(Y/N) POV:

"Are you okay Hoseokie?" eyes immediately narrowing onto the slightly dazed expression in his eyes as he enters the office again. Expression slightly lost and vacant. Body jolted to alertness, stumbling out of my seat to get to him.

Because his scent—

His scentblockers have worn off.

Because his scent's turned acrid.

Burnt.

Sharp, burnt caramel and nuts. The taste of smoke and burnt, burnt caramel. Thick and viscous and cloying.

"Hobi what is it? What's happened?" voice sharpening with alarm, eyes falling to the folder he clutches tight, in a bruising grip.

The vacantness in his eyes seems to recede a bit. Chocolate-brown eyes seeming to thaw from their frozen state. A flicker of life, some awareness sinking in.

As if perhaps... he hadn't realised he'd made it here.

A kernel of worry sinks in.

"Hm?"

"What is it? Your scent—something's happened... what's happened?"

"I just—" there's a warring debate visible in his eyes.

Choosing whether or not to even say and that guardedness makes a slither of something cold and uncertain trickle down my spine.

"What?"

"I went to file the paperwork. And... and someone had accidentally filed your employee file under the child trafficking category."

There's something intense and pleading and searching and—

"Why?" confusion filters through me as I look at him.

His eyes widen minutely before relief and bubbling hope and eagerness spills from his gaze, from his words. Hand darting out to grip my arm, a grateful firm squeeze of fingers against me.

"Right? It's a mistake—the case file mentioned a (Y/N) and a Dong-Min..." words stopping abruptly when he feels my body stiffen under the press of his hand, ears ringing at the name.

I haven't heard that name in years, haven't heard a name that's nothing more than phantom and long gone... so where's Hobi heard it?

"(Y/N)?"

"Dong-Min?" the name a heavy weight on my tongue. Echoes and flashes of nightmares blurring behind my eyes.

An apprehension.

The hand at my arm loosening, brushing down my side.

The air in my lungs choked full of the scent of blood and tears—the phantom taste of it lingering on my tongue, feet fumbling back a step.

"You know the name?" cautiously. Warily. Eyes trying to search for something. Something Hobi doesn't want to find but must see in my own stare. Gaze dropping hollow to the file in his hand.

Where on earth did Dong-Min's file get dug up from?

I didn't even know it existed on paper.

And why does Hobi look haunted by the name too.

Hobi doesn't know Dong-Min... not when the name ceased to exist nearly two decades ago.

Not when the name no longer exists. And therefore that person doesn't exist... Dong-Min was an eight year old boy whose name and data and life all got erased and re-wiped.

New chance. New slate.

So where has it cropped up from after all these years?

"I told you... Dong-Min's name... is mentioned with yours."

"Why mine?" a blank drawing up at the connection, the lack thereof.

A blank slate, nothing—not a scrap of insight as to why the name's been connected to mine in official documentation. I knew Dong-Min... but why is that on...paper?

"I was hoping you'd be able to tell me." face expression caution, features trying to smoothen out, but they fail to be impassive and neutral. They fail to be guarded.

Hobi's face is open. Expressive.

So the flicker of confusion and fear and something pained gleaming in his eyes makes my pulse flare up with an echoing anxiousness that his scent's broadcasting again. Sharp, burnt caramel that stings my nose, pervades my lungs.

"I knew Dong-Min but... knowing someone doesn't mean I'd be on his case file—"

"So you know he was a trafficked child."

My throat closes up.

Swallows around nothing.

Tries to swallow around air. Fails.

Fingers brushing up to my shoulder. Squeezing. Grounding.

My name murmured softly. Dark eyes snagging my focus again.

I nod.

"That's in the past."

"Ji Sung was the judge on the case."

My fingers curl into fists. Nails pressing against my palm.

Tight...tight...tighter. The feeling in my throat grows painfully constricting.

A soothing murmured word. Firm despite it.

"Breathe." And my lungs allow it. Comply to it.

"He...was. I was young at the time, but he did use to be a judge."

"He's a lawyer now."

I nod.

The questions I'm worried about, the questions that burn through my own consciousness don't spill from his lips though.

"Was his job a reason why you became distanced?"

A pinprick of pain. Then another. Then countless others sinking in. Re-opening wounds and injuries that never quite healed.

That pushed the distance between us in the first place.

"He was never there. I needed him Hobi, and he wasn't there. He was there for Dong-Min and I'm so, so glad for that. But afterwards—afterwards it was like he changed." Anguish bleeding into my voice. Words sounding hollow and distant and tinged with agony.

A thumb against my jaw.

Name murmured whisper-soft.

Featherlight.

Calming.

Because bit by bit... my own blockers' barrier splinter.

Faint notes of wilted heavy decay. Off and moulding and crumbling in on itself.

A grimace twists my lips.

Ugly thoughts ugly scent.

"I don't know why your name's there... I don't know if it's someone else... another (Y/N)... but we don't have to talk about it right now." words placating. Calming.

Eyes both searching and bolstering.

Encouraging and grounding but a flicker in them is worried. Haunted by the possibility.

But how do I tell him it's not me. I'd remember something that horrific, I'd remember if I'd shared something with Dong-Min that went beyond friendship, beyond growing up together, beyond becoming—Lee Dong Min was a ghost. A child whose name had faded in the past. And been erased from any moment past it.

And now it whirls around the dark recesses of my mind, alongside fragments of nightmares that have nothing to do with me, yet grip me with talons sunk in deep. Nightmares that are formed of seeing so much and not being to entirely escape from it...

And yet even in nightmares I don't ever see that young girl scream out his name. I don't see that girl's face except what's reflected back in pained brown eyes that are too young and too haunted.

But that case.

Lee Dong-Min's case. That Ji Sung—dad had handled all those years ago.

The beginning of the end of it all...

The names, the past... all of it dredges up skeletons long since buried. Opens doors that have barely withheld all the pressure pushing...pushing...pushing on the other end of it. That Hobi twisting the handle and wrenching it open unwittingly spills out the ugly mess that it'd all been.

"I don't want to talk about it." a firmness amidst the wavering exhales.

A refusal.

A flash of a pained grimace and something indecipherably worrying in his eyes before he nods. A tight motion of his head.

"I won't mention the name again. I'm sorry."

Hand skimming to curl against my nape, a gentle tug to draw me closer. Foreheads touching. Resting. A quiet rumble of words that I don't hear, the deeper cadence of it something that's instinctually relieving, unwinds the tightness in my shoulders. In my nape. And I feel myself loosen slightly. Head tilting forward heavily.

The press of his palm and fingers against my nape, the brush of fingertips against the side of my gland trying to coax my scent to settle. Smell it stronger now.

Burnt caramel and decayed foliage.

Not the best of us.

Not the best of me.

And yet he still holds me.

Draws in each mouthful of scent with a shuddering quietness, an unsettledness that lingers in the defensive jaggedness of his own posture.

The crinkle of paper under his touch. Folder clutched harder.

He doesn't offer it.

I don't ask for it.

Too much in those pages about a story... a nightmare I had no interest in re-hearing.

Seeing it once was enough.

Was too much.

Re-reading, re-learning... remembering it again... no.

I didn't want to associate haunted eyes and a weak, frail body to the one full of life and love today.

Ghosts were meant to remain undisturbed, skeletons were meant to remain buried.

----------------------

Something changes. Shifts.

It's almost subtle.

Until it's not.

A charged heaviness in Hobi's silence when he decides to drop it but the file—the file gets returned. Filed correctly. But there's still something off.

First it's Hobi.

Then it's Joon and Jimin.

A quiet contemplativeness. A silent observation.

Eyes that just seem to hold more than what they're saying.

Then come the tentative questions. So obviously skirting around something bigger and unnamed. But because of that—it makes a familiar coil of nauseating worry begin to wind itself around my gut. Twists my stomach into knots. Makes every breath contract and shudder before forcing itself out of lungs that feel just a bit too tight when the apartment quietens, and everything is too quiet. The faint deep breaths of sleep, of whoever I'm curled to, not truly vanishing the coils of dread that sink deeper and deeper.

"Will you just say?" abandoning pretence that I hadn't noticed the silently exchanged glances. Two set of eyes startled, caught out. Morphing into guilty pup eyes.

"Say what?"

"Whatever you're trying to push the other to say. I won't bite pups." Brows raised, a faint flicker of amusement at the way they share a guilty glance. Silently nudging the other to speak.

"The... there's paperwork Hobi hyung passed onto us..."

My eyes flit between them, the quiet trepidation in Joon's eyes as he seems to wait, with bated breath, for an explosiveness that never comes.

A plummeting feeling and a cold, cold sense of dread, a cold knowledge because I know what paperwork they're referring to.

And I feel both a mix of betrayal and hurt at the realisation that Hobi gave it to them. A stinging realisation that buried pasts weren't put to rest. Couldn't be put to rest.

That sense of betrayal wells up when I realise Hobi's passed it on despite me saying that that case had no relevance now, that it was an old file... there was no business in it being drawn out now.

"It's got nothing to do with you."

"We're looking into Ji Sung."

The train of thought I'd had, teetering dangerously into uncertain waters is dragged to a screeching halt.

"Why?"

"He was a judge at the time of—" Dong-Min's name isn't spoken. It's a small mercy I clutch onto.

I nod tightly.

"He's a lawyer now and he's doing this work pro-bono. We're just covering each end."

We're making sure he's not involved. We're making sure whatever reason he has to do this isn't selfish, isn't something that'll come back to bite us.

Those suspicions are read clearly in their eyes.

In eyes that are unguarded and open and willingly surrendering their intent in them, I realise.

"He wouldn't..." he might've been an absent father but he's not a bad person—not at what he does.

"We think there could be something to go on. We're just covering every angle. If he was a judge for a child trafficking case—" Joon begins, faltering at the flinch that wracks my body, sitting on opposite ends of the table. The emptiness of it, the scattered dishes, the isolation of sitting alone on one side and the two on the other... a faint echoing sense of being questioned ripples through me.

Even if logically I know that's not the case.

Not when their scents are softening, brushing against me to comfort and soothe, looking painfully despairing of the table being in the way.

Joon half-rises, a whined sound plaintive and big deep puppy eyes staring morosely at me.

Reading every line of my body with a clarity that does nothing but make the soft whines grow.

"From what I remember that role was taken from him. Being a judge was everything. Above everything."

Sympathy pools in their eyes and it's a feeling I've been compelled to deal with growing up. I've seen that look in far too many eyes, seen it far too many times... known it way too closely.

I don't want to see it in my mate's eyes.

I don't want to see it directed at me.

My chair pushes back from the table, a screeching sound that makes their ears flicker to attention, stiffen to perked points. My own flicker with discomfort at the harsh sound.

"(Y/N)—"

"Ask around, ask him... but anything got to do with that case—" I see the quietness in their gazes, the acquiescence without pushing.

"Let it rest. Please."

Let his story rest. And let him live. Away from it. Without it all.

[......]

A quiet sounding on the door makes my head turn, half-curled on the beanbag in Yoongi's studio. See it get pushed open cautiously and a head peering past tentatively.

"Space for one—two more?"

"Couldn't sleep?" I murmur, straightening up as the door pushes open, a quiet baleful chirp in the hushedness of the room, scooped to Joon's chest as he pads in quietly.

Fox paws immediately scrabbling closer to me the moment he's set down, the moment Joon sinks down into a beanbag beside me. Shuffling and scooting closer, leg knocking against mine as paws scrabble at my legs before clambering onto my lap.

Nose immediately bonking and scenting, nuzzling at my jaw, at my cheek. Quiet chirps and soft grooming licks against my skin. Hand smoothening down fur that's cold I realise with a start. He's cold and so's the hand that brushes against my side.

"Both of you been out?"

"Patrolling."

From behind his radio set-up, Yoongi makes a soft rumbling sound.

"Find anything?"

"Just scouted the area. Made sure it was safe. Secure." Joon murmurs, scooting closer.

Shuffle-shuffle—shuffle.

My lips curve up. Hands already brushing through fur, warming under my touch. Eager snuffles against my skin and body curling to press close. Cold nose against my gland, tail swishing under my touch.

My gaze flits up to track the quiet want in soft eyes.

"Want to get closer—" I offer at the same time as Joon blurts.

"I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"We're not prying. We're not getting involved to pry in anything that's long gone or buried."

"I know that."

"But that day we asked—it hurt you. What we were going to do hurt you."

"It doesn't..." hurt.

"It doesn't hurt. It's... that time... seeing as a child how... another child was suffering... I don't want to drag up that feeling again." I try again.

"He's untraceable."

"Not if you know where to look." But even to my own ears it sounds elusive. It sounds vague.

The question and curiosity clear in Joon's eyes. In the fox that rears his head back to peer at me. Nose booping mine.

Paw against my cheek.

"He's safe. And happy. And living a better life. He's free."

"And you want to keep it like that."

"Of course I do—some things are better never relived again."

"So Ji Sung helped him?"

"Hunted them down without mercy. I learnt about it years later—he got the highest sentence he could for them." and for the first time in a long time, a tinge of pride colours my voice.

Because he'd never been bad at his job, he'd never done the people he helped dirty. He'd gone to every length.

A great part of me wishes he'd done that for me too.

Memories tinged with pain and misery and cold, cold emptiness. Loneliness.

A house without a family.

Four walls and a ceiling. No life in it.

Cold, cold, cold.

But for the first time in a long time. Thinking about just how much of him he invested into helping others... it brings a flicker of warmth.

At least he was a good person to others. Even if he failed at being a good dad.

There's quiet treads, almost noiseless, almost missed in the way my chest tightens, heart squeezing painfully with longing and yearning and a flash of bitter want. Something that'd been so deeply buried that now when mentioning him resurfaces, it brings with it flashes of that same ache that'd been forced down so long ago.

"Being a good man doesn't mean he was a good dad." Yoongi whispers, voice hushed. Sinking into a crouch, hand coaxing me to half-rise, scooped fox pressed to my chest when he sinks down onto the seat and re-draws me back but onto his lap.

A hand smoothening down my spine.

Needing physical reassurance. Needing to give it too.

But hearing the same knowledge I've had for years. Hear it echoed, confirmed—doesn't bring the same sense of validation or sense of being known after so long. It brings with it comfort. But also resigned acceptance.

Of something long gone.

Of a relationship long faded.

"I guess he couldn't pick both."

"It's not a choice he should've hesitated over." A firmness there. Unwavering.

It makes the corners of my eyes sting unexpectedly.

It makes my head tilt to the thick winter floof to briefly burrow hide from the sincerity in the voice that rumbles through me, that presses into my back. To the quiet warmth and unconditional, unwavering love their scents and gazes betray.

Briefly nuzzling into the thick fur, soft grooming licks, gentle against my cheeks, soft chirps as a head bonks at mine. Soft pup eyes peering up at me.

Tail brushing against my palm in slow swishes.

"It's not something that should matter now."

"It matters because he's involved. Because we've involved him." Mimi chirps in baleful assent.

Pawing at my cheek to get my attention. Nose nudging at mine.

Eyes dropping to look at him.

It's easier.

"When the case is over—"

"Then he goes back to how it's always been between us."

An absent stranger.

There's a pause, a beat of silence that stretches into the next—

"Okay. It's your choice."

Lips brushing against my hair.

A rumbled purr echoing the words Joon's already said.

Because on the other end of this case, everything would fall back into order.

Past would remain where it was. And the relationships that were gone, would stay long since faded.

Reappearing in a case did nothing now.

He was here purely on a professional basis. Not that any personal tie tethered him here.

--------------------

"You've got a visitor."

"I'm not expecting anyone." I turn with confusion, body immediately straightening, hand pausing in wiping down my side. A grimace still marring my face. Scowling at the bin where I'd dumped another drink.

Twisting around to face the voice that introduces itself. A half-step unconsciously taken.

Face schooling itself into a blankness.

But the flash of emotion and guardedness that greets me in return lets me know I wasn't as quick as I wanted to be. The distaste and mistrust echoing across my features before they vanish.

Dad—"What're you doing here?"

"I've reached a conclusion."

"You don't share your findings with me. You're not under my payroll—or the officers now that I think about it but... you don't answer to me."

Eyes flicker with unspoken apology.

With apologies that would fall too short, too stale now. Aged over time and years.

A hardness to his jaw.

The unconscious stiffening of his own posture.

A predator being challenged.

"I thought you should know first. You should know from me."

An apprehension sinks in.

What news could Ji Sung possibly bring that I should here first?

Staring at the lion hybrid hard for a few moments before gesturing to the inside of the office.

A trickle of trepidation skimming down my spine as I stare hard. Gauging the space, whether or not to leave the door open—whether that' d be a sign of cowardice, of discomfort... whether it'd be inviting ears to the conversation, whether it'd be a weakness or a sign that I didn't want to be in a closed space with him for any period of time.

Too many variations and thoughts that whirl together. Entangle.

"I don't think you want the door open for this."

Decision made for me.

A purposefulness sinking in, a finality with the click of the door.

It feels isolating and confining all at once. Trapping me in a space that's bereft of any other presence to diffuse the silent standoff, sharp eyes skimming over the inside of a space that's mine.

Reading the silent observation in his eyes. The curiosity. The pang of something more and deeper than I want to contemplate.

Another tipping of the scales—of what measurement I don't know, when he sits on the seat opposite to my own, a balance of power shifting. As if the air in the room swells, thickens with the undetectable charged energy of both our pheromones staking claim and place in the space. Establishing our places.

I don't need the scents to be noticeable to know that in my space—I've got the upperhand.

But whatever he's come to say threatens it, threatens to uproot that sense of control.

I see his eyes flit around the room.

Before slowly turning in his seat.

As if examining the place he'd found me in when he'd entered.

"Is something wrong?"

"Nothing that concerns you."

The small talk cut short.

Pleasantries and concern something long beyond salvageable now.

The distance between us long past the cold hollowness of strangers.

I wonder if he realises it hurts more because there was something... that even now when I look to him—I fail to find a shred of myself in him. I fail to find a scrap of family inside the man opposite me. Nothing seeming to connect me to the person whose presence, whose scent, whose very DNA is a biological calling to my own—a connection of family-pack. I wonder he feels the echo of pain of what it feels to lose that bond, that tether.

The grief in his eyes magnify.

"You seem stressed." Voice gentle. Quiet. Miserable.

"You didn't come here to see how I was."

The grief brews.

"I came to tell you something I was asked has gotten me thinking."

Dong-Min. I know it without him saying.

But I'm prepared for it.

The resolute, unwavering love and comfort and trust between me and my mates solidifying the ground under me now.

Past is past.

"What?"

"I think—I'm so stupid for not seeing it before... but I think those cases all those years ago. The cases now have too much of a resemblance to Dong-Min's... it's the same pattern—"

"We're not talking about him." I say bluntly.

"(Y/N)."

"No. We're not having this conversation. If you have anything to say about the case it goes directly to Officers Park and Kim—you let Namjoon and Jimin know any connections, any findings..."

"I think there's someone dangerous at the centre." His words are abrupt. Harsh. Jagged with worry and anger.

"I already know about the mole threat..."

"I think someone's hiding at the centre... not staff. Have you seen any unfamiliar faces recently?" the firm sharpness in his voice makes my eyes snap up. Finding only steely determination in dark, dark eyes that look at me with a focused sharpness that's more predator than father at the moment. More animal than human.

He's always slipped too easily between them.

"No... what is this about? Where's this coming from?" I demand, volume rising despite myself, his words planting a seed of hesitance... I need to know why he thinks that.

"Call it a gut instinct."

I scoff.

"Always the gut instinct isn't it? Well where was your gut instinct when we went out and—"

"Don't." word firm. Cutting me off.

The pain that's in his eyes drowns out the predator in them. Strips him bare of that biological dominance.

Leaves him looking defeated. Exhausted.

Pained.

For a moment my throat tightens. Constricts.

"Please." Voice a harsh whisper as he shakes his head, as his tail curls and swats sharply at the air. An unspoken sign of his antsy distress.

My throat tightens. Constricts. Once. Twice.

Nerves feeling too raw. Too fraught.

Frustrated that they are so sensitive. That it rankles and pains me in equal measure.

"...what instinct is telling you there's someone hiding here? Whatever instincts you've had, you've always had reason."

"There's something about the discrepancies in the case... they're small but something about the reports don't read right, something about each examination taken just—there's something I can't put my finger on."

"The paperwork's never lacking. Never for an eval or an examination." I say bluntly, words grating my own ears.

"It's not the quality of paperwork—it's their content... it's just something I'm trying to figure out." A frustrated harsh breath that's exhaled with another sharp swat of his tail.

The unconscious growl in his voice an ever constant reminder he's more lion than man. That he's been that way for a long time. That that's all I remember him as.

Each memory more painful than the last.

"Dad please." The words are broken. Aching. The name slips out without intending to. And they can't be taken back. Body freezing even as the schooled expression on his face shatters. Devastation and yearning etched harshly into his face, into eyes long since hardened with experience and pain. Of having seen too much.

The words still him, body frozen in its half-tilt forward. The prickly jaggedness of his posture seeming to crumble inwards.

"(Y/N)... bokki I'm not doing this to hurt you. I'm not doing it to bring back—"

The nickname is painful to hear, laced with memories long since overridden.

The words still him. But his root me to the ground. Keep me from pushing away from the desk. From pushing open a window, feeling stifled by a scent I can't detect.

Stifled by the presence in an enclosed room, conjuring up phantoms neither of us could bear to have become corporeal.

Not when we've both moved on in our own way.

"Appa."

The word stills us both.

The misery that cracks the syllables splinters through my heart.

And I can't bring myself to look at the lion frozen on the other side of the desk.

The one being dragged down into the depths of the pain we're both raw from.

"Let his past go. Let Eunwoo live."

[......]

I'd let him go so he'd be safe.

I'd let my pack go so they could be unharmed.

But bringing up a case long since buried and gone. Bringing it up now... with these cases? It threatened to ruin everything I'd left to protect.

----------------------

"You're scaring me appa."

"I'm not scaring you, I'm protecting you!"

"No! You're scaring me!" words whimpered out, body shrinking back as my biology surrenders, guiled into it by the way right now he's just strong. And bigger. And powerful. And his fangs—

"Appa stop." Words hushed, laced with the wobble of tears that clog my throat and make my eyes sting as they well up thick and strong and spill over in heated trails down flushed skin, ears flickering at the faint agonised rumble at the back of his throat, growl swallowed down. Receding.

"Appa's sorry... appa's so, so sorry." hand painstakingly careful, faltering when a sob wrenches past my lips, chest shuddering with it before I tilt close. Barrelling forward towards the familiar scent and safety of being tucked to his chest. Clutching at him.

Appa's big and strong and powerful.

"Appa's going to keep you safe. Whatever it takes bokki." The promise whispered into my hair, lips gentle at my temple. A low murmured comfort.

"Appa's sorry... appa's so, so sorry." he repeats over and over again, arms cradling me close, chasing away every remnant of nightmare, of phantom, of lingering remnants of something I couldn't hold onto, because the image itself evaporated but the fear lingered. Made home in my body.

"Appa make it go."

"Appa will."

[......]

"His name's not Dong-Min anymore."

"It's not?"

"Eunwoo. Cha Eunwoo." Appa murmurs quietly.

Hand brushing over his hair, retreating at the soft flinch, barely noticeable. Contained but still there.

"Eunwoo. I'll keep you safe Eunwoo."

"You did. You already did. Remember?" shiny wide eyes looking at me. A flash of a pain I can't remember but his eyes will me to remember again.

Something pained and alert flickers in appa's eyes.

Voice gently shushing, coaxing the questions away before they can form, fingers gently brushing over my flickering ears. Watching as I shuffle, scoot closer to the young buck.

He'd been staying here since I could remember.

Part of my consciousness and memory for as long as I can think back.

And when I think of before. The before he came there's only warmth and giddiness.

There's sadness now. Because it clings to the young buck. The baby buck.

It clings to him.

So I cling to him.

Desperate and insistent to get it to go.

"Eunwoo... my Eunwoo..." I nuzzle into his cheek, curling around him protectively. Clutching at him. Feeling a wave of relief so deep in my bones when he curls into me, when he clutches me back just as tightly. With teary relief as he looks at me.

Not knowing why he looks at me like that... but knowing deep down, this innate need to be close to him ripples through me.

Refuses to let go of him.

"He's staying isn't he appa?"

"Of course he is."

[......]

"Don't you remember me?"

"Of course I do."

"No you don't... don't you remember before?" the word hushed. Terrified. Eyes glossy with pain and unshed tears, throat hoarse from screaming. Skin sweat-damp, shivering as I clutch at him, as his body trembles no matter how hard I hold him, no matter how warm his body feels next to mine. No matter how gently and carefully appa changes his clothes and tucks him up with an extra blanket to tuck us two together. His fingers trace the side of my neck, a flash of pain that feels real and not at the same time. A sting and then it's gone.

"Before though—"

"It's okay bokki." Words murmured gently as appa brushes a cool cloth across Eunwoo's damp hair, sponging away the heat with a carefulness. Eyes full of worry. Voice a low soothing rumble. Tail brushing slow back and forth.

"Appa—" a pained mumble for him, Eunwoo's eyes welling up with tears as he looks upwards. Small fingers clutching at the wrist that tilts closer.

A quiet rumble.

Gentle and soothing.

"My bokkies. Appa's got you safe." But when he looks at us, the worry and pain isn't just for Eunwoo, it's shared to me. A quiet bundle of worry grows in my stomach. Makes it clench anxiously.

As if he's worried for me too. As if the promise to keep us safe is real, real, real.

[.......]

He moves. A few doors down. The same street. To parents with warm smiles and warmer hearts.

But when Eunwoo leaves.

That warm, warm, warmth goes with him.

And the house becomes cold, cold, cold.

"Why did Eunwoo leave appa?"

"Appa gets busy sometimes doesn't he?" I nod.

I'd spent days over at Eunwoo's because appa was so busy some days. Had gotten to know his parents just as closely.

"Twin shadows" his new eomma and appa call us. But appa hadn't heard that story. He'd been busy at work to hear the words mumbled as he scooped me up from their front door. Body curling to the quiet rumbles and low, low voice. Burrowing closer, sleepy but knowing appa was here. I'd tell him later.

"Appa wants to look after his bokkies well. And sometimes you have to let others look after them so you can do everything in your power for them." fingers brushing away tears, soft quiet rumbled sounds of reassurance and comfort. Tucking me close. Murmuring an apology and a promise that he wouldn't be back home so late.

"But I want appa to look after me."

Some days I didn't want other parents to look after me. I just wanted my own.

I just wanted to come home to appa.

An emptiness stretching out to greet me after school, house empty, scents stale as if it was wilting slightly without anyone to live in it.

"I miss you though."

His arms tighten.

"I still miss you. More than you know. More than you'll ever know."

[......]

The soft brush of fingertips against warm, damp cheeks are what my eyes flutter open to. Soft, worried eyes peering at me in the dark, the dim glow of the bedside table lighting up the room. Brushing over sleepy, drowsy features with a golden glow.

No words said.

Fingers brushing away tears that trickle down my cheeks and an aching emptiness where my heart should be, hand pressing to it tightly. Trying to will that emptiness away, a grounding pressure of my palm to ease the phantom pain that sits there. Rings dissonance through my body.

No words said as lips replace fingertips, brushing against my cheeks, against my eyes as they clench shut. Against my hair, against my forehead.

Body shuffling closer to mine, knees knocking before his leg slots between mine. A warmth that seeps from his body to my own, his hand brushing down my spine before tugging me closer. Trying to press closer and closer. Nose nudging to mine in quiet comfort.

Forehead resting to mine, quiet...quiet unspoken comfort in the way he presses closer to ease the ache and emptiness by filling it with all of him.

Soft trembling breaths that betray the too-loud thud of my pulse, the heavier, slower one of his own coaxing mine to calm. To fall into slowed, unrushed rhythm with his own.

No words said as his hand settles at my nape, weighted comfort, that makes my body sink to his before it skims down my spine once more.

Lips lingering at my cheeks. Underneath my eyes.

"You smell sad." The words quiet and achy.

Flopped ear brushing against my cheek as he shuffles impossibly closer.

My fingers brush up against his chest, chasing warmth, the echo of his pulse to hammer under my skin and sink in. Curling closer to him.

"I'm not sad anymore." I whisper, confess into the planes of his skin.

Lips that brush against my hairline.

Head tucking over mine.

Touch comforting. Tightening.

Unrelenting.

"I'll never make you sad."

"You haven't."

"I'll never let people make you sad."

"You can't promise."

"I'll try every moment."

Hushed promises confided into hair and skin, into each other.

"So will I. I never want you to be sad Koo." I echo back.

Tilting my head up to peer into soft, brown eyes.

"I'll never leave your side." A whispered comfort. Words so weighted in sincerity. Laced with sleep and genuineness.

And underneath my palm, his heart thuds the same.

The lingering remnants of sadness chased away by the sleep-heavy cotton scent, by the curled press of his body melding to mine.

The world around us quietening, the remnants of nightmares and memories slowly crumbling as they too quieten, hand brushing up and down my spine in a slow, repetitive motion.

The weight of sleep beginning to press in around the corners, clouding my vision with a gentle lulling darkness laced with the scent of cotton. Burrowing further into him, lips pressing a soft kiss against his chest. The hollowness being filled so entirely by cotton-warmth-comfort-love.

Just as quick as that hollow feeling had threatened to settle, fragments of broken memories still gripping onto me, it isn't allowed to linger. Whether that's because of Koo it slips away all the quicker or it's because my heart's left feeling so full, there's no space for that old stabbing pain of loneliness.

The past has no place here.

----------------------------

"I'm going to miss you Seokie~" I lilt, watching as he scans the bakery menu with a sharp attentiveness, a seriousness and gravity that belies the situation... that he is ultimately just picking flavours.

The side of his face is sharp and tight with attentive contemplation. Eyes narrowed as he assesses, re-assesses, re-examines the choices on the menu. So raptly focused that the words don't register.

And when they do it makes his lips tug into that familiar heart-shaped smile. Eyes dragging away from the menu, the sharpness of his eyes soften into rich, melted chocolate-warmth once again.

"You'll have me back next year. Once I've finished with uni officially."

"But I haven't had a coworker who I've gotten along so well with." Lips jutting slightly.

His eyes flash.

Proud and smugly satisfied and warm-warm-sweetness.

"Flattering me sweet kit? So I'll leave more sweet treats in your office?"

"I think I deserve more by right. I've worked with you the most." Peering over his shoulder to glance down the custom order options.

The order form brought back from the bakery, alongside a box of baked goods they hadn't sold—hands swiping treats as they passed.

Currently there's a plate with cheesecake sitting next to Hobi's left hand, his right still gripping the menu choice.

His laugh is infectious and loud and bright.

Head tilting back to peer at me with amusement and indulgence.

Dark brown gaze glinting with playfulness.

"And what sweet treats does my sweet kit desire?"

Head tilting back when my fingers gently skim through his hair, a rumbled purred satisfaction at the touch, exposing the line of his throat in invite. Lips briefly pressing to his gland before slotting to his mouth, curving closer from behind. Purr rumbling louder against my mouth, a scrape of fangs playfully initiating before I draw back.

Pressing a fluttering light kiss to his lips.

"I haven't tried a chocolate dessert." Peering with curiosity at the extensive range.

He hums in agreement.

"Everyone likes chocolate right? It should be a safe bet."

"With the kids? You've won them over with caramel... the chocolate will be an easy win." I tease, fingers circling his gland, brushing over the sensitive tissue. Coaxing out said-sticky-sweet-caramel.

"What about Ji Soo? And the caregiver staff? And the nurses that worked with Ji Ah and Min Junie? And Mrs Kim... and the others—" my lips brush against his once more, stifling the spilling possibilities and endless list.

Thumb brushing across his jaw.

"You my sweet caramel have helped us all so much and you want to treat us? That sweetness of yours is dangerous." I murmur.

His eyes sparkle.

"How?"

"Get too addicted to a good thing. To your sweetness." Thumb brushing up against his ear, against that slither of skin that makes his head tilt back with a fluttering pleased smile.

Caramel scent sweetening,

"Charmy kit. Now I definitely know you're after my baked goods."

"If anything wouldn't that make her after my baked goods? Although they're not the only thing I have to offer." A lazy grin, winking when my head tilts, a pleased lilt to his words, the generous sweep of his mouth curling into a satisfied grin as his wings rustle with amusement. Flapping as he laughs at his own words.

"I don't know hyung~ you're not the one taking them in... although I think I'm ready to final the order."

The rustle-rustle of wings tucking against his back as Jin takes a seat at the table, legs stretching out leisurely at the lack of legs locking underneath the table.

There's almost a weirdness in using the second kitchen.

But it does make ample space for bakery meetings like this pre-dinner one. The sounds of the clattering and voices almost... almost distance if my ears hadn't been able to pick up every single sound, able to distinguish them, able to pick apart the voices and hear the conversations.

Jin looks utterly ease as he looks at Hobi, at my body curled around his, half-peeking.

"Two desserts." Eyes drifting slyly.

"And a special secret order." Lips twitching.

"Not going to tell me?"

"Won't be a secret then will it?"

I grumble.

"What do you want the desserts to be?"

"Stuffed cookies and cupcakes!"

"Flavours?"

"Hyung and bun can choose."

An excitement gleams in Jin's eyes at the prospect. At the element of surprise in having control in what exactly the kids will get to eat tomorrow. Jotting down notes on his phone. Wings rustling in musing contemplation.

"We can choose what?"

Hand drying a flopped ear, towelling it thoroughly and carefully as he pads into the kitchen, clothes slouchy and comfy.

"The dessert flavours—we'll have to keep the bakery shut until it's all prepared and delivered."

"I'll deliver!" Koo enthuses, ear perking up, the one he'd been towelling dry still loosely being brushed over, but it twitches.

"Without me? I think not."

"You just want to see the centre."

"I want to see my chickie at her workplace." He says without batting an eye.

"Going to sneak in and see (Y/N)? We're just there to deliver the food."

"I can take my time. Or get... lost on the way to finding Hobi. The centre's big I've heard."

A feigned blankness that's betrayed by grinning lips stretching wide as he finds my eyes. Staring at me with sparked mischief.

"Maybe someone who works there would be happy to help me find my way to the right office. Don't want to be wandering~"

I don't mention that they shouldn't, that whatever threat lingered—whoever was at the centre watching... whoever was the mole, the threat, the planted danger... I don't word the brief twist of nauseating-fear that cripples me from the inside. A twisting sharpness that I force back with a deep exhale.

The shoulder my head had been resting on briefly tensing before loosening. This close—the astuteness in feline eyes read it all without speaking it aloud.

But there's a sweet vanilla-caramel warmth and with all the comfort of the homey-cottony scent that makes me guard and stifle that fear.

Not an inkling of it will affect the sugary warmth of their happiness, their excitement.

Nose nudging against Hobi's cheek, pressing a soft kiss to his jaw.

But before I can straighten, Jin's tapping his cheek with a finger, an eager glittering smile patiently waiting, feathers rustling.

"Want a kiss?"

"Equality for all mates." He shrugs.

"Can't smooch one Seok and not the other." Koo grins, toothy, scrunchy smile stretched wide. Ears flopping as he continues to brush fingers through his fur. Smoothening them down.

And when I round the table to press a kiss to Jin's cheek, there's fingers at my waist, hand brushing down my front and drawing me up.

Body twisting to peer at the scrunchy smile, the quick kiss stolen from my lips swiftly.

"And can't leave me without a kiss—that's not playing nice." He murmurs, tilting close to steal another.

Quick, brief pecks before I find myself being steered away. Twisted away from the table and nudged towards the doorway.

Brows rising as I try to press back, to stop myself from being insistently steered out.

"Hey!"

"I heard hyungs are planning a secret. That you can't know about."

"But Koo—"

"No ifs, no buts—"

"No coconuts." Jin's voice follows me out, tinged with laughter.

"I don't want a coconut dessert!" I call back.

"Noted." Hobi's laughter is barely muffled, amusement ringing in his voice.

The teasing lilt of their voices following, hushed and conspiring.

Koo's eyes narrow with playful sharpness, nudging me further down the hallway.

"I know the walls are somewhat soundproof but no listening in sneaky."

"Who said I'd do such a thing?"

"We do." Hobi's voice filters out the hallway.

"I would~ you're sneakier than you let on." Yoongi says, stretched out across the sofa, tail swishing languidly.

Having caught the tail end of the conversation.

Ears flickering.

Sneaky eavesdropper.

There's no real hybrid-proof wall to block out enough voice or sound.

"Says you. Listening in are we panther?"

"Some things are meant to be heard." A lazy curling swish that sways in beckon.

"Such as?"

"Right now Tae and Jiminie are plotting..." and then he raises his voice slightly. So there's no mistake it won't be unheard.

"I wouldn't think of any more shampoo switches kits." Voice tinged with warning, a gummy tug to his mouth. A flash of fangs.

"Oh?"

"They were targeting—" and from the nearest bedroom, equally scandalised and huffing.

"Hyung!" in unified pout.

But that bubbling feeling, giddy and light, is so reminiscent of home—so viscerally reminiscent of home there and here—it feels as if both overlap. As if between Yoongi and my laughter, between the yelled pouts and the layer of chatter somewhere distant, I can hear how easily...seamlessly Binnie and Eunwoo's voices and presences would meld. That for an instant—it feels like they do.

And in that lightness, a flash of yearning. For that to become a reality.

---------------------

🌞: I've left a surprise on your desk.

You left it? or Jinnie did? or Koo?

🌞: I did!

But they made it

🌞: ...it was my heart and soul that went into it!

You're my heart~

🌞: You're a charmer kit... spending too much time with the oranges?

Just automatic when it comes to you.

My lips tug up wider and wider. Stretching across my face as I stare at the messages, see the three dots appear. Vanish. Appear.

A gif of a kitten covering its face with paws. An animated blush before it blows a kiss. Paw stretching out to reach me.

Hobi's last day brings a buzz about the centre, with the people he's worked with, the kids he's spent time with—the part of the centre that's been touched by the signature caramel-nutty-sweetness and heart shaped smiles.

It brings a sugar-high fuelled buzz.

It brings a quiet melancholy in the feeling that even though I share a home with him, there was a difference in sharing this space, this part of my life with him.

It's an unfounded melancholy because I know months later he'll be back to start full-time.

It's just—a quiet pang of missing something I haven't lost.

I haven't even gotten to see Jin or Koo with how unsettled Min Junie had become at the knowledge that he wasn't going to be seeing his favourite twirly kitten hyung on a daily basis.

Hadn't been able to go meet the two with how upset the news had made Min Junie. Big sad cub eyes welling with tears, clinging desperately to Hobi—because Hobi had become normalcy, had become routine, had become safety.

Hobi had been here just as long almost as I had spent with Min Junie.

And now he was attached to Hobi, clinging to him with a fervent desperation, anxious to let go. Desperate to douse him in his scent.

Though realistically Hobi could visit still. Realistically he would still visit. I knew that.

I knew there'd be no way that Hobi would be able to keep away.

But that didn't make Min Junie cling any less.

🌻Have you got Min Junie with you?

🌞: Hasn't left my side. If Jangmi doesn't steal him away first I might smuggle a baby bear out myself 🤫🤫

🌻Spilling your secrets to your supervisor doesn't seem wise

🌞: You're only my boss for the rest of the day~

🌻Leaving me so easily 🥺🥺🥺🥺

🌞: Noooooo never... where are you? I'll come find you... I'll cling to YOU all day...

🌻I'm going to Ji Ah... maybe one sweetheart's still loyal to me

🌞: I'M LOYAL

My lips twitch.

🌞: Baby bear's loyal too!

[......]

"Hi Ji Ah honey~"

Wide meerkat eyes peer at me from over her notebook, the pages eased shut.

It might be a gentler motion now.

But the sentiment is the same.

The diary's still off-limits. its contents are still hidden. Still private.

And she guards it so fiercely, so completely—stuck to it, kept within eye range or tucked out of sight that there's no contemplation of just taking it as Ji Soo had suggested.

The idea shot down, chagrined even as he'd said it.

Even though he'd seen some of the drawings, had tried to make sense of the jagged shadows and angry shapes. Of the pointed talons and teeth with no face, no features.

She tilts her head towards the door. A tilt of her chin to gesture to the noise and hum of sounds she can hear from beyond it.

"The kids are all in the play centre with Hobi and Tae. It's his last official day. But you know him.. he'll be around, can't keep him away."

Her lips curl up, nodding in agreement.

Eyes contemplating as they stare at the door, then at me.

"Want to go? We don't have to stay long." Words softly encouraging. Bolstering.

Quietly wondering...debating...wondering...

Then a small subtle shake of her head. Not out of wariness or fear. But a no for now.

Her eyes gesture it. Not now.

Hand patting the space beside her as she looks at me.

I shut the door behind me, and I realise her eyes have never stopped tracking that motion. That doing so eases a subconscious tension in her posture.

Safer behind closed doors.

Safer in an enclosed space.

A pang of empathy echoes through my body—knowing all too well that the situations were different but the circumstances that had both of us confined were from the same cause.

Feel that ever-present surge of protectiveness and tenderness when it comes to Ji Ah, when it comes to knowing her, understanding her fears and knowing what they're rooted in.

Knowing, as I've gotten to know her, that her silence is chosen. Her muteness is a mix of conditioned silence and a determination to keep a hold of those secrets, of those truths until the very end.

But keeping silent is stifling.

How much of it is being pushed further and further inside? How much of that silence is paining her day in, day out.

How much is it for someone so young and small to burden? To weigh on her shoulders?

The bed dips as I sink down beside her, arm unfurling and stretching out in invite. A shuffled closeness before she carefully clambers onto my lap.

So small for her age. So worn down and undernourished and weak still. Nutrients and balanced meals and a steadily increasing calorie count would help her body physically but psychological burdens had a way of gnawing away at that progress regardless.

"How was your night? Sleep well?" she makes a teetering gesture with her hand.

Good and bad.

But then her head tilts, fingers reaching up to brush underneath my eyes.

As if she reads the exhaustion there. The similarly disturbed nights.

Gentle...gentle... and worried eyes.

The emotion in her gaze hurts to look at because she shouldn't be worrying, she shouldn't be fretting... she should be looking after herself and putting herself first.

But she traces with featherlight touches the faint, faint shadows.

Faint echoes of the darker circles marring her own.

Plagued with unrest.

Dreams, nightmares, memories—all blurring together, all poured out into her notebook.

My gaze drops to it.

And fingers drop to my palm.

Tracing out letters and words.

A question.

Why can't you sleep?

My lips quirk up, a faint smile.

"I'll tell you why if you tell me why you've been sleeping bad kit." fingers gently poking at her shadowed eyes.

Face scrunching with distaste, eyes lingering, searching before her head dips once in a silent yes.

"Been having some dreams...that make me feel sad when I wake." I murmur. Feel her shuffle on my lap as she presses closer, as if silently saying she too knows what that feels like.

"But-- do you know why I'm not sad?"

Why?

"I wake up and I tell someone. That I had a bad dream. That it made me feel lonely. And then they stay with me. And it's not lonely anymore."

My fingers poke lightly at her side.

"You're not alone you know. I know you still think it."

Her eyes flash with disagreement but wilts under the reproachful look I give her, knowing all too well that her silence both for what had happened and for what she still dreamt about-- I knew her silence was her way of dealing with it alone.

"So, I remember that I'm not. It does make it easier Ji Ah."

Slowly...slowly... my body stills as she reaches for her notebook. Flipping it to the back. To a clean page.

I dream that I'm still getting poisoned.

My heartbeat thuds loud and heavy. Weighed with misery and anger.

Fingers brushing against my wrist to soothe me. An achy laugh welling at my lips.

Because of course she's still trying to comfort. Putting others before her own pain.

"The scorpions have been caught... you've met Jimin and Joon—the wolf and fox officers?"

She nods tentatively.

"They caught them. The bad guys who hurt you have been caught."

Shining, shining relief. Overwhelmed by it.

"They're never going to hurt a single person again."

Really?

"They hurt children...we don't forgive that." I murmur softly. Fingers smoothening down her back.

Feel her body relax slightly.

Then her hand's moving across the page again.

The scorpions were told to hurt me.

"By ?"

He likes the pain. Likes seeing what pain looks like.

He.

Whoever handles the scorpions, the low-level brute force was male.

The next words she writes makes my skin feel cold.

He enjoys it.

"Did he use to order them to hurt you?"

A controlled nod.

The flinch that wracks her whole body isn't as controlled. Isn't able to be stifled.

"Was he a scorpion too?"

...

It's him I realise. The person who ordered the pain, who ordered the constant hurting, that cycle of poisoning and conditioning that fear in her. That her words would cost her... it's him.

That nameless threat that hovers over her still.

That poison that still taints her fears, drowns them. Keeps her from speaking even now.

It's not the scorpions having a hold over her.

It's the man who'd ordered them to hurt her.

The one with the power to cause her to be trapped in this endless cycle of pain.

To be subjected to the scorpions' torture in the first place.

No.

But his poison hurt more.

My mind catalogues it, sifts and files through any type of hybrid species I knew of that could be poisonous, that could secrete venom or sting.

It had to be a species more powerful and dangerous than scorpions.

Because like her lab results showed, in her bloodwork, the scorpion venom was constantly administered in repeated cycles and doses. A pattern of their abuse.

A testament to its short-term effect.

Scorpion venom was painful. But it wore off quick on meerkat hybrids. It wore off quick.

So her bloodwork was consistent with the incompatibility of venom in her bloodstream, it wasn't working long-term, so the pain was repetitive, sharp bursts of it.

But whose venom hurt more? Who was more poisonous?

"Can you tell me where he injected the venom?"

Her lips curl in a hollow, empty smile. Eyes vacant.

She lets the pen fall from her hand before she makes a clawing curled motion with her hand. The motion a sharp, quick strike as it jabs out before drawing back.

The brief echo of pressure where she presses her fingers to my throat and then lets them fall.

Bitten at the neck.

Stung.

Poisoned.

The motion of furling and unfurling is swift.

So the species must be too. That and the agile swiftness of a man considerably bigger, stronger, faster against a small child.

There's a buzz as my phone goes off.

It goes ignored as I stare at the haunting misery in Ji Ah's eyes. The way her head hunches lower when my eyes fall to her neck.

"There isn't a scar though. The stinging of the tails, of the injections... they left marks."

A sharp violent flinch that has my words being bitten back.

Wounded eyes staring at me.

"Oh sweetheart I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to remind you."

She tugs at the sleeves of her shirt, hiding more and more of her wrists and hands from sight. Shadowed eyes slipping away as if she can't bear to see whatever my own hold.

Whatever torrid mix of feelings and pain sear through me.

Quick and harsh.

As if my own words drive themselves into my gut, lodge themselves there, make my breath waver at the agony that flickers in her eyes before she shakes her head.

And then slowly...slowly tilts her head—buzz.

The sight of an unmarked throat, void of scars or of that bite makes a shuddering wave of relief wash over me, fingers gently skimming her small gland. Feel the faint tremor as she grips my fingers. And stills them on her throat.

Tapping lightly.

Here.

"You were bitten here?"

Nod.

"Does it still hurt? Were you bitten more than once?"

Once. At the beginning.

It kept me from running.

It was a warning.

A simmering, coiling heat of anger threads itself through my gut, winds tighter and tighter at the way the words spill easily from her pen.

How long had she been there? How long had it been since she'd learnt to stop? Had learnt that if she didn't stop then it hurt more...

Buzz. Buzz.

And then a piercing alarm goes off. Ears stiffening with alertness. Registering the sound, hand moving to tug my phone out without second thought.

Immediate reaction to the familiar pager sound that's gone off.

Serpent hybrid's missing from ICU ward.

And then flashing underneath it is a follow up. A churning sense of alarm.

Volatile and aggressive.

The ICU wasn't too far from these private rooms. Wasn't too far from Ji Ah's room.

But he needed help.

But Ji Ah needed to be safe.

Her eyes are full of questions and worries as she looks at me.

"Just give me a moment."

And I ease away from her to go towards the door, eyes quickly flitting to scan the surroundings—eyes falling to the plains-clothes officers on guard, eyes flickering up to me.

Watch them silently approach.

"The serpent hybrid who's in the ICU's gotten out. But he's volatile."

Alertness shifting in their expressions, a different intensity as they exchange a quiet glance.

"We're meant to be stationed here."

"But he needs protection too. And right now he acts as a threat because of how volatile he is. There's kids in these wards. The ICU isn't far."

"We're protecting Ji Ah."

"The kids here are also tied to the case. You're protecting them by helping find him."

There's two officers. One human. One hybrid.

And it's clear that the hybrid officer takes charge of the situation, nose briefly flaring and then a flash of frustration at being unable to detect any pheromones, any scent to help gauge the severity of the situation or the way any emotions might teeter.

But regardless of the news, regardless of the alarm that's been signalled to every worker in the centre—it's procedure being followed.

Ji Ah's my priority.

So I stay with her.

Ji Ah's under my care.

So I look after her.

The centre-wide mass message and alert is to signify that the serpent hybrid is out of the ICU—which poses significant risk to others but also to himself, so it alerts caregivers with vulnerable children hybrids, it alerts untrained staff, it alerts people who can help to act.

Ji Ah's worried gaze follows me as I make my way back to her, the door locked behind us.

"Nothing you need to worry about Ji Ah."

Her eyes still carry worry.

Searching and assessing, eyes flitting back towards the shut door.

To the phone still clutched in my hand.

"I'm here. And the others are helping another hybrid."

Her eyes flash with a brief pulse of curiosity.

A tentative thought blooms in my mind, circling back to the bed, eyes glancing outside. Normal. Settled.

So still indoors.

My mind flashes with a mental map of the centre—trying to figure the possible places the serpent hybrid could've gotten. The ICU ward not too far from the privatised rooms but also with connecting corridors to side exits and opening out into the offices.

And I'm drawn out of trying to mentally calculate the distance from the ICU to the more open areas of the centre, areas that it'd be harder to help isolate him and draw him back and away from the mixed variation of hybrid and human staff. The office workers were less trained which meant that it was a potential weak spot because of the vulnerability of being confronted with a volatile serpent hybrid and the female staff and—

A tug at my sleeve tilts my gaze to Ji Ah.

Fingers reaching out to tap my phone screen in silent prompting question.

Wanting to know.

"Well we've—Jimin and Joon and the other officers rescued a lot of other children you know. From the same sort of place you and Min Junie were."

She stiffens even though an aching vulnerable brimming hopefulness surges up and wells in her eyes, bright and shining with palpable relief.

"And there's some who are leaving the centre because they're getting better—some that are moving to different centres and hospitals. And then there's some who are going because there are better places to help them."

Confusion furrows her brows.

Pen moving against paper.

But centre safe.

"It is safe." I murmur, hand brushing down her spine, tucking her close to me.

"But sometimes we try our best but there's others who can help more, who can keep them safer. Sometimes some behaviours aren't safe for everyone else."

She nods slightly, curving to shift her body closer to mine. To tuck against my side.

"So we're safe. And the others are going to make sure that one of the adults who got hurt by the same people aren't hurt either."

They're safe too now?

I nod.

"They'd been hurt too."

How?

Silence.

"In a way you'll never be hurt." I murmur in return, body tucking hers more shielded against my own. Holding her all the whilst knowing that somewhere on the other side of that door there was a serpent hybrid who needed the same help and focused care, but he needed to be safe first.

My phone buzzes.

🌞: Where are you?

🌻Still with Ji Ah.

🌻Door's closed.

🌻Where are you and Tae?

🌞: Got Min-Junie. In your office. Door's shut.

🌻Good... don't leave either of them.

🌞: You're okay?

🌻We're okay—you?

🌞: Safe and sound.

Protocol means they'll have all highly trained employees trying to find Jihyun.

He's got size on his side... it won't be easy— thinking easily of the large man of 35. The considerable bulk and mass despite what he'd gone through. The difficulties multiple doctors and caregivers had had in helping to restrain him. Remembering angry, violent straining muscles and pooled fangs and eyes slitted with inhumane venom.

And then he pauses...

A few long moments before my phone buzzes again.

Twice.

Ji Soo won't let him reach the children's wing... it's all going to be fine cub! The message interjecting through Hobi's. Phone snatched away.

My head tilts into a quick subconscious nod. Lips curving.

Bolstered further by the assurance in his words and the message that follows from Hobi.

🌞I'll come find you when I get the all clear from Ji Soo here~ be right with you kit!

I angle the phone to show Ji Ah.

Feel her shuffle closer, peering at the screen.

A silent encouraged smile on her lips as she nods determinedly.

"See—Hobi's going to come get us."

And whatever situation was on the other side of the door would settle.

Jihyun wasn't going to hurt anyone. Not even himself.

[......]

The only indication of time is the occasional glance at my screen, turned away when Ji Ah gently tugs it out of my hand—eyes reading the unspoken antsiness in my posture, fingers brushing against my wrist. Quiet comfort and shared solace. We're safe.

But I don't know what's happening outside. The world around the room seeming disconnected.

Isolated by its location, by its safety, by the closed door.

I don't know how long it's been, Ji Ah's body steadily sinking against mine, turning heavier as she slowly, slowly drifts off to sleep—

There's a sharp rap of knuckles against the door, the sound heavy and uneven.

Body pressing closer.

"Who is it?"

A heavy thud of a hand against the door, the sound making my ears flicker up and twist.

"Open the door." Words snarled heavy and weighted.

Three things happen.

Ji Ah flinches hard at the sound of the voice, at the sharp command muffled by the wood but decapitating, making her body lock up beside me. Fingers curling painfully tight at my wrist with a distressed stifled sound as she shrinks back. And in doing so desperately wrenches me back too. A feverish shake of her head.

My ears flicker and twist at the sound. Twitching at the hostility in the voice. Placing the reverberation of it, the low rippled sound as pure aggression. It takes two beats of breath to realise it's Jihyun. Sounding wilder and more rougher and more animal than I've ever heard him. Sounding borderline inhumane. Something... something lost in the snarled words. Something unhinged in it.

And then on the other side of the door, a voice sharp and low and rough.

"Don't. Whatever the reason—don't open the door (Y/N)."

A twisting pain ripples through me at the sharp, fierce warning and command that comes from a voice I know all too well.

"...Hobi?" a sharp visceral fear that sinks in when he echoes the words again with the same unwavering harshness. Rough grit out words. Commanding.

"Don't open the door (Y/N)."

Hobi.

My stomach plummets.

Whatever grounding reassurance I'd had, whatever secure confidence and faith I'd had is wrenched away at the sound of tightly-wound syllables that are barely contained... why's Jihyun with Hobi? Why's Jihyun asking me to open the door—demanding it and Hobi's commanding I don't?

Unstable...unstable...unstable...

Volatile and aggressive.

The words from the message paint themselves violently across my sight.

Hand grabbing my phone.

Skin feeling like livewire- buzzing with discomfort and unease and a ringing sense of something having gone terribly, terribly wrong.

No signal.

Fingers fumbling to reset, restart—do something to reboot it again.

Cold, cold dread seeping into my veins.

The access to emergency calls blocked off.

Three numbers dialled but the call button doesn't work—it won't process the call. Won't connect it through.

Four walls.

But a cage. Sealing off contact to the outside. To the police. To emergency services.

"(Y/N) call the police." The voice, disembodied and just on the other side of the door, calls out. Voice level.

And then a sharp hiss of breath, poisoned and unhinged.

"I... I can't..." words hushed. Trembling fingers clutching the phone tighter.

A sickening lurching realisation that I was cut off. Any way of getting help... any way of getting into contact with the police... with Jimin or Namjoon... it was cut off.

"Open the fucking door or the feline will be the first to die." Colder, furious words tinged with a venomous promise that I can't allow—a violent tremor that wracks my body.

Eyes flickering to Ji Ah.

Mine to protect.

And then to the door.

To the voice sharp as it tells me to not open the door.

He's also mine to protect.

Ji Ah or Hobi.

Ji Ah or Hobi.

Trembling fingers being squeezed by another hand. Smaller. Also trembling. But the grip harsh.

Panicked eyes welling with scared tears as Ji Ah nods shakily.

Ji Ah or Hobi.

"Don't. He won't do—" a stifled sound.

Suppressed.

Trying to hide it.

Muffle it.

A pained grunt of a sound.

Ears twitching, twisting sharp as they register it.

The sound being driven in like a blow to my gut. Leaving my lungs feeling tight. Chest feeling winded. Constricting harsh.

"Last chance. Open the fucking door."

Fingers slipping from mine to let me go. To tell me to go.

I press the phone into her hand.

"Get into the corner Ji Ah."

Her hand clutches at the phone.

Teary eyes looking at me. Trying to tilt closer to me.

But my hand nudges her back.

The last thing she needs to be is anywhere near me as I glance at the door.

"Go into the corner Ji Ah." Words firmer. Hard. Watching her retreat before I turn.

Before I'm moving towards the door, trying to will the tremor in my hand to settle. Gripping the door tightly once I've unlocked it to wrench it open.

A brief glimpse of a hand at Hobi's nape and hair, fisted tight enough it forces his head at an unnatural, painful angle. Fangs dropping away from where they'd hovered fatally close to his throat, to his gland. A brief glimpse of an uneven rise and fall to Hobi's chest, winded, and the curl of his torso half-hunched.

And nothing but pure anger as he twists his head, but the grip tightens. Forcing him to still.

A glimpse before he's shoved roughly into me, stumbling back as his weight teeters against me, hands reaching out to steady him before the door's shoved shut. Blocked off by the serpent filling the doorway.

Eyes alight with wicked, feral delight and they gleam as they turn into slits, tongue darting out as if he can taste the scents in the air and relishes in them—burnt caramel and the sour, sharp scent of Ji Ah's distress.

The combination of the two makes my nose recoil, makes my throat tighten at the acridness that coats my tongue.

A hand steadying me and shoving me back behind him as Hobi twists, backtracking, stumbling steps that trip over my own as he pushes us further into the room. Incidentally closing us off further into the room with the serpent hybrid.

Slitted gaze fixed with sheer wild hunger as he takes in the space.

"Now treating us differently isn't fair is it? The girl gets a private room and I get a room where you're trying to pump me full of drugs day in day out." Voice low and guttural. Uneven.

There's a sharp, lethal edge to his words, eyes glittering with a dangerous gleam as his eyes slide from me and Hobi to peer at the corner.

The scents in the rooms noticeably swell. Sharp anger laced with terror and through it all—piercing through it is a poisoned edge of something darkly vicious. As if his venom seeps itself into his pheromones.

"Jihyun if you let us help you we can get you—" I begin when the hand curled around my wrist tightens to a bruising grip. Hand clasping mine in warning. In protectiveness.

Body angling to shield mine when slitted eyes slide over to mine. Holding them.

A flash of red hunger searing through them.

Fangs dropping heavy and low over his lips.

There's a glossy sheen to his lips, saliva that drips from his fangs. Hand brushing carelessly across his mouth, raking over fangs, an instinctive snap of them as he stares. Advances into the room.

Something at the sight of his slow motions stir something in the back of my mind.

In front of me Hobi's body grows stiff.

"Help me? Why help me?"

"The last thing he needs is our help." The words corrosive as Hobi spits them out, voice tight with a sharpness and cold detachment and anger so different from him. So displaced.

Surely Hobi knows that the serpent can't help his behaviours, that it's a conditioned response kicking in—

But the ringing laugh is manic and tilts off an edge that threatens to spiral into a recklessness. Eyes glittering as he slowly advances.

As with every step, Hobi backtracks with me.

The sudden motion of him lunging forward is too quick to note almost, too quick to avoid so I do the only thing I can. Hands shoving the body in front of mine away and out of the way. Panicked urgency and frantic terror to shove Hobi away from the approaching threat. Eyes meeting red slitted ones full on.

A stumbled step back when Jihyun's jowls stretch, an unnaturalness to them, somewhere between unshifted and not—a mix of where his animal biology pushes forward with how his head rears back, fangs glinting as his mouth moves to strike—

A coldness sinks in. Threatens to numb my body, limbs coiling as they poise to strike—

"NO!" harsh jagged splintering terror shattering the air, the word tearing the air apart. Stumbling back and tripping.

Landing hard against the floor.

The looming threat towering over me, hands stinging where they meet the floor, trying to scrabble back when just as quick a hand reaches out into the front of my shirt to yank me up. An easy display of strength that the sheer mass of the bulked serpent that I can't pull away from.

Cruel cold eyes turning to look at me. Body twisting quickly to try wrench myself free, dragged upright, towards the threat, towards unnaturally stretched jowls that glitter with a row of teeth just waiting to tear through flesh.

I don't dare to look at Hobi or Ji Ah. Breath ragged as I'm yanked into forced closeness to Jihyun.

Knowing that every single movement, the slightest of motions are being tracked, watched attentively.

"He reacts badly to females. We think it's a survival reflex kicking in. He spent a lot of time being tortured... his own venom—"

My gaze flits down to his hand. Curled tight at my front. Keeping me pinned close.

The trace of saliva still there.

...

But no burn marks. No reaction to the venom in his saliva. No reaction to the same venom that—

Tracing the faint burn marks, the faint pink that remains of them.

In the back of my head something continues to stir to life, something that tries to rouse itself desperately. Even as an apprehension begins to sink in. Eyes taking him in all over again.

Trying to see what we'd missed.

This close to Jihyun I can feel the sharpness of his breaths.

This close I can see his fangs hanging heavy.

Can see the intensity of the hunger in slitted snake eyes.

And feel my spine tighten at the quiet stifled pained sound from the far corner of the room.

Gaze never veering off mine as lips slowly stretch.

Curling up.

To bare a wide fanged snarling animalistic grin.

"Learnt well haven't you little meerkat. Not a word." Words dripping off his tongue, venom and saliva and dark satisfaction.

And those words connect the stirring in my mind with a cold undeniable clarity.

His words echo.

And I sense Hobi's body stiffen.

See it shift slightly. See him straighten from his half-hunched form.

Angling himself between the serpent and Ji Ah—to block her off from the direct line of sight.

And even from the gap the serpent's body's put between ours, crowded close enough that every limb, every limb, every inch of me is coiled tight with the thrumming urge of flight-or-flight beginning to sink into my bones.

A tension sinking in heavier when I realise who the man is standing in front of me.

Realise the danger standing in front of me. Standing in the same room as Ji Ah.

"You—"

"Don't seem to catch on quick do you?"

Tongue sweeping over his teeth, against his fangs. Tasting and relishing in the venom.

Slitted eyes alight with a cavernous pit of hunger that only grows when his step forward forces himself into my space.

He wouldn't need to coil back and strike—the motion Ji Ah had made earlier.

It hadn't been a scorpion who'd bitten her first.

My eyes settle on his fangs.

The sheer size of them.

It'd been Jihyun.

And to think all this time he'd been here.

"When the meerkat knew well enough to stay put." Words saturated with a vicious smugness.

Eyes dropping to track the slight bob of my throat.

Hand reaching out.

Lips quirking wider at the faint flinch of cold, cold fingers against my skin.

A minute step taken that I see from my peripheral.

That Jihyun sees because his fingers grip my jaw. Hard enough to hurt.

"I wouldn't try that feline." Words low with warning. Grip tightening, gums aching, and teeth forced into a painful grind.

This close... this close my biology recognises a pure, primal threat when it sees one. This close my mind flashes with panic.

"Get your hand off her." Words tight. Barely restrained.

Dripping with a growled sharpness.

The grip tightens before it loosens.

Drops to brush a finger slow down the side of my throat. Circle my gland as if he can already sense the emotions waiting to spill from the tissue and betray whatever I'm thinking in that instant. Though choosing one singular thought would be fruitless.

Though there's a harsh stark clarity that sits there.

He'd been at the centre the whole time. The person who'd poisoned Ji Ah and tossed her to the cruelty of the scorpions was Jihyun. And he'd been there the whole time.

And yet... yet I couldn't wrap my head around it.

It didn't make sense even though there was no denying he knew Ji Ah, he'd hurt Ji Ah.

But how...why was he here?

The press of a nail against my gland is a slight, sharp reminder of the shift of power in the room.

That every thought I'd had, every perception to be careful, to remember that Jihyun was a vulnerable patient has been erased in face of the danger and threat he presents because he intends to follow through with it, because he's in full conscious awareness of it.

He's not a threat to himself. He's a threat to us.

And with his finger pressing hard against my gland—a painful sharpness to the touch, I know he feels the way my body shifts, trying to press back from the touch but the flash of challenge in his eyes dares me to.

Feels the way my throat constricts.

Tracks the motion with a primal visceral hunger that threatens to tear those same fangs into my throat.

Feel a shiver run down my spine when I see his fangs and realise that they've torn their way through Ji Ah's throat. Clamped down and poisoned her.

Feel the threat of an unhinged predator standing in front of me.

Toying with the air around us, with the space.

Knowing full well he commands it.

He's sealed us all in it.

"Would you rather I go for the child feline? Or your throat?"

The venomous hate pools in his gaze, drowns me in it.

He's not had something against females.

He has something against me.

But that means the moment the attention, the intensity of his eyes shift to Hobi or Ji Ah—it turns the situation more volatile.

More dangerous.

My body goes still.

"You've got something against me. So end it with me."

Cruel wicked eyes train on me.

"It starts with you. It doesn't end with you doe."

Eyes flitting away.

To stare at the corner.

The scent of Ji Ah's fear thickening. Swelling.

A quiet sound. Hitched breath.

Stifled, suffocated distress.

And he's the reason.

A swirling pit of anger grows low in my gut. Spreads like liquid fire in my veins. Tamped down by the cold dread that anything can tip the situation into something lethal.

He needs to get out. I need to get him out of here.

Away from Hobi. Away from Ji Ah.

"What—" the nail presses harder. Threatens to try pierce through skin.

"What do you want? What'll make you go?"

"Oh I'm leaving. But you're coming with me."

[......]

"Move." the hand at my throat drops down to grip at my forearm harshly. Weighted press of fingertips digging into my skin. Bruising and unrelenting.

My steps fumble into motion. Yanked forward.

"Don't." my steps threaten to freeze. They turn leaden at the desperation in that one word. In the pain and misery and pleading implore.

"Move or it won't take me seconds to tear the feline's throat open. Then as he bleeds to death screaming at the poison– little meerkat why don't you tell them. Ah wait..." fangs snapping at air, snapping at the air too close to my jaw, feeling the ghost of hot breath and sharp tipped fangs almost... almost sinking into skin. The scrape of them leaving a pained sting where the venom touches skin. Hissing quietly.

A brief taste of what could happen if I let the focus shift.

"Move. Or I'll let you watch them both die choking on their own blood and screaming in pain. So why don't you take the easy way... and move."

My eyes meet Hobi's.

Jihyun's wrong. It'll begin and end with me.

Finally allow myself to. Reading the desperation and fervent refusal in his eyes. Eyes begging me to stay. To not listen.

Body half-hovering somewhere between covering Ji Ah out of sight, posture stiffened with alertness. And hand stretched out towards me, wanting to cross the distance back to me. The tension in his body tightly constrained, barely held back.

Words unspoken but brimming at my lips, wanting to push through, wanting to reach him but the weight of the risk, of whatever could happen in split seconds makes my body coil tighter. Stiffen with tension.

Feel it press in on me from each end and angle until it's suffocating.

"If I go... if I go with you... you'll leave them alone. You'll walk out first."

Slitted serpentine eyes staring at me with cold sharpness.

Tongue tracing the tip of a fang.

"Won't even let a drop of venom touch them." Words lofty. Lilted with a softness that laces each word with a hiss.

"Say it clearly... that you'll leave in front of me and the door locks behind me before I go anywhere." My words waver slightly, steeling myself for the sharp assessing stare. The quirk of his mouth that exposes the harshness of his fangs.

"The doors will lock. I won't hurt them."

A modicum of relief that flares into something wider, lungs shuddering with air, flaring with the relief that they'll be safe and out of harm's way... an ache loosening from my chest.

I take a willing step forward.

"You won't make it out the centre you fucking monster."

"Good luck calling the police. Or anyone. What good are cameras and phones if I can control them, if I have who controls them right in the palm of my hand?"

The signal was down. And somehow... somehow Jihyun was involved in it. He was involved in something much bigger than we'd realised.

We'd kept him here at the centre.

We'd kept the threat within our walls.

And he knew how secure he was. He knew how to get himself in.

He'd know how to get himself out.

"Stay... stay with Ji Ah." my voice sounds strangled. Hoarse and distant. Detached from the leaden steps I take towards the door, the grip on my arm tightening, yanking me to make me move quicker, steps half-fumbling over each other.

"(Y/N)..." my name cracking on his lips.

Strained and aching and agonised.

My eyes flit to her, to where she presses herself even further into the corner, but her eyes are already fixed onto me. Watching me with haunting pain in her eyes, clutching tightly to the phone. I nod at it. Feel my heart hammer louder against my chest, trying to burst past bones and flesh, a rapid wild pulse that he can taste the fear from as he wrenches me to the door, yanking it open.

Eyes scanning the outside.

But it's isolated.

Empty.

And I told the officers to go.

Willing that they were quick in finding Hobi and Ji Ah.

"Close the door Hobi." I murmur, each syllable cracked and strained. Throat clenching painfully as I swallow around the lump lodged there, feel the looming threat of venomed fangs hover behind me.

Solid mass of a 35 year old male who'd needed multiple people to subdue him.

And I watch as he slowly approaches the door, nothing but devastation and misery and anger swirling together in deep, deep dark eyes that right now look as if he's going to shatter. But he can't... he needs to get Ji Ah safe. He needs to let Ji Soo and the officers know.

He needs to be strong.

"(Y/N)--" a half step taken too close. The tight grip of a hand that fists into my hair, sudden and abrupt and forceful, as it yanks, arching my throat painfully. Eyes clenching shut briefly at the wild snarl that ripples in the air in front of me and the hiss I can feel slither its way down my spine from behind me.

Forcing the distance again by the unyielding grip of a hand snaked into my hair, dragging me back. Back past the threshold of the room.

Eyes stinging and breaths trying to stay even but they waver, dip and strain despite themselves.

"Close the door feline. Lock it. Take a final look." words sharp with jeered taunt.

I take a willing step back.

Refusing to let his threat anywhere near the two of them.

Heart clenching painfully, hard enough that for a moment everything in my body seems to seize and still.

Breath sharp as I dredge my lips up.

"I love you Hoseokie."

And his eyes blaze with furious wild love.

Clenching the door handle tightly.

Unable to bring himself to let it fall shut.

Heart in my throat, nausea and panic twisting themselves into tight entangled knots around my lungs. Making it hard to breathe when I see the devastation and agony etched harsh into every line of his face.

Trembling lips pressed thin.

"Close the door. Close the door. Lock it."

"I can't let you go."

"Lock it. Lock the door." Words harder. Harsher.

The hand in my hair loosens only to snake around from behind.

Broad palm painfully harsh against my nape, fingers bruising against my gland.

A ragdoll his hand manipulates to elicit a sharp sound from the depth of my throat at the sting of nails piercing skin, tainting my scent with the cold venom of him.

Head jerked aside.

"Listen to the doe if you want her survival too."

Tears trickle down thick and heavy and the scent of shame and guilt and misery bleeds into the acrid sharpness of Hobi's scent. Bleeds its ugly taint into his pheromones and clouds them with grief.

"Close the door." I whisper one final time.

Watch it slowly slowly...slowly be pressed shut.

A choked sobbed sound from behind it as the lock clicks into place.

A heavy thud of a fist against the wood.

Ears twisting as my heart plummets.

"Why are you doing this?" my voice cracks.

"I'd had enough of waiting." and the hissed triumph that curls itself around me, that slithers itself under my skin to take its poisoned root there does nothing but make my pulse ricochet. A hammering betraying tell that I know everything is in his control.

Ji Ah POV:

Bad. Something bad's out there. Something bad and dangerous and scary.

And that something hasn't gone. It hasn't left. It's followed me here. I've brought it here. I'm bad, bad, bad, bad. Words written over and over and over, carved into the pages. Scribbled there with a harshness.

Bad, bad, bad.

Was meant to look out for Min Junie, was meant to protect fawn unnie, was meant to keep them safe and stay safe, safe, safe, safe--

"You really think you're making it out of here alive? You've seen too much, meerkat. Maybe... maybe if you'd kept those eyes shut then maybe he'd still be alive—"

Bad, bad, bad, bad.

Fingers digging into my arms, dragging painful lines across skin.

Deserve the hurt. Deserve the pain. Didn't protect...didn't protect.

Bad, bad, bad, bad--

"Ji Ah honey—what's wrong? What's bad?"

Finger jabbed into my chest over and over.

I'm bad.

"Honey, are you hurt?"

Fingers dragged harsh at my chest, trying to claw out the feeling of fear so strong I'm going to be sick, I'm going to be sick, hands scrabbling as I twist.

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad—

"Easy...easy Ji Ah, easy...easy, let me help... let me help." voice soft, softer and gentler and kinder than I deserve. Than a bad child deserves.

Min Junie deserves (Y/N) unnie's help. Not me, not me, not me—quiet pain noiseless.

No sound left in my throat.

It'd all been torn out.

Forced out.

Voice locked away, throat noiselessly opening and closing, squeezing tight as if those hands are against them again, trying to force out every last bit of air from them.

Voice shaking and quiet. And when I look up, they're laced with pained tears in sorrowful eyes. Fingers gentle as they pry away the clawing force of my own, words soft and trembling.

"No more Ji Ah..." words trembling but her hand refusing to let mine go, refusing to let my hand grip at my throat to wrench away the clasping pressure I still feel.

My mouth parts. Strangled breaths as I shake my head.

Please, please, please... help.

"Don't make a sound. You want to keep the others safe? Want me to not hurt them? Then not a sound—don't want to have them stinking of fear before the bidders get here, do you? They don't sell nearly as quick sometimes."

Gleaming dead eyes peering down at me, body towering and pressed close—scent thick and strong and awful and-- I swallow back a gag, throat tightening at the clasp of fingers.

Squeezing harder and harder.

"All you have to do is keep your mouth shut."

"Ji Ah!" the words harsher, louder, startling me, body jolting as a rush of air expands my lungs.

Strangled breaths that are choked of air as my body slumps, fingers no longer clawing at my throat but clutching tightly at (Y/N) unnie instead.

Safe, safe, safe, safe—

"Stay with me sweetheart." voice grounding in its quiet firmness, eyes damp but burning with fire, refusing to look away. Her hand easily surrendered to the tight grip of my own.

Clutching harder, harder, harder—oh.

Head lowering with shame and regret and guilt as I stare at the sharp indents on the inside of her palm, angry red where my fingers have dug in, almost broken skin.

Staring dejected at her.

Words spilling out in noiseless apologies.

I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry—

"No. Nothing to be sorry for. Did someone hurt your throat before Ji Ah?"

A wary nod. Chin tucking low to press against my chest.

Head folded.

"Did they use to hurt your throat a lot?"

Nod.

"Why?"

Noiselessly...just how they wanted me... my finger taps at my lips and then my throat.

No voice, no words.

No words, no secrets revealed.

No secrets revealed, no-one hurts.

No-one hurts, not even unnie.

"They hurt you to make you quiet?"

Nod.

"But they won't hurt you anymore. I won't let them."

But it was too risky. Too dangerous.

Not at the cost of her. Not at the cost of soft, sharp strength that'd saved Min Junie and had saved me too.

I shake my head quickly.

Not risking it, not risking Min Junie, not risking you unnie, not risking the centre.

No, no, no, no, no, no—

"You know you're safe here, right?"

A stilted nod.

"You know I'm going to keep you safe." not a question. Not uncertain. Confirming what I already know.

A nod.

"You know I'm safe right?"

A shake of my head.

"...Ji Ah... honey look here."

Eyes unwillingly meeting hers, the glimmer of tears visible in soft, soft doe eyes.

A pained sound bubbles up, but it remains stuck in my throat. And I can't choke it out, no matter how much I wish my throat would expand and let the noise free.

Don't cry unnie.

Fingers shaking as they reach out a hand to brush against her cheek, against warm skin, against the quiet breaths that tremble with my name. Trying to still the tears before they even spill out. Trying to will the dampness in her eyes away.

"I'm safe honey... if you've been keeping quiet because you're scared for me then you don't need to be."

I can't...

"I'm tougher than I look. I protect who's mine remember? You, Min Junie... even the big cats that're fierce... they're still mine to protect."

But—

"So, if there's something you won't say because you're worried, I want you to tell me. Don't hide for me."

My eyes duck away from her gaze. Guilty and ashamed and too terrified to agree so easily.

There's always been a gentleness, a tenderness in (Y/N) unnie's voice, soft-spoken but so utterly strong that there's never been a single doubt that she isn't one of the safest, strongest to help me but that plea, those two words never manage to make it to my lips.

And even now her eyes are gentle but there's a sharp strength there for the people who did this.

It'd be easy to tell her.

But it's not easy to get the words out.

They sit at the pit of my stomach, twisting themselves into poisonous, slithering as they wind themselves around my gut.

Fingers nudge my chin up.

Eyes firm.

"I mean it Ji Ah..." a flicker of understanding in her eyes.

Dark, sorrowful knowledge settling in them, in whatever mine give away.

"I know you've had to protect and look out for the others for a long time but it's okay to let me do that for you. It's okay to let unnie be there for you."

Is it...?

"Do you trust me?"

Nod.

"Do you trust Hobi?"

Nod.

"Do you trust Ji Soo?"

Nod.

"Do you trust everyone at the centre?"

Head shake.

"Good. Stick to your instincts. And if they're telling you to trust me—then I need you to listen to those instincts Ji Ah because the three of us? We'll do anything to keep you safe."

B-u-t my fingers trace on her palm.

"I know it's hard and all you've seen and learnt is that there are bad people in the world... but trust the good ones." words hushed and whispered. Eyes encouraging.

Okay? She traces back onto my palm.

....

O k.

[......]

Some days are better than others.

Some harder.

Some bad.

Some days where I want to bury myself under the blankets and never, ever come out of them again.

Some days where it hurts so much to even remember how much pain existed before that I don't want to see and live to realise what after is.

Some days where I forget where I am.

And wake screaming.

Painful screams that make my throat ache but no-one can hear them.

No-one ever hears the cries.

No-one ever heard the begging. The screaming. The cries.

No-one can hear them now. I can't let them.

But some days... some days are good.

Some days are hopeful.

Some days all I want is to let out the words that have been forcefully shut so tight that they don't know how to be freed anymore.

I might be alive... I might be free... I might be safe... but what I had been—just breathing... trapped... looking over my shoulder...

How did my mind get free? How did I let it know I was safe?

"Ji Ah, we're just going to ask some questions that you can nod or shake your head to okay?"

I nod.

"Do you know you're safe now?"

Nod.

"Do you know where you were before wasn't safe?"

Nod.

An approving nod, a bolstering warmth in eyes that are full of understanding.

How long has it been since I've seen that look?

And yet it's all I've seen since coming here. Since being brought here.

"Do you know the people you were with... those adults... they weren't safe. They were dangerous. Do you know that?"

A frantic series of nods.

"Do you know anyone's face?"

Then a venomous voice. Sharp. Stinging. Biting.

"Remember... I'll be nicer... I'll tell them to be nicer to the other kids if you stay quiet."

I nod frantically. Hand tugging at the one that clasps over my mouth, the cold deadness of the touch there in the wicked hunger that's predator and animal and inhumane. Unhinged.

Quiet... quiet... I'll be quiet.

I shake my head in a frantic motion.

No... no I don't know anyone.

I don't know... I don't know...

"Just breathe for me... in...out... in...out..." guiding the unevenness of my breaths to slow, to calm... trying to will it to even at the pure panic that bolts through my body. Poisonous, stinging zaps. Over and over. Stings striking me again and again. Cold laughs echoing. Delighted in causing me pain.

"Scorpion stings aren't working..."

"They're short-term."

"So what's the point?"

"It isn't so much to hurt you is it little meerkat? It's meant to remind you how easy it is to make you hurt. That if it doesn't hurt for as long... we can do it again and again can't we?"

Fingers brushing featherlight across the side of my arm, tracing faint scarred marks. Some newer, some older. But marks all the same.

Tracing and cataloguing. Eyes silently counting.

Tallying them up.

Writing them down. Face turning more grave and serious with each visible mark.

"Ji Ah have you ever been touched in a way you didn't like? Bad touch?"

Hands at my throat, at my nape. Gripping tight to make me watch, pin me down.

"If you're so eager to see things you shouldn't little meerkat maybe we should show you what we'll do once you've learnt to keep that mouth of yours closed."

Screaming, thrashing.

"No don't! Don't hurt them... let them go..." I sob, twisting as I try wrench myself free from the hand at my nape. Hand yanking at my hair, shaking me roughly. Laughing low as my eyes stare frozen at the nightmare in front of me. A smaller girl. Younger. Tinier. A kitten meowling and thrashing with distress, hands shoving...touching...

Bad touch, bad touch, bad touch—

"NO! NO! STOP IT! STOP TOUCHING HER!"

The hand in my hair yanks to a point of harshness where the words peter off into a scream, uneven and forced out my throat, pain stinging my eyes. Ears ringing with the pained cries and eyes burning with the sight in front of me. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong—

"STOP...STOP IT... STOP HURTING HER. STOP!" desperately begging, trying to twist away, body suddenly shoved to the ground. Grip loosened. Hitting the ground hard.

Shuffling forward in stumbling steps, half-tripping, half-running towards, hands clawing at the ones holding the younger kit down.

A hand striking me back. Easily throwing me aside.

Palms stinging and side aching.

Breaths sharp.

Scrabbling back for her.

No, no, no... keep her safe... keep her safe... keep them safe...

I nod.

Hand brushing over my throat, lingering with a sickening feeling in my stomach as my hand trembles. Not able to hover over my own body. Not able to show where they've touched.

Bad touch, bad touch.

The doctor doesn't ask again. Doesn't write it down. Pain and anger and hurt in her eyes as she looks at me. For the first time since... since when... I felt as if being looked at, being seen... didn't mean I was in danger...

For the first time since I can remember thinking back... I don't feel scared when an adult looks at me.

I'd never felt scared of (Y/N) unnie.

Not once.

Because her eyes not once had held anything bad or hurtful for me, for any of the children that she was around. Not once did they look at her with anything but love.

"I'm not telling you to trust me. I'm telling you to give yourself time to figure out whether I'm worthy of that trust Ji Ah. Don't hand it to me. Decide if I've earnt it."

Not once has she demanded anything. Whether that's even helping fulfil needs.

Days stretching on with food untouched, stared at sceptically, mistrustingly, without a scrap of certainty that it wasn't laced with anything.

And those days only slowly...slowly fixed by a familiar figure slipping into the room... my room I was told, and sinking down onto the floor beside me. Both of us staring at the food, sitting in silence until—

A hand reaches out, drawing a mouthful of food to her lips first to eat it. Chewing slowly.

Then empty long minutes afterwards.

To prove it was untampered.

To prove it was safe to eat.

To prove that I could eat.

Days when I wouldn't eat until I'd seen her eat it first.

Until the habit had started breaking. Splintering. Cracking.

And if the walls and shields and barriers hadn't started breaking, splintering, cracking around (Y/N) unnie already then they'd fallen down when a familiar face had found mine.

So soft and round. So healthy. So alive. And so, so, so taken care of.

A face that wasn't drained and exhausted and too thin for a baby.

A face that was proof that it did get better.

Unnie helped him get better.

"Noona!" legs toddling towards me, body colliding with mine with all the force and love and giddiness that a toddler can physically muster and then some.

Squeezing me tightly with the happiest baby growls I'd ever heard and shiny hazel eyes blinking up at me.

A different pair of eyes—soft doe eyes sparkling with happy tears and a wobbly smile as she nods her head when understanding settles.

Your baby bear... I kept him safe for you.

And I know the first person I come to trust... the first adult I trust in my life... is unnie.

So she's the last person I could ever tell.

The last person I could ever put in danger.

[......]

It found her.

It found her.

It found her.

It found her anyways.

I stayed quiet.

But it found her anyways.

[......]

The sobs are so loud. So broken. So angry. Sobbing as he hunches over. Clawing at the door and trying to cleave his hand through it. Hand curled around the lock.

Sobbing her name over and over.

Words sharp and broken growls and spine curled over. Unable to hold himself upright.

My eyes remain fixed to the door.

To the sacrifice made to keep it shut.

Why, why, why... why? Why not give me up? It'd have been easier.

My eyes burn. And the sight of the man on the floor, slumped and defeated blurs with it. The sounds in my throat, that have stayed there stuck and choked there. Trapped there try to break themselves free.

Lungs tight and tight and tighter. Until my hand drags at my throat, fingers scratching harsh where those fangs that had been at fawn unnie's skin had torn through my own. Scratching harder and harder and harder, until that sound that's been trapped inside spills out in a sharp aching scream that seems to come from somewhere. That I don't realise straight away comes from me.

One word.

One plea.

One sacrifice.

[......]

"...unnie."

(I AM SO SO SORRY FOR THE HEARTACHE YOU'VE REACHED AT THE END OF THIS BUT I CRIED MANY TIMES, I HAD TO STOP MANY TIMES BECAUSE OF THE PAIN AND ANGST AND ACHE AND EVERYTHING THAT THIS CHAPTER BUBBLED TOWARDS... IT TOOK ME SO LONG BECAUSE I KNEW WHAT THIS CHAPTER WAS BRINGING AND IM SORRY QWOEPJGWEOG IM SORRY! I WONDERED HOW MANY OF YOU WOULD EVER DOUBT THE SERPENT... HOW MANY OF YOU MIGHT'VE BEGUN TO DOUBT HIM IN THIS CHAPTER BEFORE WE REACHED ITS END AND HOW MANY OF YOU WHO SUSPECT EVERY NEW CHARACTER MIGHT'VE PICKED UP ON THE TINY TINY HINTS I LEFT AROUND- AHHHHHHHHHHH THIS CHAPTER MAKES ME SO NERVOUS TO SEE WHAT YOU ALL THINK AND TO SEE WHAT YOU ALL FEEL AT THE END OF IT. LET THE ANGST COMMENCE! Midiiplier COME BACK AND BE FERAL!)

Borahae! 💜💜💜

PurpleQueenie <3