Transform.

Kibum knew what they were saying, yet in the same instance he couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea. The very notion that he was one of them seemed so bizarre and abstract. It was like he was having an out of body experience. He'd gone from gossiping with his friend over coffee to this, in less than 48 hours.

Everything that had happened up to this point seemed unreal. Insane even. But somehow he knew he wasn’t dreaming. Somehow he felt it in his very core that this was all actually happening. That the drunken haze he’d felt that morning as he followed Jonghyun into the guest room wasn’t just a hallucination.

Before going to bed the previous night he had half wondered if he’d actually died out there in the forest, and that all of this was the final crazy fevered hallucinations of his mind slowly fading away before the last bits of hypothermia plunged him into eternal cold.

It didn’t end though, it kept going. Here he was now with two blond haired wolf men in front of him. Both of their scents overwhelming in a way so distinctily unique that it felt almost as though he'd developed a completely new sense. He stared silently at the floor, and concentrated, letting those lingering worried thoughts leave his mind for a moment.

Minho had said to concentrate.

The smell of the pine surrounded him as he closed his eyes. Concentracting seemed like such a vague instruction, but imagining himself as one of them came so naturally. Concentrate. Focus. Surrender to the wolf.

The deep, dark cold of the arctic winter pierced his lungs. Something shifted within him.

He opened his eyes and inhaled deeply. The room looked different, smelled different. He was so acutely aware of his surroundings that it seemed almost as though he could reach out and touch the very scents that wafted around him. Everything smelled so much more pungent than it had just moments before. He could almost see the aromas. The world felt so much more rich and vibrant than he'd ever known it to be, in any previous moment of his life.

”Good job, you did it.” Minho’s voice was so clear and crisp, untouched by any other sound. The realization that it had come from within his own head rather than being something the silver haired alpha had said out loud sent a shiver down Kibum's spine. How was that possible?

He'd been staring at the floor up until that point, taking in his newfound senses, but the second he heard the voice come from within the depths of his own mind he snatched his head up abrubtly, only to come eye to eye with Minho, who was now in wolf form. Jonghyun stood still in human form near the front door.

”Come on, let’s go.” Jonghyun said with his normal voice, as he opened the door and gestured for Kibum and Minho to head outside. Kibum hesitated, still momentarily confused by the shock of hearing Minho's voice in his head and all the heightened sensations he was experiencing, but quickly he realized that he too was a wolf. A jet black wolf, he noted as he looked down at his paws, examining his new form. He snapped out of his daze as Jonghyun called out again, urging them to hurry.

"Kibum, we really must hurry."

After momentarily stumbling about in his new form, Kibum found his bearings and trotted forward, following Minho out the front door.

Jonghyun followed close behind, remaining human only momentarily so that he could close and locked the door behind them. After a quick scan of the are inside the treeline to ensure that nothing was watching them at that moment, he placed Kibum’s house key under the mat on the front porch so that he’d be able to get back in later, and then he too shifted into his wolf.

”Follow us.”

Minho’s voice rang out clearly from within Kibum’s mind once again. 

Within an instant they were all running through the trees, deep into the depths of the forests from which Minho had carried Kibum's weak body out of the previous night. Despite the speed at which their limber wolvine forms sprinted Kibum took in his surroundings in vivid detail with ease. His body moved with an unnatural velocity, but his mind seemed simultaneously to be viewing the world in slow motion. Pine branches coated in a thick layer of fluffy snow shimmered beautifully in the morning sunlight. Deep brown thick roots jutted from the frozen earth beneath his paws, occasional clumps of dirt spotted the land where snow had been unable to reach due to the naturally formed canopy of the trees. Once in a while an ice covered lake glittered against the sun, it's rays of warmth not strong enough to penetrate the thick cold