Eight

Four years later…

            Kyuhyun and I were in college and living on our own in an apartment.  Kyuhyun’s parents were flipping the bill for the little place and we were hesitant to let them at first, but they felt that we ought to have a home of our own.  They thought we needed the privacy and our need to build our own life alone together finally made us agree, as long and they allowed us to start paying the bills as soon as we finished school and started our careers.  In fact, we both did work part time, but just enough to have extra spending money without having to ask them for more.  It didn’t dig into our study time much.  Both of us worked just a couple days a week and stuck to a strict budget.

            The first year of living together had been a little rough.  Kyuhyun seemed to assume that I’d be doing all the cooking and cleaning for some reason, just because I’m an omega.  I am naturally inclined to do these things if no one else does them, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be helping and there were a number of arguments and sleepless nights until we’d ironed out what was appropriate and inappropriate behaviors for a mate, regardless of whether they were alphas or omegas.  I had a lot of backing from both our mothers, which sped things up a bit.  No one took any pity on him.

            By the time we were halfway through our third year of college, we had living alone together perfected.  He was helpful around the house and—when I was doing something he was completely useless at—he knew when to stay the hell out of my way.  We kept up communication well, when we were working late or had special projects to do at school.  We talked about big purchases ahead of time and planned ahead for things we might need.  Most importantly, we prioritized our relationship.  There was always time in our schedules set aside to spend together and we were open about what we were feeling.  Everything was going well.  Until it wasn’t one day, which came as a shock to me.

            I’d been on a recent trip to Paris for a week with my cooking class.  I was going to school to be a baker—although Kyuhyun already thought my cooking was unparalleled, even without additional schooling—and we’d gone to Paris to study pastries for a short while.  Kyuhyun had missed me, of course, but he’d survived the week and had only lost a little weight.  Our mothers had cooked dinners for him and brought them over, apparently.  He’s so spoiled by them!  But he’d been acting a little more possessive since my return: constantly asking me where I had been and who I was with.  It had gotten worse and worse as time went on and it was over three weeks since my return.

            So, when I got out of the shower one night and noticed him looking through my cellphone, I just about lost it.  He’d never done anything like that before.  “What the hell are you doing?”

            Kyuhyun didn’t even have the decency to look guilty about it and kept looking at the phone.  “Whose D.O?”

            “One of my classmates,” I informed him, walking over to the bed and snatching my phone away from him.  He was looking through my text messages.

            “Why does he text you so much?”

            “Because we’re friends and we’re in a group project together.  Why are you spying on me?  I don’t look through your phone!”

            “I’m not constantly on the damn thing, ignoring you during conversations!” Kyuhyun argued.

            “If you’re mad at me texting while I’m at home with you, then talk to me about it.  Don’t go snooping through my phone.  I’m not hiding anything from you!”

            “Then why don’t you want me to look through your phone?” he countered.

            “Because what I say to my friends is private!  I don’t listen into all your conversations with Changmin or Eunhyuk!  I never look at your phone to see who you’re calling.  I trust you!  You’ve never given me a reason not to.  I’d like to know why you suddenly feel like it’s necessary to spy on me!”

            “You did go to Paris for a week,” Kyuhyun threw out at me.

            I stared at him, my mouth falling open in shock.  “For school!”

            “I wasn’t there,” Kyuhyun simply said.  “I don’t know what you were doing.”

            “Sungmin came with as well, since he’s in the same program.  That’s practically like me having a chaperone.  Although I don’t need one!  You have pictures of me and my classmates cooking that I sent you.  What reason have I given you not to trust me?”

            Kyuhyun crossed his arms over his chest and looked away. 

            “This is ridiculous!  I’m not fighting with you over something so stupid,” I grumbled.  I grabbed my pillow off the bed and stormed out of the room.  I headed into the living room, where I threw my pillow onto the couch, and proceeded to set the alarm on my phone for late morning.  I thankfully had just a couple afternoon classes the next day, since I felt positive that I was going to be stewing over my mate’s weird possessive behavior for a while and wouldn’t be falling to sleep anytime soon.

            He hadn’t acted like this in forever.  Not since we first started being romantically involved, back in high school.  Once he felt certain that I loved him back, he pretty much stopped acting weird about me talking to other alphas or going out without him, as long as no one hit on me.  If someone was stupid enough to hit on me—now that my mate mark was so prominent—he wasn’t very nice about it.  Otherwise, Kyuhyun had curbed his jealous behavior years ago.  Why was it rearing its ugly head now?

            After setting my alarm, I grabbed the blanket off the back of the couch and was about to settle in when I remembered that I still needed to take my suppressant, which was unfortunately in the bedroom.  Skipping one day usually wasn’t detrimental, but I’d accidentally left the pills at home when I’d gone to Paris.  Thankfully, my trip to Paris was a month and a half before my heat was expected to arrive, but I didn’t want to upset the balance of things more and skip one this close to my projected heat time when I’d not taken the pill for a whole week.  You never know. 

            Sighing loudly, I got back up and headed down the hall to our bedroom.  I would just have to be quick about it—hurry in and out—and avoid further arguing.  I wasn’t in the mood for false accusations or mistrust.  I didn’t even know where such ideas were coming from.  But when I opened the door, determined to show a hard attitude and just go in for my pills, I found my mate sitting in the bed with red eyes, tears running down his cheeks.  It stopped me cold in the middle of the room.

            Kyuhyun took a deep breath and wiped his cheeks.  “I-I’m sorry, Ryeong.  I don’t know what’s gotten into me.  You know that I trust you—more than anyone else in the world—and I honestly don’t know why I’m acting like this.  I’ve felt so…I’ve been anxious lately.  Please don’t leave.”

            He sounded desperate and I could feel the panicked emotions inside him.  He felt miserable and confused.  I wondered if, for once, he was more stressed out about school then he let on.  He usually made his work sound so easy, but I doubted that it was all the time.

            I walked over to the bed and climbed on, sitting down in front of him.  Then I reached up to help him dry his cheeks.  “No more looking through my phone without asking, Kyu.”

            He nodded.  “I’m sorry.”

            “Would you like to meet D.O?  Should I invite him over for dinner sometime?”

            “Yeah, but I’m not really worried about him.  I don’t know why I acted like that.”

            I let out a long breath.  Kyuhyun still seemed anxious, as he claimed, and I only knew one surefire way to relax him.  It would probably also relieve his worry about me cheating, although he claimed he wasn’t worried about it.  So, I released my pheromones.  I felt the immediate effect of it on Kyuhyun’s emotions.  All the confusion and worry vanished and were replaced with affection and attraction.  Almost instantly, he responded by releasing his own and I felt myself relax as well. 

            We hadn’t slept together in a couple months.  It wasn’t intentional, we’d just both been busy and our schedules conflicted sometimes.  Even when we were home together, we were often too tired to worry about being intimate.  This wasn’t as common an occurrence as it had once been in the beginning of our relationship, but it was kind of a shame, because he was damn good in bed and it always seemed to strengthen our relationship.

            Kyuhyun leaned closer and pressed his nose against my neck, inhaling greedily.  “It’s been so long since we’ve done this, I’ve forgotten how good you smell.  You smell even sweeter than I remember.”

            I giggled a little, feeling ticklish as his lips lightly grazed my skin, and tilted my head back for more.  Kyuhyun’s pheromones smelled better than I remembered as well.  That was probably a consequence of not sleeping together for so long.  I could feel slick coming out of me already, which seemed a little excessive, but my body felt primed to be taken by my mate.  My wolf wanted his knot.  It felt almost needy for it, to the point that my legs began to shake in anticipation. 

            Neither of us wasted time.  We began striping each other of clothes and touching each other immediately.  Within minutes, he was ing inside of me, over and over, until we both came hard and fast.  And then we did it two more times before dawn, still overwhelmed by the strength of the pheromones in the room and our own emotions. 

            It wasn’t until the next day that I began to suspect that there was something more going on.

            When I came home from classes the following day, I felt famished.  I figured that was probably because I’d had three times the night before and had barely slept.  So, I decided to try out some of my new recipes and began making some cookies, a cake, a couple different breads, rolls, and even some bars.  Kyuhyun was going to be thrilled when he came home.  I started dinner up as well, knowing that Kyuhyun runs late on Thursdays, and was thankful when he called on his way home.

            “Hello!” I cheerfully answered the phone, setting down the cookie I’d been munching on.  “Is class finished?”

            “Class is done and I thought I’d stop at the store on the way home to pick up a couple things.  I was wondering if you needed anything.”

            “I do!  Could you get me some butter, flour, sugar, vanilla extract, cinnamon powder, peanut butter, parsley, onions, garlic cloves, bananas, and baking soda?”

            “Ah…” Kyuhyun stammered.  “I’m driving right now, babe.  Can you text me that list?  I don’t think I’ll remember it all.”

            “Sure.”

            “You ran out of all of that?  I could have sworn we had flour and sugar in the jars this morning when I looked.”

            “We did, but I’ve done a bunch of baking this afternoon.  I hope you’re hungry,” I informed him, checking on the pot boiling on the stove and stirring the contents.  “Oh, I’d better add rice to that as well.”

            “Just how much stuff did you bake?  There’s only two of us!”

            “We’ll eat it all before it spoils.  Trust me.”

            “You mean me.  I’ll probably gain more weight and have to start walking to campus again just to burn it off,” Kyuhyun complained.

            “Or you could burn it off the same way you did last night,” I suggested.

            Kyuhyun chuckled, his voice lowering seductively.  “That is my preference.”

            “Good.  I’ll skip going to the gym tomorrow morning.”

            “You don’t need to wait until tomorrow morning,” Kyuhyun insisted.  “But I just pulled into the parking lot.  We probably shouldn’t talk about our new work out regimen while I wander through the store.  Send me your list and I’ll be home in a little while.”

            “Okay.  Thank you.  See you soon.”

            “Bye.  I love you.”

            “I love you, too,” I said back, smiling into the phone at my affectionate mate.  “Bye-bye.”

            Kyuhyun did not take long at the store, despite the long list that I’d sent him.  He was used to having to track down weird ingredients for my recipes at that point and unless it was a very rare item or they’d recently reorganized the shelves at the store, Kyuhyun had grocery shopping down to a science and was rather quick and