Last Time:

"When do you guys leave?”

“Tomorrow afternoon,” Kris said. He reached up and ran a hand through his hair. “At least, we’re supposed to. Will it be safe?”

Stiles bit his lip, obviously considering. “Likely. If he’s around someone who he looks up to, someone he respects.”

“Duizhang,” Yixing said, snickering. He weakly toed Kris’s thigh.

Kris laughed, too. “I can control him,” he said to Stiles, placing a hand on the lump of Yixing’s blanket covered foot. 

Chapter One 

“Derek, I need you to call me. I’ve found the rogue. It’s near Chinatown. It bit someone—he’s changing. Call me?”

Stiles sat on a bench in the park, flipping his phone over and over in his hands. He and Derek had come down on the heels of a rumour of a rogue, to help find and remove the danger and to help its victims find a pack to take them in. Before this evening, they’d been lucky; there’d only been three human victims, all of whom had been easily taken into small packs around the area. But tonight had thrown a wrench in the works. While they had figured out where the rogue was hiding, it was in a highly-populated area, and the person it had bit made the whole situation a hell of a lot messier.

Yixing, the newest victim, couldn’t be folded into a local pack. He was going to return home, and soon. Stiles didn’t have connections in Seoul, not the way he had connections in Canada and Mexico and, strangely enough, London. That made it all the better that the other man, Yifan, seemed to know about wolves, and the medic. Hopefully they knew of a pack that would take the boy.

He started, just a little, when his phone rang; years of knowing Derek and Scott and the particular brand of completely ing nuts they attracted had left him more than a little jumpy. Seeing Derek’s number on the screen, he answered.

“Yo, Derek!”

“You found the rogue?”

“Hello to you, too, and might I say, yeah, I’m doing splendid, how are you?”

“Stiles—”

“Chill, wolfman. Use the FriendFinder app I loaded on your phone, come to me. We can go find the rogue.”

There was a beep as Derek hung up. Stiles pulled the phone away from his ear and gave it a disgusted look.

---

After waking up to a furry, be-tailed Yixing his face gleefully, Kris was pretty sure that the day could not get any worse. Which was unfortunate, considering his unpleasant wake up call came before ten in the morning, and he still had a twelve hour flight to look forward to, and trans-pacific flights were exercises in loathing under the best of circumstances. 

 He talked Yixing back into his human form using the half-remembered instructions he’d once heard his aunt giving to new wolves in the old pack. Whether the advice was that good, Yixing trusted him that much, or the process really was just that much instinct, Kris would never know. It had the wanted effect, however, and soon Yixing was standing in front of him, bright-eyed and, thankfully only metaphorically, bushy-tailed. Kris had given him the quick rundown on how wolfdom worked--at least for his wolf pack back in Canada; he was still waiting on the promised pdf file from that Stiles kid.

Super strength, super smell, super hearing--three things that were going to be a hell of a lot of fun to hide, especially from the other members. Both he and Yixing had agreed that they weren’t going to tell anyone before they told Suho and the primary manager, which wasn’t going to happen until they were back in Seoul. Given that they were going to be stuck in a small metal tube for half the day, neither of the men was all that excited about getting home.

On the other hand, their apartment in Korea, with its familiar smells and comforting spaces, would probably help Yixing’s wolf settle, or so Kris had mused while brushing his teeth.

And therein lay the trick, didn’t it? Because the transformation between human and were happened under stress, keeping Yixing calm was going to be key in helping him and the entire group make the necessary adjustments to their lives. Before leaving, Stiles had mentioned that the kind of wolf that had bitten Yixing--a were breed that resembled the Tibetan wolf--had the ability to shift between human, partial wolf, and full wolf (as Kris had woken up to). Hiding clawed hands and furry jowls was one kind of nightmare. But hiding a full grown wolf?

Kris wondered if it was too early to start drinking.

---

Suho’s eyes fluttered as he leant back in the seat, trying to relax his shoulders. He felt like , from head to toe, but his shoulders were the worst. Probably stress from what happened to Yixing. And, ugh, he needed to get the details of whatever super-secret conversation had taken place out of Kris, and soon.

Well, at least Yixing had looked better this morning. He’d seemed a little…stretched, pale and tired, maybe, but the bite on his hand had faded to a dull red mark, and it didn’t seem to be paining him overmuch. He’d stretch his hand every once in a while, flexing it, but other than that, he ignored the wound. The fever he’d had last night appeared to have broken, too, and left no sigh that it had been there.

He was more worried about Kris, honestly. The other leader had spent all morning whispering furtively on his phone in what Suho presumed was Cantonese, given the way he was avoiding Tao like the plague. That avoidance wasn’t going over the younger man’s head, either, which was unfortunate. He was starting to look like a kicked puppy.

Suho wasn’t the only one who’d noticed that, either. Minseok was side-eyeing his leader, hard, his lips thinned. If he hadn’t been already seated, his hands would have been on hips. Suho was willing to bet good money on that. Still, rather than raising a fuss—at least in a public place; he wasn’t sure that Minseok wouldn’t chew Kris out in private—Minseok waved Tao over to sit beside him.

“TaoTao!” he said brightly, patting the seat beside him. “Come on. Sit with hyung. We’ve got twelve hours. Surely you can help me with Chinese.”

Tao’s face lit up as a smile started to creep across it. “Oh, gege,” he said, laughing in that little, silent way of his. “It’s probably gonna take a lot longer than that.”

But he sat down beside Minseok, and his attention was drawn away from Kris, so Suho counted it as a win, anyway.

 That was about the only win it seemed he was going to get. His shoulders were as tight as ever they had been, to say nothing of the way every single muscle in his body was clamoring for attention. He ached and he hurt and he just wanted to sleep away this flight, in the hopes that he would wake up, at home, feeling less like something that had been run over.

Suho, like all k-idols, was no stranger to the peculiar, weighty ache of sleep deprivation and overwork. But whatever was currently wracking his joints and clawing his brain was a different beast; that much was obvious from the start. Hopeful, he’d popped some Tylenol that morning, but it hadn’t really helped. Maybe he’d try some Narfen, later. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d mix-and-matched pain medications.

Next to him, Sehun was already lost in a book, lips moving ever-so-slightly as he read. He would likely finish it soon, but that was okay. As soon as the plane was in the air, Sehun would move to his video games, or maybe even catch some sleep.

Sleeping seemed like a good idea. With a nod to Sehun, Suho closed his eyes, tugged the eyemask from his bag over his face, and set about seeking some rest.

---

Suho woke up to a cold hand pressed against the underside of his chin, feeling at his throat. He fussed slightly, batting at the arm in front of him, struggling to crack his eyes open. Someone had taken his eyemask.

“Hey there, Suho,” SM’s private nurse said, her lips quirking. “How are you feeling?”

Closing his eyes again—when had the plane gotten so bright?—he mumbled something.

“I thought so,” the woman said. “Kris came and got me. You’re not looking so wonderful, I’m afraid.” She started rifling through her bag. “Have you taken anything today?”

“Just Tylenol,” he said.

She hmmed her agreement. Finding something, she pulled out a bottle of pills. “Two of these, and then I’m going to give you a quick injection.”

Suho stuck out a hand, waiting for the ibuprofen. When the nurse dropped the pills into his hand, and a water bottle into the other, he quickly knocked them back. After chasing the pills with several slugs of water, he opened his eyes again and took another look at her. “Do you know what I’ve got?”

Preparing the syringe, the nurse shrugged. “Honestly? Probably some kind of upper respiratory infection; that’s the most common thing. My goal right now is to get you so that we can get you home and then I’ll work out the details.” Without so much as a by-your-leave, she yanked up his shirt and swabbed his abs. She sank the needle in easily, depressing the plunger and injecting him with what looked to be the standard booster mix.

As she rose to her feet, the nurse cast a long look over Suho. “You should start feeling better soon,” she said, putting her tools away. “We’ll be back in Seoul in about an hour, and that injection should hold you for about two after that. Long enough to get you into bed, at least.”

Suho nodded, leaning back into the seat. “And Yixing?”

“Hmm?”

“How is Yixing?” he asked.

The nurse nodded, understanding. “Yixing’s doing well,” she said. “He’s not feverish, not in anything more than residual pain. He’s doing quite well. You, on the other hand…” She handed him a mask. “I sent Sehun to my seat, so he shouldn’t get sick. Do try not to breathe on me too much, though, would you?”

---

Yixing was drooling on his shoulder, but that wasn’t what had Kris worried. No, his attention was caught far more by the way Suho’s teeth, revealed in quick flashes by his grimaces, seemed to be much larger and sharper than they should have been. His hands, too—or at least his fingers. The one ring he was wearing looked tight and uncomfortable, and his fingernails had a familiar, frightening arc to them.

When had he been bitten, Kris wondered. Yixing had gone from just-bitten to groaning and hallucinating in pain in a couple of hours, with his full transformation taking less than twelve hours, all told. So if Suho was starting to change—and he was, there was no mistaking the sit of wolf teeth and wolf claws on a human body, not if you had grown up with it and seen it in all its many shifts and shapes—he must have been bitten recently. But not by Yixing. Yixing had been next to Kris on the flight back, and he certainly hadn’t bit Suho.

Not on the flight, anyway, Kris realized. But earlier…with a sinking feeling of horror, Kris thought about the night before. Had he seen Suho stick a hand in his mouth? Why would he do that, except that it hurt? And he’d been Yixing’s forehead…

. Another one of the members bit, and this one that Kris didn’t have any control over. Well, at least he had been planning on telling Suho the truth, and soon. Looked like that explanation was going to be more important than he had been expecting.

---

Minseok watched his leader half-carry Suho into the apartment building while Yixing followed close on their heels, manager-noona meeting them at the door. Lips thin, he turned to find Tao.

The younger man was staring after Kris’s retreating back, his dark-rimmed eyes wide and sad. He looked like he had started to say something, only to freeze halfway through. His shoulders were slumped, tired; the bag in his hand was nearly touching the ground.

Minseok didn’t care if it took him all day to pin down his leader; he was going to give Kris the bollocksing of a lifetime for the look on Tao’s face! Kris knew how much his attention meant to Tao, knew how much the younger man looked up to him, and normally he took that into consideration. He made time for Tao, usually, which made this sudden and complete avoidance all that more obvious. Hell, even Chanyeol was looking between where Tao was standing and the door swinging shut behind Kris, a confused look on his face.

“Taozi,” Minseok said quickly, sliding into Mandarin, glad his language skills would at least let him get through this. “Come on, let’s get inside. Can’t have Lulu beating us to the hot water, can we?”

Tao looked over at him, clearly trying to bury his hurt. “Yeah, gege,” he agreed. Though his eyes shone brightly and there was a suspicious thickness to his voice, not a single tear slid down his cheek. “Yeah,” he repeated, stronger. “Lu-ge always steals the hot water.”

“Do not,” Luhan said, sidling up between them. He flung an arm around Tao’s hips. “It’s not stealing if the rest of you leave it to me.”

“Pretty sure we not leaving it to you if you race in there before the rest of us even have our shoes off,” Minseok said, flicking Luhan’s ear gently.

Luhan clapped a hand over his abused ear, then pouted at the Korean man. “Mean,” he said. Then, after a moment, “and I think you forgot a verb.”

Mentally retracing his sentence, even as he led the way into the relative warmth of the parking garage’s foyer, Minseok realized he was right. “We are not,” he said, trusting that the other two would know what he meant and where he meant it.

They seemed to; Tao pressed the button to call the elevator, nodding, but adding nothing. That was one of the nice things about M. They had bonded through mutual misunderstandings in all directions, starting with Yixing, Tao, and Luhan’s first efforts to learn Korean, adding in the fact that Kris defaulted to English more than he liked to admit, a pinch of Cantonese not shared by the majority of the members, and capped off by Minseok and Chen’s struggles to learn Mandarin. Children’s television was depressingly popular in their dorm, along with the more accepted news and variety programs in the language of the moment.

Kyungsoo squished into the elevator with them, racing past the doors at the very last second. He beamed, then quickly swiped his key card and punched the button for their floor. “Glad to be back?” he asked them.

“So glad,” Luhan groaned, flopping against Tao. His slide into Korean was nearly flawless, accent slipping away with every syllable. “I miss my bed.”

“Just last night you were saying you planned on stealing the hotel bed,” Tao said, arching an eyebrow at the older man.

Grinning up from his shoulder, Luhan winked. “Just because my heart expands to include others, doesn’t mean I will forget my first lo—ow! Jesus, MinMin!”

Minseok was utterly unrepentant for the heavy-duty pinch he had delivered. “Stop teaching the dìdì ty drama lines, LuLu.”

Kyungsoo snorted. “Pretty sure Tao watches enough dramas without Luhan’s help, Min-ah. It may already be a lost cause.”

Minseok waved a finger at him. “Don’t you start, Kyung-ah. I will keep the little one’s language pure, I will.”

“,” Tao murmured, counting off on his fingers. He used one to point forward, showing that the door to the elevator had opened. “. Damn. . . Goddamn. Hell. Cu—”

“That’s enough, dìdì,” Chen said, cutting him off as he exited the staircase, followed closely by Sehun and Chanyeol. “I don’t want to know who or what got you started, but point proved. You can swear.”

“There is a difference between swearing and bad melodrama,” Minseok said, punching in the door code. They’d gotten more a secure system, ever since the latest round of sasaeng fans turning up where they shouldn’t be; you had to unlock the code box with one of the magnet keys—the same ones used for the elevator—and then input the code. He did so, and opened the door to the apartment M was currently sharing. As he toed off his shoes, he stuck his head out the door. “See you later, Kyung-ah?”

“Later,” Kyungsoo confirmed, opening the door to K’s apartment.

Tao rolled his eyes, gathering up the shoes the other members had kicked all over the entrance way. “Like you’re not watching those dramas with me, Min-ge,” he said, starting to tuck everyone’s shoes together in pairs in the shoe shelf beside the door.

Minseok waved a negligent hand in the air. “Not important.” He leant over, picked up his bag, and headed towards the room he and Chen shared. “Did the hyungs say when our luggage would arrive?” he called back over his shoulder.

“No,” Luhan groaned, rolling his shoulders and kicking his bag down the hall. He smiled his thanks at Tao for cleaning up, then kicked his bag another couple of feet. “Should be soon? Ish?”

“I’m just glad they decided to send us on,” Chen said, “instead of having us wait around at the airport.” He exchanged a look with Luhan. “Fans are getting a little handsy.”

“Just a little,” Tao agreed, snide. He stretched, popping his back, and yawned. “Ugh. I ache.”

Minseok his head out from the room. “Tao-ya? Does hyung need to give you a backrub tonight?”

Tao treated him to a pathetic look. “Please?”

“Just remind me,” the older man said, nodding.

A scream from K’s apartment split the air. It hung in the air, crystal-clear and glass-edged sharp, before the silence shattered and all of the men lurched toward the door.