I headed back to the house, albeit sulking the whole way.

“Kai! Jeez, finally! We’re starving and Hyesun noona wouldn’t let us eat until you got here!” Baekhyun ‘greeted’ me at the door.

“Well, I’m here now, so let’s eat.” I replied, still grumpy about being torn away from Sonja.

It was a pretty traditional Korean meal with japchae, deonjang jjigae, and an array of side dishes as well as plenty of galbi, hot off the grill.

Everyone settled into the normal flow of things and before long there were only a few scraps left. Some of the boys were itching to spar so they moved the gathering outside. Suho asked me to stay back and help clear the plates, so I began cleaning up and putting what little was left into tupperware for leftovers. The sound of Suho clearing his throat interrupted me slightly and I could tell he had something to say to me.

“Yeah, hyung? What’s up?” He had a serious look on his face that I didn’t often see. “Look if this is about being late today, I’m sorry I really didn’t realize what time it was and--”

“No, no, it’s not about that. I have some news… or rather a lack of news from the other mates I told you about.”

“Oh! The were with the human mate! What did they say? Anything to help me in breaching the subject with Sonja?”

“Well, here’s the thing, I couldn’t really get any information from them.”

“What do you mean? I thought you said you heard from them?”

“I did. I did hear from Jackson. But I don’t think it’s what you want to hear.” The atmosphere grew tense.

“What exactly did he say?”

“I just want you to keep in mind that this might be a totally isolated incident, and--”

“Hyung,” I paused to take a breath, trying to calm myself. “What did he say?”

“He said he didn’t want to share any information and asked us to not contact them again. Apparently they’ve had some trouble with other packs in the area.”

“What do you mean ‘trouble’?”

“Well, it seems that not everyone looks at a were mating with a human as a… positive thing. I don’t really know all of the details, Jongin, but from whatever happened Jackson felt that he and his mate needed to go into hiding and didn’t want to risk any more attention being drawn to them.” I heard the wood of the head of a kitchen chair splintering in my hands before I even realized that I was gripping onto it.

“What the hell--!” My words were half growl. I could feel my wolf taking over as a rage against anyone who w