Last Time:

“Luhan knows to keep his mouth shut,” Kris said. “And Minseok, too. He’s surprisingly good at keeping secrets.”

“And Jongdae?”

“Won’t upset Zitao,” Kris said firmly.

“Right,” Suho said slowly. “Upset him.” He nodded once.

 

Chapter Nine

 

Minseok cornered Kris on his way into the building, a few moments after he got back from the meeting with the Infinite pack. His round face was unusually serious, and he wore a tight expression. Suho took one look at the older man and quickly excused himself. Kris was not so lucky, as it seemed to have been him that Minseok was waiting on. Glowering, Minseok caught his wrist in a tight, unmoving grip, and pulled him towards an empty office.

 

“Minseok, I need to—” Kris began to say, trying to edge past the other man’s arm and out the door. His eyes darted rapidly around the small room, as if looking for an exit where there was none. What was this, Torture Duizhang Day? He knew Minseok, and he knew that look on his face. This was going to be another conversation about emotions, he knew it, he knew it. this. He didn’t have the energy for this. Not today. Maybe not ever.

 

“No,” Minseok said. He was having none of his duizhang’s avoidance, not right now, not on this topic. “No,” he repeated. “We’re not meeting with the others for another hour, and even you don’t need to be there for another thirty minutes.” The smile he treated Kris to, if smile it could be called, was sharp, toothy, and vaguely threatening. “I asked Jinki-hyung.”

 

Never let it be said that Kris didn’t know when he was beat, or that he was unwilling to admit to it. He shifted from foot to foot for a moment before resigning himself to the obvious. Sighing, he folded to Minseok’s determination, his shoulders slumping and his head lowering. “Yes, hyung?”

 

“You’re avoiding Tao.”

 

It took everything he had in him not to visibly wince, especially considering that this was the third time today that the subject had come up. His conversations with Sunggyu and Suho had been painfully awkward, and neither of them had asked as much of him during it as he knew Minseok would. He could feel the tension building in his shoulders. Awkward, he shook them out, wishing it would be easier to evade Minseok’s sharp gaze.

 

Unfortunately, his silence said as much to the older man as any words might have.

 

“Look, Yifan,” Minseok said, reaching up to rake a hand through his hair. It looked like he’d done that a time or two already today. “I’m not going to ride your case about how you feel for our maknae. And don’t even try and tell me that you don’t know what I’m talking about; you may be an emotional idiot, but even you aren’t that dumb.”

 

“Hey,” Kris said. He felt vaguely insulted by that, in a distant, panic-stricken way. Somehow he’d gone from not talking about his emotions, ever, to being confronted with the fact that, apparently, everyone knew about how he felt about Tao. It was an uncomfortable position to be in. He felt like everyone was staring at him, judging him, making comments about his feelings behind his back.

 

Minseok raised an eyebrow. He waited until Kris subsided, wearing a look of chagrin, then continued. “And you know, if you want to keep your feelings to yourself, that’s all well and good. Time honored traditions and what not. However, your emotional crisis is starting to affect everyone else around you, and that’s the point where I’m going to get involved, got it?”

 

It was Kris’s turn to sigh. Avoiding Minseok’s eyes, he watched himself scuff his feet against the floor. “Minseok, I can’t just—”

 

“I’m not expecting you to tell Tao-ya,” Minseok said. “Again, time honored traditions of emotional constipation around this place.” He waved a hand. “What I am expecting is for you to leader up and start dealing with the rest of the mess.”

 

“How?!” Kris exploded. “It…it’s so…I can’t…” He could feel himself fraying, could feel himself starting to split apart under the strain of having everyone’s eyes on his soft underbelly, metaphorical though it might be at this point.

 

“It is, and you can,” Minseok said. “Obviously, this is not all getting sorted out at once, much as I wish it could happen so easily. But start with the little things. Tao thinks you’re disgusted with him. Did you know that? He thinks he messed up, even before this whole wolf thing, and now he’s got it in his head that you hate him.”          

 

“I don’t hate him.”

 

“I know that. You know that. Hell, if he could think about it logically, Tao-ya probably even knows that. But it’s not trickling through, right now, and can you really blame him? You avoid him, then have no time for him, even though the two of you are the closest of friends and you let him use you like a teddy bear and good luck charm. And now, when he needs that the most—when he needs the same friend who doesn’t laugh at him for not showering alone, the friend who sang to him every night until he fell asleep when we first moved to China—you’re nowhere to be found.” Minseok glared at him.

 

Kris wilted. “I… Minseok, you know I’m not trying to hurt him.” He thought he might be physically incapable of hurting Tao, actually. From the very start, he had wanted nothing more than to protect Tao from the world. He wasn’t too proud to admit that he wanted more than that, now, though; Kris wanted to protect Tao from the world, and from the people in it, and he wanted to wrap himself around the younger man and never, ever let him go.

 

Minseok nodded. “Oh, I know. That’s the only reason I’m not feeding your to you right now. Well, that, and because I think I’d likely need a step-stool to reach your mouth.”

 

Kris cracked a small grin. It was uncomfortable, and didn’t quite fit properly on his face, but it was still a grin.

 

That had been what Minseok had been shooting for. He smiled back. “I’m not asking that you fix it all right now, Yifannie. To be honest, I don’t think you can. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t, or shouldn’t, try.”

 

---

 

The meeting with the other not-so-human members of SM started with just Kris and Suho. Or, at least, just Kris and Suho representing the newly-formed EXO Pack; the others had already arrived and began settling themselves around the room. After EXO’s two leaders, their Alpha and their Second, introduced themselves (needless, perhaps, given that everyone in the room already knew who they were, but a courtesy nonetheless), they introduced the rest of their pack, welcoming them into the large meeting room.

 

It was a fascinating sight. Luhan, hanging a bit further back on Jinki’s advice, let his eyes move slowly around the room, noting the wild riot of colours and accessories present. At least, that was the best way he could describe what he saw. As of yet, he wasn’t sure what the exact vocabulary was, how one (politely) referenced the streams of light or embossed tattoos that the sunbaenim were replete with.

 

Inside the room, free from prying eyes, welcoming other members into their supernatural conclave, many of the others had released the small enchantments or shifts in body that helped them hide as plain humans. For some, the change was small; Ara’s eyes were a vibrant lime green, and Henry’s face had melted, shifted, some, but those were the only changes those two seemed to have. Others, like Changmin and Key, were visibly very different. Key was still human-shaped, mostly, though he had glossy blue-black feathers jutting through his hair and in thin lines on his arm, and when he smiled, his teeth were like tiny ivory needles tucked in his mouth. Changmin had fangs curling out from beneath his top lip, and his hair had curled in wide ringlets behind his head and against his neck. His fingernails, too, had grown sharp and strange, much like Luhan’s own when he shifted.

 

The most stunning transformations were Jinki and Amber’s, and the shock of seeing Jinki in his more natural form was blunted by the fact that he had already revealed it to the group, albeit briefly. Too, even fully relaxed into his skin as an incubus, Jinki likely could have passed as a strange human, at least for a few minutes. The charcoal black geometric designs on his face (and his arms, and, Luhan suspected, elsewhere) could have been tattoos, and the colour of his eyes could have been explained by contacts. If they hadn’t been shifting and shimmering, molten metal. His ears, well, Luhan had heard of people having their ears pointed, and there were always prosthetics, like in those movies, right?

 

Amber was harder to explain. She looked much like her normal self, except for the fact that her ears, too, had drawn up into sharp points. They’d also moved further back on her head, while her eyes had shifted ever-so-slightly forward. Not very far forward, Luhan noted, not so that it leapt out at you that her eyes were closer to her nose than they should have been, rather, just far enough that something about her face felt off. Of course, the unnaturalness of her face was a secondary concern, as she was currently hanging in midair from long, shimmering ribbons of light.

 

A slight chiming noise was ringing throughout the room, making his teeth itch. Luhan clenched his jaw and fought the urge to rub at his ears. What was that sound?

 

“Amber, chill,” Henry said, reaching back to swat at her without taking his eyes off the nine wolves that had just filed into the room, plus the two that had already been there. “You’re making my head hurt.”

 

Amber made a face at him, but lowered to the ground. The light at her back shifted, paled, steadied, until it seemed she just had prism bursts hanging behind her. The noise stopped, too.

 

Luhan relaxed slowly, now that the sound was no longer shivering through his ear canals. He looked to where Kris and Suho were standing, looking a little uncomfortable.

 

“So,” Kris said, clapping his hands awkwardly together in front of himself. “Like we said, the twelve of us have recently been bitten and shifted into Tibetan weres; we’ve formed a pack, but, please, continue to look out for us.” He bowed. So, too, did the rest of the group.

 

Changmin beamed at them. “Welcome to our side of the company,” he said. “I know that Lee Soo Man-sajangnim is looking for ways to discreetly introduce you around, so that you get to know the other non-humans you’ll be running into, but it’s always best to start at home. Besides, between us,” and he waved at the assembled group, “we can probably give you a good run down of who is what, how that affects them, and how that’s going to affect you.”

 

Henry nodded. “So. You’ve noticed that we’re all in our most comfortable shape. For us, most of us, that shape’s not entirely human. You guys will be different—are different—because you’re werewolves. You’re actually still human, in reality. Us?” He shrugged. “Key has a human form, but that doesn’t really make him human. I’m the closest you’re going to get, I think.

 

“You notice my face looks distinctly doggish? That’s because I’m a selkie. I can be human—ish—or I can shimmy into my sealskin and go for a swim.” He grinned, revealing pointed teeth.

 

“And I’m a haetae,” Changmin said. “Or a…how do you say it, Henry?”

 

“Xiezhi,” he said.

 

Luhan looked at Changmin, paying closer attention to the changes he had seen earlier, tallying them against what he now knew. A lion-dog, huh? That explained the curl to his hair, to his mane. And it also offered an explanation for his four fangs, though nothing was answering how he managed to talk so normally with them. His face, Luhan noticed, had also definitely taken on a leonine shape. It was subtle, just barely not-human, but it was there.

 

Ara, seated next to Changmin, spoke up next. “Ah, I’m not sure how well you all know me; you see me a lot less than most everyone else here!” She rose to her feet and bowed quickly. “Hello, I’m Go Ara, and I’m Earth-born. Which means very little, except that I’m not human at all, so much as I am a human-shaped spirit of earth.”

 

“She bleeds mud,” Key said, the comment a stage-whisper that earned him an elbow to the ribs from the actress. He blew her a kiss, and then winked at the assembled wolves. “You already know I’m a raven, a trickster being. To give that a little more context, I get my energy from chaos and hubbub and practical jokes.”

 

“And I get my energy from ,” Jinki deadpanned. He his lips, revealing a pointed tongue, and continued. “Or ual energy. Because I’m an incubus. I also can use pheromones and glamours to play with people’s brains a little bit, or to get a read off of them.” He nodded to Luhan. “Feeling better?”

 

Flushing, Luhan nodded. Jinki had taken him aside the night before and spent a good two hours in an empty room helping him get used to the smell of various emotions and center himself, so that he wouldn’t react nearly so extremely.

 

“Good,” Jinki said, nodding.

 

Amber snorted, shaking her head. Seeing that most eyes in the room had drifted to her, she waved. “Yo. As you can see, not human! Um, I’m fae. So, a fairy, as most of you would know it? Hence the wings.” She gestured to her back with a thumb. “Apparently they make a noise only people with really great hearing can hear when I fly, so, let me know if they’re ever bothering you; nine times out of ten, I can chillax a little. Uh, G Dragon’s in the same boat, just as an FYI, but I don’t think he flies a lot? Anyway, now you know.”

 

“Fairies are real?” Sehun demanded.

 

“Dude. You got bit and now you turn into a wolf and you’re concerned with fairies being real?” Amber said, raising an eyebrow.

 

Sehun flushed. “Pardon me for not being up on my unrealities one-oh-one,” he said, lip curling.

 

Suho set his hand on the back of Sehun’s neck. He didn’t say anything, just pulled, gently, until Sehun’s shoulders slumped slightly and the younger man followed his hand back into the mass of bodies.

 

“Anyway,” Kris said, exchanging a look with his second. “Thank you for telling us. We understand the importance of what you have said, and we will guard your identities as carefully as we guard our own.”

 

Changmin smiled at him. “We trust you,” he said. “We have to.” He looked around at the rest of the group. “Now, I know I can’t speak for all of us, but I definitely know a couple of people in this business who are okay with having their—nonhuman—secret told. Why don’t you all get settled, and we’ll start talking about what it’s like to be on a music program with vampires?”

 

“Step one,” Amber called, hopping up onto a stool in the back of the room, though without using her wings. “They smell funny.” She frowned. “Kind of like Jinki. Only bloody.”

 

---

 

Kris sighed. He was not looking forward to this, not in the slightest. Still, Minseok had been very blunt with him, and so even if Kris was determined to duck and dodge as much as he could, he knew that the older man could (and would) make his life a living hell if he didn’t bite the bullet. And, for all that he tended to do what he could to make life easier on the others, Minseok really knew how to get under people’s skin.

 

He really needed to stop avoiding Tao.

 

Or this conversation.

 

Same thing, really.

 

Taking a deep breath to steel himself, Kris knocked on the door. It was intended more as a warning than anything, because he was going to be coming inside, unless Tao specifically told him to stay out, but… Well. His mother (and his Alpha) hadn’t raised him to surprise other wolves in their own spaces.

 

“Come in?”

 

Tao sounded drunk. Kris tried not to think of just how wrong that was; he wasn’t used to hearing Tao, sweet, soft, loving Zitao sounding like he was adrift and unleashed. It was strange, uncomfortable, didn’t fit.

 

“Hey, Taozi,” Kris said, coming into the room. He smiled at the other man, seeing him curled under the soft blanket his mother had sent him when he was homesick. It was a strange, forced smile that hurt more than it should have; as wrong as Tao had sounded, he looked even worse.

 

He was pale and washed out, but the circles under his eyes were darker and deeper than ever. He didn’t seem to be aware of that, though. There was an IV in his arm, taped into a gash that Kris had had to cut because werewolves healed too fast for such things, unless injured by an alpha. He’d cried when Kris had cut him, and, looking at him now, the memory made Kris want to cry.

 

Tao hadn’t moved much from the foetal curl he’d tucked himself into, arm held awkwardly to prevent jarring the needle. At some point, he had drifted into that place between wolf and human, so fine downy fur was trailing down his jaw, which had thickened and widened. His teeth were more pointed, better angled now for ripping and tearing. His eyes were golden-orange, shining slightly in the half-dark of his room.

 

“Duizhang,” Tao greeted, his eyes slipping shut. They had to keep him nearly unconscious to hold off the kind of panic that made it seem that he might actually hurt himself.

 

Every instinct Kris had screamed that this was wrong, that the situation was wrong. Sick pack, sick pack! the alpha in the back of his head was crying, wolf shoving and scrabbling at his brain in a panicked insistence that something needed to change, that something needed to be done to help Tao.

 

But he didn’t know how.

 

“How are you feeling, TaoTao?” Kris asked, stepping closer to the bed. He dropped into an open-legged squat, so that he was closer on a level with Tao. He didn’t want the other straining his neck to look at him, wasn’t sure that Tao could do that right now, anyway.

 

Tao hummed out some half-answer, the corners of his mouth tipping up. Then, just as suddenly, they dropped. “Gege,” he said, stretching out a hand towards Kris. “Gege, I’m wrong.”

 

“Oh, Zitao,” Kris said. He could feel his heart breaking in his chest. Reaching forward, he caught Tao’s wandering fingers, tangling them up with his own. “You’re not wrong, xiao Taozi. You’re wonderful. You’re perfect. You’re my little TaoTao.”

 

“M a girl,” Tao said. “But ‘m not a girl. Right? So what am I?”

 

“You’re my Tao,” Kris said again. “Whether you’re a human or a wolf or somewhere in between, you’re Tao. My dìdì. My Taozi.” He squeezed Tao’s hand.

 

That didn’t seem to sit too well with Tao, though. The younger man frowned sleepily at Kris, his pupils blown and his eyes unfocused but open. “But ‘m not y’r dìdì,” he slurred. “Not as a wolf. ‘m a girl.”

 

Throwing caution to the winds, Kris leant forward and kissed Tao’s sweaty forehead. “Oh, Tao-ya,” he sighed. “It doesn’t matter if your wolf is female or not. You’ll always be my Tao.”

 

Tao sighed, and his eyes slid shut once more. “Oh,” he breathed. “Okay.”

 

---

 

 That night, Kris shared a bed with Tao.

 

It was entirely innocent—Kris just wanted to get the younger man adjusted to his fur and, hopefully, to the new design of that body. They couldn’t leave him on an IV drip of anti-anxiety drugs forever, and, more than that, Kris couldn’t leave Tao suffering. It was killing him even now, watching the drugged and dizzy swirl to the other man’s eyes as the medication slowly cleared from his bloodstream, now that the needle had been removed.

 

It took a while, but the haze eventually cleared from Tao’s eyes, until they were clear, bright, and far too aware. He didn’t have long to dwell—not on the pain, not on the strange feeling, not on the realization that everything, everything was wrong. No, before those thoughts could really start to sink in, he felt Kris pulling on his mind, tugging, nudging, until he was fully wolfed out, and then his duizhang was covering him like a living blanket.

 

Kris’s fur was soft and warm, and he pressed against Tao like he wanted to bury him, to hide him from the world in the thick safety of his coat. He nudged at the other wolf, until Tao rolled slightly onto his side, so that Kris could shove their muzzles together. He made a huffing sound, pleased, and gave Tao’s face a quick before settling down for a nap.

 

They woke when the door suddenly snapped shut; Kyungsoo, on food duty for the night, seemed to have left a pair of trays just inside the door. One tray held a large platter, full of seasoned chicken, but no bones. The other held two bowls of water. Clearly, it was intended that they would eat as wolves.

 

Kris left carefully off the bed and padded towards the door, followed closely by Tao. After the leader snagged the corner of the tray full of chicken in his teeth and began to drag it more towards the center of the room, Tao followed his example, delicately pushing the bowls of water in front of him with his nose.

 

They dined together, peaceably, if not delicately. There was, Tao reflected briefly, a reason that people talked about ‘wolfing down’ your food; really, the body did not lend itself to careful, delicate eating. It was hard enough to be mannerly, let alone publically dainty.

 

Not that he or Kris really tried for that; they just went for filling their tummies without injuring or insulting one another. This seemed to mean that Tao waited for Kris to eat before starting to dine himself, and that only at the other’s prompting, while Kris would occasionally offer a large bit of chicken to the other wolf, clearly wanting him to take it.

 

Between the pair of them, the plate was quickly emptied of food, and they turned their attention to the water.  Kris sniffed both offerings, and then quickly pushed one to Tao, before starting to drink from his own. He watched, wary, until the other werewolf started to drink, as well, and then settled in for slaking his thirst.

 

When he was sure that Tao had had enough to drink, Kris gently pawed at his face, making the other wolf look at him. Tao’s eyes fluttered into a happy smile, and his tongue slipped out of his mouth, an instinctive act of submission.  Kris, taking it for what it was, leant in and began grooming his friend with careful . He was sure to get as much of the seasoning and grease from their meal off of Tao’s fur as possible.

 

He was pleasantly surprised when, after a moment’s hesitation, Tao belly-crawled forward and offered him the same care.

 

---

 

“I am grateful for your presence,” Kris said, falling back on his formal training as he poured coffee for the two men seated across the low table from him.

 

“We are honored by your respect,” Sunggyu said in turn, a smile lurking in his eyes, though he didn’t let it curl his lips. He accepted the coffee—though tea was traditional, for this, Kris had been raised in a Canadian pack and, besides, they were idols—with a small bow. His eyes darted to where Tao lay, wolf-bodied, head pillowed on Suho’s thigh. “And by your trust.”

 

Suho bristled at the implied threat, but remained where he was and forced himself to relax when Kris’s only response was a bland smile.

 

“Zitao is an honored member of my pack,” he said, calm as a summer’s day, now pouring coffee for Suho and himself. “And also more than capable of defending himself, regardless of body. Cream? Sugar?”

 

There was a small lull in conversation as everyone sipped at their coffee, then doctored it to their particular liking. Suho offered around a plate of biscuits and fruit, having been coached on his role in this meeting (on their home territory, for the first time) by Kris.

 

“So,” Dongwoo said finally, setting his mug carefully on the table. “Let’s be real. This isn’t a social visit.”

 

Grinning, Suho offered him another cookie. His smile widened when the other man took it with a wink.

 

Kris, watching this exchange, reached over and Tao’s ears in commiseration. He wasn’t really opposed to closer ties with the other pack; in fact, setting a groundwork for a strong relationship with the Infinite Pack was definitely in the plans. He just wasn’t so sure he wanted to do so by watching Junmyeon and Dongwoo flirt over coffee before the biggest, most nerve-wracking meeting of his life.

 

Sunggyu seemed to agree with him, if the way he rolled his eyes was any indication. “So,” he said, taking another long slurp of coffee. “As Dongwoo said. Not a social visit, not really. You need info on the other packs in the area.”

 

“I need to know what I should be getting ready for,” Kris said, neither agreeing or disagreeing outright with the other alpha’s statement. “I wish for this transition—the addition of the EXO Pack into Seoul—to go as smoothly as possible.”

 

“Of course,” Sunggyu said, inclining his head, just short of a nod. “Well, let it not be said that we don’t hand down information that was given once to us. Woo-ya, stop flirting with Junmyeon and hand me that folder.”

 

His Second flushed, breaking his gaze with Suho. He reached into the bag he had brought with him, and drew out a thick plastic file folder. Placing it on the table, he looked first to his alpha and, at Sunggyu’s nod, opened it up to reveal full dossiers.

 

“When we started forming Infinite Pack,” Dongwoo explained quietly, “each of us brought what information we had about our own packs and what information our packs were willing to share about others. As we’re not really in this as Traditionalists—we don’t really need territory lines, I mean, we’re idols, so…” He shrugged.

 

Sunggyu picked up the thread. “It does us no harm to share this information with you. Now, most of the packs in our region are relatively benign. This being Seoul, as you would expect, most of them have a very modernist approach to the whole thing. Like I said before. This pack,” and he tapped a picture of a sharp-faced woman seated on a fancy couch with a tall, willowy man standing behind her, “we avoid on principle. It’s up to you if you wish to do the same; I am certainly not going to try and dictate policy to you.”

 

Kris noted the renewed flush in Dongwoo’s cheeks—a ruddy red that looked more ashamed than anything—and saw the way the other wolf slanted his eyes way, looking at the door. He also noted that the pack was labelled as the Jang Conglomerate Pack. Not being nearly as much a fool as he occasionally pretended, Kris kept his mouth shut. He had no doubt that the similarity in the Pack’s name and Dongwoo’s was not incidental.

 

“Thank you,” he murmured, accepting the file as it was pushed towards him. “I will, of course, offer you my observations, as they are gathered. And, if ever a need arises for information about the packs of Greater Canada…” He let it hang.

 

“We’ll know who to call,” Sunggyu agreed. He did not look down at where his hand was now covering Dongwoo’s, seemingly all of his attention on the alpha across the table.

 

Kris nodded. “Now, you said most of the packs. Who do I need to keep an eye out for?”

 

Sunggyu leant forward, propping his arms on the table. “Dongwoo—Moon Pack?”

 

“Green tab,” Dongwoo said, now leaning forward as well. He seemed to be a little more sure in his skin, now that he had something concrete to focus on, and the conversation had moved from whatever trauma had separated him from his birth pack.

 

Kris found the file with the green tab, and shuffled the papers around to it.

 

“Moon Pack,” Sunggyu began, “is led by Moon Hyunsik. They’re very much a Traditionalist pack. A pain in everyone’s , frankly.  Half of the time we get called to convene, it’s because of them. The alpha enjoys nothing so much as humiliating other alphas in front of the entire meet. Last time, it was something like…what was it, Dongwoo, do you recall?”

 

Dongwoo snorted, an ugly sound. “One of the Expat Pack strayed onto his territory without permission or acknowledgement. Hyunsik, of course, demanded that the kid in question be summoned to apologise.”

 

“Which, of course, means that the kid’s alpha apologized,” Kris said, mind quickly putting two and two together (it was less traumatic than thinking about how Suho had tangled his fingers with Dongwoo). He reached out and scratched under Tao’s chin as he continued to think aloud. “Because another alpha can punish the pack, but not the alpha of the pack. And he sounds like the kind of person who would take it out on a kid just to take it out on him.”

 

“Got it in one,” Sunggyu said. “But it’s not all little stuff. A few years ago, a pair of mated wolves from one pack—a young Second-to-Be with potential to be an alpha, and her husband—submitted to the Meet that they had been coerced into the Moon Pack by a member biting their human-born son.”

 

“Bitten wolves automatically become a part of their biter’s pack,” Kris said to Suho, realizing that his Second might not be aware of that political undercurrent to this conversation. He looked to the other men. “And I assume his mother refused to reject her family bond to him? And so of course her mate followed her.”

 

Dongwoo nodded. “Moon Hyunsik insisted he was horrified—horrified, I tell you!—that such spurious claims had been laid at his door. Why, his whole pack knew that the man who had bitten the child hadn’t been in his right mind! He’d done as an alpha should, of course, and put down the ill wolf. Look, here was his heart, on ice, as proof.”

 

Tao whimpered and all but shot into Kris’s lap, burying his nose in the crook of his alpha’s hip. He shivered and shook until the human man had his hands tucked into the thick ruff of fur around his neck, and soothing as best he could.

 

Suho just shuddered, wide-eyed with disgust. “And he’s an alpha?”

 

“Some of the ones from traditional packs are downright sociopathic,” Sunggyu said bluntly. “No contact with non-pack humans, living in secluded runs as far from humanity as they can get—they have forgotten what it’s like to be a part of the world.”

 

“Or never known,” Kris said, thinking of a few of those sorts of people he had known about as a child. “There’s one pack in North Dakota that abandons their human-born within an hour of birth. They claim that, outside of their Emissary, no one within the pack has had contact with humans since 1852.”

 

“They kill the kids?” Dongwoo squawked.

 

Kris shook his head. “No, no. Even they aren’t that bad. They’re still wolves, after all, and family’s important. I don’t think even they could bring themselves to kill a newborn smelling of their blood. The Emissary brings the baby to a local hospital, as I understand it.”

 

Sunggyu’s lip curled. “And I thought that Dongwoo had had it rough,” he grunted.

 

Suho looked between Sunggyu and his Second, but, getting no explanation beyond a squeeze of Dongwoo’s hand, said nothing.

 

“Okay,” Kris said. “A sociopath with ego issues. What else?”

 

---

 

The alarm waking him for the Meet rang far too early. Groaning, Kris rolled over and stabbed at his phone until the cheerful chiming stopped. He peeked over his shoulder, guilty, but the tight pull in his chest eased when he saw that Tao hadn’t been woken by his alarm.

 

The other man was slowly adapting to just how much his life had changed, with some parts coming more easily than others. While he still struggled with the feminine structure of his wolf shape, it seemed that the indignity and discomfort of finding himself the wrong meant that shifting back to human in his sleep—and thus, ly snuggling another man—didn’t so much as blip on his radar anymore.

 

It blipped on Kris’s, though, even more so when he could feel his friend’s , half-hard and warm, pressing against the small of his back. He knew it was normal, knew that it was just a human reaction, but he had his limits and he had things he could handle and things he couldn’t, and this fell squarely in the category of things he was trying his hardest not to think about.  And so he quickly pulled himself from the younger man’s warm embrace. Pulling on the clothes he had laid out the night before, selected to not be too formal nor too informal, to show that he was the alpha of his independent pack, Kris watched Tao sleep.

 

His little panda dìdì was sound asleep, now curling around the pillow that Kris had abandoned. His hair, which was getting long again, splayed in an inky halo against the yellow fur of the stuffed duck he slept on. It was soft, Kris knew, because Tao hadn’t had it dyed recently. And because he had woken in the middle of the night and it, much as he would Tao’s fur when he was wolfed out.

 

Kris squeezed his eyes shut and fought the urge to groan aloud. He needed to be focused on the upcoming Meet. Not on Tao.

 

Hearing Suho moving around in the hall gave him the impetus he needed to really get moving. Kris stooped forward and pressed a soft kiss to Tao’s forehead, then pulled the blanket up to better cover his bare shoulder. No sense in the younger man getting cold, after all, now that his bed partner had left. That taken care of, Kris slipped out the door, barely cracking it so that the minimum of light got in.

 

Let Tao sleep. He needed it.

 

---

 

Listening to the alphas and their Seconds drone on and on and on, Suho was grateful that he had gotten up early enough to make coffee for himself and his alpha. Across the room, Dongwoo saluted him with his own travel mug. Idols, Suho thought, swallowing back a grin. You could take them out of the show business, at least for a moment, but there was no shaking the bone-deep weariness, or the tricks they had learnt to keep it all at bay.

 

The mere process of introducing Kris and Suho, and the pack they represented (EXO Pack, they had decided they would be called) had taken nearly two hours. Nothing could just be said, no. Every one of the alphas had to get a comment in, and that nearly always devolved into petty bickering in the guise of polite, diplomatic . And then, once Kris had finally been able to finish introducing his pack, each of the other alphas had to introduce themselves, and their seconds, and their packs. They had to explain where their packs were located, and the processes they expected EXO to follow, and so on and so forth.

 

It was enough that Suho found himself being exceedingly grateful that Kris was the one fielding this storm. He wasn’t sure that, had he found himself in the other man’s shoes, he would have been able to handle it. Kris, at least, had known about werewolves, and had been somewhat familiar with the way their packs worked. Suho had no clue, and even less than nothing to go on.

 

“Okay,” the alpha who was serving as the head of the Meet said, clapping her hands together. “Anything else we need to deal with? Any concerns about the formation of EXO Pack and their admittance into Seoul?”

 

Moon Hyunsik, his face twisted up like a rotten apple, forced himself to his feet. “I have a concern,” he said, voice silky and cruel. “I attest now that the one who bit this child’s friend” he gestured to Kris “is a member of my pack. Moon Jongho travelled abroad for work, and our pack lost contact with him until just this week. Though he was travelling, Moon Jongho maintained membership of the Moon Pack. And so, his offspring, be they born or made.” The old man’s eyes narrowed, sharp and cruel. “Thus, I assert that this little pseudo-pack falls under my oversight.”

 

Kris growled, the sound rolling up from vocal cords that were distinctly inhuman. “Your rogue bit an unknowing human,” he snarled, “and you let the infection spread, with no concern for humans in the way. Like hell will I submit.”

 

“Yifan!” Sunggyu snapped, half-rising to his feet. Behind him, Dongwoo had gone stone-faced and still.

 

Suho froze, his coffee still halfway to his mouth. Kris sounded more than angry; he sounded coldly furious, in a way that Suho hadn’t heard from him in a long, long time. The last time had been because of a screw up that had nearly injured Jongdae. He couldn’t see Kris’s face, not from where he was seated, but he could read the tension in his tight shoulders, in the sharp angle of his back.

 

The female alpha at the head of the table frowned. “Hyunsik-ssi, you wish to take in the EXO Pack?”

 

“I do,” Hyunsik said, smirking at Kris before turning his attentions back to the other alpha. “They’re but children, not a one of them born wolf. While I can certainly let them live on their own, they need oversight.”

 

“Oversight—” Kris started.

 

The woman stopped him with a hand. “Yifan-ssi,” she said calmly, “I understand that you were raised in a pack, though as human-born?”

 

Kris nodded, the motion tight and sharp.

 

“And you have been in communication with your initial pack?”

 

He nodded again, the motion more fluid. “Yes, ma’am. Also with the McCall-Hale Pack in California. Additionally, packs in Seoul have been lending their knowledge, and there is a pack in China ready and able to sponsor the Chinese members of my pack, when that becomes necessary.” He smiled at her impressed look. “SM Entertainment has connections in many interesting places, and they are willing to do what it takes.”

 

“So I see. Hyunsik-ssi, are you willing to accept that this pack as a separate pack, given what you know now?”

 

Hyunsik shook his head, his scowl gone dark. “No,” he said. “These children are making themselves more dangerous by thinking that they know enough. If he will not submit his pack, then I will dissolve it entire, and claim the pack by right of combat.”

 

The alpha scowled. “Hyunsik-ssi!”

 

“It’s his right,” Kris said, a hint of growl in his suddenly-chesty voice. “As it is mine to refuse his rule without my defeat.”

 

At that, Suho felt his heart stop in his chest. That couldn’t possibly mean what he thought it did, could it?

 

The woman sighed heavily, her eyes rolling to the ceiling. “Very well,” she growled out. “This dispute shall be settled by trial of combat at the full moon, exactly two months’ time. Until then, neither alpha may harry the other’s pack, nor may you attack one another. The information for when and where to meet will be communicated to the whole Meet the day before the combat trial. Both packs must have a full complement of wolves present. You may settle this privately beforehand, but it must be done peaceably, and a member of the Meet must chaperone all meetings. Am I understood?”

 

“Yes, Alpha,” Hyunsik said, smirking.

 

Kris nodded. “Yes, Alpha.” He narrowed his eyes at Hyunsik, who was already turning that vicious smirk to him, as if claiming him already.

 

He would not let his pack go to this creature, not without a fight. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friends! Thank you for bearing with me this long! Alas, this is the final chapter of Changes. It is not the end of the story, as you can undoubtedly tell, but the tale will be continued soon in the next part of the TWO MOONS verse! Please keep a weather eye out for it! In the meantime, both BunBun28 and I will be posting side stories. The main story for those is on my profile. Check it out!