Werewolves. There is no other explanation. A shiver passes through Baekhyun’s entire body because of the thought. He knows precisely nothing about werewolves. Ever since he was young, he’s been scared out of his mind of the species and steered well clear of them – in every possible way. He remembers how he saw a movie once – he couldn’t sleep for weeks. To be honest, he doesn’t know if they were portrayed realistically, but he doesn’t want to know, he doesn’t dare.  

Why does he have the kind of luck to run into them anyway? He wipes the tears from his face and only then notices the headache. Is this because of the alcohol? Or because of the scene happening right outside his tent that he heard way too clearly? Because he’s been thinking about it way too much? He doesn’t know why he even thinks of it and sits up straight once the first sunrays hit the top of the tent.

It should be safe to go out now, Baekhyun thinks, but he’s shaky and he’s not surprised by that at all. The noise he makes when he simply shifts on the mattress, is enough to have him flinch and sit still for another few minutes. He curses at himself, he should behave already, but it’s difficult. He doesn’t understand; normally, he’s carefree, he laughs things off all the time, but he can’t right now. Even if he reasons that it was just a bad dream, his heartrate is still uneven.

But he has to get out, that much is clear. Whatever he’ll face when he gets there, he can only see when he takes that step. So even though he bites his lip in concentration to be quiet, when Baekhyun zips the tent door open, it makes a hell of  a lot of noise to his strained ears. They’re gone by now, he says to himself, calm down, they’re gone.

Once outside, the air feels a lot less heavy and Baekhyun feels like he can finally breathe. He frowns when he pokes his head back inside the tent and all becomes clear. It’s suffocating with the smell of his own fear and yet another shiver travels his spine as he thinks of the reason why. He makes up his mind – he’s not sleeping there again, whatever may happen.

The pounding in his head worsens when Baekhyun looks for the bottle of water, only to find it empty. He sighs deeply, knows he’ll have to wait until he either comes by a river – he has no recollection of how he got here last night, so he doesn’t know whether or not he passed one – or until he returns to the cabin.

The guys must have slept so well, he thinks as he leaves his temporary home behind, with no intention to pack up. The first thing he’ll have to do, is get back to the others and make sure they’re okay. He grins to himself, of course they’re okay. There’s absolutely no reason… his mind halts when he sees blood on fallen leaves. Instantly, his heart pounds against his ribcage again. He turns to look at the tent – just a few meters away. From the looks of it, the blood isn’t old and it wouldn’t surprise Baekhyun if it is from the struggle he heard.

He sees the blood left a trail further into the woods, away from the path Baekhyun was planning to take. He doesn’t know why his feet don’t let him go back to the cabin, of course this is the wrong move to make. Still, he follows the trail of blood, though it gradually grows more difficult to see. The bleeding must have stopped somewhere along the way.

Why must he be so curious? Why must he go on and follow blood, of all things? Baekhyun doesn’t know, he’s always been like this. His curiosity for alcohol in his younger days even led him here in the woods in the first place. He shakes his head, he can be so stupid sometimes, and even when he’s fully aware of it, he can’t just stop.

Baekhyun picks up on the sound of water nearby and his heart finally leaps with joy for a moment and he speeds up his pace to get there. He squints against the pain in his head, but knows it won’t last too long anymore. He even has the heart to chuckle when he thinks of how Kyungsoo and Jongdae would react. Baekhyun messed up so badly and this is so much his own fault, they wouldn’t do any other than make fun of him.

He reaches the stream not long after he heard it and crouches down next to it to fill up the bottle. Surely this water must be drinkable. If not – well, he’s made enough mistakes in the past twenty-four hours, so this one could only add to those nicely. Baekhyun sits down carefully against a tree after gulping down the entire contents of the bottle. He waits, he doesn’t even know for how long, but feels the pain ebb away finally.

Another sigh leaves Baekhyun’s lips. He feels so much better now. He even feels like he can do this; like everything is going to be okay. He shakes his head with a smile – of course it’s going to be okay. He isn’t going to die out here, neither are his friends – nor Chanyeol. The short man stretches himself out before he stands up, looks in the direction up-stream and his breath gets stuck in his throat.

Baekhyun sees a tail. A red-gray tail– wolf-gray. The tip is black – and the fact that Baekhyun can see it, because it doesn’t lay curled around the wolf’s body, should have told him that something is off. But Baekhyun knows nothing about these animals, he doesn’t even know that it’s a rather unusual place for a wolf to go sleeping.

He turns around and runs away as fast as he can. He knows he makes too much noise, but what can he do about that now? The only thing he can do, is get back to safety, get back to the cabin and Kyungsoo and Jongdae. They’ll know what to do, right? The more Baekhyun has time to think though, the more he realizes that they won’t know. In fact, it might be dangerous to lead a wolf right to his friends – but there it already is. There’s the cabin and Baekhyun feels too exhausted to turn back around and go somewhere else. He hasn’t eaten anything, after all. It’s about the last thing on his mind though.

He runs up to the door, pushes the handle down, but the door doesn’t open. Did they lock him out? Frowning and with a skyrocketing heartbeat, Baekhyun tries harder, pushes more violently against the door – even if there has been no sign of him being followed.

“Guys!” he yells and is startled by the panic in his own voice. Nevertheless, when he doesn’t get an answer, he doesn’t intend to calm down. He bangs on the door, yells “open the door!”, but nobody does.

And there they are again, those footsteps. Baekhyun instantly freezes and his eyes widen. What does he do now? That wolf he found – it must have been the werewolf he heard, and now, they’re coming back for him. He feels how his breathing speeds up, but balls his hands into fists.

“No,” he says out loud, though his voice is awfully weak. He means it though, no, he’s not going to let himself get killed now. There’s another door – surely there is another door somewhere. And he’ll find it, of course he will. So he backs away from the door, without turning around because if there’s anything he doesn’t want to see, it’s that horrifying picture of a werewolf. Hairy, big, huge teeth, claws- no. Baekhyun runs around the wooden cabin and there it is, around the back, the door they unlocked upon getting here, but didn’t use afterwards.

He slams the door shut behind himself, but knows he has no key. He yells for the guys one more time, but he already knew – they’re not here. But then where are they? Baekhyun can only go into the only room he deems safe enough; the one he slept in for the short time they were all here.

He hears one of the doors open and he knows the intruder is inside the cabin now, too. And how stupid has Baekhyun been? Cornering himself like that? How is this safe? He can’t go anywhere now. Windows, he thinks, and turns around to frantically look at them, but as he’s made his way towards one of them to open it, the door to this room opens as well.

“Ah, there you are,” a voice sounds, deep and smooth – unlike Chanyeol’s, but somehow similar. Baekhyun shivers, knows his life is over now, but doesn’t move otherwise. What if he triggers the werewolf to kill him sooner? “You’re looking for your friends, aren’t you? They’re not here.” As if Baekhyun didn’t notice that, he thinks, his palms sweaty. “I came here in search for you, and your smell was all over the place, but you weren’t here,” the figure continues to tell him in a voice that is both terrifying as well as compelling.

“What did you do to them?” Baekhyun asks, his voice small, but he turns around anyway. If he’s to meet his end here anyway, he will do it as a man. Finally, he thinks – he seems to be scared of everything on this trip. But when he turns and sees what stands before him, he can’t help the frown that etches onto his face. This can’t be a werewolf. “Who are you?! Where are my friends?!” he roars, suddenly not scared anymore – because this is just a man. A tall man, definitely, but a man. No wolf – nothing for Baekhyun to be scared of here. The man raises a brow at him though and then chuckles as one of the corners of his mouth pulls up.

“What a change in character,” he says and steps closer, to which Baekhyun realizes his fear isn’t precisely gone, the short man takes a step back in defense. “Where your friends are, doesn’t particularly matter. Where you should be, does.”

Baekhyun doesn’t have a response and his eyes only grow larger when the man in front of him comes closer and he doesn’t have any space to get back anymore. Baekhyun’s eyes flicker to the man’s plump lips, sees they’re glistening when he opens his mouth slightly. A greedy hand lands on the shirt Baekhyun wears, pulls it to the side at his neck and shoulder. Baekhyun flinches away, but there’s nowhere to go with his back against the wall and he can only look on in horror when the man’s canines start growing until they’re as large as a wolf’s.

Then he screams, as if his life depends on it.

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Thanks again so much for subscribing, voting and commenting!! <3 You're the best, really! I was wondering, do you think I need to rate this story? I mean, it's not really going to get violent, but I'm not sure ^^' 

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