Barks.

 

Growls.

 

Yips.

 

Snarls.

 

Then a voice seemed to grab at me and pull me back up to the surface, out of the depths of the dark waters that I had been suddenly thrown into. The ascent was slow, the seconds dragging by until I broke the surface and found myself blinking sunlight out of my eyes as I looked up at a bright blue sky with only a few white clouds drifting by on the light breeze.

 

There was a face positioned over me, and after a few moments I registered that the owner of the face was kneeling next to my head and looking at me from what seemed upside down to me. I blinked again, confused, before I realized that this was the person who was speaking, the voice that had pulled me out of the darkness.

 

And the voice belonged to Kris.

 

"Elle, please say something. Hell, say anything so I know you're not brain dead," he said, his words humorous but his tone giving away how concerned he was.

 

"Your voice keeps pulling me out of these horrible nightmares," I said quietly, a small smile on my face.

 

His eyes widened for a moment as I spoke, then his expression simply shut down, as cold as it had been before. I had thought, for a fraction of a second, that he might actually open up a little bit, but I quickly realized that that wasn't the case. Instead, his emotions were unreadable, and I knew I wouldn't get anywhere else with him soon.

 

Suddenly, I realized the animals - the wolves, more specifically - that had pounded out of the woods and run straight for me. I sat up quickly, the thought alone startling me, but I quickly checked myself, grabbing my forehead as a dull ache pounded against the front of my skull.

 

"You hit your head when you fell, so you should be more careful," Kris said from behind me, his tone cool and collected. Strangely, I noted how much I hated that kind of tone in his voice.

 

"Lovely," I spat, my voice rich in sarcasm. "Thanks so much for the help." Before he could move, I pushed myself up, forcing my legs underneath my body so that I could stand up. I swayed a little once I was up, a certain dizziness attempting to set in and probably cause nausea along with it.

 

There was sound close to a growl from behind me, and all at once, I found Kris at my side, his face stern, which was at least a change from emotionless.

 

"I told you to be careful!" he said, clearly angry with me. Of course, I didn't really care, since I had realized he couldn't show any consistent concern for me.

 

"Don't even act like you care about what happens to me, okay?" I said, my anger rising, which was a strange occurrence for me. I didn't normally get this angry over nominal things, especially concerning boys, but there it was; I was growing closer and closer to completely losing my temper, simply because Kris was absolutely stupid.

 

Before he could respond though, his attention was pulled to the edge of the woods, and I turned my head to see a bright white elongated face peering out at us from among the brush.

 

"Yeah, fine, I think it's alright for you to come out now," Kris said as if he was speaking to someone who had asked him a question, though he still sounded irritated. "Just no running; no need to startle her again."

 

Then, a large white wolf emerged from where the face had been, and I was dumbfounded by how majestic the creature was. Then, distracted from my little spat with Kris, I racked my brain, remembering that Luhan had told me what color he was in his wolf form.

 

"Luhan, right?" I said quietly, glancing sideways at Kris for confirmation.

 

He nodded in response, his gaze cast downward, and, as if on cue, the white wolf trotted the last couple of paces and stopped a couple of feet from me. At this level, I could see straight into the wolf's rich brown eyes, the eyes that could only belong to my new friend.

 

"Hello, Luhan," I said, pushing my hand into the thick white fur of his neck. It was warm, and any chill that my hand may have felt was gone within moments.

 

He managed to ease forward before settling his fuzzy head on my shoulder and placing a large paw around my torso in a sort of hug. From this position, it was easy for me to reach my arms around his neck, hugging him back as I buried my face in his fur.

 

As he stepped back, I glanced behind him to see four more wolves, each one unique in some way so that they were all distinguishable. But Luhan had never told me who was which, so I looked at Kris carefully so that he might explain it to me.

 

He hesitated for a moment, deliberating with himself, before giving in. "Xiumin," he said pointing to a smaller golden-brown wolf with darker streaks. "Lay," -- a lean mostly brown wolf with small streaks of yellow-brown and light grey. "Chen," -- a dark grey wolf with a white belly and chin. "And Tao," -- a completely grey wolf with a coat thicker than all the others.

 

I smiled, looking at each of them as he pointed and committing their appearances to memory. For some reason, I found it easier than memorizing where their rooms were, probably because I had a visual of each of them.

 

As I was studying each of them and Luhan was trying to distract me and make me focus on him, I failed to notice Kris slip away from the group. A few minutes passed, and when I had finally let Luhan me in the face -- it took him several minutes of whining and puppy eyes to convince me -- the rest of the pack turned away, trying to signal to Luhan that it was time to go. He looked at me for a moment, clearly not wanting to leave me alone, but I placed my hand on the side of his face reassuringly, and he leaned into it for a moment before turning as well.

 

~

 

After that, the boys had to go into the woods and patrol the territory, which included all of the land that was part of the state park. Technically, the town was part of their territory too, but they couldn't patrol it in their canine forms and had to keep an eye on it when they were human.

 

When all six of them had disappeared into the dense forest, I turned back toward the large house, wrapping Kris's jacket tightly around my arms, even though I had reasons for wanting to get it off of me. I hurried inside, since the chill air had become bitingly cold in the last few minutes. Looking around the back hallway, I wasn't really sure what I planned to do since no one else that I could talk to was in the house. I supposed I could watch tv, but there probably wasn't anything good on since it was Saturday morning.

 

Then, I remembered that I hadn't talked to anyone outside of the house since the day before. With that in mind, I made my way up the stairs and into the spare bedroom I had slept in. I had remembered that my smartphone was on the bedside table, unmoved from where it had been placed the evening before after it had been turned off. I switched it back on and, after the startup screen disappeared and the home screen came up, I opened the messaging app and waited for a minute.

 

Suddenly, several texts flashed into my inbox, all marked as unread, and I saw that Jamye had texted me several times the evening before.

 

"Hey! What are you doing?"

 

"Ignoring me, huh?"

 

"I was gonna see if you wanted to hang out, but clearly you're busy."

 

"ELLE WHAT THE HELL. WHY DOES YOUR MOM THINK YOU'RE SPENDING THE NIGHT WITH ME?"

 

"Look, whatever you're doing, I'll play along and cover for you this time, but only if you tell me later."

 

"Dear god, you better tell me, or I will not hesitate to--"

 

Then she described some insane and immensely gory kind of torture that I won't go into detail about for your sake, but we'll just say that, had it been executed, it would have been extremely painful.

 

I shot her back a short text saying, "It's a long story, but I promise I'll explain it the best that I can when I see you in person."

 

Only a few moments later, just as I was sitting down on the bed, my phone vibrated, and I read the text from her.

 

"Okay. But you're still coming this afternoon, right?"

 

Crap. In everything that had happened in the past twelve hours, I had completely forgotten about the movie I was supposed to go see with my friends. I mentally slapped myself and then thought for a few minutes before responding to her text.

 

"I should be."

 

~

 

The boy were only gone for about an hour, but that was plenty of time for me to explore the small bathroom that was connected to my room. I managed to find some shampoo that must have come from a hotel, and a towel, and was able to take a hot shower that really relaxed my tense muscles.

 

When I got out, I had no choice but to put the same clothes back on since I didn't have any others, and I wrapped the towel around my hair to let it dry a bit because I had been unsuccessful in finding a hair dryer. I was sure one of the boys probably had one somewhere since their hair was all basically perfect, but then again, there was a good chance my hair would be dry by the time they returned.

 

As I wandered back downstairs, I heard the door shutting as several pairs of feet slapped the floor in the back hallway. I slowed down, wondering who it would be at the front of the group; if it was Kris, I wasn't particularly looking forward to another interaction with him. 

 

But my fears were dispelled when Luhan appeared around the corner and grinned as soon as he saw me.

 

"So? What did you think?" he asked, obviously referring to their wolves. The five youngest members of the pack were now staring at me expectantly, clearly wanting to hear something positive or encouraging about their wolf forms.

 

"Um... fluffy?" I said, smiling at them half-heartedly. 

 

Immediately, their faces dropped, and there was a large defeated exhale of breath from each of them.

 

"I'm only kidding!" I said, smirking at them. "You guys are too easy to mess with! Actually, it was amazing. You can sort of see your personalities reflected through your wolf forms."

 

"Lupine," Tao said from Luhan's right side.

 

"Huh?" I said, with no idea what he was talking about.

 

"If you're going to keep talking about it, call them our lupine forms. Otherwise, you just sound like some idiot talking about one of the characters from that horrible teen vampire romance series." He cracked a grin at me, and I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

 

"Trust me, that's the last thing I want to sound like," I said. I paused though, thinking about it, before saying, "It just dawned on me how absolutely cliche this situation is. It's like a really bad young adult novel."

 

"Except it's real, which makes it ten times worse," Lay chimed in.

 

"But we're way more attractive than those silly vampires and wannabe werewolves, right?" Xiumin piped up.

 

Luhan turned to Xiumin, grinning, and said, "Don't worry, Xiumin-hyung, you are."

 

Xiumin blushed a deep red at this, and all the others weren't really sure how to react. I just smiled knowingly, suddenly understanding the dynamic between the two of them, something that none of their "brothers" had clearly picked up on yet. Leave it to boys.