Chapter Text
“Darling mine, just a little more.” Seonghwa huffs, hoisting himself up the little edge and then turning back to pull the other up. “A little bit more and then we’re safe, so close love–” his hands curls under Wooyoung’s arms, but the wound on the younger’s side is gaping, bleeding, eliciting a new kind of agony every time it is strained as Seonghwa tries to heave him up and over the fallen trees, to the little clearing resting atop the low hill.
Wooyoung clenches his teeth and paws desperately at the other’s chest, muffling his pained cries by biting on his lips as Seonghwa pulls him up, all the while whispering quiet coos and soft nonsense to try to quell the worst of the pain.
His knees scrape on the rocky edge, but when his waist finally breaks surface, Wooyoung’s tugging in the older’s chest and using him as support to clamber up, a whine falling past the tight seal of his lips when his side smarts, making him double over himself as he tries to will the dark spots out of his vision.
“Hwa,” He pleads, tears in his eyes, “Hyung, hyung please, leave me! I can’t–I can’t—”
“No.” Seonghwa cuts him off, an arm winding around the younger’s hips, careful of the arrow lodged just to the right of his belly. “We either escape together, or we don’t.”
“Yeosang,” Wooyoung cries, another whine falling out of him as his wound jostles when they break into a run. “You can’t leave him, he needs—”
“I told him,” Seonghwa pants, sweat dripping from his brow and down the curve of his cheek, “When I first sensed it, I tore the necklace. He should have fled by now, I know he should have. He’s smart, he knows where to go. Don’t you wanna see him Wooyoungie? Darling, just a little bit more and then you’ll see him, love. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I should’ve known, I should have known.”
Wooyoung’s knees give out, but before his knees can touch the ground, Seonghwa is gripping him tight and heaving him forward, over the slippery leaves and the unsteady rocks, pushing him into the thicket of the trees to escape the hunters on their trail.
“Hyung, please–” Wooyoung wails, his steps slowing, legs wobbling where he stands as his hands clutch to the arrow embedded into his flesh. “It hurts, it hurts, hyung please, no more, I can’t — it hurts–”
Helpless, Seonghwa stops as well, but when he turns his gaze to him, Wooyoung can’t stop letting out a scared little whimper as a pair of red-rimmed, fearful eyes meet his own. Seonghwa shouldn’t ever be scared, not ever, there should never be a reason to make him look the way he is now.
Wooyoung so desperately wishes for this nightmare to end, for the yells and hollers on their trail to die down and let them be, but Seonghwa is slowly shaking his head, his hands trembling as he pulls Wooyoung’s hands towards his chest, holding on to them as if it’s his last breath.
“I don’t know what to do,” Seonghwa bites his lip, tears making their way down his eyes. His voice shakes, “I don’t know what to do, Wooyoungie.”
“Leave me,” Wooyoung cries, “I’m injured, there’s no hope of me making it out of here alive, but you can. Yeosang needs you,” he says, swallowing down a hiccup, “Hyung, you can’t just abandon him in this mess and–and deh-die here with me.”
“Die?” Seonghwa’s breath hitches, his eyes gaining a feral gleam to them. “You won’t just die, Wooyoung.” he sucks into a deep breath, eyes shaking. “They will burn you! They will tie you down to that cursed stake and light fire under your feet Wooyoung!”
“I know!” Wooyoung lets himself fall, his bony knees hitting the dirt floor with a sickening thud, Seonghwa is too shaken to be able to hold him this time, his sight too blurry to be properly able to see and react. Wooyoung’s soft green dress falls in a circle around him, concealing his bruised knees but the younger doesn’t even feel the scrapes as the wound on his side flares, ridding him of any thoughts.
He breathes heavily, trying to speak over the giant lump lodged into the back of his throat.
“I know,” he says slowly, when the pain has edged back enough for him to form a word. He looks up, his shiny eyes mirrored in Seonghwa’s golden gaze as he musters up a small, sad smile.
“It’s okay.” Wooyoung whispers, hiding his trembling hands in the folds of his skirt, “Better me than you, or Yeosang hyung.”
“Wooyoung,” Seonghwa squeezes his eyes closed, and it is clear that every word out of his mouth hurts the other to hear. “I can’t leave you to death like this. It will kill me anyway if I leave knowing what is going to happen to you.”
A horse neighs, the sound of it far closer than any of them felt comfortable to be.
Wooyoung gestures down at the arrow on his belly, thick and barbed, tearing past the cotton of his dress and into his skin. A benign smile on his lips.
“I am a lost cause, hyung.” He huffs a little breath, tilting his head up to look at the older with every inch of love he feels for him. “Thank you, for saving me. For taking care of me. I will forever be grateful for your kindness,” his tongue feels heavy, but Wooyoung simply wets his lips and continues.
Seongwha looks down at him like he just lost a child.
“It’s the least I can do after everything you have done for me.” Wooyoung leans a bit forward, lifting his hand out of lap and gently taking a hold of the older witch’s calloused palm in his. “Let me repay you back,” he breathes. Voice a whisper, Wooyoung smiles. “Please, let me let you go.”
Seonghwa is immediately kneeling down and pulling him into his embrace, cradling the back of his head into his chest as if Wooyoung was something precious, something fragile.
“No.” Seonghwa says sternly, and Wooyoung feels goosebumps erupt over his skin by the cold clarity in the older’s tone. “No. No one is left behind. I know a spell. I will call to them, and if we die here, together…” His hands tighten on Wooyoung’s shoulder, and even in his grief he’s careful of his injury.
Seonghwa clicks his mouth shut. “Then so be it.”
“Them?” Wooyoung asks breathily, holding down pained gasps that threaten to spill from his lips. “Who?”
But when he tips his head back to catch the other’s eyes, Seonghwa’s golden gaze is already glowing, lips moving in a hurried, low tone — chanting a spell.
The older pulls away, just barely, enough to move his arms away from Wooyoung’s waist. His fingers skirt over the bloodied mess around the wounded flesh, gathering blood, and there’s a soft apology to Wooyoung’s ear before he feels his hair being pulled, gasping as he looks down and sees a few strands of his black hair now grasped in the older’s bloodied hand.
Seonghwa takes a deep breath, and closes his eyes.
“Advenire.”
Just as Seonghwa’s lips close around the word, Wooyoung’s skin breaks out in goosebumps.
Something shifted.
Something of sound mind and heavy weight.
Seonghwa slumps into Wooyoung’s arms, but just as he’s about to ask what happened, Wooyoung flinches when there’s a howl — coming from just right behind them.
“Witches,” A raspy voice sneers, the sound almost drowned out by the yells of hunters coming their way.
Seonghwa clambers up to his feet, moving to crouch in front of Wooyoung’s vulnerable form defensively.
“Why am I here?”
“Alpha,” the older calls, towards the man standing all in his naked glory before them. When Wooyoung turns, Seonghwa’s obscuring his vision, and he can’t catch a clear picture of the werewolf standing right in front of them without straining the wound on his side.
Wooyoung gasps, “Hyung? Hyung–what–”
But Seonghwa’s voice is stable, even as his hand shakes from where he extends it across Wooyoung’s chest. “Help us, and you have our favor. A witch’s favor.”
“I’ll be your eternal servant,” Seonghwa’s eyes blaze, “but you have to serve me first.”
─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────
Seonghwa watches the wolf sharper than a hawk as the creature moves to lay his Wooyoung carefully on a matted stone table that was lined with pathetic fur stripes. The room reeks of wet coal, rotten verbal herbs and old, soaked grief in its rawest form — none of things that should ever get to touch his little love.
Wooyoung had closed his eyes to consciousness only few minutes ago, the same agonizing minutes in which Seonghwa fought to enter the wolves’ den with his dignity still intact and hands free of chain, lips barely holding back from threatening to hex them all — his blood pact be damned — and rushing to deter the hands that tried to take his darling away from the wolf’s arms even if the man did use his enhanced voice against his own pack to protect Wooyoung.
Seonghwa glares at them all now, standing over Wooyoung’s head and daring any of them to breathe harsher in the boy’s way.
The foolish alpha that his desperate call had summoned — Hongjoong of the Kim pack, he came to find —, positions himself in front of the stone bed with his arms crossed over his chest, bulging muscles out in a show of nothing more than a feral dog as the alpha stands terrifyingly still. Eyes cloudy in a gray fog, and yet no less cutting, steady, under the others’ yelled out protests.
The werefolk had all followed them from the edge of the pack’s borders to the healer’s cabin ever since they caught the whiff of Wooyoung’s blood, a witch’s blood, their hackles risen and teeth out snarling as they came howling a myriad of different curses, a few other alphas even daring out to reach and swipe at the two of them — Seonghwa ducked under the head alpha’s short height and his darling little love cradled protectively in Hongjoong’s hold, desperately trying to evade the hands wishing to cause them harm.
A bunch of them have even spilled into the quiet room now, complaining and asking the alpha if he has gone mad to bring not a witch, but two to their territory, some going so far as to question his authority which got snarls from the others — but contrary to his initial beliefs, Hongjoong had stood tall in front of this… sorry excuse of a bed, not rising to their pathetic challenge.
The calmness that the alpha exudes is a fresh breath of air in the midst of madness they have found themselves in, and no matter how much it pains him to admit it, Hongjoong proves himself a steadfast pillar between them and the unhinged folk of his pack, so Seonghwa lets his defenses lower a bit.
He directs his attention to the healer, a beta woman aged way more than both of them combined, pick and prod gently at Wooyoung’s wound, trying to dislodge the arrow without causing him more hurt.
If only it was him that dealt in healing magic between the two of them.
Seonghwa balls his hands into fists, leaning over Wooyoung’s head and burying his face into the other’s neck upside down. But no, he had to leave the light to not sully it with his darkness, to keep the purity of the matter, and not let the storm prowling in his veins kill the innocence of giving life.
No. Seonghwa chose to delve down into shadowed depths of defensive spells, only to emerge on the other side of the book having learnt that, there isn’t a charm named protection, but charms meant to protect.
One of them had to make that sacrifice to break a heart and mend it back together with glass shards, and between the two of them, as long as he got to have a say in it, it would always be Seonghwa.
“He does not belong in here,” one of the wolves pushes forward, hands braced on Hongjoong’s chest. “You are wasting our resources on some — some demons that will slit your throat the second he’s got a chance!”
There, on the right side of the room, all the way back past the healer and the alpha, pushed against the wall and lined up on shelves, are three vials of dried foxgloves.
Seonghwa has the exact right spell to use those flowers and drain the blood away from this fool’s body and onto the flower’s petals, the spell memorized and ready to chant, just holding his breath and waiting for the moment the wolf gets past Hongjoong and dares to think of reaching for Wooyoung.
But his attention snaps back to the beta when she successfully manages to rip out the arrow, now going through all over the nearby shelves, rushing to clear the wound.
Hongjoong barely budges. “I will explain myself to you only once, and in a very civilised manner.” He drones, as if having two witches standing behind him was an everyday matter. He rips the man off of his chest though, and that’s the only time Seonghwa even catches a modicum of annoyance in the man’s face towards his folk.
When silence ensues, Seonghwa uses it to slither behind the bed and move to help the healer bandage his love’s waist, all the while keeping his eyes on the room.
Hongjoong clicks his tongue. “I’ve got myself a witch under my command and if any of you think to harm my possession, I’m going to be very pissed.”
That seems to shut up the room.
The bandage crumples under his fist, but Seonghwa very carefully doesn’t let his scorn spill.
Some of them look at the alpha with shock while the others’ gaze speak of wonder, but all Seonghwa can see in the moment, is pure, unhinged, red.
His hands shake from where he grips Wooyoung’s waist, and the hitch of his darling’s breath and the slight pinch of his brows is the only thing keeping him from burning this self-absorbent, egoistic piece of shit down to hell.
“We all know witches can’t lie,” Hongjoong turns to meet his gaze, and it’s filled with so much arrogance that Seonghwa wants to reach for that arrow and make him feel the agony of being a witch.
“So tell them, let them know the truth yourself.” He tilts his head, chuckling. “Hells’ know, even with satan’s magic in your veins you are no one’s favorite to have his lies.”
One of the vials holding the foxgloves — shatters.
“Hyung?” Wooyoung croaks.
All the fight leaves Seonghwa’s body in a single breath.
“Darling,” he crouches down on the floor, putting his head in Wooyoung’s line of sight. “Oh baby, it’s alright darling, you’re okay. We’re okay.”
Wooyoung blinks at him confusedly, and Seonghwa’s heart breaks all over again. “But there were—” he whispers, coughs a little, and then looks up at Seonghwa with big wide eyes. “But h-hyung, the hunters?”
“Just rest now, baby, okay? Hyung’s got you now.” He touches their foreheads, whispering it against the younger’s closed lashes. “You’re safe now.”
“Huh,” Wooyoung whispers back, falling back into that dreamless sleep again, “Safe.”
Seonghwa looks up at Hongjoong with hatred alive in his eyes.
“I made a promise.” He declares, standing up to his full height and rounding the table to stand eye to eye with the alpha, using his height to sneer down at him. “I am to act as you say in exchange for our safety.”
Hongjoong grins. “That was a foolish move.”
“And yet here you are.” Seonghwa arches a brow.
If anything, that works to make the creature’s grin widen even more, and Seonghwa rips his gaze away from the alpha so he doesn’t rip out anything else.
“You heard the witch,” Hongjoong directs back to the people frozen in the cabin. “So if you will leave now, I have a witch to heal.”
The wolves leave the hut in a daze, some more excited and some more scared. Seonghwa rejoices in the feeling of having scared at least a few of them, but the feeling dies down in his chest when a tall wolf stays glued to the wall beside the open door.
Hongjoong looks at him questioningly.
“I’m not leaving you alone with that,” the man spits, eyes trained on Seonghwa as if he was seconds away from hexing them — which, understandable. Seonghwa was, truly, seconds away from hexing them.
Hongjoong spares a glance down at the table, and Seonghwa moves to cut off his sight from Wooyoung completely.
“One of them can’t move and the other is sworn to not harm me,” Hongjoong waves off the other’s concern. “You don’t need to stay here, Yunho.”
“I’d rather stay,” says Yunho, eyes glaring daggers at Seonghwa that he wholeheartedly returns.
“Alright,” Hongjoong nods, “Suit yourself. Doc,” he turns to the beta, tipping his chin towards Wooyoung. “What’s the verdict?”
“He’ll live.”
Seonghwa raises his brows in pure disappointment. “I could only expect that the healer of your pathetic pack would be as useless as this.”
The woman whirls on her feet to snarl at him. “I saved him, you heathen!”
“And it took you nearly half an hour standing frozen over him!” Seonghwa scowls, “Any longer and I’d have started to believe you needed a saving of your own.”
“Go to hell!”
“Eh,” Seonghwa shrugs, perching beside Wooyoung’s hip on the table. He gives the woman’s hunched body a cursory look, “You’ll be there earlier than me.”
The beta, beet-red, turns to the alpha to back her up, but surprisingly, Hongjoong only raises his arms up in surrender, “I can’t fight all of your battles, Youra. I did a whole lot of ‘em already.”
Any ounce of joy he might have felt at the healer’s very obvious frustration vanishes when Seonghwa realizes Hongjoong seems to share his delight.
The alpha chuckles when the beta, Youra, shoulder-checks him when she leaves, and then turns that mirthful gaze back to Seonghwa’s soulless one.
Seonghwa raises his chin. “Want me to drain her blood? You two don’t seem to get along.”
“We get along fine, but I didn’t realize I picked up a vampire stray.” Hongjoong takes a seat at the chair beside the other alpha, putting one leg over other knee. “Do I have to start worrying about your rations, too?”
Seonghwa scoffs, “Worry about your people first.”
“You really don’t help your case with that tongue.” Yunho grimaces, as if pained to even address him. “What can you even do for our pack?”
That catches Seonghwa off guard, and he looks at them both with a surprised gaze for a second, before bursting into cackle. “Oh, you idiots,” he laughs, crossing his legs, “Why on Earth would I give you ideas. You are all free to do that on your own, and take all the time you need.”
Hongjoong and Yunho pale.
A witch’s cackle. Rumored to bring the worst of bad lucks if it came from the heart and genuine joy, trapping you under its curse.
A whole lot of horseshit, really. Wooyoung and him erupt into uncontrollable giggles whenever the towns’ kids come to play with them by the well in the city center, and it only serves to enhance their health and increase their luck for the day. No sudden fires in their houses or warts all over their bodies.
But Seonghwa makes sure his laugh is extra loud when he catches a sight of stricken faces.
“Shut up you witch!” Yunho steps forward, but Seonghwa only rolls his eyes.
“You realize calling me a witch is not the insult you think it is, right?”
He sputters, “I’ll call you whatever the hell I want!”
“Alright,” Seonghwa ignores him, sliding his gaze back onto the alpha, who’s watching them closely. “Just saying.”
“Why were you running away from the hunters?”
Seonghwa stares at him. Trying to make out if this creature does own a head as thick as it looks, and when Hongjoong only stares back, he comes to an appalled realization that the wolf is, matter of fact, a tool in the shed.
“Because..?” Seonghwa trails off, looking at the other questioningly. “I don’t want fire under my feet?” He frowns, makes sure his voice is dripping in condescension. “Why is that so hard to understand?”
Yunho sighs, and Hongjoong runs a hand through his hair.
“You are an idiot.”
Seonghwa gasps at Yunho, gesturing towards the head alpha. “In comparison to him? Never.”
“I’m asking you how they were on your trail,” Hongjoong raises a hand to hold off Yunho’s advancing form. “You have to remember that you answer to me now.”
“Yes, I do quite remember that. It’s been an hour already and you never let me forget.” Seonghwa rolls his eyes, “How would I know what they did to find us, if I wasn’t as clueless, I wouldn’t be here, you see.”
Yunho snarls, “Stop playing games!”
“I’m not playing any games! Your alpha is the one asking me stupid questions!”
Seonghwa’s back hits Wooyoung’s thighs as Yunho’s jacket rips in Hongjoong hands. His darling whines in pain beneath him, and that’s fucking it—
A claw digs into his neck, right on his pulse point, drawing blood.
Seonghwa stops.
“Don’t get cocky now, witch.” Yunho’s eyes flare red, looking down leaning over him with a venomous gaze.
“Your safety was promised so you wouldn’t die,” he says, and Seonghwa’s blood freezes in his veins at his own ignorance. He should have been more detailed, should have thought about it more—
The claw digs deeper, and Seonghwa can’t stop the way his breath hitches in pain.
“Why were they chasing you?”
“They told on us.” He stammers out, “Woo—My covenmate healed a boy by the well, close to our house, and someone followed us home.” Seonghwa squeezes his eyes shut, the memory of that god awful arrow taking home in Wooyoung’s flesh still too vivid in his mind.
“There were hunters in town, and we — I,” he winces, biting his lips to stifle a whine. His voice comes out hollow when he speaks next, “I didn’t know.”
The pressure on his neck eases. Yunho pulls back, leaning down until his eyes meet Seonghwa’s slanted gaze.
“Who?”
“The townsfolk.” Hongjoong hums, at the back. “Doesn’t matter. No one important, I assume.”
The taller barely moves for a moment, but then the claw leaves his throat with a harsh scoff.
Seonghwa breathes a little easier, though his legs take a moment to shake off their tremble to gain strength again. With an unsteady hand grappling for purchase anywhere that is not Wooyoung, Seonghwa slowly pushes himself up into a half-sit, half-standing position over his love’s body. Standing guard for however measly his stand might be.
Yunho doesn’t stay too close, already having crossed over to watch over behind his alpha’s shoulder lest he comes close to the witches' any more than necessary. The urge to roll his eyes is high, but so is his drive to protect his little love.
Except, the wolves don’t just stand there. With a nod of his head, Hongjoong glances down at the boy still out cold on the table, and then he turns away. Moving to leave.
Seonghwa’s heart lurches.
“You’re going to leave us here?”
The breathy tone of his own voice makes him wince, but Wooyoung’s body is out cold beneath him, laid over hard stone and left in the open without any charms made to protect him, so Seonghwa grips his hand tight on his skirts and faces the carpets.
Hongjoong considers him, stopping with a foot out of the door, the taller wolf tense at his shoulder.
The alpha frowns, he turns his chin to address him. “No one will lay a hand on you while you’re here.”
Seonghwa lets out a wry smile. His hand curls around his throat, catching a bead of the blood that leaks out from the thin wound. He looks down at the ruby red on his finger. “Liar.”
Hongjoong’s eyes track the movement, Yunho scoffing quietly behind him. “That will not happen again,” His lips thin. “You have my word.”
“A lycan’s word means nothing to me, alpha.” Seonghwa sneers, but it’s with the fight having drained out of him, the light of it left in ashes. All he feels is exhaustion, tired beyond what his shaky bones can carry, so much so that Seonghwa would have considered a moment to close his eyes to a dreamless sleep if it weren’t for Wooyoung’s vulnerable body behind him.
“They can hurt me.” He sighs instead, raising his head. His droopy eyes meet Hongjoong’s sharp ones, and Seonghwa feels his weight grow heavier as he realizes what he’s going to say next might just be his downfall.
“Your wolves can hurt me, alpha.” He forces out, mouth dry. Seonghwa glares back at the floor. “I won’t trust them at all, not for you. Not for anything.”
Hongjoong turns to face him sharply at that, all the while as something sickeningly close to excitement pours into Yunho’s eyes.
Seonghwa just wants to rest.
He knows that the decisions he’s making on the cusp of passing out are to be of a headache if he survives the night in the wolves’ den — but then again, with his love spread out under him, it can never be a matter of ifs.
He’s just so tired. Making a blood pact is something a witch needs to prepare beforehand, to take a few moons to adapt and replenish their energy before ever attempting to touch and mend souls. It’s not a practice just done out of the blue with a man he doesn’t know. Soul kindling is a gift, not a curse, it demands love and safety within the bond to not latch onto the bodies themselves to feed off their energy.
Seonghwa took it upon himself to perform the ritual, to bear the weight of the sudden energy vacuum since his darling was already in a fight with Death himself, and the repercussions of such an act is weighing heavily on him now. Not to mention, the alpha would be someone that would rather harm the witch rather than protect him, as is the nature and need for the connection in the first place.
Truth be told, Seonghwa sighs softly, closing his eyes, when he had called for him, he had wanted Hongjoong to finish them off before the hunter’s could get their torches anywhere close.
He doesn’t know why Hongjoong had accepted the proposal. Doesn’t know why the lycan had honored his words and kept him out of harm’s way, his darling out of harm’s way. Seonghwa had used Wooyoung’s hair to bind the wolf’s loyalties to the boy, not to himself. The fact he gets to stand here, and be with Wooyoung now in itself is a miracle, though one that Seonghwa will never thank the wolf for. Whatever the alpha doesn’t know won't hurt him, and Seonghwa would rather keep it to himself why his throat can bleed in Hongjoong’s presence while the alpha watches — for it were Wooyoung’s neck to shred blood, the alpha would suffer the same.
“Very well, then.”
“Huh?” A tired noise leaves Seonghwa’s lips, and then his eyes look up to catch’s Hongjoong’s equally wary gaze.
“Yunho, go fetch more blankets and a futon, please.” The alpha orders, looking straight ahead into Seonghwa’s eyes. He nods his chin, resolute. “I will stay here.”
“No—“ Seonghwa frowns, “What?”
“Alpha.” Yunho shakes his head.
Hongjoong arches a brow, turning until his face is visible to the other. “Do I need to repeat myself?”
“No.” Yunho chews on his lips, stealing a glance at Seonghwa’s slouched shoulders. “But he—“
“He is mine.” Hongjoong cuts him off, raking a hand through his messy black locks. “And in desperate need of blankets, so.” He turns back, a clear dismissal. “Get to it.”
Yunho leaves the den with tight lips and even tighter face. Obviously not one bit agreeing with their arrangements. And truth be told, Seonghwa shares his sentiment.
“You’re willing to stay here?” He arches a brow, a hand behind protectively over Wooyoung’s hip. “With witches?”
“Problem?” Hongjoong takes his eyes off his sleeping love’s face and back to him. He tilts his head, a cocky grin on his face. “I’m the only one who can.”
Seonghwa’s lips purse. “You can’t hurt us. We have a pact.”
“I know.”
“Then get out.”
“You said it yourself, witch.” Hongjoong groans, though his lips have yet to lose that bastard smile. He slouches back on the wall, “My wolves can hurt you, and I’m here merely to defend you.”
Seonghwa barks out a laugh. “Defend me? Defend me outside, alpha. I don’t need to be looking at your mutt face while you stand there and gawk.”
“Mhm.” Hongjoong smirks, “I’m allowed to look, no?”
Seonghwa’s heart drops. His hands shake. Hongjoong’s face sobers just a minute late.
“Touch Wooyoung and you’re dead.” Seonghwa stammers, pushing forward to stand in between his love and this — this… despicable wolf with his towering, albeit trembling height. “You hear me?” Seonghwa hisses, hands clenched tight beside his hips. “Blood pack be damned, I will take myself out with you — I don’t care! Touch him, I dare you!”
The alpha licks his lips. It’s not a nervous act, more calculating than anything, and it has Seonghwa’s heart jackrabbiting in his chest. He doesn’t like this. Doesn’t like this one bit. Oh gods, what has he done?
“I apologize.” The alpha starts, tipping his chin. He averts his gaze. “I didn’t mean to insinuate any unsavory acts.”
“I am honest.” Seonghwa pushes out, teeth clattering. “You said it yourself, witches can’t lie. You touch him with anything other than protection in your mind and I will end you.” He says, taking a step back. Walking until his hip hits the table and he slumps down onto the edge of where Wooyoung’s laying. Seonghwa takes a deep breath, nodding. “I promise. A witch’s promise.”
Hongjoong slowly, with his eyes tracked on Seonghwa’s every movement like a hawk, pushes off the wall and turns. His hands flex once beside his hips, trying to get out the excess energy, and it’s never a good idea to be stuck in a room with a wolf that is restless. Much less a head alpha at that.
Except Hongjoong doesn’t demand to stay anymore. When Seonghwa’s gaze bores into him with equal distaste, the alpha curses under his breath and faces away.
“I’ll be outside.” He says, reaching for the door. “Yunho will leave the blankets on the porch with a knock. Do what you will.”