Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

No one told him presenting would hurt. Healer Lee had walked him through the particulars of it, clinical but kind, and so the fever and the cloudiness and the need aren’t surprises. Even the loneliness, which isn’t physical but cuts like a knife all the same, is something he’d known to anticipate—no one in the pack would deign to sully themselves by keeping company with an outcast, and so Jimin had grit his teeth and accepted that his first rut would be worse than most.

But the ache and discomfort and desire pale in comparison to the pain, which pulses between his shoulders and pushes up under his skin, like someone has slipped a branding iron along the line of his spine and is trying to pull it out again. Nobody, not even Healer Lee with all his pity, had told him it would burn.

“Please,” he whimpers. His throat is hoarse from begging—he thinks maybe he screamed when he first felt the fire licking up his back, but everything is a sweat-streaked blur. He presses his face into the furs, tears soaking through along with the sweat and everything else, muscles locked tight and nausea pushing up the back of his throat, and claws at his back as though he could peel the skin away and let whatever’s inside him out. It hurts, but not as much as the fire, which is nothing like arousal or desire or anything he’s ever known.

He just wants it out. He wants it to stop.

Nobody hears him, and nobody helps. He’s lucky to have the honor of a rut house for his presentation, late and surprising as it’s been. But that’s for their protection more than his—nobody wants an unmated, fresh-presented alpha running around in the throes of rut. Here, at least the elders can be sure he won’t harm anyone.

Not that he could, not like this. He’s weaker than he’s ever been in his life, and desperate in a way that makes even his wolf alien, made of nothing but instinct and loneliness and pain. He curls himself tighter, sweating and shaking and pleading for someone to stop it, to take the pain away, until exhaustion drags him under.

The next time he surfaces, the fire is a low simmer, little more than rut-fever. The memory of hurt fades into the haze of need and heat and desire, and he forgets the pain in the face of overwhelming loneliness and need.

It takes days for his body to burn itself out, to understand that no one is coming to answer his call. It’s a relief, almost, when the heartbreak crashes over him, his wolf howling in despair. At least it means it will end soon. Everything stinks, and he’s sore and spent and horribly alone.

And then finally, blessedly, it’s over.

He wakes up sometime after sunset, wholly himself again, lying spread-eagle in the ruin of the bed, sticky and unsated and finally clear-headed. Night slips in through the shuttered windows, a dark stain across the sill and the floorboards, and he isn’t sure what day it is or how long he’s been here. Every inch of him aches, like he’s lost a fight or twelve. He can’t imagine doing this with a partner, with another body equally sore and spent lying next to him. Healer Lee says it’s better when there’s someone else, but Jimin can’t imagine it. Even his dick hurts.

Gingerly, he rolls himself over so he can crawl—his legs don’t seem to be working yet—to the basin in the corner, where he can scrub away the worst of the mess clinging to his skin and matting his hair. The water is long-cold with nobody to tend the fire or replace it, but it serves its purpose. He sits naked on the floor and washes himself with a thin curl of scentless soap and a rough cloth, shivering in the autumn chill. The room stinks of him, a thick clog of rainfall and the musky tang of jasmine, denser than he’s ever smelled it. The room is so heavy with arousal and desperation he’s almost embarrassed. Even in the autumn chill, he considers opening a window to air out the worst of it—it’s hardly as though it’s any colder out there than it is inside.

When his skin is pink-clean, he pushes himself up onto his knees and leans over to wet his hair, working out the tangles and the sweat and a somewhat embarrassing amount of cum with his fingers. He’s left it to grow long over the summer, waves of silver down his back—though it’s lost its luster now, a grimy unwashed grey. He takes his time working the soap through the strands, combing it as best he can with his cold, trembling fingers.

The elders have always told him the gleaming silver color is unnatural—his first mark of strangeness, an ill omen and a bitter birthright. But he likes the way it shines. Like moonlight, his mother used to say, back when she was still alive to oil and comb it smooth. He wears it long in her honor, and because the pack hates him enough already. He has little to remember her by, but he honors her memory in the ways he can.

He’s pulling on a pair of pants, finally upright, when he catches sight of his back in the tiny mirror tacked up above the basin. For a moment he thinks it’s a trick of his rut-addled mind—he’s exhausted and hungry, shaky on his feet from days without food, and it wouldn’t surprise him to discover he’s seeing things.

But the image doesn’t go away, not even when he blinks and shakes his head and splashes cold water on his face. There, curved over his nape, is a dark crescent-moon mark that hadn’t been there before.

He twists with a frown, trying to get a better glimpse of it, and— oh. Oh, there are more of them.

Seven in total, a complete lunar cycle waxing and waning along the line of his spine, starting at the base of his neck and running all the way to the small of his back. Thin red lines frame the markings, which are tattoo-dark and cleaner than any inkwork he’s seen, and it takes him a moment to realize the lines are from his own nails, when he’d clawed himself in the haze of rut. The memory rushes back to him, the echo of pain muted and muffled, and he shivers. The markings shiver with him.

He reaches back with one wary hand to touch the uppermost moon, the thin crescent curved at the top of his spine. He braces for pain, but the pain never comes—there’s only the smoothness of his own skin under his fingers, a little damp from bathing, still rut-warm. He draws a hand down his spine, marveling, and could almost swear they gleam under his touch.

A part of him, small and sour, resents that nobody told him of this. But it doesn’t surprise him. He’s used to having only himself to rely on—he’s been left to learn the ways of the world on his own ever since he was a pup, and he hardly expects that to change now.

A knock sounds at the door, drawing him sharply from his reflection. 

“Yes?” he calls, voice hoarse and thin, barely loud enough to carry. That doesn’t matter, though—the knock is a warning more than a request, and a moment later, Elder Im opens the door.

She brings with her a wave of cloying, caramelized licorice. Her nose wrinkles as she scans the room, which is hardly fair—he’s barely left a mark, save for his own thick scent and the mess of the bed, which can hardly be helped. Jimin has cleaned the cabins after ruts and heats before; he knows how bad they can get.

Her disapproval lands on him, lip curled to bare the hint of her canines. Jimin is well prepared for this slantwise hint of a threat—it wouldn’t be the first time one of his own pack bared their teeth to him. What he isn’t prepared for is the way his wolf prickles, his hackles raising in return. He’s sensitive all over, outside and in, defensive. It’s a greater effort than usual to keep his composure and force his wolf down. She’s an elder, he reminds himself. He’s barely more than a pup. He owes her his respect.

His wolf, rumbling silently in his chest, disagrees.

“It’s done then?” she asks, mouth pursed. Jimin forces himself to take a breath.

When Yongguk presented a moon ago, there had been a feast—dancing and gifts and a slaughtered pig to celebrate the occasion. Jimin gets this: ill-disguised disgust and a chill wash of autumn air through the open door, barely enough time to clean himself after his rut ends.

He should be used to it. He is used to it, he reminds himself. It’s only the lingering rut bubbling under his skin, stirring an anger he thought he’d banked years ago.

“Yes, Elder Im.”

“Good. Clean this.”

He smells the surge of his own anger almost before he feels it, a lightning flash of hurt blotting out Elder Im’s scent. She surely can’t mean it. He’s exhausted down to his bones, hungry and shaking and barely out of rut. It isn’t his duty to clean his own rut house.

But she only stares, impervious, her own scent thickening at the challenge—and Jimin doesn’t want a challenge, doesn’t want to make his own life any more difficult than it is. The pack hates him enough for his strange silver hair and his rogue father; he doesn’t need another strike against him.

“Yes, Elder,” he replies, bowing deep enough that his hair curtains his face and hides the fury flashing across it.

Across the room, Elder Im sucks in a breath.

“What is that?”

Jimin straightens. He doesn’t know what to make of the shock in her voice. “Elder?”

She isn’t looking at his face, though—she’s staring at his shoulder, at his bare torso. At the marks down his spine.

“Turn around,” she orders, and he only wars with himself for a moment before he submits. His wolf whines in his chest, unsettled and on edge, but she’s an elder, an alpha. It would be pure stupidity to refuse.

Still, his shoulders rise as she approaches, and he shudders when she touches his hair, sweeping it aside to bare his neck. There’s a rumbling in the air around them, and it takes a moment to realize it’s him, his lip curled and scent sour. The noise grows louder when her hand settles at the base of his skull, turning his head to the side. In the mirror, he catches a glimpse of his reflection, wiry and slight and dwarfed by the shadow of the older alpha at his back.

“Quiet,” she orders with a shake, like disciplining a pup. Her nails dig into his skin. He squeezes his eyes shut, fighting to submit like a good pack member, but his instincts, new and sharp and muddled by his rut, clamor against it. Tears prick at the corners of his eyes, shame and fury and a measure of panic muddled together.

Behind him, Elder Im’s scent thickens with anger. Anger, and fear beneath it.

“What,” she says slowly, “is this?”

“They just appeared,” Jimin answers. “I thought—”

She cuts him off. “When?”

“I don’t know.” Her grip gets tighter, vicelike, and he blurts, “Yesterday?” Time meant nothing during his rut. “During my rut. I only noticed after.”

Her mouth curls down, frown marring her face as her eyes trail down his spine. “What are they, she murmurs, more to herself than anything. Honestly, he can’t tell if she’s aware of him at all, beyond the curiosity of his skin. He may as well be an object, for all the care she pays him.

In the mirror, watches her raise a hand towards the lunar cycle printed on his skin, and his instincts flare in alarm. He wrenches himself out of her grip, panic so immense he’s barely aware of her nails drawing blood where she’s holding him too tight. Then that too vanishes, eclipsed by the blistering agony of her hand pressing against the mark inked between the wings of his shoulder blade.

For a heartbeat, he loses everything except the pure electric shock and the howling of his wolf, wild and frantic in his chest. When his vision clears, he’s crouched on the floorboards with the tang of copper thick on his tongue and his skin pulled tight, his scent thick and muddled around him. A sharp cry of pain rings in his ears, and it takes him a moment to separate it from the throbbing in his skull. He presses his palms flat on the ground, panting, and only then does he realize the noise isn’t coming from him.

Elder Im hunches in the middle of the room, clutching the wrist of her right hand, which is—

Wrong.

Wrong shape. Wrong color. All red the way a hand isn’t supposed to be, and twisted up in a claw, and Jimin’s empty stomach rebels as he understands what he’s seeing. She’s been burned, horribly. Like grabbing a coal from a fire, like holding a cookpot fresh off the stove.

He burned her. She touched him and he burned her.

“Oh, moon above,” he whispers, dizzy. He reaches out to her, nearly touching before he thinks better of it. He shouldn’t touch her. Shouldn’t touch anyone, not if touching him means— “Elder, are you okay? Should I get Healer Lee?” He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what happened. “I’m sorry, Elder—”

Her head snaps up, eyes flashing alpha red, all fury. Her scent gets stronger, as burned as her hand, and her good hand snaps out to grab him by the hair, dragging him up by the roots. He cries out, struggling after her as she yanks him out of the cabin and down the road.

“Cursed child,” she spits as he stumbles along behind her, back twisted. “We should have thrown you out with your thrice-cursed rogue father and spared the pack the trouble.”

“I’m sorry,” gasps Jimin. He’s still weak from rut, trembling as he tries to keep up with the pace she sets. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know—”

He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to have known. He doesn’t know what’s happening. But it doesn’t matter; she isn’t listening. No one ever listens to him.

The rut cabins are at the very outskirts of town, and it’s a long, freezing walk to the town square. This late, there are only a few stragglers out—it must be well past dinner—but there are enough to see him and whisper, and Jimin knows the news will be all through the pack come sunrise. Shame curdles in his gut, squeezed alongside the fear and the pain and the slow-burning fury of his wolf at such an indignity. How dare they treat him like this, like they have these past ten years, like some rogue whelp, like—

Elder Im releases him in front of the pack house, and he drops like a sack of rice, scalp stinging. The pack hearth flickers behind him, a fire that never goes out, casting a golden glow across the town square. The heat is barely enough to ward off the chill of the autumn night, and he shivers as Elder Im steps forward.

“Council!” she calls, voice ringing loud, as angry as her scent. “Council, I demand justice!”

High overhead, the moon shines down. It’s full tonight, bathing the world with a quicksilver gleam, and it leaves him nowhere to hide. Jimin hunches over on himself, struggling to catch his breath, doing his best to smother his wolf’s fury. It will do him no good, he knows. There can be no strength before the council, only obedience and submission. That’s a lesson he learned when his father died.

Movement stirs in the window of the pack house, and then the door slides open, and Jimin watches as the rest of the elders step out onto the porch.

There are five of them total: Alpha Im in all her wounded fury; and stocky, deep-voiced Alpha Yeon, and paper-frail Omega Kim who is as old as the pack and twice as set in her ways; and blank-faced Healer Lee unobtrusive as the only beta among them, and Head Alpha Choi presiding over them all, brow knit with displeasure.

“Elder Im,” he says, voice steady. “What is the meaning of this?”

“The whelp attacked me,” she declares, voice ringing clear across the square. Shadows flicker behind him, the night growing louder with the rustle of wolves coming to see the show, and Jimin flushes.

“I didn’t,” he protests, straightening as best he can. “I don’t know—”

“Silence.”

Head Alpha Choi’s voice rings with all the power of a command, and Jimin’s jaw clamps shut almost before he understands the order. The breeze picks up, cold air drawing fingers over his bare skin, and he shudders, silenced. Head Alpha Choi turns to Elder Im.

“What happened?”

Elder Im’s scent thickens in satisfaction. Of course she’ll get her way here, surrounded by her council fellows.

“He bears a cursed mark,” she says, pulling his hair aside and forcing him to bend forward, baring the markings down his back. Nausea pushes up Jimin’s throat, wolf roiling in his chest. “See what he has done to me!”

She raise her twisted hand in offering, and a hiss goes up around them. Jimin startles—the crowd is larger than he’d thought. If he twists his head, he can make them out at the edge of the square, eyes shining in the dark.

“The whelp has always been trouble,” says Elder Im, releasing him. Jimin shakes himself, hair falling down his back again, a feeble curtain to protect his modesty. “But to do harm to an elder? He takes it too far.”

“You touched me,” Jimin bites back. It’s twice as difficult to speak it with the pressure of the pack alpha’s command pressing down on his tongue, but his wolf can’t bear to stay quiet. The hand in his hair tightens, and he swallows down a hiss.

“I said it,” murmurs Elder Kim, her papery voice still loud enough to carry across the square. “I said, we should have cast the pup out with his traitor father.”

“He wasn’t—!”

The strike blindsides him. He catches himself on an elbow in the dirt, cheek stinging. The copper taste is back in his mouth, and he spits blood into the dirt. His ears ring and the world spins, and for a moment he thinks he might be sick, but there’s nothing inside him to come up. He takes a breath, shaky, and pushes himself up again.

It isn’t fair. His father’s only treason was to a rogue from beyond the Three Rivers Pack, an otherness for which the pack had never forgiven him. It was an otherness he had passed on to Jimin as his only pup, one made worse by the silver of his hair. Never mind that his parents had mated lawfully in the eyes of the pack and the moon; never mind that they had been happy and good and kind. The Three Rivers Pack had no trust for outsiders. Nor, apparently, their pups.

Jimin still doesn’t know why the pack turned on his father when they did—if it was only a matter of time or an opportunity that came with his mother’s death, his father a lone wolf without a mate to stand for him. But he remembers it still: standing in his whites, the incense not yet doused, watching them drag his father from his mourning post to accuse him of the crime of his mate’s death. They hadn’t allowed him to speak against the charge—hadn’t even let Jimin give his own account, though he had fought tooth and nail to speak the truth. He’d only been a boy then, had barely seen twelve winters. What could he possibly have done against the fury of an entire pack?

He knows the story they tell: that his father was a rogue alpha who killed his omega mate and was cast out to die in the mountains without name or pack or honor. But Jimin doesn’t believe it. He won’t. His parents were happy, even if only for a short time, and their union was the truest love he’s ever known. Whatever sins his father may have had to his name, he hadn’t killed Park Miyeon.

“He could have been useful,” Elder Yeon shrugs, kissing his teeth in disappointment. Jimin stares as they talk about him as though he isn’t there. “Didn’t Sungho say he had an omega look about him?”

“But he isn’t an omega, is he Healer Lee?” Head Alpha Choi’s eyes stay fixed on Jimin, and Jimin raises his chin to meet them. It doesn’t matter that his limbs shake and his cheek stings and the cold cuts through him. He won’t be cowed.

In his chest, his wolf stands proud.

“No,” says Healer Lee, expression and voice still perfectly, politely blank. “The boy presented as an alpha.”

“You were wrong.”

Healer Lee’s face remains blank, but there’s a sharpness to his eyes as he shrugs. “Everyone’s wrong sometimes.”

“Ten years ago or now, he must go,” Elder Im interjects, impatient. “He is a danger to the pack. A cursed alpha who attacks his elders. Who knows who he’ll harm next? An omega? A pup?”

“I wouldn’t!” Jimin argues. He’s borne their scorn and their jeers and the worst of the jobs for ten years, and his presentation won’t change that. But he can sense the agreement around him, nose picking up the blooming tang of excitement, the hunger for a hunt. Whatever decision the elders make, the wolves behind him are eager for punishment.

Head Alpha Choi’s mouth goes small and sharp as he descends from the porch. The firelight gleams off him, catching on the burnished gold of his bracelets and the polished bone pierced through his ears. He’s every part the pack alpha, his presence swelling around him, and Jimin should turn his head, bare his neck and submit. It will make whatever comes next easier.

But he can’t.

Ten years, he thinks, a little dizzy, a little outside his body. Ten years of this and still they hate him, and it won’t change. He understands that now. No matter what, it will never change.

The understanding freezes him in place, some terrible mix of hopelessness and fury. Even when Elder Im steps back, even when it’s only the two of them, Jimin hunched in the dirt and Head Alpha Choi standing above him in a blaze of fire and moonlight, he can’t force his body to yield. The pack alpha’s presence bears down on him, and Jimin digs his fingers into the thin fabric of his pants and holds his ground.

In his chest, his wolf howls. It feels like grief—and maybe, beneath, the stubbornness of outrage.

For a long, still minute, nothing moves. The world closes in around them, until they are the only two people in it. Then the pack alpha’s attention shifts to Elder Im, and Jimin takes a breath again.

“Your hand,” he says, gesturing for her to show him. Elder Im holds it for his examination without a word, though her scent sours in pain and distress when Pack Alpha Choi takes her by the wrist and turns it around.

“The whelp did this to you?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“He’s cursed—”

“Not you.” Head Alpha Choi’s attention slides back to Jimin. The weight of his gaze pins him in place. Jimin wets his lips.

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me,” commands Pack Alpha Choi, and the weight of the order squeezes his throat, pushes the air from his chest and the words across his tongue. It feels like suffocating, like drowning on dry land.

“I don’t know,” he gasps, his bravado waning in the face of his fear. He can’t breathe. “I don’t know, she just touched me, I don’t know what happened.”

There’s nothing else he can say. Maybe they were right, he thinks, suddenly hopeless. Maybe he is cursed. Maybe he’s an evil thing, an ill omen, the rot inside the pack ruining it from the inside.

Head Alpha Choi stares at him, expression hard, and the command eases. Jimin sways forward, chest heaving, sweat beading down his back. Spots dance at the edge of his vision.

“If you don’t know,” says Head Alpha Choi, “then there is no way to know you won’t do it again.”

“I won’t,” Jimin swears. “I’ll figure it out. I can control it.” He can already see the shape the future will take: his limited contact with the other wolves dwindling to nothing. No training, no hunts, no courting. No feasts, no dances. They will never trust him, and he cannot change their minds. He’ll be a ghost, alive but invisible in every way, unable to touch the world around him.

That’s the price, he understands, of living here, of being pack and not a lone wolf marked for death. And Jimin doesn’t want to die.

But it hardly matters what he wants.

“No,” decides Head Alpha Choi. Only the red glint in his eyes belies his calm as he speaks. “I will not let you bring further harm to my pack.”

“I won’t,” Jimin repeats, but the pack alpha ignores him, reaching out instead to run his fingers over the crown of Jimin’s head, gathering the loose fall of his hair. He leans in close, careful with it, and Jimin holds himself still, panic stirring in his chest as the pack alpha moves to stand behind him. He’s unsettled with another wolf at his back, especially an alpha, especially one who wishes him ill. Jimin can smell it in his scent—the bonfire smell gets sharper, fills his nostrils until he thinks he might choke.

“I should have known the first time I saw you,” he says as he gathers Jimin’s hair, close enough for only the two of them. His scent eclipses Jimin’s struggling rainfall and faded jasmine completely. “I should have listened to the council when your mother brought you before me, silver and unnatural. I should have dashed your head against a rock and been done with it.”

Fear climbs up Jimin’s spine. “Head Alpha—”

The slide of a blade leaving its sheath cuts him short, a long, slow rasp of metal against leather, and Alpha Choi stands straight.

“Alpha Park,” he says, pitched to carry. It’s the first time anyone has called him according to his status. It should be a cause for joy, for celebration, but instead he’s here, kneeling beneath the gleam of the full moon and a bare blade.

“Don’t,” Jimin says. He’s not sure who he’s asking. The air is thick with smoke and anger and fear, and he can’t tell his apart from the roil of the crowd. Head Alpha Choi’s hand titans in his hair, holding it close to the root.

“For years, you have been an ill omen to this pack. No more.”

“No,” says Jimin, nearly dazed. No, surely they won’t. Nothing he’s done has been so terrible as to deserve this. Has it?

“For daring to harm a pack elder, for refusing to submit to your Pack Alpha—”

He’s seen this before. He knows the steps to this dance, and he knows how it ends.

“—and for defending the rogue who killed Omega Park—”

“No,” says Jimin, louder. He struggles against the pack alpha’s hold, but he’s half starved and exhausted and shaking with the cold. He’s no challenge.

“—for these offenses, you are cast out.”

“No, wait—”

Alpha Choi carries on, inexorable. “You will receive no pack-mark. You will receive no sustenance nor shelter from any in the Three Rivers Pack. Our allies will know your crimes, and all who see you will know you are outcast.”

“Wait,” he pants, wrenching against the hand knotted in his hair, ignoring the burn and the tears beading at the corners of his eyes. “Wait, please, I’m sorry—”

Icy metal kisses the back of his neck, a different kind of burning, and he freezes. The air is thick with the stench of fury, the pack-bright sharpness of a hunt, and beneath that, his own sick-sour desperation. Jimin knows this part—watched them shear his father’s hair before they drove him into the mountains to die.

“You are severed,” intones Alpha Choi, and the pressure at Jimin’s scalp abruptly vanishes as he draws his knife up, cutting through his hair. Jimin falls forward, hands splayed in the dirt and cold night air scraping over the back of his bare neck. He squeezes his eyes shut as hard as he can, pressing his face against his knees as he breathes hard through his teeth. He feels stripped. Naked.

“We honor the old laws,” says Alpha Choi, sheathing his knife with a cool snick of metal, and the bonfire behind him flares, smell of burning hair filling the square. Jimin sucks in a wet breath against his knees, willing himself not to cry.

“The rogue has until sunrise to leave,” declares Alpha Yeon. “The rogue may go where he wishes, but will not be welcome here. At dawn, the rogue yields all belongings to the good of the pack. If the rogue is on pack land come first light, he will be hunted.”

Jimin listens to the elder intone his fate and thinks, at least, the lengthening autumn nights will give him longer to run.

He’s nearly home when he smells the smoke. It’s a long walk on weak legs, his parent’s little house past the edge of town where no one could complain of a rogue raising a family, and he hasn’t seen another soul since he left the square, but he smells smoke and sees the sullen red glow and his heart climbs up into his throat.

He picks up his pace, stumbling between gnarled trees. They wouldn’t; surely they wouldn’t. The old laws prevail, and he has until dawn.

They’re supposed to give him until dawn.

A branch snaps behind him, louder than his stumbling, and he spins around. The motion makes his head ring, vision blurring, but he refuses to let his guard down. They won’t take him, not like this. A growl sits in his chest, wolf ready to go down fighting.

“Easy,” says Healer Lee, sliding out of the shadows with his hands raised. “I came to help.”

Healer Lee is the youngest of the elders, quiet and obedient the way a beta should be. His scent is faint enough that Jimin can’t pick it out under the smoke and the damp of the autumn forest, but his face is creased with concern. Jimin would like more than anything to believe him, but he’s not nearly that stupid.

“What do you want?” he rasps, braced for something—to flee or to fight, he’s not sure yet. Healer Lee shakes his head.

“To warn you. They’re waiting for you.”

“I have to go home,” Jimin returns, chest seizing. “My things—”

Pity colors the healer’s face. “Jimin.”

“I have until morning,” he insists, though the firelight and the smoke behind him clearly say otherwise. “I have to— I need to get my things, food, and—”

Food and clothes, and the few fragile things in his life that have any value: his father’s hunting knife, the necklace his mother left. Everything he owns is in that house, everything his heart treasures. They can’t take that from him too.

“They’ll claim you struck first,” says Healer Lee in that same kind, clear way he’d explained rut. “Choi will give them a slap on the wrist and you an unmarked grave.”

Jimin takes a breath, shuddering and thick, and feels the fight seep out of him. He’s right. Jimin knows he’s right, and it’s stupid to cling to hope. They’ve never played by their own rules. He can’t expect them to start now.

“Why do you care?” he chokes out. “I’m not pack.”

“You are until sunup. I took an oath to help every member of this community, no matter what the head alpha may think. And…” He hesitates. “I owe your father.”

“My father?”

“It’s an old debt, one I should have repaid years ago. I hope, being that I cannot pay it to him, his son will accept it instead.”

For a moment, Jimin almost finds it sweet. But only for a moment.

“You can’t change their minds.”

“I know.” The pity is back—and Jimin wonders for the first time if perhaps it isn’t directed at him. “But I can help in other ways. Here.”

He reaches down to the underbrush, and Jimin realizes for the first time he has a bag with him—a familiar bag.

“I took what I could before they arrived,” Healer Lee says. “There’s food and clothes, and some medicine to help you recover. And— forgive me if I should not have touched it. But there was a necklace next to your bed…”

“My mother’s,” says Jimin, taking the bag and lifting the flap to stare at the tiny blue-stone butterfly resting on top of a shirt. He presses his fingers to his lips, then to the pendant, speechless with gratitude.

“I’m sorry it isn’t more. But there is one last thing I can do. Give me your pants.”

Jimin stares at him. “What?”

“There’s still rut in your scent. It will confuse anyone who follows you. I’ll draw them south. You must go north. Shift and follow the Littlest River to its source—the water will mask your trail. There’s a mountain pass there, hard to find and harder to follow. It will lead you to the Packless Lands.”

Jimin hesitates. Every wolf knows of the Packless Lands, a wild place ungoverned by law or creed. He’d be safer going south, even if it means avoiding any pack that may have trade with Three Rivers. But surely, surely if he runs far enough, he’ll find an unallied pack, a place where he might hide his marks and color his hair and live with his head low. Safe.

“They’ll expect you to go south,” Healer Lee says, reading his hesitation. “The pack has many allies from here to the sea. But they won’t look for you in the north.”

It’s sound logic, put like that, but he wishes he had half of Healer Lee’s faith. It isn’t as though he has any choice, though. He’s never really had any choice.

“Okay,” he whispers. “North.”

“You’ll be alright,” Healer Lee says. He steps forward with a hand outstretched, as though to clasp his bare shoulder, and Jimin steps back before he can make contact. Jimin doesn’t want to hurt him. He’s never wanted to hurt anyone.

For a moment, Healer Lee stands there, reaching, and then he drops his hand. Jimin ignores the sting in his eyes and the lump in the back of his throat.

“Thank you,” he says as steadily as he can. “Whatever debt you owed my father, please consider it fulfilled.

“You are a good man, Jimin, and you will make a good, strong alpha. It’s our loss to cast you away, not your failure. If you believe nothing else, believe that.” Healer Lee glances up through the canopy and frowns. “Hurry and shift now. We’re wasting moonlight, and you have a long way to go."

Chapter Text

Hoseok is patrolling the southern boundary when the wind changes.

He pauses, noise raised to survey the skies. Damn. He’d hoped the storm might hold a little longer, but luck has hardly been with them this season. Autumn has already been troublingly short, and now winter barrels towards them faster than they can prepare.

Like now—in a good season he’d never be left patrolling on his own. But with Jin and Jungkook gone to town for supplies and Yoongi on the irritable edge of just-past-rut, they’re short-handed, and someone has to check the borders. Theirs isn’t a large territory, not with so few of them, not when packs are the exception rather than the rule in these parts, but in Hoseok’s opinion, that just means it’s all the more important to keep an eye on his pack’s land.

Something about the change in the wind gives him pause, more than just the storm, but he can’t put his nose on what. There’s the wet of the mountains, soaked by the unusually rainy autumn and the early snows. Yoongi’s cedar from his last patrol, old and blunted. The blood-warm, musty smell of hares in their burrows, making their own preparations for the winter. And something beneath everything else, the ozone of the brewing storm but thin and sour, a little stagnant—

His head snaps up. Not just ozone—rotting vegetation too, like the summer the garden had nearly drowned. It’s an alpha’s scent, thick and insistent, and it’s fresh. 

There’s a wolf in their territory.

Hoseok startles into motion. The patrol can wait; he’ll send Taehyung or Namjoon out to mark the boundary later. The pack’s safety takes precedence.

The wolf, fortunately, isn’t subtle. Even without their scent, it would be easy to track their passage—they’ve left snapped-off twigs and trampled undergrowth in their wake, prints pressed into the soil where the earth is damp. Here and there their path twists, oddly meandering for how boldly they’ve bowled through the underbrush, but it curves steadily eastwards towards the riverbank.

Which is where Hoseok finds him: on his belly, shivering in the muck.

Hoseok pauses at the top of the low ridge, staring down. The strange wolf is a skinny thing, fur matted, stained in places. The breeze off the water carries Hoseok’s scent back towards  the woods, giving him a moment to observe. His panic, that old pack-alpha fear of something threatening his mates, disappears as soon as he sees the thing, immediately replaced by a deep, welling pity. He’s obviously alone, and weak, maybe even injured. Whatever else he may be, the pup is clearly not a threat. 

Hoseok is still weighing the pros and cons of introducing himself when the alpha gives a shudder, skinny frame rippling, and then in place of the beast is a boy.

Hoseok’s ears flatten at the sight of him. He looks even worse in his human skin, pale and trembling. His hair is a matted, shaggy mess, cut carelessly around his ears and caked with dirt. For a moment he lies in the mud, so still that Hoseok fears for him, but then he pushes himself to his knees and dips his hands in the water. Even from so far back, Hoseok hears him hiss—the river is freezing this late in the year.

Carefully, Hoseok creeps forward. The boy, gulping down a drink like it’s the first he’s had in days, doesn’t notice his approach.

He has nothing on him save for a sack slung crosswise over his shoulder his middle, the strap loose enough to wear through the shift and just as dirty as he is. 

Hoseok can’t imagine where he’s come from. Nobody north of the mountains would leave a boy—he can’t be more than a pup, fresh-presented—to fend for himself. Certainly not in such a sorry state. He slinks forward to get a better look, freezing when the boy sits up.

But he doesn’t notice Hoseok. He splashes water on his face, hissing again, and then shrugs off his bag, tugging at the opening. He shakes so badly it takes him two tries to unlace the flap, and Hoseok inches closer as he fumbles around inside, clearly struggling for something. A moment later he comes up with a clay jar no bigger than his fist, and he wriggles the stopper out and tips it into his waiting mouth. 

A single drop of something drips down onto his cracked lip, and the boy’s tongue darts out to taste it. He shakes the jar, but nothing more comes out. Whatever it is, there’s clearly nothing left. The boy lowers the jar and stares at it for a moment before his head falls forward. His entire frame trembles, from cold or shock or sickness Hoseok can’t tell.

Hoseok takes another step forward. Just enough to clear the trees, he promises himself. He only wants to get a better look.

A root, brittle with cold, snaps beneath him. Hoseok winces—he’s lucky the pack isn’t here, or they’d never let him live it down. At the riverbank, the boy shoots to his feet.

He drops his jar, clay shattering over the ground, but the boy doesn’t seem to notice. His eyes land on Hoseok, wide and wild, and his scent sours immediately with fear. Hoseok yips, apologetic. The boy stumbles backwards, heel catching on a river stone, and falls hard.

Hoseok scrambles forward, concern a hot coal under his tongue, but the boy flinches. Hoseok freezes. 

For a moment, they stare at each other. The boy stares at him, chest heaving and knees drawn up. His eyes fix on Hoseok, wide and dark and utterly terrified. Even hunched in on himself, Hoseok can count his ribs, and there’s a long, ugly wound down his side, yellow and inflamed. The boy’s scent thickens in the air between them, musky jasmine and the electric lick of a summer rainstorm, drenched in fear.

Hoseok eases his weight back, slow as he can, and then—not breaking eye contact for a moment—he shifts.

The boy’s eyes get even wider, breathing rapid and shallow. Hoseok stays kneeling and raises his hands slowly.

“It’s alright,” he calls as gently as he knows how. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The boy’s tongue darts out to wet his lips, eyes flicking over Hoseok’s shoulder, and Hoseok feels bad for cornering him like this, between the woods and the river. But the pup doesn’t look like he’s in any shape to run even if he could. He looks— Actually, he looks like he’s about to pass out.

“It’s okay,” Hoseok says. “Hey, just— breathe, yeah?”

The boy’s chest heaves. Hoseok wets his lips and gives his best smile, hoping it doesn’t look as strained as it feels.

“I’m Hoseok. What’s your name?”

The boy’s lips part, whispering so quietly Hoseok can’t hear. He leans forward, but the boy flinches back again. Hoseok pauses.

“You’re safe,” he says, letting his scent ease the way it does when Taehyung has a nightmare or Jungkook gets in one of his moods. He hopes the boy believes him. “You’re safe here.”

The boy’s expression flickers, fear giving wait to despair, and then his head lolls back. Shit. Shit shit shit.

Hoseok gives up on taking it slow, throwing himself forward to catch the boy before he falls backwards into the river. The pup whines and struggles against his grip, but there’s no strength left in him. His skin burns, fever-hot to the touch.

“Shh,” Hoseok hushes. “It’s okay. You’re safe. I promise you’re okay.”

The boy shakes his head, lips parting faintly. Hoseok leans in close.

“What’s that?”

“I’m sorry,” the boy whispers, and then he goes limp in Hoseok’s arms. Hoseok curses under his breath and holds him closer, worry eating through him. He needs t oget the pup inside, warm, safe. His wolf howls in his chest.

Carefully, he lifts the boy and his bag, retreating to the shelter of the treeline where the wind isn’t so brutal. He lays the boy down in the curve of a tree root, careful to avoid his bruises and the ugly cut down his side. Only once he’s curled up safe and secure in a hollow does Hoseok shift.

He bounds back to the river bank, muzzle raised in a long, piercing call, a plea for aid. Namjoon and Taehyung had been restocking the cellar when he’d left, but they’ll hear. They’ll know.

Then he shuffles back to the tree and delicately wraps himself around the boy’s sleeping for, keeping him as warm as he can until help arrives.

Jimin dreams of flying. He dreams of the world in streaks of green and grey, his cheek against something warm, his torn and aching feet miles above the unforgiving earth.

In his dream, everything smells like pipesmoke, smooth and smokey and sweet. It reminds him of his father, of thick summer nights spent sitting out on the back step with the red-warm glow of the pipe and the maemi singing and the forest alive around them. In his dream, the memory doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts. Even the cold is far away.

It isn’t a bad way to go, he thinks, lucid thought curling through the fever haze of his dream. He made it through the mountains. The pack won’t find him here, won’t dishonor his body or his memory. That’s a greater freedom than he ever thought he’d get. 

Maybe his soul will find his father’s, out here in the wilds. Maybe he’ll be proud. Jimin made it through the mountains, farther than he ever did, and Jimin will see him soon—his father and his mother, and they’ll be a family again. He’ll be safe with them, safe where no one will hurt him and where he’ll hurt no one.

Shh, a voice whispers in his ear, no louder than the breeze he rides on high above the winter-cold earth. You’re safe. You can rest.

He’s been running for so long, weeks and weeks. But the voice says he can rest, and Jimin believes it. He’ll be home soon.

He’s going home.

“What’s wrong?” Namjoon demands as soon as they breach the treeline. Hoseok shifts as they reach the yard, one moment on four legs and the next skidding to a stop on two. Taehyung slows more carefully, still in the shift, because he’s got—

Oh. There’s a boy on his back.

This answers none of Namjoon’s questions. If anything, it leaves him with even more.

“What the fuck,” he says, hurrying to toss his coat over Hoseok’s narrow shoulders. The pack alpha nearly disappears under the bulk of his furs, but that doesn’t stop him from patting Taehyung’s heaving side and then reaching up to check the boy’s pulse.

“I tracked him from the southern border,” he answers, distracted, mouth pursed and eyes sharp. “Help me get him down.”

Namjoon moves on instinct, spurred by the worry sharpening his mate’s voice. The boy weighs next to nothing as Namjoon slides him off Taehyung’s back. He stinks of rotting flowers and a summer flood, and under that fear and sickness and infection.

“Where did he come from?”

“I don’t know.” Hoseok barely glances at him, taking the steps two at a time. Namjoon follows with Taehyung hot on his heels, shifting only when he reaches the long wraparound porch. Namjoon isn’t one predisposed to panic—in his experience, it spreads like wildfire through a pack and rarely makes things better—but he can feel it fizzing around him, fed by his packmates’ blistering worry. Taehyung’s mellow, smokey scent is thick with concern, and Hoseok’s cardamom is all spice and no sweetness, singed around the edges. Namjoon takes a breath.

“Hoseok-ah.”

“We need to get him warm.” Hoseok is already shifting furniture aside to spread blankets in front of the fireplace, frown fixed on his face as he squares off the edges with exacting precision. “Tae, heat water, that wound needs cleaning. Where’s Yoongi-hyung?”

“Asleep,” answers Namjoon, going easily when Hoseok tugs him down to set the boy in the middle of the nest as he builds it. This isn’t nearly as bad as the winter Jungkook went through the ice, but Namjoon can sense the same frantic worry in Hoseok’s actions as he wraps the pup up.

“Hey,” Namjoon says, quieter. “Hobah. Seokie. Look at me.”

Hoseok takes a deep breath and finally meets his eyes. There’s a shine to them, something teary and furious, and Namjoon reaches over the boy’s prone form to rub his thumb under his jaw, smoothing down to his scent gland. Hoseok takes a breath, scent softening with Namjoon’s faint earthy green, and his shoulders slump.

“I just— Who could let something like this happen?” He glances down at the pup between them, tucked under a pile of blankets drawn nearly to his chin. His face is folded up tight, like even now he’s in pain. “Who would do this to a pup?”

“He’ll be okay,” Namjoon says. “You found him. We’ll make sure he’s alright.”

“Yeah. Yeah, just—”

“I know.”

Hoseok takes a deep breath and shakes his head. Namjoon sits back on his heels, giving him a moment to collect himself. When Hoseok looks at him again, gratitude is written plain across his face. 

“Thank you, Joon-ah. Will you stay with him? I’ve gotta— I’m gonna go wake up hyung.”

Namjoon hesitates. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

It had been a bad rut, the anxious, frenetic kind, with Yoongi counting heads again and again and again, panicking each time one of them stepped out for food or firewood or fresh water. Even after it broke yesterday, he’d been all sorts of tender, tucked into the pack nest and anxious with Jin and Jungkook heading into town. Namjoon’s not sure about bringing attention to the new wolf—an alpha at that—nesting in their den.

“He needs a healer,” Hoseok says, eyes on the boy. Namjoon wets his lips. Seokjin tends to them, usually, but Seokjin isn’t here. Won’t be for a week at least.

Hoseok’s right. There really isn’t a choice.

“I trust hyung,” Hoseok says, quieter, and he looks up to meet Namjoon’s eyes. “And you. If there’s a problem…”

If there’s a problem, Namjoon will take care of it. That’s his job, as their head beta, and there’s nothing Namjoon takes more seriously.

“Okay,” he relents. “Okay, I’ve got him. You get hyung.”

Hoseok favors him with a smile, leaning forward to press their foreheads together and press a lightning quick kiss to Namjoon’s lips. Then he slips away to get Yoongi.

Theirs is a strange pack, Namjoon knows. Always has been, ever since it was just him and Hoseok and Yoongi trying to figure out what a pack of two alphas and a beta looked like, especially with Yoongi so completely disinterested in challenging anyone for the title of leader despite his unquestionable seniority. It’s a question they’ve never really answered. On the exceedingly rare occasion they run into other pack wolves this far north, they tend to pay deference to Hoseok as the alpha. But between them it isn’t so straightforward—sometimes Namjoon swears Hoseok leads them, and sometimes Hoseok swears it’s Namjoon, and mostly they balance their responsibilities as best they can.

Namjoon understands the confusion. Typically, a pack alpha would be mated to an omega, not a beta like himself, would stand above the pack, and wouldn’t bring a strange, sick alpha home and build him a nest in the middle of the common space. But Hoseok isn’t a typical pack alpha, and they aren’t a typical pack, and they all like it that way. For one reason or another, all of his packmates have ended up here—right where they’re meant to be, Jungkook likes to say, and Namjoon isn’t one for believing in higher powers but he can’t help but agree. His mates are his world.

While Taehyung heats water in the kitchen and Hoseok goes to rouse Yoongi from sleep—a Herculean task on the best days, and even trickier after a rut—Namjoon strips down and shifts, stretching in his wolfskin and curling crescent around the sleeping boy. He positions himself so the bulk of his body shields the boy from the rest of the room. It feels better like that, to keep his small, shivering frame bounded between Namjoon and the fire.

He huffs to himself. Apparently Hoseok isn’t the only one whose instincts are going haywire.

He rests his muzzle on his paws, eyes slitted, ears twitching as he tracks his pack. Taehyung clatters in the kitchen, quietly cursing at the water pump. He can’t hear Hoseok, but his thick cardamom scent layers over everything, and beneath that is Yoongi’s cedar and sawdust, a little heady and carrying the honey-thick strain of rut.

Something scrapes nearby, and then Yoongi say, low and rough from sleep, “Oh.”

Namjoon raises his head. Yoongi stands in the doorway that leads into the pack room, bleached hair a tousled mess, hand frozen scratching at his jaw. Hoseok hovers over his shoulder, mouth a hard line, dressed in his own clothes again. The room grows stifling with the sudden spike of alpha pheromones. 

Yoongi takes a step forward, and then another. He’s flushed, from sleep or the last of his rut or the threat of a strange alpha in their den Namjoon doesn’t know. Namjoon watches him approach, nostrils flaring. He comes to a stop at the edge of the nest Hoseok built.

“Hyung,” Hoseok says, and Yoongi takes a deeper breath. Namjoon slides out of the shift, just in case. If things go sideways, it’s better to have two hands to deal with things.

Yoongi turns towards Hoseok. “You found him like this?”

“Wandering the territory,” Hoseok says. “He… apologized.”

Namjoon’s attention flicks to Hoseok for a heartbeat. “You spoke to him?”

Hoseok shrugs, mouth pinched. “Not really. That was all I got before he passed out.”

Yoongi kneels slowly. There’s a seared edge to his scent, the burn of anger thickening around them, and the boy whimpers in his sleep. Yoongi freezes. Namjoon tenses.

“It’s okay,” Yoongi murmurs. For a moment, Namjoon isn’t sure who he’s talking to, but then Yoongi glances up and meets his eyes, and Namjoon realizes he’s rumbling a little, beginning of a growl stuck in his throat. Yoongi smiles at him, exhausted and lopsided. “‘S okay. I’m not gonna hurt him.”

“Sorry,” Namjoon says, hot with embarrassment. “Sorry, I just…”

He doesn’t know what to say. His wolf is still rumbling in his chest, an echo of the care and protectiveness Namjoon feels towards his mates. Yoongi sets a hand on his knee, silent forgiveness, and peels the blankets back far enough to see the boy’s torso.

“Shit,” he says. He checks his pulse and presses the back of a hand to his forehead and his face pinches in concern. He doesn’t touch the wound at his side, but he looks at it for a long minute and puffs out a breath. “Shit, okay. Do we have hot water?”

“Tae’s heating some,” Hoseok says. As if summoned, Taehyung appears in the entrance to the kitchen with a steaming bowl in his hands. Yoongi looks up at him and nods, beckoning him forward.

“Okay. He’ll need a bath. And medicine. Stitches, probably.” Yoongi pauses, mouth going small and flat. “I don’t know, Hobah.”

“It’s not good,” Hoseok says, almost a question. The flex of Yoongi’s jaw is answer enough.

“You’ll try, though,” Taehyung says, staring down at the boy. “You have to try.”

“I’ll do whatever I can. But at this point…” Yoongi brushes the boy’s matted, muddied hair out of his face, and Namjoon hisses at the trail of dried blood that's dripped from a wound behind his ear. “At this point, it may not be up to us.”

“He made it this far,” Hoseok reasons. “He’s strong. I know he is.”

Namjoon meets his eyes, and knows what he isn’t saying—strong enough to make it to them, yes. But strong enough to hold on? All they can do is hope.

Jimin dreams he’s warm. He dreams of hands carding through his hair, and cedar and pipe smoke and cardamom, and touch that doesn’t hurt. He dreams of his father and the summer garden and his mother’s voice. 

He dreams of a nest in front of a fire, a warm floor. He dreams of high ceilings made of light wood and sunlight through paper windows and elegant dark-wood furniture and a beautiful boy humming sweet songs, fingers twisting as he braids thread. In his dream, the boy looks at him and smiles, and then blinks, eyes widening with surprise.

“Oh,” says the boy in a rich, low voice. “You’re awake.”

Jimin startles, and it aches from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. 

Ah. Not dreaming, then.

He scrambles upright, yanking a blanket up over his bare chest. Adrenaline sharpens his senses and makes his heart pound. He takes in his surroundings in fear-bright flashes: a fireplace, a clutch of blankets, the boy who smells like his appa’s pipe smoke. Sunlight and pale wooden walls. Layers upon layers of scents thread through the space, the memory of the wolves who live here pressed into the walls and the ceiling beams and the gudeul floor.

“Woah, it’s okay,” says the boy. He reaches towards Jimin and Jimin shies away so violently he almost falls out of the nest. He wants to flee, the urge to shift pulsing beneath his breastbone, but he’s not sure he can—he's weak, shaky with something beyond exhaustion. And his wolf recognizes a nest, recognizes safety, and wants it more than the cold and the ache and the loneliness.

It leaves him frozen, torn in two. For a moment he can do nothing but sit there, panting, trying to think through the pounding of his head and the dizziness and the pain pulsing through his side in time with his heart.

“What,” he starts, coughing at the hoarseness of his throat. He can barely manage a whisper. “Who are you?”

“I’m Taehyung,” says the boy. He leans back, leaving a good arm’s span between himself and the nest, and Jimin cautiously eases himself back into the warm well of the nest. Taehyung’s scent sweetens, getting even smoother—trying to soothe him, Jimin realizes, and he hates that it’s working, that this omega is calming him down when he’s sharp and straining with fear.

“Where am I? What happened?”

“You’re in our pack house. Hobi-hyung found you by the river. You’re sick.”

By the… Oh. Right. He’d stopped for water and to choke down a dose of Healer Lee’s medicine, but there had been nothing left. He hadn’t even realized the other wolf was there—it had been a nasty, shameful shock to turn around and discover he was being hunted. Even so far from Three Rivers, the presence of an alpha had nearly blinded him with fear, and—

He’s not sure. Clearly something happened, something that led to him here, in this strange, pale-wood house with an omega he doesn’t know.

Taehyung’s scent sweetens again. “It’s okay,” he promises. “We’re going to help you. Yoongi-hyung even dressed your wound. He says it’s looking much better now.”

Jimin’s hand dips down to his side, and he realizes belatedly that he’s clean, dressed in pants that aren’t his with a bandage wrapped around his torso, which means—

Oh, moon above. They must have touched him. He wets his lips, knuckles white where they dig into the blanket.

“Did I— Did I hurt anyone?”

It comes out small, frail. The omega cocks his head, confusion coloring his beautiful face.

“Hurt?” he echoes. “No, of course not. You’re the one who was hurt. Yoongi-hyung has been taking care of you. We all have.”

For a moment, Jimin’s mind spins. They’ve clearly dressed him and his wounds. Surely if they touched him…

But he was asleep. Unconscious. Maybe he has to be awake for the curse to work.

The omega reaches for him again and Jimin flinches away, moving as close to the edge of the nest as he can get without falling out. No one has built a nest for him since his mother died, and even in the midst of the fear and confusion, there’s a comfort to being here. Still, he watches Taehyung warily, ready to bolt if he has to.

Taehyung frowns at him for a moment, then shakes himself. “I’ll get you some water,” he says. “And maybe some broth? Are you hungry?”

Yes, Jimin realizes. Starved, actually, scraped-out and hollow. As if in answer, his stomach rumbles, and he flushes. Taehyung grins.

“Okay. I’ll bring some of that too.”

He disappears into a room to the side, and Jimin presses a hand to his chest, trying to quiet the pounding of his heart. Slowly, he runs a hand over his torso, feeling the dips between his ribs, the scrape of old abrasions. Bruises peek between his bandages, a mottle of color, and the skin of his palms is tender to the touch. Tentatively, he draws his fingers up over his throat and over his face, feeling for wounds. There’s a thin cut near his hairline, and his hair—

Oh. His hair. He slides his fingers through it and finds it short. Shorter than Alpha Choi cut it, even, barely brushing the tops of his ears, bangs fluttering in his eyes. A lump sticks in his throat, heart cracking in his chest. He clenches his fists, strands slipping out of his grip, and folds over his knees.

“Oh.” Footsteps approach, bringing with them the smell of pipe smoke and warm broth. Jimin turns his head enough to see Taehyung’s feet come to a stop at the edge of the nest. “Are you okay?”

Jimin swallows hard. “I— You cut my hair.”

Silence sits between them for a moment, and then Taehyung sinks slowly into a crouch, dark eyes peering at him. He has a wide, steaming bowl balanced in one hand and a cup in the other.

“Yoongi-hyung had to,” he says, apology pressed into his face and his scent. “It was all matted, and there was a cut that he couldn’t... I’m really sorry, though. It’s so pretty. I’ve never seen anyone with such beautiful hair before.”

Jimin takes a breath and rubs his fingers over his skull, feels the pull of a stitches behind his right ear. He tucks his face against his knees again. It’s fine, he tells himself. It’s just hair. It will grow back.

It doesn’t stop him from feeling like he’s lost something.

“Your tattoos are pretty too,” Taehyung offers, and Jimin’s head snaps up again.

“You can’t touch them,” he says, twisting so Taehyung can’t see them. Taehyung startles, bowl tipping a little before he catches himself, droplets of broth scattered over the floor.

“I won’t,” he says hastily. “I didn’t, I’m not— We won’t touch you. It’s okay. You’re safe here, really. I mean it.” He hesitates, and his voice softens. “I don’t know what happened to you before, but the hyungs are good. They won’t hurt you. They won’t let anyone hurt you.”

Jimin holds his eyes for a long minute, assessing. Taehyung gives him a smile, unbearably sad, and sets the bowl of broth and the cup of water down at the edge of the nest, taking two steps back before he sits. Jimin wets his lips and tries the water first, sniffing it carefully. It doesn’t smell like anything, though, so he tips it back and drinks deep, soothing the parch of his throat.

“Thank you,” he says, setting the cup down. Taehyung brightens, scent mellow and pleased.

The thing is, he believes Taehyung. He believes that the wolves who live here may truly be good people. They took in an injured rogue wolf, cleaned and dressed him and laid him to sleep in a beautiful, comfortable nest, and now Taehyung has brought him food. They won’t hurt him.

But he’ll hurt them. And when he does, it won’t matter how good they are or how well they mean—a threat is a threat, and he’s a danger nesting in their packhouse. There’s no way they’ll let him stay. They’ve already seen his curse marks, even if they haven’t recognized the signs while he’s slumbered. 

He can only hope they won’t kill him before he has the chance to leave of his own volition. 

“You should drink that slowly,” Taehyung says brightly, nodding to the broth. Jimin picks it up carefully. The heat has seeped through the wood, and he savors the sting of warm against his palms. “Otherwise you’ll get sick. That’s what hyung says. I could spoon feed you, if you want?”

“No,” Jimin says, bringing the bowl to his lips. It smells divine, and Jimin feels half ashamed and half feral as his hunger makes itself known—it takes everything he has not to simply gulp it down at once. He takes a tentative sip and muffles an embarrassing moan. Heat blooms in his empty belly, and the flavor is so rich he’s nearly sick with it. He takes another deeper drink, scalding the roof of his mouth, and doesn’t even care.

“I said slowly,” Taehyung pouts, and Jimin forces himself to stop, mouth still pressed to the edge of the bowl, eyes drifting closed. The steam fills his nose, blotting out all the other scents of the packhouse, filling him almost as surely as the broth itself.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “Just. Been a while.”

“How long?” Taehyung asks, unsubtle, but— Well. Jimin sees no reason to hide it.

And he’s not entirely sure when it is.

“How long was I asleep?”

“Three days,” says Taehyung, furrow between his brow. Jimin hums. That explains why he’s so starved. 

“A little over a week, I guess.”

Taehyung blanches, like he can’t imagine such a thing. A week is a little long, Jimin supposes, but he’s gone days without food before, and after a while the body forgets to feel the difference. He’d have been okay, probably, if he hadn’t caught fever, or had to fend off that rogue in the mountains. He touches his side with a wince.

“A week since you ate?”

“I caught a rabbit.” He’d had to dig through most of the burrow to get it, and the damn thing had nearly escaped. He’d thought hunting had been difficult in the Three Rivers territory, but the mountains had been a hundred times worse. “Um. Sorry if it was your pack’s.”

“It probably wasn’t. Our territory isn’t that big, and we would have caught you. I mean, run into you before, not caught you caught you.” Taehyung looks sheepish for a moment, then perks up. “But don’t worry! There really aren’t any packs around here. Not like they do it in the south.” His nose wrinkles. 

Jimin takes another sip of soup to hide his wince. He’s not sure what he expected from the Packless Lands—actually, he’s surprised to find any pack wolves at all. He supposes they must do things differently up here, if they refuse to associate themselves with the southern packs. Which makes him wonder what Taehyung’s pack looks like. 

“How big is your pack?” he asks. “You keep mentioning— You have hyungs?”

“Yeah,” Taehyung nods. “Jin-hyung’s the oldest, but he’s in town right now. And then there’s Yoongi-hyung—he’s been patching you up. He mostly fixes the furniture and the buildings, but Jin-hyung taught him some medicine too, so he’s been fixing you too.”

Jimin snorts, not sure he appreciates being compared to a faulty awning—but he supposed it makes sense. Taehyung grins at him, a wide, square smile that warms Jimin almost as much as the soup. He’s never been on the receiving end of so much cheer and charm, and he doesn’t entirely know what to do with himself.

“Then there’s Hobi-hyung—he’s the one who found you—and Joonie-hyung. They founded the pack, them and Yoongi-hyung. They’re kind of the leaders.”

Jimin nods. That makes sense. Hobi must be the alpha he saw by the river. Which must mean Joonie, whoever that is, is his omega.

“And Jungkookie is the baby, he’s even younger than me. Though— maybe not anymore.” He gives Jimin an unsubtle look. “What about you? How old are you? Will you tell me your name?”

“My name is Jimin,” he says. “Park Jimin, of—” He bites his lip. Of nowhere, now. Of no one. “I’ve seen twenty-two summers.”

His ears flush—he knows he looks small for it. Small for an alpha too, with his small hands and soft cheeks. Well. Not so soft anymore, he supposes.

He expects derision, a comment on his size, but Taehyung lights up.

“Me too!” he crows, rocking up onto his knees in excitement. Jimin clutches his broth closer to his chest and tries not to flinch. “Well, nearly. At the end of the year. But that means we’re the same age! You can be familiar with me, Jimin-ah, I don’t mind.”

Jimin opens his mouth to protest, but his arguments fade in the face of Taehyung’s obvious joy. He wears his feelings openly, on his face and in his scent, and Jimin isn’t prepared for how much the scent of satisfied omega pleases him. He wants more of that, immediately, always, with a strength that unnerves him. He’s been around omegas all his life and never once reacted so strongly.

He hadn’t realized presenting would mean this too—a whole new set of instincts heaped on top of the old, his wolf both intimately familiar and a stranger in his chest. It’s just one more change no one thought to prepare him for.

“Okay,” he says, trying to shake off the flicker of resentment. “Thank you, Taehyung-ah.”

He stutters over it a little bit, cheeks flushed from more than just the steam of the broth. But Taehyung only smiles, and Jimin thinks he doesn’t mind a little embarrassment if it means being graced with such effortless joy.

Taehyung keeps chattering as he finishes his broth, filling up Jimin’s quiet with tales of his pack. Jimin nods along, attention drifting. Exhaustion tugs at him, and he feels stuffed full even though he hasn’t finished a full bowl. And his head is starting to ache again, a throbbing that starts in his temples and pushes down behind his eyes and bands around the back of his skull.

“Oh,” says Taehyung, cutting himself off halfway through a story involving one of his hyungs—Namjoon, Jimin thinks he said, though his attention has been straying—and the unfortunate demise of a door. “You can go to sleep again. Here, leave the bowl outside the nest. Is there anything else you need? I’ll get you more water. And some medicine, you should take that too.”

“That’s alright,” says Jimin. It isn’t like he has anything besides his— “No, wait! My bag, there was a bag—”

“Hyung brought it,” Taehyung says. He points to a line of pegs next to a door, and there’s the bag, Jimin sits up, straining for it, and Taehyung hurries to bring it to him. He has to check, has to make sure it’s still there, that they haven’t—

It is. He breathes out a sigh of relief, tugging out the scrap of cloth he’d used to wrap his mother’s necklace. The clasp is fraying and the thread has seen better days, but the butterfly pendant gleams clear blue. For a moment he stares at it, trembling with relief, and then he pulls it over his head. Now, at least if he has to run, he won’t lose it.

“It’s very pretty,” Taehyung says, half a question. Jimin’s lip quirks.

“It was my mother’s.”

“Oh.” His voice is heavy with understanding. Jimin swallows.

“Thank you for keeping it safe.”

“Of course.” Taehyung clears his throat. “I’ll just— I’ll get you more water. You can sleep again, if you want. I’ll try to make sure the hyungs don’t wake you up when they get back.”

“Okay,” Jimin says. He folds a hand around the necklace and sinks down again, curled in the middle of the nest. The nest they made for him—him, a stranger, a bad omen, a cursed wolf. The kindness makes his eyes sting, and he hides the wetness in the furs, curling himself up as tight as he can without pulling at the wound in his side. For a moment, Taehyung hesitates, and then he collects the cup and the bowl, and his footsteps retreat back towards the kitchen.

He returns with a fresh cup of water, but Jimin is already asleep.

Chapter Text

Unfamiliar voices draw him out of knotted dreams filled with burning and the kiss of cold metal and a distant song. He stirs slowly, breathing in a faint green scent and a sweet-sharp note that’s almost familiar, and beneath that the copper tang of blood.

It’s the blood that wakes him fully.

He jolts upright, eyes landing on a narrow, gangly wolf halfway through donning a thin inner robe. The wolf’s eyes go wide beneath auburn bangs, and something about that is familiar too.

“Oh shit,” he says, seemingly unconcerned by the stench of blood, frozen half in his robe like a pup caught sneaking back in after dark. “Sorry. We didn’t mean to wake you.”

We is himself and another wolf—a tall, broad, sheepish man with honey-warm skin prominently on display, because he’s wearing only a pair of trousers. Jimin blinks at them, owlish and startled. Evening has fallen, and the lantern light burnishes both of them golden as they shuffle around near the entrance. The half-bare one pulls on a robe of his own, and even all the way across the room, Jimin can see the flush on his face.

Then the narrow wolf steps forward, and Jimin recognizes him from the river. The alpha.

Uncertainty shivers up his spine, fear muddled up with the tattered remains of his dream and the chill burn of a fever. The copper tang of blood hangs like a threat in the air, and there are two strange wolves, and he’s small and weak and bundled in a nest, defenseless.

But his wolf is quiet in his chest, and that’s— confusing, mostly. He shifts in case he needs to move quickly, unsure if he should be on his guard, and realizes abruptly that, in addition to the pressing matter of the wolves in the door, there’s the pressing matter of his bladder.

“Where’s Taehyung?” he asks. It comes out as a croak. The wolves glance at each other, and then gangly alpha takes a step forward, air thickening with soothing pheromones. He smells nice, all spices and warmth and a hint of something clean-sharp underneath. Mint, maybe.

“He’s out helping Yoongi-hyung bring in the hunt. I’m Jung Hoseok. Do you… remember me?”

That must be the blood, then. Fresh kill—food, not danger. He takes a breath and it comes a little easier.

“Yes. From the river.” He dips his head as far as he can without getting dizzy. “I’m sorry for trespassing on your territory, Hoseok-ssi.”

“Ah, that’s alright, there was no harm done.” He looks a little uncertain, which Jimin doesn’t understand. He’s the pack alpha, the one in charge. Jimin isn’t even pack. He’s not worth anyone’s confusion.

“How are you feeling?” asks the other wolf, hanging back as though not to overwhelm him. He has a deep, warm voice, and Jimin is struck by the flashpan desire to wrap himself up in it, to listen to the man speak until he runs out of things to say. He brushes the thought away.

“I— Alright.”

“Taehyung said you two spoke a little earlier.”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t bother you, did he?”

“No,” says Jimin. The wolf nods, face furrowed. If Jimin didn’t know better, he’d think the man was concerned.

“Do you need anything?” asks Hoseok. Jimin hesitates, weighing his discomfort against his willingness to ask for anything, but— Well, it isn’t as though he has the dignity to spare.

“Can I use the toilet?”

Hoseok blinks at him, and then his mouth curves up in a smile. When he grins, it’s shaped like a heart.

“Of course,” he says, coming towards him with a hand outstretched. “Here, let me—”

Jimin flinches away, the stench of burning heavy in the air. It takes him a moment to realize it’s only his memory—Hoseok’s scent mellows almost immediately, all warmth and spice. He pulls his hand back, and Jimin stares at it, heart pounding. His head swims.

Hoseok’s lovely smile vanishes. “Jimin-ssi?”

It shouldn’t surprise him so much to hear his own name—of course Taehyung told them—but it startles him all the same.

“Sorry,” he manages, drawing himself back together. The other wolf stands stock still in the middle of the room, hands wrapped around the back of a beautifully-carved chair, tension singing in the air around him. Jimin doesn’t miss the way Hoseok shakes his head, a silent order to keep back, and his stomach twists with guilt. “Sorry, it’s— I don’t like to be touched.”

The lie hurts, but not as much as he’ll hurt them if they get too close, and he’s in no shape to defend himself if they find out about his curse. He can’t let himself become a threat.

Hoseok stares at him a moment, then nods and steps back. “Okay,” he says. “It’s just down at the end of the hall. I can show you?”

“That’s alright.” Jimin rises on unsteady feet, side throbbing, a little embarrassed to still be half dressed. He doesn’t miss the way the larger wolf looks between Jimin and Hoseok, mouth pursed.

“Wait,” he says, collecting a coat from the door and approaching Jimin. He moves carefully, like he’s scared Jimin will bolt—and honestly, Jimin’s a little afraid he might. But the wolf’s scent is calming, light and earthy and unmistakably beta, which helps. It helps too that he keeps his motions slow and steady, waiting for Jimin’s jerky nod before he drapes the coat over his frame, careful not to touch him. Jimin swallows past the scrape of his throat, breathing easier when the wolf steps back.

It’s a beautiful coat, made of thick wool of a finer quality than anything Jimin’s ever owned and lined with soft furs. It also dwarfs him, hem brushing the floor and sleeves dangling past his fingers. He feels like a child again, playing dress-up in his father’s durumagi. Grief sits under his tongue, at odds with his alpha’s satisfaction of being given a gift.

Not a gift, he tells himself, firm. Out loud, he says, “Thank you.”

“Of course,” says the wolf. It’s impossible to miss the faint blush staining his cheeks. “Ah, we’ll find you a shirt. Sorry.”

“That’s alright,” Jimin says, something like a smile tugging at his lips. That’s a surprise—he wasn’t sure he still remembered how. “It’s down the hall?”

“All the way at the end,” says Hoseok. It’s hard to read his face, but his scent keeps sweetening, a little overwhelming. Jimin isn’t sure he’s even aware of it. “Let us know if you need anything.”

He half expects one of them to follow after him, but they let him shuffle off alone. It’s a bigger house than he expects, or maybe he’s sicker than he realized—the hall seems to go on forever. He passes a handful of doors and an entrance to a narrow, steep stairwell before he reaches the room at the end.

The washroom is big, lit by a glass-covered lantern turned down low. It takes Jimin a minute to figure out how to turn it up, light reflected in the mirror over the wash basin. In the corner sits a tub easily large enough to fit three people. There’s a smear of rusty red on the rim, barely visible in the lamplight. Jimin presses the pad of his thumb against the stain for a moment, mind cloudy with the cold and the fire of his dream, the smell of blood that Hoseok and the beta carried into the house with them. 

A shiver crawls up his spine, and he shakes himself, hurrying to go about his business. At least it isn’t too cold—the coat is warm and so is the floor underfoot, even in the furthest reaches of the house. It makes it easy to linger, especially when he catches sight of himself in the mirror.

He looks ghostly. Gone is the last lingering softness of his cheeks; his jaw is sharp, his eyes dark. They’ve shorn his hair down to the bristling roots at the side of his head, and he can see the black line of stitches behind his right ear. There’s still some length at the top, at least—when he combs it forward, it almost covers his eyes. He pushes his fingers through it, trying to get used to the weight, the absence. His neck feels bare.

Carefully, he shrugs out of the coat, twisting to stare at the markings trailing down his spine. They look the same as they did the night of his presentation—ink-black, beautiful, strange. He touches his fingers to them and feels the ghost of warmth underthe pads of his fingertips and promptly shrugs the coat up again. The feeling of warmth lingers, as pleasant as it is unsettling.

When he returns, face freshly washed and head a little clearer, the low table in the middle of the room has been set for a meal, the house smells like cooking meat, and there’s another wolf in the room dressed in a dark grey shirt and speaking in low tones to Hoseok and the beta.

He’s smaller than the others, closer to Jimin’s stature, but compact and coiled. His round cheeks are at odds with his sharp eyes and the purse of his mouth, and even from all the way across the room he smells like cedar and sawdust and woodsmoke—an alpha. He looks up as soon as Jimin enters the room and gives him a long, slow look that makes Jimin’s bones freeze. Taehyung is still nowhere to be seen.

“Yah,” the alpha grumbles, voice low and rumbling. “What’s my patient doing up and dressed?”

Jimin opens his mouth and closes it again, unsure of how to answer. Hoseok reaches out and smacks the alpha’s arm.

“Don’t spook him, hyung,” he says. “He just woke up.” 

“And you sent him off alone right away?”

“Please don’t be mad at Hoseok-ssi,” Jimin interrupts, throat tight. Arguments between alphas are the worst. “I asked—”

Hoseok props his hands on his hips with a frown, though his scent is clear as ever. “Aish, hyung, don’t be like that. He hasn’t even eaten yet. Really, is this what you call a bedside manner?”

“He’s got Seokjin-hyung’s sense of humor at least,” says the beta, and the small alpha snorts, mouth curving up with a hint of a smile. Jimin has the distinct, bewildering sense they’re teasing each other, and he hasn’t the faintest idea what to do with that.

“You’re lucky to be awake,” the alpha says, turning towards Jimin. The smile brings out the curve of his cheeks and fine lines feathered around his eyes. His scent mellows too, light and a little dusty, like an old woodshop. “Wait a few days before undoing all my hard work, yeah?”

“Hyung, at least introduce yourself before you start telling him off.”

The alpha waves a hand behind him as though shushing a pup. “I’m Yoongi.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Yoongi-ssi.” Jimin bows—or tries to, anyway. He squints against the sudden swell of vertigo as he straightens too fast, head spinning. When he looks up again, Yoongi’s frown is back.

“None of that,” he says, gruff. “Go sit. You’re pale.”

Jimin ducks his head and shrugs the beta’s coat off, shivering in the cold. He folds it as carefully as he can and sets it on the padded seat of a bench, trying not to let his fingers linger too long against the warm wool. It’s not a gift, he reminds himself. Just because it was lent doesn’t mean he gets to keep it.

When he shuffles back to the nest, he finds some of the blankets have been changed out in his absence. There’s a shirt too, soft white and folded neatly on a pillow. A mug steams on a tray just past the edge of the furs, and the stinging herbal scent reminds Jimin of Healer Lee’s cabin. He lowers himself carefully, joints creaking as he folds and settles. Yoongi reaches out to help, but Hoseok makes a noise at the same time that Jimin shies away, and he drops his hand. His lips press together though, mouth a flat, displeased line.

Once Jimin is seated with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, Yoongi crouches down next to him, hands hanging between his knees.

“Drink the tea first,” he says, “and then I’ll check your stitches. You can put the shirt on after, and then dinner.” He takes a deep breath and nods to himself. “You smell better.”

“Where’s Taehyung?” Jimin asks quietly.

“Locking up the cellar. Jimin-ssi—”

“I don’t like to be touched.”

The lie comes a little easier with the retelling. Yoongi’s mouth gets flatter.

“Makes it hard to help.”

Jimin still isn’t entirely sure why he cares. He isn’t sure why any of them have bothered with him in the first place.

“Can’t I just— I can tell you if something's wrong.”

Yoongi gives him a long look. “Your bandages will need to be replaced.”

Jimin prickles. “I can do that. I can look out for myself.” He’s been managing long enough.

Yoongi glances at Hoseok and the beta, all of them wearing the same frown. The look makes Jimin feel small. There’s no reason they should trust him anyway, no reason they should have let him stay in their pack house to begin with.

He sort of wants to stay, though. The nest is nice. He’s warm. His feet don’t ache as badly, and neither does his head or the cramp of his stomach. He wants to curl up into something soft and warm and made just for him and trust it will keep him safe. His wolf feels quiet here, and that’s a relief after a month spent starving and running and afraid for his life. 

He knows he’s being foolish and weak, but he wants all the same.

The door interrupts their conversation, sliding open to admit Taehyung and a blister of cold air. The omega is wrapped up in a coat and scarf, nose and cheeks pink.

“That took forever,” he complains, stomping his feet and tugging off a pair of gloves. “It’s all stored, but ah, seriously, it’ll probably freeze tomorrow anyway, and then we’ll… Oh. Something’s wrong. Jimin-ah?”

He abandons his coat and scarf on the ground—Hoseok bends over to pick them up with a huff—and crouches next to the nest. He gives Yoongi a narrow, distrustful look out of the corner of one eye, and it’s so strangely charming on his handsome face that Jimin has to laugh.

Almost immediately, it turns into a cough, a welling thing deep in his chest that hurts, all clotted and brittle in his lungs. Someone thrusts a cup in his hand, steaming, and someone else is telling him to—

“—breathe it in, yeah, like that, don’t worry about anything else. Just breathe the steam. There you go. You’re okay.”

Jimin follows the directions as best he can, letting the steam ease the grit and the scrape in his lungs. After a moment he takes a tentative sip, and it’s hot but the heat cauterizes some of the rawness of his throat. He brings his other hand up to wipe his face, heel of his palm pressing the tears out of his eyes, and he finds Yoongi watching him steadily.

All of the sharpness is gone from his face, and his scent has gone even drier, dustier, a summer-parch smell. Jimin coughs again, but it eases quicker this time.

“Thank you,” he whispers. Yoongi frowns.

“Drink that,” he says, nodding at the tea. Taehyung gives him a thumbs up in encouragement, and it’s probably the height of stupidity to accept medicine from strangers, but he’s too tired to fight it. There’s hardly anything worse they can do to him, and for some reason, he finds it easy to trust them. Deep down in some new and strange and instinctual part of himself, he trusts them.

The tea is bitter, but there’s a sweetness underneath—honey, maybe. Jimin holds the mug with both hands, trying to hide their trembling.

“I won’t touch you if you aren’t comfortable with it,” Yoongi says as Jimin sips the medicine. Taehyung stays crouched next to him, mouth twisted down. “But the stitches have to come out eventually.”

Jimin lowers the mug. “When?”

Yoongi hesitates. “A few days.”

Jimin takes a slow, careful sip, breathing in cloudy steam. A few days. A few days here in a strange house with a strange pack, weak and wounded and living off their hospitality.

He can’t tell them the truth—they’d throw him back out into the winter in a heartbeat. And he can’t let them touch him—that would be even worse, to repay their kindness with pain. The only thing he can think is that he was unconscious when they stitched him up, and clearly none of them are hurt from that. Which means it must be safe for them to touch him while he sleeps. He swallows down a laugh, chest aching. Is that how it’s going to be? The only time anyone can be close to him is when he isn’t awake to know it?

He doesn’t like the thought of it. He especially doesn’t like the idea of them touching him when he isn’t aware of it, but if that’s the only way to keep from hurting anyone…

“You can’t while I’m awake,” he says. “If I’m sleeping… if you have to, I mean. That’s okay. But not when I’m awake.”

They’ve been so kind to him, so needlessly, sweetly kind. He can’t bear to hurt them.

“Wouldn’t you want to know, though?” Taehyung asks, like he can read Jimin’s thoughts, and Jimin holds the mug in his hands a little tighter.

“No.”

Yoongi’s eyes search his, like he knows there’s something Jimin isn’t saying. “Are you sure?”

No, he thinks, not really. But he’s more sure that he doesn’t want to hurt them than anything else, so he nods. Yoongi’s mouth thins.

“Okay,” he says after a moment. Jimin sags.

“Thank you.”

The alpha’s mouth stays a flat line, his eyes fixed somewhere over Jimin’s shoulder. “We won’t hurt you,” he says, almost too softly for Jimin to hear. “You’ll be safe here.”

Jimin doesn’t know how to answer that—can’t even begin to explain that he isn’t the one in danger, not really—but fortunately Yoongi doesn’t seem to expect a response. He pushes himself to his feet and disappears into the kitchen, and Taehyung immediately shuffles forward in his place.

“Sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up,” he says. “I told them you don’t like to be touched, though I guess they didn’t listen to that part. And your name too, I hope you don’t mind.”

“That’s alright,” says Jimin. Taehyung grins, scent sweetening.

“You should put on the shirt. It’s one of Jungkookie’s, so it shouldn’t bother you much. I don’t know if— Ah, I mean, alphas get territorial, right?”

“I guess,” Jimin says. He’s heard that once or twice, but he doesn’t feel anything now, his instincts quiet. Then again, it’s not his den, not his pack. The shirt smells nice, at least—a fresh, clean-clear linen scent. He tucks his nose into the collar and breathes.

Someone clears their throat, and Jimin glances up to see Hoseok hovering behind Taehyung.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” he says. “Are you up for it?”

“I think so.” He’s pretty sure the cramp in his stomach is hunger, but it’s hard to tell.

“You should eat a little,” Yoongi says, head poking out of the kitchen. “It’ll settle the medicine.”

“We can eat together,” grins Taehyung, perking up. “Now that you’ve met the hyungs. Most of the hyungs, anyway. Sorry about Namjoon-hyung’s lurking—he’s been the most worried.”

“I’m not lurking,” the beta lurking near the kitchen says. From inside the kitchen, Yoongi laughs.

“He’s been insisting someone sit with you for the past three days,” says Hoseok, and there’s that teasing again, so swift and easy and fond.

Jimin looks between them, uncertain. “Thank you, Namjoon-ssi. Are you— Um. Taehyung-ah said Hoseok-ssi was your mate? I mean—”

He stumbles to a stop, embarrassed by his own rudeness. It’s not his business who in their pack is mated to whom. Though now that he thinks about it, there’s no bite on Hoseok’s neck, no sign he’s been claimed even though he swears Taehyung had called them mates. He’s not sure what that means. Maybe packs do things differently up north?

“He is,” says Hoseok, taking pity on him. He looks slightly amused, maybe. “We all are. Is that a problem?”

“Oh, no, of course not,” Jimin says, flushing. All of them? How does that even work? How can they have a head alpha and a head omega if they’re all bonded? “Sorry, I just—”

“It’s okay.” Yoongi reappears from the kitchen with a bowl. “Not everyone gets it. Especially pack wolves.” He pauses, frowning between Jimin in his fireplace nest and the table set for dinner. “Did you want to join us?”

Jimin hesitates, embarrassed that it’s so obvious he isn’t like them. He’s been an outsider all his life—it shouldn’t bother him so much.

“I don’t want to intrude.”

“You’re not,” Namjoon says. “We have a room made up for you too, if you’d rather rest now and eat later.”

“Oh, you really don’t—” Jimin pauses to cough, chest aching. Taehyung’s hand flexes in the corner of his eye, but he keeps it to himself. For a moment, everything is quiet, all eyes on him. Jimin wants to sink into the floor.

“Come sit and eat,” Hoseok says. “You’ll feel better. And then we’ll show you to your room, and you can sleep. Okay?”

His room. Have they really gone through that much trouble for him? The idea leaves him feeling a little adrift. 

“Okay,” he nods. Easier not to think about it, he decides. He shuffles out of the nest and over to the table, feeling like a pup as he wraps a blanket around his shoulders, more for the comfort than to ward off any chill. Yoongi sets the bowl down in front of him with a twitch of a smile. It’s juk, warm and plain, and Jimin’s stomach lurches but his mouth waters.

“Taehyung-ah,” says Hoseok quietly. “Go help Yoongi-hyung in the kitchen.”

“But—”

“Go, Tae.”

Taehyung lingers, eyes finding Jimin’s, his face a silent question. It’s sweet that he cares enough to check—makes it easier for Jimin to nod. Namjoon steps out too, and then it’s only Jimin and Hoseok. 

Jimin tenses as the pack’s head alpha sits at his elbow, folding his long limbs neatly onto the cushion beneath him. Hoseok favors him with a smile.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I just want to talk.”

“I won’t stay long,” Jimin swears. Winters are hard, and they can’t be expected to feed another mouth. But Hoseok shakes his head.

“No, that’s not— You can stay as long as you like. No one here is going to make you leave, or do anything else you don’t want to do.”

Like touching, he doesn’t say, but Jimin doesn’t miss how he folds his hands neatly in his lap. He swallows hard.

“Okay,” he says, not sure if he believes it. “What do you want to know?”

Hoseok cocks his head. “About what?”

“About—” Jimin pauses, frowning. “About me? About why I—” He chokes on it and wraps his fingers around his ankles, holding himself tight. “About what happened.”

“Do you want to tell me?”

Jimin opens his mouth, then closes it again. Want? He isn’t sure want comes into it. Doesn’t the head alpha of this pack need to know? Isn’t that what this little conversation is, a chance to assess Jimin as a threat? To decide if he’s worth the wasted time and space and resources?

“You don’t have to,” says Hoseok when the silence has stretched on long enough to be uncomfortable. “Like I said. We won’t make you do anything you don’t want. Well. Yoongi-hyung might make you take some medicine. And you may have to listen to Namjoon sing, or Taehyung’s stories, or Jin-hyung’s jokes when he gets back from town. But that’s— We aren’t going to hurt you and we aren’t going to ask you to be hurt on our behalf. Okay?”

There’s a stinging at the back of Jimin’s nose and in his eyes and it hasn’t got anything to do with being sick or starved or injured. He stares down at the table and tries to control his scent. Everything smells sodden around him, a drowned summer garden. Beneath that he smells burning, and he isn’t sure if it’s the kitchen or his memory.

“Why do you care? I’m a rogue. I’m not your pack, or your mate, or— I’m not anything.”

“You’re a person,” says Hoseok, something in his voice that Jimin can’t place. “Nobody deserves to suffer.”

“I could be dangerous.”

“Are you?”

Jimin looks up to meet his gaze. He looks patient, and a little hard around the jaw, but his eyes are still warm. This is what a pack alpha should be, Jimin thinks. It comes to him unbidden, a little despairing. Why couldn’t Alpha Choi have been like this? Why couldn’t Jimin have had this before?

What a foolish thought. He’s cursed. He’s always gotten exactly what he deserves.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone, Hoseok-ssi.”

Hoseok nods. “I believe you. For what it’s worth, Jimin-ssi, I think you’re meant to be here.”

That almost makes him laugh. “What, like fate?”

“I don’t know,” Hoseok shrugs. “Maybe. But Taehyung likes you and I’ve never seen Namjoon so protective, and I’m— I just think it’s good. I hope you’ll stay.”

“I’ll have to leave eventually.”

“Maybe,” Hoseok allows. “Is there somewhere you’re going? Someone who might be expecting you? We’re happy to send word, until you’re well.”

Jimin almost laughs. What’s he supposed to say to that? That everyone who ever loved him is dead? That he’s an ill omen for any wolf or pack that touches him? That he’d been almost grateful to die out in the wilderness, if only because it was somewhere the Three Rivers pack couldn’t dishonor him?

“No,” he says thickly. “I don’t have anyone. I wasn’t going anywhere.”

“Then why not stay a while?”

He says it like it’s that easy. Jimin takes a deep breath, something monstrous stuck in his chest and under his tongue. He doesn’t know what to do with this kindness. It hurts, a little, and he wants more of it. He wants to take and take until there’s nothing left. He wants to crawl back into the nest they made him and never come out.

“I don’t know what to do,” he says, voice small. His fingers press white around the knobby bones of his ankles, thin from weeks struggling through the mountains. 

He could have died there. Should have died there, probably. It would have been easier, wouldn’t it? He doesn’t know. He’s tired. Six-weeks tired, ten-years tired. He wants to rest.

“What do you want to do?” Hoseok asks. Jimin laughs a little, and it comes out wet and crooked.

“I’d like to stay, Hoseok-ssi.”

“Then stay,” says Hoseok. “But you should probably call me hyung.”

Dinner takes it out of him. They’re all lovely, sharing an easy back-and-forth that Jimin could listen to forever, but he’s fighting the lingering edge of a fever on top of the exhaustion and starvation and wound down his side, which is starting to spot red under his borrowed shirt. He finishes maybe half the bowl of juk before nearly dozing off in the leftovers, and Taehyung laughs at him—kindly—and leads him down the hall to a room on the left. It’s much smaller than the main room, bare save for a few pieces of exquisitely-crafted furniture, everything covered in the same clean-clear scent as the shirt he’s wearing.

“Jungkookie never uses it anyway, and it’s the easiest to get to,” says Taehyung. “I, um, I helped Joonie-hyung make it up for you. We weren’t sure if you’d still want a nest, but we got a little carried away I guess. Sorry.”

He’s apologizing for the bed, which is a thick mattress set in a low frame and piled with more blankets, pillows and furs than Jimin has ever seen in his life. It stirs something in his chest, achy and sweet, but he’s too tired to bother picking the feeling apart. It’s nice. It’s been an age since he’s been cared for like this. It’s been an age since he’s been cared for at all.

“Thank you,” he says, sinking down into glorious softness. He’d shift if he could, but he hasn’t got the energy for it, and also Yoongi had said point-blank over dinner that he isn’t to try until the stitches come out. Everything smells like fresh linen and Namjoon’s gentle greenery and Taehyung’s smokey richness, which should remind him of burning but only reminds him of a home he hasn’t known in years. He rubs his cheek against a pillow before he realizes what he’s doing with a flush of embarrassment, the round smell of summer rain blooming in the air. Taehyung only beams at him.

“We’ll be in to check on you regularly,” he says. “Especially Joonie, so don’t panic if you see him shifted. He gets worried, so he’s been keeping watch.”

“I thought you were joking about that.”

“No,” says Taehyung, suddenly serious. “No, he—I mean, we— I’m not joking.” His face twists down in a frown, but even like that, he’s beautiful. Jimin wants to smooth his thumb over the furrow of his brow, but he can’t. He can’t ever, he reminds himself, tucking his hands under his chin. His mother’s necklace is cool against his chest.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, Taehyung-ah.”

Something about it—the offer, the acceptance—feels like a promise, and maybe he’ll feel strange about it in the morning, but right now he doesn’t. Right now he’s fed and warm and everything feels right, and he thinks maybe he gets what Hoseok was saying about how he’s meant to be here.

“Okay,” says Taehyung, and he holds his littlest finger up in front of his face. Jimin blinks at him for a moment, unsure, until Taehyung gives him a pointed look and he does the same. Taehyung crooks his finger and kisses his thumb, and— Oh, Jimin gets it. Promise.

They’re nowhere near close enough to link pinkies. Jimin mimics him anyway, warm all the way down to his toes.

“Goodnight, Jimin-ah.”

“Goodnight, Taehyung,” says Jimin, and Taehyung gives him another beaming, brilliant smile and douses the lights and leaves Jimin alone in the cozy comfort of a nest made just for him. A nest they made just for him.

Ours, rumbles his wolf, and Jimin is too tired to disagree. It’s a nice thought, anyway—that this, whatever it is, it’s theirs.

Sleep comes easily. When he slips under, he dreams of nothing at all.

One night turns to two turns to three, time dripping past. His fever spikes and breaks in waves, and he sleeps in long, smeary drags of dreams. When he’s awake, the pack is there—Taehyung chatters at his bedside; Yoongi sit silently as he shaves flakes from a block of soft wood until it begins to take on the shape of a fox; Namjoon curls up near the door in his wolfskin, quiet and watchful; Hoseok sweeps in russet and warm and brings him fresh water and food and updates about the weather, which is still cold and clear. Their scents swell and settle in the room until he can smell them even when they’re gone, a constant reminder of pack. And every day, once a day, once a day, Yoongi comes in and talks him through unbandaging his side, through smearing the wound with a sharp-smelling green poultice to help flush out the infection, through wrapping it again in fresh cloth. 

By the morning of the fourth day it doesn’t look nearly so inflamed, the red almost gone from his skin, the wound a long, ropey scab. Yoongi eyes it narrowly and takes the soiled bandages with a pinched frown.

“The stitches can come out tonight,” he says. “Or maybe tomorrow. You heal fast, Jimin-ah.”

Jimin isn’t sure that’s a compliment, but he ducks his head in thanks all the same. Yoongi huffs—he does that a lot, Jimin has noticed, like he can’t bring himself to say what’s on his mind—and takes his leave. As always, he doesn’t make any attempt to touch Jimin.

That, of all things, is the strangest part. He’d been sure one of them would argue the point—maybe not in front of the pack, but sooner or later someone would get fed up or forget or not care. He’s kept himself poised and watchful in his waking hours, ready to move, but they don’t reach for him. They keep him company and tell him stories and bring him food; they bring him basins of hot water to wash in and clean clothes and medicine; they keep watch at his door and tell him of the weather and about each other. But they don’t, not even once, try to touch him.

It takes him days to realize that he wishes they would. The grief is a strange, confusing thing, his wolf yearning in his chest and his mind whirling away in fear and attentiveness. The smell of a lived-in den brings back memories he’d thought he shed years ago, and he misses his father and his mother and the comfort of another body curled around him in a nest. He finds himself almost grateful for his curse, for his exile, if it means he can be here, listening to Taehyung spin out a story about about Jungkook and Hoseok and a wolf in town who’s apparently sweet on their youngest, much to Jungkook’s horror and Hoseok’s delight. And at the same time, he’s ashamed of his relief. How awful is he to be thankful for the black mark that stains him, to find it so easy to take advantage of their kindness.

Maybe the elders were right. Maybe he’s always been an ill omen. Maybe he’s the one who brought bad luck on his family. Maybe it’s his own fault he’ll always be alone.

“Jimin-ah?” Taehyung looks at him, trailing off in the middle of his story. He’s sitting on the floor with his back against the bedrame as he tells it, Namjoon in his wolfskin draped heavy across his legs, and for a second Jimin wants that so bad he could cry. 

“Jimin-ah, what’s wrong?” Taehyung’s hair is pressed up in the back where he’s been resting against the bed, a ridiculous halo, and his face makes a terrible frown. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Jimin says, the lie automatic. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“You’re crying.”

Is he? He touches his cheek and his fingers come back wet. “Oh. No. It’s just—” He casts around for an excuse. “My side hurts.”

Immediately, Namjoon is on his feet. He’s more graceful on four paws than his two human legs, picking his way over Taehyung’s lap and loping out the open door. Taehyung twists around, perching up on his knees with his brow furrowed.

“He’ll get Yoongi-hyung. You should have said something if it was hurting.”

“Sorry,” Jimin says. Taehyung’s expression goes sort of wounded, folded up with hurt.

“Don’t be sorry,” he admonishes, so kind that Jimin’s nose stings and his throat goes tight, and he rolls over to stare at the ceiling instead of Taehyung’s lovely, worried face. Everything smells like pipesmoke, sweet and familiar, and Jimin’s heart feels like a bruise. Someone has painted the crossbeams with scenes from the forest, and they blur a little when he squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath.

“Don’t be sorry,” Taehyung says again, quieter. “Just tell us when you’re hurting. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Promise,” Taehyung insists, but that’s when Yoongi knocks. Jimin sits up to watch him ease into the room, steaming cup in his hands and Namjoon nudging past his knees.

“Yah, Joon-ah,” he complains mildly, holding the cup out where it won’t slosh over him. “You’re going to knock me over.”

Namjoon lets out a low huff of apology and flops down next to the bed, muzzle settled over his paws, blinking balefully up at them. Yoongi stands next to Taehyung, brushing his hand over his packmate’s hair when Taehyung leans over to rest his head against Yoongi’s thigh.

“Joon said you’re hurting,” Yoongi says, looking at Jimin. He doesn’t comment on the thick pall of sorrow that must be seeping through the room, staining everything. He just gives Jimin a long, sharp sort of look, like he has more to say and isn’t saying it. Jimin doesn’t know if he’s more grateful or worried for the silence.

Anyway, it’s not a lie, not really. He is hurting. It’s just a different kind of hurt—the kind not even Yoongi can fix.

“This will help.” Yoongi holds out the mug, careful to turn it so Jimin can pick it up without their fingers brushing. “And you should rest.”

That’s directed at Taehyung, chiding, and Taehyung huffs.

“I don’t want him to get bored.”

“I’m not,” Jimin says into the lip of his mug. He’s tired, aching, guilty, fretful, sure. But not bored. They’re a lively, ever-changing bunch, even when they keep quiet and sedate in his sickroom. He doesn’t think he could ever get bored of them. 

“You shouldn’t encourage him,” says Yoongi, but his scent is warm and dry, unbothered. “Drink that, and let one of us know if you’re still hurting.”

The way he says it, Jimin wonders if he knows that it’s not a flesh-and-blood pain, if he understands that it goes deeper. He hopes so and he hopes not with equal fervor, and settles for taking a long draught of his tea to avoid answering. Yoongi watches him a moment longer, then ruffles Taehyung’s hair again and retreats. Jimin hears him a moment later, speaking to Hoseok out in the main room. Namjoon stretches and sighs and clambers to his feet, pausing to blink a question up at Jimin. It warms him almost as much as the tea does.

“I’m alright,” he promises. Lies. He’s not sure which; everything is muddled again, and the tea and the heartache make him tired. “You can go.”

“But do you want him to,” Taehyung presses. It’s a question Jimin doesn’t want to answer.

“I’m just going to drink this and go to sleep, I think.” He takes another long drink, and then remembers his manners. “Thank you for getting Yoongi-hyung.”

Namjoon huffs and blinks at him, amber eyes sharp and knowing, but he just shakes himself and plods out of the room. Taehyung makes a face, tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek, but he just twists around again to lean his head back against the bed.

“I’ll take the cup when you’re done,” he promises. “And I won’t talk too much so you can sleep.”

Jimin shakes his head. He’s been alone for too long. Silence suffocates him. “I really don’t mind. It’s nice to listen to you.”

Jimin can’t see his face, but his scent sweetens, pleased. When Jimin finishes his medicine and finally dozes off again, it’s to the easy lilt of Taehyung’s voice lulling him to rest.

When he wakes, he’s alone.

It’s late in the afternoon, the sky grey and overcast. Weak winter sunlight spills through the window, and the stillness is so jarring it takes him a moment to get his bearings. It’s the quiet, he realizes—he hasn’t been alone since he first arrived. Taehyung is gone and no one has come to replace him, the room still and empty.

The ache in his chest is smaller, at least, and so is the ache in his side. Mostly the scab just itches, a prickly discomfort that Yoongi assures him is a good thing. It means the wound is closing, healing. That he’ll be free to shift and run and travel again.

Jimin wishes that filled him with more relief and less fear.

He lies there for a long moment, hand pressed against his sternum, staring at the painted ceiling. It’s only a matter of time, he knows. He’s getting too comfortable; he wants them too much. It can’t end well. In his chest, his wolf keens, heavy and resigned.

A clatter down the hall draws him out of his thoughts, and he pushes himself upright with a frown. Something else clatters, louder, and then comes a swell of voices, too muffled for him to make out. He jumps when a door slams, sharp and sudden, and then there’s shouting and the scrabbling of claws against hardwood and someone calling, “Wait, Jungkook—!” and Jimin is halfway out of the bed when the door crashes open and an unfamiliar wolf skids across the threshold.

His heaviness and hurt vanish in a heartbeat. He crouches low, ready to defend his den and the nest Taehyung and Namjoon built for him—and for a moment, for a flashfire moment, he’s disappointed that Namjoon and Taehyung aren’t here, that they haven’t dared to enter the nest when it’s their hard work and they should be safe and warm inside it, resting with him, ready to burrow as winter closes in, and—

No, no. He shakes himself, gaze narrowing in on the massive wolf in front of him. He can’t be distracted like that, not now. His pulse thunders in his ears, every limb tensed to fight. Never mind that Jimin can’t shift, never mind that this wolf is easily as large as Jimin is in his human skin. This is his room, his nest, his territory. He won’t yield without a fight.

But the strange wolf doesn’t move to attack. The strange wolf pants in the middle of the room, tongue lolling, watching Jimin. His eyes are as black as his coat, and he smells like the forest, all cold earth and sharp winter and a mulchy-wet musk that masks whatever his natural scent might be. Jimin growls, low and heavy with warning, and the wolf cocks his head. Scents the air. Jimin tenses.

For a moment they stare at each other, silent. Then the wolf huffs loudly and steps back, sitting on his haunches and dipping his muzzle in a clear sign of submission. It surprises Jimin so much that the growl dies in his throat, and silence rings in its place.

“You,” says Jimin after a moment, wetting his lips. He coughs and winces at the ache in his chest. “You’re one of the others?”

It’s obvious once he says it. He hadn’t realized they would be back today, but it shouldn’t have surprised him so badly—town is only a few day’s run from here, and they’ve been gone almost a week at this point. Jimin scents the air again, focusing harder this time, and picks up what he missed before: a hint of fresh, crisp linen. It’s a clear, light, beta smell, and the same one that drenches every inch of the room he’s in.

Jimin winces. No wonder he hadn’t noticed it—it’s nearly impossible to pick out Jungkook’s scent from the rest of his room.

“Jungkook-ssi,” he says, and the wolf meets his eyes again with a quiet yip of agreement. Jimin can’t read his expression or his scent, but he can imagine what he’s thinking. How unpleasant it must be to come home from a long journey and find a strange, sick wolf in his den. Jimin’s never been territorial before, never had a need to be, and he’s horrified to find himself acting like that now when he’s a guest, an interloper. His head throbs, making everything big and bright and uncomfortable. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Yah! Jeon Jungkook!” Hoseok’s voice echoes down the hall. Jimin flinches at the noise, shoulders hitched up around his shoulders, and Jungkook’s ears flick in irritation. “No paws inside! What are you— Oh.”

Hoseok appears in the doorway, bundled up for the cold, nose and ears pink. His eyes flick between Jungkook on the ground and Jimin standing in front of the bed, and his expression immediately softens. His scent mellows with it, and Jungkook lets out a low rumble. Jimin unwinds himself from his defensive crouch, feeling stupid for overreacting.

“Aish,” the pack alpha says, giving Jimin an quick, apologetic look. “Sorry, Jimin-ah. Did he wake you?”

“No,” Jimin hurries to assure him. “It’s fine. I’m in his room—”

“He doesn't use it. Yah, don’t give me that look, you know you don’t.” Jungkook huffs, panting and heavy, and Hoseok snorts. “Don’t even start. Out, go on, out now. Next time put on pants before you try to introduce yourself. You might have better luck.”

Jungkook drops his head with a mournful whine, peering up at Jimin with round, apologetic eyes. Jimin gapes at him. Hoseok laughs, not unkind, and scratches behind his ears as he slinks out of the room, tail hung low. 

“Don’t mind him,” Hoseok says. “He gets excited sometimes. Thinks he’s still a pup.”

Jimin watches until his tail disappears from the doorway, his heart stuck in his throat, and drops back down to sit on the bed. He’s dug crescents into his palms where his fists were clenched, tiny moons pressed into his skin. His fingers tremble when he uncurls them.

“I’m sorry,” he says, staring down at the marks on his hands. “I’ll move, I can go somewhere else—”

“And abandon that nest Taehyungie worked so hard on? Don’t be ridiculous. Besides, Jungkookie really doesn’t use it. He’s just too curious for his own good.”

“I was going to fight him,” Jimin says, small and ashamed. “It’s his room and—”

“And he startled you. Jimin-ah, it’s okay. It happens. I wouldn’t go brawling quite yet, but it’s fine.” Hoseok gives him a look, frank and assessing, then drops into the chair at the side of the bed. When he speaks, his voice is softer. “You felt threatened?”

Jimin hesitates. He’s not sure threatened is quite the right word for it.

“Mostly… surprised? I think. And defensive. I didn’t— I didn’t want a stranger in here.”

Hoseok nods. “You’ve denned up. I’d expect you to be a little protective of your space.”

“I don’t—” starts Jimin, and he shakes his head. It’s not even his space; it’s Jungkook’s. The scent all over the room makes that obvious, even if it’s muted from Jungkook’s absence and everyone else pouring in and out at all hours of the day and night. “I’ve never— It wasn’t an issue before. I was always—”

Quiet. Submissive. Quick to yield, to give, to hide. Anything to keep his head down, to keep himself out of the way and safe.

Except that last night. Except when he stood before Alpha Choi and wouldn’t—couldn’t—bare his thrat. When he would have died before submitting to his pack alpha. He swallows hard, heart thrumming in his chest. What’s wrong with him?

“It’s okay,” Hoseok says again. The tone of his voice and the warmth of his scent are at odds with the way his face furrows, all concern. “Jimin-ah, it’s normal. I don’t know… Ah, whatever it was like where you were before, you don’t need to feel bad about it here, okay? I’d rather you felt comfortable and safe, we all would. Even if that means telling us off for scaring you. You should tell us off for that.”

“It isn’t like that,” Jimin says, frustrated. “I’m not scared of you, it’s—” Himself. He’s scared of himself. But the words stick in his throat, some ugly mix of confusion and shame. His hand brushes his mother’s butterfly pendant, and he stares down at his feet.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Hoseok says firmly. “Instincts are instincts. They’re not bad and you don’t have to hide them from us. Especially not while you’re recovering. Put that energy towards getting better, not ignoring how you feel.”

Jimin takes a shaky breath. It’s a stupid thing to cry about. He was only surprised. It isn’t even as though he’d been startled awake from a nightmare—his dreams have been warm, sweet things since that first night, all pipesmoke and spice and cedar and the faint, rich scent of fresh earth. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him.

“What’s important,” Hoseok continues, kindly ignoring the way Jimin’s scent sours with his distress, “is that you rest and heal. Jungkookie will be fine. Honestly, just be grateful that Jin-hyung wasn’t the one barging in.”

“How could anyone possibly be grateful for my absence,” a voice protests from the hall. Jimin’s head snaps up, and for a moment he forgets his discomfort and his confusion and even possibly his own name. 

Standing in the doorway is the most beautiful man he’s ever seen.

He’s pink-cheeked, windswept and clearly also just returned from the forest, the scent of winter cold and frozen earth hanging around him like a shroud. Unlike Jungkook, though, Jimin can pick out the man’s scent beneath: deeply, sweetly floral, and a little woody too. An omega’s scent like a springtime garden, fresh and bright and alive. 

Also unlike Jungkook, he’s shifted out of his wolfskin and dressed in pants and a shirt that hangs half-tied off his broad shoulders, neck bare. The wolf winks when he catches Jimin staring, and Jimin startles and whips his attention away. He ends up staring at Hoseok instead, who looks vaguely amused and overwhelmingly fond as he sighs at the man in the door.

“At least knock, hyung.”

“Right, of course, where are my manners?” The beautiful man reaches out to rap his knuckles blindly against the doorframe as he steps into the room. “Hello, I’m Seokjin. You must be Jimin.”

Jimin’s head bobbles in a vague approximation of a nod, and it takes him a moment to find his tongue. “It’s nice to meet you.” He takes a deep breath, trying to pull in more of his scent. Roses, he thinks; there had been a bed of them growing wild near the river, and that’s what Jimin remembers now—heavy, rose-sweet summers.

“Weren’t you unpacking?” Hoseok asks Seokjin, who waves a dismissive hand. Jimin balks at that —he’s never seen an omega dismiss their pack alpha before, not even a healer or an elder—but Hoseok only huffs and leans back in the chair, unconcerned. He appears to be smiling, of all things.

“The pups are taking care of that. I heard I had a patient. Yah, Hob-ah, this is important. Don’t you care about his health and wellbeing? He could be in terrible agony over there and you’re just sitting here laughing.” Seokjin peers at Jimin. “ Are you in terrible agony?”

“Um,” says Jimin. “No?”

“You don’t sound very sure. You can be honest now, tell hyung what’s wrong.”

“I— My head hurts a little?” From the way the others spoke of him, Jimin had expected a pack healer like Healer Lee—even-keeled, just as serious and collected as Yoongi if not more so. They’ve all spoken of him with such open affection, such admiration and appreciation. The bright, cheeky, distracting omega standing at his bedside is… not that.

“Hm. Hob-ah, fetch my tinctures.”

“You haven’t got any tinctures,” says Hoseok, but he lifts himself out of the chair anyway, pausing briefly to glance back at Jimin. There’s a question on his face, and it takes Jimin a moment to realize he’s waiting for Jimin to give him the okay, making sure it’s alright if he leaves them alone. Jimin doesn’t even think before he nods.

“The small orange jar on the left,” says Seokjin, and that must mean something to Hoseok because he flashes a thumbs up and steps out of the room. 

“Mind if I sit?” Seokjin asks, gesturing to the chair Hoseok has vacated. Jimin shakes his head. This close, his scent is nearly overpowering, rich and sweet and tempting. Jimin breathes in through his mouth and tastes it on his tongue. With every breath he feels himself unwind a little, calm seeping through him.

“Hobi will bring something to help with the headache, and then we can talk properly,” Seokjin says. “Your scent smells better than I expected, so that’s good. The infection must be clearing out.”

Jimin frowns at him, pushing through the haze of sweetness and the urge to get closer to the scent. “You can… smell that?”

“I have a very good nose.” He taps it with a wink. “And some more traditional training. I know a thing or two about healing.”

“Do you want to see?” Jimin asks, fingers picking at the hem of his shirt.

“Jimin-ah, so soon? We only just met.”

Jimin flushes, and Seokjin’s scent doesn’t help his embarrassment in the slightest. “I— no, that’s not— I mean the stitches. Yoongi-hyung did them. He’s been making me this, ah, stuff to put on it.” Does Seokjin know about the poultice? Probably. He’s a healer; he must.

“And it helps?”

Jimin nods, and Seokjin’s scent warms.

“That’s good. I trained him myself, you know.”

“He’s been very nice. Everyone has.”

“They like you. You should smell it out there—Joon’s been scenting up the place.”

“Oh.” Jimin wilts. “I’m—”

“I hope you’re not about to say sorry,” Seokjin interjects, and Jimin’s jaw snaps shut. “Do you have any idea how nice it is to return home from a week of travel to a house that smells like my contented mate? I should be thanking you. I should be bringing you gifts. I should be cooking you meals! Do you like cooking, Jimin-ah? I’ll cook something for you. Hyung’s treat.”

“You don’t have to—” Jimin starts, but Seokjin is speaking again before he can pick up any steam.

“Ah, don’t argue. I’m the oldest here, that means you have to listen. I may be an omega, but I have my pride, you know.”

“That’s not— I didn’t—” Trying to keep up with Seokjin’s switchback conversation is making him dizzy. Or maybe that’s the sweetness of his scent. “Seokjin-ssi, I promise—”

“Hyung,” Seokjin corrects gently, a smile tugging at his lips, and Jimin realizes he’s… teasing, maybe? Something close to it, anyway. Still, Jimin feels bad that Seokjin might think he’s the kind of wolf who thinks less of him for his presentation. He wonders if it’s something else they expect of pack wolves, and he flushes, embarrassed and a little angry. He isn’t like that. He hopes he hasn’t given them reason to think so—that his awkward, ungracious questions that first night haven’t been a mark against him. 

Seokjin tuts at him, drawing his attention again. “Don’t think so hard about it, Jimin-ah. What do you like?”

Jimin stares at him, mind blank. Like? He’s not sure he knows. They keep asking him all these things he hasn’t got answers to, and he doesn’t understand why. Why are they so insistent on his creature comforts when those are short-lived things and they have better use for their limited resources than on a poor, strange wolf? He reaches up to touch his mother’s necklace under his shirt, the smooth glass a grounding sensation. His fingers trace the outline of the wings, brushing against the fraying cord, and— oh. That’s not too much, he doesn’t think. Even with winter setting in, surely they can spare some string?

“If it’s alright,” he says, tentative, “could have a little twine?”

Seokjin blinks. His face is quicksilver, bright and quick to change, and right now it blinks at him, eyebrows high. “Just twine? Don’t be modest now, I’m sure we could spare at least a spool for our honored guest.”

“I don’t need that much. I just— I’d like to fix my necklace.”

Seokjin blinks again, and then his expression settles. He looks older as his humor fades—and more handsome, somehow, mouth firm, eyes solemn and dark. Jimin holds his gaze, poised on the edge of… something. He takes another deep breath, rosy and woodsy and feels a little like he’s holding his ground, like he has to plant himself to keep from being swept away.

“Okay, little alpha,” Seokjin says. “We’ll find you a fresh cord. May I see it?”

Jimin draws the pendant slowly out from beneath his borrowed shirt, the blue glass butterfly wings catching the grey afternoon llight. Seokjin leans forward, and Jimin’s breath catches. His scent is so close, so rich. He breathes in deep and feels almost shaky when Seokjin leans back again.

“We can certainly find something for that,” he says. His shirt has slipped a little with his movement, emphasizing the line of his neck and the edge of one collarbone, and Jimin can’t seem to pull his eyes away. His wolf shifts in his chest, not defensive, but— something. Aware. Sharp and watching. Eager. His eyes follow Seokjin’s throat as he sits back, watches him roll up his sleeves and bare his wrists even as he turns to the door where someone’s appeared. 

“Better?” asks the wolf in the door, and Jimin remembers—right, Hoseok. Gone to fetch something. He shakes his head, trying to focus. Everything smells sweet. Roses and that woody hint beneath them, and Jimin needs to know what that is, needs to place it. He needs more. “Everyone getting along?”

“I think so. Jimin-ah?”

“Yes,” Jimin agrees, distracted. His tongue is thick in his mouth. Seokjin smiles at him, glorious, and takes a tray from Hoseok to balance it across his knees. There’s a steaming cup of water and a small ceramic jar glazed bright orange, and Jimin watches as Seokjin lifts it and taps out a measure of dried leaves into the steaming water. A sweet smell fills the air, pleasant and rich and heavy in his nose and his throat and his head.

“Start with this,” Seokjin says, holding the cup out. Coiling lines of steam rise between them, blurring Seokjin’s smile, but Jimin’s attention isn’t on that. It’s on the underside of Seokjin’s wrist where he’s rolled up his shirt. Jimin wants to touch him—wants to press their wrists together so he can carry a little of Seokjin’s sweetness and leave his own scent against Seokjin’s skin in return. He reaches out for the cup as if in a dream, body weightless and mind far away, watching his fingers drift past the lip of the cup and reach for Seokjin’s exposed wrist. Someone’s breath catches, distant, but Jimin is only half attentive. Everything smells thick and sweet, like roses and something more, something he almost knows. If he presses a little, if he coaxes Seokjin’s scent a little further, he’ll be able to tell what. He just needs a touch.

A breath of warmth shivers up his back, a finger drawn gently along the curve of his spine, and Jimin blinks. His hand is a hair’s breadth from Seokjin’s unprotected skin. A flicker, a flinch, and Jimin will feel him.

Horror freezes him before he gets that far.

He yanks his hand back, clipping the cup and sending steaming tea sloshing out over Seokjin’s hand and the floor. The sweetness vanishes, and in its place everything smells like burning, all metal and fire and smoke. Seokjin makes a noise, reaching towards him, and Jimin snarls, teeth snapping in warning to keep him back, keep him safe. He shouldn’t have let him so close, shouldn’t have answered his questions, shouldn’t have let the sweet scent of an omega muddle his mind. His wolf is wild in his chest, and he can’t pick its panic apart from his own fear.

“Get out,” he pants. His headache is back, and his side hurts, but none of it holds a candle to the horror inside him. He almost touched him. He almost touched him. “Get out!”

Seokjin just stares at him, eyes wide. “Jimin-ah—”

“Now!” Jimin snarls, and suddenly Hoseok is there, eyes hard and scent sharp and every inch a pack alpha as he wraps a hand around Seokjin and drags him back. Seokjin is saying something but Jimin can’t hear it over his own heartbeat pounding loud in his ears, can’t see him behind Hoseok’s frame as the alpha gets between them. Thank the moon—at least their pack alpha will keep them safe like he’s supposed to, like he should have days ago when Jimin stumbled into their territory.

And yet, for some reason, for some stupid reason, with Seokjin shoved out into the hall, Hoseok hesitates. The room smells like burning, like rot and misery and danger and fear, and Hoseok is just fucking standing there.

“Jimin,” he says. Jimin wants to fight him, wants to bare his neck, wants to climb out the window, wants to burrow beneath the quilts and never leave. He hates it. Everything is bright and sharp and confusing and he doesn’t understand why Hoseok won’t leave.

“Get out,” he says again, all fire and desperation. “Get out, get out, please—”

Hoseok flinches, but he goes. Finally, he goes. The door slides shut behind him with a heavy thunk, and for a moment there’s no sound in the room but Jimin’s panting. Nothing but the rattling of his heart and his wolf in his chest howling and howling and howling, and Jimin would howl too if he could catch his breath for it.

Instead, he sits there, heart hammering. His chest aches like someone is sitting on it, ribcage squeezed small and tight, eyes burning. He hunches forward and drags his fingers through his hair, yanking at the short, choppy ends and then pressing his fingers to the mark at the nape of his neck. The memory of warmth shudders through him, and he squeezes his eyes shut. 

The nest, so comforting only minutes ago, is suddenly too much. Unearned, undeserved; he’s drowning in softness. He stumbles out, legs shaky, and bruises his knee on the chair where it sits askew, knocked about by Seokjin’s hasty exit. The tray is still there, the mug fallen and cracked and spilling over the floor. He stares at it, the scent of the tea dissipating as the water cools, puddling around his bruised, bare feet. He sucks in a breath, and another one, and crouches down, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes.

He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to do but the tea is cold underfoot and there are shard of broken pottery, and he should clean those up. Shouldn’t he? It’s his mess; he should fix it. At least he can put one thing right.

He moves slowly, taking his time with it, precise as he scoops up the scattered leaves and blots up the seeping tea. He sacrifices one of the blankets with a mumbled apology to no one. The air chills as the sun sets, his fingers going stiff, but the floor keeps warm underfoot, and it’s good to have something to do. The movement helps clear his mind.

As the panic fades, shame grows. It clobbers around inside him, an ugly, tangled mess knotted between his ribs. What was he thinking? What’s wrong with him? First Jungkook, then Seokjin— 

He sets the broken pieces on top of the tray, folds the blanket, sets everything down by the door. The nest sits heavy and inviting, but Jimin squeezes himself in the farthest corner of the room instead, tucked between the end of the bed and the wall, head buried in his knees. He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to be some knot-dumb alpha who can’t control himself around other wolves. What would his mother say if she saw him now, frightened and half feral, dependent on the kindness of strangers and incapable of showing gratitude? What a shame he is to her memory. The pack was right to cast him aside. There isn’t one thing he can touch without ruining.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there. The room goes dark and he doesn’t bother with the lamps. His knees go stiff. His tears dry. He thinks he dozes, maybe, because he jolts awake when someone raps on the door.

“Jimin?” Namjoon’s voice is muffled. “It’s me. Can I come in?”

Jimin raises his head with a wince, sore all over. After a moment, Namjoon knocks again.

“Jimin-ah? Are you awake?”

He may as well get it over with. At least they’ve been kind enough to send Namjoon to kick him out—Namjoon who is gentle and firm, who smells green and fresh and alive, who has been keeping watch for him, who helped build him a nest. That’s nice of them, to let Namjoon deliver the news.

Jimin picks himself up. He doesn’t want to be sitting here, curled in the corner like a misbehaving pup, when they throw him out. It takes a minute—his knees creak as he stands. He’s slow enough that Namjoon knocks again with a tentative, “Jimin?”

“Come in,” he calls, easing down on the edge of the bed. A heartbeat later, the door creaks open and Namjoon slips in. For a moment, a wedge of orange lamplight spills across the floor, and then Namjoon slides the door shut again and it’s grey and dark again.

“Oh.” Jimin can’t see Namjoon’s face in the gloom, but he can hear his frown. “I didn’t realize— Is it okay if I light the lamps?”

“Yes.” He swallows hard, trying to stifle the sharp kick of fear as Namjoon approaches, but he moves around the room with practiced ease, lighting the covered lamps and turning them up until they glow. When the room is golden and slowly warming, he returns to the door, sinking down to sit cross-legged with his back braced against it. It’s the same way he’s been keeping watch these past days, almost protective, and a lump rises in Jimin’s throat.

He stares down at his hands, fingers stinging as warmth returns to them. He should speak, he knows; he should apologize. But the words stick in his throat, tight with embarrassment and shame.

After a moment, Namjoon sighs. “Sorry,” he says, and Jimin’s head snaps up. He looks a little wry, a little uncomfortable, fingers rubbing at the back of his neck. “I don’t mean to be forward, but— Jimin-ah, when exactly did you present?”

“This year. The Hunter’s Moon.” Jimin answers. A fresh wave of embarrassment washes through him. He knows that’s late. It’s shameful that he’s seen twenty-two summers and is still barely more than a pup, untried and untested, but it’s especially embarrassing to admit it now. Namjoon’s lips press together. His scent gives away nothing.

“And how long have you been on your own?”

Jimin swallows hard. “Since the Hunter’s Moon.”

Namjoon draws a breath in, short and horrified. “The same day?”

“Night,” Jimin corrects. He doesn’t want to talk about it.

“That’s— Jimin-ah, that’s— Shit.” He drops his head back against the door, and Jimin flinches. This is it, this is when he’s going to tell him to go and not come back. But when Namjoon meets his eyes, he only sees sorrow there.

“I can’t imagine how that—” Namjoon shakes himself, and for a moment his eyes are a deep, burning amber. “Sorry. I’m sorry. We should have asked. Jin-hyung shouldn’t have tried to calm you like that without asking. That isn’t— I apologize, Jimin-ah.”

Jimin’s head spins. Calm him? He isn’t sure what that means. But that doesn’t matter; Namjoon shouldn’t apologize. Jimin’s the problem, the one making things harder, the one fucking up. His ears ring and he shakes his head, shoving his trembling hands between his knees.

“It’s okay, really. It was my fault—”

“It wasn’t. Wolves aren’t supposed to be on their own.” He still looks stricken. “Especially not right after presenting. That’s when wolves need contact the most, it helps settle your instincts. Moon above, why would any abandon a newly-presented pup—”

“No, I deserved it.” This part he’s sure of, and that makes it a little easier to find his voice, to interrupt Namjoon before he can stray too far into caring about things he shouldn’t. “You don’t understand, Namjoon-ssi. It really was my fault. I hurt someone. But I swear, I swear I don’t want to do it again. You’ve been so good to me, really. I don’t want to hurt any of you. So—“ And he knows, he knows this is the right answer, the only answer, even as he says it. “I’m going to go. Just point me towards town, and I’ll leave.”

Namjoon stares at him for a moment, mouth opening and closing again. “But you’re still sick.”

Jimin shakes his head. “Not that sick. My fever’s gone, and Yoongi-hyung says the stitches can come out. I can take them out myself, I think.” And then they won’t have to touch him. He should have thought of that sooner.

For some reason, Namjoon doesn’t look comforted by this. Jimin can’t smell him, but the look on his face gets darker, heavier.

“That’s not— At least let Jin-hyung check. We’ll make sure someone stays in the room if that makes you feel safer, but—”

“No, that's not— You're the ones who need to be safe.” He’s not even sure why Seokjin would be a danger to him, not when Jimin’s the one who nearly burned him. All this for a little scenting. Pathetic.

“Jimin-ah, you haven’t hurt us.”

“But I will. I’m dangerous. I’ll do something bad.”

Namjoon shakes his head. “Jin-hyung, he overdid it trying to keep you calm, we won’t let it happen again. It’s normal to be more impulsive after presenting, especially when you’ve been on your own. Hobi said you guys talked about it—”

“It isn’t like that!” Moon above, why won’t he just listen? He’s making it so much harder, and Jimin’s tired of things being hard. “I’ll hurt him. Or you, or Hobi-hyung, sooner or later, I’ll—” He takes a deep breath and wishes his hands would stop shaking. He shakes his head and gives Namjoon his best smile. It must be terrible, because Namjoon looks at him like it hurts. 

“I’ll be okay,” Jimin promises, “really. You don’t have to worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

“You can’t.”

That stings, but Jimin ignores it as best he can. He can’t expect them to know how he’s lived these past ten years. How alone he’s been. They’ve only seen him at his weakest, but he can survive this. He’s survived everything else. “I’ll be alright, Namjoon-ssi. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“No, no, I mean. You can’t leave.”

“What?” The smile slides off his face, and panic worms around in his gut. “But I have to.”

“It’s— Ah, it's not quite that simple—”

“What do you mean?” His palms are sweating. “Of course it is. I’ll just go—”

“Jimin-ah—”

“Hoseok-ssi said you wouldn’t force me to stay.” It’s hard to breathe. He knows he shouldn’t have believed it, but they’d made it so easy. They’ve been so kind and he’d wanted it so badly. “He promised.”

“No, shit, that's not—”

“You have to let me go.” He can’t seem to catch his breath. He can’t stop fucking shaking. “I have to, Namjoon-hyung, you don’t understand. I’m bad, I’m wrong, I’ll hurt you—”

“Jimin. Jimin, hey!” Namjoon’s voice cuts through the clouding panic, the smell of cold and fire and smoke. Jimin’s pulse rabbits in his ears. Namjoon has moved, kneeling near the bed with his hands out, and he looks nothing so much as heartbroken. “We don’t mean to keep you here. I’d let you go in a heartbeat, if you wanted. But the snows have set in.”

Jimin stares, uncomprehending. “What?”

“It’s the first snowstorm of the season. It’s too dangerous to go anywhere right now. I’m sorry.”

“No.” Jimin looks at the window, but the glass only reflects the room, dark pane and murky lamplight. He pushes himself to his feet, unsteady. Namjoon rises with him, scent souring with distress, but he makes no move to stop Jimin when he stumbles for the door.

It gives without any effort, and there’s no one in the hall—stupid, his wolf huffs with a spark of disapproval; they should have had someone waiting here ready to protect Namjoon, to keep the rest of the pack safe. But there’s no one in the hall and no one in the main room either, so no one stops him when he reaches the front door and forces it open, wood sliding against wood to reveal the swirling, impenetrable bulk of a winter snowstorm.

Jimin stumbles to the edge of the porch, breath frozen in his chest. The wind whips through the yard with a low, mournful wail, and the snow comes down so thick he can’t see the forest across the clearing. Thick drifts have already begun to pile up against the walls, deep and growing deeper, and the wind picks up tiny whirls of snow and ice when it dashes overtop them. Everything smells like ice, like winter—even the stench of fire is faint here, swallowed by the storm. The night is black and biting and it coils around his bones, holding him fast.

Trapped.

He’s trapped.

Chapter Text

He doesn’t entirely remember getting back inside. Yoongi is there, he registers distantly, cedar and sawdust, and Namjoon too, wintery and worried. A cup is nudged into his hands, steaming, and a fire is stoked. The air is thick with the smell of pack, and that calms his wolf, easing the panicked bite of claustrophobia and fear. Conversation buzzes in gentle waves as people move around him, voices muffled and muted, and the wind howls and the snow falls and the night settles. 

He sits in the middle of it all, feeling slowly returning to his limbs, mind clearing, wolf curling quietly in his chest. It takes a long, long while to come back to himself.

When he can make sense of things again, he’s bundled before the hearth with Namjoon’s coat draped over his shoulders, the faint green smell of spring masking the worst of the acrid, smokey fear-tang caught at the back of his throat. The mug in his hands steams, sweeter and thicker than tea and it stings when he raises it to his lips, warmth down his throat and pooling in his belly. Jimin coughs.

“Sorry,” says Yoongi, not sounding particularly sorry. “You seemed like you could use something stronger.”

He crouches nearby, his expression hard to read. Outside, the storm wails. Jimin stares at the door, closed and locked, and something inside him shrivels.

“Back with us?” asks Hoseok. He sits perched on the arm of one of the chairs, brow furrowed and mouth pursed. Seokjin sits next to him, the perfect image of poise except for the divot between his brows and the faintness of his scent, like he’s trying to mask it. He also has a cup clutched in his hands. Near the door, Namjoon keeps guard in his wolfskin, muzzle resting on his paws and eyes alert. Jimin can’t see the youngest two, but he knows perfectly well what their absence means. 

He’s familiar with the experience of being dragged up in front of the pack elders.

He sinks deeper into the folds of the coat, shivering. At least he’s not on his knees in the dirt this time. Even if they’re only a little older than him, even if they’ve given him fire and food and furs, he can feel the weight of their expectation. It won’t be long now until they deliver their judgment.

“Yes,” he says, forcing his voice steady. “I think so.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Um.” That isn’t what he expects, and it throws him for a moment. “Cold.”

Yoongi rises, and Jimin flinches, but he only goes to poke at the fire until it burns merry and bright. For a long minute, no one speaks. Jimin shifts and takes another sip of his drink, ready for the sting this time. His fingers and toes itch with the heat seeping through the room, and he aches. All he wants to do is nest—find somewhere dark and warm and safe and curl up until the winter passes.

His wolf would rather nest with them, but that’s impossible. Jimin ignores the welling urge to reach out.

“Jimin,” says Seokjin, like even his name is fragile. “I’d like to apologize.”

“For what, Seokjin-ssi?”

“Namjoon explained that you’ve been on your own since you presented.” He speaks gently, attention unwavering. Jimin wraps both hands tighter around his mug. The fire throws long shadows across the room. The furniture is dark and squatting; the entrance to the kitchen is an open mouth. Trapped, his mind whispers, and despair curls through him. His wolf is silent and still in his chest.

“Lone wolves can…” He hesitates and glances at Hoseok. “It’s not healthy for young wolves to be alone right after presenting. We need connection. Scenting, pack, it’s important. Without it, it’s hard to moderate instincts, emotions— Ah, worst case scenario…” He looks at Hoseok again.

“I know about feral wolves,” Jimin interjects. He knows what happens to rogues run out of a pack, knows what kills them if the wilds don’t get to them first. He understands perfectly well what happened to his father.

“Jimin,” Hoseok says, and Jimin closes his eyes. This is where they tell him to go, this is where they ask him to— “We’d like to help you.”

Noise at the mouth of the hallway distracts him, and he glances over to see Taehyung step into the room. A younger, dark-eyed boy trails behind him, latched onto Taehyung’s back with his chin hooked over Taehyung’s shoulder. Jimin hesitates.

“Jimin-ah?” Hoseok says, less certain, and Jimin meets his eyes. The fire flickers in them, reminding him of a different time. He turns away. Everything is heavy—the night, the stillness, his heart. The truth.

He was always going to have to tell them eventually. He’s tired of keeping secrets. Of waiting for them to change their minds.

“Thank you for worrying about me,” he says, stilted and awkward. “But I don’t think you can help me, and I don’t think you should—” He swallows hard. Care, he wants to say, but clearly they won’t listen to him if he says it. He takes a breath.

“I’m cursed.” The fire crackles, terribly loud, throwing dancing shadows between licks of orange light. He keeps his gaze on Hoseok; he can’t bear to look at the others. “That’s why I’m alone, Hoseok-ssi. The people around me get hurt. After I presented, it got worse, it—” He swallows hard. Just say it. He just has to say it. “One of our elders, she touched me and I— I burned her.” Everything burns around him, he thinks—his mother’s body, his parent’s home, Elder Im, his hair. It’s no wonder he smells smoke wherever he goes. “So, thank you for being kind. But you have let me go.”

His eyes sting. Stupid. What point is there crying about it? It’s the truth, a truth he owed them days ago, back when they first offered their hand. Whatever punishment they demand for hiding what he really is, it’ll be what he deserves. 

Hoseok says, quietly, “Is that what you want?”

Jimin closes his eyes. The kindness tears into him. He’d rather their judgment—that, at least, he would know how to bear.

“I didn’t realize the storm was— I thought I could go to town. I thought I would be able to leave.”

“It will clear.” Hoseok’s scent is sour, distressed, and Jimin grits his teeth against the shame.

“How long?”

“A couple days?” Hoseok looks at Seokjin, who gives a shrug and sets a hand on the back of Hoseok’s neck, like Hoseok is the one who needs settling. “It’s a bad year. But if you wait, once the storm clears—”

“I don’t want to wait,” Jimin interjects. The sharp edge of Hoseok’s unasked-for kindness catches on something hard inside him, the coals of his anger pressed dense and unyielding. He doesn’t deserve their patience. Worse, Hoseok is being careless with his pack’s safety to let him linger, and Jimin’s wolf hates the thought of danger lurking in their den. “ You shouldn’t want me to wait! You should be making me leave!”

“If you think we’re going to throw you out in this weather—”

“Maybe you should!” He sits up in a dizzying rush, Namjoon’s coat sliding off his shoulders, blankets pooling around his waist. The ache of his side barely registers; they’ve taken such tender care of him. “You don’t understand, Hoseok-ssi, I shouldn’t be in your den! You should have left me out in the forest! I’m dangerous!”

“Jimin-ah—”

“I mean it! I could hurt you, any of you!” Panic claws its way up his throat. Why won’t he listen; why won’t any of them listen? 

“Do you intend to?”

Jimin startles at Yoongi’s question. He’s been silent through this, but he shifts forward now, holds Jimin’s gaze cold and sharp and sure, and Jimin’s words catch in his throat.

“Do you intend to hurt our pack?”

Jimin’s never heard him like this before—frigid, unflinching, like Yoongi is assessing him with nothing but the most perfect, unyielding clarity. There’s a tension to him that makes the room feel tiny, that makes everyone else feel far away. Like if Yoongi wanted, he could be at Jimin’s throat in a heartbeat. In less than that.

Jimin’s relief swamps him. At least one of the pack’s alphas is looking out for them, even if it means blood. Even if it means Jimin’s blood.

Maybe especially if it means Jimin’s blood. Yoongi’s gaze pierces him, and he welcomes the blow.

“Well?”

“No,” Jimin says, tongue heavy and answer honest. “But I could.”

And then Yoongi is himself again, quiet and calm, a little sleepy around the edges. “Alright then,” he says. The shift leaves Jimin dizzy.

“But—”

“Namjoon chopping wood could hurt us,” he says, and Namjoon huffs. “Jungkook’s play-fighting could hurt us.”

A quiet, “Hey,” comes from the boy latched onto Taehyung’s back, but Yoongi ignores him. His eyes haven’t once left Jimin.

“Anyone’s dangerous.” He shrugs. “We could all hurt each other. You aren’t that special, Jimin-ah.”

Jimin takes a breath. The dismissal hurts almost as much as it soothes. “I don’t think that’s fair,” he says, quiet and careful. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“Know you tried to run out into a snowstorm rather than put us in danger,” Yoongi says. “Know you sent Jin-hyung away when you were worried you might hurt him. Know you’re stinking up this place smelling like an alpha protecting his pack.”

Is he? Jimin flushes. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Taehyung says. “It’s nice.”

“Tae,” Seokjin says, low and chiding, but Taehyung only shrugs, unrepentant. Behind him Jungkook watches Jimin with dark, curious eyes.

“He’s right,” Hoseok says, and— Well, he doesn’t sound angry. “It is nice. But maybe you could consider letting us protect you too.”

“I’m not your pack,” Jimin says. “I don’t understand why you care.”

It comes out plaintive. Frustrated. They’re so— annoying about this. Off to the side, Yoongi makes a noise that might be a snort, and Jimin glares at him. 

“I don’t know how they did things where you came from,” says Hoseok, drawing his attention again, “but here we don’t send wolves out into the wild for wrongs they haven’t committed yet. You haven’t hurt any of us, Jimin.”

“Southerners,” Namjoon mutters like a curse, slipping out of his wolfskin and giving himself a shake. Jimin startles a little; he hadn’t known the man was capable of such contempt. Hoseok hums, not disagreeing.

“Look,” he says firmly. “Jin-hyung and Jungkook just got home, and nobody’s going anywhere for another couple days at least with the snow, so let’s just— Let’s eat, and let’s rest, alright?” He looks at Jimin, searching. “Will you stay at least until the snow clears? I promise no one will touch you.”

Jimin hesitates. No, he wants to say. He wants to argue longer. He wants to take the tight and tangled knot of fear and loathing in his chest and yank it out for them all to see, to say look, this is what’s inside me, this is what I’ll give to you if you let me stay.

“Please,” says Taehyung quietly, and Jimin feels himself fold.

“You can’t let me touch anyone.”

“If that’s what you want,” Hoseok says.

Want has nothing to do with it. Jimin hesitates. “Just— How do you know you can trust me?”

For some reason, this makes Namjoon laugh, and a few of them smile. Jungkook tucks his nose into Taehyung’s shoulder with a grumble. It’s Seokjin who answers.

“Sometimes,” he says, almost sheepish, “our wolves know better than we do.”

As if in agreement, Jimin’s wolf stirs in his chest, and with a flush he recalls the sense of comfort he felt waking up surrounded by this pack, the certainty of his own safety. He takes a hasty sip of his drink and hopes it hides some of his flush. If the way the entire room sweetens is any indication, it doesn’t.

A few days. What’s a few days more? He lowers the mug and meets Hoseok’s eyes. “Until the snow clears.”

“Until the snow clears,” Hoseok agrees, and it settles over Jimin like an oath. The tightness in his chest eases a little.

Seokjin claps his hands together, startling, and stands. “Lovely,” he declares. “Jungkook-ah, come help hyung in the kitchen.”

The others rise in ones and twos, moving around him in a well-worn dance as they settle in for the evening. Jimin stays near the fire, feet tucked under him, tugging Namjoon’s coat back up around his shoulders. Not a gift , he reminds himself, but he feels strange with it, flushed and frustrated and something else too, a pleased and sparking satisfaction deep in his gut that he’s certain is all his wolf, because he knows they’re being stupid. They’re being stupid about him and he hates it as much as he likes it, a miserable muddle of wanting and hope and anger and a dozen other things he has no idea how to name. So he sits, and he watches them, and he waits for them to come to their senses, but the only thing that happens is Taehyung comes to sit near him and narrate what everyone is doing—some kind of feast, by the sounds of it, to welcome back their missing mates. His voice soothes, as does his scent, and Jimin finds himself relaxing almost against his better judgment.

The alcohol helps too, probably, loosening his limbs and softening the unceasing clamor inside his head. And it’s sweet, he’ll admit, to watch the pack come together—they’re clearly overjoyed to have their missing mates back, all of them sharing lingering touches and laughter. Even his shame at ruining such a happy reunion softens as the evening passes.

Eventually there’s food, a shocking spread of roasted meats and savory stews and pickled vegetables that is every bit as enticing as Taehyung promised. Jimin finds himself seated at their table without quite being sure how he got there, Hoseok on one side and Taehyung on the other. They must have started cooking hours ago in preparation for their mates’ return, and guilt creeps up on him again. But it’s hard to hold onto the feeling when they pass food and drink and laughter across the table without resentment, when the den is rich with contentment and joy. Taehyung keeps adding meat to his plate, and Hoseok keeps filling his cup, and Jimin gives up on fighting the overwhelming feeling of home and mine and want that burrows into his chest, wolf pleased to see a well-fed and well-loved pack. He’ll regret this later, he knows, when he has to leave, but it’s so much easier to let it happen than to push it away.

They know, he reminds himself. He told them the truth and they haven’t killed him or thrown him to the cold. He is not sure what to do with this trust, but he wants to honor it. To give it back, somehow.

He helps clear the table when the meal finishes, ignoring the protests of the pack, and when everyone drifts to their separate corners of the room, he settles himself near the window to watch the snowfall. If he presses his face right up to the glass, he can see it—big fat flakes swirling down. It’s falling heavier now, but the wind isn’t as harsh, and it blankets everything he can see of the yard and the shed. The glass is cold, icy, but that’s something of a relief. And it’s such a beautiful sight.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” A clean, laundry-fresh scent envelops him. Jimin, full of food and drink, nods.

“We never got snow back—” Home sits on the tip of his tongue, but it doesn’t feel right. “In the south.”

“Is that really where you’re from?”

“Yeah.”

“What was it like?”

Jimin pulls back from the window, rubbing at the numb spot on his forehead where the chill seeps in.

Jungkook has the same bright eyes and the same shaggy dark hair as his wolfskin, but he’s softer around the edges. Younger. He has a handsome face, a nice nose. He waits with an easy patience, standing close enough to speak privately and far enough that they won’t accidentally brush. It’s a little thing, but relief flushes through Jimin all the same.

He looks back to the window, chewing at the inside of his lip. It’s a hard thing to put into words: how there are so many more wolves in the south but it’s so much lonelier; how one single home standing alone in a snowstorm is a warmer, safer den than even the biggest of the southern pack houses. He’s not sure when he’ll stop being startled by how easy this strange, bonded northern pack makes it to just be.

“Colder,” he settles on. “Everything is colder.”

Jungkook hums, long and slow like he’s mulling that over. Jimin watches him out of the corner of his eye.

“Seokjin-hyung came from a southern pack,” he volunteers after a moment, which is a surprise. “He doesn’t talk about it a lot. He says it wasn’t a good place, and we shouldn’t worry about it.”

“He’s right,” Jimin agrees. His attention turns to Seokjin, lazing in a chair and sharing a cup with Yoongi, who sits on the floor with his back against Seokjin’s legs. Seokjin’s eyes flick up to meet his, as though he can feel Jimin’s gaze. For a moment they stare at each other, and then Seokjin offers him a smile, uncertain but kind. Jimin presses his cheek back against the cool window.

“Do you miss it?” Jungkook asks. Jimin snorts.

“No.”

“Not even your family?” 

Jimin shrugs. “My father was a rogue and my mother is dead.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“No, I know, I just— I’m sorry for whatever they did to you.”

Jimin blinks at him. What a strange thing to apologize for. His faults and failures have always been his own. “Who says they did anything?” 

Jungkook shrugs. “I don’t think you’d be so scared of us if they hadn’t.”

Jimin doesn’t know what to say to that. Something must read on his face, because Jungkook shakes his head and takes half a step back.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything about it. Sorry, Jimin-ssi.”

Jungkook’s faint scent gets even fainter as he stares out the window, carefully avoiding his gaze, shoulders hunched. Jimin smothers the urge to bump into his side, to loop an arm over his and draw the tension out. That would only make things worse.

“What’s with this Jimin-ssi?” he says instead. “Everyone else can be familiar but not you?”

Jungkook turns to him, eyes wide. “Oh, I just— I didn’t think you’d like that.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. You just seemed…” He trails off, mouth pursed in a frown.

“I don’t mind,” Jimin says, sparing him the effort of finding the right word. Jimin’s not sure he wants to know how he seemed. “I’ve never been anyone’s hyung before.”

“Oh no,” says Taehyung, materializing over Jungkook’s shoulder. “You’ve picked a terrible dongsaeng to start with.”

“Shut up,” Jungkook returns, shoving him off. Taehyung raises his eyebrows, as if to say, See? Jimin huffs, warmth flickering deep in his chest.

“I don’t know. He seems alright.”

“Yeah, Tae-hyung,” says Jungkook. His nose scrunches when he smiles, Jimin discovers. “I’m alright.”

“You’re all something, that’s for sure,” says Taehyung, nose wrinkled. It’s stupid, it doesn’t even make sense, but the flicker of amusement in Jimin’s chest bubbles up into laughter. It’s barely anything—a giggle, half a breath of humor—but both Taehyung and Jungkook swing around to look at him, and the air sweetens around them. Jungkook’s eyes shine. Jimin’s face warms.

“Um,” he says. “Thank you.”

Taehyung frowns, a tick between his brows. “For what?”

“Just—” He doesn’t know where to start. His nose stings. He’s sure they can smell it in his scent, the shaky, overwhelming comfort, the ache so like grief but not. He’s exhausted. Today has been so much and he doesn’t know where to start untangling it. “Everything.”

“You don’t have to thank us for that,” Taehyung huffs, and Jimin wants to argue that he does, now more than ever, but Jungkook gets there first.

“You’re welcome,” he says. Creases feather around his eyes when he smiles. “We’re glad you’re here, Jimin-hyung.”

Jimin ducks his head so they can’t see the way his eyes shine.

It snows for three days, and for three days no one leaves the house except to forge a path from the kitchen door to the cellar and back again. Jimin worries about it, about the discomfort of them all trapped in the den for days on end with nothing to do but stagnate. He isn’t sure what to do in the face of the endless sweep of snow.

As it turns out, he sleeps a lot. It’s good for him, Seokjin promises, distinctly pleased as the last of his cough fades and his appetite returns and his wound loses some of its yellowy puffiness. He needs the rest, apparently. Jimin itches a little, not doing more—in the south, winter was a lean time, a time of scraping together what he could on his own, of keeping his head down avoiding the packhouse and the attention of his packmates as much as possible—but Hoseok assures him that they’re alright, that he doesn’t need to do anything, that Seokjin and Jungkook returned from town with what they needed. So he sleeps, and he heals, and sometimes he lets them coax him into whatever they’re doing. Games, mostly—card games, table games, games of words and wit, and quite a few that involve smacking each other—but also stories, and quiet hours reading. Jungkook and Taehyung draw, he discovers, and sometimes they dance, and sometimes Namjoon sits at Jimin’s side and talks quietly about what it means to be a pack, for them, hodgepodge and strange and brimming with love.

Through it all, the wind howls and the snow piles up, but inside the den is warm and safe and full of love and laughter.

Jimin wonders, sometimes, if maybe he hasn’t actually made it out of the mountains. If maybe he’s still down at the stream, out of food and medicine, and this is all the illusory kindness of his fading mind. But then he’ll watch Yoongi idly scent Taehyung, or Namjoon in his wolfskin flop over Hoseok’s lap while the alpha laughs and grumbles in equal measure, or Jungkook sit almost close enough to touch and not say anything, only watch him with dark eyes, and Jimin knows—if this were some last, sweet dream, it wouldn’t ache so badly.

“You know,” says Yoongi on the morning of the third day of snow, watching him shrug his shirt off, “it wasn’t a problem before. You didn’t hurt anyone when we stitched you up.” He pauses, considering, and then tacks on, “Except Hob-ah put his back out a bit getting you out of the tub.”

Jimin shivers in the cool air and twists gently, feeling out his range of motion. When he glances down at his side, the wound is a pinkish stripe of new skin, stitches laddered over the new-forming scar. The inflammation has gone down significantly, and were it not for the lattice of black down his side, it could almost be mistaken for healed. His ribs don’t stand out so starkly either—nearly two weeks of food and rest have done more than he could have imagined.

“I think I have to be awake,” he says. Yoongi makes a noise, contemplative.

“How’s that work?”

If Jimin knew, he wouldn’t fear it so much. He shrugs and turns away to fold the shirt and lay it at the end of the bed, unsure of how to answer. Fortunately, he’s spared the trouble by Seokjin’s arrival.

“Right,” he announces, tray rattling in his hands as he navigates the doorway. “How is everyone feeling? Jimin-ah, you’re still sure you want to do it? Yoongi said you might prefer it if we knocked you out.”

“I don’t think ‘prefer’ is the word I used,” says Yoongi. Seokjin ignores him.

“As a trained healer I am always prepared to administer all sorts of concoctions and— Oh.”

Jimin straightens and turns around to find Seokjin staring quite blatantly at his bare chest. Jimin resists the urge to cross his arms. At this point, the pack has seen him naked as often as they’ve seen him clothed.

And his wolf is maybe just the slightest, tiniest bit pleased at Seokjin’s attention.

“I can take them out myself,” he says stiffly. “Yoongi-hyung said it would be simple.”

Seokjin keeps staring. Jimin hesitates and glances at Yoongi, then back at Seokjin. “Seokjin-ssi?”

“Those— You have tattoos?”

Oh. Right. Jimin swallows and twists his head, as though he’ll be able to see his own back. He catches only a flicker of dark ink out of the corner of his eye.

“I… Not exactly.” He winces. “They’re, um. Part of the curse.”

Seokjin takes a step forward, then hesitates again. His gaze flicks up to Jimin’s face, then back to his torso as though he could stare right through, so Jimin sighs and turns to let him get a better look. Yoongi, off to the side, raises his eyebrows. Jimin’s cheeks warm, and he looks away.

“Right,” Seokjin murmurs, almost to himself. “Okay.”

“Hyung?”

“No, yes. It’s nothing.” Jimin turns in time to see Seokjin glance at Yoongi, and the expression on his face doesn’t feel like nothing. Then he winks, broad and obvious, and says to Jimin, “I like a man with a little ink.”

Jimin’s face heats so quickly it’s a marvel he doesn’t combust.

“No you don’t,” says Yoongi, but he’s smiling now, a small and smothered thing right at the corner of his mouth.

“Untrue. I love it. You’d look good with a couple, Yoongi-yah.”

Yoongi grumbles and folds his arms, slinking back, though there’s a decided shift in his scent that suggests he might not be entirely opposed to Seokjin’s interest. Jimin clears his throat, still flushed.

“So, um. How does this work?”

“Right, yes.” Seokjin sets the tray down on a table. They’re back in Jungkook’s room—it gets the best morning light, and now that the storm has eased to light flurries, weak sunlight struggles through the cloud cover.

Also, Hoseok is a little squeamish, apparently, so they’ve relocated in deference to his delicate constitution.

“It’s quite simple,” says Seokjin. “Just a quick snip and a tug. Might feel a little odd, but shouldn’t hurt a bit. If the knot’s stuck, don’t force it, just give it a bit of a wiggle.” He gives Jimin another long look. “You’re sure about this?”

“I don’t think I’m supposed to leave them in there,” Jimin says. Seokjin shrugs.

“Generally not, no. Ah, your scalp though…”

Jimin reaches a hand up to touch at the scab behind his ear and the faint press of stitches hidden in the fuzz of his hairline. “That’s… I guess I can’t do that one too?”

Seokjin hesitates, mouth pursed. “You could try,” he allows slowly, “but I think you might open it up again.”

“Gloves?” offers Yoongi. “Is it skin contact that triggers it?”

Jimin opens his mouth and closes it again. “I think so? I don’t… I’m not sure.” It isn’t something he wants to test.

It’s a little strange for them to talk about it so openly. He’s used to whispers and sideways glances and censure, and that was before his curse’s final manifestation. Jimin’s strangeness has always been a thing to fear. The directness with which they discuss it—the curiosity, even—is sort of nice. At least he doesn’t have to be afraid alone.

“Well, one thing at a time,” Seokjin shrugs. “And then you can let us know what you’d prefer, but for now, start with the tweezers…”

Seokjin talks him through taking the stitches out, step by step. He’s right that it does feel odd, and also that it doesn’t hurt. When he’s done removing them—nearly forty all told, running from rib to hip—Seokjin gives him a paste to smear over the wound, and then he carefully wraps himself again and pulls his shirt back on, strangely tired. “Okay?” Seokjin checks, nostrils flaring. “No pain, discomfort?”

“No,” Jimin says. His side… It isn’t quite an ache and isn’t quite a sting. More like an awareness, skin tender and sensitive and prickling against the fresh poultice. He shivers. “Just tired.”

“Do you want to do the other one now, or would you rather be asleep?”

Jimin hesitates and glances at Yoongi, who is busy wiping down Seokjin’s small healer’s instruments. He glances up for a moment and, upon catching Jimin’s eye, quirks an eyebrow. Up to you, he seems to be saying.

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” he says carefully. Seokjin watches him.

“But?”

Jimin raises a hand to his hair, self-conscious of his bare neck, the bristle of where it’s been shaved down almost to skin. He doesn’t distrust them, not now, not after everything. He just…

“I’d rather be awake.”

Seokjin nods and beelines for the door, and immediately curses when he trips over the wolf lying on the other side.

“Kim Taehyung, by the moon above, I swear—”

“Is he okay?” That’s Jungkook, peering around the doorframe, and his face brightens as his eyes land on Jimin. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Jimin says. Taehyung, splayed out in front of the door in his wolfskin, tilts his head and whines. Seokjin sighs.

“Since you’re going to bother,” he says, “you can make yourself useful and go fetch my gloves. The ones in the medicine closet.”

Jungkook gives a quick nod and ducks back down the hall. On the floor, Taehyung whines again, a prodding, pointed sort of plea. Seokjin nudges him with a foot.

“What? You couldn’t wait an hour? He’s not going anywhere, you lump.” He glances back over his shoulder, and for all that his tone is annoyed, there’s a smile on his face and contentment in the air. “Are you, Jimin-ah?”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Jimin says, more honest than he means to. He swallows hard, and adds, “He can come in. If he wants.”

Immediately, Taehyung pushes himself to his feet and lopes into the room, tongue lolling. Yoongi makes a noise, low and amused, and digs his fingers into the ruff of Taehyung’s neck when he flops down next to the bed, ears tipped forward and scent all self-satisfaction.

“Impatient,” Yoongi mutters, and Jimin ducks his head to hide his smile.

When Jungkook returns, it’s with a pair of gloves and also Namjoon and Hoseok in tow, all three of them crowded in the doorway. Hoseok looks over the scene with sharp eyes—Jimin sitting cross-legged on the bed, Yoongi and Taehyung squeezed near the foot, Seokjin fiddling with the tray on the table. It’s more crowd than company, but Jimin doesn’t entirely mind.

“I can kick them out,” Seokjin tells him. “If you want.”

“No you can’t,” Jungkook protests. “It’s my room. You can kick them out.” 

Namjoon does a poor job of hiding a smile behind his hand and clears his throat. “Jimin-ah, whatever you prefer—”

“It’s fine,” Jimin says. He can’t pretend he doesn’t enjoy the sensation of pack all around, and even the embarrassment at wanting this so badly is a muffled, muted thing right now. “I don’t mind.”

Jungkook rewards him with a grin half the size of his face and goes to sit on the floor next to Taehyung, tugging at his ears and being a bother. Taehyung, for his part, lets out another self-satisfied snort and drops his head in Jungkook’s lap. Namjoon and Hoseok quietly squeeze into the room to linger near the door, half tilted into each other and looking every part their role as pack heads overseeing the chaos. Jimin clears his throat and turns so that Seokjin can better access the wound at the back of his head, watching out of the corner of his eye as he adjusts his tools on the tray, and then pulls on a pair of thin calfskin gloves. 

Jimin swallows, heart picking up. If something happens— If this goes wrong—

“Okay?” Seokjin asks him, low and serious, and Jimin recalls the swelling urge to reach out for him, to wear his scent. It’s not there now—Seokjin’s scent is muted in general, actually, and Jimin wonders if that’s for him, if he’s trying to keep from scaring him again—but the memory of it lingers. Jimin wraps his hands around his crossed ankles, knuckles white, holding on just in case he feels it again. That urge to touch.

“If I hurt you…”

“No one will blame you,” he says. Jungkook is saying something to Taehyung, which has made Hoseok laugh and Yoongi sigh, and near and quiet beneath it all is Seokjin. “But I think it’s going to be okay. Trust me?”

Jimin glances over his shoulder at him, and as he twists around he sees:

Yoongi watching him, gaze steady. Namjoon at the door where he always is, half on guard—not against him but for him, Jimin realizes with a lurch. Hoseok at the edge of it all, laughing and loud, eyes sharp and scent mellow. Taehyung’s teeth in Jungkook’s sleeve, yanking him around even as his ears flick, attentive. Jungkook grinning and complaining and eyes darting up to Jimin now and again, soft.

And Seokjin, face open, scent omega-sweet and soothing.

Jimin does. Jimin trusts him, trusts them, more than sense and far more than self. He swallows hard and nods once, eyes closed.

He doesn’t want to hurt them. He really, really doesn’t want to hurt them.

“Okay,” Seokjin says, and then there’s the gentlest, lightest touch of a hand at the back of his skull, tilting his head just so. Jimin freezes, waiting for the flash of heat, the pain, the scream, the smoke, but there’s nothing. The calfskin is soft, a little cool against his scalp. Seokjin’s fingers are precise as they maneuver him. Jimin’s heart goes shock-still and then takes up again in double time, pounding as though he’s run a race.

He breathes out, shaky, as Seokjin moves behind him. He’s one immense, exposed nerve, overwhelmed by the simple sensation of a hand through his short-cropped hair. Everyone is still talking; Yoongi says something rumbling and low and there’s more laughter, but Jimin can’t make sense of it over the white-noise blood rush in his ears. The world evaporates, shrinks down to a pair of gentle hands against his head. Even the tug of the stitches coming out is nothing compared to the weight of Seokjin’s touch.

And then it’s over. Seokjin ruffles his hair, drags a hand feather-light down the back of his neck in a way that makes Jimin shudder from sole to crown, and steps away. It takes Jimin a moment to realize he’s squeezed his eyes shut, chest heaving, fingers so tight around his ankles that his knuckles ache when he unlatches them. The noise in the room dips for a moment, conversation falling away, and he shakes himself, nearly cracking his neck as he twists around to check Seokjin over, to make sure he didn’t—

“I’m fine,” Seokjin says, peeling the gloves off, looking none the worse for wear. The remains of the stitches sit in a small bowl on his tray, innocuous. “And so are you. There’s no sign of infection. A few more weeks of rest and proper meals and you’ll be right as rain. Or snow, I suppose.”

Jimin wets his lips. “Can I shift?”

“Well I wouldn’t do it right here,” Seokjin says, waving a hand at the already-crowded room. “But yes. Just take it easy.”

Jimin touches the thin scab of the wound behind his ear and swallows. “Thank you.” His eyes land on Hoseok across the room and he doesn’t know how he’s going to pay them back for this. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever be able to express his gratitude.

Hoseok smiles at him, almost blinding. “Don’t mention it.”

The storm picks up again that afternoon, another smothering sweep of snow that keeps them packed indoors. Jimin dozes off and wakes to the scent of cooking food, and when he pads out of his borrowed bedroom he finds Namjoon and Taehyung sitting in the main room playing a card game that involves Taehyung grinning wildly and Namjoon looking half frustrated and half fond. The door on the far side of the room is open, and beyond Jimin catches a glimpse of a cozy den of a room—no, not just a den of a room, the den room, the heart of the packhouse, the pack’s nest—before Hoseok slips out and shuts the door behind him. He brightens when he sees Jimin.

“You’re up! How are you feeling?”

“Better.” Sleep clings to him, sticky, but his head feels clearer and so does his chest, lungs and heart and wolf all settled. “Is there anything I can help with?”

He doesn’t have much hope Hoseok will let him—they’ve been quite insistent about his rest—but Hoseok surprises him with a nod, tilting his head towards the kitchen. “I’m sure we can find something for you.”

“What, you’ll make him work but you won’t let us?”

“You can plate things later,” Hoseok tells Taehyung, and he shows Jimin into the kitchen.

It’s a big room, with a stove puffing away in a corner and a grand hearth taking up most of one wall, the other filled with a long wood-topped counter. The sink is a wide basin beneath a water pump, and cabinets climb the walls, except at the far end where a small door leads out to the side yard and the cellar. The entire room smells like spice and roasting meat, and Seokjin and Jungkook are both busy on opposite sides.

“Jimin-ah!” Seokjin, his sleeves pinned up to keep them out of the cookpot, grins. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Jimin says, lips twitching. “Can I help?”

Seokjin tilts an eyebrow. “Can you cook?”

“Enough to not starve.”

Seokjin gives him a look, brief and assessing, then hooks a finger towards Jungkook at the counter. “Help Ggukie with the vegetables.”

Jimin hesitates half a second—they’re going to give him a knife?—but when he glances back, Hoseok nods, smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, and Jungkook shuffles over to make room for him and passes him a knife.

“Hyung wants them long and thin,” he says, gesturing to a growing pile of sliced carrots and radishes and what must be the last of the autumn greens. “You’re feeling better?”

“Everyone keeps asking,” Jimin says with a huff of a laugh, and Jungkook scrunches his nose, rueful.

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s… nice,” he admits, ducking his head. He misses his longer hair—he could have hidden behind the fall of it, instead of flushing out where anyone can see. Jungkook grins next to him, wide and pleased, and then Seokjin calls him over and Jimin is left blessedly alone to slice vegetables in peace. 

He slips into the easy rhythm of it—the knife against the countertop; the slowly-growing pile to the side, food enough to feed a pack; the lively back-and-forth of Jungkook and Seokjin, who fill the room with their noisy affection. He’s only interrupted when Yoongi wanders into the kitchen looking even more sleep-mused than Jimin and picks a slice of carrot out of the pile to crunch on.

“Yah,” Jimin protests. “That’s for later!”

“Just checking,” says Yoongi, swaying a little as Jungkook slumps over his back, nose tucked into his collar for a brief scenting. Yoongi runs a hand through the beta’s hair absentmindedly. “They look good.”

“I know,” Jimin huffs, turning back to the counter and ignoring the sharp flash of want sliced between his ribs. “I can cook, Yoongi-ssi.”

Out of the corner of his eye he catches Yoongi’s hand reaching again, and without thinking, Jimin taps his knuckles with the flat of the knife the way his father would when he was a young and bothersome pup getting underfoot in the kitchen, sneaking a taste before dinner. This is his job, and he doesn’t care how senior the other alpha is;  Yoongi can go bother someone else.

In his irritation, it takes him a moment to realize what he’s done—that he’s hit a member of their pack.

He drops the knife and steps back, stumbling over his feet. Adrenaline sluices through him, heart pounding, scent souring in a wave of dread so thick and strong that even from all the way across the kitchen Seokjin goes, “What, what happened?”

But Yoongi is only grinning, wide enough that the pink of his gums show. “And handle a knife too, clearly,” he says, looking almost… proud? Over his shoulder, Jungkook stares at him with dark eyes, and across the room Seokjin looks lost and worried, eyes flicking between all three of them.

“Everything alright?” he asks, careful. Yoongi hums and steps back, gently detangling Jungkook.

“It’s all good,” he says, and gives Jimin a look. “Yeah? All good.”

Jimin takes a breath. Nobody smells angry. Jungkook’s scent has gone mellow and calming, and there’s a sharp worry to Seokjin’s rosy summertime, and Yoongi’s scent hasn’t even changed at all, still cedar and sawdust. Nobody is angry; nobody is afraid. Even the tang of smoke in the air is thin and fading. Jimin wets his lips.

“Yeah,” he echoes, a little hoarse. “Okay.”

He picks up the knife again, but his hands are shaking too much to hold it steady. Jungkook’s brow furrows, and he reaches out a hand before he remembers himself and draws back. Jimin breathes through the flinch of want and the ache that comes after, and when it subsides he’s a little steadier. Yoongi gives him a nod and steps away towards the pot-bellied stove in the corner. Jungkook lingers, his expression all furrows.

“Hyung…”

“It’s okay.” 

And, strangely, it is. Seokjin purses his lips but turns back to the pot on the fire, and Yoongi prods at something in the stove, and the smell of smoke clears into the smell of dinner cooking. Nobody is hurt. 

“What do you need?” Jungkook asks. Jimin swallows hard past the lump in the throat, but when he smiles—small, brief, but a smile all the same—it doesn’t hurt.

“I could use a bowl.”

Jungkook grumbles to himself, but he turns to one of the cabinets at the far side of the room and comes back with a wide wooden bowl. He even does Jimin the service of sliding the growing pile of vegetables into the bowl for him, then grins wide and scampers back toward the hearth when Seokjin calls his name.

It’s a different sort of satisfaction, Jimin reflects later, partaking of a meal that he’s helped make. It feels like giving back—not enough, not nearly enough for their kindness and their understanding and the easy way they’ve folded him into their den. But it’s a start.

By morning, the storm has cleared, and the sun shines blinding across the flat stretch of white gleaming as far as the eye can see. Jimin rises late and sluggish to an uncommonly quiet house, and discovers the source of the silence when he pads into the common room and finds the door thrown open and the pack in the yard, half in their wolfskins and the other half bundled in wool and furs. As he watches, Jungkook goes barreling through the unbroken crust of fresh snow, then shakes himself all over Seokjin, who squawks and tumbles back onto the porch. Only Yoongi lingers in the doorway, feet tucked under him and blanket around his shoulders. He looks up when Jimin pads into the room.

“Hungry? There’s breakfast in the kitchen.”

Jimin hesitates. He is, but more than food he wants…

Out in the yard, Taehyung lunges at Hoseok, lean and russet in his wolfskin, who turns and gives chase, kicking snow up in his wake as they race loops between the house and the treeline. Seokjin shakes himself off and tugs his coat loose, and between one breath and another he’s in his wolfskin, tacking Jungkook into a drift. Namjoon lounges on the porch watching it all with an air of dignified humor, ears coked back towards Jimin as he approaches. He doesn’t bother getting up.

“It’s okay, right? If I shift?”

Yoongi blinks up at him, slow. “Yeah. If you want.” He stares a second longer, then turns back to his pack in the yard, and Jimin rolls his shoulders and shrugs out of his borrowed clothes.

He takes it slow. Or he tries to, anyway; but his body remembers weeks of four legs, remembers muzzle and tail, remembers the long run through the mountains, and the time he’s spent cooped up in his human skin is suddenly stifling. He yelps as the change sweeps over him, and then he’s kicking away the pants tangled around one ankle and taking in the newness of the pack house in his wolfskin—scents sharper, sounds clearer, years of joy and hope and love pressed into the wood and the air itself. And oh, the air, the fresh, snow-cold chill drifting through the open doorway, beckoning him— And the wintergreen forest beyond, with its hidden game and secret trails and ice-fed brooks, with its markers of territory to be patrolled and protected, with the space to run—

He’s out the door before he realizes he’s moving, limbs coiling and stretching beneath him as he leaps from the porch and clears the stairs to land sure-footed in the snow. He gives into the urge to roll over in it, twisting around and around again, nosing into a drift and tossing his head to watch powder patter down around him. He rolls over again and shakes himself all over, damp and cold and alive, so gleeful with it that it takes him a moment to realize that the games in the yard have stopped. That they’re all looking at him. 

Jimin pushes himself to his feet and sneezes. Jungkook, half buried under Seokjin as the elder bites his ear, blinks at him. Hoseok lingers near the tree line, narrow and sharp and poised like a knocked arrow. On the porch, Namjoon has risen to sit, ears forward, and Yoongi is on his feet in the doorway, still bundled in his blanket. 

Taehyung, closest to him, takes a step forward. And then another.

Jimin watches him approach, wary but not afraid. His scent is smooth, rich, sweet around the edges, and every line of his body is open and welcoming. Playful. So Jimin stands and watches and feels the yard, the whole clearing, hold its breath as Taehyung comes to a stop in front of him, head cocked. He takes a step sideways, muzzle dipping, and then darts forward and nudges his nose against Jimin’s shoulder.

Jimin jumps back, ears flat and teeth bared, panic cresting in his chest. But Taehyung stands there, unharmed. Out of the corner of his eye, Jimin sees Hoseok move, circling slowly, but he can’t take his eyes off Taehyung as the wolf takes a step forward again, and then another, and slowly touches his muzzle to Jimin’s shoulder. 

There’s a weight. A weight and a warmth, but not searing, not burning, not bad; it lasts forever and a heartbeat, and Jimin forgets how to breathe, how to think. Taehyung is touching him.

Then Taehyung jumps back again, chin dipped, tail up and teasing. Jimin takes a step forward through the crunching snow, heart pounding, everything cold-clear and crystalline, and carefully, slowly— He nudges against Taehyung’s shoulder.

Nothing happens. Nothing except that Taehyung lets him press against him for a heartbeat, for five, and then he wriggles back and dances out of reach, crouched and ready, and Jimin lunges for him. They go down in a spray of snow, twisting over and over one another in a tumble of paws and yipping laughter, and Jimin ends up slouched over Taehyung, who happily licks at his ears. For one single, golden, glorious moment Jimin basks in it—the touch, the warmth, the unthinking care—and then Jungkook barrels at him and knocks him ass-first into the snow, nipping at his tail before leaping away with a wide, lolling grin, and Jimin goes racing after him instead, and then Seokjin, and then lets Hoseok knock him over and give him a thorough cleaning, leaving him pleased and a little hazy with it, and then he picks himself up and drops down to lie next to Namjoon and Yoongi on the porch, watching Seokjin and Jungkook and Taehyung play some sort of three-way tag where all of them appear to be it at once. It’s the best morning of his life.

His wolfskin feels different, too—or different than what little he has to compare it to, the hunting he did in his teens and the afternoons with his parents before his curse manifested. He feels swifter, sharper—his hearing clearer, his sense of smell more sensitive, attuned to the way the pack moves, to the changes in the weather and the woods. He’s wide awake, strong and steady. He wants to run, to hunt, to dive into the forest and come back with some proof that he can look out for this pack. He wants to stand between the wilds and their den and dare the world to try to get past him.

He hadn’t realized it would feel like this. He hadn’t known that it could.

In the end, Hoseok nudges him back inside as the sun reaches its zenith, and he shakes off with everyone else and accepts the blankets that Hoseok, long-since tired of their roughhousing, hands out. Jimin grins, flushed and triumphant, and doesn’t even mind when Seokjin says, reproachful, “I said to take it easy.”

“Sorry, hyung,” he says, still grinning, and Seokjin huffs and waves him off to dress and pretends that his scent hasn’t gone sweet and pleased. Later that afternoon, when Taehyung reaches out to sling an arm over his shoulder and remembers at the last second not to, the distance barely aches at all.

Chapter Text

They grow bolder as the days pass, eager in their wolfskins. Jimin takes to long afternoon naps by the hearth—a habit Seokjin soundly approves of, citing rest and healing—and half the time he wakes with at least one of them curled against him, close enough to feel the rise and fall of their breathing. There are games in the yard, complicated sorts of tag, and races through the woods, and lazy afternoons lounging in inconstant sunlight between the off-again on-again snowfall. Hoseok even takes him to hunt one morning, nosing winter-fat rabbits out of shallow burrows and running them down for dinner, and he licks Jimin across the muzzle when he brings back his first kill, a pride so thick that even when they shifts into their human skins, Jimin can’t stop glowing with the satisfaction of feeding them.

And Jimin loves it, he does. But the boldness slowly bleeds into everything else—a friendly hand clapped against his clothed shoulder, a playful muzzle pressed against his covered knee, a teasing elbow nudged into his side over layers of shirt and jacket—and he worries. They’re swift, glancing moments, always there and gone before Jimin can flinch, but the what-ifs keep him up at night. What if they miscalculate, what if he forgets himself, what if there’s an accident, what if what if what if. They run circles around his head until he’s dizzy.

It goes on until Hoseok grabs his arm one afternoon, grip firm around his bicep, heavy over the shirt he’s borrowed from… Honestly, he doesn’t even remember. Jimin, on his way out the door to help Taehyung clear the snow between the back door and the workshop, startles so badly he nearly shifts right there in the kitchen.

“Sorry,” Hoseok says, letting go before Jimin can yank himself backwards and trip into the lit stove. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s fine,” says Jimin, breath and fear tangled in his throat. He tugs his shirt straight, heart rabbiting in his chest. If he hadn’t been paying attention, if his sleeve had been rolled up…

Hoseok hesitates, and Jimin knows a moment before he speaks that he’s been thinking about it too. “If you want us to stop—”

“No,” Jimin blurts before Hoseok can finish, and he immediately winces at how desperate it sounds. “I mean— I just—” He swallows hard and shakes his hands out, sleeves falling over his fingers. It’s Taehyung’s shirt, then, or maybe Namjoon’s. “You shouldn’t.”

He wants it, and they shouldn’t. He wants it, therefore they shouldn’t. His desire is what it has always been: dangerous, foolish, ill-conceived and unwanted. It embarrasses him. He should be stronger, steadier, than this.

But they make it easy. They make him want.

Hoseok watches him for a moment, then places a slow, intentional hand on Jimin’s covered shoulder. Jimin’s breath catches.

“Let me worry about that,” Hoseok says, like this is something he can handle as easily as a pack dispute. Jimin marvels at his assurance, and at the absurdity. He’s a dozen times more dangerous than any passing disagreement. Sometimes he worries that they don’t understand—or worse, that they don’t believe him. He fears the small measure of grace he’s been granted in his wolfskin will make them thoughtless, or brave, or doubtful, and he can’t bear the thought of growing too comfortable, of forgetting the past and repeating it. He doesn’t want to ruin this home the way he ruined the last one.

“I don’t think I can stop,” Jimin says, gently tugging himself out of Hoseok’s grip. Hoseok lets him go with a faint quirk of a smile. Jimin’s eyes catch on his bare, slim wrist as he pulls back, and a familiar flash of wanting flares in him—but scenting is impossible. Even if he weren’t a danger, he’s not pack. It would be an unconscionable breach of decorum. It’s only— He hasn’t been scented in so long.

Hoseok’s expression drops, shifting with concern. “Jimin-ah?”

“Nothing,” he says, stuttering like a tongue-tied pup, and he makes a hasty retreat outdoors, where Taehyung grins and teases him for his blush and the heaviness of his scent. Jimin doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he’s only embarrassed about wanting what isn’t his to have, so he keeps his head down and lets Taehyung show him how to shovel the snow so it doesn’t crumble back into the path between the house and Yoongi’s workshop.

It’s shortly after that, though, that Namjoon shows up in his room with a pair of thin gloves. So Jimin can decide for himself, he says, hiding a smile badly. When Jimin brings them up to his cheek to feel the smooth, soft leather, they smell like the pack. 

He feels a little stupid, walking around indoors with them on, but the first time he unthinkingly shoves Taehyung when he cheats at cards, the grin he gets is worth any amount of awkwardness.

Still, the worry lingers. He’s half sure that one day one of them will brush up against him, wolfskin to wolfskin, and whatever grace he’s been granted will vanish, and only the fire and the loneliness will be left. But it doesn’t happen, and it keeps not happening, and they keep reaching for him, and he’s weak. He wants to reach back.

In the end, Seokjin does him one better than a bit of string for his necklace.

“Hobi made it,” he announces as he sets a strong, slim loop of leather cord at Jimin’s elbow. Across the room, Namjoon sits with his nose buried in a book and Taehyung and Hoseok play a card game while Jungkook, in his wolfskin, naps in front of the fire. Hoseok’s lounging on him, enjoying the rest after a morning patrolling the boundary line. Yoongi’s been in his workshop since they got back, which is apparently normal for him, though it has Jimin looking around periodically, anxious about one of them missing. Taehyung keeps laughing at him for that, but he can’t help it. It just… It puts him on edge. He prefers it when they’re all where he can see them.

“He didn’t have to,” Jimin tells Seokjin, running his fingers over the cord, grateful for the distraction. The braid is impressively intricate for such a thin coil, and it’s easily long enough that he won’t have to worry about shifting and snapping it or choking himself. It’s a lovely gift.

“Don’t be silly,” Seokjin says. Jimin wants to argue that he isn’t being silly about it; it means something that Hoseok took the time to make anything for him when he has so many other things to care about. But the words stick in his throat. He busies himself with unpicking the knot of his mother’s necklace instead, slipping the charm off the fraying string. The blue glass butterfly weighs nothing in his palm, catching the fading afternoon light. He runs a finger along the curve of one wing before he slides it onto the fresh cord, knotting the ends tightly. When he pulls it on, the butterfly rests low beneath his sternum.

“It’s very lovely,” Seokjin says. Jimin cups a hand around it, strangely shy, and slips it under his borrowed shirt.

Across the room, Jungkook heaves himself up—Hoseok makes an undignified squawk of protest as he loses his backrest and his cards—and pads over to set his big, heavy head on Jimin’s knee. Jimin almost pets between his ears before he remembers he isn’t wearing his gloves. For half a heartbeat, he could swear he feels the ink down his back, like something under his skin, and he suppresses a shudder.

“What’s this,” says Seokjin fondly, oblivious. “Did you come to butt in?” He has no hesitation reaching out and scratching behind one twitching ear. Jungkook snorts and remains fixedly in place.

Seokjin sighs and leans back in his seat, staring at both of them with a pursed, unsubtle smile. “You know, if there’s anything else—”

“You’ve done more than enough,” Jimin interjects, and he means it. They’ve given him food, clothing, medicine, shelter. Their friendship. Their trust. He’s afraid of accepting anything else from them. He might start thinking it means more than it does. “Thank you.”

“Aish,” says Seokjin in a tone Jimin doesn’t recognize. But then he says “You’re welcome,” heady with the smell of summer roses. A minute later, Yoongi stomps in the door, shaking snow from his boots and brushing it out of his hair, and pauses, nose wrinkling.

“Yah,” he says. “It stinks in here. What the hell, hyung.”

Hoseok breaks into crackles of laughter, and Namjoon puts his book down long enough to throw a pointed look across the room, and even in the midst of Seokjin’s loud rebuttal, Jimin can’t help but be pleased that everyone is here again. If his own scent softens with satisfaction, at least the rainsweet roundness matches well with Seokjin’s summer garden. 

It’s over dinner that evening, midway through a conversation about making another trip into town now that the snow has eased, that Seokjin says, “Jimin should come.”

The conversation fades, even on the far side of the table where Taehyung and Jungkook are playing some kind of game that involves dueling with chopsticks as they pick food out of each other’s bowls. Six sets of eyes find Seokjin, who shrugs and tacks on, “If he wants.”

“Are you sure?” Taehyung’s eyes are round, game forgotten. “It hasn’t been that long.” Next to him, Jungkook frowns.

“Isn’t it too soon? Hyung’s still healing—”

“He’ll be fine,” Seokjin says. He seems to be talking mostly to Hoseok, eyes sharp. “The weather’s settled. We can show him around. Help him pick some things up. Get a lay of the land.”

“There’s still plenty of time for—” starts Namjoon, but Hoseok interrupts him with a hum, contemplative.

“What do you think, Yoongi-hyung?”

“Sure,” says Yoongi. “Not gonna find a better time.”

After a moment, Hoseok nods. “Alright,” he says, and then he turns to Jimin. “If you want, Jimin-ah.”

Jimin sets his chopsticks down, appetite fading as they turn to him. Their expressions range from curious to wary, except for the faces he can’t read at all. Dinner sits heavy in his stomach.

It’s not that surprising, not really. He has to leave eventually. Hell, he’d wanted to leave—he’d all but begged them to let him go. This isn’t his home and it isn’t his pack, because he hasn’t got a home or a pack, and he can’t have this one just because he likes them. This was always only temporary.

“Hyung,” Jungkook says into the silence. He looks uncertain. “It’s a long run. If you’re not up for it…”

But Jimin is. If the pack alpha says it’s so, it’s so.

“It’s fine,” he says. His voice is distant to his own ears, but at least it’s steady. “I’ll come.”

Seokjin grins at him, oblivious to the sinking of Jimin’s stomach. “Wonderful. We’ll leave first thing. Jungkookie, you still want to come?”

“Of course,” Jungkook says, but his eyes don’t leave Jimin. “Yeah, hyung.”

Yoongi snorts. “Don’t sound so enthusiastic.”

Jungkook jerks his head away to frown at Yoongi. “I do!”

“Don’t worry, hyung,” says Taehyung. There’s a kind of mischief on his face now. “Jungkookie just wants to be there to help with— Yah!”

Jungkook nabs the last bite off Taehyung’s plate and scowls with the meat between his teeth, which prompts a plaintive comment from Namjoon about manners while Taehyung complains about his lost dinner, and Jimin sinks in on himself, lost in the chaos.

It will be good, he tells himself. He can get a sense of what comes after the snow clears and he leaves them. But the thought of it—new faces, new wolves, all those northern, packless strangers—sours the meal. When Namjoon and Taehyung rise to clear the table, Jimin makes his excuses and retreats to his borrowed bedroom—borrowed, he reminds himself, only ever borrowed—for a night of fitful sleep filled with dreams of the pack disappearing into smoke as soon as he lifts a hand to reach for them.

He’s gritty-eyed and bleary when he slinks into the main room early the next morning. Hoseok says it’s a two day run into town, three in the winter when sunrise comes late and sunset early. He and Seokjin are already awake and shifted, empty bags settled between their shoulder blades. Yoongi passes Jimin a steaming serving of rice porridge, and he’s scraping up the last of it when Jungkook stumbles out of the pack’s innermost den room trailed by Namjoon and Taehyung, who look no more awake then he does. He doesn’t even bother with breakfast, just trips over his feet and lands in his wolfskin, wriggling out of his shirt and nosing at Hoseok in a sleepy sort of greeting.

That’s how it’ll be when he’s gone, Jimin realizes with a lurch. All of them comfortable, coming in and out of their nest, sleepy and familiar. It’s stupid to feel like he’s losing something there. None of it was his to begin with.

“Ready?” Yoongi asks. Jimin lets him take the bowl and retreats to the borrowed bedroom to collect his own bag—packed now with a change of clothes for the day they’ll spend in town before the run back, assuming the weather holds—and shifts. He stretches and scents the air, pausing when he catches a sharp, sour edge of tension.

Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe they’re just nervous about the weather, the season, the run to town. Honestly, Jimin is a little nervous about that himself, especially since Hoseok insists on coming with. It doesn’t matter how many times Namjoon explains that land claims up north aren’t the same as they are in the south, and the only danger here is the odd feral rogue and—Namjoon assures him, eyes laughing—sick southern alphas stumbling across the boundary line. Jimin worries all the same. Yoongi will keep them safe, and Namjoon’s a good leader, but splitting the pack in the middle of winter is…

It puts his wolf on edge, is all. He prefers it when they’re safe and nearby, where he can look out for them. And he’s pretty sure the others feel the same, so maybe that has them all stinking of worry and uncertainty. Maybe it has nothing to do with him at all.

He wishes it were easier to believe that.

By the time he returns to the main room, only Hoseok is left, waiting patiently. His eyes are bright, and his head tilts in invitation when Jimin hesitates. Coming?

Outside, the sky slowly goes grey with the coming dawn. The winter forest rises stark and still, its depths beckoning. The pack mills in the clearing, all in their wolfskins—even Yoongi perches tawny and tired at the edge of the porch, watching them with his usual air of fond patience. He rises when Jimin steps out, muzzle resting between the dip of his shoulders in a lazy greeting. Taehyung says he’s got a bit of coloring there, his silver coat gone grey where the moon markings would be. Jimin can’t see his own back well enough to judge, but he feels the flush of warmth beneath his skin when Yoongi touches him, something stirring slow and stiff, and he shies away first, padding down the steps to the winter-hard ground. Snow sticks in patches around the edge of the house, but the bulk of it has melted down to ice and muddy earth, and the sky is clear—as good a time as any for a run.

Taehyung bounds up to him, sweet and unselfconscious in his greeting, rubbing himself happily along Jimin’s side. Namjoon nudges in after, which is something of a surprise—he takes affection when it comes his way, but Jimin finds he rarely instigates. It’s even stranger when Seokjin steps up to brush against his cheek, and then Jungkook nearly smothers him with his early-morning hello—still more asleep than awake—and Hoseok is last to greet him, licking over his muzzle and nudging his side.

For a moment, Jimin stands in the middle of the yard, surrounded by this strange, kind northern pack, equal parts touched and uncertain. The air is thick with the scent of winter and woodland and them, the comfortable mix of pack—and Jimin too, ozone and musk, first night-soft rainfall in a dry summer garden. 

But it’s winter now, and in the pale pre-dawn light, summer feels an impossibly long way away. He looks over them, ready to leave, and it feels like something has shifted. Their farewell feels like certainty. The feeling catches under his breastbone, a piercing hook in his chest, and he can't tell if it’s holding him fast or cutting him free.

It isn’t the same as leaving Three Rivers. He isn’t alone, isn’t cast out. He has shamed no one here, and nothing burns in his wake. 

It feels no better for the difference. When Hoseok leads them into the forest, he doesn’t let himself look back. When the howl goes up in their wake, he doesn’t join it.

If nothing else, there’s this: it’s good to run again.

Hoseok starts them slow, but as they fall into the rhythm of the trip, Jimin finds himself pushing ahead. It’s two and a half days to the town, and for the first time in months, Jimin moves freely. His blood sings with the running, and he feels, for once, perfectly fit inside himself. Even sleeping rough, squeezed in the lee of a boulder with Jungkook’s warm weight on one side and Hoseok tucked up against the other, is easy. By the time they finally reach the outer edges of town and stop to shift again, he feels fresh enough to run the whole way back. It’s nothing like his desperate, exhausted struggle through the mountains.

He says as much, off-handed as they shiver in the snow, donning robes and coats, and for a moment, Hoseok’s spice-sweet scent goes entirely sharp, all displeased bitterness. Jimin leaves off fumbling with the laces of Yoongi’s borrowed coat to stare at him, catching the tail end of a look between him and Seokjin. It’s gone almost as soon as Jimin notices it.

“It’s because you didn’t have my loving and tender care,” Seokjin says breezily. But he also touches his wrist to the inside of Hoseok’s, a quick scenting to soften the bitterness. Hoseok huffs and waves him off and drapes his own scarf around Jimin’s neck.

“Don’t push yourself,” he says over Jimin’s protests, looping the offending article around Jimin’s neck. It smells like him, spice-sweet and comforting. “We just got you healthy. Can’t have you getting sick again.”

“I’m really fine,” says Jimin, but Hoseok is already moving towards the road. Jimin huffs and touches the scarf—it is warm, and the wind is more than a little biting—and follows. 

Then the town comes into view, and all of Jimin’s arguments and protests fade.

When he was a pup—so long ago that the memories have faded to the impression of light and the hazy imprint of his parents—his mother would tell him stories. They were marvelous stories, tales of heroes and grand adventures, and he’d once harbored a dream of going on his own adventures, of seeing the magical lands his mother told him about. Then he’d grown and learned that sometimes stories were only stories, and there were no magical lands or grand adventures or heroes.

This freezing, northern, packless town is straight out of his mother’s stories.

Sloping, snow-covered rooftops stand stark against the clear winter sky. Pale-washed stone walls inset with looping patterns of blue-painted bricks line the paved road, and icicles drip from the eaves, catching the slantwise afternoon sunlight. Lanterns in intricate casings hang every dozen feet, and wooden doors stained every shade of brown and gold stand open wide beneath each soaring archway. Even the empty, snow-filled planters lining the road are starkly lovely, straight-trunked and silver-boughed saplings stretching like paintbrushes towards the sky. The air smells of cookfires and the promise of fresh snowfall, and everywhere he looks, there are wolves.

Shopping, talking, laughing, arguing, haggling, hawking, going about their lives. There are alphas and omegas and betas, all dressed in furs and brightly dyed coats. Pups dash after each other, ducking between legs and behind market stalls, and men and women call loudly over the rumble of the crowd, and they’re all… normal. They’re normal. Not one of them is feral or menacing or mad. 

Jimin stops in the middle of the street, and only Jungkook running into him gets him moving again.

“Not what you expected?” asks the beta, close enough that Jimin can catch his clean, fresh scent over the overwhelming smell of the town. Jimin shakes his head, watching a pup tug on her father’s sleeve until he hoists her up with a laugh. He swallows hard around the lump in his throat.

Jungkook offers him a slight, sweet smile and shepherds him to the side of the road. They congregate in the lee of one of the pale stone walls, out of the wind and the bustle. “They’re… they’re all packless?”

“There are a few small bonded packs, like ours,” Hoseok says, adjusting the collar of his coat and shifting out of the way of an alpha balancing a basket on her head. “They live a little outside of town. But mostly, yeah.”

“I… How are they all so…” Jimin trails off. Everything he’s ever heard about packless wolves, about the northern lands, has promised savagery and loneliness and death. Not winter-bright villages full of cooking food and colorful wares and life. It feels like walking through a dream. It feels like he should be able to pinch himself and wake up, but all he gets when he tries it is a stinging arm.

“We’re social creatures, sure,” shrugs Hoseok. “But southern packs are one way to satisfy that. It’s not the only way.”

“Just because it’s what they know doesn’t mean they know best,” Seokjin adds, something hard in his voice.

Jungkook shuffles closer to Jimin. His nose is pink with the cold. “It’s okay, right? That it’s different here?”

“Yeah.” Different barely covers it, but… “Yeah, it’s— It’s not bad different.”

“Good,” says Jungkook. “Do you want a tour?”

“We do have things to do here, you know,” says Seokjin, eyeing the sky and the market crowd. Hoseok huffs and bumps into him.

“Like give Jiminie a tour,” he grins. “If you want?”

Jimin looks between them and out at the town, the market, the liveliness. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay.”

“Okay,” Hoseok echoes, and his smile is nearly as bright as the sun off the snowy eaves. He turns to Seokjin. “C’mon, hyung. We can multitask.”

Seokjin eyes him for a moment, then sighs with his whole body, shoulders hitching high and dropping again.

“Fine,” he says. “Food first, though. I’m starved.”

Which is how Jimin ends up wandering through the market, nibbling on a fried cake stuffed with sweet roasted seeds and trailing after the others as they take care of their shopping, trying to look at a hundred things at once. It’s so much bigger than Three Rivers, and brighter—and everyone is so friendly, offering samples of grilled meats, fresh rolls, hot cider and spiced wine and steaming teas to ward off the winter chill. If it weren’t for the constant low prickle of worry that he’ll accidentally brush against someone, Jimin wouldn’t even mind the crowd.

He keeps checking and double checking his gloves. Just to be safe.

Jungkook tells him everything as they go, pointing out the merchants they like and the ones they don’t, who has the best deals and the best snacks and the best quality goods. Hoseok keeps twisting around over his shoulder to check on them, or to laugh at Jimin’s slack-jawed awe, or maybe both—his smile stays stuck to his face. He seems intent on taking the scenic route through the market, which seems to be winding Seokjin up in turn.

“We do have actual business here, you know,” he mutters, half under his breath, and Hoseok grins and drapes himself over Seokjin’s shoulder and says that he wants a cider, does anyone else want cider?

“Hoseok-ah,” sighs Seokjin, but he also fishes out the purse and pays for four cups of stinging-hot cider.

Eventually they wind their way to the main square where the crowd is densest and loudest, the road underfoot all churned to slush. Jimin, well fed and full of fried food and a hundred new scents, hesitates.

“Are we going in there?”

The others stop next to him, eyeing the crowd. Hoseok’s nose wrinkles.

“It’s busy for a market day.”

“Probably ‘cause it finally stopped snowing,” says Jungkook.

“Hm.” Seokjin cranes his neck to look over a sea of heads, bag knocking against his hip. It’s only half full, but Jimin had caught a flash of Hoseok’s list, a page covered in Namjoon’s even scrawl, and he imagines they’ll all be laden down for the trip back. “Maybe we split up? You can go deal with the, you know, and Jiminie and I will—”

“Jungkook-ah!”

The call echoes across the street, loud over the clamor of the crowd. All of them turn to look as a lanky stranger rushes up to them, grinning. Jimin stiffens as the stranger slings a casual arm over Jungkook’s shoulder, swaying them back and forth in an overly-familiar greeting. Jungkook ducks his head with a grimace, but the stranger doesn’t seem to notice.

“Hi!” he grins, effusive. “I didn’t know you’d be back so soon! You said not til mid-season!” There’s an edge of accusation to his voice, and an edge of something eager in the wolf’s scent—alpha thick and sharp, a little piney—that puts Jimin’s wolf on edge. Jungkook’s softer scent completely disappears beneath it.

“Ah, yeah, we had some other stuff to pick up.” Jungkook looks from Seokjin to Hoseok to Jimin, eyes wide and a little pleading. Jimin’s back straightens.

The boy—he looks barely more than a pup, really, gangly and uncoordinated in spite of his heavy scent—carries on, blithely oblivious. “That’s great! Are you staying? There’s this new tea house that just opened. Maybe we could check it out? I hear it’s great, I—”

“We’re busy,” Jimin interjects. He has no idea what their plans are, but there’s no way they involve sending Jungkook off with some overeager yearling pup.

The boy finally seems to realize the rest of them are there too. He clears his throat a little, though he doesn’t actually let Jungkook go.

“Oh. Hi Hoseok-ssi, Seokjin-ssi. It’s good to see you.”

“Good to see you, Seongmin,” says Hoseok, clearly amused. Jungkook shoots him a dirty look while the pup isn’t looking.

“And, um, I don’t think we’ve met.” The pup holds out a hand, wrist turned up in greeting. “Choi Seongmin. Nice to meet you.”

Jimin frowns at his outstretched hand, and for the first time he’s glad he can’t touch anyone. He doesn’t particularly want to greet Choi Seongmin, especially not while the boy has an arm wrapped possessively around Jungkook’s shoulders.

Jungkook, on the other hand, perks up. “Oh, right! Seongmin-ssi, this is Park Jimin, he’s going to j— I mean, he’s staying with us. For the winter.”

“That’s nice,” says Seongmin, and he stands there for an awkward moment with his hand out before lowering his arm and turning back to Jungkook, his scent sweetening a little. “So, about that tea house…”

Jimin scowls. Jungkook has a pack, a good pack, a pack that loves him and looks out for him. He doesn’t need some gangly alpha pup trying to woo him, especially not when he clearly doesn’t want to go.

“Sorry, but Jimin-hyung’s right. We have plans.”

“Okay, well maybe I can come with you now? I can help you out!”

Someone rumbles, the slight edge of a warning growl, and it takes Jimin a heartbeat to realize it’s him.

“We’re okay, actually—” starts Jungkook, but Seongmin is already carrying on.

“Or if you’re hungry? There’s this new skewers stall on the other side of the square. You like skewers right? We could go and—”

The rumble in Jimin’s chest gets louder, and Seongmin takes a step back, hand sliding off Jungkook’s shoulders. Jungkook almost immediately relaxes.

“He said no,” Jimin says, and Seongmin raises his hands.

“Okay, right, sorry,” he says. “I just wanted to say hi.”

“You’ve said it.”

“Right, yeah. Uh. Jungkook, I’ll see you later?”

“Sure,” says Jungkook. “We’ll stop by next time we’re in town.” He shifts closer to the pack, and Jimin takes half a step forward to make sure it’s clear that Jungkook is with them , not this Seongmin kid. His scent is thick in the air, all ozone. Maybe Seongmin will get that message.

Seongmin swallows. “Cool. Uh, Hoseok-ssi, Seokjin-ssi. I hope you have a good stay.”

“Thanks, Seongmin-ah,” says Seokjin, and the alpha gives an awkward wave and ducks back across the street to the market stall he’s come from. Jimin watches him with half an eye, pleased when the older woman running the stand turns to frown at him with her hands on his hips.

Behind him, Hoseok clears their throat. “Jimin-ah,” he says. “You can stop glaring at him now. I think he got the message.”

“I think you scared him off for good,” Seokjin adds, and Jimin turns back to them to find them both failing to smother matching grins. Jungkook has gone completely pink.

“I didn’t realize packless wolves were so rude,” Jimin huffs, and Hoseok laughs.

“He’s just… friendly,” Jungkook says, head ducked. He won’t meet any of their eyes, and Jimin’s ire fades in the face of Jungkook’s discomfort. His scent has gone a little funny too, faint and suppressed and oh. Oh, he’s overstepped.

His stomach sinks. What was he thinking, challenging another wolf? He had no right to it; he has no more claim to Jungkook or his pack than that boy. Jungkook even said it—he’s just staying with them for the season. The only reason Jimin is here at all is so he can get a sense of the town and what comes next; he has no right to be so defensive over them.

Hoseok reaches out and claps his back. “Our protective Jiminie. Looking out for us, huh?”

“Sorry.” Jimin’s face burns. “I don’t— I didn’t mean to—” He shouldn’t have done that. He used to be so much better at keeping his head down, at letting things pass over him. It’s just, the way Jungkook had looked, the idea of someone interfering with their pack—

But he’s not part of their pack. He turns to Jungkook.

“I’m sorry, Jungkook-ssi. If you wanted—” He clears his throat, awkward. “Sorry. I can go apologize.”

“No, it’s okay.” Jungkook’s still pink. “I didn’t want to anyway. I don’t— I mean, I didn’t mind. Thank you, hyung.”

“Oh, Jungkookie didn’t mind ,” drawls Seokjin, and Jungkook promptly steps on his foot. “You—!”

“Okay, okay,” Hoseok interrupts, waving them apart. “How about Jungkook and I finish with the list, and you can take care of that other thing.” He gives Seokjin a look, interrupting what is clearly about to be a bit of a tussle. Both Seokjin and Jungkook deflate. Seokjin takes a moment to check the position of the sun—beginning to sink now as the afternoon wears on—and nods.

“We’ll meet you back at the inn?”

“Alright.” Hoseok hesitates. “Hyung…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Seokjin says. Jimin glances between them and then at Jungkook, who shrugs. Apparently he doesn’t know what that’s about either. “Jimin-ah?”

Jimin turns back to Seokjin. “Hyung?”

“You’re with me.”

“Don’t stay out too late,” says Hoseok.

“I’ll have him home by dinner.”

Jimin tucks his nose into the scarf as Seokjin cackles next to him, overly pleased at his own joke, then hooks an elbow through Jimin’s and tugs him off in a new direction. Jimin lets himself be dragged along for a bit, still stewing in the embarrassment of his own overprotectiveness. It’s not until they turn down a quiet street away from the churn of the market, noise of the crowd fading behind them, that he realizes they aren’t doing more shopping.

“Where are we going?”

“To see an old friend,” says Seokjin. “Jungkookie told you I’m from a southern pack?”

“Yeah,” says Jimin, startled. “He, um. He said you don’t talk about it.”

“I usually don’t.” Seokjin sounds rueful. “It… wasn’t a good fit for me.”

Jimin nods. He’s started to realize maybe Three Rivers wasn’t a good fit for him either. “Is it okay if I ask why you left?”

Jimin doesn’t mean to pry, not if Seokjin doesn’t want to talk. It’s just that Jimin can’t imagine anyone willingly leaving a pack. He’d have done anything to stay with Three Rivers, even miserable, even alone. Seokjin must be a hundred times braver than him to make the choice to leave.

Seokjin favors him with a pinch of a smile. “It’s really not that exciting.” His scent sours a little as he says it, an edge of rot. He turns down another street, narrow and quiet, blue shadows gathered in the corners. It’s a bit of a squeeze to walk two abreast, but Jimin doesn’t unhook his arm from Seokjin’s and Seokjin doesn’t shake him off. “I was studying to be a healer. When I presented, the pack elders thought it would be better if I were mated instead. They felt I’d be less, ah, distracting. Less trouble.” His voice twists, something bitter bubbling up, and he pauses for a moment before carrying on, light again. “Well, I wasn’t interested in the match they picked. I wasn’t interested in mating at all, really. I wanted to finish my apprenticeship. But it wasn’t the sort of pack where an omega had a say in that sort of thing. So.” He shrugs. “I left.”

“Oh.” Jimin’s heard stories, but never… For all the misery of Three Rivers, he’d never known anyone forced into a mating bond. “Hyung, I’m sorry.”

Seokjin waves him off. “It was a long time ago. I’m better for it.”

“For the way they treated you?”

“For having a reason to leave.” Seokjin flashes him a grin, and his scent sweetens. “Like I said. Sometimes our wolves know better than we do.”

Jimin swallows hard. “Right.”

“I’m not looking for pity,” Seokjin says gently. Jimin wants to argue that pity is the last thing he has for Seokjin—pride, maybe, and a wild surge of protectiveness, but not pity. “I’m telling you because there’s someone I want you to meet. A pack wolf. She has a mark like yours.”

Jimin stops walking. He stops right there in the middle of the street, frozen as the snow on the rooftops. Seokjin carries on half a dozen steps before he realizes Jimin isn’t coming with him, then turns with a frown.

“Jimin-ah?”

Jimin wets his lips. “She— What?”

“When I saw your tattoos, I thought they looked familiar. It took me a while to remember why, but I thought it might help to talk to her.”

“How do you know?”

“I usually find talking helps with most things.”

“No, no, the— the marks. How do you know?”

Seokjin hesitates. “I don’t. Not for sure. But she’s a healer. She helped me when I got here, before I met the pack. I think you should talk to her.” He stares at Jimin, uncharacteristically serious. “I think it could help.”

Jimin stares at him, feeling like he’s underwater. A mark like yours. Hope and despair fill him in equal measure. If someone else shares his curse— It’s horrible to wish that on anyone, especially a healer he’s never met, especially someone Seokjin cares for, but if it’s true, if he’s not alone—

“I don’t understand.”

“Well you aren’t going to understand any better just standing there,” Seokjin says, and Jimin slowly starts moving again.

“That’s why you wanted me to come to town? To see a— a healer?” He thinks of Healer Lee, well-meaning, slipping him slivers of kindness where he could. What happened to him? Jimin hopes he wasn’t punished for helping him run.

Seokjin shrugs. “Partly. I meant it about letting you get a lay of the land too. And as much as we do love seeing you in our clothes, we thought you might eventually want to wear something that fits.” Seokjin comes to a stop in front of an open gate that looks exactly like every other on the street, and Jimin nearly walks into him, face hot. “Ah, here we are!”

Seokjin strides smartly over the lintel and steps up onto a narrow porch to rap twice on the doorframe. Jimin stumbles after him and wonders if he should admit he really doesn’t mind borrowing their clothes.

“Haewon-seonsaengnim! It’s your favorite student!”

Jimin’s still blushing when the door slides open and a tiny, ancient, grey-haired beta squints up at them.

“You’re my only student,” she says to Seokjin. She’s easily thrice Jimin’s age and a handspan shorter than him, wearing narrow spectacles on a fine silver chain and a housecoat so long it drags on the floor. “Did you come to beg for more supplies? I told you to be smart about using them, Jin-ah, it takes time to restock. Ointments don’t grow on trees.”

“Some do,” Seokjin returns, and she scoffs. “But no, no, it’s not that. I came to introduce a friend. Jimin-ah, this is Kim Haewon. Seonsaengnim, this is Park Jimin.”

Kim Haewon peers up at him through her narrow spectacles, and then her eyes go wide.

“Oh,” she breathes. “Oh, I see. Come in, come in.” She gestures them forward, gnarled fingers beckoning. Jimin shies away from her touch and steps, confused, into a small sitting room.

Seokjin slides the door shut behind them, moving with the ease of long familiarity. Haewon shuffles across the room as they unlace their boots and hang their coats. The floor is warm, and so is the fire burning in the hearth, keeping the winter at bay.

“Sit,” says Haewon, gesturing to a low table near the fire. There’s a pot warming on a braiser nearby. “Tea?”

“Ah, that’s okay,” starts Jimin, but Seokjin interjects before he can refuse.

“Let me.” He kneels next to her, taking over before she can pour. Haewon hums approvingly and gestures at the table again. Jimin, with no way to refuse, sits and takes in the room.

It’s a small sitting room, the furniture simple and functional and overshadowed by the floor-to-ceiling shelves covering every free inch of wall, all of them crowded with the accumulated treasure of a long life. There are rows and rows of paper-bound books, jars and boxes and baskets, drying herbs and cookware and crockery. Spools of twine and thread and cord and rope and cloth hang from hooks, and dozens and dozens of healer’s instruments whose purpose Jimin can only guess at sit in a neat line atop white linen. It smells like a healer’s hut, sharp herbs and fresh soap and a tinge of smoke and steeping tea. Jimin wonders if any of that is her, or if her beta’s scent is completely blotted out by her profession. 

Haewon settles across the table, shuffling stacks of books to make space for the cups Seokjin pours.

“I’m honored to meet you, Park Jimin-ssi,” she says. “I trust our Seokjinie and his pack have been treating you well? I see their alpha has staked a claim.”

Jimin reaches up to touch the scarf he’s forgotten to take off and blushes again. Seokjin makes a noise of complaint.

“Ah, seonsaengnim, don’t bother him. He’s been sick—”

“Hush, Seokjin-ah. Let the boy answer.”

Jimin clears his throat, awkward. “They’ve been very kind to me.”

“Good, good. As they should.” She frowns, brow furrowing magnificently, and then her face clears and she accepts a cup from Seokjin. Jimin does the same, porcelain warm through the thin leather of his gloves. Haewon takes a slow sip, her eyes fluttering shut. “Seokjin-ah, I hope your pack appreciates you.”

“I’ll tell them you said so.”

“Hm. Tell Hoseok-ah to stop by more often while you’re at it. And to bring that old mate of his. Now that one’s good for a conversation.”

“I’m sure Namjoon would be honored.”

“Of course he would.” She takes another sip and sets her tea down, attention zeroing in on Jimin. “And you, dear one. I am honored by your visit. What can I do for you?”

Jimin glances at Seokjin, who sets his tea down and clears his throat.

“Actually, seonsaengnim, we came because I hoped you might be able to help him.”

Haewon frowns and leans forward, peering through her spectacles. Jimin sits still as her nostrils flare, scenting the air, and then she sits back again.

“He seems healthy enough. A little underfed, perhaps, and someone has given him an atrocious haircut. But such things are remedied in time.” She clicks her tongue, and Jimin chokes on a laugh. “You’ve done well, Seokjin-ah.”

Seokjin ducks his head, clearly blushing.

Haewon huffs and turns her attention back to Jimin. “So what is it, my dear? Something Seokjin-ah can’t cure?”

“It’s— Ah.” Jimin clears his throat and sets his cup down. For a heartbeat he looks at Seokjin, seeking guidance, but it isn’t Seokjin’s curse. He has to speak for himself. “I’m cursed, ma’am.”

The furrow between Haewon’s brows deepens, and she leans forward. “Cursed? How?”

Jimin shrugs, helpless. “It’s— I don’t know. I’ve always been like this.”

She gives him another long look, then reaches for his hand. Jimin flinches on instinct, nearly knocking over his tea, and double checks his gloves.

“Touching people,” he says quickly. “People get hurt when they touch me. I’m bad luck. I got these— these marks when I presented, and since then I’ve been— It’s been worse.”

“Marks,” she echoes, and Jimin hesitates.

“Yes. Hyung said you…” He trails off, unsure if he’s supposed to share what Seokjin told him. He checks the gloves again, staring down at his hands. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just want to stop hurting people.”

Haewon hums, and after a moment she turns to Seokjin. “Jin-ah. The fire could use more fuel. Would you bring some in from the yard?”

“Of course,” he says. Panic sparks in Jimin’s gut as he rises, but Seokjin just gives him a nod and touches his shoulder, then slips out through the door, leaving Jimin alone with Haewon.

“It’s alright,” she assures him, expression kind. “Tell me about your curse, hm? Let’s see what this old healer can do.”

Jimin takes a deep breath and clenches his hands in his lap. The leather of the gloves creaks, pulls tight against his knuckles, and he screws up all his courage and his hope and he tells her.

Slowly, stiltedly, he explains it: the ill omen of his silver hair, his bad luck and how it stains the people he loves. His presentation, the pain, the markings. Elder Im, the burning and the banishment. He even tells her of the long run through the mountains, cold and starving, until he’d stumbled into the pack’s territory, and how they’d treated him with such unasked-for, unlooked-for kindness that it had hurt nearly as much as everything else. It comes out of him splintered and ugly with shame, and he’s grateful that she sent Seokjin away so he won’t hear the mess of Jimin’s past filling the room like rising floodwaters. His scent is sour, rotting flowers and endless rain, and by the time he finishes he’s breathing heavily, as though he’s right back where he was when he made it over the mountains, choking on bitterness.

Haewon sits through it all, silent, unmoved. When he’s finished, the only thing she says, gentle as the spring, is: “May I see?”

Jimin’s hands shake a little as he peels off the gloves and unloops Hoseok’s scarf, as he unlaces his shirt and shrugs it down. He turns so that the firelight illuminates the moon phases down his back, bare in every way. His hair has grown out shaggy, just long enough to brush the crescent at the nape of his neck, and he bows his head so she can see the mark.

“Ah,” Haewon breathes behind him, rustling soft as rice paper. “My dear child.”

“Please,” says Jimin, turning back towards her, pulling his shirt closed again, shivering even though the room is fire-hot. “Please, if you can help me, if there’s a way to get rid of them—”

“I cannot.” Her face is a mask of gentle sorrow. “But they aren’t a black mark upon you, my dear. You aren’t cursed.”

“No, you don’t understand.” He hasn’t explained it right. He’s never been able to say it right, not to the pack and not to her either. Maybe that’s part of the curse, that no one will ever understand what it means, what he is. He has to tell it again, better. “I know it’s my fault, the elders knew —”

Haewon holds up a hand to forestall him.

“You aren’t cursed,” she repeats, firmer. “And you are not alone.” She turns her hand palm up over the table and pulls her sleeve back and says, not unkindly, “Look.”

Jimin’s eyes flick down, and his breath hitches. Inscribed on the inside of her forearm is a tattoo—an impossibly detailed gibbous moon mapped over paper-thin skin, as bold and dark as fresh ink. Jimin stares.

“It’s a blessing. I’ve never seen anyone with so many. You must be loved indeed.”

“I— What? No.” The small, hot room closes in around him. “I’m dangerous. I hurt people.”

“No, my dear.” She holds her arm out, an invitation. “Go ahead.”

“I’ll hurt you.”

“You won’t.”

He wants to believe her, more than anything. “I…”

“What does your wolf say?”

He swallows hard, swallows back bile and protests and the swelling urge to shift and run until he’s far, far from here, and makes himself listen. Sometimes, Seokjin says, their wolves know better than they do, and Jimin tries to believe that now as he sits, as he breathes, as he lets himself feel the low, insistent urge to reach out. To touch.

Jimin is halfway outside his body as he reaches, dizzy with a terrible churn of fear and hope. His fingers hover above her moon marking, and he’s distantly aware that he’s shaking. She smiles at him, old and creased and kind, and raises her arm until his trembling fingertips brush against her skin.

For a heartbeat, he feels each mark on his back, a shiver like an autumn breeze down his spine, and the medicinal smell of the room is blotted out by the round taste of rain at the back of his tongue, and everything is bright and fresh, a full-moon flash of clarity. Then it slips away, and he’s sitting half dressed in an old healer’s home, skin to skin without pain.

He sucks in a breath and presses his palm flat against her mark, against her warm, frail wrist, and she wraps old, boney fingers around his hand. He’s grateful for it—he fears he might float away without anything to hold him down. Her scent blooms at the touch of their wrists, the simple scenting of a greeting, and it isn’t the medicinal smell of the healer’s hut or even the warmth of crackling wood; it’s a light, crisp, summer-fruit freshness he tastes at the back of his teeth.

“Wha— I— How?” he breathes, not even sure what he’s asking—what’s happening, is this real, how can she touch him, how could she know ?

“It’s an old tale. One that is not told as often as it ought to be, I think. Your elders have done you a great disservice.” Her voice is unbearably gentle. “It isn’t a curse. You’re moon-touched.”

“I don’t— I don’t know what that means.” He forces himself to pull away, even though he wants to hold on, wants the feeling of skin against his. He feels a little drunk with it, his head fuzzy. He busies himself with lacing his shirt again instead, difficult with shaking fingers, then drapes Hoseok’s scarf around his neck. The familiarity of cardamom and the faint touch of mint helps ground him. Haewon hums and returns to her tea.

“It’s said that once in a generation, the moon shines down and leaves a mark of her favor upon the world. A silver child, made in her image, who carries her markings so that the world shall know to treasure the gift she has given.” Haewon touches her hair, which Jimin realizes isn’t the grey of old age but the same silver as his own. “I’m sorry your pack couldn’t see it, and for the hurt it has caused. But it isn’t a curse, dear one. It’s a blessing.”

Jimin stares at her, a lump caught in his throat. “But why? I’m not special. I haven’t done anything worth that.”

“Why does the moon rise? Why do we live as man and wolf?” She shrugs, expansive. “It’s the way of things.”

“But—” He doesn’t know where to start. He’s not even sure he believes her, except his wolf is calm and content in his chest, except that he wants to believe her more than anything. The want is so big it scares him, and beneath it stirs something black and endless. He shoves it down. “It’s just a story. How do you know it’s true?”

Haewon stretches back across the table to touch the back of his hand, and he flinches on instinct but doesn’t pull away. Her touch is warm, and sure, and utterly unremarkable except that it is touch that doesn’t hurt or harm.

“How do you know it isn’t?”

“But I— I did hurt someone. I did!” He thinks of Elder Im, her mangled hand, and shudders, nausea churning in his gut. “I might do it again!”

Haewon sits back, her gaze hard. “That person. Your elder. She hurt you?”

“I—” Jimin sits back and takes a breath, an ache dug deep under his sternum. His throat is tight, and it feels like choking when he says, “Yes.”

He doesn’t know why it hurts so much to admit. It had only been a little discomfort, only a moment of fear. Why does he feel like crying?

“She shames her pack and our people. There is no wrong in defending yourself, child.”

“I don’t want to,” Jimin says. He swallows hard and squeezes his eyes shut. “I just want everything to stop hurting.”

For a moment the admission hangs between them, and then Haewon’s hand touches his cheek, and he jerks his head up to look at her. Her eyes are dark behind her narrow spectacles, and kind. 

“Then you must stop hurting yourself, hm?” Her gaze aches as much as her hand brushing away his tears. “None of what happened was your fault. Your suffering was not your doing and you are owed no punishment. You have done no one any disservice.” Her face, creased with age, softens into gentle sympathy. “One day, I hope you will believe me.”

“I don’t know if I know how.”

“Then you must find someone else to trust, and practice trusting them. Start with that pack of yours, hm?”

It takes him a moment to understand that she means Hoseok’s pack, and he flushes. “Oh, that’s— I mean. They aren’t my pack?” He winces when it comes out like a question, and she laughs.

“You had best tell them, if that’s the case. That alpha’s put a claim on you for the whole town to see. Might be they’re more your pack than you think.”

Jimin touches Hoseok’s scarf, automatic, and ducks his head. For all his embarrassment, his wolf is pleased. Haewon laughs again, and then that fades, and there is only the crackle of the fire and the slight shuffle as she pours them both fresh cups of tea.

For a long minute, Jimin sits there, head bowed, breathing. Then he scrubs his sleeves over his face. The ache in his chest is a strange, swollen thing, and he moves gingerly around it as he wipes the tears away. He drinks the tea Haewon pours him slowly, letting the warmth and the steam fill him. When his cup is empty again, he looks at her.

“What do I do now?”

“Go home,” she tells him. “Listen. Trust yourself and your heart, and them. It may be difficult, but such things are remedied in time. And, if you don’t mind, would you fetch Jin-ah? He’s been out in the cold for quite a while, and I have some things for him before you go.”

The walk back to the market square is long. Seokjin leads the way, a bundle—a gift from Haewon—tucked under one arm, and Jimin trails behind him, only half aware of the town as they move through it. The sky purples and bruises overhead and lanterns gleam in open doorways and at the top of fence posts, setting the night alight.

“We have a room at the inn,” says Seokjin when they reach the square. The stalls are mostly closed and shuttered, the crowd thinned out around the few still selling spirits and fried food. “We’ll eat there and pick up anything else we need in the morning before we head home again.”

“Okay,” says Jimin. He waits for Seokjin to ask about the meeting, about Haewon, about the marks, but he keeps the same measured silence, except when he stops to buy a jar of candied chestnuts, tucking it into the bag already bulging with Haewon’s gifts.

The inn is a broad two-story affair on the far side of the square. When they arrive, Seokjin greets the clerk and leads the way upstairs to a sparsely furnished room with four pallets laid out. They linger there long enough to shed their bags and coats alongside the pair already hung by the door before descending again into a warm, busy tea room. At a corner table, out of the bustle, sit Hoseok and Jungkook. Jimin’s heart eases to see them, heads bent close, sharing a bowl of nuts—though it looks like Hoseok is doing most of the sharing.

Jungkook spots them first. He perks up immediately as they approach, shifting to make space and slapping at Jin’s thigh as he sits. Jimin eases himself down more slowly, feeling tender and raw all over.

“Finally,” Jungkook exclaims. “That took forever.”

“It did not,” Seokjin says, slapping him back. On the table, Hoseok’s thumb taps against the wood, a tiny tick of nerves, and Jimin wonders, if he reached out, if he laid his palm overtop, if he stilled the twitch of nervousness—

“It was alright?” Hoseok asks, and Jimin tucks his hands in his lap instead. He’s left the gloves upstairs. Foolish.

“Yes,” he says, and Hoseok smiles, pleased. He smells pleased too, though it’s harder to tell through the heavy scent of the tea room. A headache throbs behind Jimin’s eyes.

“How is Haewon-ssi?” The question is directed at Seokjin, and it’s Seokjin who answers.

“The same as ever. Missing you more than me. She said to bring Namjoon next time.”

“Playing favorites,” grins Hoseok. “But she was good? Helpful?”

Did they all know? Or was it just Hoseok that Seokjin told? Was it a whisper in the middle of the night, a conversation early before the house roused itself for breakfast, a decision made behind the closed door of their den room? Trust said Haewon, and Believe , and Your pack, and the want in his chest aches, tender and enormous and wretched.

They’re looking at him. Waiting for his answer. Jimin clears his throat.

“Yeah. Um. I think so.”

Does he think so? He isn’t sure.

“Good,” Hoseok nods, and then, like Seokjin, he lets it go. For a heartbeat Jimin wishes he would press, would demand Jimin say more, but he won’t. They never do. They are all space and patience and understanding, and they give each one thoughtlessly, as though they don’t even realize what a gift that is.

Jimin reaches up to touch the scarf again—he’s still wearing it, even in the warmth of the tea room, unwilling to shed the comfort it brings—and he doesn’t miss the way Hoseok’s eyes follow the movement, the way his scent sweetens ever so slightly. There’s a lick of pride, there and gone again, and the swollen, tender, aching thing in Jimin’s chest trembles.

It’s too much. It’s just— It’s all too much.

“Actually,” he says, rising abruptly, and all three of them startle. “I think I might go upstairs.”

Hoseok frowns. “Are you feeling alright?”

“Aren’t you hungry?” Jungkook stares up at him. “The food will be here soon, you should eat something.”

“Just a headache,” he says. “It’s been a long day.”

“Haewon-seonsaengnim gave us some willow bark. I could make you tea?” Seokjin’s eyes are bright with concern as he makes to stand, but Jimin waves him back down.

“I just need some rest. It’s, um. It’s a little crowded.”

“Of course,” Hoseok agrees immediately, looking guilty as he glances across the full room. Jimin winces. He doesn’t want that either, he just wants— He just wants—

“It’s okay. I’ll feel better if I sleep.”

“We’ll bring you food,” Jungkook promises, and Jimin nods and offers them a smile that he hopes isn’t as wobbly as it feels before he retreats up the stairs.

Their rented room is cold, and dark. Jimin considers lighting the braziers, but even the thought of it exhausts him. He sheds his boots and burrows beneath the heavy blankets of the farthest bed instead. The freshly laundered sheets are a poor imitation of Jungkook’s scent, the smell he’s gone to sleep with for weeks now, and he is suddenly, sharply homesick in a way he hasn’t been since he came home after his father’s exile to an empty house. He drags his knees up, curled as small as he can get, and presses a hand against his chest, like he could shove the wet, sour knot of pain out.

It’s not fair.  

Haewon has to be wrong. It has to be a curse. It has to be his fault, knowing or not, because otherwise what’s the point? If it’s not his fault, if he didn’t do anything wrong, if there isn’t some black mark upon him that brings pain and suffering and bad luck wherever he goes, then his hurt is just hurt, senseless and terrible. If it’s not his fault then his pack was just cruel, and afraid, and he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to live with that. Where’s the blessing in that, in the years of loneliness, in his empty house, in his parents’ deaths, in the cold of the knife and the burning and the exile and the grief? How is a blessing any different from a curse if they both cut the same?

He takes a deep breath, trying to steady himself, and chokes on a sob. It tears out of him, splinters his ribs, a sucking wound a hundred times worse than anything else. He presses his hand against his mouth and curls himself tighter, as though that will protect him. But there’s nothing to be protected from, no curse or bitterness or unwanted hands laid on him in anger. There’s just him, small and alone with a grief he doesn’t want in a cold, empty room far from home.

And it’s not fair. It’s not fair.

He doesn’t know how long he lies there, misery washing over him in waves. Long enough for the last of the light to fade, long enough for the moon to peer through the open window, cool and distant. Long enough that the door creaks and the floorboards shift, and Hoseok’s quiet voice calls through the dark.

“Jimin?”

“I’m fine,” he tries to say, but he chokes on the lie and a sob slips out in its place. From the doorway, Hoseok makes a wounded sound.

“Jimin-ah,” he murmurs, heavy. Jimin doesn’t want that either, doesn’t want to be a cause for anyone else’s grief. He has enough already.

“I’m really fine,” he says thickly. “You can go, hyung.”

“No, no,” says Hoseok. Jimin tries to stop his tears, but the attempt just clogs in his chest, a drowning garden. The room must stink of heartache. “Ah, Jimin-ah. It’s okay.”

It isn’t. It isn’t okay and it never has been, and that just makes the ache bigger, makes Jimin winch himself tighter. Behind him comes a rustle of cloth and then the click of nails and a weight upon the bedding as Hoseok curls against his back, muzzle nosing at Jimin’s hair where it tufts out from under the blankets. Jimin takes a shuddering breath and twists towards him, pressing himself close through the barrier of the blanket.

“Why me?” he asks, so choked and muffled he’s not sure Hoseok can understand. “Why does it have to be me?”

Hoseok nuzzles against him, and Jimin squeezes his eyes against a fresh wave of tears. He doesn’t want to be special. He doesn’t want to be blessed or cursed or anything. He just wants— He just—

“I want to go home .”

His voice breaks around the admission. Hoseok makes a low, mournful noise, and Jimin shakes apart as the hurt inside him spills out and out and out. He lies there, bundled in the dark, hidden beneath the blankets, and cries until his chest cracks open, until his throat scrapes, until there’s nothing in him but rainwater and wanting—until finally, exhausted, sleep pulls him under.

He wakes boiling hot and slightly suffocated, cocooned in sweaty blankets. It takes him a cloying, claustrophobic minute to fight his way out, and when he finally manages to stick his head into the morning chill, he discovers the reason for the heat: at some point in the night, the others have come to curl around him. Hoseok lies on one side and Seokjin on the other, and Jungkook is splayed at his feet. The braisers are still unlit, the curtains are still open and letting in pale morning light. There’s an abandoned tray near the door, and the other beds are untouched because the others are all sleeping in their wolfskins bracketing Jimin’s bed.

Carefully, he extricates himself from the makeshift nest, doing his best not to disturb them. Jungkook snorts and wiggles into the warmth Jimin leaves behind, but none of them wake as he pads across the room to the basin hidden behind a privacy screen to scrubs himself down, washing away the crust of salt and sweat and tears in the frigid water.

When he reemerges, drying his face, Seokjin is awake and staring at him. Jimin pauses, wringing the wet out of his shaggy hair. Seokjin’s ear twitches.

“I’m okay,” Jimin says quietly. Okay maybe isn’t the right word for it, but he feels closer to it now than he did yesterday. Despite the headache and the stuffy nose and the dry eyes, he feels a little lighter, a little clearer. The swollen tenderness in his chest isn’t quite so enormous this morning. Even his disbelief isn’t so overwhelming. His wolf lies still, calm.

Seokjin huffs and lays his head down again, stretching one leg out until he kicks Jungkook, who grumbles.

Your pack, Haewon had said. Jimin rubs his throat as the others begin to stir, and, for the first time, lets himself think about it.

The trip back passes swiftly and in silence. Jimin is aware of it in crystalline flashes: the texture of the frozen earth underfoot, the smell of the winter forest, the flickering scent of other wolves, here and gone again. He’s grateful that they make the run in their wolfskins. It means he doesn’t have to bother with talking or trying to put words to the jumble in his head. There’s just the cold and the forest and the running, eating up the miles back to the pack.

They reach the territory marker on the afternoon of the third day, and Jungkook goes charging off towards the house. He looks ridiculous with the bulging pack strapped to his back, lunging over roots and under branches. Seokjin and Hoseok pick up the pace in his wake, but Jimin is slower as he brings up the rear, breathing in the familiar scent of forest and pack. It eases a lingering worry in him.

Yoongi is waiting in the yard when they arrive, bundled in his hat and scarf and coat so only his eyes peer out. He helps them offload the heavy packs, sorting supplies into piles on the porch. Taehyung appears in the doorway a minute later, followed by Namjoon, and the unpacking devolves into a flurry of eager greetings and lingering scenting. Jimin hangs back, waiting for Yoongi to divest him of his own bag, then he slips into the house to shift and dress. He lingers in Jungkook’s room for a moment afterwards, distracted by a lingering sweetness in the air, a little smokey. Has Taehyung been sleeping in here? The thought makes his heart clench.

When he gets back out into the yard, it’s started to snow. The damp flakes hurry everyone along, except for Taehyung who stands in the middle of the clearing with his tongue stuck out to taste, unconcerned by the cold. Namjoon catches Jimin staring.

“He had a rough heat,” he says quietly. Jimin glances at him, surprised.

“While we were gone?” He hadn’t realized it was so close. Had he missed the signs?

“Mmh. Surprised all of us.”

“Is he okay?” Now that Namjoon has said it, Jimin can pick out the unusual level of attentiveness. Seokjin keeps looking over at Taehyung between lugging things up onto the porch and out of the snow, and Hoseok makes a regular loop between the house and the supplies and Taehyung standing out in the yard, fussing more than usual.

“Yeah. We’re all alright. Better with you back. We missed you.”

“Oh.” Jimin hesitates, unsure of what to do with himself—what to say, what to ask, how to help. He doesn’t know what his place is here. Your pack.

“Hey, Joon-ah.” Yoongi pauses at the foot of the stairs, squinting up at them. He’s flushed pink with the cold, and he’s lost his scarf. Or, no. He’s just given it to Taehyung.

“Hey hyung,” says Namjoon. “Are things ready?”

“Just about.”

Jimin frowns. “Ready?”

“Yeah.” Yoongi shakes his fringe out of his eyes. “Help me get this shit down to the cellar?”

Jimin hesitates, turning to check in with Namjoon. “You don’t need more help out here?”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of the rest of it.”

There’s something they’re not saying, some space between their words where Jimin’s missing meaning. But neither of them seem particularly bothered, so Jimin shrugs and grabs a bag and follows Yoongi around the side of the house.

They work in steady silence for a while, lugging supplies down to the cool, musty safety of the cellar and out of the gathering snowfall. Yoongi’s cedar and sawdust fills the space, heavy and familiar. He doesn’t say much beyond the directions of what goes where, which is fine with Jimin. The quiet is nice. The snow muffles everything, softening the edges of the world. It feels like any other afternoon spent putting himself to work, pleased to be of use and enjoying their undemanding company. Haewon’s talk about the moon and blessings feels like it belongs in a different world.

Eventually everything is organized to Yoongi’s liking, and he digs his knuckles into the small of his back and stretches. Jimin rolls out his shoulders and eyes the shelves. It’s good to see them not quite so empty. Makes him feel better about the winter, about being certain everyone will be healthy and fed and cared for. About not being a burden to them.

“You okay?” Yoongi’s voice tugs him out of his thoughts. Jimin looks over to find him staring, gaze sharp. “Hob-ah said you had a rough time in town.”

“No, just—” Jimin reconsiders. “I mean. I guess.”

“Want to talk?”

Something about the way he says it, the measured nonchalance, makes Jimin frown. “Did hyung tell you to talk to me?”

“No. You’re just not that hard to read.”

Jimin wrinkles his nose and crouches. Yoongi puffs out a breath, mostly amusement, and comes over to sit next to Jimin.

“Come on,” he says. “Talk to hyung.”

“It’s just… Seokjin-hyung took me to visit a friend of his, a healer.”

“Kim Haewon.”

“Yeah.” Jimin wonders if they all know. For a moment, annoyance flickers through him that none of them had mentioned anything to him about it. He lets it pass.

“And?”

“And… I don’t know. She told me a bunch of stuff.”

“Good stuff?”

He looks aside at Yoongi, who is staring resolutely across the cellar. Even his scent is steady, measured. He gives nothing away.

“I guess,” Jimin allows after a long moment. “But it was… I always thought it was my fault. That I was the bad thing.”

“You’re not a bad thing,” Yoongi says gently. Jimin presses a hand against his chest and the lingering tenderness there, and takes a deep breath.

“But if it’s not me, then it’s just— It hurts more. I guess.”

“I’m sorry,” says Yoongi. His scent softens, soothing, and Jimin breathes it in. He’d never thought the scent of an old woodshop would bring so much comfort, but it does.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. “You’ve all been so… You saved my life.”

He means more than just the medicine. Yoongi glances at him, and Jimin knows he understands. For a moment they linger there, under the earth, under the snow. Jimin squeezes his eyes shut against the prickling tears. Next to him, Yoongi shifts.

“Come on. We have something for you.” When Jimin opens his eyes, he’s standing with his hand outstretched in invitation. His nails are bitten down, chapped with the cold.

Jimin flexes his own cold fingers and imagines taking his hand. “For me?”

Yoongi raises an eyebrow and looks around the empty cellar pointedly. Jimin wrinkles his nose and considers his hand, then pushes himself to his feet. Yoongi tucks his hand back into his pocket—if he’s bothered by the rejection, he doesn’t show it—and follows him out of the cellar.

In the time they’ve been working, the sun has set and the snow has stopped, a soft crust of unbroken white covering the world. Someone has lit the lanterns over the kitchen door, and yellow light pools down the side of the house and across the yard. Overhead, the moon gleams like a silver coin between the drifting clouds. Jimin turns his face towards it, a shiver stuck deep in his bones.

For a heartbeat, he feels warmth against his back, the stroke of a familiar hand. In his chest, his wolf sits calm and quiet. Waiting.

Yoongi pauses, watching him carefully. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” says Jimin. He thinks he might really mean it, this time.

Yoongi nods and gestures at the door. The moonlight makes him gentle.

Or— No. He’s gentle already. The moonlight just illuminates everything he already is.

Jimin touches the nape of his neck and huffs at himself. “Yeah,” he says again, softer.

“Come on then,” says Yoongi. “They’re waiting.”

He lingers at Jimin’s elbow as they step inside, as they kick the snow from their boots and leave them to dry by the hearth. The floor is warm underfoot, and all the lights have been lit, and it smells like the pack, a complex weave of scents he hadn’t realized he missed. Jimin takes a deep breath and feels himself relax. They’re all here, all safe. All right where they should be. Your pack.

They’re all out in the main room, clustered around a large wooden chest Jimin knows hadn’t been there earlier. They’ve moved the table to make room for it, a hefty piece of craftsmanship easily large enough to fit a man. Yoongi gives his shoulder a brief squeeze and leaves his side to stand with the others, all of them watching him. Jimin pauses, alone in the middle of the room.

“Um,” he says. For a moment he wonders if he should be nervous, but Taehyung flashes him a grin, and Jungkook seems to be vibrating even with Seokjin’s hand pressing on his shoulder, and nervous isn’t quite the right word to describe the clench in his gut. “What’s this?”

“We have something for you,” says Hoseok. He, of all of them, looks worried, longer fingers picking at the hems of his sleeves. “And a question. Well. It’s more like an offer.”

“An offer?”

“You’ve been with us for a while now, and you— I hope you’ve learned a little more about how we live here. Up north. I know it’s not what you’re used to, and I know things have been… strange, and difficult.” He fixes Jimin with a look, eyes wide with concern. “But hopefully not too much?”

“Not too much,” says Jimin. There’s an inkling of an idea in the back of his mind, an unformed nebulous thing that makes his tongue heavy, his mouth dry.

“Good.” Hoseok lets out a sigh, shoulders easing. “That’s good, because we’ve been talking, and we think— That is, we wanted to— Well, we want to ask—”

Namjoon takes a step forward, hand resting at the small of Hoseok’s back. “We have a gift for you,” he says, gesturing down at the chest. It’s a beautiful thing, all dark wood and intricate carvings. Jimin can pick out the phases of the moon across the lid, and silhouettes of wolves lope along the lower edge, caught in such perfect motion they seem to shift before his eyes. “We’d like— Well. We’d like to court you. We’d like you to stay with us. To be with us.” His mouth quirks. “If you want. Unless you want to leave, in which case we’ll do everything we can to help you with— with everything. To help with whatever you need.”

“Oh,” says Jimin, his voice small. Your pack, whispers Haewon’s voice in the back of his head, only it doesn’t sound much like Haewon at all. It mostly just sounds like himself.

“We know you didn’t choose to be here,” says Jungkook. “But we’d like you to stay.”

“We can be slow,” Seokjin promises. “I know— We know— Well, we can be a lot, and we haven’t exactly been the best—”

“Yes you have,” Jimin interrupts. They must know that; they have to know that. “Yes, you— you really have. You’ve been better than I ever expected.”

“We can do better,” Yoongi says gently. “We’d like to. If you’ll let us.”

“Let us show you,” says Hoseok, and Jimin swallows hard. “Do you— Can we show you?”

“I—” He can’t speak through the lump in his throat.

“Wait,” says Taehyung, squeezing past Yoongi with his hand outstretched. “Wait, before you say anything, please consider this our first gift.” A square of soft leather rests folded in his his palm, and as he approaches, he peels bad the edges to reveal—

It’s a comb. A simple wooden comb.

“Park Jimin. Will you accept our courting gift?”

It’s lovely, deceptive in its simplicity. The lacquered shaft is carved in the shape of a cloud drifting over the full moon, and Jimin doesn’t need to see Yoongi’s blush to know he made it. It has the same care and detail as every other piece of woodwork in the house. The same care as the chest—and Yoong has been holed up in his workshop for days, hasn’t he? For weeks. Busy on some pack project, driving Jimin half-crazy with his absence.

 All for this. All for him, Jimin realizes. The care and attention that went into making it is his, is the care and attention they pay to him. His breath sticks in his lungs.

“Jimin-ah?” says Taehyung, and Jimin looks up at his face. He’s drifted close—close enough to touch, close enough that Jimin can pick up the lingering sweetness of his scent from his recent heat. It doesn’t overwhelm Jimin the way he’s always heard it’s supposed to. Instead he just feels… steady. Protective. A little aching.

“You,” he starts, and he doesn’t know what to say. He looks over Taehyung’s shoulder to the rest of them, all waiting. All wanting. “Really? You mean it?”

“Yes,” says Hoseok. Taehyung huffs, affronted.

“Of course we mean it,” he says, pulling Jimin’s eyes back to him and the frown marring his handsome face. “Why are you so surprised?”

Jimin laughs and squeezes his eyes shut against the sudden prickle of tears. Taehyung makes a noise, part soothing and part worried. “No, no, don’t cry. Did we make you sad?”

“No, it’s okay, I’m not sad, I’m— I don’t know.” He wipes his eyes with another damp laugh. The feeling in his chest isn’t grief. It’s kinder than that.

“Are you still afraid?” Taehyung looks at him, eyes wide and dark. “You don’t have to be. We’ll figure it out, I promise.”

“I think that’s the scary part.” He takes a deep breath, and— And he’s tired of the fear. He’s sickeningly exhausted by the caution, by the unceasing ache in his chest, but the endless stifled hope and the choking grief that comes with it. 

He trusts them. He wants to trust them. He wants to go home, and he thinks this could be home, if he wants it, if he lets himself want it. Your pack.

They’re offering. They want him. He doesn’t want to be afraid of himself, for their sake. And for his own.

So he takes a breath and wipes his face again, and then he holds a hand out, palm-up in supplication, and says, “Taehyung-ah. Can I hold your hand?”

Taehyung glances down, then back up at him. His voice is barely a whisper. “Are you sure?”

“No.” It comes out hoarse, the edge of a laugh, and a tear slips down his cheek. “But I’d really like to try. I— I trust you.”

“You won’t hurt me,” declares Taehyung. He takes a step forward, close enough to scent, and his voice is soft as a whisper. “And I won’t hurt you.”

“I know,” Jimin says, eyes fluttering shut. For a moment there’s nothing—no sound, no movement, the entire room held like a breath. Then Taehyung’s hand closes around his, gentle and warm and a little clammy, and Jimin braces himself for the pain.

But it’s just Taehyung. It’s just a hand in his. Jimin waits a heartbeat, and then seven, and then opens his eyes to the widest, brightest smile he’s ever seen.

“Ha,” says Taehyung, a puff of pure glee. “See? I told you so.”

Jimin laughs, frail, and then he’s crying, properly crying, letting Taehyung tug him forward into a crushing hug. Jimin clings to him, face pressed into his shoulder. He’s dizzy with it, desperate with a relief so enormous he’s afraid he might come apart at the seams without Taehyung’s arms to hold him together.

He can’t remember the last time he was held. He never wants it to end. He might never let go again

“Hey,” says someone else, a whine of protest, and then there’s another set of arms around him, a body plastered to his back and the scent of fresh linen. In his ear, Jungkook says, “Hey, what the hell, don’t hog him—”

“Don’t crowd him,” says Namjoon, a thin edge of panic to his voice, and Jimin pulls his face out of Taehyung’s shoulder long enough to look at him, to reach a hand out to the four shocked faces staring at them.

“Please,” he says, and then Hoseok is reaching back, tugging Namjoon along behind him, and Seokjin is grinning, and Yoongi sighs and lets himself be tugged into the fray. Jungkook’s chin digs into Jimin’s shoulder, and Jimin reaches blindly for his wrist, holding on for dear life.

“We’re okay,” Taehyung says in his ear. Jimin isn’t sure if he’s talking to him or everyone. “It’s okay.”

It is. It is . Jimin stands there, surrounded by them, touching and touched, and none of it hurts. Nothing hurts.

He doesn’t know how long they cling to each other. His knees buckle but he doesn’t fall; hands help him gently to the ground and don’t let go. He’s vaguely aware of thumbs smearing away his tears, of a kiss pressed to the crown of his head, of hands carding through his hair. He doesn’t know where they end and he begins; he only knows the feeling of them pressed around him, holding him whole. He can’t remember the last time anyone touched him with such care. He can’t remember the last time he felt so loved.

He doesn’t ever want to let them go.

Eventually, slowly, they pull back, giving him space to breathe, to wipe his face on his sleeves. He takes a shuddering breath and opens his eyes, though he can’t remember when he closed them. Taehyung sits next to him, holding his hand.

“She said it was a blessing,” Jimin says, nonsensical. Seokjin makes a noise like understanding, and someone—Namjoon, he thinks; the broad, warm hand feels like Namjoon—settles reverently against the curve of his spine where the lunar cycle marks his skin. “She said it wasn’t going to hurt. She said it meant being touched. Being loved.”

“You are,” Hoseok says. His conviction strikes like a blow, and Jimin sucks in a shuddering breath. “You are, Jimin-ah.”

“But how did you know ? How did you know it wouldn’t— That it wasn’t—”

He can’t bring himself to finish the question. Yoongi answers anyway.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, gruff. He’s kneeling next to Taehyung, mouth sharp but eyes gentle. “Whatever you want to call it, doesn’t change anything. We’d have asked anyway. Would have made it work.”

“Even with the curse? Even if you could never…?”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“We want you here,” says Hoseok. His fingers card through the shaggy fall of Jimin’s hair, and Jimin shivers into his touch. It’s overwhelming. He never wants it to stop. “We want you. Whatever that looks like. We’d have figured it out.”

Jimin laughs, damp and trembling. “You can’t want me that much.”

“Sure we can,” says Taehyung. “What do you call this?”

He waves his free hand, still holding the comb, at the cluster of them on the floor, pressed in close. Jimin has to close his eyes against a fresh wave of tears.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”

“Say whatever you want,” advises Seokjin. Next to him, Jungkook says, “Say yes.” Seokjin reaches over to pinch him.

Yoongi sighs. “Let him decide.”

“He’s already decided,” interjects Taehyung. “Haven’t you?”

Jimin takes a breath and wipes his face and holds a hand out, waiting. Taehyung grins at him, scent bright with contentment, and sets the comb down in his waiting palm. It really is lovely. He sniffs.

“Did you really make me a courting gift?”

“Do you know how hard it is to hide that kind of shit from someone who lives with you?” grumbles Yoongi, but it’s ruined by the way his scent has gotten thick and heavy with pride.

“Yes,” Namjoon says to Jimin while Seokjin pats Yoongi’s back consolingly. “Do you want to see?”

“Can I?”

Hoseok laughs and ruffles his hair. Jimin jumps at the touch, then leans into it. “It’s your gift.”

They’re slow to pull apart, nobody willing to be the first to let go. Taehyung refuses to relinquish Jimin’s hand altogether, so Yoongi opens the chest for him. It’s even lovelier up close, every side covered in intricate carvings. The interior is just as beautiful—the lid has been painted like an autumn forest, and it brims with an assortment of gifts. There are furs, clothing, another pair of supple calf leather gloves. A collection of small jars that Jimin recognizes as the set of hair oils he’d been looking at in town. A pair of mittens made from the coat of the rabbit he’d caught weeks ago and a coat in the same style as Namjoon’s, down to the dye of the wool, which makes him grin and blush almost as much as Namjoon. Another comb, this one carved with a sun, and a leather band to go with (“For when your hair grows out,” says Jungkook, proud). A thin pouch filled with beaded bracelets the same pale blue shade as the butterfly he wears around his neck.

“There’s more, of course,” says Hoseok, as though each individual thing isn’t an overwhelming treasure in its own right. “So if there’s anything you’re missing, anything you need—”

Jimin throws his arms around him.

“Thank you,” he says. “Thank you for everything.”

“Aish,” mumbles Hoseok, wrapping his arms around Jimin in turn. “It’s okay? It’s not too much?”

It’s definitely too much, but— “It’s perfect.”

“If there’s anything else,” Hoseok says quietly. “Anything you need, anything we can give you—”

“Scent me?”

It’s out of his mouth before he can think about it, and for a moment Hoseok stills against him. Jimin grits his teeth against the wave of shame and embarrassment.

“I mean— You don’t have to, I don’t—

“No, no,” soothes Hoseok. “But— It could be a lot from another alpha. Your instincts… Maybe Taehyungie would be better. Or Joon?”

“I want you. I— Please.” He needs the touch. He needs the certainty of being marked, of being theirs. Of them being his. “I trust you.”

“Okay,” says Hoseok gently.

“Hob-ah.” Yoongi reaches out to touch Hoseok’s wrist, and they both pause. Yoongi blinks, slow. “Should show him the den.”

“Yeah,” agrees Jungkook. “Hyung, we should show him the den." He turns to Jimin. "You wanna see the den, Jiminie-hyung? It's nice.”

Jimin looks between them. “Can I?”

“Of course,” says Hoseok. “Whatever you want.”

They show him to the door across the room, to their innermost den where their scents are even thicker. It's a simple room, barely any bigger than the bedroom Jimin has been borrowing, and there's nothing in it save for the wide window at the far wall and a hearth, fire banked, and their nest: a massive pallet of furs and pillows, large enough to fit all of them comfortably. Taehyung immediately climbs in, fussing with the pillows and the furs for a minute before he reaches out for them.

“Come on,” he says, tugging Seokjin in, and then the others. “Come on, everyone—”

“Okay, okay,” laughs Namjoon, shedding his jacket. Jungkook helps Jimin out of his own coat, and slowly they all settle into the bedding. Jimin finds himself placed in the middle, sitting with his legs crossed beneath him, Hoseok at his side. Everything smells like them, like pack and belonging and home. Jimin’s heart rabbits in his chest.

“Hi,” says Hoseok with a small, quirking smile.

“Hi,” says Jimin.

“You still want this?”

“Yeah.” More than anything. “Yeah, I— Please.”

“Okay. Okay, baby.”

His heart thrills at that. Then Hoseok’s nose drags up his throat, and Jimin goes boneless.

Hoseok’s scent clouds his head. He’s all sweet spice and a hint of sharpness, crisp and clear and familiar, the first hint of springtime. In his chest, Jimin’s wolf snaps to attention, a bolt of electricity carving through him, and then something clicks into place, some great settling in his heart. Jimin takes a shuddering breath and pushes himself into the touch, chin tipped to the side to give Hoseok more space, to invite the brush of his nose, the touch of his cheek, the brief press of his mouth at the hing of Jimin’s jaw.

When Hoseok pulls away, Jimin sways forward with him, face warming when Hoseok laughs.

“Okay, okay. Easy, Jimin-ah. You alright?”

“Yeah,” says Jimin, dizzy, still hungry for more. “Yes, I— You mean it? You really… You want me?”

“Yeah,” says Jungkook before Hoseok can say anything. “Joonie-hyung nearly told you about it and ruined the surprise.”

“I wouldn’t have,” says Namjoon, startlingly close. Jimin nearly bumps into him as he twists around, and Namjoon steadies him with a hand at his elbow. Jimin hesitates for a heartbeat, then lets himself lean into the touch. Namjoon dips forward as though he wants to scent too. Jimin tilts his chin in response, nearly instinctual. Namjoon pauses.

"You can," says Jimin. "You all— I'd like it. Please."

He's close enough to see the bob of Namjoon's throat as he swallows. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Jimin tells him, and Namjoon’s expression slips from surprise to sheepishness to something heavier.

Jimin’s eyes flutter shut as Namjoon pulls him in close. He’s more thorough about it than Hoseok, even with his lighter scent, and Jimin is still reeling when Taehyung crawls up next to him and muscles in, pressing a warm kiss against Jimin’s cheek before he noses down against his scent gland, surrounding him with his smokey-sweet scent, a fire without burning. Jimin gasps, clinging to him. It’s so much. They’re all so much.

He doesn’t want it to stop.

And it doesn’t. Jungkook wiggles up next, eager and surprisingly firm, and then Yoongi, quick and gentle, and then Seokjin, surprisingly shy about the whole thing. Jimin sits in the middle of them, in the middle of their nest, clutching the comb in one hand, overwhelmed in the best way possible. Their scents settle over him, marking him with the same surety as the moons down his back, a warmth caught under his skin. He touches the nape of his neck where the crescent moon sits and thinks—maybe he is blessed, somehow. What other explanation is there for how he ended up here of all places, with them? How else could he possibly have gotten so lucky?

“So that’s a yes, right?” says Taehyung. “We can court you? You'll stay?”

For a moment, Jimin looks at him—at all of them, clustered around him, warm in their nest. It feels like it’s been years since he woke up here, safe before he even knew it, accepted without ever having to ask. 

He’d said it to Hoseok, hadn’t he? He’d wanted to go home, and here he is—safe, seen, loved.

“Yeah,” he answers, reaching out for them, certain in the knowledge that they’re reaching back. “I’ll stay.”