, almond shaped eye to the other. It was an unsettling shade, but the man’s eyes looked so ditzy and sparkly that it staved off any fear factor they had. He was young in the face, but his hair was strangely white, like fresh snow. He was also clean, thank the stars!

“I’m Jinki. I’m the one in this pack that makes sure arms get attached back to the right sockets after they get torn off.”

Leaning in closely, Jinki had a conspiratorial look in his vermillion orbs that told Minho the guy was going to say something weird before he even opened his mouth.

“I also keep the imps at bay,” he whispered, sitting back up with a delighted cackle.

“The… imps?”

“Crafty little beasts, they are. The rest of the pack thinks I’ve lost my head, but I know the chaos that would ensue if the imps were free to run amuck, so it’s best the pack believes I’m hallucinating. The imps like to come into my home and smash my herb jars. Only the brown ones, mind you. They like the blue ones.”

Jinki was a raging lunatic. He must have been dropped off a roof when he was two.

Jinki is a beta, Minho. His lack of an identifying scent tells us that. They are the rarest kind of wolf, even more so than the omegas as, for some reason, they have no secondary gender. They are known for being…eccentric.

Minho didn’t care what the wolf said. Jinki had to be mad.

“Right,” Minho drawled, inching away from Jinki. Crazy might be contagious in this world.

“Scooting away from me like I’m insane. So strange this one is. Indeed, treating me like I’m the peculiar one when he talks to his wolf,” Jinki snickered, biting his fingernail so he wouldn’t full out laugh.

Suddenly Jinki’s face was in Minho’s, a very hard look in eyes that had been soft with mirth not a second earlier.

“Listen to me carefully, you strange boy,” Jinki muttered. “The others mustn’t know you talk to him. They will not understand as I do. They do not see you for what you are.”

This man was just getting more and more bizarre the longer Minho talked to him.

“And what am I?” Minho challenged.

“An enigma, for sure. So curious, so puzzling,” Jinki hummed, pulling away from Minho. “You come here in abnormal garb; speak in a slightly atypical way. And, on top of it all, you have conversations with your wolf. You are very perplexing.”

“Is there something strange about speaking to him?” Minho inquired with furrowed brows. “He likes to talk, it seems rude to ignore him.”

“And you confuse me even more by not knowing the gravity of your situation,” Jinki scoffed. “Normally separation between person and wolf is a very bad sign. It means you’re going feral.”

This world could not possibly get any tier.

“I wouldn’t worry just yet though,” Jinki added, smiling at Minho again. “You aren’t a normal case. You appear to be having civil—dare I say amicable—conversations with your wolf rather than having battles with it. That’s a good thing. Probably.”

“He… he just likes to talk, is all,” Minho mumbled, looking away from Jinki.

“Oh, I believe you. If you were feral you would be acting quite differently.”

That was reassuring, at the very least.

“Your back is going to scar something awful, by the way,” Jinki frowned, eyes roving over Minho’s backside and seemingly disinterested in what he has just talking about. “I know we don’t scar easily, but we’re also not invincible. Many pieces of your back were almost ripped clean out of your body, and that’s not a wound that just disappears. Don’t worry, though. It’ll only take a few days for the pain to go away.”

“Thanks for putting me back together, I guess.”

“You’re welcome!” Jinki beamed, hopping up to his feet. “Now, time to get up! The Alpha wanted to see you as soon as you woke up.”

Jinki grabbed Minho under his arms and hoisted him up to his feet.

“Ow, ow, ow, careful! Why do you have to be so—where the are my clothes?!”

It didn’t occur to Minho until then that he was as as the day he was born. Everything was exposed and there was no way in hell he was going anywhere with in plain sight.

Jinki just laughed at him like he was being ridiculous or something.

“Well, you can’t wear a top right now. It will surely hurt if you do. I assure you no one will mind; a lot of times people walk around bare.”

Well, that was just fantastic. There was nothing more in the whole wide world that Minho wanted than to see a bunch of gross strangers strutting around in the . Maybe it would have been better if he had died.

“Jinki, it’s great if your comfortable walking around with your out and about, but I’m not, so can I please have some pants? You are wearing a pair right now, I know they exist here!”

“I’m sorry, I don’t believe I’m familiar with the term ‘.’”

“Jinki! Pants!”

Jinki laughed at Minho some more, but he did procure a pair of beige colored pants from a trunk in the far corner of his home.

“They will be somewhat short on you, but I imagine they’ll fit just the same.”

They were short, fitting more like capris than pants, but Minho wasn’t going to complain. Even if the crude material was scratchy and rubbing against his manhood in a less than pleasant manner.

“Happy?” Jinki snorted. “Let us go to the Alpha then. He’ll be cross with me if he finds out I’ve been keeping you from him. Remember, though: don’t say anything about the conversations between you and your wolf. That is to be our little secret.”

Jinki led Minho out of his cabin-like home, tugging him by the wrist out the door and into a throng of curious spectators. It looked like everyone had been waiting for Minho to wake up.

“He’s alive,” a scratchy, nasally voice stated from somewhere to Minho’s left. “Quite a shame.”

“Mmm, it would have been better if he died,” another agreed. “We already have enough alphas for this year’s competition.”

At this point Minho wanted to give the lot a good ol’ flash of his middle finger and be on his way. They probably wouldn’t understand, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t make Minho feel better.

“The Alpha is in the center of the village,” Jinki quipped, ignoring all the hostile waves coming from everyone else. “Tomorrow is the beginning of mating season and he always gives a speech beforehand. He’s very fond of dramatics and the like.”

As if perhaps hearing Jinki, a howl rang out into the sky that said ‘come hither.’ Minho didn’t know how he could know that, so he chalked it up to his new found instincts. But, speaking of the sky, Minho only just now noticed that it wasn’t the same as the sky back on Earth. It was a mossy green and brown mixture. Weird.

“My pack!” a booming voice projected, pulling Minho’s attention away from the perpetually stormy hue of the heavens. “It is that time of year again! Tomorrow marks the beginning of the mating tournament.”

Cheers rang from every direction. Very few were displeased by the news, from what Minho could tell. They were crowding in close to a man, presumably the Alpha, standing on a high rock, leaning in to give him their full attention. Jinki was having a difficult time pushing through everyone to get to the front. Meanwhile, Minho was freaking out. Just a little bit.

The alpha said tomorrow. Taemin mentioned that Kibum was to be given away this year, which would mean Minho would have to fight for him tomorrow for the wolf to get his way. How could Minho fight over a man he hardly knew, though?

Minho, the wolf whined, his pain at the thought of letting Kibum go so great that Minho could physically feel it in his chest. It was that terrible pain you got when you saw something awful; the kind that makes your heart feel like its caving in on itself.

Minho, you do know him. His name is Kibum, and he has violet eyes and tawny hair. His skin is pale and it makes the pink in his cheeks stand out spectacularly. He sings a lot, but only when he thinks he’s alone because he doesn’t like his voice even though you like it best when he sings. He loves pups and wants so many of his own, but he’s afraid of having any because he doesn’t think a decent alpha will claim him. He’s strong and fierce and prone to fits of rage whenever an alpha he doesn’t like gets anywhere near him even though he couldn’t take them in a fight. He’s perfect, regardless of the fact that he’s temperamental and kind of haughty because you love him all the same. And you do love him. Not just me. There isn’t even a me, Minho! There is no us, me, or we. Just you. I am you. He is yours to protect, and you’ll regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t.

It was hard for Minho to think of himself and the wolf as being the same person, but… they were, weren’t they? All the conversations he had with his wolf thus far were just conversations with himself. It wasn’t that much different from when he would talk to himself back on Earth. His mind was just a little better at answering his own questions. So, if that was the case, maybe… maybe Minho did love Kibum. With such a ferocious need to shelter Kibum from the brutality of his pack mates, couldn’t Minho say he at the very least held the man in high enough esteem to want to fight for him?

“And the big brute finally joins the living.”

Minho was yanked from his thoughts before he could dwell on them too long by the Alpha. Evidentially, Jinki had made it to the front and now Minho was at the center of attention after being addressed by the pack’s leader. Who was he calling a big brute, by the way?

“We thought you were a demon the first time we saw you. A wolf of your size… unnatural.”

The Alpha had stony colored eyes that were trying to pick Minho apart like a dissecting scalpel. He was a middle aged man of medium stature and a strong build. His face was average, but it was made repugnant by an evident cruelness twisting his features.

“You never bothered to shift either. In all the time you’ve been skulking around in our territory, never once has anyone seen you in this form. We may not have even known it was you if not for those infernal eyes of yours.”

Well. It was plain to see that the Alpha himself didn’t possess a prepossessing pair of eyes, but that didn’t mean he had to hate on Minho’s just because they were pretty.

“So tell, me, beast: what is your name? Why have you picked now to show yourself?”

Minho could feel the eyes of every village member boring into his skull. It was uncomfortable, in a word.

“My name is Minho,” he mumbled, not wanting to look into the Alpha’s eyes but feeling that to look away was a sign of weakness. “And I…”

What could he tell the Alpha? There was no way he could voice the truth to these people. He’d probably be murdered for fear on insanity. What could he say to the Alpha that sounded real, if not what had befell him?

“I… t-there’s an omega,” Minho stuttered, figuring it wasn’t exactly a lie and would appear the most plausible to these animals.

“An omega,” the Alpha nodded, accepting the answer. “Any one in particular? I’m sure someone as reclusive as yourself wouldn’t reveal yourself to us just to peruse our wears.”

He was talking about the omegas as if they were objects. Like they weren’t living, breathing creatures with a beating heart and blood in their veins.

“Uh… He’s um… Kibum. There’s an omega named Kibum and I… want to mate with him.”

The whole pack broke out into loud bouts of laughter, amused greatly by this revelation. It wasn’t Minho’s fault that he was predisposed to want Kibum, why were they laughing?

“Kibum?” The Alpha said with a laugh of his own. “You picked yourself a stubborn one boy, I can tell you that. Kibum! Where are you? Come here.”

The crowd parted like the Red Sea, a very stunned omega on the other side. Kibum hesitated for a few moments, but ultimately succumbed to the command of the Alpha and hurried his away to them.

“That’s a good boy,” the Alpha sneered, grabbing onto one of Kibum’s shoulders roughly and nearly ripping a growl from Minho’s throat. A real growl, like he was a pissed off dog. “Did you hear, lad? This stranger would like to play for you.”

The crowd laughed some more.

“I heard,” Kibum said softly, looking anywhere but at the Alpha.

“I’ll let you decide his fate then,” the Alpha grinned maliciously, shoving a yelping Kibum at Minho so hard the man would have fell if Minho wasn’t there to catch him. “Would you have this alpha fight for you or would you see him dead? The choice is yours, boy.”

Kibum smelled like cloves. Minho didn’t know if they had cloves in this world, but Minho was still detecting that earthy, spicy-sweet aroma that he identified with cloves. Straightening the boy up, Minho couldn’t help but think it was a nice scent for him.

Kibum, albeit flustered, studied Minho with scrutinizing eyes that spoke volumes. Kibum didn’t want another damned alpha vying for his attention. He had plenty of those already, and he didn’t particularly want any of them.

Minho felt it was all over before it ever had the chance to start. He was at Kibum’s mercy and the omega seemed less than inspired by Minho’s little confession. Resigned to his fate, Minho did the only thing he thought was appropriate.

Kibum was completely struck, so much so that he stepped back in his surprise. The pack wasn’t laughing anymore, staring just as shell-shocked at the alpha whose head was bowed before Kibum in humble acquiescence.

“He’s submitting to an omega!” one of the onlookers squawked. The crowd broke out in uneasy mumblings, the ones closest to Minho scuttling away from him like he was diseased.

Kibum snapped out of his stupefaction, clearing his throat awkwardly and turning to the Alpha.

“If it is alright with the Alpha, I would allow this man… Minho… to fight for the right to mate with me.”

Minho shot up in shock, mouth agape and ready for flies. If they had flies.

“Truly? I guess you would want an alpha like that, wouldn’t you?” the Alpha huffed with a cocked brow. “Well, I did say you could choose. Congratulations, Minho. You are hence forth considered a member of this pack and granted the privileges of being so, including the eligibility to compete for this young omega here. This year’s games should be… interesting.”

Minho couldn’t believe what he was hearing. For the time being, he was going to remain alive. What a pleasant surprise.

~~~

It had been a few hours since Minho had been officially inducted into the pack and in that short time frame he had realized something that made him want to dissolve into an unattractive mound of ash: alphas preferred omegas, but that didn’t mean that he, as an alpha, was safe from their ual harassment.

Minho had no other choice but to sit around without a shirt on because the fabric would pull at his stitches and agitate his wounds. That left his toned abdomen and the beginnings of his tapering hips in complete view. Coupled with the lean muscles in his arms and his smooth, boyishly handsome face, Minho was turning out to be quite the sight to the more brutish alphas of this pack. The only other alpha getting more unwanted s than Minho was Taemin and that was only because the poor alpha was so undeniably pretty.

“Yah, paws off the , you ing degenerate!” Minho snarled when yet another thug dared to squeeze his rear while his guard was down.

“You say that now,” the cretin grinned wantonly, “but I bet you’ll be begging for a knot before too long.”

A knot. Minho didn’t have a lot of background knowledge on the anatomy of werewolves, but he did know what it meant for an animal to knot another, and the thought of anyone sticking such horrid thing into his body was unthinkable.

“I swear to God, if you stick your anywhere near me you’re going to lose it, arasso?

“You look delicious when you’re mad. Even when you spout words no one else has ever heard of.”

Minho had realized rather quickly that Korean was not the language spoken in his new home. It hadn’t occurred to him at first that he wasn’t speaking Korean, but there were a few words that had stuck with him that no one else understood. Arasso, mianhae, annyeonghaseyo. They had no mental bank for words like that.

“Go away, Jongsuk,” a snarl came from behind. Taemin was there, emerald eyes fiery and lethal.

“And the princess is here to ruin the fun once again,” Jongsuk sighed, stepping half a foot away from Minho. “Don’t worry, beautiful. We can continue this later.”

Minho shuddered in disgust.

“Drop dead, Casanova.”

“My name is Jongsuk.”

That’s when Minho’s Korean went flying, the boy raging in a language no one could comprehend and subsequently scaring many of the people around him. Jongsuk wasn’t as deterred by Minho’s behavior until the fuming boy punctuated his last foreign expletive with a detrimental kick to the other alpha’s balls, knocking the wind out of the Jongsuk and reducing him to a wheezing mass on the ground.

Gasps filled the air along with some cowering. A few even tripped over themselves in their attempt to distance themselves from Minho.

“By the flames, what did you do?!” Jongsuk croaked, grasping his groin like it would make pain dissipate. “Y-You’ve crippled me!”

Minho laughed. Firstly because big, butch Jongsuk was on his knees in agony. Secondly because his reaction to a good kick to the nuts was that he’d been handicapped. Even across dimensions, you’d think a swift blow to a sensitive area would be a form of defense.

“There is nothing funny about this!” Jongsuk screeched. “What have you done?”

“Minho,” Taemin’s wavering voice sounded behind him. Grasping Minho’s bicep, Taemin demanded his attention when he asked, “What was that? If… If you’ve actually left permanent damage, the Alpha will—”

“Don’t you worry, Tae,” Minho scoffed, looking askance at Jongsuk then completely turning his back to him in repugnance. “In my life, I’ve never seen someone suffer lasting effects from getting kicked in the . Just some dreadful temporary pain.”

“Okay,” Taemin sighed. “But please refrain from doing that in the future. A simple broken wrist is enough.”

Oh, wow. In the end, Minho supposed Taemin wasn’t so different from his pack. Violence was definitely ingrained into the man’s way of life.

“Apparently not, since you’re still dealing with unwanted touching. Try big booting someone in the sac next time. I bet they don’t come within twenty feet of you ever again.”

“No, I… I don’t think I should do what you did. What if it doesn’t heal as you say?”

Seriously, though. No one ever gets kicked in the hard candies here? Surely they’ve been struck there before, even if it was just an accident.

“It will, but suit yourself. Just keep breaking wrists if it makes you feel better.”

Humming, Taemin shook his head at Minho and then curled his fingers around the larger alpha’s forearm to coax Minho into walking next to him.

“Where are we going?”

“To my cabin,” Taemin answered. “Kibum wishes to speak to you before tomorrow’s game.”

Minho nearly laughed when he felt something wag inside him. The beast within him was getting excited, tail beating wildly in Minho’s brain cavity.

“It’s this one,” Taemin directed, pushing open the door to a small wooden house with no windows. The inside, which Minho found to be just a single room, was lit by a multitude of rudimentary candles, the small flames that flickered from the wicks an odd shade of yellow that contained no hues of orange, red, or blue. There was an unlit fire pit in the middle of the space that had a large, empty stone pot handing from a metal stand over it. There were not tables or chairs, but there was a tall cupboard filled with tools and jars, and two trunks that probably contained clothing and furs. Off in the far left corner was a hay bed much like the one Minho had woken up in, only it was covered with a lot more furs—all strangely colored—and had two omegas sitting on top.

One of them was on his feet immediately, leeching himself to a Taemin who was all too ready to fold the man into his arms. This was the other omega Minho’s wolf had met at the stream; Kibum’s brother and Taemin’s almost-lover. It was strange to see the man trying to curl himself into Taemin when he, though a little shorter, had a lot more visible muscle and owned a face that was much more angular and handsome than Taemin’s smooth, pretty one. But Minho was fairly positive that a person’s secondary gender was not a choice, so maybe Taemin and his omega weren’t anomalous at all.

It was then that Minho felt a snuffling along his bare shoulder. Kibum had gotten up and was cautiously studying Minho is his wolf-y way. He sniffed along Minho’s shoulder up to his neck, inhaling deeper when his nose made it to the underside of Minho’s jaw.

“S-Sorry but, um… what are you doing?” Minho questioned, just slightly weirded out by the behavior.

Kibum appeared almost startled by the query. He took a quick step back from Minho, obviously rather wary of the alpha.

“I was… evaluating your scent? Have you never done this before?”

Neither wolf nor man in this case could honestly say that they had. Minho had lived in a place where sniffing a stranger was definitely looked down upon, and the wolf had lived a life of seclusion after their father passed away. When delving into his wolf’s memories, Minho found very little interaction with other wolves.

“Not really,” Minho shrugged. “I’ve… been alone for a long time.”

“Hmm, that must explain your perplexing behaviors,” Kibum mumbled mostly to himself. Crowding back against Minho, Kibum resumed right where he left off in the scenting. Minho was simultaneously cringing and thrumming happily at the attention.

“Your smell is foreign to me,” Kibum observed in confusion. Taking a strong whiff, Kibum said, “It’s very…fragrant. Sweet. Alphas don’t smell sweet.”

“Sorry to disappoint you? I could smell like one of those putrid gutter goblins out there, ya know,” Minho huffed.

“I’ve smelt this aroma before,” Taemin said, nose all of a sudden shoved up into the other side of Minho’s neck. “Once when I was delivering a message to another pack, I found some spear-shaped leaves that smelled like this. They were so veiny that the leaf was bumpy. The pack I visited liked to chew on them for their sweet flavor.”

A veiny, spear-shaped, sweet leaf? Come to think of it, that sounded familiar to Minho.

“Oh, you mean spearmint,” Minho said in certainty. So, this world and Earth shared some traits. That was kind of cool.

“Well, this spearmint is not what other alphas smell like. You should smell woody,” Kibum asserted, puzzled at the thought of an alpha whose fragrance was so different from all the rest.

Minho liked spearmint. In fact, he was glad he smelled like spearmint. He’s rather smell like spearmint than a dead cat that had been in the July heat for five days, as so many of his peers did.

“Maybe this explains his earlier show of submission,” the other omega finally chimed in, his voice mild and flowy. “He may have a docile nature, and his scent is reflecting it like it does in omegas.”

“I wouldn’t call him docile, Jonghyun,” Taemin mused, a clear reference to Minho’s act of nut-smashing from ten minutes ago.

“Hey, I will have you know that I am a perfectly complaisant man unless you molest me. Then I will hurt you,” Minho sniffed. Protecting thy assets was perfectly respectable.

“That does bring me to what I want to speak to you about,” Kibum said, pulling the attention back to him. “Why bow to me? An alpha does not submit for anyone but the leader of his pack, especially not to a lowly omega.”

Minho would hear the bitterness in Kibum’s words, the scathing hatred that Kibum had for his position easy to notice.

“Why?”

“Yes, why? It makes no sense.”

Minho could hear the wolf answering the question in his head and wow. He was completely, irrevocably, embarrassingly whipped.

“Because,” Minho started, looking away from Kibum. He could feel his cheeks staining pink at the thought of what he about to say. “I was at your mercy; it made sense in that moment to acknowledge your power over me. But I also hope to be your mate, so I want to be able to give you anything and everything you desire. After watching you for so long, I know that what you want most is control, so… if want me to roll over for you, then I will.”

There. He said it. The beast better be happy now.

“Taemin, you should do that for me,” the other omega, Jonghyun, grinned. Taemin growled in response, but Jonghyun just chuckled and bit at Taemin’s neck, which caused the alpha to hum appreciatively. Minho suddenly felt uncomfortable, like he had just witnessed something intimate that he shouldn’t have.

“Quiet, you imbeciles,” Kibum hushed, considering Minho thoughtfully. He searched for deceit in Minho’s crystal blue eyes and, when he found none, finally allowed Minho to see his lips curve up into a smile. And, oh, what a pretty smile it was.

“If that is your promise, then I hope you win.”

Kibum’s eyes shone bright, like violet orchids blossoming under the sun. Grasping Minho by the shoulders, Kibum pressed his lips to the junction of Minho’s throat and neck and then sank his teeth into the flesh like Jonghyun had to Taemin. Minho had no idea what was happening, but what should have been severe pain was sending pleasant electrical currents to his brain and making his body vibrate.

He has given us his favor! The wolf rejoiced, jumping around in Minho’s skull happily. He likes us!

The wolf may have well been Rudolph in that moment, flying around after Clarice’s compliment yelling, “She thinks I’m cute!” It was a funny visual.

Kibum swiped his tongue over the spot, cleaning up a bit of blood that had seeped from the wound.

“Let’s go show you off,” Kibum laughed, tugging Minho out the door. “I want to feel their blood boil when they see my mark on you.”

Kibum paraded Minho around the camp like a prized pony, reveling in the anger it caused amongst the other alphas. For an alpha who’d been there for all but two days to come in a steal one of their few omegas out from under them really struck a nerve within the alphas. And sweet, lovely, vindictive little Kibum couldn’t be happier about it.

That night, after royally pissing off nearly the whole pack and narrowly avoiding many brawls between Kibum and said pack, Minho splayed spread eagle on the ground with a chipper Kibum tending to his back.

“Do we really have to sleep out here?” Minho griped, wincing when a wet cloth came into contact with his sensitive muscles. “, be gentle, would you? I’m as fragile as a fruit right now.”

“You admit weakness so easily,” Kibum snickered. Minho couldn’t see his face, but he knew Kibum was snickering. He could just feel it. “And why would we sleep inside when it’s so nice outside?”

“There are bugs out here. I saw something with sixteen legs just over there, and that’s freaky.”

“You can’t be bothered by a few little bugs.”

“I can when they have six-ing-teen legs.”

Dropping the rag by his leg, Kibum leaned over so he could see Minho’s face.

“You’re an unusual man.”

“Thanks. You aren’t the first to say that to me since I’ve gotten here.”

“I imagine not,” Kibum snorted. “But don’t worry about the creatures that crawl during the night. I will protect you.”

Then Kibum’s face was gone and the boy went back to cleaning Minho’s wounds. Except this time he decided he didn’t need the cloth to go about the cleaning process.

“Hey, what are you doing?!” Minho jumped when he felt the warm drag of Kibum’s tongue slide from the bottom of one of the smaller lacerations to the top.

“Has no one ever cleaned your wounds for you before, my secluded little wolf? You sound like you were a lonely thing. Well, not to worry: the least an omega can do for such a good, unassertive alpha is care for his injuries.”

It was so, so, so bizarre to lie there whilst someone lapped at the cuts on his back, but Minho forced his muscles to relax an allowed Kibum to continue. After a while, it actually started feeling pleasant. Some of the pain started to recede and Minho’s eyes drooped in comfortable drowsiness. He fell asleep to the soothing pull of Kibum’s tongue against his butchered back.