YOONGI POV:

Jin hyung moves past me to get to the two maknaes.

"There you two are." He murmurs, running a possessive hand over the two of them, releasing some that tension that had hovered when he'd woken up feeling settled but that had promptly vanished when the centre of the bed held only empty space where the maknaes should've been.

They smile and lean into the touch but I note that they make no move to separate, not from where they're wrapped around each other. Hyung stays there, hovering and reassuring himself even as Tae slots himself easily into the space next to them, showering them with easy loving affection in the form of hugs, peppered kisses, and words.

Jin hyung sighs, relieved and kisses both of their foreheads before stepping away, phone already out.

"I need to make some phone calls, Yoongi-ah; make sure everyone has breakfast." He says shooting me a soft smile before stepping out of the kitchen, hands already busied and phone at his ear.

But it seems like the issue of what to make for breakfast is solved for us, that, and the fact that the counters are filled- leaving no space to make any. Lined with baked goods yet again...it makes my heart twist in sorrow that (Y/N) wakes up restless, wakes up because she can't sleep any more- because her mind won't let her rest, because she's too troubled to.

"Jagi...you're going to fatten us all up." Tae says, but he sounds absolutely delighted when his bright sparkling eyes fall onto the rows of cakes and even if Hobi chides him- saying he can't substitute all foods for just cake, he's smiling too.

"Not even if they're made by our baby mate? You'd deny yourself of that pleasure hyung?" Jiminie pipes up, easily picking up on the comment and reversing it onto him, making him fumble over them- gaze darting from between the two of them in front of the counters to (Y/N) who's still wrapped around Kookie and shooting him a betrayed wounded look.

"What if I want to? Then that way you won't ever catch me." she teases lightly, falling silent at the dangerous gleam in Tae and Jiminie's eyes as they look at her- eyes flaring red at the challenge she's issued. 

"No chance. I'll always catch you baby mate." Tae promises, and there's something deeper in those words. Not a promise to catch her mid-chase but to catch her whenever she falls.

And her eyes soften and she slips down off the counter, the house lowering it down so she doesn't need to hop down- even if Kookie had his arms around her to help. 

And patters off to make drinks, knowing everyone's preferences, all the small details that seem like nothing but warm me up inside anyway. 

Joon happily praises her as he brings the closest one to an available counter to slice up, murmuring how pretty the colours of the filling and cake look together.

And it's a small but much craved and needed sense of normalcy when (Y/N) mindlessly and almost habitually goes to feed the maknaes, where she silently indulges them by fussing over them in a way that makes them bat Jin hyung's hands away at times, but the cooing and gushing they readily accept from their youngest mate. She even does it to Hobi, Joon and me- smiling when we happily accept the proffered food, smiling as she feeds us. My hand captures her wrist as she feeds me, stilling it there.

"Do you want me to contact Jinyoung-ah?" I ask, taking in the shadows forming under her eyes, the visible change of not having slept enough for the past few days. My other hand comes to thumb under her eyes, frowning at them- at the blatant sight of our mate's unrest glaring at us.

She smiles.

"I'm pretty sure Jinyoung oppa won't give me back to you. He likes indulging his caring instincts." She says wryly.

"And that's the last you'll see or hear from me, even the other Ims don't get a chance." She adds.

My hand falls and I smile.

"Maybe not Jinyoung-ah then, MJ?" I ask, not ready to drop the matter.

But before she can shake her head, Hobi speaks up- sounding both indignant and put-out.

"What can another healer do that I can't for our baby?" he asks testily.

I grin.

"Maybe Joon's Eomma then?" I say, laughing when Hobi pouts and tugs at Joonie's arm.

"You can't just throw (Y/N) to the wolves. You know our parents would be a force to reckon with. Especially when they learn we've been holding out on them with our beautiful mate." He says, eliciting both a blush from (Y/N) but also a look of confusion.

"Are you hiding me? Do they not know about me?" she asks head tilted but there's a tone of uncertainty that has him shaking his head adamantly.

"We all told our families that we found our final mate. We just never took you to meet them, we didn't want to push you into it." He says.

"I think...I'd like to meet them. When all of this is over. When Chul is captured." She says lightly but her grip tightens around her spoon when Chul is mentioned, a flick of a switch that has the bond between us swelling with rage.

And then Jin hyung enters, looking calm and composed for all the way he grits his phone and his hair looks dishevelled as if he's been running his fingers through it but he smiles for us, smiles even as he notes us having cake with our own drinks for breakfast instead of something wholesome like he'd have preferred.

"What's wrong?" I ask, he turns his head to me trying to smile but it slips off his face.

"It's just...it's just hard to keep a hold on the slippery sicko Chul is. Mother said they'd had tabs on him for the past few days, had him followed- knew all his whereabouts and now...he's just vanished." He sighs.

The words sound ominous. Foreboding.

Does he know we're onto him?

"Maybe he's gotten scared into hiding. But I'll still dig him out. He's not getting away." Hobi says, voice level despite the measured rage that seeps from each syllable.

I don't want to shatter Hobi's notion of Chul being scared. Chul doesn't get scared, he does the scaring. A shiver dances up my spine at the thought.

"He hasn't. Chul doesn't hide, he makes you want to hide." (Y/N) says levelly, finger tracing over the rim of her mug, head bent.

Her words are so simple, so blunt and yet hit with all the force of a knife being driven into my chest, until the hilt protrudes only.

Because Chul made (Y/N) scared to be alone when we went out, because Chul made (Y/N) wake up screaming, begging for the darkness to go even in a brightly lit room, because Chul made (Y/N) lose that freedom that came with being her own person, with going about her life as she once had. Because despite her being turned from human to vampire, she was more fragile and vulnerable.

"She's right. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like something Chul would do. He revels in playing, in making the person lose their mind with panic and fear and paranoia." I add, but unable to hide the hatred in my voice- unbothered with even trying to disguise it.

Centuries pass and he still has his claws in me.

"Where was he last seen or tracked?" Jiminie asks, leaning forward. Despite the softness in his voice, the gentleness because he's talking to our mate- there's no hiding the raging tempest in his eyes, threatening to shatter and destroy.

But before Jin hyung can answer there's the sound of the doorbell being rung, something rare in itself. And the feeling of a presence outside the door, two in fact. 

(Y/N)'s the first to get up, leading the way as she heads over to the door. But there's nothing threatening about the presences, even if Jin hyung does call out to her to wait.

But waiting on the other side of the door, faces struck with rage and slightly shaken is Ryan and Deok-mi. And it seems like our paths intertwined quicker than I'd think.

(Y/N) POV:

"Unnie...oppa what are you doing here?" I ask once the door opens but quickly tugging Deok-mi unnie by the cuff of her sleeve to bring her closer to me.

Ryan oppa steps into the hallway, eyes a deep red- dark that it verges on maroon.

And his posture is tight and wound up as he steps in, broader frame protectively hovering behind Deok-mi unnie.

And I startle when unnie forcefully pulls me into her- far more force and suddenness than she'd ever consider...both when I was a human and even after I'd changed.

She'd refused to handle me with anything but the delicateness she always scooped me close with, always tender and gentle touches- cooing over her little doll.

Her arms are fierce and unrelenting as she holds me close, and when one of my mates step forward at the small gasp that tumbles past my lips, those arms tighten and she lifts her head up to shoot them a look before going back to trying to meld the two of us together.

She leans back several minutes later, eyes burning red and scanning me slowly and carefully, seeing through the layer of clothes.

"Unnie stop!" I protest, hands flying to cover myself, cheeks burning when she continues to rove her eyes up and down several times.

"My darling I've seen it plenty of times, too many over the years. It's nothing new." She chides absentmindedly.

Sometimes I really rued her ability to see through different layers, to strip them back and see what lay underneath. It worked really well for her job, not so much when she was trying to always check if I was hiding something.

It had made for years of ruined surprises and embarrassing moments, because she was both an older caretaker figure but also verged on a playful, teasy side too with me- always being my morale booster and getting me to step outside my comfort zones.

It had been mortifying when once in the middle of a shop at the mall she'd loudly exclaimed how disappointed she was I hiding such a figure from her underneath layers of clothes.

I had fled to Ryan oppa and it had taken me some time to meet her eyes after that.

"Unnie stop! I'm fine!" I insist, trying not to look at my mates, having felt the bolt of surprise and something like jealousy seep through the bond...at Deok-mi unnie's ability and what they clearly felt was a misuse of it.

If the way Jinnie oppa tugged me behind his back immediately afterwards had anything to do with it, the moment she released me from her hold.

"You're all okay?" Ryan oppa asks, directing the question to the clustered hallway.

There's nods and murmurs all around.

"Why the sudden question? And how come you came without telling me? I'd have asked for something otherwise..." I say teasingly, poking my head from around Jinnie oppa's broader frame, smiling playfully.

But the smile isn't reciprocated, not with the face that looks struck by thunder and the other one that's a silently brewing storm.

"Chul Kang-Dae visited late into the middle of the night it seems. And left a little note." Ryan oppa hedges carefully.

But Deok-mi unnie, not for one for beating around the bush withdraws said note from her pocket, slamming it down onto the top of the hallway table. And it almost seems as if the table shrinks and wilts away from the contents of the paper, which has been opened to reveal a ghastly sight.

Because somehow...lying on top of the paper is a photo- glossy and high-quality I note with disgust, a photo of the scene from the alleyway and it seems like it's been taken seconds after Chul tore my back and shoulder. The sight of torn flesh and blood marring the curved back that had been my attempt to hover and protect the boy. Was this what my mother had felt? What she'd looked like when Chul tore into her too?

And under the photo, in a cruel joke clearly because he's used red ink...I hope that's red ink. Is a small handwritten note.

Playtime isn't over.

And the words...that just remind me just how many lives he's destroyed in toying and playing like some sick twisted, deranged thing makes something in me just snap.

I've had enough.

Like hell playtime isn't over. It full well is now.

Now no more games, no more playing, no more toying.

If I have to walk out the door, loudly proclaiming Yoongi oppa belongs to me at the top of my lungs to draw Chul out then so be it.

But no more. No more lives. No more games.

It's Kookie who plucks the photos up, expression haunted and aghast as he looks at it, eyes burning crimson- a mixture of rage, hate and profound sorrow in them.

"Can we just kill him? End it already?" he says bluntly and sharply, breaking the sickened silence with his words.

That the usually soft and gentle Kookie we all know and love is expressing his murderous desires bluntly and simply.

No waver, no mercy in his tone.

"What is it you need? Name it." Deok-mi unnie answers, voice sharp.

And when I look at her I don't just see the person standing in front of me, don't just see the sweet, playful, and loving person who's Ryan oppa's mate. I see someone who tugged me out of that nightmare, who stayed with me and rocked me asleep the nights I lay awake. I see the person who didn't push me to eat with them at mealtimes, but instead she was the person who joined me afterwards with tempting snacks- ready to do anything to fill my stomach. She wasn't just the art curator, the professional I worked with and the person I admired. She was so, so much more. She was the one who put a paintbrush in my hand when my nails dug red marks into my skin, the one who replaced my empty clenched fists with something to fill them, something to use all that energy and hurt and pain onto.

The one who taught me again from the basics, from the beginning as if I was learning for the first time that red was just another colour, that red could make pretty colours, that red didn't always represent blood.

She was the one who taught me to not love and open up to humans or vampires but people. People who despite whether or not their hearts beat, had souls of air and sunshine. Who didn't hover fussing and pushing herself into my space but gave it to me when I needed it.

That's who I see.

And I'm lost in my love for her.

"Just for you to be there when this is over." I say softly, feet moving me out from behind Jinnie oppa.

Her arms are gentle and tender once again as she awaits for me to fill them.

"I'll be here always. Now and forever with you my love." She promises as she presses a kiss to my head.

And that's all I need. I had my family. 

Now all that remained was to convince Gyeom into agreeing to the mad plan that had begun to form.

(THERE YOU GO! A LATE CHAPTER OOPS! AND NOW I'M GONNA DASH TO DO MY UNI WORK FOR TOMORROW SO MAYBE WE'LL GET A LATE SS UPDATE OR MAYBE WE WON'T! SO SORRY IN ADVANCE AND THANK YOU FOR BEARING WITH ME AND GOING ALONG WITH IT LIKE ALWAYS!! SO! CHUL VANISHES AND TURNS UP LIKE THIS?! TO LEAVE A NOTE OUTSIDE RYAN AND DEOK-MI'S HOUSE? I AM LOSING PATIENCE WITH CHUL AND ALL THIS HATE IS JUST FUELLING MY MURDEROUS PLANS FOR HIM- BUT IT'S ALL GOOD, WE DON'T JUDGE MURDER HERE- NOT IF IT'S FOR A MORAL NOBLE CAUSE OF RIDDING THE WORLD OF CHUL- ALL PEOPLE WILLING TO ACT, ARE WELCOMED! LET ME KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS! I REALLY HOPE I'M NOT BORING ANY OF YOU!! LET ME KNOW IF THAT'S THE CASE BUT I DON'T WANT TO THROW THE PLOT INTO A SUDDEN RUSH TO GET CHUL KILLED, LIKE YOU CAN'T JUST STUMBLE ONTO HIM!! I WONDER WHAT HER PLAN IS!! THEORIES? STAY SAFE AND ENJOY!)

Sometimes the most beauty and wonder come from the maddest thoughts! Don't forget to indulge that side of you as well! We all have a dash of it inside us!

Borahae! 💜💜💜

PurpleQueenie <3