Last Time:

Jinki winked at Kai, then hoisted him to his feet. He let the younger man sag against him, and held him close as the wolves edged closer.

Kai closed his eyes when Chen’s fanged mouth opened. He had seen enough tonight. He really didn’t want to see this, too.

Chapter Five

As the other supernatural beings had predicted, Kyungsoo changed almost as soon as Suho and Yixing finished washing the wound in long, rough tongue-. Fur crept across his body in fluffy tufts, and then his body warped and reformed—and a sad, hurting wolf lay on the floor beside Key and a fox-shaped Daesung.

With a sigh of relief, Jinki released the last of his control over the wolves. Immediately, they swamped Kyungsoo, whining and whimpering and grooming him. Daesung crept back, until his lithe body was pressed against Jinki’s leg. He yipped until the incubus picked him up, drawing off a little of Daesung’s happy energy through the contact.

“Where’d you leave Luhan?” Key asked, suddenly exhausted. “Can we leave Kai there?”

Had Daesung been capable of speech, he likely would have been snarking at Key. As it was, he just did the fox equivalent of arching an eyebrow. All nine of his tails curling messily around Jinki’s bare arm, he pointed his nose at the mess of blood and fur on the floor.

“Ah,” Key said, understanding. “Can’t have that happening again, can we? So where should Kai rest? He should change soon.”

“Put him in the manager’s office,” Jinki said. “Their apartment is like ours—they should have one. These four go back to their own room,” he gave the wolves a dark look, “and we’ll stay here. Just until Kris can handle them.”

Key snorted. “If he can. Well, hyung,” he addressed Daesung, “you’d either human up and tell me where you put Luhan, or you’re going to have to lead me to him. I’ve been glamoured by you before. I’m not leaving him alone with that hangover.”

Daesung barked a laugh and leapt from Jinki’s arms, heading down the hall.

“I’ll settle Kai,” Jinki said, “and get a start on that mess.”

---

Cold noses pressed against Kyungsoo’s neck and shoulders. He woke slowly, comfortably sleepy, cradled between warm, soft bodies. Tails were tucked around him, heads nuzzled against him, and paws were buried beneath him.

Kai—how did he know it was Kai—whined low in his throat. Kai-wolf leaned forward and began at Kyungsoo’s muzzle. He groomed him carefully, tongue working over the fur of his face. It was the same gentle touch that usually passed between friends, warm and soft and kind and caring.

Kyungsoo huffed and shuffled a little closer to the other wolf. He was glad that Kai had finished his Change, too. It was nicer when they were all together like this. Easier to forget how he had gotten here in the first place.

Perhaps smelling the memory on him, Suho made an unhappy sound. His tail whipped back and forth, whacking against the leg of the bed. He crept forward, just a little bit, and washed Kyungsoo’s ear.

Kyungsoo yipped back, wagging his tail the way a dog might. He didn’t bear Suho or Chen or Yixing any ill-will. Yes, it had hurt, when it had happened, and he knew that he would likely be having nightmares for months to come. But Kyungsoo had always lived with the idea that what had happened had happened, and there was no point in wishing for things to have gone differently. He had been changed, and while the circumstances had been rotten-bad, he had a pack, and they were taking the best care of him that they could.

They had absorbed his pain while waiting for the change to take, and even after he had shifted, they’d kept it up. He had had to push them away so that they would stop drawing the pain after the wounds had healed; there had been no hurt for them to take, but they had been determined to do so, anyway.

Suho had coddled Kyungsoo in this new shape while Yixing had explained that they needed to see Kai, that they could help him. In the end, Kai had curled against Suho like a child against a stuffed toy, and the rest of the pack had buried him beneath their furry bulk, taking the last of the pain of the Change. At some point, they’d all fallen asleep, and Kai had woken in his own fur.

There was one more night of the moon’s influence to weather—and oh, but they were still regretting having not been paying attention the first night!—but they had worked out their plans. For the night, they would remain locked in the small room, a pile of puppies cementing their bond.

Come morning, they would have their freedom.

---

Suho wrinkled his nose as he entered Kris’s room. It stank of illness and unwashed man, little bitter snips of fear and anger making his nose itch. He sneezed, trying to get the stench out of his too-sensitive nose.

Minseok, slumped across Kris’s legs, groaned and twitched at the sound. He didn’t really wake up, though.

Suho put his front paws up on the edge of the bed and got a good sniff of Kris. Ugh, the other man needed a shower, and how, but the stink of sick seemed less on his body than in the room. Somehow, he knew that that meant that Kris was getting better, that he would soon be well. Turning his head, he sniffed at Minseok. Ah. This one, he needed sleep. Real sleep. Not in a chair, not with his head propped on Kris’s feet. In a bed. With sheets. And a pillow. And a blanket.

Unthinking, Suho took Minseok’s thin wrist in his mouth and pulled.

---

Kris groaned. His head was pounding, yes, but not nearly as badly as it had been. No, what was really getting him right now was that he’d been sick for three days and somehow three of his friends had gotten bitten and Changed. Jinki and Key had updated him on the situation, Key laughing fit to make himself sick the entire time. They hadn’t given him too much detail, but he knew that there had been blood. Lots of it.

On the other hand, the mess and the pain had served one better purpose—the pack seemed to have coalesced, finally. And as they had connected with one another, they had also gotten in better touch with their own wolves. Though Suho had accidentally changed Minseok—honestly, spending so long in his wolf-form that he had completely forgotten—the chances of a tragedy like the one that had happened to Kyungsoo and Kai happening was greatly reduced.

Now to get the rest of the members used to the wolves. Going off of the information Stiles had sent, Kris had moved the furniture out of M’s living room. Baekhyun and Kai had gone shopping, ostensibly for Monggu and Jjanggu. The results—a haul of toys for big, tough dogs—had been scattered across the floor. There were large bundles of blankets, too.

“Play time,” Luhan said, looking around the room. He settled carefully on the floor beside his leader, offering Kris silent comfort. “So…we get used to thinking of the wolves as really big dogs?”

Kris shrugged. “Really big dogs who also happen to be our friends,” he said.

“Someday,” Chen said, coming into the room, “we need to go outside. To nature.” He cast his gaze over the toys, blankets, and other members who had already arrived. “Go for a run.”

“We’d have to be on leashes,” Minseok warned. “There are leash laws, remember?”

Chanyeol snorted. “At least you can pass for a normal doggy, Min-ah.”

Minseok growled playfully at him, letting a little fur fluff up around his face. His fangs slid down, and there was a wobble in his voice as his vocal folds changed, too, so that he was growling like a wolf.

Chanyeol just laughed, reaching up to ruffle Minseok’s hair. “They had squeaky toys at the shop,” he said. “Go full wolf and I’ll show you what Baekhyun found.”

“Oh lord,” Luhan groaned, burying his face in his hands.

Tao, just entering the room, raised an eyebrow. “Gege?”

“The toy,” Luhan said. “I know what it is. Baekhyun has a ty sense of humor.”

Minseok grinned, the expression twice as dangerous when he was half-shifted as it normally seemed. “This, I cannot miss.” He removed his shirt, balling it up and tossing it into a corner as he stepped out of his pants. In seconds, he was landing on his paws, fully-furred, tongue hanging out of his mouth.

“You really do look like a dog like that,” Chen said, cocking his head to the side. “Do the tail—yeah. There you go.”

“Good doggy,” Tao said, kneeling down and letting Minseok sniff his hand. Grinning, he started petting his friend. “Chan-ge, where’s Baekhyun with that toy?”

“Right here!” Baekhyun sung out, coming into the room with Suho on his heels. “So you did talk him into it. Good going, Channie.” Digging into his bag, he pulled out a rubber toy the size of his fist and tossed it to Minseok.

If wolves could laugh, Chen and Minseok would have been howling with it. As it was, both were making a strange chuffing-cough sound, and Minseok was batting the toy around with his paws.

The toy in question wasn’t all that large. It was a pasty off-white, like the cheap oatmeal the company had made them all eat during training when they were trying to lose weight. It was vaguely conical, with grooves marking out where it drew together in a gather at the top. It had little eyes and a comical mustache.

“It’s a baozi,” Luhan said, completely deadpan. “You found a squeaky baozi.”

“Yeah!” Kai laughed, stripping down so he, too, could wolf. “We couldn’t resist.”

“Saw it in line,” Baekhyun said, taking up the story as Kai’s mouth went far too wolf to speak. “Like hell we were passing up that opportunity. It was either that or a deer.”

Luhan treated him to the evil eye. “Thank you,” he said in a voice that fair dripped with pleasant venom, “for not encouraging him to eat me.”

Minseok looked up from his toy and whined. Lying flat on the ground, his ears tucked back against his skull and his tail curling under, he gave Luhan the biggest, saddest puppy eyes any of them had ever seen.

“I think—” Kris paused, needing to cough, “I think he’s trying to say he wouldn’t eat you.”

Minseok yipped, but quietly, as if afraid anything louder would be too aggressive.

Luhan frowned for a long moment, and then rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, then, you big goof,” he said, scooting forward on the hardwood flooring. “Come here and get scritchies.”

As the two friends bonded again, Luhan’s hands unerringly finding the good spots hidden deep in Minseok’s thick fur, Kris turned his attention to the rest of the group. Suho was watching over the other wolves as they played carefully with the toys, obviously doing their damnedest to seem like very large dogs, and nothing more. As they relaxed, though, so, too, did the other members. Sehun had already stretched out one of the blankets, a pillow tucked under his head. Kai had his head pillowed on Sehun’s thigh, either asleep or well on his way there. Baekhyun and Chanyeol had teamed up in a tug-of-war against Kyungsoo, and it was a surprisingly even match. And Chen and Yixing…

Kris started, surprised, then relaxed back against the wall. Chen and Yixing, who had been separated from “their baby” for more than a week now, had Tao pinned down between them. They were obviously taking great pains to avoid hurting him, but each wolf was carefully sniffing him over. As he watched, Yixing paused, his paw resting over one of the younger man’s kidneys. He huffed at Chen, who nosed Tao’s shirt up, revealing a large bruise. The two immediately began lecturing Tao, either completely forgetting that they couldn’t actually speak in this form, or trusting the sound to get the idea across as much as words might have.

Kris couldn’t help it; he started to laugh. Unfortunately, the laughing turned into coughing fairly quickly, but he was smiling even as he hacked. His coughing also drew the attention of everyone in the room, but while the others soon turned away, having accepted that it was just what it was, Suho came bounding over. He cocked his head to one side and stared at Kris for a long moment, and then turned his head the other way. After a moment, he huffed a canine sigh and lay down, resting his head on Kris’s crossed ankles.

“Hey, Suho,” Kris said, reaching down and rubbing his ears. “I think it’s gonna work out. Yeah?”

Suho lifted his head, nodded, and then settled back down, content to watch the rest of the group play.

---

He’d made a huge mistake, letting Chen and Yixing find out about the bruises.  Because as much as he didn’t think of them as being too much of a problem, the three (because of course Minseok had found out) didn’t seem to agree with his read on the situation, and there was little to no chance of the bruising stopping any time soon.

When he had finally admitted to over-training in an effort to unstress, SM’s overall trainer had called in his usual Wushu partner, and the next time Junjie had come, he’d brought another expert. Lina was tall, skinny, and hit like a truck.

“We’ll get you up to the next level of fighting fit, dìdì,” she had said, grinning at him as they’d finished their first spar. “That was a good warm-up. Now let’s see what you can really do.”

And so he’d found himself practically a punching bag to woman who was far, far better at Changquan than he was. Not only did she have him practicing cekongfan until he thought his head would come off, but she had him trying to use the leaps and flips to avoid her strikes. When she got tired of him failing to dodge, she tried to beat bajiquan into his head, which was where the majority of his bruises were coming from.

Junjie usually sat out of the boxing lessons, but he was a great spotter during the more acrobatic moments of the workout. It was thanks to his quick hands and patient explanations that Tao didn’t have more bruises.

Not that any of his motherhens would accept that as an answer. No, they seemed to have drawn straws and written up a schedule. Someone was assigned to ask after his health, another if he had any injuries, and the third would lunge out at him, sniffing out any injuries or unwellnesses he had not seen fit to confess.

Then all three of them would smother him in care and ice and bruise balm and, one memorable time, bandaids. Luhan later announced—over dinner, of all things—that it had been rather like watching humans trying to pill an uncooperative and kind of pissy cat, but for the part where the cat was taller than any of the humans and two of the humans had reverted to giant dog status in an effort to hold him down.

After that, the bandaids stayed out of the picture.

The motherhenning, however, did not end. Eventually, Tao just came to accept that if he copped to the small injuries he picked up in practice, the others were soothed by over his wounds and setting him free.

---

I’m dying, Tao thought, delirious and awash in pain. There’s something wrong with me, and I’m dying.

With a whimper, he reached down between his legs and clutched his . When the pain had started, he had thought that maybe he had a hernia, or he’d twisted a testicle, but the stabbing fire had just gotten worse and worse, until he was lying here, in bed, crying into his pillow.

He had his room to himself, right now, because Kris had gotten into the habit of cratering in the office, or sleeping on the couch in the living room, or falling asleep in K’s dorm. That was a relief; he had been doing everything he could to avoid his leader. He knew that Minseok was right, and that he needed to talk to the other man and clear the air, that Kris wasn’t actually angry with him, but…

He was scared. He was just as scared of talking to Kris as he was of whatever the hell was going on right now.

Turning his face into his pillow, Tao whimpered. He was going to die, and at this rate, he was looking forward to it. Death was going to be way, way more pleasant than this; death would stop the hurting. Which wasn’t that he wasn’t used to pain. No, Tao had more than a passing familiarity with pain; that was just one of those things about practicing wushu and dance and kpop in general. But this—this was far too much pain, in a place that pain did not belong.

He was feverish, too. The others had crept out to enjoy the late summer evening atop the apartment building, and Luhan had gone in search of Sehun, trying to repair their relationship. That meant that there were no sensitive wolf-ears or wolf-noses to hear or smell that anything was wrong, and no human gege determined to cuddle him into happiness (Luhan was not subtle in his efforts to cheer others up, not in the slightest.) With Kris conked out and snoring, there was no risk that anyone would come in and find Tao like this.

He was glad of that. If there was one thing Tao hated, it was making people worry overmuch. And if anyone in the group knew, knew that he was lying in bed, holding himself and crying, they would worry.

So really, it was for the better that he was all alone right now.

Notes:

Baozi (and mandu!) dog toys are apparently totally a thing that actually exists: check it out

Changquan is one of the most commonly taught forms of wushu. A Northern "family" of martial art, it's also known as "Long Fist" style because it focuses on full extensions and long-leg kicks. It's particularly appropriate for a string bean like Zitao.

Cekongfan are the fancy-pants side-somersaults we've seen Zitao show off before. Even though they are usually combined with other elements, they are cool as hell on their own, because, seriously, LOOK MA NO HANDS CARTWHEEEEEEEEL

Bajiquan is a form of wushu that's a lot shorter and more explosive than some of the more common forms. It focuses on sharp, abrupt motions, especially elbow strikes. For someone who's been doing a longer form for years, it would be quite the adjustment. Especially when you're all lanky and stretched out. Still, it's great for getting your aggressions out.