Luhan.

From Yerin had been told, he should have been locked up in EXO’s chinese facility. How was he possibly be here?

He patted Sehun’s back lovingly. “I’ve missed you, too.”

Sehun straightened up, trying his hardest to make his face stoic again.

“How are you here?” Minseok asked the question that was on everyone’s lips.

“Security in the other lab isn’t as tight,” he answered, stepping further into the house. The door closed with a loud bang behind him, causing Yerin to flinch. This shock to her system was frying her nerves. “They rescued us first. That was about eight months ago.”

“Are-” Junmyeon stopped, clearing his throat nervously. “Are the others with you?”

Luhan shook his head. “No. After about five months, they were ready to be back into the world. They split up. Tao’s still angry with Kris, blaming him for us being caught. They check in separately every so often, but I haven’t heard from them in a while. As far as we know, they’re doing fine.”

Junmyeon nodded, seemingly simultaneously sad and grateful for the update.

“Yerin.”

She perked up at the sound of her name. Leaning around Jongin’s shoulder, she swallowed thickly. “Yes?”

“Where’s Marcus?”

her lips, she opened to give him the terrible news, but Junmyeon beat her to the punch.

“He didn’t make it.”

Luhan visibly deflated, shoulders slumping.

Pushing past her protective barrier in Jongin and her own personal fear, she added, "He got caught in the crossfire. We couldn’t save him.” She crossed herr arms to hold herself together. “I’m assuming you’re the contact he told me about?”

He smiled ruefully. “Yeah. I decided to stick with the program in order to get these idiots out.”

A few chuckles rumbled off from the crowd behind her. Even Yerin grinned a bit.

“You’re late.” The mood in the room was light and she tried to keep up with it.

“I know. EXO isn’t making it easy to move around. We had to be careful so we didn’t lead them to you accidentally.” He glance around the room. “I’m sorry guys. You’ll have to stay here a little longer.” Luhan's expression fell, all so serious. “Yerin, I think we should talk in private.”

Understanding, she nodded. “Okay. Let’s go up to my room.”

Multiple roars erupted from the crowd gathered in the front room. Yerin couldn’t decipher who exactly had objected to the suggestion. The big deal of it all was lost on her. Luhan wasn’t a stranger. To them, at least.

“Or not.” Yerin scratched her head thoughtfully. “Okay, how about everyone else goes up to their rooms and Luhan and I stay in the living room?” No objection was given. “Okay, then. I’ll call for you guys when we’re through.”

After a few nods of approval, they slowly slunked their way up the stairs. Minseok stopped briefly to give Luhan a hug.

“I’m glad to see you safe, Minseok.”

Pulling away, the eldest shook his head. “You’re one to talk.”

Sehun was the last to leave, obviously reluctant to be absent of Luhan’s presence.

“We’ll catch up soon, Sehun,” he promised.

Giving in, Sehun nodded and took the stairs to the second floor two at a time.

“Come on,” Yerin motioned with her head for him to follow.

Though she had said to conveign in the living room, she didn’t entirely trust the guys to stay in their rooms. She bypassed the reactional room to the breakfast room. Windows made up three of the four walls with a small, round table in the middle, perfect for breakfast at sunrise. It was another one of her little hideaways where the boys gave her alone time. With a good deal distance from the second floor and plenty of doors in between, she knew the two of them could have privacy if they kept their voices low. Once they both were seated, she let out a deep breath.

“Is the part where you tell me that my face is plastered all over every news broadcast as a wanted criminal?”

Luhan shook his head. The small smile on his face was reassuring. He had young boyish features, although from what little she could remember from his nearly empty file, he was one of the older ones.The glance had been brief, so she could have misread the data. 

“No. EXO has kept this little jailbreak quiet. They can’t exactly say nine of their human experiments went missing to the public. But they’ve got plenty of manpower to search for all of us without causing a stir in the streets.”

Leaning back in the seat, Yerin sighed. “How much longer do you think we’ll have to stay here?”

The smile faded. “I don’t know. Maybe a week? They only sent me ahead because I was getting restless. We hadn’t heard from Marcus and I didn’t take that as a good sign. He was usually the impatient type. They agreed to let me scout ahead, make sure you guys made it here. I’ll contact my handler and them know you’re safe. From there, we’ll wait for things to die down.”

It would never die down. Dr. Wang herself was a very determined woman. She wouldn’t simply let this go. They spent too much time, money, and resources to just shrug and walk away. All of them would be hunted for the rest their lives. Constantly looking over her shoulder, making sure no one was following for too long, careful not to leave any sort of trace of who she really was.

“How exactly are you going to contact your handler?” Yerin asked, trying to get her mind on something else rather than her future living as a burned spy. If only she were that special. Or good at throwing a punch.

Luhan dug around his pocket before throwing down a very old and dingy looking flip phone. She didn’t even realize those still existed.

“Burner phone,” he explained. “Untraceable. It’s been specially programmed to only be able to receive calls from one number. Same for any outgoing calls. Only that one number, everything else will fail to dial.”

Yerin raised an eyebrow, impressed. “Nice.”

Leaning forward, Luhan rested his elbows on the table, staring her down and lowering his voice. “Yerin. The reason I wanted to talk to you alone was because I sensed something as soon as I walked into the house.”

“Sensed something?” she echoed. “Like, you smelled something? Or heard?”

He shook his head. “No. You see, my alterations gave me another sense. Not really a sixth sense since humans technically have a few more beyond our normal five.”

She bit her tongue, holding back a ready snipe. She knew that. She did go to med school.

“But my extra sense….” He paused, trying to find the best way to phrase whatever he was about to express. “Well, I guess the closest word to it is empath.”

“Okay,” Yerin chewed on the inside of her cheek as she processed his statement. “So, based on my limited knowledge of that word, you can basically feel other people’s emotions?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that, but yes. I’m so intuned, sometimes it feels like I can read their mind.”

That made her scoff. “Okay, I believe Junmyeon being able to survive underwater without breathing for an hour and I can understand the science behind Yixing’s rapid healing, but mind reading? Seriously?” Science existed, had its limits. Magic was for children. 

Luhan rolled his eyes. “It’s not mindreading. I can just make very accurate assumptions from what I pick up. It’s more like I can smell the pheromones and the chemical changes in your brain and interpret what they mean.”

“That's more believable,” Yerin replied, although still a bit skeptical of how accurate his description was. “So, why are you telling me this?”

Clearing his throat, he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Take what I’m about to say and keep it to yourself, okay?”

Yerin cocked a questioning eyebrow. “Okay….”

“I can sense the guys are protective of you,” he stated. That was obvious enough, even to her. “Marcus kept us updated on the situation with you. When the thing happened with Sehun-” he stopped, shaking the thought away. “We were able to realize that the boys would be more likely to listen to you than Marcus, so when he informed us that you were in, I was relieved. I figured they’d be attached to you, but-” he took a deep breath. “You understand that their DNA is mixed with wolf genes and that’s altered their way of thinking.”

Yerin groaned. “Luhan, I’m a doctor. I studied their files and their blood for months. I know they are basically now part wolf. They might as well be a pack of werewolves that don’t actually turn into giant dogs. What does this have to do with anything?”

He smirked. “You’re right. We might as well be wolves. Our instincts are like wolves. Including our mating instincts.”

The air caught in , making her choke. “Mating instincts?”

“Yup.” Luhan gave you a look of sympathy. “They can get attached quickly. In this case, it’s to probably the first female to ever show them kindness.”

“So, you’re saying that those nine wolves have pegged me as their possible mate?” Oh, no.... She was in deep trouble.

Luhan shook his head. “No. Not all. Like I said, most of them see you as a sister or motherly figure. Still would fight to keep you safe, but not romantic in any way. From what I could interpret, only about three of them see you as a possible mate.”

Okay. Still deep trouble but she could keep her head above water. Certain incidents popped into her head. She had a sneaking suspicion which of the boys he was talking about. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

“My advice,” he continued, “make your position known. Keep your distance. If you only want to be their friend, make sure they know it. If there is someone who you might be growing close to, keep it hidden from the others. Wolves are territorial. We’re all brothers, but they won’t hesitate to rip each other’s throats out if they feel like one of them is getting too close to you.”

She slumped in her chair. A face flashed in her mind and her heart sped up for just a moment. Yes, she was falling for him. He made her feel safe. He calmed her and always seemed to know just what to say. But how could she even think that way right now? It wasn’t the time or place for this.

“It’s okay to be getting feelings,” Luhan reassured. “You don’t have to feel guilty. It’s natural.”

Throwing him a look, Yerin tried to look on the bright side. At least there was now some progress on their current situation. With Luhan’s arrival, she finally had a way to contact the private sector if anything were to go wrong. She had someone here who had gone through a jailbreak before and could provide some very needed feedback, particularly on how not to get caught. Focusing on a love subplot to her life was not going to do any of them any good. Perhaps if she distanced herself from everyone equally, they’d be fine.

No. That wouldn’t work. The boys would pick up on it and ask if they’d done something to upset her. Minseok picked up on the issue with Yixing like a hound on a fox. All nine of them confronting her would just be horrifying.

Standing up, Yerin figured her only choice was to play it by ear. Hopefully it didn’t turn into all out war like Luhan was describing.

What was she supposed to do? Sit them all down and say “hey, so I realize that I’m the only female that has shown you even an ounce of kindness in the last fifteen years and you are genetically enhanced males that are now led by by your instincts, but lets all just try and not be controlled by our hormones for the time being”? 

She shuddered at the thought.

“Hey, don’t stress out about it too much,” Luhan comforted.

Yerin threw him a look. “I’m on the run from a very powerful research lab with practically infinite resources with nine genetically altered man-wolves who might start acting like it’s mating season. Yeah, I have absolutely nothing to stress out about.”

He smirked. “At least they’re all attractive.”

She gaped at him, unable to move as she watched his back exit from the sun room and into the main house.

Coming to her senses, she headed back inside as well. At the base of the stairs, she called up to the boys, “Okay! It’s safe to come down now!”

There was a moment of silence before a rumble that challenged a stampede of elephants shook the ceiling. All nine boys in a giant blob stumbled down the stairs before not-so-stabley coming to a stop in front of her and Luhan.

“Why don’t you all sit down at the island to catch up and I’ll warm dinner back up for everyone?”

Several of them nodded. Sehun threw an arm around Luhan, holding him back a bit while the others shuffled into the kitchen. As Yerin moved to follow them, Junmyeon caught her eye and gave you small, reassuring smile. She returned it before noticing Luhan’s smirk in the corner of her eye. When Sehun wasn’t looking, he threw her a thumbs up and a look that clearly said “nice choice”.

Shaking her head, she pushed past them and tried not to focus on Jongin’s questioning gaze.

Having an empath around was going to drive her insane.