Archive of Our Own

jungkook has been walking for days. and before that, he’d been running for hours. and even before that, he’d been shaking for months.

in anger. in anticipation. in pain. in fear. in… relief?

the relief had come when he could no longer smell his past on him. he had to be firm about that with himself. that was his past and it was over now. right now was the present, but soon it would be the future. and the future would be better. somehow.

but the relief hadn’t lasted long, budding hope quickly trampled on. because what was making his limbs shake now was definitely exhaustion. and pain.

he was still bleeding, despite the several layers of cloth he’d wrapped around the cut. he knew it was a wound that would never heal, but he’d tried his best anyway. he wished he hadn’t though - if he was going to die, he would much rather be warm in his final moments and he’d had to use the entirety of his robe to try and stop the bleeding, leaving him in only his flowy dress shirt and thin trousers, not nearly enough for this time of year.

he’d lost track of his surroundings only a few hours in, no familiar landmarks in the endless trees encircling him. and as the days dragged on, he lost more than just his direction. all he could scent in the air was his own blood, his fingers were too numb with the cold to feel anything else, even his vision was starting to get all blurry.

what scared him most was his brain. that is, until he stopped even being able to feel scared. at first, he just felt lightheaded, and had easily blamed that on dehydration. and then, everything went loopy, thoughts jumbling up into confusing patterns that made him furrow his brow. but now, it was like all the thoughts he would usually be having, the anxiousness about what his plan was, where he would find his next meal, how he was going to stop the bleeding… all gone, in the blink of an eye. like his brain had broken and been replaced with a sieve, leaving only one thought behind:

one step in front of the other.

and when he looked down to find paws where his feet should be, he just blamed it on his distorted vision.

the days were getting shorter and the nights colder, trees losing their leaves one by one, and then, all at once. most people didn’t like winter. the cold was uncomfortable, the food was harder to come by, and the dreary darkness made everything dull.

the bangtan pack certainly didn’t either. half of them were from city packs, not used to the lack of central heating and electric blankets in the forest, while the rest simply hated the hardships the cold would bring. the only one who preferred the winter was namjoon.

well, he loved the winters here.

the bangtan den was inherited by their pack alpha, seokjin, from his grandfather. it was large and spacious, two floors and various rooms to meet all their needs, surrounded by several acres of land, the perimeters of which were saturated in the pack alpha’s scent claim. it was a far cry from the forest pack namjoon had grown up in, barely any shelter or enough furs to go around. winter there had been a death sentence. winter here were an excuse for hot cocoa and more pack cuddles to keep the omegas warm.

it’s one of these pack cuddles that namjoon carefully creeps out of now, smoothing a hand down his pack beta’s back to settle him before he leaves. yoongi had always been like that, sleeping lightly and fussing around his pack, so attuned to their scents and instincts that even his subconscious brain responded to them. it had taken namjoon a while to get used to, considering how starkly different he was to the betas in namjoon’s birth pack, who mostly kept to themselves.

namjoon always finds himself thinking about his birth pack more than usual when the weather turns cold. he wonders where they were, if they’re okay, whether his sire ever remated… it’s stupid to think about, he knows that. it causes him nothing but pain, nothing but swirling anxiety that has nowhere to go, no hope of being relieved. he’d never get the answers, and he’d learnt to be okay with that for the most part, but he still has his bad days.

this helps, though - walking through the familiar path out of the den and into the surrounding fields. they grow fruits and vegetables there in the summer, trading them with nearby packs for flour and eggs, preserving what they can for the winter. it’s namjoon’s favourite chore. well, the only chore he’s really good at, and he enjoys it so much he barely even considers it a chore. there’s something so soothing, so rewarding, about tending to the earth around them, of thanking her for the sustenance she provides them with.

the field is steadily wilting now, but it’s still so full of life, almost buzzing with it. namjoon takes a deep breath in, shoulders sagging with the relief of familiarity, except-

alphas have a keen sense of smell and namjoon is no exception. not only can he pick out scents miles away, he also has an impressive memory for scents, so he can say with conviction, that something doesn’t smell right. the scents of his pack and the various plants and small animals that surround them are still there, but there’s something else too. it’s coming from the left of the den, still far off, but scenting the air again a few moments later confirms his suspicions - whatever it is, it’s coming closer.

danger.

not danger, namjoon scolds himself. they’d been living here for almost two years now, with nothing even remotely dangerous happening to them. there’s no need for his alpha to jump to rash conclusions. he mentally scans a map of the area to calm himself. the roads leading to the city on the north, the min pack to the east, and the large lake and endless forest surrounding them on the west and south. the new strange smell must be coming from deep within the forest.

hunt it down.

no. namjoon shakes his head furiously to rid himself of the thought. he needs to think rationally and figure out what the scent is, rather than letting his instincts get the best of him. it’s difficult to describe or dissect, overlapping notes, dulled by the distance and the various other scents in the way, but there’s something familiar under all of it. something that grates against his nerves, sits uncomfortably in his stomach, the disconcerting feeling of not quite being able to put your finger on something.

the longer he stands, the more potent the scent gets and the more his discomfort grows. it takes several minutes of standing in the same spot, scowling, until finally, it hits him.

it’s the scent of a fellow wolf.

now that he’s figured it out, it’s obvious. it’s the same underlying base note of every wolf, not usually noticeable when the personal scent of subgender or puphood is much stronger, but familiar all the same.

a strange wolf, steadily getting closer to his territory, to his pack den.

before he knows it, he’s running.

any hope at rational thought is lost as soon as his feet start thundering down on the floor, picking up speed and following the scent with single-minded determination. as his heart rate picks up, his mind gets progressively more panicked, only serving to make him run faster, an endless vicious loop. he runs to the edge of their property and then past it, physically feeling the protection of his alpha leave him, but it doesn’t deter him. he doesn’t stop until he gets to the very edge of the fields leading into the forest, taking in deep lung fulls of cold air that make him taste blood in his mouth. he scents the air again, face pinched in concentration to pick up the scent despite the strong winds.

the wolf is still several miles away, and there’s definitely only one, he can tell that much for sure. they don’t smell like an alpha, beta or omega, but they don’t smell like a pup either, and he can’t pick out a scent claim of any nearby pack. not that a nearby pack would ever dare to sneak up on them in this way, not when they all knew exactly what the bangtan pack and their alphas are capable of. the wolf doesn’t smell particularly… good. they smell sick. and if namjoon focusses, he can just about pick out the tangy stench of wolf blood.

hunt. danger.

if namjoon were to think rationally and push his instincts to one side, something he’s incapable of at the moment, he would run back to the den and alert the pack. because logically, this hurt, bleeding wolf was far more likely to need their help than to cause them any harm. the only thing that would cause harm to the pack in this situation is if namjoon got hurt in the forest, and they had no idea where he was. logically, even if he did listen to his instincts and hunt the poor thing down, there was no reason to creep through the woods, carefully avoiding fallen leaves and branches, because there was no way a sick wolf could outrun namjoon in his prime.

but those thoughts don’t even cross his mind, and they won’t, until much later - his alpha has completely taken over. he stalks across the forest, with a stealth he never usually employs in his movements, only stopping every now and then to scent the air and make sure he’s still on track. after a while, the scent stops getting any closer to him, the target having stilled. namjoon quickens his pace, wrinkling his nose against the stench.

sick wolves always smell horrible. it was a way of alerting the pack to the severity of their condition and a good way to monitor their progress (or lack of). dead wolves, surprisingly, didn’t smell like much of anything. old folk stories said scents were of the soul rather than the body, disappearing as soon as the life left someone’s eyes. modern science had found that the scent glands were one of the first organs to shut down completely when the heart stopped.

regardless of how terrible the wolf smells, namjoon scents the air almost constantly to check they’re still alive. the stronger the scent gets, the faster namjoon moves, even when it singes his nostrils, makes his eyes water.

finally, he stumbles into a clearing, coming to a skidding halt in front of the source of the smell. it must be nearing sundown now, but there’s just enough light filtering between the trees to make out the figure curled up on the floor. it’s a wolf. shifted into actual wolf form, large and foreboding. and it’s looking right at him.

namjoon waits for the panic to hit, for his heart to speed up, for him to freeze or run away. but instead, he takes a hesitant step closer.

shifting is an ability that modern wolves have as good as lost. technological advancements mean there are better ways to hunt and forage, less predators to be aware of, other ways to preserve body heat. there’s little to no evolutionary benefit to being able to shift, and so, over the generations, it’s getting more and more rare. over the past century, the only records of shifting have not been done at will, but rather, involuntarily in the face of a threat to life, either for short bursts to defend themselves, or for a more prolonged time in the case of feral wolves.

and given that the wolf in front of him is showing no signs of extreme distress or of shifting back, it’s likely they’re a feral.

namjoon has never seen a feral outside of the dusty books in the large library of the den. ‘feral’ was the colloquial word to describe the changes in a wolf’s behaviour as their body started to slowly shut down. shifting was thought to be the final stage, a last ditch attempt at saving themselves. it meant all instincts pushed to the max, even to the wolf’s own detriment, and little to no room for conscious complex human thought.

but the creature in front of him is a far cry from the violent, sexually deviant wolves that were depicted in the textbooks.

namjoon’s first, slightly delirious thought is that the wolf is beautiful. it’s large, even seated, with the distinctive bone structure of a male. his fur is a light shade of brown, glinting in the evening light with every breath, so thick and soft that namjoon wants to burrow his fingers into it. his fluffy ears are pricked up on top of their head, and his tail curls around to rest protectively against his front. but the most striking feature is his wide eyes, that glow a handsome molten gold. namjoon is immediately drawn in.

the wolf is beautiful and he’s hurting. namjoon can just make out the beginnings of a deep wound on the side of his neck that he rests in his front paws, hiding the extent of the injury. each breath seems to be laboured, stuttering in his chest and the poor thing smells so sick it makes namjoon’s stomach roll and his heart clench in sympathy.

he steps closer, unsure hands extending slowly once he’s within touching distance. the wolf only blinks his beautiful eyes slowly in response. namjoon swallows thickly, kneeling down to carefully pet him with one gentle hand. his fur is just as soft as it looks, and the wolf’s eyes flutter shut at the touch, body sagging a little further where he lays. namjoon feels a surprising surge of protectiveness rise up in him, almost tangible in its intensity.

this is just a poor, hurting creature that needs jimin’s healing expertise, a warm den, and healthy dose of love and doting to feel better. despite his size, he looks so young, smells so young, and namjoon’s heart cracks. he doesn’t know what led him here, bleeding out on the forest floor, all alone if namjoon hadn’t smelled him, but he won’t let him die.

getting the wolf to the den is his first task. carefully, he uses his petting hands to gently turn the wolf’s neck just slightly to get a better look at the wound.

“I know, I know,” he coos, trying to soothe the pained noises the wolf makes, trying to be as careful as he can be.

the gash looks rather nasty and namjoon winces in sympathy. it’s both deep and wide, like someone had taken a massive chunk out of his neck, and it’s bleeding slowly but steadily. namjoon doesn’t remember much from the few healing and first aid lessons jimin had insisted on giving everyone a few years ago, but he does know that he should try and stop any active bleeding as the first port of call. he quickly whips off his coat and presses it against the wound, probably too forceful in his desperation to help, because the wolf screeches in pain and rises up on his hind legs to push namjoon down by the shoulders.

even winded as he is with his injury, the wolf is fast and namjoon doesn’t have even a second to defend himself. he’s dazed as he lies there, suddenly faced with a view of the sky, before even that is covered up with the wolf’s fur as he stands above him.

and then the large beast, one side of his fur matted with blood, plops himself firmly into namjoon’s lap, nosing his snout into his neck.

“oh,” namjoon breathes, hands carefully coming up to hug the wolf’s torso as best he can, “you’re just a puppy, huh?”

the pup snuffles in response, settling more of his weight on him.

“heavy baby,” namjoon chuckles, the wolf’s weight grounding him in the same way nature does, “I’ll take care of-”

a loud growl swallows the rest of namjoon’s sentence and shakes the very ground they lay on.

one second, the pup is laying on him, and the next he’s flung off by a blur of angry black fur.

namjoon had been gone for five hours when seokjin finally loses his patience.

he’d been doing well holding himself together until then. initially, he assumed namjoon had just gone on a longer walk than normal, and that’s what he told his pack when they crawled into his lap for reassurance. hours later, when the two youngest of the pack, jimin and taehyung, started to smell scared, bravely holding back their tears, seokjin started to get angry. what was namjoon thinking? as second-in-command, he should know better than to leave for so long without telling his alpha where he was going. the anger quickly fizzles out though, and eventually, seokjin settles on worrying.

he’s glad he’s so good at masking his scent, because the last thing his already frightened, anxious pack need is for their leader to be scared too. he’s glad he has so much experience keeping his voice steady, because it doesn’t shake once when he informs them that he’s going to go looking for him an hour before sundown.

“I’ll come with you,” yoongi immediately stands up, already moving to retrieve his furs.

“you will do no such thing,” seokjin counters, palm of one hand around yoongi’s nape to emphasise the importance of the order, “you’ll protect the den while I’m gone.”

“then I’ll come with you,” hoseok says, but the request sounds weak even to his own ears. the pack omega is laying in the middle of his nest, the little ones cuddled close to him, heads tucked close to the scent glands on either side of his neck. jimin and taehyung rarely need this type of omegan comfort now, considering it was mostly reserved for pups and they had both presented almost three years ago. but whatever pup instincts they have left are soothed by the calming pheromones hoseok emits, potent enough to lull them into a daze.

seokjin doesn’t even dignify his comment with a response, only shooting a pointed look at the babies.

“I’ll be back by the end of the night,” seokjin says, voice filled with all the confidence he wishes he actually felt. the only thing that gives away his fear is the desperate kisses he presses to all his remaining pack members before leaving.

namjoon is probably fine and seokjin is probably overreacting. but he would much rather overreact and find a namjoon that had accidentally fallen asleep on some moss than under react and find-

he shuns the thought from his brain. what’s happening now is nothing like years ago. their surroundings are safer now, and namjoon is well-versed in them. and besides, he can still smell namjoon’s woody, musky scent in the air if he concentrates hard enough. it’s faint, and within a couple of hours it’ll be completely gone. seokjin has precious moments to follow it to namjoon’s location, and he needs his head clear for that, not stuck on ghosts of the past.

he follows the scent as it leads him to the edge of the forest, where seokjin pauses for a second to curse at namjoon, before carrying on. it’s only a few minutes later that he smells something else, mixed in with his mate’s scent. his nose wrinkles. whatever it is, it stinks and does nothing to calm seokjin’s nerves. he picks up the pace as much as he dares with the waning light, legs and lungs burning with exertion.

it’s another hour, before he finally finds him.

namjoon, his namjoon, smothered under a large brown beast, almost double namjoon’s size.

seokjin sees red.

when it comes to his pack and their safety, seokjin would never claim to be a level-headed pack alpha. but nothing in the past could compare to how he felt now, blood boiling, rage and fear culminating into a force within him. it swirls forebodingly in his body, growing and growing, painful as it pushes against his insides, cracks his ribs open, before releasing outwards in a torrent of energy, like it’s being pushed out from every pore, every fibre of his being.

he’s moving before he even knows it, body lithe and agile, leaping through the air to save his mate. it’s only when he’s pushed the animal off to one side and has his jaw clamped around one furry shoulder that seokjin takes stock of his own body. how the ground feels closer, and the fur of the animal rubs against his own, how the low, menacing growl that’s shaking the branches is emanating from his own vocal cords.

the fact that he’s shifted should probably cause him some distress or confusion, but it lands in his brain as a dull thought, acknowledged and set aside in favour of taking care of the animal that dared set a paw on his mate. the thing is whining high in its throat, thrashing in seokjin’s hold. but it’s too weak. no match for seokjin. all he has to do is kill it and bundle namjoon up in his arms and get them back to their den. safe.

seokjin uses one paw to push the animal down onto its back and leans down to deliver a fatal bite to its torso. it’ll be quick, and the thing already smells so sick, so he’s doing it a favour really, putting it out of it’s misery.

but just then, there’s a loud, piercing scream.

seokjin whips his head back around to look at namjoon. for one, frantic second, he thinks namjoon has been hurt, that there’s some glaringly obvious injury that he’s missed out on. but the alpha doesn’t have a cut or a bruise in sight, just tears streaming down his cheeks.

“please, hyung, please,” namjoon sobs, “he hasn’t done anything wrong, please.”

the begging and crying wouldn’t have been enough to stop seokjin. he could always apologise later and console his mate if he killed someone who didn’t deserve it, but he could never forgive himself if he let his mate be killed. but what didstop him was namjoon’s eyes - glowing golden, just like the wolf’s.

they had imprinted on each other.

fuck.

seokjin’s brain works a mile a minute, one paw firmly pressed to the chest of the whining creature.

imprinting didn’t happen with another species, meaning the beast seokjin had pinned down right now had to be another shifter. now that the realisation had hit him, he could indeed smell the human under all the layers of sickness that permeated off the thing.

imprinting was relatively common and unpredictable. in the past, it had been considered to be a sign of soulmates or fated mates. but now, it was known to be more random than that. take the bangtan pack for example: half of them had at some point imprinted on someone who didn’t end up being in the pack, and it hadn’t meant much of anything. the only tricky thing about imprinting is that being away from someone you had imprinted on was a painful experience. and seokjin didn’t want his namjoon to be in pain.

he assesses the situation. the wolf doesn’t look like much of a threat. he can probably keep him around and in check while the imprint wears off in a couple of days, and then help him get wherever he was initially headed. the problem then, is how unwell the pup smells, sick enough to have shifted. seokjin leans closer to take another whiff, ignoring the pitiful whimpers, and finds a deep cut to the right side of his neck. he seems relatively unharmed otherwise, maybe a bit dehydrated, but nothing that would immediately kill him. the bite however...

while being away from someone you’d imprinted on was painful, being away from someone you were mated to, before the bite had completely healed and instincts had fully settled, was a death sentence.

for one frazzled second, seokjin considers that namjoon had given the bite, but another sniff closer to the wound confirms that the claim is that of another alpha. seokjin recoils in distaste at the stench. potent, ugly, unfamiliar, alpha pheromones. and besides, the bite is rough and messy, like the recipient had pulled away as soon as the teeth had entered, leaving a jagged, uneven wound behind. nothing like the neat, loving bites that littered seokjin’s own neck.

the pup is almost all seokjin can smell but he scents the air anyway, searching for the pup’s rightful alpha. he comes up empty, as he knew he would - if there was another wolf in this forest, or if this was some sort of cruel trap, seokjin and namjoon would have smelled it miles away. the wolf is alone.

the wolf is alone and he’s going to die soon, and then namjoon will have to go through the excruciating process of being separated from someone he’s imprinted on. who knows how much worse it would be if the person he’d imprinted on wasn’t just physically apart from him but also dead. seokjin really only has one option, and he doesn’t like it one bit.

the wolf has stopped moving underneath him now, too exhausted to do much else other than breathe. he doesn’t have enough time to get them all back to the den and come up with a rational solution. he shoots another look at namjoon’s devastated face, prays he’s made the right decision and bites.

the blood that floods seokjin’s mouth is pungent and stale, unlike anything he’s ever had the misfortune of tasting. it goes against every instinct to dig his teeth into someone that isn’t his, to taste the claim of a non-pack alpha. the healed bites on his own neck burn in protest, but seokjin pushes it all down, working his teeth in deeper. seokjin doesn’t realise the wolf was howling in pain until he stops, eerie, deep silence overtaking the forest.

namjoon sniffles. seokjin closes his eyes.

it’s only when he can’t smell or taste the other alpha on the pup that seokjin lets his shoulders sag. the energy that had made him shift oozes out of him slowly, and between one blink and the next, he’s back in his human body, cross-legged on the floor, with a scrawny boy in his lap. carefully, he removes his teeth from his neck. the boy is skin and bone, a far cry from his impressive wolf form. skinny, useless thing, seokjin’s alpha frets. he looks young, and his eyes are still glowing, but they’ve lost their warmth, pools of dull gold.

at least he smells a little better than before, still ill, but bearable to be around. his scent is too messy to pick out his subgender, but the fact that he was able to be mated at least confirms he has presented. his neck looks worse than before, messy and painful, but it’s bleeding less. a proper mating bite, one that’s reciprocated and the newly-mated wolves stay together, has an accelerated healing speed. seokjin resists the urge to push the boy off his lap, and instead offers his neck to complete the mating bond. he only lifts his chin slightly, not wanting his gesture to be mistaken for submission, but the boy doesn’t even seem to notice.

frustrated, he forcibly pushes the boy’s head into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, clenching his jaw when he feels the wetness of tears on the boy’s cheeks press against his skin. seokjin is willing to help the pup live, but that doesn’t mean he has to be nice about it, doesn’t mean he has to like that this stranger will give him a mating bite that’ll sit next to those of all his other mates, who he actually loves and cherishes and cares for, whose mating bites he’d wanted desperately.

“bite,” seokjin instructs, a curt alpha command, that makes even namjoon snap his jaws around nothing in obedience.

there’s barely any strength in the bite, blunt teeth slipping fruitlessly several times before breaking skin. seokjin has to squeeze at his nape to coax him to bite harder. weak mate, his alpha chides, but the disdain is quickly replaced by the heady rush of emotion and instincts associated with mating washing over him in waves.

mating is a biological thing, a process that binds two wolves together. it makes bodies and minds crave each other in a way that means even being rooms apart in the same house can be painful in the first few weeks. later, it makes instincts complement each other, anticipating each other’s needs and reactions. however much seokjin thought he knew his pack before, it was nothing compared to how intimately he knew them after they mated.

maybe most importantly, it makes wolves more attuned to each other’s emotions. especially in the first few weeks, a wolf feels their mate’s emotions as strongly as their own, before they learn to tone it down to a more manageable level over time. the most intense rush of emotion came the moment the bite was reciprocated. it always felt different depending on the person and circumstances. mating hoseok had been a giggly, love-drunk affair, both of them unable to stop smiling, giddy feelings in their light chests. seokjin had mated namjoon with his knot stuck in his lube-slick hole, the bite bringing both of them to a shaking, intense peak of pleasure. he’d mated jimin when the omega was in heat and… yeah.

he braces himself for what mating the stranger will bring. the rush of instincts is instant, a biological need to stay close, to keep the little pup safe from threats. seokjin wraps his arms around him for a second, squeezing him close to his body, before he manages to overcome the lapse in control and loosen his hold. he breathes deeply to ground himself as the emotions follow.

no amount of bracing himself, no number of deep breaths, could’ve prepared him for this - emptiness. it feels like, rather than adding emotions, the pup is taking away from seokjin’s. the numbness that settles over him blunts his heart, a sensation so disconcerting it makes seokjin shiver. it’s the same emptiness that’s in the boy’s eyes - he hopes it’s not reflected in his too.

they sit there, unmoving, for a long moment. the pup shivers and namjoon sneezes and seokjin’s skin itches with the need to care for them both.

“let’s go,” seokjin says, standing up and helping the boy to his feet, before taking off his own coat and wrapping it around the pup. he’s shaking so much that seokjin is worried he’ll topple over, so after a second of thought, he lifts him up.

“put your coat on namjoon-ah,” seokjin says. if his brain wasn’t so foggy, he’d feel shock at how shaky his voice sounded, but as it is, he barely registers it.

“hyung,” namjoon starts.

“not now,” seokjin cuts him off, “let’s just focus on getting back to the den.”

seokjin is scared. in that dull, muted way he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to.

he’d been scared since the walk home really, panic building and building, both at the situation and the fog in his brain. walking into the den, he’d felt none of the usual warmth and safety, only dread as he took in the faces of his packmates. he watched the way they transformed from fear to relief to shock to confusion. he wondered what it looked like from their perspective”

namjoon, unharmed but shivering from the cold and his normally deep brown eyes glowing a muted gold;

seokjin, jaw clenched and a new bleeding bite to his neck, carrying a bundle of furs in his arms;

and the pup, emerging from the furs and shivering violently as seokjin set him down on the floor.

it was relatively easy to put the pieces together. the boy’s clothes, though in tatters, were unmistakably the traditional mating clothes worn by some of the older forest packs. he’d been separated from his mate soon after his bite, whether through his own doing or not wasn’t clear, but he’d somehow ended up wandering the forest, becoming steadily more lonely and scared and dehydrated and tired, unhealed bite sending excruciating pain through his whole body, resulting in the feral, broken wolf they saw before them.

seokjin was the one that had to recount what had happened in the forest, because namjoon was too busy fussing over the pup. he shuffled around the kitchen to find leftovers to hand feed him and spent several minutes picking out the fuzziest warmest blanket to wrap around him. he even tried to bring him into the nest, at which point hoseok outright hissed at him, omegan disapproval strong enough to penetrate through namjoon’s instinct-driven hazy headspace. nevertheless, he wasn’t put out for long, wide beaming smile in stark contrast to the rest of the room.

and this was probably the thing seokjin was most scared of, the thing that would eat away at him in the coming days and weeks. mating bonds could never be truly broken, but in a year or so from now, seokjin and the pup could probably physically bear to live away from each other. but a year was a long time to spend living with a stranger. they didn’t know a single thing about the boy, he could well be a serial killer or a thief or just someone seokjin and the pack would never click with. this split-second decision would affect the entire pack and his relationship with them, was already affecting the harmony of the pack, and he would be the one to blame if anything went drastically wrong. his brain constantly flitted through every worst possible scenario, and it was this fear that informed most of seokjin’s decisions.

at first, seokjin just tried to put as much distance between his pack and the pup as possible.

“me and namjoon will take the boy into my room,” seokjin had said, voice as hallow as he felt, “yoongi, you’ll look after the pack in that time. the imprint should wear off soon, and then namjoon can come and join you too. if anyone needs anything, you knock on my door and speak from outside of it. no one is to enter, no matter what. we have no idea what this stranger, this feral, is capable of.”

no one had looked happy about the turn of events, not least seokjin himself, but they’d all agreed, with no better solution in sight.

the first night, the imprint had been strong. strong enough that namjoon didn’t seem to care in the slightest that neither seokjin, nor the pup, reciprocated his happiness and excitement. he filled the silence easily, chatting away as he picked out clothes from seokjin’s wardrobe and scents for the bath he was drawing. for the most part, he didn’t acknowledge how worryingly blank the boy’s eyes were, but it was jarring enough that even the imprint couldn’t mask it completely.

“get in the bath, puppy, it’s nice and hot,” namjoon encouraged, friendly radiant smile and kind eyes. the boy didn’t so much as move a muscle, eyes blank and unstaring. namjoon’s smile faltered a bit before he manually hitched it up again and helped him in, cooing praises all the while.

seokjin had kept a close eye on them and focussed more on the practicalities, gathering medical supplies to treat the gash he’d left on the pup’s shoulder. the mating bites were unlikely to be causing him much pain now, previous one thoroughly covered with a new reciprocated one. but his shoulder was still bleeding slowly and given how the pup nearly jumped out of the tub when namjoon tried to clean it, it was more than painful.

once he was dry and dressed, seokjin approached him with some guaze and antiseptic, slowing his steps when the pup tilted his head back in deference. he visibly shook with nerves when seokjin was close enough to touch, squeezing his eyes shut when he started to clean the wound. the guilt was like a blunt dagger to his heart, digging deeper and deeper with every pained grunt that left the pup’s lips, every sympathetic wince from namjoon. it formed a lump in his throat when even after seokjin had wrapped him up, the boy didn’t untense until seokjin retreated several steps back.

the pup’s instincts shouldn’t be scared of his mate, he shouldn’t be refusing to meet seokjin’s eyes, he shouldn’t be infinitely calmer around namjoon. it didn’t make sense, but then again, maybe it made complete sense. seokjin had been the one to hurt him, to mate him and bring him back here without his consent, even if it had saved his life. seokjin was the one being cold and unfriendly, while namjoon was showing him kindness. maybe instincts weren’t enough to override all that. seokjin definitely shouldn’t be hurt, or worse, jealous, by this behaviour, but he couldn’t help himself.

he called for jimin to make the pup something for the pain, gritting his teeth at the phantom pain he felt himself from the boy’s injury.

the sun was nearly rising by the time namjoon and the pup were ready for bed. seokjin pulled up a chair to the end of the bed to watch over them. the boy was probably unlikely to harm his mate or the wolf he’d imprinted on, but the rest of his pack lay unprotected just a few flimsy walls away. and he’d be lying if he said that was the only reason. when he’d mated yoongi all those years ago, his first mate, seokjin had found it difficult to sleep for several weeks, too worried about keeping his new mate safe that he couldn’t rest until he’d checked the den was safe, until he’d held yoongi and watched him fall asleep first.

it was an odd feeling, to have his instincts so divided - half of him, the newly-mated part, wanted nothing more than to apologise to the boy and get into bed with his pups and pull them both close, while the other half wanted to throw the boy back in the forest, far away from his pack. he settled for sitting very still, watching the way namjoon’s large body spooned up behind the scrawny boy, the soothing rise and fall of his chest as he immediately fell asleep, such a contrast to the boy’s large gold eyes that stared ahead unseeingly.

seokjin watched him until slowly his blinks got longer and longer, eyes fluttering shut as exhaustion pulled him under, and then watched him some more. he watched him even as the light filtered in through the curtains, sun continuing to rise as it always did, unsympathetic to how seokjin’s world had turned on it’s head.

the next few days passed in a similar fashion. to his pack’s defence, they seemed to adjust remarkably well, or at least that’s what they told him to stop him worrying. they took turns leaving meals for them outside the door, yoongi came once a day to give seokjin an update about the pack, taehyung came every night with hot water for their baths, and jimin never failed to remember to bring tea to ease the pup’s pain. seokjin was so incredibly proud of and lucky to have such an amazing pack, every alpha’s dream. he just wished that the fog in his mind would lift long enough that the gratefulness he felt would be strong enough to seep into his scent.

everything in his head was jumbled and messy and seokjin had never felt less in control. the emptiness from his newest “mate” made things he’d taken for granted no longer possible. as pack alpha, he usually had a very good understanding of which emotions were coming from which pack member, an ability that seemed to be lost now. logically, it was always going to get a little impaired temporarily with the addition of a new mate, what with fresher mating bonds relaying more intense emotions, but he hadn’t anticipated it being this bad. hell, he could hardly differentiate what his own emotions were. and frustratingly, the more he focused to try and tease them apart, the more his mind spun, the more the answers floated further out of his grasp, goading him.

sometimes, though, the emotions were obvious and seokjin wished he could be ignorant to them instead.

“alpha, isn’t he pretty?” namjoon had whispered, watching the boy with wonder and adoration in his eyes. seokjin didn’t know what to say.

“alpha?” namjoon questioned, sitting up in bed, adorably mussed hair and sleepy eyes. seokjin longed to run his hands through his hair, to get into bed with him and bask in the morning sun streaming in through the windows, longed for everything to be normal.

“alpha, please say something,” namjoon pleaded.

seokjin sighed, frustration and fear from the past few days building to a breaking point.

“what do you want me to say?” seokjin’s voice shook with the effort of keeping his volatile emotions at bay.

“why are you being so mean?” namjoon pouted.

“what do you want me to be namjoon-ah? happy that you went out into the woods searching for trouble on your own? excited about the prospect of changing our pack’s dynamic forever?”

a dull pang of hurt, presumably from namjoon.

“b-but he’s part of our pack now?” namjoon looked devastated. his imprint-driven mind couldn’t wrap around how bad the situation was, so it really wasn’t fair of seokjin to raise his voice but-

“he’s a fucking feral, joon.”

a fiercer pang of hurt this time, definitely from the pup, sharp enough to make seokjin grimace.

“d-don’t call him that,” namjoon stuttered. his bottom lip was wobbling, and he bit on it to stop the tears.

“baby,” seokjin tried to soften his voice with a sigh, “you feel like this because you’ve imprinted, hm? once it wears off, you’ll see it my way.”

“how can you talk like this about your mate?”

“he’s not my mate,” seokjin said, level and calm to try and make namjoon understand, “I kept him alive for you. once the imprint wears off and my body can handle it, he’s gone.”

hurt so strong it makes seokjin clutch his chest.

he stays up even later than usual that night, blinking away stubborn tears. it goes against every instinct to hurt any of his mates, including the pup. his body punishes him for it too, skin uncomfortably tight, heart racing, thoughts forming frustratingly slowly and then flitting so fast it makes him lightheaded. he wants his pack. he wants them all in this room, curled up around him. he settles for wrapping his arms around himself and scenting the air carefully, letting the deep, lush scent of namjoon wash over him, concentrating hard to pick up the faint scents of the rest of his pack.

this comfort is enough, it has to be.

it’s another day before the imprint wears off enough for namjoon to leave the room. it’s clear he still has a soft spot for the pup, coming to stand at seokjin’s door several times a day, sometimes to ask about the pup, but often just to breathe in his scent (even if all he smells of is sickness and wolf). but he also knows his pack needs some form of normality, and their second-in-command returning to them is at least something in the right direction.

the pup doesn’t seem to notice namjoon’s absence, still spending his days (and much of his nights) staring dazedly into the distance. he still shivers and curls into himself when seokjin gets close to him to hand him his food or change the dressing on his shoulder. but seokjin also finds that he moves to the side of the bed closer to the bathroom when seokjin goes to bathe, wide eyes gaining some lucidity as he follows seokjin’s movements around the room, settling back into whatever hazy headspace he gets into when seokjin settles down again.

the pup is also starting to smell less and less sick, but the scent isn’t being replaced by anything else, no clues as to his subgender or his emotions. it’s disorientating and keeps seokjin on edge, but it’s progress nonetheless. it eases the fear seokjin had that the pup would just never wake up from this sleepless haze, that seokjin would be mated to this shell of a wolf forever.

irrationally, all the progress makes seokjin feel worse. in a few more days namjoon won’t feel any instinctual attachment to the boy (at least not one that would be physically painful to break) and with any luck, if the boy continues to make process, he’ll be back to full health in a few weeks. seokjin will be stuck with him for at least a year if not more. it feels silly now, to have committed so much to something that resolved a problem for a week and created a bigger one for a year. but what other choice did he have? he’s replayed the moment a hundred times over, not once managing to come up with a better solution.

he doesn’t know how he’s going to do this for a year. he knows he can’t stay in this room forever. he knows he’ll need to start giving in to some of the mating instincts more often, because his alpha still feels rejected, despite the reciprocated bite. his body starts hurting, mind repeating a need to get back to the pup even when he just walks to the door. it’s exhausting. one second he feels a surge of care and empathy and protectiveness for the scrawny boy that his mind insists is his mate, the next he’s spiralling about what this stranger could do to his real mates.

at least this push and pull, these complex, often contradictory instincts were something that him and the pup had in common. appeasing their instincts one moment, and recoiling away at others.

“hyung…” namjoon’s been lingering at the door for almost ten minutes now since he bought them their lunch. seokjin could smell the nerves and worry rolling off him in waves, and had immediately known what the conversation was going to be about. he’d already heard it from yoongi and hoseok, and he was feeling no more amenable now.

“hyung, you can’t hole up in there forever.”

“I know,” seokjin replies, sighing under his breath.

“let us help,” namjoon pleads.

“we don’t know what he’s capable of,” seokjin answers as he always does.

“he’s done nothing all these days.”

“he’s a feral, namjoon. and we don’t know a single thing about him. I’m mated to him and I can’t feel his emotions or intentions. I can’t let him roam around my pack.”

what if the emptiness from the pup was really a mental shield of some kind? a way for the wolf to hide his true intentions, waiting for the right moment to strike, to hurt his pack? what if he shifted again? he could easily overpower half the pack with his shifted form. what if-

“we miss you.”

and that makes seokjin stop for a second.

he misses them too, of course. their warmth and steadiness, their advice and their many clever ways of distracting him. the only thing really keeping him going was that it was him in this situation, and not any of his pack members. he doesn’t know how he could have lived knowing that one of his mates was stuck in a room with a stranger, just one door away but completely out of his sight. it was the one saving grace.

he didn’t take into account that his pack would miss him too. he hopes they don’t feel too neglected. more than just being their mate, he was their pack alpha too, with all the responsibilities that came with. yoongi had informed him yesterday that the omegas had decided to take suppressants for this cycle, not wanting to rile up the pup (or seokjin, for that matter), and it fills seokjin with guilt whenever he lets himself think of it.

but the fear of what the pup could be capable of is paralysing. it’s easier, to sit here in the company of the wolf that lays down most of the time, only stands to walk around a little when seokjin makes him, robotically eats the food seokjin puts in front of him, bathes and changes his clothes when prompted. it’s easier, to keep the door to his pack shut both physically and mentally.

“I’m sorry.”

it’s a long time before he hears namjoon’s footsteps retreat away from the door. an even longer time before the swirling guilt in seokjin’s stomach settles enough for him to get some sleep.

he blinks himself awake only a few hours later to the sound of rustling on the bed. as quietly as he can, seokjin rights himself on the mattress on the floor where he’s been sleeping the past few days to study the pup. even when the pup is awake, he rarely moves around the way he is now, writhing under the blankets like can’t quite get comfortable. instinctually, seokjin scents the air, even though it tells him nothing. instead, he watches him carefully, taking in the handsome furrow of his brow, the way his hands clench into the sheets, the wince of pain when he jostles his still sore shoulder.

the pup settles down eventually, back turned to seokjin. slowly, seokjin lowers himself down onto his own mattress too, steadying his heart to try and fall back asleep.

but then the silence is disrupted by one hitched breath. and then a muffled, watery sob. and seokjin’s heart breaks.

he sits up again, fear and guilt clogging up his throat as he takes in the sight of the pup hugging his knees close to his chest as he heaves shaky breaths in through sobs that shake his whole body. for a moment, seokjin can do nothing but watch him, as the overwhelming sadness from the boy starts to trickle into his brain, merge with his own panic. he feels it like an ache when the boy nuzzles into the pillow, breathing it in between sobs, a pitiful attempt at a scenting. the pillow probably still has remnants of the pack, of namjoon who shared the bed with him previously, of seokjin who’s been in this room the whole time. it does little to soothe the distressed pup, and seokjin can’t watch any longer.

before he knows it, he’s moving. he reaches the bed in just a few strides, and climbs in behind the pup, and then falters. it seems wrong, all the things the pack has done to him while he wasn’t lucid. sure, the mating wasn’t just beneficial to the pack and it saved the pup’s life too, but it was still a huge decision taken completely out of his hands. seokjin and namjoon had done everything they could to preserve his dignity when it came to feeding and bathing, but sometimes he was so out of it, they had no choice but to help.

comforting him, cuddling him, like seokjin’s instincts call on him to do, seems to be crossing a line somewhere. it isn’t a life-or-death matter to touch him, like it had been to clean his wound or to carry him back to the den. seokjin flounders.

“you have to let me know if I do something you don’t like,” seokjin says, hesitant. he gently grabs the boy’s hand, in his own shaking one, and repeats the order in alpha voice, carefully watching the way his shoulders tense and then relax at the command.

“squeeze my hand if you understand,” seokjin continues, pushing aside any discomfort he feels at using his subgender to his advantage like this. he unintentionally holds his breath as he waits, letting the relief course through his veins when he feels a soft squeeze in return. he curls himself around the pup’s back, gently pulling him close, enveloping him in his arms as best he can. seokjin’s own eyes close in relief at how instinctually good it feels to be so close to his mate. the poor thing is shaking in his arms. his round nose turns into seokjin’s bicep, nuzzling sweetly there for a second, before his brow furrows and he turns his neck, whining as he tries to get to the source of seokjin’s scent.

with gentle hands, seokjin helps him turn, helps him press his face into his neck, lets him take a deep shuddering breath there before he starts sobbing in earnest.

“oh cub,” seokjin sighs, tears filling his own eyes as he rubs one hand over his back in soothing strokes, the other cupped warmly against his nape. with every cry, with every wet tear tickling seokjin’s neck, the emptiness, the blockade between them cracks further and further. he’s filled with every bit of desperation and devastation that the pup feels, so strong his heart feels almost unbearably heavy with it.

it’s not the first time seokjin’s thought about how the pup must be feeling, but it is the first time he’s been so devastated by it. this poor wolf, running from some sort of situation with his ex-mate, that left him bleeding out as a feral on the cold forest floor, only to be mated once more to a strange angry alpha that took a chunk out of his shoulder. and now, he’s locked into a room in a strange den, under constant supervision, with no one to explain anything from him. seokjin is willing to bet that his life before they met him wasn’t completely good, but the way that he’s treated him… is it any better?

“alpha’s been so mean, hm?” seokjin murmurs, tilting his head down until he can bury his nose into the pup’s hair. he smells clean, like yoongi’s gentle shampoo, and seokjin lets that scent lull him into enough comfort that he can start to regulate his own pheromones, to comfort the pup in turn. omegas are much better at this sort of thing, but seokjin finds that it comes naturally. it’s instinctual to comfort your mate.

and slowly but surely, the sobs taper off, the vice-like grip of the pup’s emotions loosens slightly over seokjin’s heart as the pup falls asleep once more. seokjin doesn’t dare move, he couldn’t bear to, now that he knows how right this feels. the fear and apprehension is still there, still strong, but the worry and care is stronger now. not just instinctual, but also moral, a conscious want to make things better for the boy, regardless of the mating bond they share.

he’s in over his head. his pack is right - he needs their help.

yoongi doesn’t remember things ever being this tense in the pack.

they’d gone through a lot in the past. getting to where they were, in a peaceful cozy den, far away from the people that wished harm on them, hadn’t been easy. but they’d done all of that together, as boyfriends, and then as a mated pack, not divided as they were now. of course, they’ve had disagreements within the pack before, but it had never been like this, an emotional and physical distance between them.

ever since seokjin had bought the pup home, yoongi’s instincts had been going haywire. as the pack beta, the only beta, the brunt of the pack’s emotions often fell on him. usually, this was a positive. he’d sense the warmth of seokjin’s affection, the playful happiness of taehyung’s laughter, the strength of namjoon’s need to protect them, even when it wasn’t directed at him specifically. it meant he could pick out a rift between any of the members, and instinctually knew when to intervene. while the omegas were good at providing comfort and the alphas were good at providing safety, the flawless harmony of the pack was a testament to the quiet way yoongi handled even the smallest of disputes.

this time though, he was at a bit of a loss.

because no amount of experience can prepare him for the fallout of seokjin having a mate that isn’t tied to the rest of them.

the very fact grates on all of their nerves, and had done since seokjin had bitten him - they’d felt the shock of that moment miles away in the den, with no idea what to blame the sudden hollow feeling in their chests on. jimin and taehyung had awoken with a cry, and yoongi and hoseok had had no idea how to console them. waiting the few hours after that for their alphas’ return had been hell. yoongi had imagined every single possible terrible scenario in detail, was ready to ignore the pack alpha’s order and go out after them, when they had finally walked through the door.

there wasn’t a second to even process everything that had happened before seokjin was taking the skinny little pup and a smitten namjoon into his room, and locking the door shut with a foreboding click. and without any preparation nor warning, the responsibility of taking care of the rest of the pack fell on yoongi.

he’d herded them all into the pack nest to try and sleep as much as they could, all ignoring how empty, how wrong, it felt with two of their alphas missing. until they couldn’t ignore it any longer and hoseok and jimin invited them into their smaller, usually omega-only nest instead. it made the omegas feel a little safer, and made their baby alpha, taehyung, feel like the protector of the nest, preening when yoongi told him he was doing a good job.

the days passed slowly, all of them trying their best to keep up with their normal daily routines, a feat that became a little easier when namjoon’s imprint wore off, and he was able to rejoin them. yoongi and jimin cooked, taehyung and hoseok went out for wood (staying strictly close enough that they could be seen from the kitchen window) and namjoon disappeared into the library, set on researching feral wolves and how to help them. they made sure to sit together for every meal, let the conversation and laughter run well into the night, even when the jokes were only half as funny without the squeaky laugh that usually accompanied them.

it was an admirable attempt at pretending everything was fine, when nothing was. yoongi could see how it was affecting everyone, could feel all their heartache in his bones, weighing him down day by day. the guilt that rolled off namjoon in waves, the bitter jealousy from hoseok, the confusion and hurt from taehyung, the well-hidden neglect from jimin. yoongi tried, as much as possible, to not let them hole those feelings up and internalise them. he spoke to them all individually, being their safe space to say things that they may feel guilty for even thinking.

he knew that in turn, they could feel his pain too, the return of the insecure thoughts of not being enough, the fear that this pack would turn unstable. so hoseok would still offer him a smile even if it was wobbly and taehyung and jimin would come and nuzzle him affectionately and namjoon would hug him from behind as yoongi cooked. they all looked out for each other unfailingly, like they had always done, and while it didn’t fix anything, it did make things better.

yoongi spent most of his time wracking his brains for a solution. he’d always been someone that functioned better with a plan that he could work towards, but he kept coming up blank. there was nothing they could do to change the mating, nothing they could do to actually prove the pup was safe enough to be around the whole pack, nothing yoongi could do to fill the space their pack alpha had left behind. but nothing could be okay with their pack alpha locked up in a room with a stranger.

the pup was a different matter entirely. namjoon spoke of him almost fondly, even well after the imprint had worn off. he told them about how sweet he’d been in his shifted form, gentle and unthreatening despite his size, how he’d nuzzle into warmth and familiar smells subconsciously, how young he seemed and how much he was hurting. and yoongi’s instincts screamed out to help him almost as much as they did for his pack.

it was surprising - he should resent the pup, and on some level he did. if he’d just wandered to a slightly different bit of the forest, or been a little less ill, then maybe they wouldn’t be in this situation. but more than that, yoongi felt sorry for him. the poor thing had probably escaped a terrible situation and been put in an arguably worse one: on the brink of death for who knows how long, mated (for the second time) without his consent, and then kept in a locked room in an unfamiliar den. yoongi’s heart ached for him, throbbing harder every time seokjin refused to let anyone into their room.

even enemies who mated would engage in some level of cuddling just to sate their instincts, but seokjin barely touched the pup. even enemies who mated wouldn’t be able to feel negative emotions towards their newly-mated wolf, but seokjin seemed to have no trouble even voicing them out loud. how could the pup ever hope to heal in such conditions? besides, it was becoming more and more clear that the pack’s recovery was dependent on the pup’s - seokjin wouldn’t rejoin them in the den until the pup was deemed to be safe, and for him to be deemed safe, he had to be coherent enough to convince them of the fact. and to get him coherent, well he needed namjoon’s help for that.

he finds him sitting on the porch in a T-shirt and a beanie, covered in sweat despite the chilly air. he looks up when the front door opens, soft concerned frown when yoongi steps out.

“hyung, it’s cold!” he protests, already making to stand up when yoongi gently pushes him down by the shoulders and sits down next to him.

“you look pretty hot to me,” yoongi teases

namjoon blushes, always so easy to embarrass. “I went on a run,” he explains.

yoongi hums, taking another second to admire the contours of his muscles, his shiny honey skin.

“I wanted to ask you about the pup,” yoongi starts, “is there any hope for him?”

“hope for him, as in…?”

“as in, will he get better? enough to earn jin-hyung’s trust so they can both join us in the rest of the den?”

namjoon thinks it over for a second, looking out into the distance, eyes tracing the edges of the forest just visible in the distance. he’s always been someone that’s settled by nature, and the pack has gotten used to taking him on walks when he gets too in his head, so yoongi’s glad they’re having the conversation out here.

“it’s hard to say,” namjoon replies eventually, and yoongi deflates, “there’s not that much literature on feral wolves. and of the little there is, some of it just doesn’t seem to fit in to what we see with the pup, so I’m not sure if there’s just an extremely wide variety of presentations with feral wolves, or if the authors are just writing theoretically and with no actual experience.”

“he’s not what I thought a feral would be like,” yoongi admits, and namjoon nods.

“the few cases that seem to match up don’t have much about recovery because, well,” namjoon trails off. yoongi gapes at him. he knew that the pup had been on the brink of death before the bite, but he hadn’t considered that he could still die now, that his condition was still life-threatening. if it came to the worst, what would happen to jin-hyung? what would happen to their pack?

“I don’t think he’s going to die,” namjoon soothes.

“how can you be so sure?”

“I can’t. but in the few days I spent with him, he had moments of slightly more lucidity. he responds to alpha voice. he would follow his instincts sometimes, but repress them other times. there’s still a human under everything, fighting to get out. he’s not too far gone.”

“how do we help him?”

namjoon smiles at him, putting his arm around him to pull him close to his body. yoongi hadn’t realised how cold he really was until he was scooted close into the warmth of an alpha.

“I think we need to appeal to his base human instincts to reassure the hindbrain wolf that it’s okay to back down, that it doesn’t need to protect him any more. like reversing the conditions that led him to becoming feral in the first place.”

“so when he was in the forest he was probably alone, scared, cold, hungry, in pain…” yoongi thinks aloud.

“exactly. we’re already making sure his meals are provided for, that he can bathe, that he’s warm, that his pain is being managed. It’s why he’s not actively getting worse, or shifting again or anything. some part of him knows that he’s being taken care of here. but i don’t know if we’re helping with the “alone and scared” part.”

yoongi thinks about how alone and scared he would feel in a strange den, unable to communicate, unable to leave.

“he needs kind words and scents, love and care. we need to try and get through to him, and show him that the life he can have here is worth being present for,” namjoon continues. it makes sense, but it’s definitely easier said than done. they sit together discussing plans and ideas until yoongi is shivering even with namjoon’s body heat enveloping him. namjoon helps them both up, back hugging them as they enter the warm den.

“don’t you want to be the one to talk to jin-hyung? considering it’s your plan and research?”

namjoon’s silent behind him, ducking his head to yoongi’s neck. yoongi sees it as the question it is and tilts his head to the side, letting the alpha scent him.

“I want you to do it, hyung. please?”

and that’s how yoongi finds himself knocking on seokjin’s door after lunch the next day, when everyone else is preoccupied.

“yes?” seokjin calls hesitantly, voice hoarse from disuse.

“hyung, the feral hasn’t hurt you in all this time and I know you’ll protect me if he tries to hurt me,” yoongi starts, “and I’d really like to see you hyung. I miss you.”

there’s a long, loaded silence.

“please,” yoongi whispers.

the door opens with a quiet click, just enough for yoongi to slip inside and close it behind him, a little disorientated by how easily seokjin had let him in. the room doesn’t look much different to how it usually does. they usually spend most of their time in the nest downstairs, or in the pack room, so their individual rooms barely get any use. yoongi doesn’t know what he expected, but seeing the room as devoid of life as it always was, is disconcerting. the door to the ensuite is open, but other than the herbal smell of healing balms thick in the air, it’s as neat as ever. the mattress that seokjin had requested lies on the floor, a good distance from the bed, duvet and pillows placed neatly on top. the sheets on the bed are a bit more rumpled, but nothing to give the impression that two whole adults have been sharing this space for a week. in fact-

“he’s in the wardrobe.”

“oh right,” yoongi nods absentmindedly, before, “wait- the wardrobe?”

“I guess he got a bit skittish?” seokjin runs his hands through his hair frustratedly, pulling a little at the ends. yoongi takes a second to look at his hyung a bit closer. he looks pale and tired, face drawn even when he meets yoongi’s eyes and attempts a smile. there’s bags under his eyes and his hair stands up at all angles, no doubt from how much his anxious hands have been playing with it.

and there’s something, something he can’t quite put his finger on, that’s dulling yoongi’s instincts as he looks at his pack alpha. he steps closer, gently taking seokjin’s hands into his. despite the fire burning merrily in the fireplace, seokjin is cold when yoongi scents him gently, wrist to wrist, nose running gently up and down his neck. it doesn’t have the same effect that an omega would have, but seokjin breathes out shakily, a shiver running down his spine.

“you smell different, alpha.” it’s hard to describe his scent exactly, but it’s like the depth of it is gone, or masked by something else. scents do sometimes change after a mating, settling back down after a few months, but this level of change is unprecedented, and probably contributes to why yoongi’s instincts feel so confused too. he’s been the sole beta of this pack for years, becoming extremely well-versed in their scents, able to pick them up and interpret them in seconds, almost subconsciously. now, he can scent the fear, the worry, the guilt, but nothing deeper than those obvious emotions, and it frustrates him to no end.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“don’t be sorry,” yoongi kisses his jaw, “do we need to get the pup out of the wardrobe?”

seokjin shakes his head, eyes closing briefly as he dips his own head down to press a kiss to his mating bite in the centre of yoongi’s neck. “I’ve been trying all morning but-” he cuts himself off with a sigh. there’s a burst of anger in his scent, self-loathing anger that makes yoongi reel back at the intensity, his own pheromones going haywire in response in a desperate attempt to soothe him. it hits him then, how much has been changed by this mating. they’ll all have to learn each other again, instincts clashing clumsily while they learn how they fit into the pack again as they make room for the pup.

it puts yoongi on edge. he doesn’t like the uncertainty between them, doesn’t like the way seokjin’s eyes turn sad when yoongi recoils from his scent. he’s scared that he won’t be able to help seokjin, or any of them for that matter, if he can’t even do his basic job as a beta. he’s even more scared that this will become the new normal between them, that he’ll never be able to work through the curtain between yoongi’s instincts and seokjin’s emotion.

but none of those thoughts are useful now, not when his pack alpha is looking at him with a pained, sorrowful expression.

“c’mon, let’s sit,” yoongi murmurs, pulling seokjin gently to the edge of the bed, and after only a second of hesitation, plops himself sideways into his lap. they’ve never been overly touchy with each other, at least not like this - their affection is usually shared in acts of service, or holding hands. but the embarrassment that burns yoongi’s cheeks is worth it when seokjin breaks out into a bright, genuine smile, wrapping his arms around him with a contented sigh. yoongi relaxes into him, giving in to the urge to tuck his head just under seokjin’s chin, the way the younger members of the pack do with him sometimes. it feels nice to be held, and if seokjin’s instinctual rumble of approval is anything to go by, doing the holding is nice too.

“missed you,” yoongi repeats.

“and I missed you, my beta,” seokjin replies. a pause and then, “I’m sorry.”

“hyung?”

“I know it doesn’t fix anything, but I am. I’m sorry you all have to miss me. do I even deserve to be missed? when i’m the one that ruined everything? the reason the omegas are having to suppress this heat cycle, why taehyung smells so sad even the feral pup can smell it, why you look so tired? but I’m sorry. I can’t even say I would take it all back if I could, because I don’t know what else I could have done-”

“exactly,” yoongi cuts him off, “I’m sorry for interrupting, hyung, but that’s exactly the reason you don’t have to apologise, and exactly why none of us would ever blame you. yes it made more sense to miss this heat cycle, even though it is a shame. yes taehyung is sad and I’m tired. but, alpha, you did what you always promised us you’d do - protect your own.”

seokjin’s silent for a long moment, mulling it over, before he sighs. “I might have been protecting namjoon in the moment and I’m definitely trying to protect the rest of you now, but my intentions don’t matter when the outcome of my actions is just everyone suffering.”

“it’s your job to protect us, but it’s not your job to shoulder responsibility that isn’t yours to carry,” yoongi rubs his thumb gently on the new bite, small and healing well, “hyung, the truth is, you can’t do this on your own. and you don’t need to.”

seokjin swallows heavily, eyes flicking from yoongi to the wardrobe door and then back again.

“he’s going to be in our lives for a while whether we like it or not,” yoongi pleads, “it’s not fair to him, or to you, or to us to carry on like this.”

“okay,” seokjin says.

“no really, you have to- wait, ‘okay’?” yoongi leans back a little from his cosy little spot in seokjin’s neck to look him in the eye. it’s not that he isn’t happy with that answer, it’s just that he thought he would need to do a lot more convincing to get seokjin to agree. every member of the pack had tried at least once to coax seokjin out of his room, to try and assure him that they weren’t scared of the scrawny pup, but to no avail. he can’t help but be suspicious now.

“okay,” seokjin repeats, squeezing him in his arms.

“why?”

and so, seokjin tells him everything. about how odd it is to be mated to a feral stranger, how confusing it’s been to figure out what to do when his instincts and heart are so at odds with each other and his brain constantly feels sluggish. he tells him about how it had all blown up in his face last night when the pup had started sobbing out of nowhere, how seokjin had to use his alpha voice to get through to him, before cuddling him close and feeling a bit of his heart open up to accept the poor thing into it. he told him about how rocky this morning had been, the pup more lucid than before but jumping at every movement seokjin made, how none of the pup’s emotions felt dull to seokjin anymore, strong enough to make his head spin. how it physically hurt to keep forcing himself to be wary of the pup, to keep holding him at arm’s length. how all of it made seokjin feel so completely out of his depth.

in turn, yoongi told him about their plan and namjoon’s research, and reassured him that the healing process was bound to be rocky and messy and emotional, but the most important thing, was to keep showing him love and kindness.

“I haven’t been very kind,” seokjin admits quietly and yoongi kisses him gently.

“it’s not too late. just trust your instincts to tell you how to take care of him, just the way you do with us. can I try and talk to him?”

the apprehension is still clear in seokjin’s stance when he knocks gently on the wardrobe door, while yoongi nods at him encouragingly.

“I’m going to open the door now. my beta is here to talk to you.” seokjin’s speech is so stilted and awkward that it makes yoongi wince.

seokjin opens the door and steps back, enough for yoongi to stand in front of him, seokjin looming behind him like some sort of foreboding giant. it probably doesn’t make the pup feel any safer, but it was the compromise that he and seokjin had settled on, so yoongi bites back the protest on the tip of his tongue and instead looks into the wardrobe.

it’s dark in there, the sun that streams into the room not reaching the wardrobe even with it’s doors open. it takes a second for yoongi’s eyes to adjust enough to find the skinny little pup sat on the floor, knees pulled tightly into his chest, wide eyes staring up at him. and oh his eyes are so pretty, big and glassy, almost doll-like. he looks much better than he did before, more weight on his bones, colour in his cheeks. and he smells better too, only a faint hint of sickness remaining.

yoongi crouches down to get on eye-level with him and puts on his most welcoming smile.

“hello,” yoongi starts, faltering a little when he gets distracted by how the boy’s eyes get even wider, “my name’s yoongi. it’s nice to meet you! is it okay if I talk to you?”

seokjin had warned him to not expect a reply, verbal or otherwise, so yoongi doesn’t let himself be deterred, just leaves enough of a pause that if the boy did want to reply, he could. when he doesn’t see any outward signs of distress, yoongi settles down on the floor, cross-legged.

“I’m the head beta of the pack whose den you’ve been in the past few days. has hyung introduced himself yet?” yoongi gestures with his thumb at where seokjin stands behind him. the pup’s eyes dart quickly to seokjin before settling back on yoongi again.

“no? that’s seokjin hyung, he’s the pack alpha, and the eldest. we also have two omegas and two more alphas. would you like me to tell you about them?”

it continues like that for more than an hour, the pup not offering him more than the occasional curious tilt of the head, but listening to him attentively throughout. yoongi tells him all about the pack, their hobbies and interests, tries to describe all their scents in case the pup is a beta himself and sensitive to scents. he tells him about the book he read recently, and the preparations they’re taking for the start of winter. he asks him questions too, leaving pauses for him to blink his doe eyes at him, long black eyelashes fanning his cheeks.

at some point, seokjin went from standing defensively at his back to sitting down on the bed, and then somehow laying all the way down, lulled by yoongi’s babbling. yoongi giggles when his soft snores start to fill the room, a ghost of a smile gracing the pup’s lips too. it’s only when the winter sun starts to set that yoongi excuses himself to get started on dinner.

“can I come back tomorrow? so we can talk more?” yoongi asks at the door. the pup only blinks at him in response. “let seokjin-hyung know if you don’t want me to come, okay?”

but the pup does no such thing, and yoongi plans to return again the very next day. this development with the pup brings a new life to the pack, a stubborn flicker of hope igniting in all their chests. it’s a testament to how badly they all miss seokjin hyung, that they all push down their varying levels of distrust and resentment at the pup, and focus their efforts entirely on how to help him heal. that night, they brainstorm ideas together over the dinner table, each one more and more ludicrous in nature as the night carries on. namjoon seems the happiest of them all, all dimpled smiles every time yoongi glances at him, turning even softer when their eyes met.

the next day, he barely manages to stop taehyung and jimin joining him, telling them over and over that the last thing they want to do is overwhelm the boy with anything more than yoongi’s mild beta scent. besides, it’s not like seokjin would let them in anyway.

“we can’t have alphas and omegas yet, sweethearts, you know that.”

“seokjin-hyung’s an alpha,” taehyung pouts.

“he’s also mated to him, baby,” yoongi laughs, consoling the both of them with a kiss before leaving with a pointed look to hoseok to distract them.

this time, yoongi brings some paper and a pen with him, rolling his eyes when seokjin makes him switch out the pen for a “far less dangerous” pencil. the pup is in bed, curled up with his back to the room, tensing when the door opens, relaxing minutely when he recognises yoongi’s scent.

“you wanna come sit on the floor with hyung, puppy?” yoongi calls, prepared for whatever level of answer he gets. it takes a long moment, but he gets up eventually, as if by lots of effort, and shuffles his way to yoongi, keeping his distance still.

“are you okay?” yoongi asks, concern only doubling when the pup responds by tipping his head back, showing him the long line of his throat.

“fuck,” seokjin mutters, rubbing his own chest with a grimace. whatever the pup is feeling is potent enough to affect him. “I don’t know if he thinks we’re angry at him?”

seokjin scoots closer to the distressed pup. he’s got his eyes squeezed shut, and his posture is tense, nothing like the willing submission that they’re used to seeing from pack members. but equally, his instincts aren’t going to feel appeased until he gets the dominance his body is asking for. seokjin flounders for a second before taking several deep breaths, forcing his scent to become calmer, only a trace of his panic and confusion left when he rolls up his sleeve and presses the inside of his wrist to the side of the pup’s throat.

for a moment, nothing changes, and then the pup gasps for a breath, like he’d been holding it this whole time, and then his body slackens, tense shoulders loosening, fists unclenching. he nuzzles his cheek into seokjin’s hand, a sweet little scenting despite him having no scent of his own to contribute. the room feels lighter somehow, when he’s done and sits up to give his attention to yoongi, as though all the dark, heavy worry and concern has fizzled out.

seokjin looks at him as if he’s truly seeing him for the first time. he pulls his hand back slowly, careful to make sure the pup doesn’t get distressed again and yoongi grins at the both of them, proud of them both for taking the plunge and trusting their instincts, rather than suppressing them. any mating bonds, even consensual ones where both parties have known and loved each other for months if not years before the bite, take some time to settle down, both bodies having to adjust to the way they respond to each other. rocky moments like this will only strengthen their ability to care for each other later on.

“what are we doing today, yoongi-yah,” seokjin asks, desperate to get yoongi’s attention off his red ears.

yoongi chuckles and puts the pad of paper between them on the floor. he wants to give the pup some sort of way to communicate, despite being non-verbal. he could definitely hear them, and seemed to understand them too, so it wasn’t illogical to think that he’d be able to reply too, if given the right tools. he takes the pencil and writes ‘yes’ on one half of the paper and ‘no’ on the other, and then falters.

“can you read, puppy?” he asks. they know next to nothing about the pup’s upbringing, only a vague idea that he’s from a traditional forest pack, given the clothes they had found him in. some of those packs are far enough removed from civilisation that they don’t put much emphasis on reading and writing. there’s others that have languages of their own.

but the pup only looks at him. yoongi rips out the paper and turns it around, this time drawing a smiley face and a sad face in place of the “yes” and “no”, and then pushes the paper close to the pup, who studies it carefully.

“the happy face means something’s good, and the sad face means it’s bad. you can use it to communicate with me and hyung. like for example, if I say “did you like lunch?” then you can-” yoongi cuts himself off with a surprised laugh when the pup immediately points at the happy face.

“good pup, that’s perfect!” yoongi praises, “what about… do you like winter?”

sad face.

“me too. summer’s much better, huh?”

happy face.

yoongi can barely keep the smile off his own face as they continue on like this. he learns so much about the pup, a reminder that there’s a whole person with a personality under the curtain of foggy dissonance. sure, the things he learns aren’t particularly deep or earth-shattering, but even knowing orange-scented soap is a no and the beach is a yes, feels like progress yoongi couldn’t even have imagined a day ago.

the next day, yoongi brings in an assortment of snacks. their little game yesterday had revealed that the pup pointed at the happy face every time yoongi asked about food, and seokjin had mentioned how the pup’s appetite had been picking up a bit recently, no longer having to be reminded to eat, but actually getting up as soon as a pack member knocked on the door, and polishing off his plate with the sweetest little frown on his face. it shows in his energy too, less time spent in the bed and more pacing around the room, still careful not to get in seokjin’s way.

while the meals yoongi cooks for the pack are nutritious and tasty, they aren’t particularly varied in the winter, when they rely more on what they’ve preserved from the summer months, than on acquiring more ingredients. they satisfied most of their other cravings with snacks from the grocery store in the village, and if a sweet treat makes their days so much better, who’s to say that it wouldn’t help the pup too?

yoongi unwraps each snack, dividing it up into three while he explains what it is. the pup listens carefully and brings each food up to his face, sniffing if curiously, before taking a big bite. they don’t even need the happy/sad paper to communicate, because the pup’s own face is more expressive than yoongi’s drawings could ever hope to be. yoongi and seokjin laugh themselves silly at the face he pulls at the lemon doughnut, disgusted to the point he looks offended, and can’t stop smiling when the dried apricots make his nose scrunch up in joy. his favourite is a banana soy drink, that positively makes his eyes light up with happiness, and seokjin and yoongi easily give him the rest of their cartons to enjoy.

“I feel full just watching you eat,” yoongi assures him when the pup tries to refuse.

“he was looking at the paper and pencil for ages last night so I offered it to him,” seokjin whispers when the pup goes to the bathroom, “and look.”

it’s a small drawing of yoongi and seokjin, impressively detailed despite its simplicity. he’s captured all their features perfectly, yoongi’s gums that show when he smiles, seokjin’s eyebrows that shoot up into his hair line when he squawks in mock-indignation. and he’s drawn them just under the wobbly smiley face. yoongi feels choked with emotion, hugging the surprised pup tight that night before he leaves.

of course, the days don’t always go as well as this. some days, the pup is too nonverbal to participate in any mode of conversation. on those days, yoongi talks to him in low lilting tones, calm and without any judgment or annoyance. on even worse days, the boy doesn’t even make it out of bed, curled up tightly. yoongi brings his guitar in, playing something sweet and repetitive until both the pup and their pack alpha have been lulled to sleep. sometimes it works and sometimes it makes the pup burst into tears, heartbreaking hitched breaths between every sob, bed shaking with the intensity of it.

the first time it had happened, yoongi and seokjin had both frozen in shock, last few chords of the song he was playing a jumbled mess.

“c’mere cub,” seokjin recovers faster than him, scooping the boy up into his arms and rocking him gently, “it’s okay baby, let it out.”

and then yoongi had been shocked for an entirely different reason. because since yoongi had been doing his daily visits, seokjin hadn’t exactly been unkind to the boy, but he hadn’t always treated him as his mate either. he’d joined in to yoongi’s one-sided conversations sometimes, a joke here or there, but mostly he kept to himself. but this seokjin, this caring, tactile wolf, was the pack alpha that yoongi knew, the mate that the boy deserved. he looked so little in seokjin’s arms, delicate and vulnerable, but he also looked safer there than he had anywhere else in the room. and seokjin looked far more in his element than he ever did sitting on the mattress a meter away and pretending he wasn’t listening.

the hope in yoongi’s chest burns bright.

seokjin wakes one morning to the most delicious smell wafting in the room. it’s warm and sweet, but not overpoweringly so, and it reminds him of waking up at his grandparent’s house on lazy sundays, the promise of waffles or pancakes or pastries strong in the air. the smell now isn’t exactly like that, but it does carry that same warmth. seokjin rolls over as he takes a deep breath in, letting it settle his nerves.

he should probably open his eyes and start the day. a routine is important when they’re cooped up like this, and he’s done well to follow it every morning so far. but it feels too nice to lay here, head smushed in a pillow, another warm pillow cuddled to his chest, and the perfect scent in the air lulling him into that hazy half-sleep-half-awake state. he feels like he’s floating, weightless and also like all his limbs are being weighed down onto the bed, too heavy to lift. just like his eyelids.

he’s almost asleep again, taking steady deep breaths of the scent, when he feels the pillow he’s cuddling shift slightly. ah, it must be the cub. seokjin readjusts to help him get more comfortable, and then nuzzles into him again, sighing when the warm scent fills his lungs again.

and then it hits him. all the pieces of the puzzle slot together so quickly it leaves him reeling, dizzy as he clumsily gets up onto his elbows to look down at the cub, who’s blinking awake at the commotion.

“holy shit,” seokjin murmurs, “you’re an omega,” and then his face breaks out into a huge grin, cheeks aching with the surprise, the happiness, “you’re an omega!”

this feels like the first big breakthrough, the first tangible result to show them that they’re on the right track, that the cub is making progress. he smells divine, the sweetness of an omega, with a bakery spiced warmth that makes seokjin’s mouth water. he can’t help himself when he lies down again and pulls the cub into a tight hug, chest exploding with happiness, half his and half the cub’s.

so much has changed in just a few days, with the help of yoongi and namjoon and the rest of the pack’s genius ideas. seokjin feels happy in a way that he thought was impossible ever since the cub had entered his life. his brain feels less foggy, he talks to all his packmates daily through the door, feeling the self-imposed emotional distance between them get smaller and smaller day by day. he talks to the cub too, waiting on replies on the paper yoongi made him, or just content at the knowledge that he’s listening. he no longer feels like his mind and heart and body are at war, ever since he’s taken yoongi’s advice and let his instincts guide him.

because yes, mating has the power to make him protective over a stranger, but it’s not like an imprint. it doesn’t affect his insight or judgement in the same way. he can still trust himself to make the right decisions and ever since seokjin has started to let his instincts win, he’s felt paradoxically more rational, more like himself.

he feels light on his feet for the rest of the day, riding the high of his mate getting so much better, his mate smelling so deliciously sweet, scent sure to mix in perfectly with the pack. he longs to scent him properly, to pull him into his lap and take his time intermingling their scents together, until there’s no distinction between him and his mate. he settles for gently rubbing their wrists together every time the urge overtakes him, encouraging the cub when he returns the favour.

he’s a bit shier, more withdrawn with yoongi when he comes for his daily visit, and yoongi is careful about keeping his distance, even as he smiles widely and compliments his scent, chats as usual until the cub’s shoulders relax from where they had tensed up.

“we should get him acquainted with the other omegas sooner rather than later,” yoongi murmurs, and seokjin can’t help but agree. omegas are protective creatures, and his omegas can sometimes be too overprotective. if their plan of integrating the pup into the pack to help him heal was going to work, they had to try and minimise the risk of a future hoseok refusing to let the pup into the nest or a future jimin not feeling safe to have his heat with the pup in the den. and given how cautious the cub was being with yoongi, who he’d already met and been comfortable before redeveloping his scent, it would likely take him some time to let the rest of the pack members in too.

the first meeting with hoseok doesn’t go well.

they thought it would be easier for him to meet the pack omega first, and seokjin had tried to get the pup ready for the fact the previous night, over their plates of dinner. he could sense the cub’s anticipation, but it wasn’t outright anxiety, so they’d gone ahead with the plan.

“hyung!” hoseok calls as soon as the door opens, running in to hug seokjin arms wide open. seokjin laughs brightly, ready to turn and catch the omega in his arms, when there’s a blur of movement between them, and hoseok comes to a skidding halt, narrowly missing colliding into the cub who stands between them, hissing through snarled lips. there’s a second of complete stillness, everyone taking a moment to process the situation, before hoseok replies with a hiss of his own, rising viciously in his throat. it has the cub stumbling back, fear potent and thick in his scent, clogging up seokjin’s throat.

“I’m sorry hoseok-ie, but yoongi take him outside,” seokjin commands.

it isn’t about picking favourites, and god knows seokjin wants that hug as badly as hoseok does, but the distress from the cub is too much to handle, not just for the cub, but for seokjin too. he can feel that piercing fear, making his chest feel tight and his hands shake. it’s nothing compared to how much the pup is shaking, almost hyperventilating by the time yoongi shut the door, looking just as small and scared as he had in the forest all those weeks ago.

“it’s okay, cub, alpha’s here,” seokjin is breathless himself, but he tries to be calm for him. he picks him up and settles them both into the bed, blankets pulled tight and safe around them. “breathe for me baby, it’s okay.”

the cub gasps for breath, in the throes of what seems to be a panic attack, body reacting violently to the threat of a hissing omega. it makes seokjin lightheaded, so he does the only thing he can think to do - scruffs him with one palm cupped over his nape. he’s gentle with it, has playfully scruffed taehyung and jimin with much more force than this, but the effect is instantaneous. the cub’s whole body relaxes, instinctually taking deep lung fulls of seokjin’s scent to calm himself. seokjin helps guide his face into his neck to grant him better access, and tries to breathe himself. it’s overwhelming, how much the cub is feeling, mostly fear, but a hint of hurt, a dose of guilt. it makes seokjin’s heart ache.

“I’m here, baby, no one’s going to take alpha away from you,” he soothes, hand resting warmly on his nape, a reminder of his alpha’s presence.

and then, he feels the sharpness of teeth at his neck, followed by the wetness of a tongue, softness of lips. it takes him a second to figure out what’s going on. the cub is nibbling at his neck, teeth biting gently without breaking skin, before holding a bit of skin gently between his blunt little teeth and sucking on it rhythmically. and from the pleasant tingles that it sends down seokjin’s spine, he’s doing it right over his mating bite.

seokjin isn’t sure if it’s some sort of instinctual thing, to make his mark on his alpha, or just a self-soothing technique, but it calms them both down. it all gets mixed up sometimes, which way the emotions are going. is the nibbling calming down the omega, meaning seokjin is also calmer or is it calming seokjin directly? either way, they lie there, giving and receiving comfort from one another until their breaths come a little easier, their chests ache a little less.

later, he’ll open the window to completely get rid of the stench of fear and anger and threat that lurks in the room. he’ll ask for hoseok and he’ll apologise to him properly, make sure that his mate is okay. maybe in a few days, if the cub is given sufficient warning, seokjin will be able to give his other omegas a cuddle. but for now, he watches the cub drift into a fitful sleep, holds him close to his body and wishes for him to be okay.

they learn from their mistakes and are far more careful when they introduce him to jimin next. earning the cub’s trust is just as important as him earning theirs, and so jimin brings him a hamper-full of nesting materials as a gift, lightly saturated in the scent of the pack. he’d spent days picking them out from their stash of rarely used nesting materials, and had even plucked one of the items from the omega-only nest, an olive branch if there ever was one.

seokjin has taken precautions too, sitting cross-legged on one corner of the bed with the cub in his lap, a clear message to the omega that he’s okay and that alpha isn’t going anywhere. he can feel the spike of fear when jimin enters the room, and he runs his hands gently along the cub’s sides.

“hello, hyung! hi, puppy!” jimin settles himself on the opposite edge of the body, a good distance away, even if seokjin can see the clear want in his eyes, knows that it’s reflected in his own too. it’s been so long since he’s gotten to hold the pretty little omega, kiss him and touch him freely, love on him like he deserves. he feels a fresh surge of gratefulness to his pack, so selfless in their pursuit to help the cub.

“I’m jimin. yoongi-hyung said he’s told you lots about me. I hope they’re all good things, because he’s definitely told us all good things about you.”

the baby is clearly trying his best to listen, but his traitorous wide eyes keep glancing down at the hamper of soft materials that jimin holds in his lap. it’s clear when, between one blink and the next, jimin decides he likes him, eyes turning soft as he pushes the hamper across the bed in the boy’s directions.

“they’re nesting materials,” jimin explains when the boy doesn’t move, only keeps looking at them, curiously, “they’re for you,” jimin tries again.

seokjin can feel how badly the cub wants them, the little ache in his chest that urges him to give the cub anything he wants. but jimin beats him to it, scooting closer and pulling a small heart-shaped cushion from the hamper and handing it to the boy, who carefully takes it from jimin’s hold after an encouraging nod from both jimin and seokjin. he holds it like it’s the most precious thing in the world, careful as he brings it close enough to nuzzle his cheek into. his scent blooms in the room, a burst of innocent happiness that has jimin scenting the air in appreciation.

“it’s really soft, huh? I think we got this for the sofas, but it was a little small and it looked a bit silly. it would go perfect in a nest, though. here, how about this?”

the next item he picks out is a folded dark green fluffy blanket. the cub carefully places the cushion in his lap and takes the blanket in both hands, taking a dainty sniff, eyelids fluttering as he brings it closer to breathe it in.

“we scented that one for you,” jimin explains, “the pack smells perfect, don’t they? but it’s okay if you don’t want everyone’s scent in your nest, you can just get your own pretty scent in it, or get seokjin hyung to scent it for you.”

he hands him a pushie next. it’s a small, floppy-eared bunny, downy soft brown fur and covered in hoseok’s sunshine bright scent. the cub takes a second to smooth the blanket down carefully into his lap before accepting the plushie. unlike the other items, he’s far less shy with this, immediately hugging the bunny to his chest with a cute little smile, that he hides in the bunny’s ears when jimin coos at him.

“that’s hoseok hyung’s sorry present for you,” jimin laughs, endeared, “he said you reminded him of a fierce little bunny rabbit.”

when jimin tries to hand him the next item, the cub keeps the bunny tucked carefully under one arm rather than setting it down into his lap, and seokjin drops a fond kiss into his hair. jimin picks up on his reluctance to part with the gift, and decides to change tactic.

“have you ever built a nest before, pup? it’s okay if you haven’t, I’ll teach you. the first step is always to get big messy alphas off the nest,” he says, with a playful glare at seokjin who laughs and puts his hand up.

“I’ll stand here, cub,” seokjin says, keeping his movements slow as he stands next to the bed, still close enough to the cub for him to touch, for him to look over for reassurance every few seconds as jimin explains how to make a nest.

“but in the end, it’s really just for comfort. me and hoseokie-hyung’s nests look wildly different when we make them apart, when we make them together, when we make them for the pack or for a heat. it’s all just instinct.”

he pushes the duvet to the edge as he speaks and begins laying out a few items at random, stopping knowingly when the cub’s hand twitches in his direction.

“go on, you can fix it,” jimin encourages. and that’s all it takes for him to shuffle closer and fix the blanket jimin had laid out, moving it a few centimetres to the left and folding down the corners neatly. and once he’s started, he doesn’t seem to be able to stop, fiddling with a cushion here and the end of the bedsheet there. for once, the connection that ties seokjin to the cub is quiet, a calm contentment between them as he gets lost in his work. it’s cute, how he bites his lip for concentration, how he lays the bunny down carefully when he needs both hands to do something, and picks it up immediately once he’s done, giving it a nuzzle before moving on to the next task.

jimin slowly slides off the bed to come and stand next to seokjin, and seokjin immediately pulls him close.

“missed you so much hyung,” jimin whispers, as seokjin coaxes him into tipping his head back for a thorough scenting and a soft kiss. his alpha rumbles appreciatively at the happy, content scents of two of his omegas in the room. it’s seokjin’s favourite smell, his favourite thing to work for.

“missed you too, baby.”

“he’s cute,” jimin says, offering an encouraging smile to the cub when he turns to look at them every few minutes, as if checking they’re still there.

“he is,” seokjin agrees, “thank you for doing this.”

“I thought he could use some comfort.”

seokjin feels a surge of love and respect for jimin. he knows that jimin has struggled with this, they’ve had many hushed conversations about it through the bedroom door after the pup had fallen asleep, and seokjin’s had even more conversations with one of the other pack members about jimin. he knows how tough he found it to be separated from seokjin so close to his heat, how much he hates taking suppressants. he knows there was an undertone of jealousy that both omegas felt at having their pack alpha’s attention always on the new omega, even if they rationally understood why.

and yet, here he was, prioritising the cub’s comfort over his own.

“I love you,” seokjin murmurs, and it’s not everything he wants to say, not everything he wants to do to make it up to jimin, but for now it’s enough when jimin’s scent buds prettily in the room.

it takes the cub close to an hour to finish up his nest, blinking out of the focussed instinct-driven haze he’d gotten into and looking up at them from where he’s sitting cross-legged in the middle of his nest. his nest is quite small, taking up about half of the bed. he’s carefully chosen a variety of textures to build the wall of the nest and the thickest blanket to form the base, with a few blankets folded at the bottom of it, presumably for them to lay under. he’s put one of the pillows from the bed at the head of the nest, with the heart-cushion neatly placed in the middle of it. the bunny, predictably, is still in his hand.

“oh it’s perfect,” seokjin praises, “well done, cub, such a pretty nest!”

having two omegas who often want to show off their nests to him, especially when they were in pre-heat, means that seokjin knows exactly how to respond. the pup preens, pink blush rising in his cheeks.

“such a fast learner, too!” jimin adds on, “hyung’s proud of you, puppy.”

the cub gets even redder, looking away bashfully.

that night, seokjin enters the room after his bath to find that his discarded shirt from the day has been snuck out of the laundry hamper he’d left it in and into the nest by a shy looking omega. he resists the urge to coo and tease, instead just asking to enter the nest and squeezing into the place the cub makes for him.

the nest is comfy and smells nice and appeases the cub’s instincts - he clearly feels safe in it, and that in turn, makes seokjin feel calmer too. it also makes the cub closer to the omegas, the second meeting with hoseok going miles better than the first. but what they haven’t accounted for is how protective the pup would be over his nest. their room soon becomes an omega-and-seokjin zone only, even yoongi no longer allowed to enter. in all honesty, it isn’t much different to how jimin and hoseok treat their nests at the best of times, so it isn’t really concerning, it just means that introductions to the remaining two alphas have to be out in the rest of the den, rather than in their room.

the first time seokjin tries to coax the cub out of the room, the poor thing shakes so hard that they only make it a few steps into the landing before seokjin decides to call it off for the day and retreat back into the relative protection of their room and the nest. the next time, seokjin intertwines their fingers together, and manages to give him a tour of the upstairs rooms before he deems it enough of a success to go back to their room. the third time, they manage to make it down the stairs, but the cub had been so spooked by the sight of taehyung and namjoon, that he’d bolted back up the stairs, without even waiting for seokjin to follow.

and that’s why taehyung is officially introduced to the cub on the landing, with the protection of the nest only a door away. hoseok and seokjin sit on either side of the cub, there to soothe him if he gets overwhelmed or anxious. but they needn’t have worried - taehyung brings along an easy card game for them to play, and after only a few minutes, they get along like a house on fire. taehyung is the first one to make the cub laugh, this sweet breathy tinkling giggle and a burst of warmth in his scent, so perfect it makes seokjin’s teeth ache. before long, all four of them are engrossed in a very competitive, very loud, game, and for a while, everything feels like pack and home, nostalgic somehow.

sure, the excitement of the day makes the cub so sleepy that seokjin has to hand feed him dinner, but it’s a success overall.

in fact, everything seems to be going well, better and quicker than seokjin could have ever hoped for, except… except namjoon.

seokjin’s oldest alpha, his most trusted friend, and the mastermind behind the whole “socialising the cub” plan in the first place, seemed to make himself scarce wherever possible. he’d still come daily to give an update on the pack and the den and any news from neighbouring packs, but he would never linger long enough for seokjin to strike up a more personal conversation. when seokjin and the cub were out of their room and in the rest of the den, namjoon would always conveniently be nowhere to be found, the pack only sharing a look when seokjin inquired about him.

the avoidance isn’t something that he’s used to from namjoon. usually, namjoon avoids his problems by coming to talk to seokjin about them. even though he knows it’s not malicious, it hurts all the same. and it’s not like seokjin can just find him and force him to talk, not when he’s instinctually and emotionally and physically attached to the cub at all times.

luckily, the perfect opportunity presents itself a few days later. they’re sitting on the landing again, another rare day where the cub has enough energy to play some sort of complicated game with taehyung, the two of them giggling away, when seokjin hears namjoon’s voice downstairs. seokjin only thinks for a second before

“joon-ah, come up here please!”

the cub jumps a little at the sound, turning to look at him with questioning eyes.

“sorry, baby, I need to talk to joonie,” seokjin explains, apologetic, “come sit with alpha if you want to.”

“he’s the last member of the pack,” taehyung explains, scooting closer with all the playing cards in tow so they can continue the game even with the cub sitting between seokjin’s legs, “you met him already a while back, but I don’t know if you remember.”

seokjin settles the cub with one hand stroking his tummy, letting taehyung take charge of distracting him, as he concentrates on the noises from downstairs. it’s not exactly surprising when he hears his footsteps coming up the stairs - he hadn’t expected namjoon to ignore a direct order from the pack alpha - but seokjin lets out a relieved breath anyway.

“yes hyung?” he looks as gorgeous as ever, standing at the top of the steps, his shirt damp in some places with sweat. but his tall, capable frame is curled in on himself, shoulders hunched, and his post-workout sated scent is stained with his anxiety.

“come sit,” seokjin says, gesturing to the floor beside him. the cub has frozen in his hold, eyes carefully tracking namjoon’s movements, but seokjin doesn’t sense anything more than mild nerves in his scent.

“hi, pup, hi taehyung-ah,” namjoon says, giving them an awkward little wave as he walks past them to sit on seokjin’s other side. seokjin shoots a quick look at taehyung that has him loudly continuing their game again, before he turns to namjoon.

“c’mon, spit it out.”

namjoon balks.

“w-what?”

“you’ve been avoiding me. or the cub. or both of us. and I want to know why and I want to know how to fix it,” namjoon’s one of the few people in the world that seokjin feels comfortable being completely blunt with, and this is definitely not something he can bear to beat around the bush with.

there’s a silence and the next time namjoon blinks, his eyes are glassy.

“it’s not on you to make anything better, alpha,” his voice sounds wet, teary, making taehyung falter a little in his game before he chats with even more enthusiasm, doing his best to give them the illusion of privacy, as much as he can while being sat two feet away.

“it’s all my fault. I can’t even look at you without wanting to get on my knees and beg for your forgiveness. I’m humiliated. I was so stupid and reckless and the opposite of everything you need from an alpha in your pack. I forced this decision on you. I’m avoiding you, yes, but it’s because I can’t think of anything I can do to make you forgive my actions, and I can’t bear to look at you and see resentment or disappointment or anger, where there used to be only love.”

“look at me,” seokjin commands, not using his alpha voice but dominant enough that the pup twists to look at him too, and seokjin has to direct him back to taehyung with a whispered “good boy”.

namjoon looks at him for a long moment, searching his eyes for what he thinks should be there, lip trembling when all he’s met with is the love he’d convinced himself he lost.

“I’m going to be very honest and I want you to listen carefully,” seokjin says. it’s rare for him to employ this much dominance with namjoon, usually reserving it for the omegas and taehyung who enjoy being on the receiving end of it, but in a situation like this, it makes namjoon focus, makes him less likely to get lost in his head.

“I was angry at you when you left without telling anyone where you were going. I was worried sick when you ran off into the forest on your own, especially considering how even a few years ago, that could’ve been a death sentence. but that was before I found out about the imprint. and that’s something that’s so out of your control, that only an idiot would blame you for it.”

seokjin can see when the self-loathing defences that namjoon’s spent the past few weeks meticulously building up start to break at his calm, alpha insistence.

“and since then, I’ve had everything to thank you for. taking double the responsibility around the den to keep the pack safe, making sure everyone has everything they need, researching how to help the cub… I don’t think I can imagine a more capable, more worthy alpha.”

the first tear escapes namjoon’s eye, and seokjin is silent as he watches it track a wet path down his cheek, as namjoon ducks his head to hide the rivers of tears that follow.

“don’t make it hurt by pushing us away. I need the pack now, more than ever. I need my strong, confident, loving, sensitive alpha by my side. we both do.”

seokjin opens one arm in a silent invitation that namjoon takes, clumsily barrelling into seokjin’s chest to hide as silent sobs wrack his body. the cub jumps at the impact, turning curiously to take a closer look at namjoon. he seems conflicted for a second, looking between them all, as he seemingly decides what to do. for a second seokjin’s worried that he’ll want namjoon to leave, or want to retreat back to their nest. but instead, he surprises all three of them, by picking up the bunny in his lap and offering it to namjoon.

namjoon takes it with a wet little “thank you”, holding it gently as he tries to get his breathing back in control.

“oh, baby,” taehyung coos, “you’re just so good.”

seokjin can’t help but agree, pressing kisses to both the cub and namjoon’s heads (and taehyung’s when he playfully presses his head close to him).

they have a pack dinner that night, for the first time in what feels like forever. the cub sits in his lap bravely, and eats everything yoongi puts on his plate, thanking him with a shy grin. the conversation flows easily between the pack, no unsaid words left between them to make things unnecessarily awkward or tense. seokjin can’t stop smiling.

he must smell extra happy and sated that night, because the cub makes him scent more nesting materials (hoseok had helped him pick them out from their stash) and cuddles as close as humanly possible when they get settled for sleep.

he’s starting to doze off with the warm weight of his mate on top of him, happy at how much stronger his baby is now, at how well he’s getting along with the pack, when-

“alpha.”

jungkook comes back to himself in small pieces. he has moments of almost full lucidity, where he can hear and understand everything around him, and make his own thoughts and judgements about it. most of the time, though, it’s like there’s a huge barrier between him and the present world, like he’s seeing and hearing from miles away, dissociated from his body enough that he can barely feel it. other times, his instincts rise up within him, overtaking everything else. jungkook knows he must look silly, randomly jumping out of alpha’s hold and hiding in the wardrobe, or turning his back on everyone to eat in a corner, or sitting as close to alpha as possible until the other gets the hint and pulls him into his lap, but he can’t help it in those moments.

it had all been confusing in the first few weeks, when his brain was at its most loopy, memories hazy, thoughts slow to form. but over the weeks, jungkook had slowly put the pieces together, learning lots by listening in to the conversations alpha would have with his pack members, from the conversations that they would all try to have with him.

he still can’t quite believe he was mated after narrowly escaping that same fate before. he rubs at his bite mark sometimes, stares at it in the bathroom mirror when he’s sure no one would catch him fiddling with it. the first bite had completely disappeared, and it was odd to think that jungkook had never gotten a good look at it. instead, there’s just one clean bite in the centre of his throat, that tingles with the claim his alpha had laid on him.

jungkook may have put together most of the facts now, but how it made him feel was a different story entirely. one the one hand, alpha and his pack seemed kinder than his ex-betrothed had been, but on the other, he was still bound to an alpha he hadn’t chosen. at least this pack would let him, nay were excited to, let him go once the bites had healed physically and emotionally.

any time jungkook finds himself less than thrilled at that fact, he reminds himself that it’s just the mating instincts talking, not his own thoughts. jungkook before the bite wanted freedom, wanted to find true and consensual love and companionship. jungkook after the bite could not be trusted to make decisions.

current jungkook has one job and one job only - to get better. he’s heard the others talking about it, murmuring quietly about his “progress” and their “plan”. he’s felt how happy and proud alpha is every time jungkook manages something he hadn’t been able to do before. he wants to keep making alpha proud.

“alpha,” he manages to whisper one day, more a breath, a suggestion, than a properly-formed word. but alpha freezes underneath him anyway, arm tightening around him in disbelief.

“cub?”

it’s so exhausting even forming that word that jungkook doesn’t have the energy for much more. just settles heavy into alpha’s arms and hopes that’s enough to let him know that he’s getting better, that he’ll be out of their hair soon.

“alpha’s got you,” alpha murmurs, smoothing his hand down jungkook’s back, again and again until jungkook is lulled to sleep.

he doesn’t get a moment like that again for the next few days, no matter how much he tries to push past the fog in his brain, no matter how much he can feel how hopeful alpha is.

jungkook never thought he would like being mated, but he likes this bit, the part where he knows his alpha’s thoughts and intentions as well as his own. his brain can be too far away to understand words or scents or make sense of what he’s seeing, but he can always feel what alpha’s thinking. even when alpha resents him or gets upset, he can feel deep in his bones that alpha doesn’t want to hurt him, feels the protectiveness flow through him when they’re with the other pack members. alpha would never let them hurt him either.

it’s comforting. it makes things easier. as does the nest. he’d never been allowed to nest before - it was considered improper for an omega unless they were with child. but this pack didn’t seem to care about that. the omegas had been so kind, and gave him so many soft blankets and cushions and toys, that no one had tried to take away from him. they’d let him into their pack nest too, and it was beautiful and cosy, but jungkook found it far too big. he preferred it when it was just him and alpha and bunny in their nest, liked to tidy it every night, straighten the edges and smooth down the base, and have alpha praise him for it. it made everything feel less scary, even for a little while, when everything was boiled down to the walls of his nest.

nesting wasn’t the only thing jungkook got to indulge in since being here. he didn’t know much about the pack’s history, or the land that they were on, but it was staggering just how different this pack was from jungkook’s old one. the pack jungkook had been in, and all the packs he’d ever met or heard of, had all been huge - tens, if not hundreds, of families, each with an alpha-omega or beta-omega couple and their pups. but this pack only had two omegas, compared to the total of four alphas and betas, and alpha had six mating bites on his neck.

jungkook hadn’t even known that was possible. nor did he understand the hierarchy. it was meant to be that betas had power over omegas and alphas had power over both. but here, the beta scruffed the younger alphas when they were being rowdy, and the head omega had almost everyone baring their necks in easy comfortable submission. it made jungkook’s skin crawl, put him on edge, like his body was expecting his old pack to come banging through the door any moment and flog them all for indecency and destroying natural order.

it was clear that the vast majority of customs from jungkook’s old life didn’t apply here. he blushed when he saw them toppling into each other’s arms and kissing each other freely, even alphas kissing other alphas. he felt a dull pang of fear when one of the omegas would be playful and cheeky with the alphas, even though it never resulted in anything close to a punishment. he still couldn’t get used to them all referring to each other so casually by name or by “hyung”, something considered so disrespectful in his old pack that it still made his skin prickle with discomfort.

but maybe most strikingly of all, there weren’t any pups running around. the mating bites had healed, and the omegas seemed perfectly healthy, and there were no pups. unless they were specifically hiding them from him, and somehow covering up the potent milky scent of them in the den, he couldn’t make sense of it. did alpha not expect his omegas to carry his seed? were the omegas not able to, and alpha would expect jungkook to do it instead?

the strange little pack had jungkook running laps in his mind to keep up with them, to make sense of the unusual world he was in now, everything topsy-turvy and inside-out compared to his old life. every time he thinks of his past he’s reminded how much is on the line if they find him, how hard he needs to work to get better, to run away as soon as he is able to, to prevent himself from ending up in the emotional and physical prison that his old pack was again.

“alpha,” jungkook whispers again a few nights later, more energy this time. he’d felt tired all day long, as if his very bones weighed him down, and him and alpha had barely left the nest. it’s late in the afternoon when jungkook starts to feel a little better, like he can move without dying, and he directs all that energy into trying to form words. it’s a different type of exertion, working around the huge mental block between him and his language. most of the time he doesn’t even think in words anymore, rather in pictures and shapes. but he knows alpha wants to talk to him, can feel his shock of elated joy at hearing him speak.

“my baby,” he whispers back.

“cub,” jungkook corrects unthinkingly, freezing when he recognises the type of rudeness that would’ve easily gotten him punished in his old pack. but all he feels from alpha is warm amusement.

“my baby cub,” he amends, and then there’s a pause before, “what’s your name?”

it puts things into perspective, how they can be so intertwined in each other’s arms, can lay together for hours, know each other’s thoughts and feelings without any verbal communication, but alpha doesn’t even know his name. it takes jungkook a second to even remember it himself.

“jungkook,” he replies, voice hoarse. he clears his throat.

“jungkook,” alpha replies, like he’s savouring the word on his tongue, “how’re you feeling, jungkook?”

“good, alpha,”

and it’s true, he does feel good. they’d went outside yesterday, just him and alpha, only for a little while. but it had felt nice to feel the sun on his skin, nicer still to smell the strong protective claim on the den. it made something inside jungkook loosen, the den and his nest suddenly seeming so much safer, the fear of his past shrinking just a little.

“I’m glad, cub,” alpha sounds overwhelmed with emotion. jungkook can feel it, his giddy pride, how many questions are on the tip of the tongue, the nerves about saying the wrong thing. but jungkook really only has one thing he wants to say:

“thank you, alpha.”

once he’s completely better, once every day doesn’t feel like an uphill battle, jungkook will make it up to alpha and the pack. he owes them all so much. he’ll help around the house, with the cooking and cleaning, and he’ll attend to alpha, and when he can finally leave, he’ll get a job in the city and send them money, or anything else they could need. they showed him kindness when they could have left him to die - he owes them his life (he just hopes they don’t ask for it).

he doesn’t know how they can continue to be so kind and patient, when jungkook is such a failure. one day he’ll manage to interact with the whole pack and spend the day out in the den, and the next he’ll have a panic attack if alpha leaves the nest or bunny leaves his hand. one step forward, ten steps back. it’s so frustrating, it makes jungkook want to pull his hair out, makes tears drip from his eyes unbidden.

“what’s wrong with me, alpha?” he cries after a particularly hard day, confusion and frustration and guilt and self-loathing reaching fever pitch, making his skin crawl with the need to scream it all out.

alpha looks sad as he rocks both of them lightly. jungkook doesn’t want to make him sad.

“wolves are social creatures that crave love, little cub,” alpha explains, “it’s not in our nature to be alone. and after a mating bite, it’s impossible. you were so lonely, hm? all alone and in pain in the cold forest. it was a lot for your body to take. it’s going to take a while to undo all that damage.”

“didn’ mean it,” jungkook cries. he wants alpha to know that it’s not his fault. wants to tell him all about how he had to run, how he had no choice. how he’d tried to escape before the fatal mating bite, but he’d been caught and his wedding day had been bought closer. wants to explain how he’d been lonely for much longer than the forest, for as long as he could remember. he wants alpha to know he did his best, but the words don’t form, and even if they did, he couldn’t force them past the lump in his throat, suffocating him.

“I know, cub,” alpha coos, “I know you didn’t mean it. it’s not your fault. you didn’t do anything wrong.”

and alpha can’t possibly know that’s true, but there’s only conviction in his scent, and jungkook lets it envelope his heart, expand his lungs. it’s comfort that he’ll have to turn to so many times through his healing, and it’s always willingly given. jungkook will never take it for it granted.

even though he says at least a few words to the alpha every day, it’s a while before he can muster up the courage to speak to the other pack members. the beta is the first to hear his voice, and it’s by accident. they’re sat together on the sofas, jungkook drawing on a sketchpad that the youngest alpha had gifted him, and the beta strumming a familiar tune on the guitar. jungkook doesn’t realise he’s humming along to it until the beta gasps in disbelief. jungkook blushes, clears his throat.

“you have such a pretty voice, jungkook,” the beta praises, and jungkook’s instincts sing.

with the omegas, it takes a little more will power. they’re the only ones jungkook feels comfortable with in alpha’s room, but even they aren’t allowed in his nest. but he likes sitting with them on the rug on the floor, listening to them talk to each other in that friendly, comfortable tone. he knows they’re more than just friends, knows they’re mates and lovers, but he longs for a friendship like theirs. he must’ve been a pup the last time he talked to someone so comfortably, laughed without a care. listening to them, being around them, is the second best thing if he can’t experience it himself.

“we went to the the village today, jungkook-ah,” the pack omega croons as soon as they enter the room, “and guess what we got you!”

“what did you get, omega-nim?”

both omegas freeze for a second, looking at him with awe-struck faces while he tries his best to not burrow his face into the pillows in his nest and hide. the pack omega is the first to recover, smiling at him brightly as he pulls the package out from the bag he’s carrying.

“different flavoured milk! yoongi-hyung said you liked the banana milk, but there’s also chocolate and strawberry and vanilla for you to try.”

“oh! thank you!”

“come sit, jimin bought snacks too.”

he figures out that banana is still his favourite, but he likes all the others too. he finds that alpha hates the strawberry milk, enough to spit it out and leave them all in peels of laughter. he learns that he’s capable of holding a short conversation, without dying from exhaustion or embarrassment, that it’s less tiring when he doesn’t think too hard about what he’s saying. they never make fun of him, when the words take a while to come, long awkward pauses between their questions and his replies. they never cut him off or get annoyed, and so, jungkook tries to not get annoyed at himself either.

the youngest alpha is jungkook’s next target. he’s always felt comfortable around him, despite how his instincts shrink and cower in fear at loud alphas usually. he still makes him startle sometimes, but jungkook is getting used to him as they spend more time together. and with him, he has fun. the youngest alpha is playful and giggly, and has jungkook’s chest filling with this giddy child-like excitement, feels like a bit of him that’s been cowering in fear and neglect gets to heal the more time he spends around his boxy grin.

“that’s cheating, alpha-nim!” jungkook exclaims one day, the alpha’s blatant cheating in the board game they’re playing taking his aback so much that he forgets his shyness.

alpha’s grin softens proudly for just a second, before he looks devilishly delighted again.

“wasn’t cheating,” he asserts, an air of playful teasing.

“you were, alpha-nim! I saw!”

“I’ll admit I was cheating if you call me by my name,” he says, smug.

“call you…?”

“call me taehyung.”

jungkook blanches. his alpha looks over from where he’s sat on the sofa a few feet away, the discomfort from jungkook distracting him from his book.

“I- I can’t.”

“you can. I want you to.”

jungkook shakes his head.

“guess I haven’t cheated then. and I’ll win this round. and the next.”

jungkook slowly nods his assent, biting his lip. he’d rather lose all the games he ever plays again, than… than what? what’s he so afraid of? they’ve never given him any indication that he needs to refer to any one by their titles. pack alpha has tried to explain it to him, how titles can feel nice, can be respectful, but they should never be constricting, should never come from a place of fear. some of the other pack members have looked bewildered when he used their titles, but it’s a habit he can’t shake. but… has he even tried to shake it?

“how about,” the alpha dips his head until he can meet jungkook’s eyes, “can you call me hyung?”

and maybe that’s a good middle ground, a good place to start. despite being less formal, it’s still respectful, still a title, and won’t make anxiety clog up his throat.

“h-hyung,” he whispers, and hyung beams at him.

“okay, okay, here are the counters I stole off the board when I thought you weren’t looking,” and jungkook’s jaw drops at just how many there are.

of course, the other pack members quickly catch on, and insist that jungkook calls them all hyung, and jungkook tries his best to remember to. at first, his body involuntarily braces for a punishment that never comes, but slowly, his brain learns that it really is okay. he still calls his alpha by his title, though not from fear, but because of the safety it brings him, how warm it makes his insides. and alpha never tries to force him to change, still calls him “cub” more often than not, instinctually knowing that it’s a comfort jungkook craves, a sense of normality, however outdated, that he needs when all he’s surrounded by is confusing change.

“what are you reading, n-namjoon-hyung?” jungkook asks one day. he hopes it comes off sounding casual, and not like he’d rehearsed the sentence eighteen times in his head before saying it out loud. he’s been working at starting conversations recently, not just answering his hyungs’ questions, but actively trying to talk to them too. alpha had assured him that it wasn’t annoying, that no one would be secretly wishing for him to be quiet, or to stutter less or to talk faster. it was easy to believe his alpha when he could feel the sincerity and truth in his every word, so jungkook set a mental goal to start one conversation a day.

today, they’d been in the living room since breakfast. alpha and yoongi-hyung were chatting at the table, jimin-hyung and taehyung-hyung were still asleep, hoseok-hyung was upstairs bathing, and jungkook was sat cross-legged in the pack nest, practicing different types of knots from a book namjoon-hyung had leant him. namjoon-hyung spent a lot of time reading books, and a lot of time in the library. he was a part-time researcher for one of the universities in the city. jungkook’s sire always painted the universities in such a bad light, always talked about how they were corrupting the minds of the youth with nonsense.

but namjoon-hyung wasn’t corrupted or silly, and while jungkook didn’t always understand some of the things he talked to him about, he liked to listen anyway.

“ah this isn’t research or anything. it’s a fiction book. would you like me to tell you about it?” namjoon-hyung beams at him, like he’s happy jungkook distracted him from his book with a conversation, like he’s somehow getting just as much out of this as jungkook is.

“yes please,” jungkook says, pleased, shy smile curling his lips as he knees his way closer to hyung and settles down at his feet to listen. it’s nice, comfortable, even more so when hyung reaches over with one hand to run his fingers through jungkook’s hair. he gets lost in it, his hyung’s voice and the story he tells him about, the pleasant scents of the pack wafting about him, the bone-deep safety he feels like this. he can just about make out alpha’s laughter from the other room and it makes him smile, this happiness inside him that alpha responds to with a warm curl of fondness.

“do you want me to read to you?” namjoon asks once he’s caught him up on the book so far.

“yah, kim namjoon you’re gonna bore him-” hoseok-hyung calls as he walks in.

jungkook doesn’t hear another word.

panic shoots through him, his body’s stress response so rapid, it makes him nauseous. his head spins, a ringing noise in his ears, as he scrambles back on clammy hands, stumbling as he gets up on shaky legs.

“jungkookie? you okay, baby?” hoseok’s voice sounds like it’s coming from a mile away, distorted in his ears.

that name.

jungkook bolts.

fear, strong and potent, so overwhelming in its intensity, it makes seokjin’s knees buckle. he gasps, gripping the edge of the table to try and stay upright, to catch his breath.

“hyung?” yoongi asks, concerned as he reaches out towards him. seokjin shares one stricken, panicked look with him, before suddenly there’s a rope tightening around his heart, painful and jagged, tugging at him harshly.

his feet are moving well before his brain catches up.

he barges past his packmates into the hall and runs out of the already open door of the den in his slippers, barely hearing the shouts behind him, as all his senses tune into one thing - the cub, several meters ahead of him, running like his life depends on it. running away from the safety of the den, away from his mate. seokjin speeds up, fear and anger and panic clouding his mind, blurring his vision.

he can feel jungkook’s fear getting stronger the closer he gets to catching up. it chokes seokjin up, makes his breaths stutter in his chest, makes his mind spin. it hurts, not just the physical distance between them, but the emotional fallout too, of knowing that his mate is scared of him. scared enough to run away. the omega is surprisingly fast, would be even faster if he didn’t turn back to look at seokjin every few minutes, wide, fear-stricken eyes. but seokjin is faster, and in a matter of minutes, he catches up to him, breathing raggedly.

he grabs jungkook’s hand, growling low in his throat when the omega manages to slip free, and seokjin has to resort to grabbing him with both arms around the torso.

“what are you doing?” seokjin sneers, voice raised and shaking with the amount of emotion he’s feeling. they’re at the edge of the pack’s land now, the protective alpha claim beginning to fizzle out so far from the den and the omega feel so tiny in his hold. why would he run from the nest when he was so vulnerable?

“enough jungkook,” seokjin growls, tightening his hold when he keeps wiggling, almost lifting him off the ground like this. the fear and hurt have mixed and become almost unrecognisable, disguised as anger, the only way he can express the magnitude of his emotions. but in his fear, he’s forgotten how sensitive jungkook is. the cub chirps, this heart-breaking omegan sound, that carries through the trees, and makes nature itself answer, the wind rustling and the birds calling their replies in a desperate bid to calm the omega’s anguish.

it stuns seokjin back to his senses, as abruptly as though a bucket of cold water had been poured over his head. the anger dissipates as soon as it had come, the raging storm of emotions quietening enough for him to take a deep breath.

he focuses. the cub is panting in his hold. he can feel the way his ribcage shakes with the way his desperate lungs try to take a breath, can feel his heartbeat even from his back.

“breathe,” seokjin says, alpha voice in full effect, and jungkook heaves in a huge breath.

seokjin tries not to use alpha voice on him most of the time - it’s part of the cub’s healing to teach him how to work through his emotions, giving him tools to help him recover from a panic attack on his own. but seokjin’s too frazzled for that right now and the last thing he needs is the cub passing out in his hands.

“good boy,” seokjin murmurs, “such a good boy for alpha.”

now the adrenaline is wearing off, they’re both shivering. he’s a bit too shaken to go all the way back to the den, so seokjin walks them to nearby tree and sits down, cub pulled firmly into his lap. the poor thing had been barefoot when he ran and his feet are bleeding now, soles muddy and cut in various places. and he’s crying quietly.

“talk to me,” seokjin pleads.

“alpha,” he sobs, “please let me leave.”

seokjin feels this uncomfortable jolt in his chest, like his heart stopped for a second at hearing those words. he swallows, tries to push his emotions aside.

“I can’t, cub,” seokjin replies. not only because of the mating bond that keeps them attached at the hips, but also because of his heart, that can’t bear to let him go. but the words are too thick, too loaded, for seokjin to utter.

“will you let me go when the bond doesn’t hurt anymore?” he asks, nuzzling his face against his chest, seeking comfort from the alpha he wants to escape. did he feel the same suffocating feeling around his heart that seokjin did and still managed to run in the opposite direction? seokjin’s chest feels raw even following the thread that connected their hearts together. he can’t imagine what it would feel like to fight that urge.

“if you want to leave then, you’ll be free to,” seokjin chooses his words carefully.

“please don’t lie, alpha,” jungkook says with a sob. the uncertainty must have reflected in more than just his stilted words. he forgets sometimes, that jungkook knows him just as intimately as he knows jungkook, that he can’t hide big revelations like “maybe I’m too attached to you” from him.

“if you need to leave now, I’ll go with you. if you genuinely want to leave as soon as the mating bite heals, I won’t stop you. I won’t like it, it’ll hurt, but I won’t stop you. and neither will anyone else.”

they’d never talked much about the past or future, so he shouldn’t have expected him to want the life that the pack offered. no matter how much he thought he and the pack knew him, they didn’t really know him at all.

but… that isn’t really true is it? he does know when jungkook is truly happy or content or safe, knows that he’s been feeling that way in the den recently. he tries to push away the hurt and the insecurity and think rationally.

“but please,” seokjin continues, “please let me in. let me help. what scared you, baby? let alpha help make it better.”

“kim namjoon was my old pack alpha.”

seokjin’s blood runs cold.

“w-what? you’re from the kim pack?”

the kim pack was the biggest of the forest packs, and notorious for its tyrannical leader and terrible living conditions. seokjin has had more than his fair share of trouble with that pack over the years.

“I was betrothed to his son.”

for one crazy second, seokjin thinks he means his pack mate, namjoon, but then he remembers namjoon’s brother, hajoon. he’d only had the misfortune of meeting him once, and those few moments had been enough for seokjin to get a good idea of his character.

“oh, cub,” seokjin breathes.

“m-my sire set it up. and my dam let him, she thought it would be a good idea. it’s a hard pack to survive in, if you’re not in the inner circle. most of the common families did all the hunting and gathering, only to not get a share of the food or furs. my parents thought being mated to kim hajoon would be the only way to ensure our family’s survival,” jungkook frowns and looks into the distance, face going through a complex series of emotions. seokjin can feel how conflicted he is, the myriad of feelings he associates with his family.

“they wanted a good life for me, I guess. but my alpha brother, they helped him escape the pack, but refused to help me in the same way. sire would say omegas can’t make it on their own, no matter how much I would beg. for a while, I thought that maybe it would be okay. maybe hajoon would be nice, and we could build a better pack once he was the pack alpha. I wouldn’t have minded standing by his side and helping him do that,” there’s a hardness to jungkook’s eyes now, one that seokjin isn’t used to seeing.

“but he was somehow even more cruel, even more depraved than the pack alpha. he… he hit me the first time we met. held me by the chin and turned my head side to side and then slapped one cheek and said I was pretty and pinked up nicely. while my sire watched, while the pack alpha watched.”

seokjin’s vision blurs, anger and pain, and he pulls the cub impossibly closer, wishing he could somehow protect him from his past.

“a-and I realised,” jungkook’s breath hitches, “I realised no amount of furs or food could ever make that life worth it. I’d rather die alone in the forest than alone in a cold den with bruises and pups running around that would also be destined to a terrible life if they presented as anything other than an alpha.”

he turns in seokjin’s hold to face him, accepting the gentle scenting seokjin offers him.

“I can’t go back to that life, alpha. I need to run away if there’s even a chance that namjoon-hyung is in contact with his old pack, or even if they know where he is. I can’t do it again, hyung. it’ll ruin me this time. and I’m too close to freedom and happiness to give that away.”

“and I’m a little too attached to both you and namjoon to ever give either of you up to that bastard either,” seokjin assures, with a kiss to his cheek, “I’m your alpha, but I’m also his. I was the one who got him out of that shitty pack in the first place.”

jungkook’s pretty, starry eyes meet his in shock. it’s not something he talks about much, a story that hurt them all more than anything. they all knew it still weighed on namjoon heavily, and it still gave the rest of them nightmares too. but the cub needs to hear it if he’s ever to feel safe with them again.

“back before everyone knew what the kim pack were like, they were looked up to in society. namjoon, yoongi and I were all the sons or grandsons of three big, prestigious packs, and we met at one of the annual forest dinners.”

“but yoongi-hyung’s a beta?” jungkook asks, shocked.

“ah, that sort of thing doesn’t matter in the min pack,” seokjin said, smiling at the cub’s surprise, “we’ll take you to meet them one day and then you’ll understand. yoongi adores them and they adore him. they’re actually… we owe them a lot.”

“anyway, me and namjoon and yoongi, we were like a little trio,” seokjin smiles still remembering it, “the dinners happened every quarter, and I’d always look forward to them. and then, namjoon’s dam died. it was terrible, some sort of freak accident, namjoon never likes to talk about the details. I don’t even know if he knows the details. but he was devastated. he started keeping to himself at the dinners, even when me and yoongi would try to talk to him. and then he started coming less and less. his sire made excuses for him saying he was out running around and causing mischief with the other alphas.”

the cub’s frowning now, this little burst of pain in his scent, not for himself, but for his namjoon-hyung. seokjin wonders how much of the story jungkook has figured out from just this. he must be even more aware than them of just how cruel the pack alpha is.

“but… it was odd. out of all of us, namjoon was the one who took his role as next in line the most seriously. me and yoongi never did, more than happy to let that honour go to our siblings, or in yoongi’s case, an election. so it made no sense that namjoon had suddenly stopped taking his pack duties seriously. but we were young - maybe he changed his mind, maybe he was going through a rebellious phase after his dam’s demise. in that time, me and yoongi kept getting closer and closer. we took a trip to the city one summer, where we met the rest of the pack, and things started falling into place.”

it’s a happy memory, one that needs the whole pack there to do it justice, so seokjin glosses over it now.

“we started all living together, seeing if our wolves liked to share space and what the hierarchy would be like if we mated. and yoongi asked me one day if I ever thought about namjoon. and of course, I did. he was our childhood friend, and I’d always felt for him what I felt for yoongi. infatuation and butterflies. with yoongi, that had turned into love as we grew. who’s to say the same wouldn’t have happened with namjoon?”

“so we went to try and talk to him one day, not knowing a single thing about the kim pack. and at first, they were nothing bus hospitable, giving us rooms and saying they’ll arrange a meeting with namjoon and his sire as soon as possible. but the longer we stayed there, waiting for the meeting, things started to get weirder and weirder. we never saw any omegas around. some packs are more protective of them, sure, and it doesn’t always have to be a bad thing, but the boarded up windows of some dens, the way groups of alphas would go into one den and come out together, boasting. the way we were offered those same… experiences. it all just rubbed us up the wrong way.”

“and then, a week after we got there, we finally got to meet namjoon. and he looked… worse than I’d ever seen him. thin and gaunt, eyes having lost all their warmth. there were bruises on his wrists when his clothes moved, a limp as he walked in that he tried his best to hide…” it makes seokjin shiver to think about, the image still so strongly branded into his mind’s eye, “and he told us in this pleasant voice, all surface niceties, that he wasn’t interested and thank you for coming.”

“it probably took them that long to convince him of what to say,” jungkook replies sadly, “there was… a certain way they wanted everybody to act, and when you didn’t, it was taught to you by whatever means necessary.”

“we knew it wasn’t what he really wanted,” seokjin nods his agreement, “so we took our leave and made a plan. yoongi’s sire and my grandad helped us find someone in the kim pack that we could use to get letters to namjoon. namjoon was clever enough to spin his words and give us just enough information in his letters for us to know his and his sire’s schedule. but on the day we planned to help him escape, the person who was helping with the letters turned on us, so while we were getting him out, the sire was waking up angry.”

the memory is as vivid as ever, still making seokjin’s skin crawl so many years later. the cub lets out sweet omegan pheromones in response to seokjin’s sadness, frowning in concentration. he’s only just started working out how to do that, and it never fails to endear seokjin to him even more. he gives him a grateful kiss before he continues.

“namjoon has a huge scar on his back where one of the kim alphas managed to slice him with a sword as we were running. yoongi dislocated his shoulder falling. it was about a week of steadily being hunted by them, a week of trying to mask our scents as we hid in the forest, shook in caves as we tried to make no noise. eventually, they left us alone, and we made it back to our den. once he was a little better, namjoon wanted more than anything to go back and save the rest of his pack from his sire’s rule, especially knowing that his brother would be an even worse leader. and the sire must have known that he’d be a threat, so he came looking for us again,” seokjin can’t suppress the full body shudder this time.

“we barely escaped that time. it was during jimin and taehyung’s presentation, and it was so hard on them, to have to run so much, so far,” he admits, smiling softly at how devastated the cub looks, “but we made it to my old pack, who took us in and kept us safe. and they worked together with the min pack to enforce sanctions on the kim pack and take in anyone who managed to leave it. as part of the sanctions, my grandfather gifted us this den, as a safe space. if any of the kim pack even get near it, they’ll have hell to pay.”

seokjin sighs, running his fingers through jungkook’s long hair, combing through it gently where the wind blows it across his face. “baby, this is the safest place for you to be. I’ve protected namjoon from their wrath before, and now you’re mine to protect too. of course, if after you’re better you still want to leave, then we’ll help you find somewhere else safe but… at least think about it, hm?”

jungkook looks at him and then nods, nuzzling his hand into seokjin’s palm. it’s not all seokjin wants to say. he wants to lay his heart bare and get on his knees in the soil and beg his cub to say, but instead he picks him up again. they’re both tired and cold, and seokjin’s anxious to get the cuts in jungkook’s feet cleaned and patched up. the rest can wait.

jimin takes one look at them when they enter the den and scurries to run a warm bath for them. seokjin offers a smile to everyone else but the cub is hiding in his chest so he follows jimin upstairs, knowing the pack will be happy to wait for an explanation later. he thanks jimin with a kiss, cub still held in his arms between them. jimin hesitates for only a second, before leaning down to press a kiss to jungkook’s cheeks, who flushes so prettily in response, despite the cold.

seokjin helps him bathe, bandages up his feet, dresses him in his warmest clothes. every now and then, jungkook will cry again, and seokjin will press a kiss to his forehead, quiet comfort, quiet understanding at how overwhelming it all is.

“what if… what if I don’t want to leave, alpha?” he asks in the dead of night, face hidden by the dark and into seokjin’s neck, where he still nibbles on the skin sometimes for comfort.

“I want to have my life,” jungkook continues, “have a life that I choose. but then I think about leaving here, I think about leaving everyone and trying to make it on my own, and… and I don’t really want that. I want to choose this.”

“please don’t leave,” seokjin says, taking the leap. his heart lurches, whether from his own nerves or from jungkook’s, he doesn’t know.

“cub, my instincts want you because we’re mated. but my heart wants you because… because you fit. you’re part of me now. I need you here, badly,” and then after a minute of silence, whispered into the night, “I love you.”

jungkook sniffles, presses his round nose into seokjin’s neck.

“I love you, too.”

namjoon finds it hard to get his head around everything. in some ways, it’s like his past is coming back to taunt him. sometimes, he looks at jungkook and all he sees is the ways in which he failed to protect his birth pack. he sees it in the way jungkook immediately defers to the rest of them, the way he tries to keep strict control over his scents and pheromones, the way he flinches at raised voices or play fighting. it makes him think to the other members in the kim pack. what had become of his friends? jungkook’s parents? all the betas and omegas that namjoon had never even set his eyes on? were they all suffering in the exact same way, just because namjoon couldn’t save them?

but in other ways, it’s like having jungkook around him was his first real shot at healing. he sees in jungkook all the ways he himself had to heal. his heart bursts with pride and hope as jungkook learns to refer to them without their titles, to choose what he wants to eat, to playfully tease seokjin, now that he’s sure he won’t be punished for it. he talks more at pack dinners, with the help of taehyung, who’s an expert of getting him out of his shell, always noticing when jungkook has something to say but is too anxious to interject. to jungkook’s embarrassment, the whole house had smelt like nothing but everyone’s pride when he’d shakily asked if it would be okay if he took suppressants for his upcoming heat.

there’s so much further for him to go, still, but if jungkook can heal, can allow himself to be happy after such trauma, surely namjoon can too?

it helps that jungkook vehemently disagrees with him whenever namjoon tries to blame himself. jungkook had been the one to seek him out the day after he’d ran from the den in fear, a meek, mild apology for causing a scene, and that he still very much trusts namjoon. it was namjoon that had flinched, blood in his veins turning to ice as he shook and stuttered an apology for all the harm his family had caused him.

“why are you sorry?” jungkook had asked, sincere and guileless, head tilted to one side, shaggy, long hair, resembling a little puppy.

“I-I- jungkook-ah,” namjoon blinked away the tears, hands shaking, “you’ve been so hurt by my brother and my father. the way they treated you. it’s okay if you want to be away from me-”

“but you’re not them hyung,” jungkook sounded just as confused, and something that had been rising up in namjoon seemed to burst at the seams.

“I was the closest to them. I technically had the most power after them. it was my duty to save you, but I ran away-”

“I ran away too, hyung. I could’ve mated hajoon and had just as much power as you had in that pack.”

“that’s different,” namjoon had argued, “you were suffering.”

“we both were,” he corrected, “and besides, it was never just your brother and the pack alpha. it was a whole group of them running the pack. we never stood a chance.”

“how many more people are suffering?” namjoon asked, not knowing if he was prepared for the answer.

jungkook’s silent for a second, before, “alpha said we can try and help them. yoongi-hyung’s pack and alpha’s pack and our- this pack. together. we can try.”

and for now, that had to be enough. jungkook still finds him whenever namjoon is wallowing in a pit of guilt and misery. sometimes, they talk about it together, but other times, jungkook just curls up small next to him, scent calm, a reminder that he’s okay and that he doesn’t blame namjoon. it helps more than he can put into words.

later, jungkook would ask him if he wanted to go on a run and namjoon would easily agree. they’ll go on a run around the den’s land and lift weights in the shed-turned-gym. namjoon used to use exercise as a coping mechanism, as a way to distract from his thoughts, by punishing his body. but now, he genuinely enjoys it. loves seeing the giddy smile on jungkook’s face when he gets to pick out the clothes he wants to wear from the (all black) wardrobe seokjin had taken him to the city to go pick out, the infectious excitement when he completes his lap in record time or does a few extra reps in his gym routine, the hopeful pride when everyone compliments him on his muscles rather than scolding him with out-dated harmful preconceptions of what an omega’s body looks like.

his healing, his hope, his resilience - it’s infectious. there’s a long road ahead for both of them but namjoon feels a little stronger with jungkook by his side.

he knows that the others feel it too.

hoseok and jimin invite jungkook to help rebuild the pack nest, and it feels so right that even the alphas, on whom nest science is lost, can feel how perfect it is. they rebuild the omega-only nest too, spending many lazy mornings all cuddled up around each other, driving the rest of them wild with their warm, happy scents when they finally emerge. jungkook shyly admits that hoseok’s scent is his favourite, spends any time he’s near hoseok with his round nose tucked into hosoek’s neck. it’s a compliment that makes hoseok so happy, he positively glows with it. jimin’s omega has been thriving with a younger omega to take care of. he usually tried to sate those instincts by doting on taehyung, but that was only successful half the time, so having jungkook, a significantly more submissive wolf, worked wonders for jimin.

taehyung and jungkook stay up for hours talking and giggling and coming up with cute little handshakes, both of their scents so happy and complementing each other perfectly. yoongi has rediscovered his love of music again, and the den is often filled with the soft notes of a piano or the gentle strum of a guitar, jungkook always hovering nearby, sometimes just swaying to it with his eyes closed, but other times, singing along melodiously, whole den silent to savour the magic they’re creating. yoongi writes all his songs down in a little notebook, the first page of which reads “for my little prince”.

seokjin laughs and plays more than namjoon has ever seen him do. it’s not that he wasn’t easygoing before, quite the opposite. but now, he lets himself indulge in a more child-like play with jungkook, happy to up the dramatics if it gets a laugh out of jungkook (and it always does). it delights everyone to no end, watching the two of them interact when they’re in that giggly playful mood, all of them happy to see them so carefree after being stressed for so long.

seokjin and jungkook still sleep in their room more nights than not, jungkook feeling especially safe there. but namjoon loves the nights when they all pile into the pack den, laughing and talking until they all drift off to sleep one by one. he loves curling close behind seokjin to watch the gentle rise and fall of jungkook’s chest, the way he snuffles and nuzzles at the bunny plushie that he always keeps tucked next to him. he loves when everyone else had fallen asleep, warm and safe, and seokjin lets him circle his throat with one hand, rub his thumb along jungkook’s bite mark, and feel his own neck burn where he wanted one of his own.

the others had talked about it too. the pack alpha being mated to someone who wasn’t mated to the rest of the pack still felt strange, made the pack bond feel a little unbalanced, even after forming their own emotional bonds with jungkook. they’d all agreed that mating jungkook would be a conversation to be had a little later, when the bond between the pup and seokjin had settled a little more. but that didn’t stop namjoon’s eyes catching on the almost bare expanse of jungkook’s neck, teeth aching in his gums.

namjoon had always secretly believed in fate, but even if he hadn’t, he couldn’t think of anything other than fate that would lead him out of this very pack nest and into the cold, icy forest all those months ago. nothing else that would lead to an imprint so strong it compelled him through hours of walking in the cold towards a feral. towards a set of circumstances that would leave them no choice but to welcome jungkook into their den. he was fated to be theirs, to lie pretty and protected in the middle of their warm nests.

as namjoon drifts off, he decides that winter is still his favourite. after all, it's the season that bought jungkook to them and completed their pack.