This is PART 2 guys!The chapters were long so I had to split. Read Part 1 first.

This was a two chapter update for this weekend!

They walked for a while in long fast strides. It took Onew a minute before he realized the trees were blurring past them and the leaves were a bit of blur as well. He didn’t realize just how fast they were walking. Definitely not human. It lightened up his mood a bit, knowing that there was something else unique about him other than just turning invisible. A fear that lapsed his mind as he thought about only being half human. As they got up to the cave, Taemin stopped him for a second, bending his head to watch the boy’s expression.

“You know Onew…this isn’t a trap. You know that right?”

Onew’s eyes blinked like a fluttering butterfly, mimicking his time with Luna. He’d been staring in a daze ever since they arrived.

“Oh, no…it’s nothing like that. I was just—thinking about something else.”

Without waiting for Taemin to say anything more, he walked inside, immediately introduced with a tight embrace from Key.

“To be honest, I didn’t think you’d come,” the boy smiled.

Onew played a “sure” smile and looked around the vast, dense area and its amber rocks. The subtle sky of the outside lingered in this place, casting small scattering shadows and bits of luminous light that glinted off the luster of the cave walls.

“Well, you knew I was going to come anyway with everything that happened yesterday,” he answered.

“About yesterday,” he came striding from the shadows. Minho, a tall bulky mask of black that slowly peered into view. “We do apologize for our counterparts’ behavior. They are…unstable as you can tell.”

Onew raised his brows and slightly nodded just as Taemin came in to join them. They stood in an equal square, surrounding each other, looking like a lowly superhero team who were attempting a mission to save the universe. Quite a large imagination, but they did look a little silly.

“So…what’s the story here,” Onew sighed, “because if we’re all being honest, I guess I have something to tell you guys too. So, you swing first. I’m only here because Key wants to trust you two for whatever silly reason.”

He waved his hand in the air, glancing between Taemin and Minho with one raised brow. Taemin pursed his lips and motioned for Minho to continue. They wouldn’t gain Onew’s trust otherwise. Even Key felt a little bad. After all, it wasn’t Onew who’d heard Minho and Taemin during that day in the cafeteria and declared they never be trusted. It was him: Key. It was understandable and quite loyal, that Onew kept a deep indifferent expression as they stood in Minho’s cave. It was his fault for being so inconsistent with his feelings towards the Cerberi.

Minho stepped a little further into their perfectly formed square, his arms crossed, making his biceps bulge at the seams of his shirt.

“Well, like I told Key earlier, we had no idea that Siwon, Eunhyuk and the others were going to be assigned to us. We didn’t know about the surprise trip that we were sent on by the Uncles and I didn’t know that Donghae wasn’t going to come back.”

“Your cousin? The one that was always a little lingery and a little creepy?” Onew asked. He hadn’t even realized the man wasn’t around anymore.

“Precisely. He is nowhere near our age. I was suspicious of him ever since he joined our pack without any consultation to me. We were distant cousins. He was someone who didn’t really come around so I guess the Uncles didn’t think I would question his age. When I tried to look into him, it took forever to find any information. As if someone were hiding it. And as I told Key and Taemin, I still don’t know what he was doing here or what he got out of being here and not coming back. But something’s telling me it has to do with the Elders.”

“The Elders…the creepy old guys who none of your people question. Those Elders right?”

“Yes, Onew, those Elders.”

“I thought you were loyal to them,” he stepped in further too.

“I was, a while ago. But for some time now, what you said about them was starting to make sense.”

“So,” Onew sighed, “your older cousin got sent here, possibly by the Elders to do god knows what. He leaves, and you two are sent back here with four extra Cerberi.”

“Who are unstable as hell,” Taemin adds, pointing his finger in the air, “and who we were given to make them better apparently.”

“Just what did they do?”

“Ah, I got this one,” Key cheered, “Minho just told me. Apparently, what they attempted last night with us isn’t the first time for them. Humans were starting to spot large wolves in the Hallasan Mountains and they were constantly getting into it with the Katclan.”

“The Katclan?” Onew furrowed his brows.

“Oh,” Key cheered again, a gesture that made Minho chuckle under his breath a bit, “they told me about them too. Apparently, they’re Griffons. You know like those gargoyle things you see sitting on churches, but real and better and quite different than what stories make you believe. We…well humans call them mountain lions but apparently something else happened to them where they don’t have the title of Griffon any-”

Onew shook his head.

“Okay, let’s put the Katclan or griffons, or whatever aside for now. So this is definitely an Elder and Uncles issue.”

Everyone in the square nodded his head.

“And what about you and Key,” Taemin asked, “what happened to you guys that you hated us so much?”

Onew turned to Key.

“You haven’t told them?”

“I was waiting for you to come,” the boy admitted, then turned to the others, “When you guys were gone, my aunt was attacked in the woods. I found her bloody and scarred. There was something…big, it tried to get us. I was terrified. It looked like….like one of you guys but more gruesome and bigger. A LOT bigger…” he emphasized.

The men looked at each other, crossing concerned looks. They understood now, the sitting distrust in Key’s eyes when they walked through the hallways. The boy’s hand was slightly shaking at the memories of that night. Minho had the urge to reach out and grab him, encompass his hand in his warmth, but Onew reached out instead, wrapping his opposite hand around Key’s. Key peered up at his best friend and they nodded to each other, a small signal for Key to keep going.

“The-the only thing-that-um…that-” Onew stopped him, placing another hand on the boy’s shoulder and eyeing him in concern.

“Key, just stop,” he whispered.

Key didn’t reply and instead let the tresses of his brown hair bounce against his forehead. Onew straightened his posture again, squaring his shoulders and breathing out something close to responsibility.

“It’s a long story,” he announced, “but the gest of it is, on the day Key and his aunt got attacked in the woods, there was a strange man that Key said he thought was following him earlier that morning on his way to school. The man disappeared, of course, that same night the attack took place. His aunt was attacked when he found her, kept saying that something was telling him to go into the woods. The woods protected him from that thing though.”

“The woods protected him?” Taemin questioned.

“Yes, what do you exactly mean by that?” Minho added.

“The woods-” Key spoke up though his voice was still shaky, still reliving that night the more he thought about it. “I am connected to them. In a way, me and Onew are. When I need to find something or someone, it leads me to them. It created a-a barricade of sorts, over me when that thing was trying to kill us.”

“Whatever it was,” Onew continued, “left when he it sensed that me and my mom were coming. We saw Key caged in the barricade and when we approached, it went away.”

“Wait, wait…how and when did you learn that you were connected with the woods? What kind of supernatural creature is that?” Minho asked.

But before anyone could speak, Taemin walked in the middle of their group and started wriggling his pointer finger in the air.

“Wait, wait,” he whispered, “this sounds familiar. The woods thing that is. It’s some creatures that I heard about as a scary story when I was little. Me and my cousin were playing in the woods and he said he heard one of the adults talking about it. Foxes or something that was sent to erase our kind. Or…you know, something along those lines.”

“Foxes?” Minho blurted but then turned his eyes to Onew and Key who grew frown lines in the middle of their brows.

“That’s not exactly the true story.” Key gritted his teeth, “but I’m not gonna get angry because it’s not you all’s fault. It’s our parents and their parents before us. This was their problem and we…we are the aftermath.”

So together, Onew and Key told them about the first night Key was attacked in the woods. How it was the same creature that tried to come back for him and his aunt. And they told them about the scratch on Key’s back. How his aunt used her status in the hospital to get him out fast and only put a cast around his messed up arm to evade attention. How they believe it was the scratch and Key’s venture into the woods that night, that woke up Key’s fox side. It was then that Minho interrupted and announced that maybe it was the imbalance in so many creatures in the woods that made their packs loose control, but deep down both he and Taemin felt better knowing it was neither of them that hurt Key after all.

Eventually, the four of them sat around in a circle on the floor rocks as Key and Onew continued their stories. They told them about the discovery of their abilities and how they found out everything Onew’s parents had been hiding from them. How their trust kept faltering between them and themselves and how, given everything, they learned that Key was hidden in a tree in this woods as a little boy. They even talked about the story of Key’s parents to the point where the sun was setting outside the cave and the birds were starting to quiet down.

Taemin and Minho’s expressions changed from disappointment and disgust in their own kind when Key explained this story and it worsened when Onew talked about their connect-the-dots with the Elders and how they think they were the “Ancient Ones” that everyone talked about living for so long. Minho’s heart started to beat fast, his chest tightening into a ball. Was this how Key felt when he had to look them in the face every day at school while knowing all this?

For some reason, both the boys kept Paradise out of their story. Something about it just screamed that it shouldn’t be talked about. Not now anyway. So when Key got to the point about their plan, excluding their discovery of Paradise, Onew played off of it and did the same, not mentioning it at all. After the tell of their suspicions on the Elders, the Cerberi eased up, their attentions focused and they became interested in the stories they were being told. When the boys finished, they breathed heavily like they’d been running all night.

“Wow…” Taemin whispered, legs crossed, eyes towards the ground. “That was…alot.”

Key shrugged lightly.

“Well, we’ve been through a lot.”

Minho nodded.

“I see why you guys hate us so much.”

The words “hate us,” echoed in the room and the boys couldn’t help but feel a bang of guilt when they figured out that Minho and Taemin were in the same point. Both blinded to the truth by the ones they loved. Living in a world of secrecy where they thought they had all the answers.

“We-we, don’t,” Onew’s voice went to a whisper, “we don’t hate you guys.”

“It was just-you know,” Key shrugged again, “hard to trust you with everything we’ve been through.”

Minho looked up to the hole of the cave and realized how fast the time had gone by.

“You guys should get going, we don’t want you to get in trouble,” he attempted a smile.

No one had realized how much time had gone by. They all looked out the hole in unison, nodding together. Onew and Key dusted off their pants when they stood up, Minho and Taemin following suit.

“Wait…” Onew announced. “There was something that Luna told me about the rumors behind our species that I have to share.”

“Luna?” The three of them said.

Onew rolled his eyes.

“Yes, Luna. The good thing about her is, she listens. To everything,” he turned to Key, “you remember when my mom said that you people had been ambushed but they never figured out why?”

Key nodded.

“Luna told me about a story her parents used to tell her and Z when they were kids. A story about foxes,” he looked at Key, “humans,” he looked at Taemin, “and wolves,” he looked at Minho. Then he looked at the three of them.

“In the story, strange men who can transform into wolves approach the humans. Specifically, her ancestors. They came with a pact.”

“A pact?” Minho whispered.

Onew spread his hands out, demonstrating his story while he spoke it.

“A pact that was made for power. Luna said that in the pact, her parents told her the wolves ensured the humans of the foxes extinction.”

Taemin furrowed his brows.

“Why would Cerberi come to men. We are powerful creatures, why would we come to betray our supernatural counterparts?”

“She said,” Onew continued, “that the wolves were weak. That they told the humans they could never beat the foxes on their own. They needed an alliance. An alliance that they had to keep secret and only involve the most prominent human families who could get the job done.”

“Luna’s family?” Key asked.

“Think about it Key. Luna always has rumors ready before anyone else and she always says she hears her parents whispering about stuff. It’s where her rumors come from. I mean-”

“Wait.” Minho raised his hand. “What was the rest of the pact?”

His head was swirling with confusion. A pounding started to sound in its core.

“The pact was that the Cerberi would give the humans a way into the Foxes’ den and the humans had to slaughter them all before leaving. Apparently, the wolves said they had a meeting with foxes a while ago along with many of the supernatural species-”

“The meeting your mom told us about in the story,” Key commented.

“Right. And while some Cerberi were speaking their side on the supernatural matters, the others found secret ways to get into their territory without them knowing and fed that information to the humans,” Onew nodded, “but the humans had to promise not to come back and they would have their peace.”

Key shook his head. “That’s impossible, there have to be foxes around the world for them to do that. There are other forms of foxes than just Gumihos right?”

“She said,” Onew sighed, “that, that was why prominent families were needed. This wasn’t just a central thing I guess. It would make sense if they were looking, not just for prominent families around here, but around the world. But then again, something like that would mean war upon war and my mom only talked about the war on Gumihos. A war with foxes around the world would take-.”

“Centuries,” Taemin retorted, “forever. The same forever that the Elders have lived…”

“But why would humans agree to that? With the wolves’ plan, there would still be supernaturals. Even with the foxes gone.” Key asked.

Onew shrugged. “ I don’t know. She said she couldn’t remember everything about the story because it was so long ago. She thinks it’s just a tale.”

“But even tales have truths in them,” Minho grunted.

“So even if we are the bad guys, something’s missing in the story,” Taemin stated.

Onew looked over.

“You guys aren’t the bad guys. It’s your-”

“Ancestors. Got that…or the Elders, who the hell knows.” The boy shrugged.

“Onew’s right,” Key said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Minho interrupted, “Taemin’s right, there’s something missing from this story and we’re the ones who have to figure it out.”

His contact was directed to Taemin.

“No,” Key walked into his line of sight, “we all have to figure out. Just the four of us…Together.”

They all looked to each other, a quiet on-stare. But soon subtle nods moved around the entire circle, assured expressions on their faces.

“And everything we talked about stays between us,” Minho whispered, “Nothing leaves this cave.”

“Nothing.” They said together.