Like so many other wolf stories you’ve heard, this is the story about when I bonded with my mate.  Unlike most of the stories you’ve probably heard, it happened to me at a much younger age than it normally does.  I was only three years old.  You’re probably wondering how something like that could even happen.  Honestly, I only have the vaguest memory of it.  Kyuhyun remembers a couple more details about it—despite only being two and a half at the time—because his mother initially scolded him over it, which wasn’t normal.  Kyuhyun was a little spoiled as a child and wasn’t scolded very often.  But biting another kid on the neck and accidentally mating with them happened to be grounds for it.

            From what information I’ve collected about the incident from our mothers, who were both present at the time, I’ve somewhat reconstructed the moment.  Both of our families were living in Seoul.  My wolf pack had just moved there within the previous year were still adjusting to city life, having lived in the woods for centuries, while Kyuhyun’s pack had already been in the city for a couple generations.  On one lovely summer day, unnoteworthy aside from what would later happen to us and the weather being nice enough for pups to play outside in, our mothers just both happened to bring us to the same park, at the same time.  They didn’t know one another, although they’d seen each other in passing in the neighborhood on several occasions.  Our mothers happened to sit down on the same bench and introduced themselves to each other and us, apparently.

            “Ryeowook, did you hear her?  His name is Kyuhyun.”

            I hid my head in her lap, barely peeking at the young alpha boy.

            “He’s very shy,” my mother explained.

            “I wish I could say the same about my son.  He’s energetic and he talks a great deal, but most of it is still nonsensical babbling, I’m afraid.  Only his sister, Ahra, seems to make sense of what he’s trying to tell us.  Of course, she’s at her music lessons at the moment, so I’m stuck trying to interpret him on my own.  Ryeowook, you can just call him Kyu for short, like we do, if that’s easier,” Kyuhyun’s mother said.

            “Kyu,” I softly repeated.

            Kyuhyun’s mother was still trying to remove his sweater and Kyuhyun was trying to yank out of it, eager to play in the park, but he kept looking over at me curiously.

            “Kyuhyun,” my mother said to the boy, “this is Ryeowook, but you can call him Wookie.”

            “Wookie,” the boy repeated and then grabbed onto my hand wrist the moment his arms were free of the sweater and drug me with him to the park.  I was too shocked to object.  I did like to play with other kids that I knew, but I was far shier with strangers as a child and didn’t quite know what to do with this boy that had a death grip on my arm.  We continued barreling along until we reached the slide and then he began climbing the stairs, dragging me up with him.  I had to run up them to keep up with him, but thankfully he stopped when we reached the very top.  Once we were up there, we both sat down and that’s when Kyuhyun started acting different. 

            The young alpha began by sniffing the air, as if he had caught a strange scent.  Curious to know what he smelled, I started sniffing the air as well.  And this is where my memory kicks in hard.  I do remember smelling something distinct and powerful, but it was not the same thing that Kyuhyun smelled.  He remembers this differently.  Kyuhyun claims that he could smell jasmine.  What he was, in fact, smelling was my natural pheromones.  They aren’t very strong when you’re a child, but they still exist.  I didn’t notice my own scent, of course, but I could clearly smell his and he—being the little alpha he was—began releasing more of them once he caught my own scent.  Kyuhyun smelled of sandalwood.  He still does, of course.  It’s his natural scent.  And because he happens to be my mate, this is the scent that I’m most attracted to.  Even at the age of three, I could not break my initial interest in Kyuhyun, once I finally registered it fully.

            Kyuhyun’s head moved closer to mine as he continued to sniff the air and he grabbed onto my shoulders as he leaned closer, beginning to sniff my skin.  Now, I wasn’t paying any attention to our mothers at all, but this was apparently around the time that one of them glanced over and began to wonder what was going on.  But they weren’t overly concerned.  Because we were just little pups.  Pups do weird things like sniff new people all the time.  And I wasn’t overreacting and throwing a fit like I generally would because Kyuhyun’s pheromones were having a calming effect on me. 

            Kyuhyun took a deep breath as his nose touched my neck and sighed contentedly.  I might be making this up, but it sounds right.  He still does crap like that.  I think baby Kyu did it too. 

            And then he said something to me.  He said a word.  It wasn’t babble, as his mother had suggested to mine that he did most of the time.  It was a real word and I remember it clearly, although no one is quite sure how he’d heard of the word or if he even fully understood it’s meaning. 

            “Mate,” Kyuhyun said, nuzzling my neck.

            “What?” I asked, not understanding him.

            Kyuhyun wrapped his arms around me tightly and this is when I heard a gasp from Kyuhyun’s mother and looked over, noticing her jump to her feet.  She’d caught Kyuhyun’s pheromones in the air and noticed how strong they were and grew suddenly worried about how her son was holding onto me and sniffing my neck.  Although children mating was rare, it did happen on occasion. 

            Just as she was beginning to rush our direction, Kyuhyun moved his head away marginally, still staring at my neck.  “Mine,” he told me, claiming me as if I were some possession, like a favorite toy of his.  And then he bent his head back down and bit my neck.  I remember feeling pain and crying, I remember our mothers screaming, I remember being picked up by my mother and rocked as our rattled mothers nervously panicked over the situation, and then I remember whining because I wanted to be put back down.  I remember, even just a couple minutes after Kyuhyun had marked me, I already began feeling upset if I was away from him for too long.

            From that day forward, our parents got to know each other rather well.  Our pack leaders and doctors advised that we not be separated—that we live together—so from that day onward, we bounced back and forth from one house to another.  We usually just switched on the weekends, spending full weeks at one house or the other.  When it came time to enter school, we were put into the same one, although we were in different classes. 

            I never knew there was anything strange about our situation until I was a little older and other kids began teasing me that I was already marked and mated.  I knew what it meant in a general sense, but I didn’t realize immediately that this meant I was bound to be romantically involved with Kyuhyun and that we’d end up living and raising a family together.  Not right away, at least.  But all this became apparent as time drew on and I felt strange about it.  I had grown up with Kyuhyun.  We were almost more like brothers because of the way we’d been raised together, although not in a traditional way.  I thought of him as my best friend…not my mate.

            When we hit puberty, that’s when things began to become awkward between us.  By the time we started high school, our relationship had become outright strained.  I avoided him as much as possible at school.  Most people didn’t even know who I was mated to, aside from my closest friends.  From what I could tell, Kyuhyun didn’t openly advertise the fact that he was mated either.  All the girls swarmed around him, unaware that he was already taken.  He turned them all down, but he never explained why.  I wasn’t sure if he was just respecting my wishes on not wanting the whole world to know about us or if he felt embarrassed