Chapter Text
“Shoot it! It’s getting away!”
At their leader’s order, three shooters form a line in front of the group of hunters. They quickly load their weapons and aim. With his pulse thundering in his ears, Hoseok shoots and in his heart, he knows he hit the target.
The gray wolf lets out a pitiful yelp and stumbles, rolling down the hill and out of sight.
“Find him,” Lee Hyeok, the lead hunter, grunts. “Bring me the body. And if it’s still alive, take it back to camp. You.”
Hoseok gulps when he’s pointed at by their leader’s finger.
“Good shot, kid.”
Hoseok bows awkwardly and trots after the rest of the group, already spreading through the forest to find the wounded wolf.
“We’ll cover more ground if we split,” Namjoon says, silver knife in hand. He’s the second in command and one of their best hunters. “Whoever finds the wolf gets the last of the deer for dinner.”
The group takes off with a few excited whispers. It’s sad that the offer of food is so attractive to them, but it’s been a rough couple of weeks. They’ve been hunting the pack of wolf-shifters in this area tirelessly, and this sighting is the first track they’ve had so far. They were beginning to believe that the tip that got them here was fake, that they would have to leave empty handed. But fortune is on their side, it seems.
They desperately need a win. The Council pays them one monthly allowance per wolf, and they’ve been living with half of the resources for a while. But that's nothing new.
Hoseok takes a deep breath of crisp air. The forest is somber and cold. There’s still a bit of daylight left, but under the canopy of old trees, night is already settling around the intruders .
Whenever they enter the forest, Namjoon always says that they’re intruding in a realm that’s not theirs, that they’re here to conquer. Hoseok smiles every time, but in all honesty, he has never agreed with his friend.
He doesn’t feel foreign in the realm of nature. He feels home.
Taking another deep breath, Hoseok walks deeper into the undisturbed grounds. The tracks of the wolf’s slide down the hill end abruptly where the terrain flattens. The guild spread from that point onwards. The wolf is wounded, so it can’t have gone too far.
Something like dread courses through Hoseok’s veins as he follows a hunch . At least that’s what he calls them when his fellow hunters ask him how he can always find trackless targets. It’s like a path drawn in the air that he can smell or maybe feel, but it’s neither of those. It’s like a sixth sense he can’t explain.
The path he's following now is tinted with blood, pain and fear. The wounded wolf is at the end of it.
Hoseok’s hands shake, he takes every step with caution. The target is pretty much still alive, he knows it, and wolves usually fight until their last breath, so he needs to be ready. Hoseok is a great shot and an even better tracker, but close combat has always been his weakness.
It’s just that he doesn’t deal well with aggression. Lee Hyeok says that he lacks spine, and Hoseok would never talk back to their leader, but… That's not it. If Lee Hyeok knew all he's been through, he wouldn't say that.
No one knows, but people are quick to judge. Being aggressive is not the only way to be strong. But there are certain situations - and Hoseok tends to find himself in those kinds of situations quite often - in which the fire of aggression is what keeps you alive. He tries to channel some of that now. He’s not planning to die anytime soon, definitely not today.
Holding his rifle firmly and ready, Hoseok rounds a big hollow trunk. The path leads there, but even without that sign, a harsh breathing can be easily heard in the silence of the forest.
Hoseok breathes in a big gulp of air through his mouth. The stench in the air is overwhelming. Blood, pain and fear, but up close there’s also something bitter that makes his nose itch.
When he finally rounds the trunk, the sight of the wolf freezes him on the spot.
It is turned: in place of the wolf now there’s a pale naked man trying to stop the blood flowing out from a bullet wound on his shoulder with trembling fingers. His face is twisted in pain, dark gray hair wet over his forehead from sweat. The veins around the wound are visible on his pale skin and of a dark purple color.
The gunpowder is mixed with grounded roots of wolfsbane, a terribly poisonous substance for people, but even worse for shifters.
They heal at an incredible speed. For some reason, any wound inflicted on a wolf-shifter that is not instantly fatal cures on its own in minutes no matter how severe. That makes the hunters’ job way harder, so they need to cheat. Despite their incredible healing power, they are vulnerable to certain elements. Silver and wolfsbane are used in most of the weapons used to combat wolf-shifters. The metal ensures maximum damage, and the poison stops the healing process and can even kill a wolf-shifter if they’re not treated in time.
That’s probably what will happen to the wolf in front of him. A phantom pain flashes under Hoseok’s skin just imagining it.
The wolf growls through gritted teeth and scrambles to his knees.
“What are you waiting for? Wanna see me bleed to death, you bastard!”
Hoseok winces at the wolf’s spiteful voice. As usual, it’s a struggle to hold his head high against aggression, but he plants his feet on the ground firmly and raises his rifle. His finger is on the trigger, and at this distance he could not fail, but his hands are shaky and his chest tight.
“Come on,” he mutters to himself.
It’s not just the affront. Something about the wolf bleeding at his feet is making him anxious. He wants to look away, but he’s seized by the rage in the wolf’s dark eyes.
“Come on!”
The wolf swipes at him, trying to catch him, but he only manages to lose balance and fall. Hoseok gasps as the wolf rolls onto his back before his wounded shoulder hits the ground, and a shudder of second-hand pain runs down his spine
“Finish your fucking job, hunter,” the wolf mutters, chest heaving, and that’s when Hoseok sees it.
The wolf is not covering his wounded shoulder anymore, revealing an awfully familiar symbol on his chest: a crescent moon with flowers covering the bottom end.
“By the Moon, don’t let them take me alive…”
The wolf closes his eyes, and Hoseok is frozen on the spot.
“Hoseok-ah?”
Namjoon’s voice makes him and the wolf startle. His fellow hunter is still far but getting closer.
"Kill me," the wolf growls, opening his eyes and trying to sit up. “That’s what you came here for, come on.”
Hoseok is torn by hesitation, his heart beating faster than ever, and an ominous feeling crawling under his skin.
The decision is made before Hoseok realizes.
Locking the rifle and hanging it on his shoulder, Hoseok puts his hands under the wolf’s armpits and drags him into the hollow trunk again. The wolf grunts and struggles, tries to free himself from Hoseok’s hold, but he’s so weak that Hoseok can ignore his squirming easily.
“Hoseok-ah, are you there?” he can already hear the forest ground crunching under Namjoon’s boots.
“Coming,” Hoseok says and quickly takes off the glove that got stained by the wolf’s blood.
With a last look at the frowning wolf, Hoseok goes to find Namjoon before he can reach the trunk.
“Hey!” Namjoon smiles when he sees him, and Hoseok tries to mask his fear. “Did you find anything?”
He’s a terrible liar and he’s scared as hell, but he already chose.
Hoseok shakes his head. “No, I lost the track—”
Just as he utters the weak lie, a haunting howl pierces the quiet air of the forest. It freezes Hoseok’s soul. The howl is a cry of pain, but not the physical kind. No, the kind that tears the heart into two. It’s also far away in the opposite direction. Probably a decoy.
“Let’s go,” Namjoon says, looking at the general direction of the howl. “We might get two wolves tonight.”
As they start running to join the rest of the guild, Hoseok doubts they’d find even one wolf tonight, and he feels guilty for the relief that that thought brings him.
“It was half dead already! How could you let it escape?!”
The seven hunters keep their heads low as their leader reprimands them. They all know it’s better to take it quietly. From the corner of his eye, Hoseok can see Namjoon nodding, clenching his jaw with frustration.
“It was dark, sunbae-nim. They know this forest like the palm of—”
“Those things …” Lee Hyeok only has to raise his voice a little for Namjoon to shut his mouth. “Those things have their days counted. We’ll go out there again tomorrow at dawn. Kyun has the first watch. Now get the hell out of my sight.”
They all bow at their leader and walk the distance from Lee Hyeok’s tent to the heart of their camp with their tails between their legs, oh the irony. The silence of scolded children hangs in the air as they spread through the camp. Some begin to rummage through their bags, looking for some spare food, others go straight to their tents, like Yunha, the oldest of the group. She sends them all a somber look and goes to bed.
“Fuck!”
Taehwan kicks a pile of firewood, and Hoseok gets startled. He has the irrational fear that someone will point at him any moment now and discover his lie.
“Can you not…” Namjoon sighs at Taehwan, who keeps kicking things and cursing.
The three of them are the same age and ever since they were recruited by the Council and put on this team together, they’ve had a healthy dose of competition between them. While Namjoon has been in the lead in most aspects the whole time, Taehwan is the one who always wants a rematch. Hoseok simply plays along with their schemes. He can’t beat them in anything, except maybe tracking, to Taehwan’s absolute scorn.
“Hoseok, you shot the damn beast!” Taehwan points at him, and Hoseok does his best to give no reaction. “We all saw it! How could it have escaped?”
“They probably have hideouts all over the forest.” Namjoon sits on the barren tree trunk they’re using as a bench. “And we played right into their distraction plan.”
He doesn’t call names, but Haeri, their youngest, stomps her feet on the ground and hides her face behind her hands. She was the most eager to follow the new wolf, convinced that she knew where it was.
“I thought it was closer,” she defends herself. “Besides, I thought Hoseok-oppa had found the other one already.”
“His tracking magic only works to pull rabbits out of their holes,” Taehwan snarls, his narrowed eyes looking at Hoseok with spite.
“I, um… I’ll go get some water,” Hoseok mutters and taking a couple of empty canteens, he slips away from the camp and any suspicious glare that might be thrown his way.
Maybe he’s being paranoid, but the conversation was making him nervous, and he’s prone to say more than he should when he’s nervous.
Hoseok is used to being regarded with reproach anyway. His kill rate is considerably low compared to the rest of the members of the guild. In fact, he can count with the fingers of one hand the times he has shot a wolf-shifter to death. He remembers every single one of those shots, the wild rage in their eyes, the half-morphed fangs, bared and aiming at his neck. If he had not taken those shots, his life would have been taken instead. He had, however, assisted in the death of plenty of wolf-shifters, tracking them down and leading other hunters in the right direction.
So, what happened today? He had a clear shot and did not take it. That’s not strange, he has never killed in cold blood. But Namjoon arrived just in time. If Hoseok didn’t have the guts to kill the wolf himself, he could have called his friend to do it. He didn’t do anything, or well, he did something even worse and if someone were to find out…
Only when he’s by the edge of the stream does Hoseok let out the anxious breath pressing against his chest from within. He crouches on the muddy ground and lets the soft murmur of the running water calm down his mind.
What have I done?
Things would be very different if he had just shot the wolf in the head. Hoseok shakes his head. Killing has never come easy for him. The wolf was already half-dead, bleeding out and poisoned by his shot. Such a sight chilled his soul. And anyways, the order had been to bring the wolf alive. Bring him to the camp, to Lee Hyeok, who would have tortured him to pull the location of the rest of the pack out of bloody lips. Hoseok doesn’t have the stomach for that either. Lee Hyeok is brutal and merciless on a good day. This hunt has been wearing them all thin, so he fears to imagine what that wolf would have had to go through in the hands of their leader.
It would have been uselessly horrendous. Wolves never betray their pack.
By the Moon, don’t let them take me alive.
Those softly spoken words will haunt him for a long time. They echoed way too loudly in a part of his soul he has fought to keep secret since he realized what was at stake.
Hoseok turns his eyes to the sky. The moon is hidden behind thick clouds, and the scent of petrichor is looming over the forest. Any other time and Hoseok would have loved this night, but now the shadow always lurking beneath the surface of his mind has grown too large.
He’s not a stranger to the dreadful feeling of keeping a secret. He’s lived his entire life holding back a terrible suspicion.
Hoseok pulls the necklace hiding under his shirt and presses the pendant against his lips. It’s his only possession. The nuns at the orphanage where he grew up told him that they found him on their doorstep with that necklace tied around his little ankle and nothing more. He liked to imagine it was an amulet from his mother, that maybe she had died and only left him the beautifully carved piece of bogwood.
A crescent moon with cherry blossoms at the bottom. The same design the wolf had tattooed on his chest.
Dawn receives the group of hunters with a light rain that turns into a full-blown storm by noon. As if to remind them, a spark of lightning pierces the sky right before a loud thunder explodes above their heads.
“Hyung, I really think we should head back.” Kyun seems a thunder away from tugging Namjoon’s sleeve.
“No way, we’ve come too far already.”
Namjoon misses Kyun’s worried frown, and Hoseok feels sorry for the younger hunter. Namjoon isn’t easily dissuaded, not even by a storm.
They split up into three teams and picked it up where they had left it off the previous evening. Lee Hyeok went with Yunha to seek the trail of the second wolf, Namjoon decided to start from where Hoseok said he’d lost the wounded wolf’s track, and Taehwan wanted to go back to the area where they first saw the wolf.
There was no question that Hoseok had to go with Namjoon. They always pair up anyway. And Kyun, who’d rather shoot himself in the leg than taking orders from Taehwan, joined them, so Haeri and Hanse, the least experienced hunters of their guild, had to go with Taehwan.
Hoseok led his team to the hollow trunk easily. The rain wasn’t that bad yet, and Hoseok could still catch a whiff of the metallic scent of blood in the area. Despite his apprehension, there was no dead body waiting for them in the hollow trunk. Hoseok was so relieved, but he’s not sure if it’s because the wolf might have survived or because his lie would remain intact.
In any case, there was a visible trail of blood near the hollow trunk, so they continued from there. A bit deeper into the forest, they found a footprint that somehow survived the rain, and that sealed it as the right path to follow. It seemed as if the wounded wolf had been rescued, and the other shifters didn’t take the precaution of covering their tracks, probably knowing a storm was coming.
Big mistake.
They were still finding small traces of blood and signs of someone forcibly making their way through the forest's low vegetation when the first thunder burst above their heads.
It’s been a few hours now and Namjoon has no intention of turning back, not when there is a solid chance of success. Hoseok is almost sure that they’re going to find something at the end of the trail. The rain covered everything with its watery scent, but even now that they’re stomping their boots in the mud, Hoseok can distinguish two other scents along with the blood of the first wolf, suspended in the air a few inches above the ground.
It’s always the same with wolf-shifters’ scents. Hoseok can distinguish them so clearly, and they call him. Even now, he has the urge of dropping on his hands and knees and lowering his face closer to the ground to properly take in the scents. He wouldn’t know how to explain that to the others, though.
Another lightning flashes in the sky and the rain starts pouring with vengeance. Currently, they’re so far from camp that they could not make it back with daylight. Not that there is much with the thick storm clouds. They have no means to communicate with the others, and Kyun is visibly worried. Hoseok is certain that he can find the way back, but the storm is growing in violence, and they started going uphill a while ago, so the chances of falling and getting injured are high.
“You know what, Joon-ah?” Hoseok turns around and shields his eyes from the rain with his hands to look at his guild mates. “I think Kyunie might be right.”
“You wanna go back?”
“No, but I lost the track a while back. We should find a place to wait for the storm to tame a little.”
Namjoon seems like he wants to argue, and Hoseok can’t say he minds. He wants to continue, but Kyun’s distress is like a tangible spine on his side.
“Alright,” Namjoon grunts reluctantly.
It doesn’t take them too long to find a crack in the growing mountain ahead of them. The cave is only big enough to house the three of them, and deep enough to guard them from the wind and the rain.
“This should do.”
“How bad of an idea would be lighting a fire?” Kyun asks as they take off their leather capes.
“Terrible,” Namjoon says. “But we’ll fucking freeze if we don’t.”
Hoseok only notices how cold it is when he sees Namjoon and Kyun shivering without their capes. He’s always been good at enduring cold weather.
“I’ll go get some wood,” Hoseok says, putting on his cape again.
He doesn’t wander far and keeps a watchful eye on his surroundings. Now he feels like an intruder.
Hoseok didn’t lie when he said that he had lost the track. Any visible trail was long gone and even the scents Hoseok had picked up got harder to distinguish the higher they climbed. But not because they had been blurred by the storm. No, there were so many new scents hanging all over the area that it was impossible to pick two out of them.
They must be close to the pack’s hideout, and maybe the safest option was indeed turning back, but. Namjoon is right. They’ve come so far already.
Hoseok wants to get to the end of it, however scary it might be. He wants to know if his eyes tricked him or if he really found a clue about his origins.
He returns to the cave with an armful of wet sticks and finds Namjoon and Kyun rubbing their feet to keep them warm. Their boots can handle some rain and mud, but not to this degree. Hoseok also feels like walking on wet towels.
“Are you sure about this?” Hoseok asks, arranging the sticks in a pile and placing rocks around it. “We’ll give away our position. Sunbae-nim wouldn’t approve.”
“Lee Hyeok fucking sunbae-nim is probably warm and cozy in his tent,” Namjoon huffs. “He’s also nowhere close to finding the pack.”
“And we are?” Kyun mutters, arching an eyebrow. He’s rummaging in his satchel for his lighter.
“We’re in their territory or close to it at least,” Hoseok says, hoping they don’t ask him how he knows that.
“Anyways,” Namjoon clears his throat, pulling out the book he’s currently obsessing over. “I’ll sacrifice for the team.”
Namjoon proceeds to rip a few pages from the book, so Kyun can start the fire. Hoseok was mindful of placing it near the entrance of the cave or they would have choked with the excess of white smoke that comes from the wet wood.
“The storm will cover it.” Namjoon doesn’t sound entirely sure. “Who would be watching in this weather anyway.”
They put their socks and boots close to the fire and sit shoulder to shoulder to maximize the warmth. But as the cold subsides, their stomachs begin to growl. Fortunately, they were mindful enough to pack some bread and dried meat. They eat a bit and drink some water from their canteens. Namjoon even shares a sip of his secret flask.
“No one, especially not Tae Hwan, can know about this,” Namjoon says, narrowing his eyes at Kyun as he drinks a bit of Namjoon’s soju stash.
Kyun sighs after returning the flask, turning longing eyes at the ceiling of the cave. “I miss rice so much.”
Namjoon and Hoseok hum in agreement.
For every wolf-shifter killed or apprehended, the Council gives them a fixed amount of food, ammunition and money. A mal of rice, 10 pounds of gunpowder and 50 silver coins for an alpha. Betas are worth half that rate and omegas are paid with gold coins. Omegas are the rarest, hence they’re the most valuable. Alphas and betas would lay their life down without a fight to save an omega.
Hoseok has only seen it once. They usually go after packs of rogues or lone wolves making trouble. Those usually are unmated alphas and betas, but they once encountered a small pack formed in the traditional way: a lead alpha-omega couple and their betas.
They rarely go after that kind of pack, because they usually stay away from humans, but that time a male alpha and two young betas had been stealing cattle from a village of farmers. Tired of this situation, the people of the village had tried to end the matter themselves, prompting a bloody response from the alpha. Their guild was sent there to hunt the pack down once and for all, and they did, but it almost cost them a few members. When they got close to the den, the wolves had gone feral. They fought tooth and nail, but once the alpha and one of the betas were gone, the surviving beta surrendered, turned and begged them to take him and end it there. Lee Hyeok was not having it, so he killed the beta and they could enter the den the wolves died to protect.
The reason was waiting at the deepest point of the cave: a pregnant omega. They took her to the Council offices alive, because even Lee Hyeok wasn’t cruel enough to kill a pregnant female.
The Council doesn’t encourage mindless killing either. The proper procedure is to kill only the wolves that have been proved guilty of attacking humans in any way. Hunters are also allowed to open fire if a wolf resists detention, and any self-defense action resulting in the death of a shifter is not penalized by law. Non-violent wolves are taken to the Council offices. There is one in every major city, and they have facilities to keep wolf-shifters contained.
Pregnant omegas don’t receive special treatment. They are imprisoned until they deliver the baby, and Hoseok is not sure what happens to them later, but he’s heard that most wolf-shifters don’t live for too long in a cage. As for the babies—
There is movement outside the cave.
Hoseok grabs a few rocks at hand and puts out the fire.
“What the hell?”
“Shh…” Hoseok fans the smoke with his arms. “Put on your boots, quickly.”
“I haven’t heard anything,” Kyun whispers, fumbling with his socks.
“Me neither, it’s just…” Hoseok hesitates as he fastens the straps of his boots as quickly as he can. He felt something moving nearby. It could be anything, but his gut is telling him that it’s exactly what they fear.
“Get your weapons ready,” Namjoon mutters, eyes fixed on the darkness outside the cave.
Hoseok reaches for his rifle, but it’s too late.
A big form jumps out of the darkness and into the cave. Two heavy paws push his body to the ground and take away his breath. A low growl reverberates in the cave, and Hoseok can feel the warmth of the wolf’s breath on his neck. On instinct, Hoseok turns his face aside, baring his neck in submission, which seems to placate the beast a little.
“Get off him, you fucking mutt—!”
“Uh-uh, none of that. Drop your weapons.”
At the sound of metal hitting the ground, the wolf steps back, and only then Hoseok sees three other shifters in human form standing at the entrance of the cave. The three of them are pointing bows ready to fire at them.
“Hands where I can see them.”
The shifter still in wolf form is sniffing Hoseok, making him shiver when his wet nose touches his neck. Although his features are not human, the black as night wolf seems to be frowning. He walks past him towards Namjoon and Kyun to sniff them as well.
“Quit that already, Jeongguk-ah.” The center archer is actually frowning. “They just stink of wet human. Now get out of the way.”
The wolf lets out a confused whimper and lowers his big head against Hoseok’s neck to sniff him again.
Despite the threatening archers in front of them, Hoseok is oddly calm. The black wolf is the owner of one of the scents he followed all the way here, and maybe Hoseok is just delusional, but after smelling it the whole day, it feels like he knows this wolf.
After a final huff, the wolf moves away from his neck and with an awful crack of bones, morphs into a man.
Hoseok bites his lip to hold back a gasp. He’d never seen the process so closely before and even now, he’s not sure of what he saw. There isn’t much light nor words in his brain to describe it.
What is certain, though, is that a young man is crouching where the wolf used to be. Despite his apparent youth – he can’t be much older than twenty – he’s tall and strong, with shaggy black hair and honey skin. He stands up, straightening a drenched piece of cloth tied over one of his shoulders to cover his nakedness.
“I think this is the one Yoongi-hyung was talking about,” the boy says, pointing at Hoseok.
The archer in the middle frowns more deeply. The young shifter turns around and fixes Hoseok with a curious look.
“Are you sure?”
The boy hums, his dark eyes piercing through Hoseok’s soul, as if he could see all his secrets bare.
The archer on the right, an angry looking female, clears her throat to call the other’s attention. “I’d love to discuss this over a warm cup of tea, but we’re not on an idle stroll through the forest, guys.”
The archer in the middle rolls his eyes and puts his bow down with the clear intention of snapping something back, but the female continues, “Are we killing them or not?”
“What? You got somewhere to be?”
“I do, actually. Byulyi was baking buns,” she mumbles through pouted lips and relaxes her stance to look at the male in the middle with pleading eyes.
“Oh, I love those,” the other archer comments, and the middle one turns to him with a betrayed expression.
It’s so strange. Hoseok has always seen wolf-shifters as little more than beasts. Most of the creatures they’ve encountered have been deranged and violent, like blind rabid dogs. The wolf-shifters in front of them now regard each other like members of a family.
The idea of being in a small cave with four hostile wolf-shifters would have terrified him just yesterday, but now Hoseok can’t say he’s all that scared. Even though the wolves have weapons and talk about killing them, they don’t seem capable of cold blood murder.
Hoseok is not scared of the shifters, but a resolute intake of air and a swish of clothes is all it takes for his heart to start racing.
The “no” dies in his throat. Namjoon surely saw a chance on the shifter’s momentary distraction. He makes a move to grab one of Kyun’s pistols, but the wolves are quicker. In the blink of an eye, the boy that had just turned, shifts into a wolf again and tackles Namjoon to the ground.
“No!” Hoseok makes to grab the wolf, but a grip on his hair pulls him back.
Namjoon fights with all his might, but he’s no match for the wolf. His throat is a bite away from being ripped apart by sharp fangs in a matter of seconds.
Hoseok’s blood runs cold. He can’t lose Namjoon. Not Namjoon. If Namjoon dies, it’ll be all his fault, and he could not live after leading his only friend to his death.
“Let him go!”
The growl in his voice echoes like thunder inside the little cave. For a heartbeat everyone freezes, and even Hoseok is shocked by the strength in his words.
“Jeongguk, stop,” the archer in the center orders with a measured tone.
The black wolf, Jeongguk, turns into a man again and puts Namjoon’s head in a lock.
“Stop! What are you doing?”
Despite Hoseok’s agitation, the boy squeezes Namjoon’s neck with bulking arms until he quits his struggling and his body goes lax. Hoseok looks from them to the center archer, who’s rubbing his temples in frustration.
“Let’s take them prisoners.” The boy releases Namjoon’s head carefully and goes to Kyun. “We can use them to bargain with the others and make them go away.”
“Jeongguk-ah…”
Jeongguk steps behind Kyun and touches the crook of his neck, searching. Kyun still has his hands up and is visibly shaking, though it’s hard to say whether it is from anger, fear or cold. The female archer has her bow pointing at Kyun’s chest, and if looks could kill, the four wolves would be dead and cold on the ground.
“It worked that time we went to the beach.” Jeongguk shrugs and jabs at Kyun’s neck, his hand is hard and precise. Hoseok winces and watches Kyun fall to the ground unconscious immediately. “Yoongi-hyung said we had to play smart.”
“Yeah, I doubt that taking hunters to our den counts as smart, though.”
Jeongguk is walking towards him with a smug smile on his face.
“We’ll be taking more than just hunters home, Tae-hyung.”
Jeongguk tilts his head to the side, looking just like a playful pup. A playful pup that is about to jab his consciousness away.
Hoseok tries to back away, but the third archer still has a firm grip on his hair.
“Sorry,” Jeongguk says, and there’s a toothy grin on his face when he hits Hoseok.