“Look, Kris, I hope you know that I’m never going to be able to do this.”

For a little over an hour, Kris had been trying to teach me how to completely focus my mind and actually shift into my lupine form on purpose. However, my mind was running in about a million different directions with everything that had happened in the previous 24 hours; after all, it was just that morning that I had found out that I came from a lineage of werewolves.

He was crouched down a few feet from me, his hands pressed against his bent knees, and he actually looked a little silly in that position, considering that, upright, he was a good foot taller than me. I threw my fingers up over my mouth, hiding the grin that was creeping over my face as he carefully unbent himself and stood back up to his full height, my eyes following all of his movements.

“Don’t worry about it,” came Kris’s reply as he closed the gap between us, his large hands nestling my elbows; even that small, seemingly meaningless gesture sent warmth through my skin. “It’s rare for someone to be able to completely shift after only a few tries. Though, I still don’t know how you managed to completely shift before and yet you can’t do it now.” He narrowed his eyes playfully before snaking out a finger and poking me in the ribs, drawing out a giggle that I desperately tried to hold back. “Are you sure you’re really trying?” he asked with a smirk.

“Y-yeah, I—am. Kris!” I managed to splutter in between laughing and gasping for breath as he continued to tickle me. Unfortunately for me, he had realized fairly quickly how terribly ticklish I was, and he refused to stop for several minutes. Finally, when I had rolled onto the ground, my back against the plush grass as he knelt over me, he figured I wouldn’t be able to breathe soon and decided to relent.

When I had regained my composure – and the air in my lungs – I looked up into his eyes at a smile that not only widened his grin but made the color in his pupils sparkle. I could do nothing but stare into his eyes, trying to etch into my memory exactly how his face looked in that moment. But before I felt that I was finished, Kris suddenly leaned down and, closing his eyes, firmly pressed his lips against mine. I gasped a little at the unexpected contact, making Kris grin into the kiss, but I managed to find my bearings and kiss him back, my hands reaching upward as my fingers tangled into his hair.

We only stayed like that for a minute before footsteps reached my ears, and Kris pulled away, obviously having heard them as well. I pushed myself up onto my elbows, looking into the direction that the sound came from before I caught Kris watching me with a puzzled expression on his face.

“What?” I asked, suddenly self-conscious that maybe I had something on my face or something had gotten caught in my hair.

He blinked a couple of times, his brow furrowed, before opening his mouth. “Don’t tell me you heard that.”

“What, the footsteps?” I asked, sitting up completely in front of him. “Yeah, they sounded like they were right over there, just in the woods. Why?”

He sat back on his heels, facing me as he shook his head slightly, still watching my face. “They were by the house. There’s no way you should be able to hear that well yet.”

Now it was my turn to stare at him curiously. How could the footsteps have been that far away? I could have sworn that they were no more than a few feet away, as clear as the sound had been. But Kris certainly had a much better grasp on gauging distances based on sound simply because he had possessed his lupine hearing far longer than me.

“I... I don’t know how I did that,” I stuttered, my voice almost a whisper. “I don’t know why.”

Kris pushed himself up onto his feet before offering a hand to pull me up too. “Well, we’ve already figured out that you’re different from any of us, certainly in every way we could have expected. Maybe your senses will develop faster than we expect too.” He grinned a little, adding, “Which means you’ll be able to completely shift a lot faster than the rest of us were able to.”

I managed to smile at him, but I turned my face away from him after a moment to hide the fact that a knot of nerves had formed in the pit of my stomach. The more and more I found that pointed to how different I was and how I was such a unique case made me nauseous. What if I eventually found something that was really and truly wrong with me? What if I had another episode where I shifted unconsciously and lashed out at someone I cared about? My head was spinning, the nausea building up, and I felt like I might actually vomit, but I knew I couldn’t do that in front of Kris; it would only cause more problems.

Regardless of my efforts to hide how I was feeling, Kris seemed to pick up on it almost immediately, though he had no idea of the reason for it. “Are you feeling alright, Elle?”

“Uh, you know, I’m not feeling all that well,” I replied. “I think maybe I’m just a little tired, probably from being out here for so long.” It wasn’t entirely a lie, but under normal circumstances, I could spend an entire day outside without a single thought of going indoors. But it was the only excuse I could think of on such short notice.

“It is still rather warm out here,” he responded, grabbing my hand and intertwining our fingers. “Let’s get back to the house so you can rest a bit before abeoji gives us the okay to go get your things from your house.”

I nodded, but I felt that knot tighten in my stomach; I had almost forgotten completely that I would have to face my parents with whatever story abeoji had come up with just to keep the pack a secret.

Neither of us spoke much as we walked back through the woods, and when we stepped out of the tree line and into view of the house, Luhan was waiting on the porch and looked as if he might have been pacing for a bit of time.

“There you two are!” he exclaimed as soon as he saw us, jumping all three steps from the porch to the ground before sprinting toward me and Kris. He paused for a moment, not saying anything else, so Kris glanced around before verbally prodding him.

“Is there a reason you were waiting for us, Lu?”

Suddenly snapped back to attention, Luhan nodded vigorously and babbled, “Yeah! Yeah, abeoji said we’re clear to go to your house and get your stuff. So can I please go with you? I know you probably want Kris to take you, but—“

“Wait, wait, stop,” I interrupted, holding up my hands to emphasize the command. “What else did he say? What did he tell my parents? I have to know what he told them so I don’t give away whatever story he came up with.”

Luhan just sort of looked at me for a few moments, working through what I had asked him. When he finally opened his mouth again, his response was not what I wanted to hear at all, and my stomach dropped.

“He didn’t say anything about that. I have no idea.”

~

Ten minutes later, and I was seated in the passenger seat of Kris’s Range Rover, staring straight through the windshield as Kris drove down the road through the state forest. Luhan was seated in the back since I had allowed him to come too, after he unnecessarily begged me to; I probably would have asked him to come even if he hadn’t asked. But at the moment, I was tuned out of the conversation the two boys were having because I was too busy worrying about how badly this could go.

I had absolutely no story to go on since I had no idea what abeoji had told my parents about the situation. I still hadn’t thought of a reason for me to move out and start living with six boys and their wizened guardian, at least nothing they would believe, so I hoped that abeoji had told them something instead of expecting me to lie for everyone. We would be ruined if that was the case.

“Elle, did you hear me?”

Kris’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts, and I felt bad for tuning the two out. “Uh, no, sorry. I was thinking about, you know, how I’m going to come up with an excuse to tell my parents for this whole situation.” I let out a sigh of exasperation, slumping backwards in my seat and covering my face with my hands.

Luhan leaned forward from where he was sitting, grabbing the sides of my seat, and rested his head on the inside corner of it. “I’m telling you, I bet whatever abeoji told them will be really obvious as soon as we get there. No big deal, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“Then why couldn’t he have just said what it was?” I whined, pushing my hands away from my face and through my hair.

I didn’t get a chance to hear an explanation from either of them, because I suddenly recognized where we were. “Kris, slow down,” I managed to say, before pointing at a house on the right side of the road just a little way from where we were. “That one. That’s my house.”

Kris pulled into the driveway without a word, and Luhan was silent too, and I could imagine that they were taking everything in. The plot of land that my family’s house sat on was fairly large, maybe ten or so acres, with pastures enough to keep the few horses we owned. My dad had been raised as the son of a farmer, so he had planted a somewhat extensive garden to one side of the house, fenced off separately to keep out deer and rabbits that would eat the vegetables. The house itself wasn’t huge, certainly not as large as where the pack lived, but it was sizeable for a family of three, since I didn’t have any siblings.

Kris stopped the car behind my mom’s Ford Fusion and beside the truck that my dad had inherited from his own father. I was about to open my door and get out, but Kris grabbed my wrist and said, “I can come with you, if you want.”

I paused for a moment, about to ask him to just stay in the car, but I realized I couldn’t face my parents alone for some reason. “Will both of you come, please?”

Neither of them hesitated for a moment, and they followed me down the pathway that led up onto the porch and to the front door. On a normal day, I would have gone through the garage, but I didn’t have any way to open it, so I settled for ringing the doorbell.

A moment later, the door was all but flung open and my mom stood in the doorway, looking only slightly less than frazzled. I managed to catch a glimpse of the panic in her eyes just as she pulled me into a bone-crushing hug before noticing that I wasn’t alone. When she released me, I took a step back and cleared my throat awkwardly.

“Um, Mom, this is Kris and Luhan,” I said, my introduction about as simple as it could possibly be. However, I still had no idea what my mom thought the story was, so I was trying not to give anything away before I knew everything.

My mom simply nodded to the two of them before she glanced off behind all three of us, as if she was afraid someone might be watching us. When she moved her attention back to us, she said, “I think it might be better if we talked about this inside.”

I was more than a little confused as my mother ushered as inside and into the living room, gesturing for us to sit down. The three of us sat on the couch that was against one of the walls, Kris in the middle while I was on the end closest to the chair that my mom sat in. She didn’t hesitate with her words, and I was a little taken aback by them.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, Elle.”

I coughed once, barely choking on the air in my windpipe as I tried to respond a little too quickly. When I had recovered, I asked, “Didn’t tell me what, exactly?”

My mother glanced down at her hands in her lap before meeting my gaze again. “About your lineage, your bloodline. About what you are. I honestly never thought you would be the one to get the dominant Shifter gene, but I guess I should have watched more closely when you were growing up.”

That time, I did choke on air, coughing almost violently as I tried to regain my ability to breathe normally. Kris patted me on the back, trying to help, and eventually, I stopped spluttering long enough to force out coherent words. “You mean, you know? You already knew?”

“Of course. You know how avidly I studied our background for a few years. I discovered the stories about the tribe our family actually comes from, and I did some research on their particular lore. The wolves came up in nearly every article I read, so I knew that it must have held some relevance and truth. So when the older man—what do you call him? Abeoji? When he called me earlier and mentioned you, that was the first thing I asked him. I probably should have been more surprised than I was when he confirmed my theory, but I’ve looked into it far too much for it to come as a real shock.”

“Meanwhile, I was completely in the dark about everything,” I muttered under my breath so she couldn’t hear, but I think Kris did since he shifted slightly in his seat. Looking up at her again, I asked, “And you never shared any of your ‘research’ with me?”

“I didn’t think you’d find any of it the least bit interesting. Not to mention, I didn’t think, at the time, it would ever have anything to do with you. I thought the gene had skipped over you just like it had for the last several generations. Apparently, I was wrong about that.”

She paused then, looking toward the boys for a moment, before continuing. “But what did surprise me was to learn that there is an active pack that lives so close to us. That’s a huge coincidence, if you ask me.” Her tone wasn’t suspicious as she said this, merely thoughtful.

“Well, I’m glad you’re so accepting of all of this, Mom,” I stated, hoping she wouldn’t start asking questions like I knew her to do. “But I think I need to get all of my stuff packed up so we don’t get back too late. We do have school tomorrow, after all.” I knew she wouldn’t argue with that point, and I was right.

“Alright, alright, well, I’ll just let the three of you take care of that since it seems like you have plenty of help. I’ll be outside if you need anything, okay?”

“Okay.” As we all stood up, I suddenly felt the urge to hug her again, and as I did, I said, “Thanks, Mom. Really, I appreciate everything you’ve done.”

“Oh, stop,” she said, grinning at me. “Just don’t say anything to your dad. He doesn’t know anything, and since he’s still at work, I think I’ll be the one explaining everything to him later on.”

I nodded, and I led Kris and Luhan out of the room and the hallway to the bedroom I had grown up in. As I packed up all of my clothes into two suitcases I had in my closet, I thought about how weird it was going to be not coming home to this house and hiding out in this room when I needed privacy. Not having my mom right down the hall to talk to, not being able to hear my dad watching baseball in the living room. As I glanced out of the window of my room that overlooked the pastures, I remembered something else that I was going to miss.

As my attention moved back to the room, Kris came out of my walk-in closet holding a somewhat large trophy. “Hey, Elle, what’s this?”

“Hm?” When I looked up at him, I realized what it was. “Oh, that. I used to show horses when I was younger, and that’s the last trophy I got, about a year ago. It was a year-end award, for getting the most points during the whole season.” A smile slipped onto my face as I recalled how surprised I had been when they had called my name for the award at the banquet. “But I stopped riding competitively after that, wanting to focus on school more. So I just ride for fun when I feel like it.”

Luhan and Kris both looked at each other after I said this, and I caught it immediately, knowing all too well what was coming after it. Before either of them could open their mouths, I cut in, “And I swear if either of you makes that joke, I’ll kill you.” At the end of the sentence, I glanced back up at them, smirking. “It’s not like I haven’t heard a million times from other boys, you know.”

“Psh, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Luhan scoffed, waving away my words.

“Oh, don’t even act innocent,” I retorted. “Anyway, I’ll have to bring you guys out here sometime so you can really see the horses, and maybe I’ll let you get on one or something.”

Kris gave me a weird look before saying, “But then people would make the joke about us. And we can’t have that.”

“Whatever!” I replied, grinning, before grabbing a small plush and throwing it at him.

“Ow!” he exclaimed, sounding not the least bit sarcastic. Picking up the plush from the floor, he looked at while rubbing the spot where I had hit him, stating, “That actually hurt.” Looking back at me, he added, “Why did that actually hurt?”

Luhan glanced over his shoulder and simply responded, “Wolf strength. Must be coming in early.” Looking back at the photos on my shelf, he added casually, “I can already see who’s going to wear the pants in the relationship.”

AUTHOR'S NOTE

OKAY SO. i am really really sorry about how long it's taken me to update this story! i sort of lost muse for it for a little while, especially with everything that's happened with kris, but i think i'm starting to get it back. with that, i hope this longer-than-usual update has made up for my lengthy hiatus, and i hope you've enjoyed some of the interactions! there should be more of the other boys as well in the next chapter, so look forward to that too <3 alright, love you all! thank you for reading!~