“That’s,” Woohyun’s voice faded as he took slow steps forward, closer to the item Tablo now held in open palm. “That’s the necklace.”

You looked away from it and towards Woohyun. The look on his face now was a mixture of different emotions. Firstly, happiness. He was genuinely happy. Why shouldn’t he be? There in front of him was what all of this trouble was for. The necklace. Sunggyu’s grandfather’s necklace. However, there was one more emotion on his face right now. Confusion. He was confused. Yet for some reason, all of this made sense to you. It was the missing puzzle piece to everything.

Tablo was down here. Here, where Zico had speculated the necklace was. Here, where the mayor’s key opened the door. Here, where the mayor kept Tablo locked up all in exchange for the promise of one day reuniting him with Kim Shinae. An exchange that never happened. An exchange that will never happen.

Especially since Tablo now reached down and took your hand in his grasp and placed the necklace in your palm. You could feel it instantly, the heat of his skin akin to Woohyun’s and Myungsoo’s. He was a werewolf. And he had been down here for twenty years. He had most likely been wearing the necklace after Sunggyu’s grandfather died and the mayor brought it here to him. The necklace that supposedly made him all human. Yet, how human did it make him exactly?

He was still strong. Unbelievably. He could run quickly as well. So then what exactly did this necklace do? Zico seemed sure that it had the ability to stop transformations. Sunggyu seemed sure it was just a necklace he was told to protect. 

As Woohyun continued to stare on, a third emotion of disbelief spreading across his features, and you decided to ask Tablo just that.

“Do you know what this necklace does?”

Tablo understood your question. You could tell by the way his eyes blinked slowly in recognition. Then, he nodded, “It’s a suppressor.”

“Of what exactly?”

He answer was one word, simple, and short, “Me.”

“What?” Woohyun questioned, only now registering the conversation that was taking place between the two of you.

Tablo looked up, his eyes briefly scanning Woohyun’s frame before he spoke. “He doesn’t know.” He stated, his tone one of amazement.

“What don’t I know?” Woohyun looked from Tablo, to you, then back to Tablo. The two of you were looking up at him as though you were pondering if you should tell him. In the end, he turned to you, kneeling down beside you as he looked at you, locking eyes with you in that way he always does, his eyebrows furrowed as he silently pleaded with you to relieve him of his confusion. Yet, you didn’t know how to tell him. Didn’t know what information you knew about the necklace was false and what was true. The result was silence as your mind worked to come up with an explanation.

But, you didn’t have to. Instead, Tablo answered his question, saving you from your inner conflict.

“It suppresses the one who wears it and the ones who are near the one who wears it.” Tablo explained to both you and Woohyun as he looked down at the silver chained piece of simple looking jewelry. At the end of it was a single tear shaped gem embezzled with worked silver bent to look like branches engulfing it from the bottom up. Inside of the tear was a faint purple gleam.

“Suppresses what?” Woohyun asked, turning to you again. And to this question, you knew the answer Tablo was insinuating.

“The werewolf.” You answered as your eyes went down to the cold metal of the necklace in your palm. “It doesn’t get rid of it but it suppresses it.” The statement was as new to you as it was to Woohyun.

That’s why Tablo still had superhuman abilities. The necklace didn’t stop a person from being a werewolf, it simply pushed the werewolf down.

“That’s why when we were fighting, I couldn’t transform.” Woohyun said out loud, though more of to himself than anyone else. He receded into his own train of thought, thinking over everything he had just found out.

This was good. You finally knew what the necklace did. As for how it did it, that was answered by Tablo’s next statement.

“It’s Wolfsbane. Concentrated, pure Wolfsbane. Dried out to the point where it doesn’t have a distinctive smell. Released through the pores in the glass casing. Affecting the one who wears it and those close to them.”

At the very least, it seemed he wasn’t ignorantly wearing it. He knew exactly what it did and how it did it. Which meant he asked questions. Most likely not at all to the Major’s pleasure. Yet, him knowing this was good.

The necklace suppressed the person wearing it and the people around that person from transforming. It dampened their werewolf abilities. It did it simply, through the power of the good ol’ herb that is Wolfsbane. This was good. Knowing this. Knowing it wasn’t some magic imbued item that turned a werewolf all human. In a sense, that’s even more ridiculous than the prospect of werewolves existing in the first place.

This was good.

You kept telling yourself that.

Because there was a small voice in the back of your head that whispered to you.

A voice that whispered the word “no” over and over again. Whispered that this wasn’t good at all.

Why wouldn’t this be good? The simple reason is that it wasn’t a magical item that turned a werewolf all human. It wasn’t the answer the hunters were looking for. It was simply another lead back to Wolfsbane.

And this, this was not good at all.

Woohyun’s words are what drew you out of you revere. His words that spelled out exactly what the three of you had to do now.

“We need to find Myungsoo.”

Tablo stared straight ahead at the wall in front of you two now. To the left was a visible dead end and to the right was a gaping drop down where the hallway had collapsed. It was as though he were accessing the map he had stored in his head as he stood still, his eyes glazed over. The map he had made after living down here all of his life. He knew this place like the back of his hand with how quickly he rebounded from coming upon dead ends by immediately finding alternate routes showed you that.

You now understood how he was able to find you, Myungsoo, and Woohyun so easily all those times before. Yet, right now, he seemed unsure of himself. As though he couldn’t make the decision of where to go so easily.

You saw him glance down the left hall, staring at it as though it contained some kind of secret world only he could see. Then, he looked towards the right and you saw a flash of disappointment cross his face. It was so fleeting that it was gone by the time he spoke up.

“This way.”

He asserted. This was the first time he had done such at thing. First, he had critically looked at the situation before coming to a decision and secondly he felt the need to reiterate his decision to you and Woohyun. What was the reason the left hall, that obviously led to a dead end, had caused such confliction? You didn’t understand it but you followed him all the same down the right fork, coming to a stop next to him as he gazed downward into where the floor had collapsed.

“It is not far down. We will descend.” He looked back towards you, waiting for a response of some kind. A response signifying that you had heard his words and understood his next course action.

Oddly, there was something about the way he looked at you that made you trust him completely. It was as though he was fellow walking billboard with the sign “I will protect all of you” written on him. You nodded once, deciding to trust your gut, and that was apparently enough as he disappeared in a flash, jumping down into the darkness below.

You peered down, squinting your eyes to see him. There was nothing. You stepped forward, closer to the edge of the drop and you saw something move, coupled with the sound of cloth rubbing on cloth. Just like the sound of someone readjusting their jacket. Tablo was fine. You breathed a sigh of relief. The drop must have not been too bad. However, this was Tablo. A werewolf. Most drops are not bad for him. The real question was, would the drop be bad for you?

That’s when you felt it again. The stall of all thoughts in your mind as fear took over. As you thought about running again. But you didn’t. Your feet stayed unmoving on the edge of what might have been your death. You felt something else then. Something that surged you with energy. Something that boosted your confidence to an unintelligible level.

You would be fine because you would make sure you would be.

You were strong enough to be sure of that.

You had faith in yourself.

And as though that already wasn’t more than enough to make you jump down into the abyss below, Woohyun’s next words were.

“I’ll catch you.”

He stood now on the edge of the drop, the back of his hand lightly brushing past your fingers and through that, you felt the warmth being released from his insulated werewolf body.

“I’ll always catch you.”

You couldn’t help the smile that formed on your face now. Always. Surely he wouldn’t always be here.

Yet for some reason, it didn’t scare you as much as it did before. The prospect that one day he wouldn’t be there. That one day neither the hunters nor the werewolves would be there. Because now, you knew you would be able to protect yourself. To live another day. A day in which they would be there. Sure, it sounded crazy to think that they would be leaving. Maybe even crazy to think that they would come back, but you did.

And when they did come back, you would be waiting for them, healthy as can be.

“You promise?” You grinned at Woohyun whom at that moment, couldn’t find anything in your expression that betrayed your current inner thoughts.

Instead, he was too distracted by the how brightly you seemed to shine now, how stunning you looked despite all the dirt and dust that laid caked on your face and your clothes. At any other moment, he would have reached out and rubbed your face free of the debris but for some reason, right now, at this very moment, you couldn’t have been more beautiful to his eyes. And his heart leapt in his chest. And his next words never seemed truer than they were now.

“I promise. Always.”

And with that, he jumped down into the darkness below.

It didn’t take long until your heard his voice from below.

“Ready?”

Woohyun was here for you. Tablo was here for you. And the three of you were going to find Myungsoo. And once you did, you’d get out of here and bring the necklace back to Sunggyu and Zico. And finally, this would all be over. No more fighting. No more life or death situations. If there was any point in time in which you weren’t ready, it sure as hell wasn’t now. You steadied yourself on the edge, and without one single doubt in your mind, jumped.

Or, you would have.

But at that very moment, the ground shook and a scrapping sound invaded your eardrums. You heard the faint hum of Woohyun’s voice as he called out to you from below. You shouted back at him, trying to steady his voice, telling him you were okay. You looked back, behind you, where there was once a dead end hallway, to find the wall shifting out of place. And now, you saw something. As the dead end became fully unblocked, you saw what was there on the other side and now, you were more than okay.

“Let’s see, exactly how many cameras do you think we’ll have to go through before we find him?”

“Considering we took care of our problematic child today, I’d say we have all the time in the world to look.”

“We don’t want him dying on us though. That’d be a shame.”

Soryong’s lips curved upwards into a smile due to his brother’s sarcasm, “It would be a shame, wouldn’t it?” He clicked down again on the mouse of the computer, and with that one single click, his smile got wider, “Lucky for us though, I just found our little prince.”

“Really? Where?” Daeryong practically bounded over the couch he was previously sitting on to get to Soryong whom at the current point in time was seated at Tiffany’s grandfather’s desk. Once he was standing by Soryong and caught a look at what he was seeing on the screen, he grinned in amusement. “Well isn’t this a happy coincidence?”

Soryong pursed his lips as he took note of the camera he was looking through, “What would you say to reuniting him with his princess?”

“I’d say it’s more like Snow White and the fourteen dwarves.” Daeryong laughed at his own joke as he walked back over to the laptop he had left on the coffee table.

Soryong pondered over the idea for a moment, “It does doesn’t it?”

His lips formed that same amused smile as Daeryong proceeded to make a series of clicks on the laptop on the coffee table. After a few seconds, Daeryong breathed out in satisfaction and lay back onto the couch, as content as can be.

“Well then, I’d say our work here is done.” Soryong dragged the cursor over and without hesitation, shut down the system.

“Sungjong.”

Sungjong looked up at the call to find a meek looking Minah, quite uncomfortable and out of her environment, in his homeroom among other first years. People whispered, mostly rumors about her and you. All due to the fact that your disappearance seemed to be the reason Sungjong yelled at her in the first place. If there was one thing the first years paid attention to, it was pretty boy Sungjong. Thus, Minah had become known for not only being the mayor’s daughter but an object of Sungjong’s hate and as a result, the object of hate of some girls in first year as well.

Sungjong looked away, rolling his eyes in response to her appearance, “This better be good.” He mumbled as he scribbled down notes in his history notebook. She didn’t answer, causing his upper lip to twitch. The sooner he got finished with her the better. Thus, this whole situation of dragging things out was beyond irritating. He looked up, a glare in his eyes instinctively. However, his glare ended up not on Minah, yet on the item she held down in front of him. Her cell phone.

There was a message on the lit up screen. Coordinates. More importantly was the message underneath.

“After 5, but before 6. Do get this message to them, little sparrow. By them, I’m sure you know who it is I’m talking about.”

A time and a place. For what? Sungjong didn’t know. But he did know he had to get this information to Zico and Sunggyu as fast as possible.

“Hyunjoo!”

Woohyun yelled at the top of his lungs, straining his voice after he heard the commotion happen above him. The silence that followed the loud noises is what worried him. He couldn’t see you but he could hear you. He could hear your steady heartbeat. Which meant you were fine. Still, he yelled again only to have more silence follow.

Tablo beside him was still, unmoving with not a word escaping his lips. Instead, he took a step closer to Woohyun, widening his stance slightly as he crossed his arms against his chest. Why? Because he knew. He smelt it. His nose much more sensitive to changes within the Containment Zone than Woohyun’s.

“Hyunjoo!” Woohyun yelled again, one more time. And this last time, you answered.

“I’ll be right there.”

He heard your voice echo from above and his nerves relaxed at last. He held out his arms, expecting you to come into view any moment from above. And there you were, a dark shadow falling downwards. And you landed in his outstretched arms. But, he faltered for a moment. Faltered because you were heavier than he remembered. Faltered because you had come flying down at him like a projectile. And because he faltered, he fell backwards and you fell down with him.

Except, it wasn’t you.

As Woohyun groaned in pain, he struggled to see through his squinted eyes. He saw Tablo, standing with his legs slightly apart as he slowly uncrossed his arms from his chest and held them outward. In them, in an instant, landed someone. You.

And if that was you, then the person he caught, or rather the person who came flying down towards him now, was not you at all. The pressure on his body slowly moved away, allowing him to sit up. When he did, he saw a rather familiar face.

“Who the hell told you to catch me?” Myungsoo complained as he rubbed his aching head. Woohyun, despite the pain he had just endured, could not help the smile that made its way onto his face. 

-----

A/N:

Well this is super late isn't it? Mostly because I slacked off today, despite knowing I shouldn't have. On the bright side, I know what to write for the next chapter! So fingers crossed that that will be out on time. Also, I didn't reply to all of your comments, but I will proceed to do so right after I click the post button below~ So if you came, read this chapter, and you commented on the last chapter but didn't get a reply, know I'm on it~

In this chapter, we finally figure out what the necklace can do. Yet, why is it so prized when its affects are so small? Also, we found Myungsoo thanks to the Tasty Twins! Let's thank them properly shall we? 

Today went by so fast, I didn't even notice it.