Last Time:

And then Tao was falling, but he had already passed out, so he didn’t know.

Chapter Eight

Chanyeol cringed away from Kyungsoo’s teeth when they approached his hip, but Kris just stripped away his shirt and sat down on the floor, letting the others come at him with their teeth. (He’d figured—they had all figured—that more nips would bring the change on faster, stronger. And like Luhan had said, there was really no point in just waiting anymore; it was going to happen, so why not let it happen—make it happen—on his own terms? He had no intentions of letting Suho down, no intentions of letting the rest of them—Minseok with his gentle trust, Tao with the stars in his eyes, Chen with his quiet hope, Luhan with his laughter and his easy touches, Yixing with all the patience he had given him so far—feel like he had not given them absolutely everything he had.)

Minseok’s teeth were the first to sink in, driving a sharp bolt through his right shoulder. Suho bit into his left shoulder, while Yixing and Chen and Kyungsoo and Kai bit at his ribs. Luhan took his hand in his teeth, gentle as the whisper of the spring wind, and then bit, hard. Baekhyun’s teeth sank into his upper arm.

Sehun had not completed the Change yet. Chanyeol was only bit seconds before Kris accepted his friends’ and members’ teeth. Tao was ill—

Tao was ill? As the wolf clicked into Kris’s brain, the feeling of right and home and us settling in (Suho was right; he was the Alpha, he had been the Alpha) something about his family felt wrong, felt like wiggling a loose tooth.

“Hyung?” Kai asked, cocking his head to the side.

Kris shook his head. “I, uh. The Change. I can feel it. I can feel you. All of you.”

“Like Luhan?” Yixing asked. There was a note of concern in his voice; who could blame him? Luhan was still out of it, snuggled tightly between Minseok and Yixing, both because he was twice as handsy as usual right now and because they were worried about what might happen if they let him loose.

“No,” Kris said. He shook his head again. He wasn’t sure if he was underlining the weirdness or if he was trying to settle something intangible inside his brain. “No, not like Luhan. Like I know where you all are. How you all are. Except for Sehun and Chanyeol. They’re like…like whispers. Ghosts.”

“You can feel us as wolves? As your pack?”

“I think?” Kris frowned. “I can feel all of you. Everyone. Except Sehun and Chanyeol.”

Chen’s eyes narrowed. “You feel Tao?”

“I feel Tao-ish. He feels wrong. Hurt.” Kris looked at them, a worried look on his face. “Where’s Tao? Tao isn’t okay. We need to find Tao.”

He struggled to his feet, not heeding the hands that reached for him, ignoring the fact that his torso was smeared with blood and saliva. He was still wearing pants, which gave him an edge over the others; most of them had gone full-wolf in order to bite him most effectively. Only Minseok and Luhan had kept a fair amount of their human forms; they trailed tight behind him as Kris streamed across the hall, searching for where the screaming Tao in the back of his mind had hidden away.

“Tao? Tao!” he called, fighting his way into the apartment.

He stopped in front of his own room, his and Tao’s, the one they had shared before this had all started. He tried the door handle, but it rattled in his grasp, locked. “Jongdae. Jongdae!”

“I’m here, hyung,” Chen said, even as he hitched his pants up higher on his hips. He found a paperclip in the pocket of his sweatpants, already unfolded. He slid to his knees in front of the door, letting Minseok edge Kris out of the way, so that he could work.

There were a few moments of tense silence, the only sounds the scrape and rattle of Chen’s impromptu lockpick in the doorknob. Because of the absolutely pin-drop quiet, they could all hear the click as the tumbler finally gave up the ghost and the lock came undone.

Kris jolted past Chen, shoving him roughly out of the way so that he could force the door open the rest of the way. “TaoTao! Huang Zitao! Where are you?”

A low whine came from under the bed.

Kris crouched down. “TaoTao?”

Golden eyes, buried deep in pale brown fur, met his for a short moment, mere seconds. Another whine, and the eyes vanished back into the darkness, the barest flick of a tail and the click of claws on wood suggesting that Tao had crept further under the bed.

---

“He’s not coming out,” Minseok muttered, not bothering to turn and look at Luhan as he updated him on what was going on. “Duizhang’s been down there on his knees for at least half an hour. Tao’s not moving.”

“Well, he is,” Luhan said. He offered the other member a glass of orange juice. “Just, not in the direction we want.”

Taking the juice, Minseok snorted. “Accurate statements, Luhannie. How are you feeling?”

“Better,” the other man said. “Being around less people is helping. And I think I’m getting more used to it.” He grinned. “I don’t feel like rolling around in a field full of bunnies, anyway.”

“Not even to eat them?”

Luhan thought for a moment. “Okay, I might actually eat one. Maybe. I am a bit hungry.”

“Well, I’ll start making lunch as soon as we get Tao-ya out from under the bed,” Minseok said. “So, if you want to hurry that along, go find Chen.” He shot another look into the dark room. “Somehow, I don’t think that Duizhang’s going to be as successful as he hopes.”

---

Kris was not as successful at talking Tao out from under the bed as he had been hoping to be.

After he had tried for an hour to convince Tao to come forward, to crawl to where they could see him, reach him, touch him, even Kris had admitted that M’s maknae wasn’t going to move. He had let Chen and Minseok come in, then. Minseok had joined Tao on the ground, wolf-shaped, while Chen and Kris had lifted the bed. Luhan had waited at the door, ready to grab for Tao should he make a bolt for it.

Minseok pressed his nose against Tao’s as he joined him under the bed, wanting to comfort the younger man. He also wanted more confirmation on the strange smell drifting from Tao’s body—a smell he didn’t think he had smelled before as a wolf, one that his brain was struggling to place, to identify. Tao did not smell like the other members, the other wolves he had smelled. He didn’t smell like Kris, either; he didn’t have that strange-familiar odor that was so like the other members but just that slightest bit different, a little bit strange.

Tao tried to flinch away, but he was buried against the wall and there was nowhere else for him to go. Instead, he held rigidly still, refusing to look at Minseok. Instead, he flicked his tail up to cover his face.

Minseok yipped at him, frustrated. Honestly, did Tao think that he was the only one who had become a wolf? Did he think that so much had changed? Just as quickly as Minseok’s anger had surged, it faded again, leaving a paralytic sadness in its wake. He sighed, then lunged forward and a broad stripe across Tao’s muzzle. He pinned the younger wolf in place, trying to soothe him through calm grooming.

Tao lurched against the contact when Chen and Kris lifted the bed, but the heavy weight of Minseok’s body kept him in place. Like this, in their fully-furred wolf forms, Minseok actually was larger than he was, weighed more. It helped him hold Tao down while their human friends moved the bed.

When the bed was out of the way, Kris sat on the floor. “TaoTao?” he said, opening his arms. “TaoTao? Can you come here?”

Minseok moved, letting Tao have space. They all waited to see how he would react.

After a long moment, Tao stood up. He shook himself carefully, slowly, and then began to slowly cross the room. He wobbled on his new legs, unfamiliar with them. He had spent so much of his time in this form lying down that walking was not only strange and unfamiliar, but uncomfortable, too, because his feet were still numb.

Kris caught him as he staggered towards him, welcoming him into the warm circle of his arms. “Oh, TaoTao,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around Tao’s thin body and burying his face in the thick ruff that surrounded his neck. “Duizhang was worried about you, dìdì.”

Tao whimpered, but gathered himself closer to Kris. He shivered in his leader’s arms, the pain of his transition slowly fading in the wake of the soft scritches of Kris’s long fingers behind his ears, the slow of his hand through his fur. Kris was blanketing him in warm affection, and it felt a lot better than the aching, burning transition.

“I figured it out,” Minseok said, accepting the clothes Chen offered him. “The reason Tao-ya smells different from the rest of you.”

Chen arched an eyebrow.

“Look,” Minseok said, nodding towards where their leader and the youngest member of M were still cuddling. “Notice something missing?”

Chen’s eyes widened.

Minseok nodded. “Yup. Tao’s a girl.”

---

Kris emailed Stiles, explaining the situation and asking him to call back as soon as he could. At the same time, Suho called the managers and the company and, in the midst of an extremely uncomfortable three-way call, started sorting out the various messes that still needed to be dealt with.

“You twelve are not the only not-entirely-human members of this company,” Lee Soo Man said, sounding frustrated. “I would have rather it not start like this, but… Well. We have seen things like this before, and we are more than ready to work with them. There’s a history. Standards.”

“Yes,” Suho said. “SHINee sunbaenims introduced themselves to us. And another person.” He held his tongue on who, exactly, that other person had been. While it wasn’t officially frowned upon for YG and SM artists to fraternize, let alone to fraternize, Suho wasn’t sure how much Jinki had told the company, how much the company had figured out, and whether or not there was a rule there.

“Another per—oh, well,” Lee Soo Man said. “Yes, there are others in the other companies. I presume Jinki-ya and Kibummie were thorough enough to explain why so many are in entertainment? Yes, good. So. We’ll have you meet with the other local Alphas—it’s important that you start with good relations with them—”

“I’m not the Alpha, hyung,” Suho said.

“You—wha—?”

“I’m not the Alpha,” Suho repeated. “Yifan is. He has been. This whole time.”

“Even when he wasn’t— Aish. Okay. Well, the same carries over. We’ll have him meet with the other local Alphas, so that you all can start with good relations with other weres in the area. I will have the other supernaturals in the company come introduce themselves to you, and we’ll talk to the other companies to see about meeting theirs, too. Better you know now, than have you be surprised at a recording or a show or something. Aish.”

Suho nodded. “That all sounds very good. Thank you for taking such good care of us.”

Lee Soo Man snorted. “Yeah, well. What can we do?”

---

Kris brought Suho to the meeting as his second, and was briefly grateful that he had managed to get both his aunt and Stiles (with the addition of Stiles’s Alpha, Derek) on the phone the day before, to discuss his “battle plan”. As such, he’d had a chance to run through both etiquette and expectations on both sides of the equation with people who knew what he’d be facing.

SM had offered to host the meeting, but the other pack had turned them down, suggesting instead that they meet at a neutral location. The café suggested was not one that Kris was familiar with, but he was quickly assured that it was located between both of their pack territories and, importantly, it had a private back room that they could use.

Kris and Suho arrived at the café first. They each ordered a hot drink, and Suho went ahead and bought a gigantic muffin for them to share. While they were normally incredibly careful about their strict diets—the company had purposely incorporated chances for them to go all out, increasing the chances of their individual nutrition plans being followed—everyone had noticed that they were eating more, needing more, since being bitten and having the change take hold. Their nutritional plans were now all under review. In the meantime, however, there was the absolutely ridiculously large muffin. And extra whipped cream in their lattes.

They had only just received their drinks when the door opened, and in swept two very pretty men, both dressed in plain clothes. They were very close in height, and would have been equally commanding, had it not been for the way the one with the sharp cheekbones strode ahead, the rounder-faced man close on his heels. Kris and Suho rose, bowing to the other men. Their bows were returned, though Suho noted that neither Kris nor the other Alpha bowed quite as low as strict etiquette would have suggested. He himself kept his eyes on the other second, which wasn’t strictly polite, either.

“Kim Sunggyu,” the Alpha introduced himself. “Leader of Infinite.”

“Wu Yifan,” Kris replied. “Please, just call me Kris.” He gestured to Suho. “This is my second, Kim Junmyeon.”

“Suho, please.”

“And I’m Sunggyu’s second. Jang Dongwoo. Pleasure to meet you.” Smiling brightly and revealing an awful lot of teeth, Dongwoo started the circle of handshakes.

As they reseated themselves, Dongwoo winked at Suho. “Solid choice on the muffin,” he said. “This coffee shop has the best baked goods.”

“You’d know,” Sunggyu said, gently flicking the younger man’s shoulder. “You certainly eat enough of them.”

“Counseling your pack,” Dongwoo returned. He looked across the table. “Yah, Suho-ssi. Don’t let your Alpha walk all over you. Feel free to tell him he’s being an idiot.”

Suho laughed, shaking his head. “He’s got a better idea of what he’s doing.”

“No one ever knows what they’re doing,” Sunggyu said, shaking his head. “And if an Alpha tells you differently, they’re posturing.” He turned to Kris. “I understand this is something of a shock to you—your entire group in how long? Less than a month?”

“Three weeks, from the first bite to the last,” Kris said, frowning slightly. “It was…well. A bit of a transition. At least they’re all people I know. We know.”

“True,” Sunggyu agreed. “When Myungsoo was finally turned, I spent the first month in a total panic that he would bite someone, and we’d have to find a way of building someone into the pack.”

“Were you guys a group before you were a pack?” Suho asked.

Dongwoo shook his head. “Nah, we were all ‘wolfed before we joined Woolim. Well, all but Myungsoo-yah. But even he was part of a pack. He just happened to be human-born.”

“Sungyeollie wasn’t, either,” Sunggyu said. “That’s really why they added him at the last minute. He got bit, I took him in until a proper pack could be found…” He shrugged. “But he fit too well, and that was that.”

Kris nodded, fully understanding that feel. He had known it, somewhat, as a member of a pack back in Canada; when someone was a part of the family, whether you had the bond of the wolf or not, you knew it, felt it in some deep, dark recess of your mind. Moving back to China afterwards—and then on to Korea, where he hadn’t even known one person—had been an abrupt and unpleasant change. Still, now that he had the full packbond, the bond that all wolves, born or bitten, had with each other, and the Alpha bond on top of that… Kris didn’t want to imagine what it would have been like, being pulled away from his pack now.

“Are humans in wolf-packs common around here, then?” Suho was asking. “Only, I know Yifan was saying…”

Sunggyu turned to look at Dongwoo, explaining even as he did so. “I don’t know so much, actually; I was bitten in middle school. Dongwoo grew up in a pack, though.”

Dongwoo see-sawed a hand in midair. “I mean, there were definitely humans in my family pack, yes. When you’re bitten, there’s only like a five percent chance that your children will be born as wolves, and even born wolves sometimes have plain human children. For a given value of plain, anyway.” He nodded to Kris. “You probably have a better grasp of that, actually, than I do, what with having been human and all.”

Kris nodded. “I wasn’t completely—” he searched for a word, grimacing, “flat? Blunt? I guess. I always was a little more connected to the wolfpack than, say, someone who had been bitten’s spouse.”

“Exactly,” Dongwoo said. “Like, humans end up in packs because they were born into them, or because someone they’re closely connected with ends up in one. We don’t break family bonds, not if we can help it. Sometimes humans end up in packs because they’re not, well, normal humans. In some cases, that’s because of wolf or other blood a little farther down the line. In some cases, well.” He shrugged. “Mutations happen.”

“My aunt,” Kris explained to Suho, “is a witch. It comes from my grandfather’s side of the family. He was human. My grandmother was a wolf. All of their children are human. Mostly.”

“So,” Sunggyu said, drawing their attention. “The real reason we’re here today is because you need a crash course in being a pack in the industry. Unfortunately, Yifan-ssi, it’s not going to be nearly as easy or as natural as the pack you grew up in. It’s a rough gig, but totally worth it. And SM Entertainment has a long history of working with supernaturals, actually.”

“I was a little startled by that,” Kris said. “It feels…counterintuitive.”

“Which is likely why it works,” Sunggyu said. “After all, think of how many supernaturals rely on human energy. What better way to get it safely than through performing and being in the public eye so much? Wolves, unfortunately, don’t benefit quite so handily, though I will say that the expected skinship and workbonds of being in a group together really work perfectly for being a pack. I mean, honestly. How else could we keep seven twenty-something men together and not raise eyebrows?”

“At least, not raise eyebrows indecently,” Suho muttered under his breath.

“I know I’ve smelled at least one incubus around your headquarters,” Dongwoo said, smirking. “Trust me. He? Is enjoying every minute of his job.”

Sunggyu placed a hand on Dongwoo’s knee. “So, like I was saying, not entirely as natural as you could hope, Kris-ssi, but there are some upsides to it, too. You know packs. What part of this shall we start with?”

---

“That was interesting,” Suho said, following Kris out into the waiting van. “Some of that I don’t think I ever would have thought of.”

Kris grunted his agreement, still thinking through what he and Suho had learnt from the other Alpha and his gregarious Second. While it was nice to have an explanation of how cities handled their pack boundaries—and god, but he was grateful he wasn’t going to have to do the same kind of protective line drawing the his Alpha back in Canada had had to do; that had been a miserable process, and no mistake—he was less than excited about the prospect of all the political maneuvering that was headed his way.

Sunggyu had warned him that, as the newest pack in the area, their little group was likely to be handed a lot of , at least for the first couple of months. While they were going to be given a lot of protection through their relationship with SM, and simply the fact that, as idols, there was absolutely zero chance of them being able to work in the shadows, that wasn’t going to stop anyone else from trying to shove it off on them. He was going to have to keep a firm backbone but also try and keep his temper while dealing with people that really just enjoyed heaping it on the new kid.

The other two men had also brought his attention to a few things that he hadn’t completely thought through, in terms of considerations that were now going to be necessary. For one, someone either in the pack or very closely related was going to have to get very, very good at setting up access for EXO in other areas; while Seoul tended to fall under the “we’re civilized people living in close quarters; we will deal with this like adults” provision of pack life, there was no guarantee that everywhere they went for promotions and the like would be as laidback about having 12 werewolves moving in and out of their territories and riling up the locals.

Dongwoo had offered Suho his contact list, and promised that he would get their manager in contact with him, so that they could work it out with their manager. It was easier, that way, he had explained, because the companies already handled so much of what they did and when they did it and where. It was basically just another person to call. Some places would expect Kris or Suho to call, rather than delegating it to an out-of-pack human, but those were few, far-between, and already identified on Dongwoo’s list.

Suho had really hit it off with the other Second, for which Kris was grateful. When he and the rest of M left for China—and that was going to happen, there were no ifs, ands, or buts about it—Suho was going to have to become the Alpha, of sorts, here in Seoul. Because while Kris could remain the overall Alpha, and likely would, there was just no way for a pack to function properly with no command structure. Which was why Kris had selected Suho as his Second, at least for now. While he honestly thought he might be better served with Minseok, who had mothering the group down to a fine and well-run art, treating Suho as his Second now would give him the authority he would need to be the Alpha pro tem while Kris was in another country.

And besides, Kris would need a Second in China, too. Minseok would easily take on that role at that time, and Suho would be able to select his own Second.  It might mean a dominance struggle or two when the groups folded back together again, but what pack didn’t have those, at least on occasion? Especially a pack formed of young people. Dominance struggles were just the way younger packs worked, as everyone grew up and into their fur, so to speak.

“They had some good advice, I think,” Suho said, interrupting Kris’s whirling thoughts. “I plan on getting some of the plans and structures in place that Dongwoo-ya told me about in place pretty much as soon as I can. Did you have a good conversation with Sunggyu-ssi?”

“I did,” Kris said. “He had some thoughts about why Taozi’s wolf is female.”

And oh, but that had been a hell of a conversation. Nearly as interesting as it had been with Stiles and Derek, the night before.

---

“So his as the wolf is completely different from his as a human? And, like, it doesn’t correspond with his gender, either?”

Kris had sighed. “I know that we’re both speaking the same language right now, Stiles, but I have absolutely no clue what you just said.”

“Right. Um, crash course in gender politics. is what’s going on between someone’s legs, you know, in the metaphorical sense of going on, like, a or a vulva or some combination thereof, technically, I guess. Not like literally what’s going on between someone’s legs, like doing to the do, although, I guess, if you want to get real technical, that’s , too, just more like the verb than the noun even though it’s a noun, too—”

“Stiles!” someone on Stiles’s end of the line had snapped.

“Keep your fur on, sourwolf—yeah, yeah, Alpha sourwolf to me, whatever. Maybe not the best time for the gender politics course, but I’ll just finish it off with the idea that gender’s what’s going on between your ears, like if you identify as male or female. Anyway.”

“I’ve seen him ,” Kris had cut in, trying to stop another Stiles-explanation before it could start. “Zitao is male.”

“Ah, but is he masculine?”

“He has a , he has , he calls himself our little brother, and uses masculine pronouns in every language he speaks,” Kris had said. “Also, he panicked so much at finding the new architecture in his wolf form that a nurse had to sedate him. Do you know how much benzodiazepine it takes to sedate a werewolf?”

“A hell of a lot,” Stiles had said. “I hear you. That must have been frightening. Unfortunately, for me? This is a total aberration from the norm. As in, I have spent eight years around werewolves, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this happening. Which isn’t to say that it hasn’t? I mostly deal with American weres, and they’re overwhelming grey wolves, and, as you’ve already seen, there are some major differences between how they work and how your wolves are working. Still, if you were here, and if you guys were the kind of wolf I was familiar with? Well, if the wolf in question was little gender floppy, I’d probably start looking around for some fairies doing the whole wish fulfillment, every time a happy human sings another fairy gets its’ ing sparkly wings bull or maybe a chaos being getting off on the whole mess, but…”

“A chaos being?” Kris had asked, a chill slowly slipping down his spine.

“Yeah, beings that feed and thrive on chaos and—”

Kris had cut him off. “Like a trickster? Or a nine-tailed fox?”

“Either one would be a prime candidate,” Stiles had answered.

Kris had growled, low and deep in his throat. “I have some sunbaenim to murder. Thank you for your help. Please thank your Alpha.” And then he had hung up the phone.

---

Suho frowned, looking to Kris as they both stepped out of the car in front of the SM headquarter building. “Did Sunggyu-ssi think that Stiles might be right?”

Kris shook his head. “He said it might be an option, and he certainly wasn’t going to put being an past any chaos being—there has to be a story there, but he didn’t elaborate—but apparently it’s more common with Asian wolves.”

“Why?”

“Something about pack structures,” Kris said. “Which, I mean, I guess I can understand? My pack back home was all grey and arctic wolves, so… They’re different. Different species, different histories, different packs. But Asian wolves have always incorporated humans in their packs. So I guess it makes more sense that whatever keeps the transformation running—”

“Magic?” Suho said, a twist in his lips suggesting that he was trying not to laugh.

A pained look crossed Kris’s face. “Magic,” he said, as if the word was distasteful. “Whatever. It looks for a way to make the pack a, well, family.”

Suho was no fool; he’d googled wolf behaviour pretty much as soon as he could keep human fingertips long enough not to risk killing his laptop. He hadn’t realised how close to nature the were packs held, however.  Unfortunately, that didn’t answer all of his questions. Or even most of them.

“But why change Tao-ya? I mean, why not Minseokkie? He’s like the mom to you lot, anyway,” Suho  said, curious to see how Kris would respond. He had his own sneaking suspicions about why magic would make Tao a female in an effort to preserve a “family structure” within the pack, but that was one of those things he wanted to hear Kris say. After all, there was money riding on this. While Suho was not usually one to encourage behind-the-back betting within the group, everyone had had an opinion about how long it would take either Kris or Tao to speak up once they were sharing a room (or, you know, act--both men were prone to letting their actions speak). Even the fact that none of them had thought it would take longer than six months had not dissuaded them from watching.

Kris, too busy trying to avoid Suho’s eyes, tripped over something—possibly nothing—on the sidewalk. He lurched forward and fumbled to catch himself, getting a handful of rough brick for his trouble. It scraped up his hand, and he tucked his reddened palm again his chest, still not looking towards the other leader, his Second. But he knew that ignoring him entirely was not an option. Already, Suho was smirking at him, waiting.

“It has to do with the Alpha,” Kris admitted. His cheeks had gone from a light pink to a dark, painful-looking red. He refused to meet Suho’s eyes, instead focusing closely on the ground in front of him. For all of that, he still managed to catch a toe in a crack on the sidewalk. “In normal wolf packs—non weres—only the Alpha male and female mate, so I guess…that’s where it comes from?” He kind of hoped that the ground would open up and swallow him, or that the sky might him right from the surface of the planet. This was not one of those things he had ever wanted to have to confess to Suho. Or, really, anyone.

“But why then Tao?  Or…” A look of comprehension dawned across Suho’s face. “Ah. I understand.”

And he did. He’d spent enough time with Kris to know when the other leader was so embarrassed it hurt, and he was pretty sure that he and Minseok were in a unique position to know just how awkward Kris got when he was uncomfortable. Suho bit his lip to keep from laughing; he knew that from where Kris was standing, the situation was likely unbearable, but Suho had a much more prosaic outlook on the whole thing. His Alpha was not the first leader to fall for another member, nor the first emotionally-constipated idiot Suho had been so privileged as to suss out.

Kris glared at him. “Not. A. Word.”

Suho snorted. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Which isn’t to say Luhan or Minseok won’t say anything. Or Jongdae, for that matter.”

“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.