Six year old Yunho had a long list of things that made him happy and a teeny-tiny list of maybe four things that annoyed him.

Of those four things, his parents giving all their attention to his younger brother Changmin was at number two, his best friend Heechul stealing all his toys and burying them in the garden was at number three and his mother the fur behind his ears and telling him to learn how to groom himself was at number four.

What was number 1, you may ask?

It wasn’t a secret. The whole pack knew that if there was one thing, sorry, one person, that annoyed Yunho the most, it was Kim Jaejoong.

Being the oldest son of the Alpha of their pack meant that Yunho was respected and adored by everyone. It wasn’t hard to love him - he was bright, excitable, kind and above all incredibly intelligent for his age.

But Kim Jaejoong made it his mission in life to make sure everyone was there to witness exactly how stupid Yunho could be if a situation called for it.

Although their parents were best friends, Yunho and Jaejoong never seemed to get along. They were barely a month apart in age but Yunho felt he was infinitely more mature than the older boy.

Jaejoong who frequently let Changmin pee on Yunho’s bed, who put acorns on his chair when they were at pack dinners, who tied his shoelaces together when he wasn’t looking just to see him fall on his face and worst of all, never took any responsibility for his actions - choosing to blame it on their pack beta, Junsu, who at the age of five was still trying to learn how to tie his own shoe laces let alone someone else’s.

Thirteen year old Yunho decided he hated Kim Jaejoong, especially when the poor excuse of a pack member snatched his beautiful, hand-written letter to Yoo Jin - who at eighteen was the prettiest Omega in their pack - and read it out to their entire class, pausing to flutter his eyelashes as he simpered out a “Yoo Jin, your smile makes my heart come alive.”

He felt Heechul pat his head sympathetically even as the older stifled his laughter into his other hand, “Oh, Yunho, don’t you already know she’s found her mate?”

Turns out, she had.

Ki Tae Young was one of the strongest hunters in their pack and someone Yunho himself looked upto growing up. So suffice to say, his dream of mating Yoo Jin died before it could even begin.

But his hatred for Jaejoong had just begun.

The next few years were spent trying to one-up each other, and Yunho, who until a few years ago, passively took everything Jaejoong dished out - decided it was time to teach the head a lesson.

When Yunho decided to put Nair into Jaejoong’s high school crush’s shampoo, only to then place the blame solely on Jaejoong - the village learned that they were going to end up killing each other eventually. Jaejoong took the retaliation as well as he dealt them and eventually their parents had to intervene before the two of them managed to destroy the entire village.

At seventeen and a day before his eighteenth birthday, and a month after Jaejoong had presented as an Omega, Yunho’s father gave him an ultimatum - get along with Jaejoong and act responsibly, or give up any possibility of taking over the pack in the long run. “I won’t have a son who loses all sense of maturity over petty little fights with one of the rare omegas we have in this pack, take over one of the most powerful packs in the world just because he doesn’t know how to act like an adult in a given situation.”

The conversation had ended with that and Yunho had been left to stare at the floor in shame and anger at having disappointed his father for the first time in his entire life.

But at midnight on his eighteenth birthday, Yunho looked at himself in the mirror and bit back a growl at his glowing red eyes.

Alpha.

He was going to take over their pack whether anyone liked it or not now anyway.

He decided to shift and take a run through the woods, his skin itching as his Alpha wolf demanded to be let out and relieve him of some of the raw energy he had building up right through his bones.

He ran until he felt his muscles start to hurt and lay down by the river bed, trying to calm his racing heart.

There was a weird compulsion in him to find something. Find something or someone. Another itch that needed to be scratched, one that he’d only heard stories about all his life.

He arched his neck and howled into the night, a call for whatever or whoever it was to come to him so that he could end the ache.

So when he heard twigs snap behind him minutes later and turned to find Kim Jaejoong behind him. He knew two things for certain.

One, Kim Jaejoong was his mate.

Two, neither of them were going to live long enough to take over the pack.

***

It’s been two days, Jaejoong’s gone and holed himself up in his room and refusing to come out. Yunho’s spent the last 48 hours in the library trying to figure out how to break a soul-bond with minimum damage to himself. Jaejoong could go take a hike for all he cared.

And unfortunately, he did care. Unwillingly.

Ever since his presenting, all Yunho wanted to do was turn back into his wolf form and rub his scent over the omega, mark him, claim him, have pups with him and live a long and happy life with him.

But his wolf wasn’t the one that had to deal with Jaejoong’s crappy personality and his complete lack of consideration for anyone but himself.

So Yunho was going to figure how to come out of this unscathed if it was the last thing he’d do.

The last thing he did was apparently fall asleep over the books and then have an exasperated Changmin drag him back home.

“Why are you even fighting this?” Changmin asked dubiously. Staring at his pouting brother, who’d now proceeded to lock them both up in their room.

Yunho gaped at him, “What do you mean ‘why am I fighting this’? Have you met Kim Jaejoong? Have you not seen the torture me every day since he was born? How can you even ask me that question?”

“I don’t know? Maybe the fact that you’ve been obsessed with him since you could crawl. I mean we’ve got baby pictures of you two practically attached to each other, there’s video footage of you wailing at Jaejoong’s parents for taking him away from you. Even when you’ll were trying to kill each other, I’m pretty sure everyone in the pack could smell how -“

Yunho leapt off the bed and put a hand over his younger brother’s mouth. “Not another word out of you, I swear to God.”

“You enjoy it, Yunho. You literally thrive on the attention he gives you. Don’t you think it’s weird that the only time you ever retaliate against Jaejoong is when he has a crush on someone or expresses interest in someone else? Also isn’t it weirder that he only seems to talk about his so-called crushes when you’re around? Because I can promise you, the second you’re not around- those Alphas are dropped like rotten sardines.”

“What are you trying to say, exactly? That Jaejoong and I actually like each other?”

“Oh God no, you don’t like each other at all. You’re both head over paws for each other. In love. The aishteruyo, mi amore, how am I supposed to live a life worth living without you in it, kind of love.”

“You’re so full of .”

“Okay, how about this? If you go to Jaejoong’s house right now, I’m betting you he’s sobbing his eyes out. Not because he doesn’t want to be mated to you, but because you, my idiot brother, decided to turn tail and run away from him the second you found out it was him.”

“I didn’t turn-“

“Yes. Yes you did. You’re blind to your own feelings, he has very poor coping mechanisms and you’re both idiots. Everyone thought that you two would figure out your , but we realise that that’s giving you more credit than your brainless asses deserve. Now please, let me go eat my god damned dinner, while you get your head out of your and go claim your mate.”

Yunho watched his younger brother leave the room and then stared at the open door for a while, unseeing as he thought back over his interactions with Jaejoong over the years.

Changmin wasn’t wrong. If you looked beyond the surface and paid attention to the unsaid…there was more to it than just bad memories and anger.

Every time Jaejoong made him trip, the other would help him up and clean his wounds, no apologies - but numerous gentle touches.

Every time Yunho retaliated, he never hurt Jaejoong, always making sure someone else took the brunt of his revenge.

Every time their wolves fought, Jaejoong would rub the top of his head under Yunho’s maw, silently scent marking him so other, presented omegas would back off.

Yunho thought this was his way of using his status to make Yunho suffer more, isolate him and make him miserable - but could it have been more than that? Could Jaejoong have meant to be something beyond malicious?

There were the smaller things too. The things that he’d noticed but never given any thought to. Not really.

Jaejoong’s struggle to hide his laughter when his “crush” turned up at school with no hair. Far from the distraught image Yunho had in mind and only retaliating when the younger had blamed him for the incident.

Jaejoong glaring at Yunho as he wrote down his letter to Yoo Jin and then snatching it away to read to the class. The omega deliberately avoiding reading out some of Yunho’s personal secrets that were in that letter as if keeping those for himself.

Jaejoong quietly standing by his side as he mourned the loss of his grandfather, a hand he’d never noticed laying quietly on his back as he cried for the first time in years. Not a condescending word out of him for a month.

Jaejoong’s eyes shining in the moonlight when they discovered they were mates, dimmed as Yunho snarled and turned away to run.

Jaejoong who’d always been by his side - through the good and the bad.Often the instigator of both. But a Jaejoong who breathed fun into Yunho’s otherwise duty bound life.

“Well ,” the alpha muttered to himself, running his fingers through his hair. “.”

Had he really just been blind to it all? All this time, could Jaejoong have just been trying to get his attention? Trying to steer clear of being relegated to friends, and trying desperately to make the younger see him as something more?

Yunho pulled off his clothes and shifted, his tanned skin shifting to ebony fur, his dark brown eyes shifting to a fiery red.

He bounded down the stairs of his house, ignoring his mother’s calls and his brother’s barely whispered “ing finally”, and ran through the woods towards Jaejoong’s house.

He scratched frantically at the front door, only to have his mate’s mother open it and stare at him exasperatedly, “Yunho, do you realise what time it is?”

Yunho barked at her and sneaked past her legs sheepishly in order to bound up the stairs towards his mate’s room, blatantly ignoring the woman’s laughter.

He scuffed his paw against the bedroom door and barked irritatedly when he heard a muffled “I’m not hungry.”

He continued assaulting the door until his disgruntled mate pulled it open, only to then stare at him in a mixture of irritation, surprise and sadness.

Suffice to say his wolf was less than pleased to see his own mate looking so unhappy with him.

“What do you want, Yunho?”

Yunho walked forward and bumped into the other’s stomach, pushing the other further into the room as he rubbed himself all over him, trying to will away the smell of other people on him.

“What are you doing? You made it plenty clear what you thought of me last night. Get off me,” Jaejoong muttered, his slender fingers gripping onto Yunho’s fur in an attempt to pull him away.

The alpha turned his head to nip gently at the other’s wrist, before herding the older towards the bed.

“What is wrong with you? Will you please just shift back so that we can talk?”

Yunho pushed the other onto the bed and looked up into his angry eyes, no not angry - hurt.

The alpha whined and bumped his nose against Jaejoong’s stomach again, nosing along the other’s waistband, asking to be pet, or shown any form of affection.

When the omega just stared dubiously at him, Yunho huffed and scrambled onto the bed himself, curling up in on himself and then turning his head away in a huff.

“Are you serious? You break into my room and decide to sulk instead?”

Yunho opened an eye and closed it before burying his nose in his mate’s blanket, enjoying the comforting scent of home while the other seethed next to him.

“You rejected me.” Jaejoong’s voice wavered as he poked Yunho’s side, “You rejected me and you’re here acting like you didn’t and now you’re avoiding me by shifting and sulking because you think that’s going to make me pretend like everything’s alright.”

Yunho opened his eyes and stared at the wall, his heart tripping in his chest in guilt. He huffed and then shifted back into his human form, uncaring of his .

“I didn’t reject you, Jaejoong.”

The omega scoffed and threw his blanket at Yunho, silently asking him to cover up.

“You ran away from me before I could even get a word in, what does that say to you?”

“I needed to think. We haven’t exactly had the sanest or most functional relationship growing up. We’ve always been at each other’s throats and its never been straight forward, you know?”

Jaejoong looked right into Yunho’s eyes and the alpha was struck by the realisation that the prettiest omega in their pack, the most ethereal one, was now his mate.

“It’s not my fault you’re dense.”

Yunho bit back a growl, begging his temper not to get the best of him.

“Jaejoong, no sane person would believe that you were trying to get my attention romantically in any way. You made my life miserable, you tripped me up in public, you read out personal letters to the whole class, you made it a point to draw blood every time our wolves fought and you deliberately paraded your love interests in front of me. Now explain to me how I’m supposed to infer that you actually like me from all of this?”

“Is that all you really recall from those interactions? There were other times too, Yunho. There were so many other times in between that where we stuck together, where we supported each other, where we forgot to stop fighting and just let each other be.”

Yunho raised his hand and put it around Jaejoong’s nape, bringing the other close enough that their noses were touching.

“That’s all I did remember, until tonight. All I could think of were the times you made me miserable, the times I thought you were just being selfish and mean. Then I thought back and realised maybe you aren’t such a piece of after all. That you have a couple of redeeming qualities.”

Jaejoong reached out and pinched Yunho’s in retaliation, causing the alpha to laugh and pull the omega closer, bringing their lips a hair-breadth away from each other.

“I don’t know why, even after all the we’ve pulled on each other, there’s a part of me that’s so insanely in love with you, Kim Jaejoong. I hate it to the moon and back that I love you. It’s driving my wolf insane. What is it about you? That even through all the crap we’ve been through - you managed to do just enough to make me realise that I love you.”

“That’s what being mates does to you, I guess.”

“Make you stupid?”

“Can you please just shut up?”

“Do you love me, Jaejoong?”

“Not anymore you assh-“

“Yes or no, head.”

“Yes.”

The younger smirked and closed the gap between them, bringing their lips together in a soft kiss, he felt the omega’s lips against his and sighed as he felt an odd sense of home fill him.

They don’t know how long they sat there, pressing light, sipping kisses against each other’s lips - long enough that Jaejoong was now in Yunho’s lap and the alpha’s hands were wrapped tight around him as if protecting him from the world.

Yunho pulled away and nosed his way along Jaejoong’s neck, causing the other to hunch over at the ticklish feeling.

The alpha placed a soft, comforting kiss on the older’s clavicle before coming up to the curve of his neck.

“May I claim you?” Yunho asked, not forgetting tradition as he gave in to his instincts, waiting for the other’s consent before tying themselves together for life.

“Are you sure you can handle me for the rest of your life?”

“Do you promise not to tie my shoelaces together and make me trip during pack dinners?”

Jaejoong sighed despondently, “If I have to.”

Yunho laughed as the other muttered something about taking all the fun out of their romance.

He asked the omega to hold on to him, rubbing soothing circles down his back, and bit down hard against the other’s neck.

He proceeded to hold his now claimed mate tight against his chest and reached up to wipe his tears away and press light kisses against his cheek, whispering words of praise as the other came down from the pain of being claimed, the wound already scarring over.

“You’re mine Kim Jaejoong.”

“I like the sound of Jung Jaejoong better.”

***

Six years later when Yunho ends up with his shoelaces tied together and his cheek against the floor because his daughter thought it would be funny to torture her father, the resounding “Jung Jaejoong!” that filled the village brought smiles to everyone’s faces, including the omega in question, who brought a hand to his mouth and whispered, “That’s my girl.”

Changmin, who heard his brother-in law, shook his head and muttered, “I’ll never understand the two of you.”

end.