Chapter Text
Well, this is just my luck, Jimin thought.
Seokjin was mid-step up the stairs of Jimin’s front porch, his face mild but perfectly content, when his eyes landed on the guy stepping out of the door. Seokjin’s face morphed into a poorly hidden scowl so fast, under any other circumstances Jimin would have been impressed by his friend’s expressiveness. As he entered a staring contest with the other omega, the guy behind him chuckled awkwardly.
“Omega Kim,” he greeted stiffly. “What a surprise”
“Likewise,” if there was any more venom in Jin’s voice, it would have dripped down his chin. “Blessed Season, Beta Gu.”
Gu Baekjae, not the most confident guy on a good day, hesitated.
“Blessed,” he agreed finally. “Seems like you have business to attend to.”
Jimin couldn’t help the sigh that escaped him. Of all the days Seokjin chose to make the track all the way from the temple to Jimin’s house, this just had to be the one. He internally bemoaned not making the guy leave as soon as they were done last night, but this close to a heat Jimin was just a little too clingy, a little too lonely for his own good.
Now he was going to have to deal with Jin’s motherly instincts.
“Seems like I do,” he turned to the beta, schooling his face in as neutral of an expression as he could master. “See you around?”
“Sure,” Baekjae nodded in a way that said they wouldn’t. He sent an unsure glance Seokjin’s way, and then they watched him walk off, his steps light and bouncy.
After a moment, Jin stepped over the last two stairs up onto the porch and leaned against the railing. The wooden planks whined precariously.
“Well?” Jimin said, an eyebrow raised. If he was going to get a lecture, he’d like to get it over with as soon as possible, or Jin would stew in his frustration and the whole day would be ruined.
The older omega looked at him, eyebrow creased, bottom lip caught between his teeth. It wasn’t a common look on him, one of deep concentration and mental effort. He usually only ever looked like this while translating a particularly difficult section of old scripture.
The silence stretched. Jimin shifted uncomfortably on his feet.
“So… did something happen?” Whatever weird stupor Jin had entered, the question seemed to break it.
“Kind of. Hweein said there would be an announcement today.”
“About?”
“The Revelation.”
Jimin’s eyes went wide.
“Yeah, I know. We will need to hit the market if she’s correct. There are only about two dozen candles left.”
Jimin nodded, already opening the front door. The candles would be the least of their problems; the silks they would need for the ceremony were a much bigger concern. He crossed the small room toward a large chest of drawers, one of its legs broken and replaced by a pile of flat river rocks, tilting a little unsteadily to one side. Carefully, as to not upset the balance, Jimin pulled out the biggest drawer, small pelts and dyed cotton garments filling it about half-way. A medium sized wooden jewelry box sat on one side. He pulled it out and began to ruffle through the array of brass jewelry stored inside. The gifts he occasionally received from his many paramours weren’t anything truly luxurious, nothing an omega would receive if they were being courted, but Jimin wasn’t in the business of complaining.
Now inside a closed space, Jin’s scent, thick with displeasure, quickly filled the room. Out of the corner of his eye, Jimin watched his friend walk up to his unmade bed that stood in the corner by the window, the remnants of Jimin’s nest strewn across the surface. The smell of an overwatered jasmine plant curled in Jimin’s nostrils.
“Hyung,” he called out with way less sass than initially intended. Something wasn’t right. Jin smelled sad, not frustrated or angry. “Spit it out.”
Jin stood still for a moment, staring into the space in front of him, that twisted expression etched uncomfortably onto his beautiful face.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally, voice uncharacteristically broken. “I’m sorry you have to do this just so we can trade.”
Jimin stared at him incredulously.
“What are you… Hyung, that is not why I sleep with people.” He crossed the room and grabbed his friend’s hands. Jin’s eyes shimmered wit something that looked like guilt. “Where is this coming from?”
Jin smiled, though it looked forced.
“It’s just… I was going to scold you a little, but then I thought about how right after I’d ask you to go through your stash so we can go to the market and get supplies, and now I’m sick to my stomach.”
Jimin shook his head in exasperation.
“You know nobody pays me to have sex with them right? It’s just gifts. Literally everyone in the compound gets gifts from their fuck buddies every once in a while. Alphas can’t help it.”
“I know,” Jin rubbed at his eyes. “Not everyone has to use those gifts for trading though.”
“Well, most of them also don’t have the weight of an entire religion on their shoulders, hyung,” Jimin smiled. “Come on, don’t make me feel bad about something I didn’t even think about in that way until you said it. I just like sex. I get to have fun, and the temple gets to have the things we need. It all works out.”
Jin didn’t look entirely convinced but nodded anyway. Jimin tugged him back to the chest and shoved the jewelry box into his hands.
“Come on, help me go through this. We will need something better than a few pairs of earrings to convince Minsung to trade us for those silks and you know her taste better than I do.”
Half an hour later found them walking down the dirt road that connected Jimin’s neighbourhood to the main town, satchels stuffed with pelts and shirts and jewelry thrown over their shoulders. Jin still smelled upset, so Jimin chose to keep quiet to let his friend work out whatever it was that prompted that whole conversation.
For a while, the only sounds accompanying them was an occasional bird chirping overhead and the wind rustling in the trees and bushes that grew untamed all along the road. Very few people still lived in this part of town, most choosing to move closer to the centre, and whoever did occupy the old dens, were all too used to the sight of Jimin to pay them any mind. Most of the structures that once made up the neighbourhood were long abandoned, roofs and walls collapsed, windows broken and pitch black. Jimin was used to it, too young to remember it any differently, but Jin wasn’t. He rarely ever came this way, preferring to meet Jimin at the temple every morning, not wanting to see the dens that were once full of life and sound, now dilapidated and decaying.
Closer to the town, the scenery changed. The houses stood up straighter, the number of crooked roofs thinned out, the trees appeared more pruned and looked after, some of them still heavy with late fruit. The people changed, too — a group of tiny pups rushed past them at one point, engrossed in their game of tug. A pregnant omega, cheeks glowy with blush, stood in a garden, his eyes trained carefully on Jimin as they passed by. A little golden plate in the shape of a sun with wavy rays crowned the roof of his house. The omega muttered something to himself, too far away for the words to be audible, but still Jimin felt it like a physical brush against his cheek. He shuddered. Jin’s warm hand found his, though he didn’t say anything, just squeezed his fingers for a moment. Jimin squeezed his back.
Once the dirt road turned a stone-paved boulevard, they were in the town. They didn’t stay on the main streets for long, ducking into an alleyway quickly, briskly walking though a maze of back streets. The sun neared its highest point by the time they made it onto the square.
The market was a fluid and inconstant thing: sometimes it sprawled across the entire square in every direction, even spilling out onto the adjacent streets; sometimes it was nothing more that a handful of booths clustered in one corner. Today they caught it in the in-between state — four somewhat neat rows of stalls lined the left width of the square, while a large stage towered over the right one.
“Wow,” Jimin breathed out, awed despite himself. “The Council went all out this year, didn’t they?”
Seokjin shrugged.
“Good trading year, apparently,” he said. They walked along the side of the square closer to the stage while still covered by the shade of the mess hall. “Plus, if Hweein is right, this equinox is going to be much more than just a drunken brawl and a bonfire.”
They leaned against the wall, just a few short meters away from the edge of the stage. They settled for a few moments, and then Jin circled his arms around Jimin’s shoulders carefully, as if afraid of being pushed away; Jimin nuzzled into him readily, always eager to scent. Jin buried his nose in Jimin’s hair.
“I’m sorry about what I said in the morning, Jiminie,” he said mournfully. The scent of jasmine, much fresher than it has been the entire day, settled around them in a soft cloud. “I’ve just… haven’t been feeling the best about the world recently, I guess.”
Jimin hummed.
“Did something happen?”
Jin sighed but didn’t answer. They cuddled together for a while, watching as more and more people trickled into the square as the minutes passed by. A crowd formed in front of the stage.
“The Council must’ve sent messengers across the neighbourhoods,” Seokjin said quietly. Jimin hummed. A middle-aged alpha caught the sight of them huddled up together and turned away so quickly he almost fell, disdain on his face barely hiding his fear. It almost made Jimin smile. No one sent a messenger for them to come here today, and yet here they were, envoys of a goddess few still worshipped.
Another half-hour passed before a group of six made it onto the stage. At the head of the procession, leaning heavily onto her cane and held up on each side by two young men, was Elder Hwan, the features of her face nearly lost to the wrinkles. A few steps behind her a man and a woman stood, so similar to each other, there could be no doubt they were siblings. Jimin knew, more that saw, the gold medallions in the shape of a sun laid carefully on both their chests. Another figure, swallowed entirely by a white robe stopped at the very back of the stage.
Once Elder Hwan was carefully balanced by her two aids in front of the crowd, the figure made a pass with their hand. The crowd fell silent. Even the merchants and their customers ceased their transactions and turned to listen.
When Elder Hwan spoke, her voice carried across the square.
“Pack Alpha Min’s condition has deteriorated drastically over the past few days,” she said, never one to mince words. “Though he is rarely conscious anymore, he awoke early this morning to tell that the Founding Alpha had come to him in his sleep and showed him his soon departure. The high priest then performed divination and confirmed Pack Alpha’s vision.”
She swayed gently to the side, the helper’s hand catching the woman’s elbow to steady her. She continued after a moment.
“It was Pack Alpha’s express wish to announce his successor during the equinox celebration next week. The Council, in light of the vision and Pack Alpha’s condition, is inclined to agree.”
The crowd, almost deathly still up to this point, murmured. Elder Hwan continued, unperturbed.
“The Revelation will happen at noon on the second day of the celebration, with all the proper ceremonies set to proceed in order afterward.”
She tilted her head, just slightly, and though she hardly could have known where they were, Jimin was sure in that moment she was looking right at him.
“A tax of one tribute gift per able adult is imposed on the entire pack at the time of the Revelation.”
She sighed heavily, the sound swiping across the square like a caress.
“That will be all.”
As the procession walked down from the stage, the square erupted in noise. Someone cheered.
For a moment, the two omegas stood still, basking in the gravity of everything that had just been said.
“Well,” Jin murmured finally, pulling away from the wall. “We have to go get those silks.”
—
In the inner yard of the pack alpha’s den, pups were on break from their lessons. Their voices, high and clear, rang through the open walkways, full of the kind of happiness that could only be experienced in childhood. Sitting by the window in Pack Alpha Min’s room, Yoongi listened to them count to ten in a game of hide-and-seek, though his eyes never strayed away from the figure laid motionless on the large bed in front of him.
Not for the first time, he tried to remember what his grandfather used to look like. The image escaped him, lately — he only knew that despite never being the tallest person in a room, Min Jungmyun was always the one everybody looked at. He was a prolific orator, something Yoongi didn’t exactly inherit, always able to inject his voice and his speech with such overflowing confidence, it was hard not to agree with him.
But the details of his appearance had been wiped clean by the way this sickness, whatever it was, obliterated him.
The shape on the bed could hardly be recognized as a man at all. A shallow husk of greyed skin, wrinkled in some places, taut in others. His cheekbones protruded dramatically; his lips were nearly gone. His breathing, quiet, yet laboured, was the only sound in the room; his eyes were shut tightly.
Maybe he’s already dead, the alpha thought, and I am just hallucinating his breathing.
The door to the den opened and Elder Kwon Sungha came in, a person hidden from sight entirely by grey robes trailing after her. Yoongi stirred.
“I am sorry it took me so long to get here, dear,” Sungha’s voice was soft, as were her shining eyes. She made her way across the room to where Yoongi sat and crouched beside him, grabbing his lax hand with both of hers. “Elder Hwan had lots to say after the announcement.”
He shook his head, exasperated and understanding. She looked toward the bed. Yoongi’s voice was gravely from disuse when he spoke.
“Chilling, isn’t it? To see him like this.” He brushed the tips of his fingers across his lips and rested his chin in his palm. “Feels like he will fade away if I stop looking at him.”
Her smile was pained.
“He won’t,” she said with conviction Yoongi hadn’t been able to find in himself for a long time now. “He still has time.”
They watched the figure for a moment. Finally, she stood up with a heavy sigh.
“I know this is the last thing you want to discuss right about now,” she perched herself on the neighbouring armchair. “But we have no choice anymore.”
She paused.
Yoongi closed his eyes. He knew what she was about to say, and though he appreciated both her delicacy and the urgency of the matter, the timing felt like a sick joke. He motioned for her to continue.
“The Revelation has been set for the second day. There will be an open challenge, though I can’t imagine anyone will put their candidacy forward; then the confirmation ceremony, and,” she huffed somewhat petulantly, “the initiation at the old temple.”
He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“We are actually doing that?”
Sungha pursed her lips.
“Believe me, dear, I would never step foot in that place on my own accord, and if it were up to me, neither would you. But,” she nodded toward the motionless figure on the bed, “seeing through that part of the process might just be what keeps him here still.” Her smile was fond.
Yoongi hummed. “I guess I thought that since this is the condition he’s in, the initiation would be nicked.”
She gasped in mock offence.
“We respect Pack Alpha’s wishes regardless of what state he’s in,” Sungha tutted, but her eyes were soft. She held the expression for a few moments, though that trick didn’t work on Yoongi anymore, and then sighed. “I know what you mean. But if I am honest, most on the Council are actually quite inclined to uphold the tradition, however strained their personal feelings on the matter are. After all, your grandfather didn’t have an initiation and look how that turned out.” She motioned toward the bed.
“You think the Moon has something to do with this?”
Her mouth twisted in disgust.
“I wouldn’t put it past them,” she said. Yoongi stared at her in disbelief.
“Come on, noona-” he began but she didn’t let him finish.
“It doesn’t matter, Yoongi, not at this point anyway. If it was in fact the priestesses’ doing, Father will deal with it.” She ran a frustrated hand over her face. “What is important,” she took his hand, “is that your ascension goes smoothly. We all want that, and me more than most.”
She smiled at him, warm, motherly. He suddenly longed for her embrace, something he hadn’t allowed himself in a long time, but now, on the precipice of something he at one point didn’t even think would happen, he wished more than anything that this woman, the closest thing to a mother he’d ever have, would hug him.
Something in his face must have given his wish away because she moved toward him with a quiet, “oh, honey.”
A rustle sounded through the room.
They both snapped their heads toward the bed.
A sharp intake of air and then a cough.
“Water…”
Yoongi and Sungha both moved at the same time, but the grey shadow was at the bedside before either of them could so much as locate the pitcher and a glass.
The priest helped Jungmyun up, propping the pack alpha against the pillows, and tipped the glass to his lips. Yoongi stood, halfway between the armchair and the bed, shocked into stillness by his grandfather’s state now that the daylight streaming through the window illuminated him better.
Jungmyun finished drinking, exhaling heavily, the simple action likely draining what little energy he had. “Thank you,” he rasped, pushing the priest’s hand away lightly.
“Pack Alpha Min,” Sungha said softly, “how are you feeling?”
Jungmyun chuckled, his whole body jumping slightly.
“Give your healer my thanks, Sungha. Whatever dope he mixed up in that little vial of his, I can’t feel a thing anymore.”
Sungha nodded, though her smile was pained.
“I will, Pack Alpha.”
“Have you done what I asked for?”
“Yes, the Revelation has been announced just after noon today. Your successor-”
The alpha stopped her with a single motion of a hand.
“I don’t need to know all the details now; I trust you and your brother to take care of it.” He coughed again, nearly toppling over from the force of it. “I would like to have a moment with my grandson while I can. Leave us, would you?”
Sungha glanced at Yoongi. “Of course, Pack Alpha.”
She made it all the way to the door, before Jungmyun spoke again.
“Leave us,” his voice boomed across the room with a force Yoongi didn’t think he had anymore. “Both of you.”
Yoongi only saw a dash of grey across the room, before they were alone. He sat on the edge of the bed, careful of his grandfather’s legs.
“Those pesky priests,” Jungmyun’s laugh was weak. “Sometimes I wonder if they forgot they aren’t actually shadows.”
Yoongi smiled, but his throat was tight. His grandfather hasn’t been this lucid in weeks, if not months, his speech usually nothing more than a slurred jumble of sounds. Jungmyun looked at him, his bright eyes too big for his emaciated face. He smiled sadly.
“I know this isn’t how we planned it, my boy,” he said. “But this is how the gods willed it and that, perhaps, is a blessing none of us can see yet.”
Yoongi cleared his throat.
“Sungha said some think that this is the Moon’s doing,” he said, barely above whisper. “Your sickness, I mean.”
Jungmyun hummed thoughtfully.
“I doubt it. Mother has always been kind to me. Perhaps, too kind,” he took Yoongi’s hand, the skin of his palm dry and hot. “Time will tell, Yoongi, and when that time comes, it will be up to you to make the final judgement.”
He began coughing again, this fit so long that by the time it ended, Yoongi had almost forgotten what they were talking about in the first place. He adjusted the pillows and the furs around his grandfather, the man’s eyes closed in exhaustion.
“I want you to do something for me.” He said after a while.
“Anything, harabeonim.”
“Go to the celebrations next week. Enjoy yourself, for once. Who knows how long before you will have an opportunity to be young again.”
Yoongi’s eyes widened but Jungmyun raised a weak hand before he could protest.
“I know it seems callous to you, to have fun while I am in this state,” he smiled. “But time is fleeting, my boy. Fate doesn’t wait for anyone, it moves along its own song, and all too often we are deaf to it. Trust me, I will still be here when you come back. Think of this as my final wish.”
And who is Yoongi to refuse this man anything?
—
The sun was low in the sky by the time they made it to the temple. Jimin felt the beginnings of a headache just behind his eyes, the long hour they spent haggling with the merchants at the market left him completely worn out. Taehyung, bent over at the waist and knee-deep in upturned garden soil, stood straight once he caught sight of them, face shaded by the large rim of a straw hat, an expectant smile stretching his lips.
“How did it go?” He called out, tugging his gloves off and walking over to them.
“Hweein was right,” Jimin said. He stretched his arms toward the omega, already so tired just from the thought of all the work they had ahead of them. “The Revelation is set for the second day. I don’t know if we will be able to go to the bonfire at all.”
Tae hopped over the low fence separating the walkway from the garden and threw his arms around Jimin. His scent, sour-sweet cherry, sun and dried up soil, made Jimin want to curl in a nest and never leave.
“You will,” Seokjin said sternly. “We will all go and have fun, no matter what.”
“Yeah,” Tae nodded, his nose buried in Jimin’s hair. “It’s all for show anyway. No one will care if the temple isn’t sparkling during the ceremony.” He pulled away with a grin.
“Well, some might care,” Seokjin walked toward the entrance. “But it’s not like we can erase twenty years of abandonment with just a deep clean.”
With that rueful comment, he disappeared inside. Tae furrowed his brows.
“What’s with him?”
Jimin sighed.
“He saw a guy leave my place this morning,” he said. “It was weird. I don’t really want to talk about it.”
Taehyung hummed.
“I think he saw Namjoon the other day at the Council.” Jimin sucked in a breath. “Exactly. He didn’t say much when he returned but I saw him praying three nights in a row now.”
“That will do it,” Jimin murmured.
“Talk to him, maybe? If they did see each other, I’m sure whatever weird thing he said to you this morning was really about that.”
Walking into the Moon Temple, a rare worshipper would inevitably find themselves under the unwavering gaze of a marble statue, posed at if mid-step in the very middle of the chamber, towering high above everything else.
Cut out of a whole slab of pure marble, her figure was covered entirely by folds of flowing fabric, her shape suggested, but not visible, except for her feet and the right eye, the left one halfway covered. Jimin entered the temple on most days, and every time he did, for a fleeting moment he found himself unable to move, pinned to the spot, trying to decipher what feeling his deity held in her eyes that day. Sometimes she looked at him joyfully, at times she was judgemental. Today, he thought, she seemed worried. Jimin stared at the exposed part of her face, the crease in her eyebrow, the downturn in the outer corner of her eye. Was she nervous, he wondered, to have all those people here again, after so long?
“Jiminie,” Seokjin’s loud voice bounced against the stone walls. Jimin startled, ripping his eyes away from the statue. “Come help halmeonim with the fabrics.”
He made his way to the back, into a sectioned-off part of the chamber where they usually dealt with ceremonial preparations. Hweein sat on the floor, skirts pooled around her haphazardly, long bony fingers fluttering neurotically over a chest full of different fabrics. Jimin laid the bundle of new silks from the market gently next to her as he sat down.
“How are you feeling, halmeonim?”
It was as if he hadn’t spoken at all. Hweein didn’t look up, her hands, though shaky and unsteady, didn’t twitch at the sound of his voice. She was muttering under her breath, so quietly it hardly sounded like speech at all. She pulled out a bundle of velvet, deep navy, tiny stars embroidered on it, and set it to the side. Jimin picked it up, unraveling it to inspect for damage done by mole or time.
They worked like this for a while, silent except for her muttering. Seokjin usually talked at her, without expecting anything in return, but Jimin couldn’t. Her lack of response stung him, though he knew it was hardly her fault.
He was looking over yet another piece of fabric when a bony hand suddenly gripped his wrist. He looked up at his mentor, eyes wide, his breath caught in his mouth. Hweein’s lips moved without sound.
“Halmeonim?” He said, louder than intended. Somewhere in the middle distance, Seokjin’s quick steps grew closer. Her nails dug painfully into his skin, her eyes glazed over, staring into a world he wasn’t privy to.
When she finally spoke, her words came out in a hissing breath.
“You’ll do it,” she said. “You’ll initiate the new alpha.”
“What?” Jimin looked to Jin incredulously, but the older omega seemed to be as startled as he was. “Halmeonim, I can’t do the initiation, I don’t know-”
She shook her head resolutely.
“You’ll do it,” she repeated. “You have to do it.”
—
In the end, it was kind of anticlimactic how easily Sungha agreed to let him go to the bonfire.
Yoongi had thought that with the date of the Revelation set, the Council would essentially put him on house arrest. But the lack of any sort of concern on Sungha’s part when she heard about his grandfather’s request surprised him.
“Take Namjoon with you,” she said, her eyes glued to a scroll. “It will be good for him to remember there is a world outside the library.”
He almost made it out of her study when she spoke again.
“Don’t forget, the Jungs are expecting you for a check-up the day after tomorrow.” She glanced up from her scroll and smiled. “Can’t have anything go wrong now, can we?”
He found Namjoon where he usually did — curled on a windowsill with a book in his lap. His scent, orange and clove, curled in the air with heavy bitterness.
“Hey,” he said, sliding across from his friend. “What’s the topic today?”
Namjoon barely spared him a glance.
“Just an anthology of fairy tales from up north.”
Yoongi hummed. Namjoon turned a page.
“How’s harabeonim doing?”
“Awake, surprisingly,” Yoongi tilted his head against the window and closed his eyes. The sun was nearing the horizon now, and the inner yard was silent. He wished the pups were still out — anything to fill the heavy silence that covered the den seemingly all the time now. “Wants me to go to the bonfire. I asked Sungha, she said we could go.”
The pages rustled. “We?”
“Said you need to get out of this place sometime.”
Namjoon hummed. Turned another page.
Yoongi waited. Patience was something they both excelled at.
“I saw him,” Namjoon said finally.
“Yes, at the Council last week. You told me.”
Namjoon closed the book with a resounding thump.
“No, today,” his eyes, though dry, were red. “I went to the square around the announcement time. Hid by the stage. Don’t think he saw me.”
Yoongi exhaled heavily. He wondered what he could say that he hadn’t said already a million times before, something that would get through the heartbroken haze in Namjoon’s head.
In the end, there was only one thing.
“Why?”
Namjoon’s eyes slipped closed. He rolled his head to the side, temple resting against the window.
“I keep seeing him in my dreams. I mean, I have been ever since he left, but lately, it’s gotten…” he paused, his face twisting in a strange way, one that made Yoongi’s stomach clench.
“What are the dreams, Joon?”
“They’re violent. I watch him die over and over again, in a million different ways, and I can never do anything to stop it. Sometimes,” he inhaled heavily, “sometimes he looks at me, as I am screaming for him, and then he walks away. Walks toward the thing that I know will kill him.”
Yoongi nodded. “So, you seek him out to make sure he’s alive.”
“I seek him out to make sure he’s alive.” Joon repeated, his voice almost a whisper.
They fell silent for a moment.
“And how does Kim Seokjin look?” Yoongi asked. He’d lie if he said he wasn’t somewhat curious.
Namjoon shrugged.
“Alright, I guess. Sad, maybe?” He hummed in thought. “Does it make me horrible if a part of me was happy that he looked so sad?”
“No, Joon, he dumped you in the most awful way possible. I’d be concerned if you didn’t want him to suffer just a little.”
A tear slipped out the corner of Namjoon’s eye, even as he smiled.
“He was with another omega,” he said, staring beyond the window into the inner yard. “The tiny one, priestess’s grandson. Something must’ve happened, because they both looked… weird, I don’t know. Nuzzling each other, scenting.” He hiccuped lightly and wiped the tears off his cheeks. “My alpha nearly made me go over there and scent the hell out of him, so I left. The announcement hadn’t even started yet.”
Yoongi stared at his friend, who got through sword training without tears ever since they were children despite not being the best warrior and hated Kim Seokjin’s very existence.
“Stop, Yoongs,” Namjoon said, a tired smile stretching his lips, though his cheeks stayed sadly dimple-free. “He had his reasons.”
Yoongi huffed.
“You keep saying that, but won’t tell me what those reasons were,” he folded his arms across his chest, knowing full well he was probably pouting and looked ridiculous, but not able to stop himself anyway. “As far as I’m concerned, he got cold feet because of all the responsibility he would have to take on if you ended up as harabeonim’s successor.”
Namjoon shook his head ruefully.
“No, that wasn’t going to happen by that point. We both knew it. I don’t like keeping it from you, hyung, you know I don’t, but…” He frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe I just haven’t even come to terms with it myself yet.”
Yoongi sighed. “Well, the good news is, I’m not going anywhere. So, its okay, Joonie. You don’t have to tell me now.”
Namjoon smiled at him again. “Thanks, hyung.”
—
Nightfall found all three priestesses bent at the waist, scrubbing the floor in the main chamber.
“This is awful,” Seokjin grumbled for what felt like the hundredth time. “My hands will never recover.”
To Jimin’s right, Taehyung snickered. This was somewhat of a ritual, Seokjin whining about the endangerment of his beauty every time they did any sort of manual labour.
“You chose this life, hyung,” Jimin quipped, like they always did, and then caught Tae’s wide eyes. Seokjin laughed, but it was forced.
“Yeah, that I did.”
Jimin bit his lip. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to Jin properly ever since they came back from the market. The preparations for the ceremony would take up all their walking hours for the next few days, and they still had to make sure there was enough time for Jimin to go over the ritual itself and learn the prayers, now that Hweein had put him in charge.
“There is no talking her out of this,” Seokjin said when Jimin tried to protest this last-minute promotion. “It’s not that hard, I will go over the order with you a few times. The prayer is long, but you have good memory. You’ll be fine.”
Still, the state of the temple was nowhere near acceptable for the initiation. Certain things they had no way of remedying — like the chunk of the roof that collapsed a few months ago. Some of the rubble was still piled up toward the back of the chamber, and though they have tried to clean it up as best they could, the largest pieces were just to heavy for them to move.
But the floors, the floors had to be cleaned. Hweein stood in the middle of the chamber for about five minutes, stomping her foot and pointing down, howling something incomprehensible, until Taehyung slammed a bucket of water right next to her and began mopping the floor. She looked at him blankly for a minute and then wobbled back to the preparation room.
“I love her but she’s going to drive me nuts soon,” Tae said. Jimin could only sigh.
Hours later, and they only had about a quarter of the chamber done. Outside, the night had coalesced into an inky mass, and Jimin knew he wouldn’t make it home tonight. Jin hardly would have let him get farther than the door.
Finally, Taehyung straightened with a pained groan.
“Okay, we’re done for today,” he announced loudly, slamming the mop into the bucket with vengeance, somehow managing not to splatter the dirty water all over the floors. “I will go get grandma into bed. Jiminie, dump mine out for me, please?”
“Okay,” Jimin said, straightening out as well. Jin seemed lost in thought, mindlessly continuing to mop as Jimin took his and Tae’s buckets outside and dumped them out. He drew a whole bucket of fresh water, washed the rags, and put them on the line to dry, and when he came back, Jin was still staring into the middle space, his chin propped against the long handle of the mop.
“You want help with that, hyung?” He startled at the sound of Jimin’s voice, blinking rapidly a few times.
“No, I… I’ll finish it up here. Go wash up, Jiminie.”
“Okay.”
He washed his face and brushed his teeth quickly in the little bathroom just off the hallway that led to the living quarters. It had been a while since all three of them spent the night at the temple, but the few rooms that withstood the brunt of time and weather were always ready for him. Jimin hesitated on the threshold of the bathroom, his mind running in circles around what Taehyung said earlier and Jin’s lacklustre reaction to the joke they have been making for months now. He could let it go. There was no guarantee Seokjin would even want talk about what happened when he went to give his monthly report on the temple’s affairs to the Council last week. He was always a little off for a few days after, this wasn’t that out of the norm.
Jimin pinched the bridge of his nose.
Except it was, of course, way out of the norm.
With a defeated sigh he walked back to the chamber.
Seokjin sat on his knees in front of Mother’s statue, three small candles illuminating his face, his eyes closed, his mouth moving soundlessly. They didn’t really do nightly services anymore, not since Pack Alpha fell ill. For a long time, the man came to the temple randomly, always in the dead of night, always wrapped tightly in a dark cloak. He never pulled his hood off, he never even spoke, just sat silently on the floor as Hweein chanted prayers and then leave.
But he hadn’t come back in months now, and next week, Jimin realized suddenly, would probably be his last time in this room. He watched as Seokjin bowed deeply forward, his forehead resting on the low base of the statue, just centimetres away from the tips of her toes. The wind howled through the hole in the roof and Jimin shuddered.
“Why do you only pray like this after you’ve seen him, hyung?”
For a long moment, he wondered if Seokjin would answer at all.
“Because that’s when I doubt my faith the most.” He turned around, sliding to the side gracefully. “Doubt my choice to leave him so that I could be here, with you. With her.”
Jimin nodded, his eyes sliding up to Mother’s obscured face. Seokjin may have not grown up in the temple they way he and Tae had, but in some ways, he had better theology than either of them. This religion was like breathing to them; they knew no other way than this. To him, it was a thing he truly learnt, studied from books and scripts they never had access to. What he lacked in practice, he compensated with academic knowledge. There is no right way, Hweein said once, a long time ago, when the tall, awkward omega a little older than her two grandsons first snuck into the temple. It is simply a way.
“Do you think you would be happier if you stayed?”
“No,” the answer came with no hesitation. “Though it has nothing to do with him, and everything with the circumstances. But no, I wouldn’t have been happy. It just…” He sighed. “It still hurts, Jiminie.”
“Hmm. It hasn’t been that long, not really.”
“No, it hasn’t.” Jin pulled his knees to his chest, and suddenly he looked so small and so sad. “And I don’t really want the hurt to go away. I don’t even really know what I want. I just know that whenever I see him, for a brief moment I forger why I left in the first place.”
“So, you pray for her to remind you.”
“Exactly.”
Jimin hummed. They basked under her gentle gaze in silence for what felt like an eternity and a moment.
“Go to bed, Jiminie,” Seokjin said, pulling himself back to his knees.
“Will you tell me someday?” Jimin asked over his shoulder once he stood at the door to the living quarters. “The real reason why you left. I’ve never met him, but I doubt he had any qualms about you worshipping Mother.”
The pain in Seokjin’s eyes seemed to weigh a ton.
“Someday,” he nodded. “Someday I’ll tell you everything, Jiminie.”
Chapter 2
Summary:
The temple gets an unexpected visitor. Yoongi goes to the healer.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Jimin was plowing the garden, covered in soil up to the thigh, Hweein sitting against the trunk of an old fir tree, when her breath hitched suddenly, her wide eyes trained on something behind his back. Jimin turned around.
A billowing mass of grey swallowed the road that connected the temple grounds to the town. It moved and rippled, slowly getting closer, until Jimin could finally make apart the shapes of individual figures, each swallowed entirely by long grey robes. They floated down the wide dirt road up to where it turned into a paved walkway and stopped, splitting down the middle. A woman in the green robes of an elder stepped from among the crowd and began walking toward the entrance.
Jimin’s lips twisted. “Halmeonim,” he called out quietly, “go inside, please.”
It was always a bit of a toss up whether or not Hweein would hear or understand anything that was said to her, much less whether she would take direction. But something about the procession and the shadowy mass of people standing without movement in the distance clearly disturbed her. She scurried inside with a pained whimper.
Jimin walked over to the middle of the walkway, tugging the gloves off his hands, running over everything Seokjin had ever told him about interacting with the Council, which mostly consisted of muttered swearing. Jimin knew very little about the proper etiquette and, even worse, he had absolutely no idea who exactly was strutting toward him, or what her business here was. In his entire life this was the first time an elder besides Pack Alpha set foot on the temple’s territory.
Jimin squinted against the glare of the sun and examined the woman’s face, recognizing her, with a startle, as one of the siblings who stood behind Elder Hwan during the announcement. She stood tall, her spine perfectly straight, and, from afar, that afforded her the appearance of youth. Proximity, however, revealed the webs of wrinkles that spawned from the corners of her eyes and lips. She had a look of someone who’d seen too much too early, exactly the type of compound member Jimin hated dealing with the most.
She looked at him with a scowl, revulsion etched into her features. Normally, being on the receiving end of this look made Jimin recoil in apprehension, but this was his territory. He knew as well as she did that no harm would come to him so long as he stood on the temple grounds.
Jimin schooled his face into a smile and bowed at the waist. “Elder…?”
“Kwon Sungha,” she filled in for him. “I am here as a representative from the pack alpha’s den. Omega Park, if I recall correctly? I don’t think we’ve met in recent years.”
He straightened. “Probably not. Kim Seokjin is the temple liaison for the Elders’ Council.”
“I am here to speak with him,” her eyes flew up to the entrance, as if Seokjin would magically appear there. “Where is he?” She demanded.
“He is at the schoolhouse in the south-eastern neighbourhood. He teaches there three times a week. As per the Council’s order,” he added after she sent him an incredulous look.
That seemed to piss her off.
“The Revelation is days away,” she spit out. “Shouldn’t you all be trying to make this disgusting excuse for a place of worship look presentable?”
The smile slipped off Jimin’s face.
“Well, we also need to eat,” he said slowly, his voice just on the edge of rumbling. “And since Kim Taehyung and I were not permitted to take on any shifts in the main compound, and the work we do here is not considered a contribution, Seokjin hyung cannot afford to miss his teaching shifts, much as he’d like to spend that time elsewhere.”
The astonished look in Elder Kwon’s eyes filled him with such satisfaction, it was almost enough to make him disregard the power she held over him. Jimin’s interactions with the rest of the compound were so rare that he didn’t even know what kind of punishment his quip could potentially warrant, though they couldn’t arrest him while on temple grounds. Anywhere else would be a fair game but here, the elders’ status was largely nominal.
“You take after your mother, I see,” Elder Kwon drawled slowly. Before Jimin’s blood could ignite, she continued. “Well, it doesn’t matter, since you are present. I am here for an inspection, to make sure that your,” she glanced behind him, “temple is in appropriate condition for the initiation of Pack Alpha’s heir.”
Jimin stared her down for a long moment, wrestling with the knowledge that he had no choice but to let this woman in, let her walk on the ground he held most sacred.
“I will show you around, then,” he gritted out.
The three priestesses had spent the better part of the last two days getting the main chamber to look more presentable than it had in years. Except for the pile of rubble from the collapsed roof and a few deep cracks that they had no way of covering, the floors looked startlingly clean, signs of weather and neglect wiped away by multiple rounds of mopping and scrubbing. All around the room, deep navy pillows had been laid out in neat rows. Elder Kwon squatted to touch one of them.
“Did the last round of washing this morning,” Jimin explained when she turned a questioning eye to him. “We don’t have other means of drying this many all at once.” She nodded, standing up, and walked down the narrow aisle toward the statue, a wide circle of space all around it left empty.
“The altar?” She asked over the shoulder.
“Tradition dictates it is not set up until the night of the ceremony,” he said with no inflection.
Elder Kwon hummed thoughtfully, walking in a wide arc around the statue, until the rubble came into view. She looked up at the hole in the roof and then, with wide eyes, back at Jimin. He shrugged.
“Came down a few months ago during a storm,” he said. “It was thundering, so…”
Something about the pile of rocks seemed to unsettle her.
“I will send some people over to clean this up.”
“Thank you, that would be great.”
She breathed out heavily and turned around, her back facing the rubble.
“Who will be leading the ceremony? I have not seen Kim Hweein in a long time, but I cannot imagine she is in any condition for such an intense experience.”
Jimin’s eye narrowed. “I will be leading.” He paused, observing the assured line of her shoulders, the way she seemed to be intimately acquainted with the space. “You have seen the ceremony before.”
Elder Kwon’s smile was sarcastic.
“I have,” she turned around to face the statue. Jimin could hear the wind howling through the opening in the roof. “Tell me, Omega Park,” she turned her head, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, “how is your mother doing?”
She could have gripped his throat with her hands and the effect would have been the same. Breath rushed out of him with a low hiss. She chuckled, hands locked behind her back, head tilted as she stared at Mother’s face.
“Not well, I’ll take it. How many omegas has this place driven mad over the years? You have seen firsthand what happens to the poor souls that choose to serve her. And still, somehow, she manages to keep you enthralled and loyal.” Her voice grated on Jimin ears. He wished she would disappear.
Instead, Elder Kwon turned around. “You are correct, though, I watched Pack Alpha Min’s predecessor be initiated in this very place almost four decades ago. Min Junki’s ceremony was a grand affair. He was… a formidable alpha, we used to say. Have you had the privilege to meet his father yet?”
Jimin bit his lip. If she wanted to catch him in a lie, this would be the perfect set up. Although Pack Alpha’s visits to the temple always seemed to be secret, for all he knew this woman could be Min Jungmyun’s closest confidant.
His hesitation was a second too long.
“You are a smart one,” she said like it was an insult. “Pack Alpha’s affinity for your goddess is well-known to the Council. The secrecy of his visits was for the benefit of the pack and, especially, for his protégés. It isn’t a crime to pray to her, you know. Anyone if free to come here, if they so wish. The state of your temple is nothing more than a manifestation of the people’s, how should I say it… disdain. She did, after all, fail us.”
Jimin gritted his teeth. Above Elder Kwon’s head, Mother’s eye glowed with fury.
“Then why are you here?” He spit out. “If you hate her so much, why do you want her blessing? Why uphold a tradition you clearly have no use for anymore?”
She considered him for a moment.
“You youngsters think that tradition spawns out of want. It doesn’t. It is a product of need. Although yes, not many in this compound want your goddess’s approval, we need it. We’ve had… a hard two decades. The Council needs the new Pack Alpha to succeed.”
For a moment, Jimin was so dumbfounded by her arrogance, he couldn’t even fully comprehend what she’d just said. And then, suddenly, the world exploded with unfamiliar colours, and he could see right through her, her status and posturing falling away like pearly layers of an onion to expose her core, eaten through with rot. Laughter bubbled out of his throat, growing louder and louder, until it filled the chamber to the very brim and burst outside. He watched as Kwon Sungha’s face elongated, her eyes rounding with terror.
“And you think that she cares?” He asked, voice projecting at a volume he had never had before. The edges of his vision blurred, everything but Mother’s figure out of focus, insignificant. “You think that after eighteen years of lies and neglect she will give a fuck about what you need?”
The woman’s mouth trembled on an inhale, but he was done listening to her.
“Let me be very clear,” he watched in slow motion as Kwon Sungha stumbled back, a mount of solid stone that was Mother’s body stopping her tracks. She froze. “The sacrament that will take place here in three days has nothing to do with your Council’s wishes.” A force propelled him forward, his steps light yet resonating across the chamber. “Everything that I will do here, everything that she will do here through me, will be done for Pack Alpha’s sake. And even then,” he scoffed, “it is the strength of Min Jungmyun’s faith that grants them that privilege. Not their status, not their power, not their character for I do not care to know those things anymore.”
He towered over her, having seemingly grown in size in mere seconds. To him, Kwon Sungha seemed like a roach, so minuscule and insignificant, disgusting, despicable, her entire life used to berate his very being, smear him, try to murder him, and still, after all that, she was brazen enough to think she had the right to demand something from him.
When he spoke again, his voice carried the weight of a thousand cycles within it.
“Only the love I have for Min Jungmyun affords his heir this favour. And it will be the last one I will ever give to you. After the initiation, I will not entertain your insolence anymore.”
“Jimin!”
He didn’t turn around, but he didn’t need to. He suddenly saw himself, as if from a higher vantage point, body contorted in an unnatural way, his eyes blazing. Behind him, Taehyung ran in slow motion down the aisle between the pillows, his face twisted in worry and fear.
“Heed my warning,” a voice that sounded only vaguely as his own echoed through the temple. “If you choose to forego it, there will be a world to pay.”
The last thing he saw was Hweein’s bright eyes, clear as they had only been when he was a child. Then everything went black.
—
The Jung residence had always struck Yoongi as unusual, if not in its exterior, then surely in its placement.
The inhabitants of the pack alpha’s den rarely ventured into the outer neighbourhoods, their duties and activities requiring them to be in close proximity to the centre. All, except for the four annual medical check-up the alphas in training had to undergo. Jung Kyungseok, though not the only healer in town, was the best at what she did, something of living legend in the compound, a woman who almost single-handedly nursed the pack back from the threshold of survivability in just a few short years after the betrayal. Yoongi knew from his grandfather and Sungha that she was offered a high position on the Council and invited to the den as the Pack Alpha’s personal healer, both of which she declined in the most disrespectful manner, if the way that Sungha seethed quietly every time the healer’s name came up was anything to go by. Instead, Jung Kyungseok decided to set up shop in the southern district, in a dilapidated building that was once a warehouse. She didn’t take apprentices except for her grandson and spent her days alternating between research and treating the residents of one of the most disparaged neighbourhoods in the compound.
The warehouse was a wooden building, darkened by weather and several fires, sprawling an acre of land that to an outsider eye would look unkempt, but Yoongi knew that Kyungseok’s chaos had a very purposeful and methodical nature. As he walked through the garden toward a crooked door that looked one strong gust of wind away from flying off the hinges, he nearly choked from how strong the herbal smell wafting in the air was. He couldn’t name more than a handful of the plants that the Jungs grew here, many of them acquired by trade with the packs to the north and south and carefully cultivated to adapt to local conditions.
Inside, it was much of the same. The front room was kept somewhat orderly, several examination tables lined with light cotton standing in a neat row, each of them accompanied by a tall side table filled with tools and vials and such. Beyond, partially obscured by a large folding screen, a labyrinth of long tables sprawled, bundles of dried and drying herbs hanging from the ceiling, walls lined with heavy-duty shelves full of concoctions, and powders, and agents, and who knows what else. After seeing an embalmed squirrel in a jar once, Yoongi didn’t venture back there without necessity. He might be a hunter but something about the critter, the terror of its last few moments preserved as perfectly as its tiny body, made his stomach churn.
“Kyungseok-ssi?” He called out into the space. Frantic rustling sounded somewhere in the distance. After a few moments, a frazzled looking young man walked from behind the screen, a lovely misshapen smile on his lips.
“Grandma is foraging,” he said, stepping closer to Yoongi and throwing his arms around him. “We ran out of the berries for your concoction last minute, and you know how she is about letting me harvest those.”
Yoongi hugged him back, burying his nose in the boy’s neck, barely-there scent of lavender settling him immediately.
“Hoseok-ah,” he greeted quietly.
“It’s been so long, hyung,” the beta scented him back. “How have you been?”
They pulled apart, and Hoseok motioned to one of the examination tables.
“Been better, been worse. Making it through, I guess.”
Hoseok’s face pulled into a grimace.
“Is he that bad?”
“He’s actually better these last few days,” Yoongi pulled his shirt off and settled onto the table. Hoseok hopped on next to him. “He’s awake. He talks, even eats at times. But it’s… you know. Almost feels like a mockery, seeing him lucid again, knowing what the end is.” He sighed.
“Well, you never know. The high priests have been wrong before.”
Yoongi hummed, noncommittal. Hoseok’s grin turned teasing.
“Come on, hyung, I’ve never seen you so affected by a vision before.”
“Well, it’s never been my grandfather’s life on the line before,” he grunted. “And mine, for that matter.” He ran a hand over his face. “Whatever. Sungha’s healer got him hooked on some kind of dope, so at least he’s not in pain anymore. It’s all out of out hands now. More importantly,” he leaned back on his hands, “how was your trip?”
Hoseok lapsed into a tale of his two-month-long stay with the pack due north, where he studied their healing traditions and taught the miracle workings of Kyungseok’s practice. Yoongi’s lips curled into a small smile, as he watched his friend’s excited gesturing.
“I mean, considering that more than half of their territory is covered in permanent frost, its actually crazy how effective their wound treatment is. Like, this one alpha came back from a hunt tattered to shreds — a run in with a bear, he said, which by the way, is terrifying, because he was maybe an hour out from the edge of the compound, they had to drag me into the woods for harvesting, — and they sewed him back together, he was running again before I left!” His eyes were wide with awe. “I was just— oh, halmeonim, you’re back!”
Kyungseok’s slight figure was illumined by the midday sun where she stood in the doorframe, a heavy-looking basket clutched in her hands. Hoseok made his way across the room to take her load, carrying it to the back immediately.
“Came back to a surprise, too,” she said, her voice lilting like a wave, the permanent frown in her eyebrows smoothed out, for once. Yoongi smiled at her.
“Kyungseok-ssi,” he greeted gently. “It’s nice to see you doing well.”
She hummed, like the comment was an inconvenience. Over the years he had known her, Yoongi learned not to take her subdued reactions to heart. She was perpetually occupied by her craft, after all, hardly any time or energy left for making sure her feelings were perceived properly.
She scrutinized him for a few moments, and he wished he was a mind reader.
“Considering that your shirt is already off, I will assume you aren’t here to beg me to come to your grandfather’s rescue again?”
Yoongi shook his head. “Just here for a check up.”
“Aren’t you a little early for that?” She took her shoes off and threw them to the side. Yoongi pursed his lips. Kyungseok watched him for a long moment, her eyes stormy. Finally, she sighed. “So, it is you,” she murmured under her breath.
He didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need him to.
“Alright,” she walked over to a basin filled with water to wash her hands.
The exam took a whole of ten minuted from start to finish. She listened to his heart and his breathing, examined his mouth and nails, took a small wooden mallet to his joints. After that, Yoongi laid flat on the table as she ran her hands over his chest and arms, a strange warmth emanating from her palms.
“You are all good,” she announced, turning around to jot her findings down in a thick book. “Is the shifting the same?”
This, not the physical exam, was the main reason he was here. Yoongi stomped out the anxiety that rose in him.
“Yes,” he confirmed. The same, in this case, didn’t mean good.
“Show me, will you?”
Yoongi took a breath, trying desperately and unsuccessfully to suppress a shudder. He reached inside, dragging his wolf, lethargic and disinterested, out to the surface. His gums ached, strained; the sounds of joints popping sounded through the room. A stifled gasp reached his ears, the movement in the air a physical caress against his skull. He whined. Hoseok hated seeing him like this, and Yoongi closed his eyes so that he wouldn’t accidentally catch the sight of his friend’s horrified face.
And then — a pull.
He whined again, straining against the tugging in his chest, his alpha desperately trying to curl back on itself, the shift stalling. Pain spread along his bloodstream into his every limb, until he was shaking, teeth, elongated into fangs, digging into his lower lip. He felt Kyungseok’s warm hand graze his sternum, slide up to his neck, then down his arms. She tutted.
“Okay, enough.”
He stopped straining, his wolf recoiling and slinking away, offended and tired. Claws disappeared, teeth and fingers returned to their normal size. He swayed, a pair of warm hands catching him by his shoulders.
“Gods, Yoongi,” Hoseok’s whisper was thick with emotion. He laid Yoongi down gingerly onto his side. “I fucking hate that.”
“Language,” Kyungseok said, but it was absentminded. The fold between her eyebrows deepened. “Stay there. I need to think about it for a moment.”
She disappeared behind the screen, the sounds of rustling paper and clinking glass lulling Yoongi into a haze. Hoseok draped a blanked over his trembling form and ran gentle fingers through his hair. For a while, Yoongi dipped in an out of consciousness, until he didn’t feel like he was about to shudder apart anymore. He glanced up at his friend, Hoseok’s face pulled into a frown that so resembled his grandmother’s.
“Did you meet anyone?” Yoongi asked, desperately trying to redirect attention. “Up north, I mean.”
Hoseok hummed, thinking. His cheeks tinged pink.
“Not anyone worth mentioning,” he said. Yoongi got the impression he wasn’t telling the whole truth but that didn’t matter as much as distracting him. “No one I’d bring down here, that for sure.”
Yoongi chuckled.
“What about you? Any new omegas while I was gone?”
Yoongi thought about the round slope of Suran’s face, the gentle way she smiled at him in the early hours of the morning. About the sad downturn of her mouth whenever Dahye passed by in a hallway without so much as sparing the omega a glance. Hoseok knew about Suran, as he knew about her desperate crush.
“No one new, no.”
They fell silent for so long, Yoongi managed to fall asleep. When he opened his eyes again, the sun beamed directly into the window, just a palm’s width above the horizon. He stirred. Hoseok was nowhere in sight, but Kyungseok sat primly at a table nearby, writing again, a small vial next to her. Yoongi rumbled groggily.
She looked up at him, her eyes even.
“How was your nap?” He shrugged.
“Did you figure out what’s wrong with me?”
Kyungseok rolled her eyes.
“Nothing is wrong with you,” she tutted. “I looked over my notes and your shift started slowing down around the same time your grandfather fell ill. We are all affected by Pack Alpha’s condition, it is natural, but you are related to him. Your alpha recognizes him on a different, deeper level than the rest of us, and it is sad. And scared.” She closed her book with a resounding thump. “I know you aren’t thrilled about being the heir, Yoongi.”
He grumbled. “Namjoon would be better at it.”
She tsked. “You don’t know that but also, not the point. Your grandfather is dying, you are forced into a position you don’t feel ready for, there is pressure for you to do well. Your wolf feels all that and, on top of it, it has its own thoughts on the matter. It knows you don’t trust yourself, which in turn means, you don’t trust it. So, it stalls. Refuses the shift, makes it as painful for you as it possibly can so that you’ll leave it alone.”
“It can do that?”
“Oh, it can do much more. Look, Yoongi, you are a strong alpha, but you are still young. Being a shifter is a symbiotic relationship. You take care of your wolf, it takes care of you. Right now, you see it as the reason for being in a situation you desperately wish you could escape.”
Yoongi suddenly felt very exposed. He reached for his abandoned shirt and pulled it over his head.
“Okay, I get it, I’ve got to take care of it better. How do I do that so that I can shift before everyone knows I’m the heir?”
Kyungseok sighed.
“You don’t.” She picked up the vial and stared at it, face strangely blank. “The initiation is the day before the full moon. Until the next one, you observe your wolf, see how it behaves. See if your shifts improve. On the next full moon, you drink this.” She handed him the vial, a luminescent red liquid bubbling inside. “Drink it even if you make good progress. It won’t hurt.”
He frowned.
“Why so specific?”
Her lips twisted.
“Because this is an ancient technique. From before the betrayal.” She turned around sharply, hiding her face from his view. “Once the initiation is over, your alpha will settle. It will feel more secure, regardless of how you feel. It will be more receptive to the medicine.”
Yoongi stared at her nape. “So I have a little over a month to figure it out on my own,” he said slowly. “Okay. What about my usual-”
“Don’t take any for the time being. You can’t mix the two. Come see me after you’ve done as I said. We will talk.” Her tone was dismissive.
Yoongi sighed. “Okay. Thank you, Kyungseok-ssi.”
Her voice caught him in the doorframe.
“That full moon is just before the Hunt,” she sounded strangely hollow. “Pray to both of them that your wolf comes around before you have to go into the woods, Min Yoongi.”
—
He was cradled by cherry and jasmine when he woke up.
Jimin whined, high in his throat, regretting it immediately, when the sound made his skull throb. Covers rustled to his right, and then Taehyung’s cherry scent filled his nostrils, though it was cut through with sourness.
“Shh,” he carefully put his hands on Jimin’s shoulders preventing him from getting up. “It’s okay, Jiminie, you’re okay. You want water?”
Jimin hummed affirmative.
Taehyung held up his head and then the cool rim of a glass pressed against Jimin’s lips. He took three big gulps before the smooth pull of water against the roof of his mouth became too much, and he shifted his head back, pained mewling bubbling in his mouth.
A clink of the glass against a wooden surface. Then, Taehyung’s cool hand pushed his hair off his face, and he laid Jimin back down gently.
“What happened, Tae?” His voice barely above whisper. He thought about opening his eyes, but decided against it. He had no idea what time of day it was, and he had a sneaking suspicion that the headache would get worse if it was still daylight.
He felt Tae’s warm body settle next to him under the covers.
“You don’t remember?
Jimin thought back to that morning.
“An elder came by. I was showing her around, she mentioned my mom and after that it all goes blurry.”
Taehyung’s sigh was shaky.
“Something she said must’ve angered Mother and used your body to give that elder a piece of her mind. That’s what Hweein said, anyway.”
“That doesn’t sound like something Hweein could say,” Jimin chuckled despite himself. His friend was silent. “Tae?”
“She was… different when I got back. After I called out your name, you collapsed, and she helped me carry you back here, and she was… talking in full sentences. Even made a couple jokes.” Jimin blindly nuzzled in the other omega’s direction. Tae shifted and pulled Jimin’s face into his neck. “For maybe twenty minutes she was like she used to be when we were little, and then… she went back to the usual.”
Jimin sighed. “How long has it been since she was fully lucid like that?”
“A few years now,” Tae said in thought. “It was nice to have her back, even if it wasn’t for that long. Sorry you didn’t get to see it.”
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t but it also wasn’t anyone’s fault. Definitely not Tae’s. “Did the elder say anything?”
“Not to me. She basically ran outside after you fell. I told Jin hyung what happened after he came back from his shift. He sat in front of Mother for a little while, then said he was going to the Council. He looked really mad.”
Jimin’s eyes flew open. The twilight streamed into the room through the window.
“He still isn’t back?”
Taehyung shook his head, bottom lip caught between his teeth.
“Chim, I think you should move to the temple. Permanently.” Jimin opened his mouth to protest, but Tae didn’t let him. “I’m worried. And not just because of what happened today. I don’t like you being all the way over there, alone. I want to know you’re safe.”
The scared little crease in his eyebrow tugged at Jimin’s heartstrings.
“I’ll stay until the initiation,” he decided. “And then we will see.”
“Promise?”
Jimin nodded. “Promise.”
“Okay.”
They fell silent, and eventually, Jimin slipped back into unconsciousness.
Notes:
if you made it this far, thanks for reading! kudos and comments are greatly appreciated :) i plan to have the next update up before the end of the week so stick around :)
Chapter 3
Summary:
A chance encounter at the bonfire leads to a heated night. The aftermath promises only trouble.
Notes:
content warning: there is a very light predator/prey leading up to the smut scene. its not graphic and only slightly sexual; jimin is just trying to rile yoongi up a bit.
i wanted also to mention that i edited the very beginning of the first chapter slightly. i am still working out some of the details of the plot, so i think it’s inevitable that there will inconsistencies in the first few chapters as we go along. the edited part is very minor (it’s basically where jin is talking about his reasons for not wanting jimin to sleep around), and it doesn’t come into play until next chapter but i thought i’d let you know regardless :)
in terms of the future updates, i don’t know when the next chapter will be up. i am set to become kind of busy with real-life stuff in the coming weeks, so i don’t think multiple updates a week are in the cards for me anymore. i’ll try to post one chapter a week tho!
okay that’s all! enjoy!
Chapter Text
Yoongi had only been allowed to the bonfire once before, just months after he presented. One last taste of freedom before he was hidden away in the den for three long years, until the elders deemed him safe enough to be out and about on his own, and even then, not too often. He remembered the heat of the fire on his face and not much else —the mayhem that swallowed his life blurred out most of his memories from that time, including that one.
As Namjoon and he stepped onto a large clearing, he thought of the elation he felt back then. Gravel crunched under his shoes as he walked closer to the huge pyre in the middle, the flames so high he had to tilt his head back to find where they licked relentlessly at the dark sky.
“Wow,” Namjoon breathed out next to him. It was his first time at the celebration in a long time too. “I think this is the largest it's ever been?”
Yoongi hummed. He had no way of knowing for sure, but it was hard to imagine the fire being any bigger than it already was.
He stared at the dancing flames, strangely hypnotized by their movement, everything around him fading away. The crackling of the wood sounded like a voice to him, an old decrepit hag spinning her tales in the dead of night. Enraptured, Yoongi didn’t even notice that they had been walking this entire time, until he stood a mere metre or two away from the fire, the heat almost unbearable on his skin. Yoongi blinked through the stupor.
When he turned around, Namjoon’s eyes were equal parts suspicious and worried.
“You wanna explain that?”
Yoongi shook his head. Even if he had an explanation, he doubted it would have sounded halfway convincing.
They made their way across the glade toward a couple long tables with drinks and food; got their cups filled with sweet southern wine, then drifted for a few moments along the food selections, neither really hungry. Namjoon picked up a tiny blueberry roll, the bread steaming with warmth when he broke into it.
They stood to the side, Yoongi sipping his wine, Namjoon chewing idly, both observing the people milling around the clearing. It was still quite early in the night, and the crowd was sure to grow in size as the hours passed, yet the space already felt not big enough.
Images of a fall long gone flashed through Yoongi’s mind. He sighed. Namjoon turned a questioning look to him.
“What?”
“Just… remembering that one year.”
“When the equinox was cancelled?”
“Uh-huh.”
Namjoon took a sip of the wine. He didn’t say anything else, but Yoongi knew they were both thinking of going to bed with hunger suckling viciously on their stomachs, summer heat so strong, it felt like their skin would burn off if they stayed out too long. A bleak fall, blanketed by poorly hidden fear of the impeding winter, dark, and lonely, and hungry. As his eyes slid across the drinking and laughing crowd, Yoongi wondered how many of them had lost a loved one then.
“I do remember,” Namjoon said carefully, like he was afraid Yoongi would break if his voice was a little too loud. Yoongi sighed in irritation.
“You don’t have to do that, Joon,” he said, keeping his voice as even as possible. “I’m not about to spiral. I’m just… nervous, that’s all.”
Namjoon’s eyes scanned the area around them, and he motioned to the side, toward the tree line, where there weren’t any prying ears listening in on the conversation. They walked over slowly, dodging drunk people every other step.
“Afraid of being displaced, hyung?” His voice dipped low, and though it was supposed to be a teasing quip, there was an undercurrent of serious concern there, too.
“I guess,” Yoongi sighed. “I mean, it’s never been pretty, and-”
“Also hasn’t happened in decades.”
Yoongi scowled at him. “It’s on the books as an option and tell me you don’t think some in the Council won’t jump at the first opportunity to switch me out. I’m not exactly the favourite candidate for a lot of these people. But also,” he continued, “I don’t want the deaths of other compound members on my conscience.”
They fell silent, Namjoon’s eyes trained somewhere on the ground. There wasn’t much he could say to that, no consolation would sound genuine. Namjoon, along with the rest of the training alphas, were all escaping the heaviest burden of responsibility in the compound and doing so at Yoongi’s expense. Many revelled in the fact, but Namjoon didn’t.
Yoongi felt a sharp stab of guilt in his chest. Joon didn’t deserve this.
“Sorry,” he said quietly, his eyes drifting over the crowd absently. “It’s not on you.”
“You don’t have to apologize, hyung,” the alpha’s voice was soft. “It’s understandable that you would be worried about these things, but I don’t think you have any reason to. The Council is much more united and stable than it was back in the day, and the pack is in a better place than we were leading up to that winter.” He laid a warm palm of Yoongi’s shoulder. “I’m not saying it will be easy, but you don’t have to run yourself into the ground with worry.”
Yoongi sighed. Before he could think of a reply, a warm body collided into his.
“Hyungs!” Hoseok’s shrill voice burrowed into his ear. The beta smelled of alcohol and sweat, his usually subdued lavender blooming in the air. Hoseok let Yoongi go just to bury himself in Namjoon’s embrace. “Hi!”
“Hey Hobi,” the alpha said, endearment lacing his voice. “Having fun?”
“I am!” The beta bounced on the balls of his feet a few times, excitement oozing out of every pore. “You two don’t look too festive, though. I mean, you’ve been let out of that jail you call a den, isn’t that a cause for celebration?”
Namjoon chuckled.
“Grumpy gramps over here was just having a bit of an existential crisis,” he said, eyeing Yoongi. Hoseok opened his mouth to ask but Namjoon didn’t let him. “How are you doing, Hoseok-ah? We haven’t had a chance to catch up since your return.”
Namjoon was truly a blessing at times.
For the next little while, as Hoseok recounted his time in the north, Yoongi tuned in and out of the conversation. His mind wandered, unfocused, as he sipped his wine idly, observing the crowd. A group of omegas on the opposite side of the clearing were dancing in a circle, the majority of other attendees surrounded the little performance, cheering them on with whistles and howling. Yoongi wondered what was happening back at the den. The tutors and pups usually had their own, much smaller gathering in the inner yard, but with the heavy grief that hung in the hallways lately over the impending departure of his grandfather, he doubted the celebration was anywhere near as joyful as usual.
He finished his drink just as Hoseok launched into a story about a north-specific ritual that he was allowed to observe. Yoongi stared into his cup for a long moment, debating. He was far from intoxication, and though he had to be up early the next morning, the Revelation wasn’t until noon. A hangover was highly unlikely and anyway, he would have time to recover. Sungha was sure to bring a whole team to groom and make him presentable.
“I’ll go get another drink,” he said. Hoseok and Namjoon were too enraptured by the conversation to acknowledge him.
He made his way to the tables where a large cauldron of wine was stationed. With most of the crowd congregated on the opposite end of the clearing, there was thankfully no line for the drinks. A selection of glass bottles with stronger home-made alcohol was strewn across the surface, but he bypassed all of them to reach for the ladle. As he was pouring the red liquid into his cup, two small hands wrapped around a glass came into his view. A soft voice with the sweetest lilt to it followed.
“Can you pour me some?”
Yoongi cast his eyes down to find a round face turned up at him, a mischievous smile stretching plush lips, eyes like two little crescents. The smell of water lilies wafted to his nose.
“Sure,” he grunted, awkward. He dipped the ladle into the cauldron and emptied it into the omega’s cup, a little sloshing out onto small fingers. Yoongi’s face felt hot. “Sorry.”
The omega’s laugh was a tinkling caress against his ears.
“It happens,” he said with a kind smile. Yoongi’s shoulders drooped, just to tense up a moment later, when the boy brought the wet hand up to his face and slipped a couple fingers into his mouth, eyes locked on the alpha the entire time.
The heat Yoongi felt this time was for marginally different reasons.
The smile turned sly.
“You doing okay over there?” He asked, head tilted to the side, the long expanse of his neck in full view. “Your face is really red.”
To his horror, Yoongi felt his wolf stir in interest at the shameless display before him. Really? He thought with bitterness. This is what drags you out?
The wolf whined petulantly and slinked away to the outskirts of his consciousness.
“I’m okay,” he said. “A little warm from the fire, I guess.”
The omega took a sip from his cup, humming thoughtfully.
“They went all out,” he said, glancing to the bonfire. “Last year it was maybe half as big? Probably less.”
Surprisingly, Yoongi didn’t feel the urge to leave the conversation as soon as possible.
“You come every year?”
The omega’s smile was bright.
“I do! It’s kind of the only celebration where no one looks at me sideways, since it’s mostly young people.”
Yoongi’s eyebrow furrowed.
“Why would anyone look at you sideways?”
The omega’s eyes went wide, smile dimming. He stared at Yoongi for a moment, pensive.
“Oh, just… the elders don’t like me much,” he didn’t sound particularly convincing. Before Yoongi could question him further, he asked, “Where do you live?”
Yoongi sputtered.
“Um,” he hesitated, more out of shock than anything else. Though pack alphas rarely engaged with the general public, almost everyone in the centre knew at least their faces, so…
And then it dawned on him.
The omega was from the outskirts, so a lower rank, likely almost never in the central part of the town. He didn’t know who Yoongi was. He asked out of caution, not ambition.
“North-western dens,” he lied. Close enough to the centre to be plausible, far enough from the truth to keep Yoongi safe and the omega interested. The boy looked at him for a moment, scrutinizing, but Yoongi decided to nip any interrogation in the bud. “Look, you clearly weren’t telling the truth about why people would look at you weird, but I didn’t ask.”
The omega’s mouth fell open in shock and then he giggled. Yoongi’s heart stuttered.
“Okay, I won’t question you either.” He glanced around quickly and when his eyes fell back on Yoongi, they were full of mischief. “You are a hunter then?”
Yoongi grunted affirmative, happy to give the omega at least this little bit of the truth.
The next question made his stomach swoop.
“Wanna get out of here?”
Yoongi studied the soft slope of the boy’s cheeks, the sheen of the skin visible in the deep cut of his shirt.
He shouldn’t. He imagined the shock on the omega’s pretty face when he saw Yoongi up on the stage less that twenty-four hours later. Would he be mad? Probably. Upset at Yoongi for lying? Definitely.
He shouldn’t.
A warm little hand wrapped around his wrist. “Come on,” his voice was bordering on a whine.
When was the last time someone looked at Yoongi like this? Like he was just a man and not a means to a better life. Suran was a friend, and she loved him just because, but they weren’t lovers. Simply a convenient way to get a release.
The omega tugged on his hand.
Grandfather wanted him to have one last night of fun, before his life would become full of responsibility too heavy for one person. Wouldn’t this fall under the category of fun?
He glanced over to where Namjoon and Hoseok were still engrossed in their conversation. Namjoon was gesturing wildly, both of them facing away from the drinks table.
“Fine,” he breathed out, eyes tracing the omega’s gentle features. “Let’s get out of here.”
The smile he received in response was warmer than the bonfire.
They walked through the forest, farther and farther away from the celebration, the warmth dissipating in the cool September night.
“Where are you taking me?” Yoongi asked finally. “It’s the opposite way from the compound.”
The omega threw a sly look at him over the shoulder.
“You don’t want to be seen in the compound with me,” he said lightly.
Yoongi hummed.
“What did you do to piss off the elders so much?” He asked. The dry leaves crunched rhythmically under the soles of their shoes, though Yoongi still managed to make much less noise than the omega.
“I thought we agreed not to ask,” the boy said, ducking under a huge fallen tree. Yoongi hopped over it instead.
“Okay. Will you tell me your name at least?”
“Will you tell me yours?”
The alpha rolled his eyes.
“Yoongi.”
The omega rounded a tree.
“Jimin.” His steps quickened.
“Nice to formally meet you, I guess.”
Jimin laughed.
“Are all hunters this reserved or just you?”
Yoongi felt his wolf stir at the challenge in the boy’s voice. The rustling of the leaves grew louder.
“I save the excitement for when I’m chasing prey.” Not that far from truth. It’s been a long time since Yoongi felt invigorated outside of a hunt.
“Well then,” Jimin glanced over his shoulder, mirth dancing in his eyes, “let me give you a chase.”
And then he ran.
—
The thrill that zinged through Jimin’s body at the sound of the alpha’s deep, guttural growl made the risk of what they were doing worth it.
He ducked between trees, fast on his feet, but loud, even to his own ears, his heart beating wildly in his chest. Yoongi was much quieter, but still, the rustle of leaves under his feet let Jimin know that the alpha decided to indulge in his little game. A giggle burst out of his chest. Yoongi seemed so forlorn back at the bonfire, a heavy sadness etched into the corners of his eyes. Jimin wondered if his silly chase would make the alpha smile. Wondered what his stoic face would look like if it did.
They flew out of the tree line onto a tiny clearing, no bigger than ten large steps in width, remnants of a stone foundation lying in the middle. Jimin skipped over them, eager to prolong the chase, but Yoongi was faster, and bigger, and clearly a very good hunter. Strong arms wrapped around his waist, yanking him to the side and into a broad chest. Jimin squealed. The man rumbled lowly into his ear, the sound a playful warning.
“Okay, okay,” he heaved out, “you caught me. You won, alpha.”
“You are a little shit, you know that?”
Jimin turned around, his hands coming to rest on the alpha’s chest. A small smile tugged at the corners of Yoongi’s mouth, exasperated but satisfied. Victorious.
“I’ve been told,” he said, appeased. “But I got what I wanted.”
Yoongi inclined his head.
“Which was?”
“To rile you up,” Jimin inched his hands higher, where long strands of black hair curled slightly at the end. Brushed his fingers through. “Make you look less like you’d swallowed an unripe berry.”
Yoongi laughed, a full, real smile stretching his lips. Jimin stared at him, enraptured.
Yeah, he definitely got what he wanted.
“And here I was, feeling good about myself for catching you,” Yoongi shook his head slightly. “I guess it was you who really won, huh?”
With one hand, Jimin reached around to where his top was clasped at the back of his neck.
“I guess so,” he agreed. The metal enclosure snapped open under his fingers, loud in the quiet of the woods. Yoongi’s eyes went dark. “But you still get a reward, don’t you,” he let the fabric go, “alpha?”
His shirt didn’t even hit the ground before Yoongi was on him with a loud snarl. Their mouths smashed together almost painfully, the sudden force of the alpha’s hunger making Jimin keen into the kiss. He felt the sharp sting of a bit on his bottom lip, soothed immediately by a warm, wet tongue, prodding insistently at the seam of his mouth. Jimin let it in.
The kiss grew loud, wet sounds ringing across the glade. Yoongi’s hands wrapped around Jimin’s ribcage, thumbs coming up to tease his nipples, hard and perky in the cool night air. Jimin moaned into the kiss, the sensation of rough fingertips rubbing against his skin zapping through him. He felt wetness seep through his underwear, embarrassment heating up his face. He was never this quick to slick up.
His scent much have bloomed in the air because Yoongi broke the kiss with an obscene pop, pressing their foreheads together.
“I haven’t even done anything yet,” his rasp was teasing, hands sliding down Jimin’s body, large palms coming to rest on his ass, squeezing and fondling. Jimin moaned, desperation rising in him.
Yoongi closed his eyes, breathing heavily through his nose. Jimin didn’t like the way the alpha seemed to hold himself back. He shifted slightly, nuzzled into Yoongi’s scent gland, pine and salt making him feel woozy, though there was an acidic bitterness to his scent. Jimin pushed the thought away and nosed up to Yoongi’s ear.
“Want more, alpha,” he said, tone deliberately breathy, the rank falling out of his mouth like a prayer. “‘M all wet for you, don’t you wanna see?” He pushed back into the tight grip on his ass.
That did the trick.
With a low, dangerous growl Yoongi spun him around in his arms, until they were pressed chest to chest, Jimin’s ass nestled in the alpha’s groin. Jimin keened at the feeling a long, thick hardness pressed squarely between his cheeks.
“Shove me in the face if you need to stop,” Yoongi rasped out. Jimin nearly rolled his eyes.
“I don’t want you to stop,” he said, and as a last resort, he submitted, head rolling back until it rested on the alpha’s shoulder, neck exposed and right under Yoongi’ nose.
The sound of teeth snapping so close to his skin made slick gush out of his hole.
Yoongi’s fingers tangled in the lace-up front of his pants, nearly snapping the drawstring in his haste to undo it. He slid the pants and his underwear down all in one go, not bothering to take them off fully. Jimin whined at the feeling of cold air against his hard dick, curving just so where it stood small and proud between his thighs. Yoongi waisted no time in wrapping his palm around it, his hand so large it engulfed Jimin’s length entirely, with some space to spare. The alpha’s other hand slipped between his asscheeks, thumbing at the entrance.
“You’re fucking dripping for me,” he snarled into Jimin’s ear, the hand on his cock squeezing tightly, ripping a desperate little squeal out of the omega’s throat. Jimin breathed out, forcing himself to relax, his hole fluttering around the fingertip, soft and pliable and all too welcoming to the long digit that slipped inside with barely any resistance.
The sound Yoongi made was nearly a howl.
“Fuck,” he swore, drawing back a little. Jimin burned in shame at the realization that the alpha was staring at where his finger pumped in and out of his entrance, clenching around the protrusion. “Such a greedy little hole, you’re-”
His words slurred into a growl.
“More, alpha,” Jimin gasped out, moving his hips in time with the finger pumping in and out of his ass. “Want another one, wanna stretch wide for you- ah!”
Yoongi slipped a second finger inside, spreading and scissoring, angling down on the next thrust, brushing against Jimin’s prostate on the upstroke. The omega nearly came, his breath caught in his throat, lashes wet with tears. Pleasure zinged through his body, and he wailed, hips stuttering, caught between the hand squeezing his dick and the fingers pumping in his ass.
Yoongi added a third finger, the stretch much more noticeable, but he didn’t give Jimin any time to dwell on that, angling the next stroke all the way down, but instead of pulling out, he stopped, finger pads massaging against the sweet spot deep inside. Jimin hiccuped, but before he could even open his mouth to warn the alpha, he was coming, thin, long strings of come splattering up to his chest.
He shuddered, mouth open on a soundless scream, orgasm blinding him to everything that wasn’t the feeling of Yoongi’s hands, the firm line of his body, his hot breath breaking against Jimin’s nape. He was still shaking with aftershocks, when the hands disappeared from his body entirely, the lack of contact suspending him in a vacuum. Before he could whine out a complaint, Yoongi gripped his hips tightly and then a cock, almost unbearably thick, slid inside him in one long, delicious motion.
Jimin’s eyes rolled back. He heard a scream and realized only a moment later that it came out of his own mouth.
“Stretched you out on three fingers and you’re still so fucking tight,” Yoongi sounded gone in his ear. “I’m gonna fuck you until you can’t walk straight anymore.”
And that’s exactly what he did.
He set a slow pace, thrusts hard and punching the breath out of Jimin’s chest every time. His dick didn’t even soften all the way, already forced back to weeping hardness, with no time to recover. Overstimulation throbbed in Jimin’s abdomen, liquid fire coursing in his veins. He heard himself moaning and squealing at every thrust of the cock lodged deep in his hole, but it sounded muted, the rushing of blood in his ears too loud, all-consuming. Yoongi kept up a steady stream of filth in his ear, but Jimin’s mind was too far away to register most of it.
He couldn’t feel the lower part of his body anymore, pleasure so intense that his knees buckled, and he would have fallen to the ground, if it weren’t for Yoongi’s arms holding him up. The alpha slid his hands under his thighs, and then he was tilted back, balanced against Yoongi’s chest, legs in the air and spread wide, his pants and underwear dangling off one ankle.
He was being bounced on the cock like a ragdoll, helpless and useless, able only to moan and whine and whimper into the air. He felt the sharp sting of an orgasm burning in his groin, his dick, neglected and an angry red from the overstimulation, weeping pearly precome onto his stomach.
“Alpha,” he gasped out, head lolling back. Yoongi’s face, twisted in ecstasy, was blurry through the tears in his eyes. “Alpha, I’m- ah! Come, w’nna come..!”
Yoongi bounced him harder, a growl reverberating in his chest. Jimin felt the sharp sting of teeth on his neck, not enough to break skin, but enough to make his whole body lock up, every muscle strung tight. His back bowed, hole clenching almost painfully tight around the thick length, and then he gushed, come shooting through the air, his hole squirting so much slick, Jimin was sure the entire front of Yoongi’s pants was soaked. The alpha’s snarl was deafening, and Jimin felt the cock inside him throb, load after load of hot seed pumped into his abused hole.
And then suddenly he was empty, lack of sensation instantly sending him into hysteria.
“No!” He sobbed out, the feeling devastating. “Don’t go, please, I’m-”
Yoongi lowered them carefully to the ground, and Jimin felt another load of come land on his thigh, almost sizzling hot to his oversensitive skin.
“‘S okay,” the alpha crooned into his ear, turning him around so that Jimin could bury his face in his neck. “I’m not going anywhere.” He shuddered with a stifled moan. Jimin tried to look down, but the alpha held him in place with a hand on his nape. “Shh, don’t worry about anything, sweetheart.”
They sat there, wet and sticky all over, shivering, for a long while. Eventually, Yoongi’s shuddering subsided, and Jimin didn’t feel like one gust of wind could shatter him apart anymore. Instead, a heavy exhaustion settled over the both of them. Without standing, Yoongi scooted over to the side and laid them down carefully, Jimin’s face still buried deep in his neck.
“Sleep,” he rumbled out. Jimin obeyed.
—
Yoongi woke up alone.
He sat up, his shoulder throbbing slightly from the awkward position he spent the night in. The sky was still dark, but the stars were fading, signalling the approach of sunrise. The glade was empty, Jimin and his clothes nowhere in sight. Yoongi felt a pitiful little whine rise in his chest and swallowed the sound, staring in disbelief down at his own chest.
“What is wrong with you,” he murmured. His wolf didn’t answer.
He got up, giving the little clearing another glance and wondering briefly what this place might have been in the past. The stone rubble in the middle was light in colour, almost white, gleaming slightly. He stared at the very spot where he fucked Jimin within an inch of his life just a few hours earlier, the omega’s slick still glistening in the grass like dew. His cheeks felt warm.
He needed to get back to the den.
The trek back to the compound took him the better part of an hour, the world around him strangely sharp, sounds of the forest too loud, colours too bright even in the twilight. By the time he reached the pack alpha’s den, his head throbbed from overstimulation, and the horizon was tinged with pink. Yoongi stayed close to the walls as he made his way around back, careful to avoid the eyes of the alphas on patrol duty.
He internally thanked his habit of leaving the window of his room open for the night. Silently, he climbed the stone wall, sliding inside, immediately turning to close the shutters.
“Where the fuck were you?”
Yoongi spun around, lip curled over his teeth. Namjoon’s severe expression morphed into surprise.
“Hyung? Why are you shifted?”
Yoongi glanced over to where a large mirror was propped against a wall. He was hunched over, shoulders unnaturally high, arms elongated past his knees, legs bent as if he was preparing to pounce. The snarl exposed teeth, entirely bestial, his face distorted into a weird half-human, half-animal shape. His eyes blazed bright gold.
Yoongi stumbled back, nearly falling out of the still-open window.
“Hyung!” Namjoon was across the room in a blink of an eye, hands grabbing at his shoulders and pulling him further into the room. “Fuck, what happened to you?”
Yoongi panted, desperately trying to reel in the shift. It took him way too long, considering that just two days earlier he was struggling to get his nails become claws without kneeling over from pain. Finally, he managed to make sound other than growling.
“What the…” he breathed out, his eyes sliding close, what little light got through the window too bright for his retinas. “Joon, I’m…”
“Who were you with, hyung?” Namjoon’s voice was frantic. Yoongi recoiled at the volume, his ears still sensitive.
“An omega, why are you…”
“What was his name?”
Yoongi had to swallow a howl.
“Jimin, and why the fuck are you yelling at me?”
Namjoon let him go. Yoongi cracked his eyes open to see the alpha staring at him with a horrified expression on his face.
“Yoongi,” he said slowly, his voice shaking. “Do you know who that is?”
“Okay, Joon, what’s with this sudden elitism? You’ve never cared about someone’s status before, so why-”
“Hyung!” It was almost a shout. They both froze, listening for any sound outside the door. The den was quiet. Namjoon took a few steadying breaths, a hand running over his face.
“Tell me what is going on. Calmly.”
Namjoon bit his lip.
“I don’t know when you left, but some time later, we saw Seokjin, running around the glade, frazzled. Hobi went to ask him what was wrong, and he said that he couldn’t find his little brother,” his eyes were severe, “and that he went to get another drink and didn’t come back.”
Yoongi’s heart sank.
“Do you wanna guess what his brother’s name is, hyung?”
He didn’t need to. Jimin’s sweet little face flitted through his mind, teasing eye-smile and puffy lips taunting him.
“Fuck,” he breathed out. “I slept with the priestess.”
Chapter 4
Summary:
An emergency assembly at the Council Hall sends everyone for a spin. Yoongi visits the temple and learns of the true danger their entanglement poses to Jimin.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Yoongi let himself fall back onto the bed. This is gonna be so annoying to deal with.
“You didn’t know?” Namjoon’s voice had lost some of its urgency but was still strained. Yoongi grunted no. “Does he know who you are?”
“If you’re asking if I told him I was a shifter, then no, I didn’t.”
He felt the bed dip. Namjoon settled onto the mattress next to him.
“So… nothing happened between you guys?” He sounded unsure. “Did you just talk or something?”
Yoongi snorted despite the anxiety churning in his chest. “Yeah, I went into the woods with an unfamiliar omega just to have a deep conversation about the universe.” Namjoon glared at him. “We fucked. Obviously.” He gestured at himself.
“But he would have known as soon as you popped a knot,” Namjoon’s brows furrowed. “Non-shifters don’t knot outside rut.”
Yoongi stared at the ceiling.
“Oh,” Namjoon breathed out in realization. “You pulled out.”
Yoongi’s whole body flared with heat at the memory. He’d barely swallowed a wail after forcing himself out of Jimin’s warm, trembling body before his knot could form. The shuddering, almost painful orgasm that followed left him feeling hollow and unsatisfied.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Namjoon wince.
“Okay, well. Won’t be long until he knows now. At least no one saw the two of you leave, or they would’ve said something to Jin. He wasn’t subtle.”
Yoongi groaned. “He’s gonna kill me.” Namjoon snorted. “No, Joon, seriously. Imagine the ruckus the elders will cause if they get a whiff of it? They are gonna talk my ear off about proper mating pairings and not risking an unwanted pregnancy with a low rank. Now imagine the lecture Jimin will get.”
Namjoon’s responding sigh was heavy. “Something tells me that he would get more than a lecture,” he murmured. “But that’s why we’re gonna make sure they don’t find out. Go take a bath and burn the clothes,” Namjoon slid off the bed. “You reek of water lilies. Don’t give Sungha a reason to question you.” He mulled something over for a moment. “I’ll go find Suran.”
Yoongi sat up. “No, Joon, let’s not drag her into this.”
“We need to make it seem like you’ve been back a while. The patrols were light yesterday, since everyone was at the bonfire, and I came in through the gardens, so no one will know when you returned. In case someone asks, Suran will be the one neutral witness you have.”
Yoongi went to protest again, but Namjoon already had one foot out the door.
“If we don’t cover this up now, it will be bad,” he said over the shoulder. There was a severity to his face that Yoongi thought was maybe a little too extreme. “And Jimin will have it much worse than you.”
The door closed with a a quiet click behind him.
Yoongi fell back on the bed.
When he finally dragged himself into the adjacent bathroom, the man that greeted him in the mirror looked more like a scary drawing of a near-feral alpha from the scripture, rather than someone just a handful of hours away from becoming the pack’s leader.
Yoongi studied the way the combination of deep shadows under his eyes and the residual distortion of a shift made his face seem broken, unnatural, a caricature of a human. He braced himself against the counter, breathing in and out slowly for a few moments, taking stock of how his mind felt. Confused, but not hazy, so he wasn’t actually near-feral.
Yoongi stripped off his clothes and walked over to the small furnace in the corner of the room. He remembered the distressed little whine he let out when he realized Jimin was gone. Even now, not having seen the omega, not being able to check up on him, make sure he was okay, made Yoongi’s wolf slink around, rueful and anxious.
Yoongi piled just enough kindling in the furnace to start a fire strong enough that it would incinerate his clothes and then die out quickly on its own. Once the flames were dancing around happily, he looked down at the clothes, lying on the floor next to him. He picked up the pants and didn’t even have to bring them any closer to his nose; the smallest movement made water lilies burst in the air, the scent thick, viscous. Heat flared in his groin at the memory of Jimin coming so hard he squirted, soaking the entire front of Yoongi’s trousers. He felt unhinged, just slightly, like he was about to jump right back out of the windows and run halfway across town, butt-naked, to the temple, but his wolf stayed quiet. No shift.
Yoongi threw the pants into the mouth of the furnace. The shirt followed suit.
He wasn’t feral. Distressed and anxious, sure, but he still had a perfect grip on all his faculties.
He closed the door of the furnace. Maybe all those warnings in the scripture about priestesses driving shifters mad weren’t true. Maybe they were just another way for the elders to keep young shifters in line.
He sat on the floor for a while, watching as the cotton fabric disintegrated quickly in the flames, wondering how mad Jimin would be once he saw Yoongi up on that stage. He was fairly certain that, given a bit of time, and after he’d established himself more firmly on the Pack Alpha pedestal, he’d be in a position to make the decision of who to court and who to mate all on his own. In the meantime, he’d court Jimin secretly, unofficially. Get to know each other before he would announce the intention to the elders. But what is the omega was so angry with him for lying in the first place that he wouldn’t want anything to do with him?
Yoongi sighed, rising up from the floor, and walked over to the tub. He’d have to deal with that later.
When he opened the tap, the water was tepid. He washed up quickly, making sure not to wet his hair, scrubbing the scent of water lilies off his neck and legs, though he was swallowing protesting whines the whole time. The animal inside wanted to be smothered in the flowers, and Yoongi didn’t have it in him to pretend he didn’t want that, too.
When he returned to the bedroom, a towel wrapped around his hips, he was greeted with the sight of Suran sitting on his bed, blankets drawn close to fight off the morning chill, her eyes heavy with sleep.
“Hey noona.” He walked over to the armoire in the corner and ruffled around for his sleeping pants.
“You look like shit,” she said. Yoongi snorted.
“Thanks.” He pulled the pants on and threw the towel in the laundry basket. “What did Namjoon tell you?”
“That you did something kind of stupid,” she scooted over so that he could climb under the covers. “I’ve gotta say, it’s been a while since you’ve taken a walk beyond the line of acceptable.”
Yoongi hummed. “Sleeping with you is unacceptable in their eyes.”
Suran sighed, exasperated. “I’m talking about actually doing something wrong, not putting on a spectacle every once in a while. Anyway, Joon said that if anyone asks, you knocked on my door a little after midnight, I came here with you and haven’t left since.”
Yoongi exhaled heavily. “Sorry. I didn’t want to involve you, but it would be a headache if anyone found out who I was with last night.”
She tugged on his arm, and Yoongi went easily.
“Lucky for you, I don’t care.” She settled close to him, arm thrown over his chest. “As far as everyone else is concerned, you were with me.”
Yoongi smiled. “Thanks, noona. You’re the best.”
“Just sleep,” she snarked back.
As he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, Yoongi wondered what it would be like to wake up with Jimin’s lithe form tucked into him. How this morning may have turned out if it was the smell of water lilies that pulled him gently out of slumber.
He blinked. Probably shouldn’t think about that.
But it seemed he couldn’t think about much else. Suran fell asleep almost immediately, her breathing even, and he laid there, awake and remembering every detail of the night. The pretend chase through the woods that had his blood pumping; Jimin’s delighted little giggles. How the curve of his spine felt under Yoongi’s hands; the heat of his body when he fingered him open. Yoongi breathed through his nose slowly, trying to chase away the heat in his abdomen.
He must’ve dozed off at some point, because the next thing Yoongi knew, there was a rapid knocking at the door, and then Sungha waltzed in, unnervingly chipper for this early in the morning, three sullen-looking betas following behind her. One immediately went into the bathroom.
“Rise and shine,” she sang. Suran stirred at Yoongi’s side with an annoyed little sound. “Big day today, dear,” she looked at him, a manic glow in her eyes. “We have a lot to do and not a lot of time, so,” she glanced at Suran, “your lounging time is over.”
Suran sat up, her hair ruffled on one side and looked down at Yoongi with a smile, but her eyes were empty, dark and distant. He wondered if there was another face floating in her vision whenever she looked at him.
He smiled back. “I’ll see you later?”
She leaned down and nuzzled into his chest briefly. Over the line of her head, Yoongi saw Sungha watch the exchange like a hawk, a disapproving twist in her brow.
When she straightened, Suran’s smile was genuine. “Congrats, Yoongi-yah.”
He only huffed.
Suran slid off the bed, fingers running through her long hair, snagging on a few knots. “Elder Kwon,” she said without inflection. Sungha didn’t grace her with an answer. They exchanged a tense glance, and then Suran walked out.
Sungha tutted. “I will never understand what you see in her.” She walked around the bed to drag Yoongi from under the covers. He went obediently. “There are omegas much better suited for you, and they would be lining up in front of your door if you’d just drop that girl.”
“They aren’t suited for me,” he muttered. “They are suited for my title.”
“It’s the same thing,” Sungha huffed. “You need someone who knows how to support you, and not be an emotional nuisance. You won’t have time to deal with her hysterics after today, you know.”
Yoongi decided not to answer.
He was hauled into the bathtub, the water nearly scorching this time, and then the betas spent the better part of an hour scrubbing him down so vigorously, his skin felt raw by the end. There wasn’t a wisp of water lilies anywhere anymore, and he selfishly wished he’d hidden the clothes from the night somewhere instead of burning them.
Once the bath time was over, Yoongi was sat in a chair, his back to the window, one of the betas snipping away at the ends of his hair with a pair of scissors, while the other two prepared his clothes. Sungha paced the room, talking a mile a minute.
“Today is spent entirely at the square,” she gestured wildly. Yoongi narrowed his eyes at her. She was an active lady, sure, but this level of energy was odd, even for her. “The usual festivities for the equinox, but all of them in your honour. Tomorrow, it is a little more private. Father’s guidance will be early in the morning; Sunghyung is back from whatever it is that he was doing, so he will be the one to greet us at the House.” Yoongi grimaced. She didn’t notice. “Lunch will be at the Hall, semi-formal. Then you will have some downtime, before…” her lips twisted. “Before we have to be at the temple.”
Yoongi’s heart stuttered.
“I got it, noona,” he said evenly, though the thought of seeing Jimin again made him want to howl in anticipation. “No need to get so worked up. I’ll be fine.”
She stopped her frantic pacing and looked at him, eyes shining.
“You will be more than fine, dear,” her hands came up to his cheeks, cradling his face carefully. “And I’ll be there every step of the way. I will be there when you need me.”
Yoongi hummed in appreciation but before he could answer there was a knock on the door. Sungha let him go.
“Come in,” she called out.
A beta shuffled in. His eyes met Yoongi’s and then got stuck somewhere on the floor.
“Alpha Min. Elder Kwon,” he greeted stiffly. “Elder Hwan sent me to inform you that there will be an assembly at the Hall immediately after the Revelation.”
Yoongi’s first thought was that Namjoon was wrong. Someone did see him leaving the bonfire with Jimin after all and took the first opportunity to inform the elders.
And he had hoped to have some buffer time before having a big fight at the Council over the matter of his personal life.
The beta shuffled through the room and presented Yoongi with a scroll, but Sungha snatched it before he could even lift a hand. He looked to the messenger with a raised eyebrow.
“I believe it has something to do with Maester Kwon’s return from border patrol,” the beta’s voice wavered.
Sungha shushed him sharply, but the damage was already done.
“Border patrol?” Yoongi repeated. “Since when is the House responsible for that?”
Sungha glanced at him quickly.
“Noona,” he said. “You can’t be keeping things away from me anymore.” He stretched out an arm toward her, palm up. She looked at him for a moment, as if unsure, and handed over the scroll.
“The House gets involved with the border patrol if there is need for discretion,” she said. Yoongi scanned through the message. There was no indication of what the reason for the meeting was, just a request for him to make his way to the Hall right after he was officially announced as heir. His shoulders drooped just slightly.
“You are dismissed,” Sungha threw to the beta.
Once he was out of the room, her eyebrows knitted together.
“You don’t have to go, darling,” she said. Yoongi looked up at her, incredulous. “It is supposed to be a day for celebration, not duty, and I know the assemblies are your least favourite places to be,” she cupped his cheek again. “I will smooth it over with the Council.”
Yoongi let out a startled laugh. “What are you talking about? Of course I am going.”
He stood up and walked over to where the outfit was laid out for him on the bed.
“The days when I could get out of a meeting with minimal consequences are over,” he said, looking over the layers of gold and black he was about to wear. “I’m pretty sure there will be no assembly if I don’t show up.”
Sungha sighed.
Namjoon greeted them in the inner yard, face serene.
“Elder Kwon,” he said with no inflection. Sungha bowed her head. Namjoon smiled at Yoongi. “Slept well?”
Yoongi shrugged. Sungha rolled her eyes.
“I received a messenger earlier,” Namjoon said evenly. “An emergency assembly? Any ideas what that is about, Sungha-ssi? I heard there was a protracted meeting two days ago, yourself involved.”
When Yoongi looked over to her, Sungha’s face was too blank to be genuine.
“It was a confidential matter, Alpha Kim, and no, I don’t know why we are having another one today,” she said. Her fingers were twitching. Yoongi was about to ask when a loud voice called everyone to their places. “I will see you later,” she said.
“She’s acting weird,” Namjoon said as they watched her walk over to where the tutors and younger shifters congregated toward the back. “No one is telling me what that meeting was about.”
Yoongi hummed. “Well,” he said, turning to a palanquin covered in sheer golden fabric that sat on the ground smack in the middle of the procession. “Maybe we will find out later today.”
They stepped closer to the palanquin, and Namjoon lifted the curtain. “Or you could demand it and they’d have no choice but to tell.”
Yoongi shuddered. Right, by the time the Council would convene today, he would have the power to do that. He watched as a burly beta carried his grandfather like a child, swaddled in blankets, toward the front of the procession. Jungmyun was lowered gently into his own sedan, open, and ornate, and lined with perhaps too many pillows. Yoongi wondered if the man was even awake.
Namjoon followed the line of his sight and sighed, drawing back the edge of the fabric on the palanquin. “It will be okay, hyung.”
Yoongi climbed into his seat and settled, staring straight ahead. Namjoon drew the curtains around him.
The pack alpha’s den, being a relatively new addition, was the westernmost building in the compound, guarded on one side by the forest, and separated from the square by a maze of communal living quarters, a plethora of storage units, several mess halls and commercial storefronts that housed both local and foreign merchants. Yoongi knew, mostly by hearsay, that some of those buildings were empty, abandoned and sealed off due to the sharp decrease in population after the betrayal, although most of the abandoned property was on the eastern end of the town. But even closer to the den, the streets were often empty, which Yoongi preferred. He liked the quiet.
Today, however, the gates opened to mayhem. The entire route from the front gates to the square was lined with compound members, young pups and their parents cheering on the procession. Unmated alphas and omegas hang off the balconies of the communal living quarters, and the entire time, a confetti of dried flower petals, cut up fall leaves and dry rice rained on his palanquin. At some point, the ruckus blurred into an unintelligible blanket of noise, and Yoongi tuned everything out. He stared ahead, where he knew Namjoon was carrying his grandfather’s sedan, wishing he could switch places with him and wondering if that made him a bad friend.
Thirty minutes later, they finally made it onto the square and slowly circled it. Even though he was barely more than an outline behind the thin silk draped all around him, Yoongi felt paraded, the curiosity of the onlookers a physical touch on his body. He watched as they approached the large, tiered seats set up opposite the stage, and wondered if Jimin and his brothers were already there. If the omega could tell, somehow, just by looking at the palanquin, that it was Yoongi who sat inside, unmoving.
In that moment, he felt guilty more than anything else. Even though he was fairly sure that he would be able to protect the omega from the Council’s wrath, Jimin didn’t deserve to be put under scrutiny simply on the basis of his low rank. No one did.
The procession slugged up onto the stage, and Yoongi was set down gently at the front, his grandfather’s sedan just a few paces off to the left. The alphas who carried the two of them stepped back, settling at front of the crowd of tutors and elders and other shifters. Orange and clove wafted through the air, breaking through the veil of fabric all around him. Yoongi’s lips twitched. He couldn’t see Namjoon, but at least he could smell him.
His grandfather stirred amongst his pillows. Hopefully I don’t trip on my way out, was the last thing Yoongi thought before Jungmyun began speaking.
—
“Please, please, please, tell me!” Tae whined for the millionth time that morning.
Jimin rolled his eyes at him and turned back to the stage, hiding a smile in the collar of his coat. The temperature dropped significantly over the course of the morning, making it hard to believe he was half-naked at the bonfire just a handful of hours prior.
From their spot at the very top of the tiered seats, the entire front half of the square and the stage seemed like a child’s playset. He looked at the golden palanquin, a dark shadow inside that hadn’t moved once the entire time the procession circled the square. He couldn’t see the person’s face, but somehow, they seemed solemn, reluctant to be seating where they did.
“Please,” Taehyung begged once again. “You’ve never had this kind of look after any of your hookups! I need to know.”
Seokjin, seated on Jimin’s other side, huffed.
He was glowering the entire morning, so pissed off that he didn’t even scold Jimin for leaving the bonfire without telling him, just scowled silently. The longer he sat there, a frown etched onto his face, the worse Jimin felt. He shook Tae off his arm and leaned into Jin.
“Hyung, I’m sorry for not telling you I was leaving,” he said, pulling his best puppy eyes. “It happened so quick, and the guy seemed like he was about to bolt the entire time I was flirting with him. I didn’t want to lose my chance.” Seokjin looked at him out of the corner of his eye. Jimin pouted. “I’m sorry. Really.”
Jin sighed, resolve crumbling.
“I was worried, Minnie,” he said quietly. Jimin nuzzled into his shoulder. “Couldn’t find you anywhere and no one else saw you. Don’t do that again.”
“I won’t,” Jimin promised earnestly. “One time thing.”
Seokjin watched him for a moment, and then his lips stretched in a grin.
“Tae is right, though,” he ruffled Jimin’s hair. “You seem satisfied.”
Jimin giggled. He was about to confirm, when an unfamiliar man walked up the stairs and stopped right next to them.
“Kim Seokjin?” He inquired. Jin nodded, and the man handed him a scroll. “You and your brothers have to appear at the Council Hall immediately after the Revelation is over,” he said and, without waiting for any of them to reply, walked away.
Jimin stared after him, mouth agape.
“What,” Tae leaned over to look at the unrolled piece of parchment in Jin’s hands. “Why do they want to see us? I thought you said everything was settled the other day with Kwon Sungha, or whatever her name was.”
Seokjin read over the scroll with furrowed brows. “It was.” He scratched at his chin. “It must be about something else.”
“But all of us?” Jimin suddenly felt very cold. “That’s never-”
Before he could finish, Min Jungmyun’s voice, shaking yet resonating, carried across the square.
“By the Sun and the Moon, and under their gaze,” his head, tiny amongst the towering pillows that he rested against, swivelled around, looking across the crowd, “may we all be protected this blessed season.”
The crowd repeated the words back at him. The distance was too much for Jimin to see clearly, but when the Pack Alpha spoke again, a smile was unmistakable in his voice.
“Thank you all for bearing witness today as I reveal the alpha whom I, in conjunction with the Elders’ Council, have chosen to be my heir. I am sure you are all aware of the state of my health. But many of you are too young to know that, because of my imminent departure, the traditional timeline of an ascension has been shortened.”
He shifted in his spot, and someone stepped up close to help him sit upright.
“Usually, the heir would spend about a year after their Revelation ruling alongside the current Pack Alpha, as a means to ensure that they are ready for the responsibility. I was planning on upholding that tradition, regardless of the fact that its necessity was eliminated by the creation of the pack alpha’s den and its associated methods of rearing young shifters. But alas,” he chuckled weakly, “the gods had something else in mind.”
He began coughing profusely. A sympathetic murmur rippled through the crowd. The Pack Alpha was handed a small jug, though he was shaking too hard to keep his hold on it, and someone helped him drink.
“Every alpha that I have watched grow and train in my residence over the past twenty years is worthy,” he continued after a moment, voice significantly hoarser. “And I have no doubt that each of them will go on to do great things and serve this compound to the best of their ability. And, among them all,” Jungmyun glanced over at the still figure concealed by the fabric, “there is no one else I think is more deserving of ascension than my own grandson.”
In the moments before the person stepped out of the palanquin, Jimin was overcome with a terrible sense of foreboding, jarringly opposite to the light, giddy mood he’d had ever since he left a sleeping Yoongi back at the glade. He suddenly had the urge to look away, to close his eyes, anything just to not see who was hidden in the palanquin.
But he didn’t have time.
The outline behind the curtains shifted, the person rising from their spot. Jimin stopped breathing.
“I present to you all,” Jungmyun said, raising a trembling arm toward the person, “Min Yoongi.”
Through the blood that rushed in his ears, Jimin could hear the faint sound of his brothers’ voices calling his name, but he couldn’t look away from the man standing at the front of the stage.
Yoongi seemed bored, looking across the nearly hysterical crowd with an absent gaze. He was dressed lavishly, gold and black planes of his outer coat shimmering in the sunlight, a thin, blue and silver twisted band cutting the outfit in half at the waist. His hair was styled back, long loose curls falling just short of his shoulders. He seemed almost unnaturally handsome, as if a painting come to life.
Jimin’s vision blurred.
“For fuck’s sake,” Seokjin’s alarmed voice drawled out next to him. “Okay, let’s get him out.”
He was pulled to the right, led down the stairs carefully and the pulled some more. At some point he finally became aware of the hot tears streaming down his face, though he didn’t make a single sound.
“Okay,” Seokjin propped him like a doll against the cold stone wall in an empty alleyway. Jimin could still hear the frantic shouting in the distance. “Why did you start crying as soon as you saw Yoongi?”
Jimin gasped. A memory, from years ago, when Seokjin first started coming around to the temple, jumped to his mind.
There is Namjoon, Seokjin had said, blush high on his cheeks. He’s courting me.
Jimin remembered the twin gasps Tae and him let out at that.
Courting? Jimin crawled closer to his new hyung. He was so excited to have a hyung. You’re allowed to do that?
Seokjin’s smile was sad. He hummed in confirmation and then winced. There’s also Yoongi. He’s annoying.
“Hyung,” he gasped out. “Hyung, it’s him!..”
Seokjin’s hands cupped his face. “Who is him? Jiminie, please, you’re not making any sense.”
Jimin could only sob, suffocated by dread.
And then he remembered the strange man handing Seokjin a scroll just before Min Jungmyun began speaking. A sob wracked through his body, folding him in half. They know. They already know.
“Jiminie, please,” Seokjin repeated, hauling him up straight.
“Hyung, I think I understand,” Taehyung’s voice was hollow. Through the tears Jimin watched as Seokjin looked over. “The alpha from yesterday. That’s him.”
It was silent for a moment, save for Jimin’s stifled sobs, and then Seokjin inhaled. “Oh fuck,” he breathed out. “Oh fuck.”
Jimin slid down the wall to the ground. In hindsight, he realized how stupid he was the night before, carelessly deciding to hook up with someone who didn’t know who he was. He remembered the rush he’d felt when he didn’t see in Yoongi’s eyes the look alphas usually gave him — leering, as if they were looking at a weird critter, a novelty never before seen. He just wanted to know what it was like to be regular. Wondered what every other omega in the compound felt like, wanted but not ogled. Nothing but a pretty boy, alluring but completely normal.
Seokjin crouched in front of him. “You didn’t know?” He asked. Jimin shook his head. “And he didn’t either, did he?”
Jimin could only sob.
In the distance, the crowd erupted in cheers.
“We have to go,” Taehyung said, uncharacteristically stiff.
Jin sighed and reached out to take Jimin’s face in his hands.
“You have to calm down now, Minnie,” he said. “I don’t think the Council knows yet; if they did, we wouldn’t get a polite invitation. Dragged through the streets more like it.” Jimin hiccuped, his chest constricting in terror. Jin shushed him. “Come on. Breathe for me, puppy. It’ll be alright.”
Jimin forced himself to take long, slow breaths, resisting the urge to run away. The Council Hall was the last place he wanted to go to right now, the thought of being surrounded by sneering elders, their looks of disgust and fear like sticky dirt on his skin.
“It will be strange if one if use doesn’t show up,” Jin said, as if reading his thoughts. Jimin nodded.
“I know,” he hiccuped and then forced himself up. His brothers’ arms steadied him when he swayed. “Let’s walk? It’ll take a while to get there.”
Jin considered him for moment, unsure, and the nodded.
The walk from the alley to the Hall was silent, Seokjin’s face growing grimmer with every step they took. He turned to them once they stood outside the Hall.
“Do not look anyone in the eye, especially not the Heir,” he glanced at Jimin. “Don’t look at him at all. Find a spot on the opposite wall and stare at it. Do not speak unless spoken to first, and even then, check in with me first.” He turned back. “Do not let any of them think that you are scared. Right now, we don’t know what this is about, so we act as if everything is normal, until there is evidence to the contrary.”
Jimin breathed out and glanced around, committing to memory the feeling of the sun on his skin. For all he knew, there was a chance he wouldn’t walk out of this meeting in one piece.
The inside of the Hall was all dark wood and golden fixtures, dust dancing in the sunlight that streamed through the windows. They made it through a large reception area and through another set of doors into an even bigger circular room, a large table in the middle. There were already people milling around but the second the priestesses walked in, everyone fell silent.
On instinct, Jimin hunched in on himself, shoulders curling up to shield his still tear-red face. This wasn’t like when Kwon Sungha came to the temple; if they wished, they could grab him at any moment, and Mother was too far to help him.
Seokjin threw a look over his shoulder.
Don’t let them think you are scared.
Jimin straightened, pulling his shoulders back and raising his chin. If this was, in fact, about what happened the night before, he was going to go out without crying. He would face the gravity of his own oversight and try to pull as much blame away from his brothers as he possibly could.
He felt a little better.
They made it around the room and stood against the wall, Taehyung and Jimin flanking Jin on each side, arms folded behind their backs. There were other people standing, though Jimin was too anxious to try and figure out who else was there. The elders stared. He looked above all their heads and through the windows, into what must’ve been a courtyard, the branches of a maple tree swaying in the breeze. He wished suddenly to be a red leaf, completely at the mercy of the wind, yet indifferent to his fate.
“Pack Alpha Heir Min Yoongi,” someone announced loudly. Jimin’s heart stuttered but he didn’t let his eyes wander from the tree. “Alpha Kim Namjoon. Elder Kwon Sungha.”
Jimin wondered how Seokjin did this every month.
Everyone scrambled to their seats. The last thing Jimin had time to think was, I wonder how angry he will be.
And then Yoongi strolled in.
Jimin could only muster enough courage to glance over at him briefly, enough to take in the impassive look on his face, the way the fabric of his coat glittered, the light bouncing off his face. Jimin looked down, fighting back a whimper. It was unfair how handsome Yoongi was, his face the perfect mix of sharp and soft.
There was some shuffling, the sound of a chair scraping against the floor. Then silence.
“Meeting commenced,” came Yoongi’s low drawl. Jimin swallowed. “Elder Hwan, can you state what the occasion is?”
Elder Hwan stood up, leaning heavily on a cane.
“I am sorry to interrupt the festivities, Pack Alpha Heir,” her scratchy voice grated against Jimin’s ears. “I am sure all of us would much rather be celebrating your ascension. But alas,” she sighed heavily, “there are urgent matters we must attend to. Maester Kwon returned late last night from a border patrol duty up north and brought with him a message from Pack Alpha Jeon Haesol.”
Someone moved in the deep shadows that cut across one side of the room. The man that stepped forward looked familiar, and it took Jimin a moment to realize that his face was eerily similar to Kwon Sungha’s, save for a long, jagged scar that ran from his left temple down to the opposite cheek.
Maester Kwon gave a bow. “Pack Alpha Heir,” he drawled out. His lips curved in a smile, but it wasn’t genuine. Jimin shuddered. “Congratulations on your ascension.”
The room grew a few degrees colder.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jimin saw Yoongi’s face grow severe. “Kwon Sunghyung.” He considered the man for along moment, as if deciding on something. “What is it that you have to report?” He said finally.
Jimin saw Kwon Sunghyung’s shoulders jump, as if he was scoffing silently, the movement so minute, he wouldn’t have noticed it if he wasn’t staring at the man.
“A member of the Jeon Pack’s border patrol delivered a message,” he pulled out a scroll, and handed it to the person in front of him to pass along. “I have not opened it, as is the protocol, but verbally he relayed that Jeon Haesol wishes to conduct a formal visit.”
The scroll made it into Yoongi’s hands; he broke the seal and unrolled it. As he read it, someone else stood up on the other side of the table.
“If I may, Pack Alpha Heir,” the woman said. Jimin couldn’t see her face, but she sounded too young to be an elder. Yoongi looked up and nodded. “We received a similar request from Pack Alpha Ahn a few days ago.” She slid another scroll across the table, the seal on this one already broken. Yoongi caught it, unrolled it, and studied both parchments for a moment.
Kwon Sunghyung spoke up again. “The pretence is to officially meet the new Pack Alpha. But I believe there are other reasons for these requests, ones that could prove…” he chewed on his lips. “More problematic.”
Yoongi hummed. “A pilgrimage,” he said pensively. “The Jeons wish to visit the Solar Peak and the Ahns,” he switched around the parchments, “want to attend the Moon Temple.”
For one long, glorious second, Jimin felt nothing but relief. The Council didn’t know what happened the night before; the meeting was unrelated to Jimin and Yoongi’s encounter at the bonfire.
And then, just as every gaze in the room turned to him, he remembered the warning Mother gave to Kwon Sungha.
Yoongi and Namjoon were the only ones still looking over the parchments.
“Well, there hasn’t been an official visit from either pack for quite some time now,” Yoongi said. “But I don’t see why a pilgrimage would be problematic.” He looked up, brows furrowing when he saw the way most were eyeing Jimin and his brothers. “Unless I am missing some crucial information here,” he drawled out slowly, voice dangerously low.
No one made a noise. Jimin glanced at Seokjin where he stood half a step ahead of him, hands clasped in the front. His face was blank.
Kwon Sunghyung sighed, drawing everyone’s attention away. “Before we get to that,” his head jerked in the priestesses’ direction. “The reason the House took over this particular patrol mission was that the Jeons had… an incident recently. About a month ago, Jeon Haesol’s youngest son went feral and was chased out of the compound.”
Yoongi raised his eyebrow and motioned for him to continue.
“Jung Hoseok was studying there at the time, and he reported the incident upon his return, stating that the alpha was chased up north, as is traditional. However,” he shifted on his feet. “There was reason to suspect that wasn’t entirely true.”
Yoongi’s face hardened. “You are saying Healer Jung lied?”
Sunghyung shrugged. “We weren’t sure. A hunting party reported chasing something, or someone, through the woods, but the being seemed sentient, and was able to evade them entirely. We had to make sure.”
“And?” Yoongi said. “What did you find?”
“Nothing, Pack Alpha Heir. My people scouted the quadrant for a week and there were no signs of anyone there.”
Yoongi’s shoulders relaxed, just slightly. “You confirmed Healer Jung’s report, in other words.”
Sunghyung nodded. “We did. It was a precaution.”
Yoongi sighed and looked over at Namjoon. The other alpha mouthed something soundlessly. Yoongi nodded.
“Okay,” he said out loud. “So there is no reason to suspect the Jeon Pack of sabotage of any kind. Now,” he looked up, eyes landing on Jimin. “Can someone explain to me what the problem with the Ahns’ request is?”
The room fell silent once again. Yoongi raised eyebrow.
“Well, if that’s the case,” he motioned in their general direction. “Priestess Kim, can you enlighten me?”
Jimin started at the title. He’d never heard anyone use it like that. Like it meant something.
Seokjin stepped forward with a scoff. “I wondered why you weren’t at the meeting two days ago, Pack Alpha Heir,” he said sarcastically. “I understand now that certain members of the Council were hoping to keep the incident from your knowledge.”
Yoongi’s eyes narrowed. “What incident?”
“Two days ago, Elder Kwon Sungha visited the temple for an inspection,” Jin’s voice boomed through the room. “Since I was absent, Park Jimin was the one to show her around.” Jimin felt the heat of Yoongi’s gaze on the side of his face. “I will not bore you with details, it is sufficient to say that Elder Kwon’s words had greatly offended Mother, which caused her to possess my brother’s body. You may not know this, but it is not a very pleasant experience, especially for the first time, which, for Jimin, it was.”
Jimin chanced a glance at the heir. Yoongi’s brows were knitted in something that looked a lot like worry.
“Is that so, Sungha-ssi?” He asked quietly. The woman nodded, head bowed down, eyes hidden from view. “Why was this kept from me?”
Again, the elders were silent. Seokjin huffed.
“Because Mother issued a warning,” he said. “Against this Council attempting to garner any more favours from her after your initiation was over.” There was spite in his voice. “As soon as I was aware of what had happened, I requested a meeting with the Council, and reiterated that the temple would abide by Mother’s word, and we would not be providing any more services for the Council’s benefit.”
He wasn’t even done speaking before Sungha’s shrill voice bounced through the room.
“You do not have the power to make such statements!” She shrieked. “You are a part of this pack, and you will do as we say, not the other way around!”
Jimin felt hot.
“That’s not the way you worded it to me,” he said, low but clear, “when you stood under Mother’s likeness.” Sungha recoiled at the sound of his voice.
Seokjin’s fingers twitched, and Jimin remembered, a second too late, his earlier instructions, but the omega didn’t move otherwise. The room, on the other hand, fell deathly silent. Jimin could feel the stares on him, but his vision glazed over, familiar fury rising in him.
“Priestess Park,” Yoongi’s low tone snapped him out of his ire. He looked over and was met with a startlingly soft look in the alpha’s eyes. “How did Elder Kwon word it at the time?”
The heat in Jimin’s veins felt different this time.
“She said that while the compound as a whole didn’t want Mother’s blessing, the Council needed it.” Yoongi frowned but before he could inquire further, Jimin continued. “Because they needed you to succeed, Pack Alpha Heir.”
He watched, with morbid fascination, as Yoongi went from surprise to comprehension to barely concealed anger.
“I see,” he drawled out slowly. “I can understand why the Moon would be offended.” He looked down a few seats at a woman who’d been scribbling on a piece of parchment ever since the meeting began. “I assume there was a record made of the meeting Priestess Kim had with the Council after the incident. I want to see it. Now.”
The scribe looked up and nodded. Someone peeled off the wall to Jimin’s left and hurried out of the room. At the same time, Namjoon leaned closer to Yoongi and said something into his ear. Yoongi nodded. Namjoon straightened.
“Priestess Kim,” he said, “I don’t know if you are aware, but Pack Alpha Ahn Hyejin had gotten mated recently to a leading priestess within the pack.” There were several gasps around the room, but he didn’t acknowledge them. He waited for a moment and when Seokjin didn’t react in any way, continued. “The Pack Omega’s name is Kim Yongsun, who, I believe, you would have met during your stay with the Ahn Pack.”
“Your point?” Seokjin’s voice was dry.
“My point is that, strictly speaking, this isn’t the Council’s request, but the sister temple’s. I will not pretend like the relations with the Ahns aren’t crucial to the Council’s and the pack’s functioning, but this isn’t entirely for the Council’s sake.” His eyes were soft, if a little exasperated. “I believe this is your friend’s attempt to check up on you. Or, at the very least, a fellow devotee’s wish to visit an important site of worship.”
Seokjin stood still for a moment, considering, then looked first at Jimin and then Taehyung. They both nodded.
“We will inform Mother on the matter,” Jin said evenly. “To be clear, this is not a confirmation that the pilgrimage will be allowed, nor is it a retraction of Mother’s warning. We will simply inform her of this.”
“And we are supposed to just wait?” Sungha piped up again. “There is no guarantee she will even answer, this is-”
“Elder Kwon,” Yoongi’s voice boomed through the room. “I believe you have said enough already.”
She looked at him, seemingly stunned. Yoongi didn’t pay her any mind.
“Priestess Park,” Jimin nearly jumped out of his skin again. Yoongi’s eyes were dark. “I want to offer my apology to you for what happened. I…” he hesitated. “I admittedly don’t know much about what serving the Moon entails, but Priestess Kim indicated that it was painful for you in some way, and I have no reason to doubt him. I am sorry for what you went through.”
Jimin could only nod. The room was suddenly too hot for him, and he wondered how long until this was over.
But Yoongi wasn’t done.
“Also,” he continued evenly, “I would like to request your permission to visit the temple later today. I would like to offer the Moon an apology. Personally.”
Jimin’s head snapped up, eyes wide. There were several loud gasps across the room, and Kwon Sungha, evidently unable to shut up even after she was directly told to, exclaimed again.
“Yoongi, no!..”
The man raised a hand, and everyone fell silent.
“This is not up for discussion,” he said coldly. “I don’t believe I have to seek the Council’s permission for this sort of thing. Not anymore.” There was a glint in his eyes, but Jimin was lost as to what it could mean. “Priestess Park?”
Jimin saw Seokjin nod imperceptibly.
“Of course, Pack Alpha Heir,” he said. “We would be honoured to host you.”
Yoongi smiled, though it was small.
“The honour will be mine.” He looked at Seokjin for a moment, and there was some kind of silent exchange between the two. “Is that everything concerning the Moon’s priestesses?” He asked, looking around the room. No one moved. “Alright. Then, Priestess Kim, you and your brothers are dismissed.”
Jimin felt dizzy from the pace at which the meeting moved.
“Pack Alpha Heir,” Seokjin said, folding himself into a polite nod. Jimin and Taehyung followed. “Congratulations on your ascension.”
Yoongi nodded in acknowledgement, and, without another word, they walked out of the room. On their way out, Jimin nearly bumped into a beta, a thin stack of papers in her arms. Her eyes were wide with fear.
“What the fuck was that,” Tae breathed out as soon as they were outside. “How do you deal with this every month, hyung?”
Jin snorted.
“You get used to it,” he said. Jimin went to say something, but Jin didn’t let him. “You did well, Jiminie.” He smiled at him. “You did really well.” Jimin smiled back. “Let’s go home.”
—
As soon as the priestesses walked out, Yoongi felt like snarling.
Instead, he flipped through the report the scribe’s apprentice had placed in front of him, reading through the record of the conversation, the details of what Sungha did and said in the temple. His chest burned.
Sunghyung decided, seemingly against his best judgement, to speak up. “Pack Alpha Heir,” he began. Out of his mouth the title sounded like an insult, and Yoongi already had no great love for it.
“Silence,” Yoongi gritted through his teeth. He leafed through the pages, growing angrier by the second as he read Sungha and Seokjin’s exchange, familiar enough with both to know that it was a contest of who could make up the most underhanded insult. He was going to have a talk with Seokjin about being more careful while in the Hall, though he couldn’t blame his hyung for being angry.
“You all seem to be under the impression that I would be content on being kept in the dark on certain matters,” he said slowly. “I suppose it is my own fault for making you all aware of how little I wished to be in this position.”
He closed the report and looked up. Elder Hwan was the only one whose face was serene; the rest ranged from surprise to outright fear.
“You knew I didn’t want this role and yet you still chose me as the heir.”
In his periphery, he saw Sungha’s chin tremble.
“But if you thought that I would let you all run amok, do whatever you wanted and just sign off on your bullshit,” he spat out. “Then you were wrong.”
He saw several people flinch. The guilt he felt was distant. He was sure it would hit him full-force later.
“From now on, every assembly I am not present for, a full report is to be delivered to me immediately after the meeting has adjourned. I am to be informed about any and all incidents directly involving the members of the Council. If something like this,” he jammed a finger into the report, “happens again and I am not informed of it, I will call for the Council to be dissolved and re-convened.”
Someone gasped. Elder Hwan’s face rippled in something like surprise, then approval. She was the oldest member and perhaps the only one who could oppose him on equal terms. The fact that she didn’t say a single word told Yoongi that he was on the right path.
“I sincerely hope you all know me well enough to realize than I am not joking,” he said a little calmer. No one moved. “Is there anything else?”
Sunghyung’s voice was the last thing he wanted to hear.
“The House will send a convoy to accompany you to the temple,” the alpha said. Yoongi shook his head.<
“No,” Sunghyung went to protest, and Yoongi’s lip curled in warning. The Maester blinked in surprise. “There will be no priests with me. I will not allow the Moon to be offended any more than she already is,” he nodded at the report in front of him. “Only Kim Namjoon and I,” he thought back to what Seokjin said about Jimin’s experience two days ago, “and Healer Jung will be visiting the temple grounds today. That is final.”
He stared Sunghyung down for a moment. There was a defiant glint in the man’s eyes.
“Let me be very clear, Maester Kwon,” Yoongi leaned forward. “If there is a single shadow anywhere close to that temple, not just today but ever, your position at the House will be revoked. You will be sent as an envoy to the Jeon Pack, this time permanently, any and all privileges you have acquired since your return will be taken back and you will not be allowed to come back in any capacity, so help me Father.”
Both twins stared at him in shock.
“Yoongi…” Sungha whispered, just as her brother said: “I think you are overestimating your power on the matter, boy.”
Yoongi let out a snarl he’d been holding back ever since Jimin’s nervous face greeted him when he first walked into the room. Sunghyung’s eyes went big.
“He is not,” Elder Kwon croaked. “Pack Alpha is well within his right to make a request to the House of the Father to excommunicate a member.”
“I am not a priest,” Sunghyung said.
“You are still a member,” she replied, unperturbed. “The House has never denied such a request from the Pack Alpha in the past.”
Sunghyung fell silent, so did everyone else.
“I believe that is all,” Elder Hwan said. “Pack Alpha Heir, if you will do the honours.”
Yoongi scanned the room slowly, making sure to look each of them in the eye. Sungha stared at him in something like disbelief, but he didn’t linger on her.
“Meeting adjourned,” he said, then stood up and walked out without another word, Namjoon hot on his heels.
The walk back to the square was silent. Yoongi was still seething, furious at Sungha, and the Council as a whole, and at himself. If he wasn’t so vocal about his disdain for the Pack Alpha position, if he’d just taken it more seriously, even before his grandfather fell sick, this wouldn’t be happening. He had a chance to build his position and influence in the Council and if he did, they wouldn’t dare try and keep something like this from him. Instead, he had to establish himself pretty much from nothing.
“I can hear you berating yourself from here, hyung,” Namjoon said evenly. “Stop it. You did everything right. You needed to let them know you wouldn’t let your position become ceremonial, just a nod to traditional order, and you did that. Now it will be a matter of acting accordingly if they ever pull something similar in the future.”
Yoongi exhaled through gritted teeth. “Let’s hope they don’t,” he grumbled. They walked out onto the square, rounding the stage from the back to get to the stairs. “I don’t want to deal with this kind of bullshit again.”
Namjoon didn’t have a chance to answer.
Yoongi rounded the corner of the stage and nearly collided with someone. A cacophony of clamouring, sickeningly sweet scents assaulted his nose so suddenly, he recoiled.
Oh please no. Not this, not right now.
The stairs were blocked by a dozen or so omegas, dressed to the moons, faces painted, saccharine smiled on their faces.
“Pack Alpha Heir!” The one that Yoongi nearly ran into said. Yoongi cringed at the rapid fluttering of his eyelashes. Yoongi wondered if anyone at all would find this attractive. “Congratulations on your ascension!”
“We are so happy it is you,” another one piped in. Yoongi recognized her; he’d seen her more than once loitering in the hallways adjacent to his room. She smiled at him, her lips painted a nearly poisonous shade of red, yet she exuded allure and self-assurance. She probably ranked the highest among the group. “You will be an amazing leader.”
Yoongi felt like growling at them all, anything to make them scatter.
“Thank you,” he said instead. “I appreciate the sentiment.”
The chorus of giggles that he got in response made his head hurt.
“We were wondering,” another omega said, eyes lowered to the ground. He seemed the most bashful, as if unsure to be standing where he was. “If you would be joining the dancing later. After the prayer.”
Yoongi was suddenly very thankful for what just happened at the Hall.
“I don’t think I can,” he said. “I just came back from an assembly and there are matters I must attend to immediately after sundown, so I will be leaving as soon as the prayer is over.”
They all gave a collective gasp, eyes wide and shimmering.
“But it’s a celebration for you!” Someone exclaimed from the back.
Namjoon threw a hand over Yoongi’s shoulders. “Ah, but the Pack Alpha’s duty doesn’t wait,” he said, an easy assured smile on his face. Yoongi resisted rolling his eyes. “Trust me, he is sorry to be missing the festivities but,” he threw an arm into the air, “what can be done?”
The omegas all nodded, as if hypnotized. Namjoon gave them another smile, dimples and all. “Now if you’ll excuse us, neither of us have eaten much today.” He inched them closer to the stairs, and the omegas stepped back, moving simultaneously, like a wave.
Yoongi was about to breathe out a sigh of relief, when a pair of hands wrapped around his forearm.
“Pack Alpha Heir,” the high-rank omega batted her lashed up at him. The tendrils of her pheromones reached all around him, so sweet he couldn’t even make out what she actually smelled like, except for sugar. “Isn’t it customary for an heir to bring a date up onto the stage after the Revelation?”
Yoongi felt stunned. “Is it?”
She nodded rapidly. “I read about it in a book the other night. Unless the heir was mated, they would choose a companion from among the compound’s omegas.” She smiled again. Behind her, the others stepped closer again, expectant faces turned up to him. “I don’t think I’ve seen anyone up there with you yet.”
She moved her shoulder, the collar of her coat slipping down. Yoongi nearly choked on the scent of burnt sugar.
Before he could think of an answer, someone stepped around the omega, wrapping a lithe arm around his shoulders.
“You haven’t seen anyone with him because I was busy making sure there was enough food for everyone,” Suran’s voice was ice cold. Yoongi could’ve kissed her in that moment. “Omega Gu.”
Yoongi remembered hearing that last name at the Hall. An elder’s relative, then.
He wondered if Sungha had somehow organized this.
Omega Gu recoiled. “Shin Suran,” she hissed. Suran smiled serenely.
Yoongi decided to intervene before it escalated.
“Thank you for the offer, Omega Gu,” he said. The woman’s face went lax at the sound of her name. Yoongi nearly snorted. “But I already have a date.” He smiled at Suran. “I am sorry about missing the dance,” he added, glancing over the whole group. “But I do hope you all enjoy the celebration in my stead.”
As they climbed the stairs, there was a chorus of dreamy sighs and squeals behind them.
“Gross,” Suran wrinkled her nose. Yoongi grunted in agreement. Namjoon only snorted.
The rest of the afternoon, Yoongi spent oscillating between anxious anticipation at the thought of seeing Jimin soon and fury, whenever he remembered what happened at the hall.
“You know I already have no big love for your mentor,” Suran said under her nose after they relayed the contents of the meeting to her in hushed tones. “But the way she seems to hate the priestesses has always seemed excessive to me.” She popped a piece of meat in her mouth and chewed it, head tilted to the side thoughtfully. “Not many like them, sure, but I don’t know if anyone hates them with the same vigour she does.”
Yoongi sighed. “From what I’ve gathered, she lost both her sons during the betrayal. She won’t tell me the details, so I don’t know much, but there is a drawing of them on the wall of her study dated from around that time.”
Namjoon hummed. “Still, I think noona is right. Seokjin was, what, five then? Taehyung and Jimin definitely aren’t old enough to have anything to do with the betrayal. I get that she might dislike them but they way she talked in the Hall just now…” He shook his head. “Not to mention what she actually said in the temple.”
Yoongi couldn’t help but agree.
They ate for a while, Namjoon and Suran chatting idly. Yoongi looked out into the crowd, hoping to see Jimin. Back at the Hall, he had a hard time breathing for the first little while, the omega’s beauty so stark in the daylight, he had felt as if someone punched him in the face. It was hard not to spend the entire assembly staring. But he also worried — all three priestesses seemed underweight to him, a slight hollowness to their cheeks, skin pale.
“Did they seem… underfed to you?” He asked Namjoon quietly once there was a lull in the conversation. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the pensive look on Suran’s face. She was too smart not to put the pieces together. “The priestesses.”
Namjoon’s lips twisted and he nodded almost imperceptibly. “I know Seokjin has lost weight.” He looked around the table, so full of food and drinks it was almost caving in on itself. “We should bring some over when we go. Say it’s for an offering to the Moon.”
Yoongi nodded.
Once the sun was just a palm’s breadth away from the horizon, he called over a messenger. “Find Jung Hoseok for me,” he said evenly. “Tell him to meet me at the den’s front gate after the prayer.”
The alpha nodded and disappeared.
Sungha found him in his room just after sundown, changing out of the ceremonial clothes into something simpler.
“You shouldn’t do this,” she said from the door. Her voice was watery. “You shouldn’t go to that place, for any reason, but least of all to apologize.”
Yoongi took off the sheer undershirt and shrugged into a simple cotton top. “What do you suggest I do instead?”
“Go back to the square. Find Gu Chaeyoung.”
He scoffed loudly. “I’d thought the swarm of omegas at the stage was your doing.” He turned to face her. Sungha’s face was streaked with tears. “When did you have the time to organize that?”
She smiled weakly. “I have my ways.”
He didn’t respond.
“Yoongi, please,” she said. “I’m begging you. Don’t go.”
“I am fixing the mess you created, noona,” he threw over the shoulder, pulling a warm coat of furs out of the closet. “Would you rather I order you to go back there and apologize?”
Her breath hitched.
“Order me?” Her voice rose several octaves. Yoongi looked over at her just in time to see indignation melt into disbelief. “You wouldn’t.”
“No, I would not. I wouldn’t make you go somewhere you hate, but that doesn’t mean what happened was okay. I cannot afford to have the Moon pissed at me, a fact that you impressed upon me.” He closed the clasp at the front of the furs and picked up a bag full of food from the feast. “What were you thinking, insulting her like that?”
“It wasn’t supposed to matter,” she exclaimed. “We were supposed to be done with them after tomorrow anyway. I was going to suggest that we chase those damn puppets of hers out after the initiation was done, make them disappear once and for all!”
She realized what she’d said a second too late.
“You what?” Yoongi snarled. His scent must’ve projected because Sungha cowered with a whine. “You were going to chase them out?”
“They are not welcome here!” She hiccuped. “No one wants them here, and after tomorrow we weren’t supposed to need them anymore. There would be no more initiations after this one, the House has created a ceremony to substitute that, Yoongi, I-”
“Get out,” he roared. Somewhere in the hallway a door slammed into the wall. Someone screamed. “Get the fuck out of here before I rip you to shreds.”
Namjoon appeared in the doorframe, eyes wide. “What the… hyung, what’s going on?”
Yoongi barely heard him. “You had the audacity to tell them they are a part of this pack and don’t have aright to dictate anything all the while you were planning to send them to their deaths in the woods,” he growled.
“They don’t!” Sungha was shaking. “They are the bottom of the barrel, the only right they have is to obey the Council’s orders!”
This time, when Yoongi roared, she fell against the wall. Namjoon was also crouched, his head tilted to the side, neck on display.
“Get the fuck out.” His arms shook with the effort it took not to pounce at her. The thought of Jimin and his brothers, alone, in the woods made him murderous. “Don’t you ever tell me what to do again, you disgusting fucking bitch.”
Sungha gasped. “I’m trying to protect you!”
He took a step toward her, Namjoon’s arms caught him around his midriff. “Sungha-ssi, go,” he threw over the shoulder.
She finally scrambled out of the door.
“I will kill her.”
“No, you won’t,” Namjoon maneuvered him onto the bed. And then, much quieter, “Not yet anyway.”
Yoongi snarled.
When they finally made it out of the den’s front gates an hour later, everyone they passed by had a bewildered look on their faces.
Good, Yoongi thought. He still didn’t feel a drop of guilt about what happened.
Hoseok was waiting for them just outside the gates, and Namjoon must’ve made a face, because the beta didn’t say a single thing. Yoongi had planned to question him about what happened while he was up north, but the fury still churned in him like a storm.
They walked in silence.
By the time they got to temple grounds, he cooled down somewhat, and the night thickened so much so, that Yoongi didn’t even realize that they were at their destination until they were just a few paces away from the stairs leading up to the entrance.
The Moon Temple’s walls emitted a low glow, almost a mirror image of its celestial namesake. It towered above them, the sloping incline of its roof reaching high into the air. Yoongi knew that the structure was old, one of the oldest buildings in the compound, yet the walls didn’t seem weathered by time, unnaturally shiny and sturdy. Still, there were signs of neglect everywhere — the overgrown ivy on one side of the building, glittering green and twining over the windows, piles of fallen leaves lining the walkway, dirt staining the stairs and the porch. There was a path winding to the right, its destination lost between overgrown trees of a garden.
Yoongi felt as if someone was watching them.
There was a faint, low light coming from the inside, as if emitted by a single candle. Yoongi looked over at Namjoon.
“Should we just go in?” He said, unsure. There was no one greeting them.
“I mean, we have permission,” Namjoon hesitated at the foot of the stairs. “I think it’s okay?”
Just as they were about to climb the stairs, Seokjin walked out, eyebrow raised.
“Scared?” He asked, and it wasn’t teasing. There was a bite in his voice. “I would be if I was you.”
Yoongi rolled his eyes.
“We come in peace, hyung,” Namjoon said quietly. “Really.”
Seokjin glanced at him and then returned his eyes to Yoongi.
“I want you to know that the only reason I haven’t slapped you yet is because Jimin asked me not to.”
Yoongi tried to squash the warmth blooming in his chest. He felt stupidly giddy.
“I’ll make sure to thank him for protecting me from your wrath,” he said. Seokjin sneered.
“Yeah, do that. Right after you apologize for lying about where you actually lived.”
Hoseok, standing a few steps behind him, snickered. Seokjin turned a scrutinizing eye to him.
“What’s Healer Jung doing here?”
“You said it wasn’t pleasant being possessed by the Moon,” Yoongi replied quietly. “I want him to take a look at Jimin. If he’s okay with that.”
Jin considered him for a moment.
“Jimin is fine,” he said. “But I guess it couldn’t hurt.”
They all stayed still for a moment and then Jin sighed, exasperated. “Come on in,” he jerked a hand toward the entrance. “Bow, will you. Once you get over the stupor, that is.”
Before any of them could ask what he could possibly mean, Jin disappeared inside.
They didn’t have to wait long to figure it out.
Yoongi was only religious insofar as it was required of him. He knew parts of the Father’s Guidance, though he never prayed on his own, only at the House, with the rest of the den. He knew some things to be true, even if he’d never experienced them personally, like visions of future and premonitions; he had no doubt that Sungha pretty much met the Moon in person two days ago, and that he himself would surely have a brush with the divine the next morning, when he went to the House to receive his own guidance from the Sun.
And yet, he was utterly unprepared for the way his whole body froze as soon as he stepped into the main chamber of the temple, pinned under the stern gaze of a towering figure in the middle of the room.
She appeared to be shrouded with fabric, though it didn’t seem to be any particular piece of clothing, just a long sheet of it permanently falling over her, moulded and shaped to her figure by an invisible gust of wind. The edge of it covered most of her face, only a part of her forehead, the bridge of her nose and one eye fully visible. Still, the weight of her gaze was physical, Yoongi felt it glide over his body, his face, dip into his mind. Unbidden, he remembered every name he’d heard others use to refer to her. The Moon, the Mother, the Shifter’s Lord, the Primordial Omega, the Elusive One, the One Who Leads Astray. He wondered which one she preferred.
He blinked, and then there was a crease under her eye, as if she was laughing at him.
“Is it just me,” Hoseok whispered, “or did her face just move?”
His voice snapped Yoongi out of the stupor, and he folded in a low bow at the waist. The other two followed suit. When he stood up, the crease under her eye was less noticeable, more regal, somehow.
Yoongi felt shivers run down his spine and wondered if he should have agreed to the convoy after all.
The Moon’s eyebrow creased.
“Sorry,” Yoongi blurted out loud. Namjoon and Hoseok looked at him like had grown a second head. He decided he would deal with that later. “I’m just… surprised. I didn’t mean offence.”
The crease smoothed out and she was smiling again.
Seokjin snickered from where he stood off to the side.
Now that he didn’t feel frozen in place, Yoongi looked around, taking in the interior. The chamber was large, likely able to fit in the compound’s entire population, but it was also bare. Only the two windows framing the front door had deep blue draperies on them, tucked to the side at the moment; the rest of the space had very little décor. There were shelves all around the room, seemingly cut into the whole blocks of stone that made up the walls, but they were empty. Tall candelabras stood at equal intervals around the perimeter, almost unnaturally shiny, crowned with long, never before lit candles. The roof was so high that it got lost in the dark, but it must’ve been partially made out of glass, because Yoongi could see stretches of stars flickering in the distance, intermittent with pure darkness.
“Who built this place?” He breathed out, not really expecting an answer.
Seokjin made an aborted noise. Yoongi looked down at him, frowning at the weird expression on the omega’s face. “What?”
Seokjin bit his lip. “It’s just… I forgot how little they actually tell you in that den. All those books they stole from here, and you don’t even know that the founder of this temple was a Min.”
Yoongi stared at him. “Oh.”
Seokjin huffed. “Yeah. Anyway,” he motioned toward the statue. “Come meet Mother.”
They walked down the aisle between neatly laid out rows of pillows, the statue dwarfing them all until Yoongi felt like a spec of dust. He could still feel her eyes on him even when they stood right underneath, Yoongi’s head barely reaching the same height as the bent in the fabric that indicated her knees.
“This might be a very stupid question,” Namjoon said, head tilted back to look up at her face. “But can she talk?”
Seokjin hesitated. “Kind of?” He inclined his head in thought. “It’s hard to explain.”
Before he could continue, the sound of bare feet against the stone floor made them all turn around.
Two figures emerged out of the darkness that shrouded the back half of the room. Jimin walked slowly, hands braced under the arms of small woman. She could have been any age, her face emanating the same glow as the outer walls of the temple, distorting her features in an eery mask. She stared ahead, a milky veil in her eyes, colouring her irises a strange, unnatural grey.
Seokjin sighed. “It’s hard to explain,” he repeated. “Easier to demonstrate.”
Jimin led the woman closer to them, a gentle, fond smile on his face. “Halmeonim wanted to join,” he said softly. Yoongi’s chest felt tight at the sound of his voice. “I think she has a lot to say to you,” he glanced up through his lashes, “Pack Alpha Heir.”
For a long moment, nothing happened. The woman’s eyes were trained on Yoongi, her mouth moving soundlessly, and the fog in her eyes grew thicker, until everything blended into one, almost seamless, stretch of white.
“Good,” she breathed out. The sound echoed across the chamber. “I had hoped you would come.”
Yoongi’s blood went cold. He looked over to Seokjin, who only nodded. Yoongi bowed deeply to the woman, raking his brain for what would be the appropriate title to use.
“The Elusive One,” he settled finally. “I am here to apologize for the offence an elder and a tutor of mine caused you a few days ago.”
When he looked up, the woman’s face was distorted, rippling with light. She was smiling, he realized.
“Kwon Sungha,” the woman said in the same breathy, wheezing tone. “Such a nuisance. Has always been one.” She pushed herself forward, and Jimin let her go. She swayed a little, taking one small, unstable step closer to Yoongi, and then two wrinkly, cold hands settled on his cheeks, pulling him up. The empty eyes studied him, burrowing into his head, a physical presence in his mind. “She made sure to stay close. That way you couldn’t see her.”
Yoongi frowned. “What do you mean?”
She didn’t seem to hear him.
“You look so much like him,” she whispered. “Like both of your parents, really.”
Yoongi blinked, stunned. “You knew them?”
“You grew up just as your father hoped you would.” Her hand slid up, brushing a lock of his hair away. “Just as I hoped you would.”
She let Yoongi go and nearly fell back, Jimin catching her in his arms last moment. She didn’t even seem to notice.
“Kwon Sungha hides well. But you will see her.”
Yoongi’s head spun. “I- I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean. Hides from who?”
The woman smiled. “From me. From you. From everyone, but her brother. They shared more than a womb. You’ll see.”
Her eyes rolled back, the light emanating from her skin dimming.
“Tell them I will see my children from the south,” she gasped out. Her eyes found Yoongi’s for one last moment. “Remember what he taught you. The final judgement will be yours to make.”
The fog in her eyes lifted and she fainted, slumping heavily in Jimin’s arms. Seokjin stepped closer to help him.
“Stay here,” he said to the omega. “I’ll go get her into bed.”
Once the woman was safely in Jin’s arms, Jimin turned to them with a bashful smile. “Sorry. I didn’t want to freak you out, but she wouldn’t stop yelling nonsense at me until I took her here.”
They all stared at him in shock.
“I’m sorry, who was that again?” Hoseok pointed to the shadows where Jin had disappeared. “Does the Moon have a mortal body, or?”
The sound of Jimin’s giggle made Yoongi’s heart stutter. “No, no, she doesn’t. That was Hweein, our grandmother. Well, she’s technically Tae’s grandmother, but she raised me, and then also sort of adopted Jin hyung, when he started coming here first. But you were talking to Mother,” he leaned his head to the side. “In a way. It’s hard to explain.”
“Yeah, that’s what Jin said,” Yoongi murmured. It was only because his eyes were glued to Jimin that he saw the light shiver run through the omega’s body.
“Well,” Namjoon held up his bag. “We brought food. For an offering but also for you guys to eat.”
Jimin’s eyes lit up. “Oh, thank you. I’ll go get the plates and see if Tae is still awake.”
Words left Yoongi’s mouth before he even thought about it. “I’ll help you. With the plates,” he added when Jimin sent him a perplexed look. For a moment, it seemed like he was going to refuse, and Yoongi was already thinking about how he could convince the omega to talk to him one-on-one.
“Okay,” Jimin said softly. “Thank you.”
Jimin led him to an inconspicuous wooden door at the back of the chamber which opened to a long, dark hallway, several doors on either side.
“The living quarters,” Jimin offered helpfully. Yoongi nodded, trying not to stare at the pretty planes of the boy’s face. They walked all the way down the hallway; Jimin stopped next to the door on the right and knocked lightly.
“Tae?” No answer. Jimin turned to the opposite side. “He might be sleeping. Let’s get the plates first.”
The kitchen was surprisingly big, a large, sturdy wooden table taking up most of the space. The cookstove could have easily fitted four large pots, though there was only an old, rusty-looking kettle there now. A stack of firewood was piled by the wall.
Jimin walked over to the counters lining one wall, opened an upper cabinet, and reached toward the plates on the second shelf, stretching on his toes. His shirt rode up, exposing a sliver of skin just above the waistband of his pants.
Yoongi felt hot.
“I’m sorry for lying to you,” he blurted out, too loud even to his own ears. Jimin took a stack of plates and set them on the counter. “I should have told you the truth. I’m sorry.”
Jimin turned around, leaning against the counter.
“I’m not mad at you,” he said, looking at Yoongi through the lashes. “I didn’t tell you who I was either. I think we are both to blame for what happened. It’s just…” he bit his lip. “I don’t think the Council will see our fault as equal.”
Yoongi sighed. No, they would not.
But also.
“They won’t find out any time soon,” he stepped closer to the omega, hoping that even that little bit of proximity would bring him a whiff of water lilies. It didn’t. “Not from me, anyway. Namjoon and Hoseok also won’t say anything. Neither will your brothers, I’m sure.”
Jimin tilted his head to the side, just slightly, and like a magnet, Yoongi’s eyes went to his neck. He swallowed a low growl.
“Someone else could have seen us. Maybe not at the bonfire but later. When you or I were coming back from…” he trailed off. His cheeks reddened. “It’s too risky. For both of us.”
Yoongi took another step closer. “I wouldn’t let anyone harm you.”
Jimin’s blush deepened but he shook his head. “You can’t promise that, Pack Alpha Heir.”
Yoongi growled. “Don’t call me that.” Jimin looked up with wide eyes. “Not when we are in private. Please.”
Jimin’s hand curled into the fabric of his shirt, and Yoongi fixated on the little fist. Better than the neck, some distant part of him decided.
“O-okay. I wont. But still, you can’t promise me anything like that,” Jimin’s eyes were earnest. “Nothing could come out of this.”
“Not right away,” Yoongi agreed begrudgingly. “My position with the Council isn’t stable enough right now, but I don’t plan on leaving it like that for long. Once I am more established, I could announce my intention officially. I would court you publicly. The elders wouldn’t like it but-”
Jimin reached out toward him with a gasp. “Yoongi-ssi,” he said, urgent. “You can’t court me. Ever.”
“What? Why?”
“I am not allowed to court, much less mate. Or bear children. I can’t even have a heat partner.” His eyes shimmered.
The room tilted.
“What?” Yoongi’s chest constricted. He wondered how many times something this would happen; how many times he would feel thrown into the storm by a new piece of information he should have known but didn’t.
“It’s a law,” Jimin whispered. “None of us are allowed to take a mate.”
“What is the punishment?” Yoongi asked, his whole body frozen.
Jimin’s smile was sad. Defeated.
“Death.”
Notes:
hello everyone!
so i know this took a little while for me to post, but this chapter is where the plot begins to thicken, so to say, and i really wanted to get it right. i don’t know if i did, but after five re-writes, i just wanted to move on, so that i wouldn’t get stuck trying to make it ✨perfect✨. you’d be waiting forever.
that being said, the good news is that i did also manage to draft out the story to about half-point. i won’t say that will make the updates easier, or more consistent, but it does mean that certain things are now solidified and the writing process should be much smoother from here on out. in the interest of keeping you all more up-to-date with when new chapters will go up, i made a twitter account. it’s barren at the moment, but i will make a post for the fic later, so if you wanna get more immediate updates, you can follow me there, but no pressure!
finally, thank you so much for all the hits and kudos on the fic, and to those of you who’ve left comments — you’re literally the light of my life. i struggle with motivation at times and reading the comments and seeing how excited people are for this story alway gets me out of a slump. so thank you 🩵 you are the best.
anyway, thanks for reading! see you soon :)
Chapter 5
Summary:
Like everything else, Yoongi’s guidance ceremony ends up disastrous. Elsewhere, Hoseok briefly shares his concerns about what he saw while visiting the Jeon Pack with Taehyung.
Notes:
alright! so
CONTENT WARNING: if you, like me, are arachnophobic, please be careful while reading this chapter. spoiler: yoongi sees a mother spider killing its hatchling. that’s it, that’s all you need to know, if you don’t want to read that part, it starts at “There was a thick branch sticking out of the trunk…” and ends at “He still felt rather rattled…”
i know this is like. mild, for some people, but i have this phobia and i nearly had a panic attack writing that scene, so. just in case.
that being said, a gentle reminder to mind the tags :)
enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
There was a long moment where Yoongi wondered if all this — the entire day, from the moment he walked onto that stage up to now, — was one huge joke. A cruel dream, his mind showing him all the worst scenarios it could ever conjure. He hoped, silently, that he would wake up all the way back at that tiny glade in the middle of the forest, and Jimin would be asleep, safe and sound in his arms, instead of watching him with something like pity in his eyes.
“Death?” He repeated, voice hollow. “No, that’s-”
Then it all fell in the place.
Death penalty as such was abolished soon after the betrayal, as to not shrink an already small mating and birthing pool.
Yoongi drew a shuddering breath.
“You are outside the mating roster by definition.”
Jimin nodded, the same rueful, defeated smile stuck on his lips.
“If any of us were killed, there would be no repercussions. I don’t think there is any punishment listed on the books, actually,” Jimin said slowly, tiny pointer finger tracing an invisible pattern on the counter. “But we all know. They want us gone, so…”
Yoongi felt sick.
“I,” he took a deep breath, trying desperately to stave off the wave of nausea that suffocated him. “I didn’t know about that.”
Jimin chuckled, though it wasn’t joyful, and bent down, pulling two foldable tray-tables from a cupboard. “No one does. It’s just another way in which they try to catch us out.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, let’s say I don’t hide in time before my pre-heat, an alpha scents me, forces themselves on me, and I end up pregnant as a result. The alpha wouldn’t get any blame for that; only I would bear the guilt for breaking the law.”
There was a growl brewing in Yoongi’s chest, but he swallowed it.
“I will try to amend this.”
Jimin glanced at him through his lashes. “I don’t mean to doubt your word, Yoongi-ssi, but how will you do that? Even just bringing the issue up at the Hall will alert the elders to your interest in me, and then what? There is more in their toolkit than just the ban. There are a thousand ways they could destroy me and my family.” He sighed, shaking his head. “If you want to keep your position, you should stay away from me.”
Yoongi watched the way shadows cut deep into the marble of his cheeks, the way his eyes glittered in the dark.
“I want to keep you safe,” he said, barely above whisper. “What do I do to keep you safe?”
Jimin looked at him for a long moment, mouth open just so, as if in disbelief.
“Unfortunately,” his gaze slid down Yoongi’s figure and onto the floor, “the same thing. If you want to keep me safe, you stay away.”
—
The spring after Jimin’s presentation was seared into his mind with acrid smoke of heartburn.
Incessant rain had fallen in long, cold sheets for days on end, until the river flooded. He ended up cut off from the temple for several days, curled up on his bed, staring out of the window and wondering if the world as he knew it was finally ending. He wondered where his mother was and if she would survive this flood, and he prayed. Prayed for her to return, though he knew it was a cruel prayer to make.
On the fifth day, the raining had subsided, and he was about to step out onto the porch to assess the damage to the neighbourhood, when he heard a knock. Outside, a young alpha greeted him, shoulders hunched over under a soaked-through coat, cheeks hollow and eyes shiny with hunger. He asked Jimin if he had any spare food — his alpha mother, the boy said, had left for a long hunt before the rain started, leaving him to fend for himself and his little sister.
“I can’t hunt,” the boy had gasped out, swaying on his feet. Jimin barely had time to catch him.
One thing the priestesses knew how to do well was prepare for the unforeseen. So, Jimin had sat the alpha down at the table with a steaming mug of tea and dug through his stock. He filled two bags full of rice, potatoes, dried fish, kimchi and even a single slab of salted venison Jimin had been saving for when his next heat would hit. They walked together, the alpha leading him to a tiny house a few streets over, where a little girl no older than six laid amongst covers, almost eerily still. Jimin had cooked a hearty meal over an open flame and then spoon-fed the girl some jjuk, while the alpha wolfed down his own portion.
On his way back, Jimin had wondered, not for the first time, what it would have been like, if he was allowed to have his own family. With his father dead and his mother gone, he felt somewhat untethered. Lost. Seokjin hadn’t visited the temple in a while, and Hweein’s eyes were glazed with fog more often than not. Unlike him, Taehyung hadn’t presented yet — it would happen only a few short weeks later, — and for the first time in his life, Jimin had felt like no one, not one soul in the entire world, understood what was happening to him. He had gone through his first heat in late winter, painful and lonely, fearful of every unknown sound. It left him hollow. He wondered what his mother would say if she was still there, with him, but he was beginning to forget the cadence of her voice, so he didn’t dwell on that too long.
He thought of the little girl in her brother’s arms, her lips back to normal, healthy pink after a warm meal.
You will never have a pup of your own, he remembered his mother screaming at the top of her lungs a few days before she left. They were sitting at the foot of his father’s grave in the backyard; it was a rare moment of lucidity amongst all-consuming grief, the kind of grief that left her mute and deaf and blind to the world. He begged her, he remembered, begged her to come play with him and Tae at the temple, and doesn’t she miss Hweein? Hweein misses her. You are not allowed to love someone the way I loved him. How can you understand?
He saw the alpha again a few weeks later. Jimin wondered, afterwards, why on earth he never asked the boy’s name, why he never made an effort to know him better. Maybe it was premonition. Maybe Mother was protecting him.
The alpha had a much healthier look about him and two freshly killed rabbits in his hands. As he roasted the meat over the fire in the backyard, Jimin felt the alpha’s eyes trace him over and over again; he had thought at the time that must’ve been the pinnacle of romance, the hungry, calculating glimmer in the boy’s eyes. When he pushed him toward the bed once they were done eating, Jimin went easily. Willingly.
Jimin had thought that maybe his mom was wrong. Maybe, despite the Council’s orders, despite the poorly veiled fear and disgust he faced wherever he went, he still had a chance at love.
The morning greeted him with harsh sunlight.
“When will you be back?” He asked the boy, still snuggled in his covers. The alpha shrugged.
“I don’t know. My mother is back and I’m getting sent on an official hunt next week, so I don’t think I’ll need your help any time soon.”
When Jimin didn’t reply, staring at him blankly, the alpha let out a startled laughter.
“You don’t mean… By the Father, you can’t seriously think I’d be back for you.” He scoffed, shaking his head. “You were so disappointing.”
Despite the bitter pain in his chest, that got Jimin’s blood boiling.
“That was my first time with an alpha. Sorry I’m not a prodigy in bed,” he snapped, tugging the covers closer around his body, suddenly cold. The alpha shook his head again.
“That’s not what I meant. Word on the street is that if you fuck a priestess, you’ll meet the Moon. That you guys glow weird and that the orgasms are much more satisfying. I thought I’d test the theory.” He sat down on the edge of the bed to put his boots on and Jimin barely suppressed the urge to kick him.
“You’re disappointed because I’m normal,” he said instead. The alpha shrugged.
“Yeah. I had thought there must be a reason the shadows preach so much about how dangerous you guys are, especially to the shifters. But you’re completely ordinary.”
Jimin had to fight against the burning in his eyes. “Why is that a bad thing?”
“Because you’re basically rankless. What else do you have to offer, if not some freaky sex?”
Jimin saw him only twice after that. Once at the market, from afar, and when a group of hunters brought his mauled and decomposing corpse back into the village after going missing on a hunt for months on end.
A rabid bear, they said.
His sister’s howling rang in Jimin’s ears for weeks.
“Jiminie?”
Seokjin’s voice, thick with sleep, startled him out of his reverie. Jimin looked over where his hyung stood at the door, his sleeping clothes rumpled and hair wild, and then turned back to the window. The sky was periwinkle.
“What are you doing up so early?”
“So late,” Jimin mumbled, resting his head against the windowsill. His eyes were burning. “Couldn’t sleep. Too much to think about.”
The evening ended up being nothing extraordinary. They ate the food the alphas brought while Jin and Hoseok chatted idly about the healer’s master, Namjoon piping in occasionally, though Jimin barely heard a word. Yoongi sat next to him completely silent the entire time and only moved to put some more food onto Jimin’s plate every once in a while. In the end, the guests left soon after midnight and Jimin had been siting on his bed, deep in thought, ever since.
“Think about what?” Seokjin climbed onto the covers next to him, a knitted shawl drawn tight around his shoulders.
Jimin sighed. He had spent some time pondering whether mentioning Yoongi’s outlandish proposition was even worth it. It’s not like it would ever actually happen and bringing it up would only remind his brothers of the things they didn’t have. In Seokjin’s case, the things he actively gave up in favour of serving Mother to the fullest capacity.
He decided to deflect, for now.
“Why did you leave, hyung?” He asked, glancing at Seokjin though his lashes. The other omega’s expression didn’t change, as if he wasn’t surprised by the question at all. “If you hadn’t taken the oath, the ban wouldn’t have applied to you. You and Namjoon-ssi would’ve mated. You could have had pups. Don’t you want that? A family?”
For a long while, it seemed like Seokjin wasn’t going to answer. They sat, across from each other, silent, for so long, Jimin began drifting away.
“A few moths before my intention I started having dreams.”
Jimin blinked his eyes open. There was something weird in Seokjin’s face, an emotion his sleepy brain couldn’t name.
“Mother took all sorts of faces and voices to talk to me. Sometimes it lasted the whole night through.”
“What did she say?” Jimin breathed out. Jin smiled.
“Lots of different things. For a while it felt as if she was just reintroducing herself. She used to be so close to me when I was younger, when I still lived with the Ahns, and then she was gone. It took some getting used to her being back.”
Jimin sighed, his eyelids fluttering shut. “Were you angry with her?”
“Angry? Why would I be angry?”
“She left you. Just like mine left me.”
For a moment the air was completely still, and then he was wrapped in cocoon of jasmine petals.
“Oh, Jiminie.” Seokjin guided him into his arms, Jimin’s head tucked under his chin. “No, I wasn’t angry. We can talk about that some other time, when you’re a bit more lucid, okay?” Jimin nodded, rubbing his nose against Jin’s neck. “Anyway, a few nights before my ceremony, she took your face.”
“Mine?”
“Uh-huh. Yours. And with your voice she told me that the moment when she’d need me close wasn’t far and when that moment came, there wouldn’t be a bond strong enough to keep me away from her.”
Jimin’s mind swam with questions, but he was too tired to ask.
“There was more,” Seokjin mumbled into his hair. “There were other things that compelled me to take the oath, but that was the catalyst. If I hadn’t left, I would only be delaying the inevitable.”
Jimin cracked his eyes open just enough to have the morning light flood his vision through the veil of his lashes.
“Will she need you,” he slurred out, “or will I need you?”
Seokjin sighed.
“I don’t know, sweetie. We shall see.”
Periwinkle sky glimmered. Jimin thought of the look Yoongi gave him before walking out of the temple, sad, and longing.
“He said he’d court me.” Jin inhaled sharply. Jimin’s eyes fell shut. “He didn’t know about the ban. Had to tell him.”
Jin’s arms tightened around his body.
“I’m sorry, Minnie,” he whispered, nuzzling even further into Jimin’s hair. “I’m so sorry.”
—
Yoongi spent the darkest part of the night in the woods, though he had little to show for it. He walked in a large arc north of the compound, from east to west, snacking on berries and letting hare after hare bypass him without so much as a second glance. He imagined, idly, that the prey was surprised at his lack of usual vigour but happy to hop through the forest for another day.
Ever since his conversation with Jimin in the kitchen, he had felt somehow unspooled, as if some invisible stitching that held him together all through the Revelation day had finally come undone. His thoughts were jumbled, to the point where he couldn’t make anything apart, except for a vague sense of defeat and helplessness.
He came back to Jimin’s circumstance over and over again, the horrific nature of the Council’s ban and its implications, not just for the temple and the longevity of the Moon’s cult, but also for the pull Yoongi felt for Jimin. His muddled mind kept stumbling over whether or not the omega’s words were, in fact, a rejection.
“He doesn’t have a choice,” Yoongi mumbled to himself, feeling vaguely ridiculous but also too distracted by his own mind to really care. “Can’t make that decision based on himself, not really…”
And that was the crux of the issue, Yoongi decided. Very little of what the omega said gave him any indication on where Jimin actually stood, whether he would have accepted Yoongi’s courtship, were it not for the ban.
He sighed, coming to a stop by a large fallen tree, the trunk of it covered with moss. This was a landmark the hunters used to orient themselves sometimes — if he walked east for about ten minutes, he would reach the sprawling gardens behind the den. Instead, Yoongi hoisted himself up onto the tree, fingers tracing the cushion of moss.
It wasn’t fair, he decided, to expect Jimin to give a full and unclouded answer at this point. The ban and its associated punishment hung over the omega and his family like a sword and Yoongi, after all, was still a stranger to him, in more ways than one. He wasn’t just an unfamiliar alpha, promising Jimin protection and safety. He was also a freshly ascended Pack Alpha, who, for all Jimin knew, could turn out to be less than merciful to someone like Jimin, a disenfranchised omega without rank.
His thought stumbled here, and Yoongi slumped, dropping his head into his hands. Something bothered him about Jimin’s position, about the evident antagonism in his relationship with the elders, if not with the pack at large, but he could put a name to it. He sighed, looking up, and propped his elbows on his knees, staring absently at the ground.
The air around him was lightening slowly, the sky growing lilac, the stars fading, and only the waxing crescent, nearly full, still shone high above the treetops. Yoongi remembered his grandfather’s words from a week ago.
Fate doesn’t wait for anyone, it moves along its own song, and all too often we are deaf to it.
He wondered what he would have felt like now, had he refused his grandfather’s wish back then, though he couldn’t bring himself to regret it, despite everything. He could only hope that this whirlwind dance of fate would slow down somewhat, so that he could keep up.
He was about to get up and make his way over to the den, when something, a minute movement in the corner of his eye, caught his attention.
There was a thick branch sticking out of the trunk, a deep fork starting around the same height as Yoongi’s eyesight. In the twilight, he only realized that there was a cobweb between the two prongs by the way dew stuck to the silken treads, the rhythmic, circular formation in which the water organized itself.
Yoongi wasn’t particularly fond of spiders — Namjoon was the one with penchant for crabs of all kinds, — but the way dewdrops trebled, as if suspended in the air by magic drew him closer, until he didn’t have to strain his eyes anymore to see the silver strands of the spiderweb, stretched taught between the two offshoots of the branch.
What he saw next felt equally as a premonition and a revelation. There were two spiders on the web, a mother and a child, judging by their size. The smaller one moved in the inner circumference of the web, while its mother sat on the outskirts of their home. The hatchling stalled for a few moments in the very centre of the web, and a bolt of terror shot through Yoongi’s body as he watched the bigger spider move in a flash.
With a gasp, he reeled back, turning away from the scene, and jumped off the log, heart hammering in his chest, cold shivers covering the back of his neck. He took two steps away from the tree, taking deep, shuddering breaths. He glanced over the shoulder back to the branch. A single spider sat on the web, its body glimmering menacingly in the moonlight.
He still felt rattled from the cannibalistic display when he made it to his grandfather’s quarters some time later.
“Hyung,” Namjoon greeted him quietly from across the room. Sungha was also here, her face swollen, the skin of her cheeks ruddy. Yoongi felt a pang of guilt, before the details of their fight came flooding back. He looked away.
“How was your walk?” Jungmyun rasped from his usual spot amongst the pillows.
Yoongi shrugged. “Alright.” He dropped the ceremonial overcoat he’d picked up from his room onto one of the armchairs by the window and ran a hand though his hair. A part of him wanted to ask Namjoon about the infanticide he’d witnessed, but something held him back. Later, he decided. “We should be leaving soon.”
Jungmyun hummed.
“How did the visit to the temple go?”
Yoongi glanced over to Sungha, unsurprisingly finding her already watching him. His mentor’s eyes were wide and wet, and yet again, he felt torn between guilt and fury.
“You didn’t say?” He asked Namjoon.
“I just got here a few minutes ago.”
Yoongi sat down on the armchair heavily.
“The Moon has agreed to receive the Ahns,” he said. “She seemed to know you quite well, harabeonim.”
Jungmyun smiled but before he could reply, Sungha piped in.
“You met her?” Her voice trembled with tension. Yoongi watched as she licked her lips, wringing her hands on her lap.
“In a way,” he said evenly. “She was speaking through one of the priestesses.”
“Kim Hweein was relaying the message,” Namjoon supplied helpfully.
Jungmyun’s eyes were fond, yet he sighed, sadness palpable in the sound.
“It is good to hear that she’s still with us.” He leaned his head back onto the pillow. “Well, seems like Yoongi’s decision to make a personal visit to the temple was successful after all, Sungha-ssi. As I told you, you have nothing to worry about.”
Sungha looked far from convinced but she nodded anyway.
“I suppose I should have more faith seeing as I was the one to teach him everything he knows.”
Yoongi frowned. Something about that statement didn’t sit right with him, though it wasn’t a lie.
Sungha stood up, righting her skirts.
“I have to go make sure the pups are up and ready to go. We will be departing for the House in half an hour.” She fell silent, waiting for Yoongi’s response. When he didn’t acknowledge her, Sungha gave a little bow and left, her bottom lip trembling.
“She told me what happened,” Jungmyun said quietly once the door fell shut behind her.
Yoongi grumbled. “I stand by everything I said and did.”
“It is too early for you to be getting into growling contests with the elders, Yoongi,” Jungmyun tutted, but there was no real fire behind his words. He was smiling. “She mothered you. She worries, that’s all.”
“With all due respect, harabeonim,” Namjoon said suddenly. “I don’t see how Elder Hwan’s motherly instincts would lead her to plan an exile for the Moon priestesses.”
Jungmyun’s face turned serious. He observed them both for a moment and the motioned to elaborate. Yoongi retold him the progression of the fight he had with Sungha, and everything else that was said.
“Hm.” There was a deep crease in the old man’s forehead.
Yoongi pondered his next words carefully. “The way Sungha protested my visit, I had expected to be attacked in some way the moment I stepped foot onto the temple grounds. I expected the Moon to be hostile. Instead, I found three young omegas and their elderly, half-mad warden who not only couldn’t bring me any harm, but also didn’t seem to want to.”
“Their quality of life is shockingly low,” Namjoon added gravely. “They didn’t say it, but I don’t think they have enough to eat.”
Jungmyun nodded, eyes glazed over with thought. After a moment, he sighed heavily.
“I wish I could say that the priestesses’ conditions were my only regret now, at the end of my reign and life, but I can’t.” He drummed his fingers against the covers for a moment. “Now that the Ahns’ visit is confirmed, you might have some leverage to help them, at least temporarily.”
“That won’t do anything if the Council is dead set on driving them out the second the southerners leave the compound,” Yoongi said.
“Which, by the way, makes no sense. Whether the elders like it or not, someone should steward the temple. Driving them out makes no sense,” Namjoon added.
Jungmyun hummed thoughtfully.
“To my knowledge, most on the Council are content to let them be. It is Kwon Sungha and her particular faction of Father’s devotees who are concerned. As to what you said, Namjoon,” he faltered. “You should talk to your intended about that.”
Yoongi and Namjoon shared a surprised look.
“Seokjin? Why? What does he have to do with this?”
Jungmyun sighed. “It’s not my place to say, but when you do ask him, tell him I gave my blessing. Whether he chooses to listen is his decision, but I think it is time he unburdens himself.”
Namjoon’s mouth opened and closed a few times but in the end, he just nodded.
Yoongi glanced over to the clock above the entrance. “We should be going.”
He stood up, picking up his coat, but Jungmyun’s next words stopped him in his tracks.
“Before you do, Yoongi, you should know — Father visited my dreams tonight.” Yoongi nodded for him to continue. “I know you are expecting the high priest to basically be his mouthpiece, but I think he intends to be much more direct than usual today.” There was a warning in his voice.
“Should I be concerned?”
“No, I don’t think so. But instead of having the priests tell you what he said, be ready to meet him eye-to-eye.”
Yoongi sighed. The dance of fate didn’t show any signs of slowing down.
—
Taehyung woke up with a gasp.
He sat up in his bed, eyes scanning his room, trying to find whatever it was that startled him out of his sleep, but there was nothing. He rubbed at his eyes, confused, trying desperately to remember if it was a nightmare that awoke him, but nothing came to mind. He sighed, meaning to lay down but something didn’t feel right. He sat for a few more moments, trying to figure out what the strange feeling in his chest was, until it finally took form, condensing into a pull of a rope.
He stood up and walked out onto the hall. The kitchen was empty, but the back door was cracked open, and he could hear Seokjin moving around in the yard. He turned the opposite way and walked slowly toward the entrance to the chamber, the pulling in his chest weakening with every step. Just to make sure, Taehyung stopped for a moment, moved to go back and gasped when the rope squeezed tightly, though not painfully.
“Okay, fine,” he muttered, speeding up. The door to Jimin’s room was shut tight and no sounds came from behind it.
The chamber was flooded with morning light, making everything seem like a mirage. At first, Tae thought maybe he’d been tricked after all, since the room was seemingly empty, but then a movement by the statue caught his eye. He squinted.
“Healer Jung?”
Hoseok looked up, eyes wide and startled. He was kneeling at Mother’s feet, a single tiny candle clutched tightly in his hands, the fire just a few centimetres away from his fingers.
“Omega Kim,” the beta scrambled up to his feet. The candle went out at the movement and Hoseok’s face fell for a split second. When he looked up again, his smile was brilliant. “Blessed morning.”
Tae tilted his head to the side.
“What are you doing here?”
“Oh, um,” he whipped around, frantic, and gestured to where his healer’s bag sat on the floor a few steps away. “Well, it is initiation day, and grandmother and I will be the healers in attendance, so…”
Taehyung bit back a smile. He’d always found the healer quite adorable, the few times they’ve crossed paths at the market or when Tae went to the Jung residence for some herbs and healing salves.
“The ceremony doesn’t start until dusk.”
“Yes!” Hoseok whipped back around. “I know, but I was supposed to do a check-up on Jimin-ssi yesterday, but he was so tired last night, and we didn’t get to it, so I thought I’d come early and do that today!”
Taehyung stepped closer. His chest trembled with mirth and amusement at the flustered man. “Why were you praying, Hoseok-ssi?”
Hoseok blinked, his fake cheerfulness evaporating in a single blink. Taehyung watched as the corners of the man’s lips drooped, something serious and somber dawning in his eyes, wishing he’d just let the man off the hook.
“Did something happen?”
Hoseok sighed, his right hand coming up to grasp the opposite forearm. He winced.
“Nothing major,” he said. Taehyung didn’t believe him but decided not to ask. “I just… after yesterday, I guess I was curious about what it was like to pray to her.”
Taehyung stepped closer. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know yet.” Hoseok looked up at the statue’s face. “I guess I’ll have to see if she responds.”
The beta was seemingly mulling something over in his head. Taehyung waited.
“I have a question, Taehyung-ssi, and I assure you that I’m not trying to come across as disrespectful or mean.”
Tae nodded encouragingly.
“How much do you know about feral alphas?”
Taehyung blinked in surprise.
Hoseok rushed to explain. “I- again, I don’t mean to be rude, I know it’s a bit of a touchy subject for the temple.” He glanced over to the statue, as if afraid it might move and smack him for the disrespect. “But I know your grandmother used to be the temple healer before…” he gestured vaguely to the side.
“Before the betrayal,” Taehyung filled in for him. Hoseok nodded, biting his lip. “Not really, I don’t. The only alpha to go feral whom I knew personally was Jimin’s father, but I wasn’t involved in treating him. I was nine, I think, when he died.”
Hoseok sighed, brows furrowed. “I see.”
“I thought you were somewhat of a specialist on this,” Taehyung said.
“I thought so too,” Hoseok murmured so quietly, Tae wasn’t sure if he’d meant to say it out loud. He frowned.
“Is it about that Jeon alpha? They talked about him at the Council meeting yesterday,” he added when Hoseok looked at him like he’d grown a second head all of a sudden. “Was there something weird about the incident?”
The healer hesitated.
“I already know it happened, Hoseok-ssi,” Taehyung said, trying to sound as soothing as possible.
“I- Well.” He bit his lip, staring into the void for a moment. “Have you ever known someone to go feral over the course of a single night?”
Taehyung’s mouth dropped open. “No, that’s… the quickest I’ve ever heard was about a week?”
Hoseok didn’t seem placated. “What if I told you that the person was only presented less than a year ago and had never even attempted to shift?”
Tae stared at him.
“That’s impossible,” he breathed out.
“Yeah, I think so too.”
“Did you tell the Council?”
“I did, but they didn’t seem particularly interested in my evaluation.” Hoseok walked over to his bag and plopped down onto the floor, his head bowed low. “So long as Jeongguk wasn’t chased out into our territory, they couldn’t care less.”
“What do you think happened, then?”
When Hoseok looked up, his eyes were dark. “I’m not sure exactly, but it wasn’t a natural occurrence, that much I know.”
—
Sungha had been an indelible part of Yoongi’s life for all twenty-three years of it, a constant presence no matter what was happening in his life. Yoongi’s earliest memories were fuzzy, a lot of blurred together faces of people he now knew as the elders, him being passed from one person to the next. They would coo at him and pinch his cheeks, and every single one of them looked at Yoongi with expectation. It wasn’t until much later, that Yoongi realized — they were hoping, expecting him to present as an alpha, and when he finally did, they were still disappointed because he wasn’t as strong, his wolf wasn’t as present as his father’s was, apparently.
Sungha was the only one who didn’t care, ever. She never talked to Yoongi about his possible rank before his presentation, and she never stopped caring for him after, even when he was still struggling with shifting. Yoongi never had a mother, and there was still a certain distance between them, subordination appropriate between a tutor and a pupil, but he knew that no one else loved him the way she did.
Still, that didn’t mean they never fought.
She did now what she’d always do, namely let out pitiful sighs every other minute and try to catch Yoongi’s eyes, her own wide and teary. The sight both tugged at his heartstrings and made him furious, and so he stared resolutely ahead, refusing to give in to her.
The witnessing procession was long, more and more people joining as they walked through the streets toward the House of the Sun, but there was no ruckus, the atmosphere somber. It grated on Yoongi’s nerves, the feeling of a million eyes on him, hopeful and revering and expectant and judgmental. He wondered if this was going to be his life forever now.
Finally, the House came into the view, tall walls of light wood and gilt, stretching far into the sky, a single round window of stained glass high above the double doors. Yoongi faltered for moment, taking the time to linger on the steps, as if in humble reverence. The crowd behind him murmured and shuffled. He bowed his head and walked through the doors, flanked by Elder Hwan and Namjoon on either side.
There wasn’t a single candle inside, and yet, even in the bleak morning light, the walls glowed with warmth. Yoongi faltered yet again, though this time it wasn’t a pretence.
“Can you feel that?” He murmured quietly. Namjoon let out an astounded breath.
“He’s woken up, it seems,” Elder Hwan rasped under her nose, leaning heavily onto her cane. “You are already blessed, Min Yoongi. Now, remember,” her long, bony fingers grasped onto his forearm, “whatever you see or hear, continue on.” Her eyes glimmered with something warm.
Yoongi nodded and together, they walked down the aisle to where Sunghyung and the high priest stood.
“The Envoy,” she greeted once they came to a stop. “Maester Kwon. Blessed morning.”
Under their black hooded robe, the high priest stirred in acknowledgement. Sunghyung inclined his head. Elder Hwan patted Yoongi’s hand and let him go, taking her place at the front of the crowd a few paces away.
Sunghyung beady little eyes drifted over Yoongi’s face, assessing.
“Pack Alpha Heir,” he drawled out, stretching the syllables. “Before the One Who Bestows Reason, be named.”
“Min Yoongi.”
The high priest’s figure rippled and then their right arm, clad entirely in a black glove, appeared from a slit in the robe, rising until it was perfectly parallel to the floor. They turned on their axis, never swaying, like a lifeless doll, and pointed at the large circular platform.
The stairs leading up reached up to about Yoongi’s knee height. From the platform a view opened, one that few were allowed to witness. The priests called it simply — the Path. An incredibly long and wide hallway, lined by twelve tall statues, six on each side, though the distance was so great Yoongi had a hard time distinguishing what exactly they depicted. At the very end of the hall, a humongous gilded plate cut in the shape of a sun was suspended in the air, framed by twelve wavy rays. Even from afar, Yoongi felt dwarfed by it.
Twelve shadowy figures stepped up onto the platform, forming a perfect circle with Yoongi right in the middle.
“Kneel,” they ordered in a single voice, the sound echoing through the House. Yoongi did. Three heavy steps rustled behind him, and he fought the urge to turn around. Fabric brushed against his back. The high priest took his place.
For a moment everything was suspended in perfect stillness, then the priests lifted their hands up to the ceiling. Somewhere fire crackled and then twelve blazing lights lit up on the Path, one in front of each statue; sharp smell of incense wafted through the air. The high priest chanted something in an ancient language. Without thinking, Yoongi translated the words of the prayer silently.
“Sunlight reflected loses warmth,
The touch of moonlight fatal flaw
For one whose birth she’d cut in two.
Beseech his word,
The rupture healed,
The wolf subdued,
For hers is madness,
His is truth.”
The priests began chanting, and Yoongi let himself tune out the sounds of their speech, eyes trained on the gilded sun. The longer the chant went on, the bigger it became, the shine and the irregularities of its surface becoming clearer and clearer, the rays swaying gently as if moved by an invisible breeze, until it filled Yoongi’s vision entirely, nothin but gold and heat around him, the sounds of prayer, the smell of incense all falling away.
He stood in front of a house, the same emblem of the sun, although much smaller, crowning its roof. All around, flowers were in bloom. Yoongi saw a tiny bee hopping from plant to plant and smiled. He was about to walk closer when a man stumbled out of the door, his whole body distorted, joints twisted and elongated, eyes red, fangs protruding from his blueberry-stained mouth.
Instinctually, Yoongi reeled back, his own mouth curling in a snarl. The man looked at him and despite the clear signs of ferity, smiled.
“You will see,” he breathed out through the terrifying grin. He charged forward. Yoongi braced himself for impact, but the collision never happened, the man’s body passing right through him.
With a loud snap, the scene dissipated, and Yoongi was standing yet again in the gilded sea.
A male voice sounded through the air.
“How are you feeling, mom? Okay, well. We will see you later!”
Snap.
A man standing in the middle distance.
Slowly, Yoongi walked closer. The man noticed him and smiled.
It was like looking in a mirror. His father’s cat-like eyes drifted all across his face, gentle and loving.
“Dad,” Yoongi breathed out in disbelief.
Junki shook his head and motioned somewhere behind him. Yoongi looked.
Two men stood there, facing each other, one of them in a strange red and black uniform that Yoongi had never seen before, the other dressed in see-though white silks, a crown of silver chains and river pearls on his head.
“It started with them,” Junki said, making Yoongi startle at his father’s deep voice. He looked over at him with a gentle, fond smile on his blue lips. “One gave me you and the other kept me going when I lost him.”
He looked back at the omegas. “I didn’t make the final decision when I should have. Now it’s up to you to judge, son.”
“Dad, I-”
But he didn’t get to finish.
Snap.
He stood outside of the temple, and through the wide-open window he saw people milling around, smiles wide and laughter exploding here and there. Yoongi grabbed onto the windowsill and hoisted himself up, until he was inside the chamber. The sounds of a celebration flowed around him, as he walked toward a table where a large crystal bowl sat, full almost to the brim with liquid the colour of watermelon. The lighting around him shifted and shards of candlelight cut through the drink. Before his eyes, the bowl depleted, until there was only the tiniest bit of light blue residue at the very bottom.
Suddenly, a fit of laughter boomed right in his ear.
He whipped around. A step away from him, two young men stood, indigo blue staining their smiling mouths, dripping down their chins, throats, chests, freezing them mid-move, mid-word, until hey were like insects suspended perfectly in candlelight amber.
Yoongi reached toward them.
Snap.
Like an illustration in a picture book, he saw the moon, a speck of blood against the violet velvet of midnight sky. A fire roared in the distance, painting the horizon with violence, a cacophony of screaming accompanying it. Frozen in place, Yoongi watched as the flame devoured buildings, as it chased people and incoherent, half-human, half-animal shapes.
Snap.
Everything stopped. Instead of fire and death, a boy stood in front of him, big brown eyes and toothy smile. He seemed so young, clearly an alpha, but a puppy, still, his cheeks childishly full.
Yoongi was about to ask him his name, when the boy choked suddenly, and with horror, Yoongi watched indigo blue stream out of the corner of his mouth.
“Help me,” the boy wheezed.
Yoongi jerked toward him.
Snap.
He stood again at the temple, but at night, familiar ivy-covered walls in front of him. A full moon was high in the sky. He began walking to the doors and stumbled on the pathway.
Snap.
He stumbled into a large, cavernous space, two giant-like figures cut out of terracotta stone in the middle. Yoongi only had time to realise that they were sculpted mid-move, as if running, reaching toward each other, before he was jerked by an invisible force.
Snap.
Jimin, strewn out beneath him, his mouth distorted in a scream, blood smeared all across his neck and collarbones.
Snap.
Taehyung’s bloodied body. A humongous wolf curled around him.
Snap.
Seokjin looking over the shoulder at him before turning around and disappearing in the dark forest.
Snap.
Someone kneeling on the platform before the gilded sun. Yoongi blinked against the glare of the gold in his eyes, but they only watered harder.
Bring them to me.
Snap.
In a dark, old, dusty place, he stood in front of a table, stretching in every direction as far as the eye could see, mountains of scrolls, loose papers and old notebooks scattered everywhere. And right in front of him, like a splatter of blood against ivory, laid a parchment with a red seal in the shape of a crescent moon.
Snap.
With a stifled scream, Yoongi opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was a pile of dark grey fabric in the shape of a human.
And another one on each side of the first. And another. And another.
Yoongi reeled back, the memory of his visions jumbling together, and bumped into something firm. His blood ran cold.
He turned around.
An old man was hiding under the high priest’s black robe, and now he too laid on the floor, a dark spot of charred skin right in the middle of his forehead. His eyes were wide open, staring into the void, mouth ajar as if he was stricken down mid-word.
Another scream rose in Yoongi’s chest, horrified, as he watched a halo of dark blood pool around his head. Unbidden, he remembered a sermon he once heard in this very room.
Only walk in the shadow to deliver his justice, for he creates the shadow, and who can hide from their creator? His light might be obscured for a time, the justice might lack swiftness, for Reason is meticulous and thorough, but be warned of the day the beam finds you for no shadow will be deep enough to protect the wicked.
Notes:
well that happened
lol
let me know what you guys think about all this mess
kudos and comments are greatly appreciated :)
Chapter 6
Summary:
Jimin has a vision of his own. Yoongi launches an investigation following the Envoy’s execution.
Notes:
content warning: a minor character commits suicide
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The last thing Jimin remembered before sleep claimed him was the shimmering lavender of the pre-dawn sky and the steady warmth of Seokjin’s arms around his shoulders.
When his eyes opened next, though, the world was different. His breath hitched as a choir of screams ripped through the air. In the far right corner of the window, blood moon hung high in the sky, bathing everything in a strange, ochre-red glow.
He sat up in the bed, blinking through the sleepy fog in his eyes, flinching violently at the sounds of yelling coming through the door.
“Hyung?” He called out into the room, rubbing his eyes with his fist. “Seokjin hyung?”
No one replied.
He shifted slowly, suddenly aware of the way the room was bathed in candlelight emanating from a large candelabra that attached to the ceiling, something that decidedly was missing from the room he fell asleep in, its golden curves glimmering in the light. The bedsheets felt way too smooth against his skin, a heavy fur draped over his legs, one that he didn’t recognize.
He looked over to the rest of the room, taking in the walls decorated with expensive-looking paintings, swirls of ink and watercolour depicting strange landscapes and portraits of unfamiliar people, some of them shimmering with silver and gold. There was a large, sturdy bookcase next to the door, full of books and knickknacks; further down, the familiar wall-mounted wardrobe was missing any of Jimin’s own clothes — instead, it was full of white and blue silks, splintered with a rare sliver of green.
For a long moment, Jimin wondered if maybe Seokjin had moved him to a different room, though he couldn’t imagine why he would do that. Still, the signs of luxury everywhere told him that this was something different — he knew that no space in the temple of his time bore such opulence and prosperity.
Just as he mustered up the confidence to get out of the bed, another bout of screaming burst through the walls, desperate and full of suffering, so unbearably devastated, Jimin’s chest churned with need to help, to relieve the suffering. He slid off the bed, his feet landing onto the softest carpet he’d ever come across in his life, and then, before he could even decide what the best course of action would be, some invisible force took hold of his body, pulling him across the room.
He struggled against what felt like a stern hand dragging him toward the door, stumbling over his own feet. The pull lessened, just slightly, and Jimin caught himself, struggling to stay on his feet.
“What the hell of going on,” he gasped out under his nose, every muscle in his body twitching, pulled between contradicting urges to move forward, toward the door, and go back to bed, try to fall asleep again and hopefully wake u in his usual room, the one he was used to, without any unfamiliar furniture and decorations.
In the ends the pull toward the door won. Jimin let himself be dragged forward, the rate of his breathing escalating with every step that he took, the sound of screaming becoming louder and lounger, the smell of blood and defecation wafting through the gap between the door and the floor. He stalled for a moment, forcing himself to take long, deep breaths, despite the sickeningly sweet smell of desecration; he knew that what he was about to witness would leave him breathless and stumped.
Before he even reached toward the doorknob, the door flew open, revealing two people fall on top of each other, struggling, one holding the other down.
“Let go!” the one pinned to the ground yelled. A burst of screams came from the main chamber, and they both looked over their shoulders, giving Jimin a moment to observe them.
He had never seen either before, but he didn’t need to. There could be no question about who they were.
A man that looked so much like Yoongi, it punched the air out of Jimin’s lungs, was pinning the last high priestess to the floor. Junki’s face was distorted by an oncoming shift, one that he was very clearly trying to fight, his features stuck between a human face and a wolf’s snout. He was choking, too – a steady stream of indigo-blue blood ran down his chin and neck, the flow so heavy that it soaked through the front of his shirt. His hands, abnormally large and tipped with glittering razor-sharp claws dug into the thin fabric of the priestess’ dress, ruby stains spreading slowly over the white fabric of omega’s dress.
He was so beautiful, it was hard to comprehend. Jimin remembered one of the few thing Hweein had ever told them about the Temple of the Moon’s last high priestess:
On the night he was born, Mother turned her face to the world and sent down a star to become his soul, and the light of the night forever reflected in his eyes. Blessed and doomed by her love.
The Last Moonkeeper, the trueborn Starglitter, the one who stood at the end of the path from the moment he took his first breath.
He looked so young, barely older then Jimin himself, and that churned Jimin’s gut with horror. He is about to die, he thought, watching as the priestess struggled against Junki’s hold, frantic with the need to go back, protect. Jimin felt this instinct just as he felt his own horror. These are his last moments.
“Let me go!” The priestess screamed again, jerking forwards, impaling himself even more onto Junki’s claws digging into his shoulders. “They are going to die!”
A growl rumbled in the alpha’s chest, blue blood dripping down onto the priestess’ exposed chest, splattering against the floor.
“You have to go, ––. Now.”
Before the priestess could respond, a shadow appeared in the doorframe leading into the main chamber. A monstrous beast of an alpha stood there, made only more terrifying by its two-legged stance. It clutched a ripped-off arm in its jaws, a delicate sleeve dangling from the limb. With one swift motion, the shifter threw the remnants of its prey into the air and caught it with his maw, swallowing it whole, the shred of fabric fluttering to the floor. Its eyes, bloodshot and lacking any shred of humanity, stared at the pair on the floor.
The wolf charged, inhumane in its speed but Junki was faster than air. He didn’t growl, he barely even breathed – in one smooth motion, too quick for Jimin to even follow, Junki crossed the several meters separating him from the feral alpha, swooped low, aiming for the beast’s belly. A swipe of an arm, the edge of his claws glittering, and the shifter crumbled to the floor.
Blood and guts spilled out of the alpha’s wound, and with them, whatever poison drove her feral also left her system. The shift receded – the fur on her face and chest thinned, a long wave of black hair fell over her back.
“Alpha,” she breathed out, the title like a prayer on her lips. Junki made a wounded noise. The woman smiled serenely and tipped her head back. “Now and forever, my throat is yours.”
Junki responded with an agonised roar. His jaw unhinged with a terrifying crack, and he swooped low, plunged his teeth into the woman’s neck, and ripped it out.
The body fell to the floor with a dull thud.
Everything around Jimin slowed down.
He watched as Junki spat the innards out, blue and red mixing on his snout, and turned to face the priestess. He expected the pack alpha to pounce, expected to witness the Starglitter’s murder with his own eyes, nauseated and yet unable to move, to look away. He was the witness, he knew, destined to see this through just as the Starglitter was destined to die.
But nothing happened.
Junki stood there, swaying for a long moment, his body rippling with the effort it took him to reel in his insanity, but there was no going back anymore, his humanity gone, dissolved by indigo. With one last exerted breath that only distantly resembled human speech, something that sounded vaguely like another order to go, Min Junki turned around and sprinted toward the entrance to the chamber.
As soon as his figure disappeared, Jimin’s head snapped around, face to face with the priestess, the Starglitter’s eyes boring into his skull. The boy heaved himself up, blood streaming from the cuts on his shoulders, soaking through the delicate fabric of his dress. Once he was stable on his feet, he stepped closer to Jimin, his eyes, dark grey, flickered all over Jimin’s face.
“You are here, at last,” he said, and his voice sounded like wind.
The world around them fell away.
“I have hated you for so long, without ever knowing who you were or even what you looked like. And here you are, as wide-eyed and frail as a newborn deer.”
They stood in what seemed like the middle of the forest, facing each other, the Starglitter’s figure bathed in crimson moonlight. At this distance, the vitriol in the priestess’ eyes wasn’t visible, but Jimin still felt it like a touch, and it reminded him of how older members of the compound looked at him sometimes.
“I’m… sorry?” He said tentatively, confused by what he was supposed to do, or say, or how to act. Ignoring the looks from pack members had become second nature to him, but this wasn’t just anyone. This was the last Moonkeeper, somewhat of a childhood hero, a promise and a dream. “I didn’t mean to… be here, I guess.”
The Starglitter scoffed, turning to walk deeper into the woods, and Jimin followed him, as if tugged along by a string.
“Exactly,” the priestess spat over his shoulder, voice dripping with venom. “A clueless pup, and I need a fucking miracle. Isn’t it fucking ironic that I held you just last week, swaddled like a present and felt nothing!” His voice rose almost to a shout, and he threw his head back, as if talking directly to the moon: “How is he supposed to be better suited for this than me?”
Mother didn’t answer.
Jimin, despite the questions itching on the tip of his tongue, decided to follow the goddess’ example and stay silent as well. They trudged through the forest for a while, stepping over boulders and climbing over fallen trees. The Starglitter’s breathing became more and more exerted with every passing minute, but Jimin felt strangely light and almost weightless.
At a certain point, the fight seemed to finally drain of the Starglitter, form exhaustion, or grief, or both.
“I had prayed so many times to know how to stop this,” he said, voice shaking with tears, leaning heavily on a tree trunk. “I want to save them all, of course, but I also don’t want to die. It’s so unfair,” he whimpered, “that you live to see the day when all this is over, and I don’t. It is unfair.” He slid down onto the ground, his shoulders wracked with sobs.
Jimin thought of the temple of his time, in disrepair and nearly abandoned by devotees, of his father dying and mother leaving, of Hweein’s descent into madness. Of the sadness in Seokjin’s eyes when they asked him about the southern temple and to recite from memory parts of scripture to them. The stares on the streets, and the Council’s thinly veiled threats. Of the longing to have a mate and children someday, the longing that he had all but buried deep in his stomach, right next to where his love for Mother was.
He didn’t say anything, but he knew the Starglitter would be able to sense all of it.
The priestess turned over, looking up at him through the tears stuck in his eyelashes. He scowled, but it lacked the hateful fervour now.
“You think it’s much better here?” He pushed himself up from the ground and resumed walking. “And anyway, the time you are from, this night isn’t over yet.”
For a long time, they walked in silence, the woods around them eerily silent, not a rustle, not a single sound of an animal scurrying in the underbrush.
Suddenly, a roar ripped through the silence, making them both spin around toward where the compound laid behind them.
The horizon line was coloured ochre-red, billowing smoke rising into the oxblood moonlight. Another crash rippled through the air, rattling Jimin’s bones.
“It really is happening,” the Starglitter whispered behind him. Jimin looked over just in time to see two big tears fall down his cheeks. The boy wiped his face roughly and gestured behind him. “Come on. We don’t have much time.”
He waited until Jimin stepped closer and they continued walking, side by side now.
“There isn’t much time for me to explain everything to you,” the Starglitter began after a few moments. “You seem to know who I am and of my prophetic ability, so that is a good start.”
The woods around them darkened, the foliage growing thicker, as did the tree trunks, until it was almost pitch-black, the spots of moonlight like splatters of blood on the ground. Jimin wondered if he had ever strayed this far from the compound.
“You will learn about this later but let me just say that the kind of insight I have is a curse more often than a blessing. I am never a student, always a teacher, knowledge that was lost to some of the elders always just there, in my memory. And yet, the one thing I wished to know, I could never reach.”
Jimin glanced at him. “What was it?”
“How to avert this night.” They sidestepped what looked like a huge ant colony. “I knew this would happen, I’d seen the fire under the crimson moon, and I knew it would be the last night of my life. I spent months in trance, begging Mother to give me a way out, to save myself, the cult, and the compound but she never did.”
“Surely she didn’t want this to happen.”
The Starglitter sighed, shaking his head.
“It’s not about wishes or desires. She must die every month to be reborn, and so must we. Maybe not as often, but there comes a point where the darkest hour cannot be delayed any more. That is what this is — the darkest hour.”
They came to a stop finally in front of an ancient oak tree, its trunk so huge it would take a dozen people holding hands to hug the entire circumference of it, its branches sprawling so high and wide, it seemed to cover the entire sky.
The Starglitter tilted his head back, and stood like that for a moment, taking in the sight of the oak, then looked down, searching for something in the thick blanket of leaves that covered the ground.
“The history of the cult is punctuated by nights that were supposed to end the way this one does — in blood and suffering and breakdown of everything we think is holy. She averted this calamity a thousand times over at the cost of her own power, but she can’t keep doing that forever.”
He finally found whatever he was looking for, and stepped back a little, his mouth set in a determined line.
“This is a reckoning and a cleansing,” he said. “A purging of the filth that is long overdue. For me and you this is a festival of senseless death, and that is because we forget that human lives are but dust under gods’ feet. We are not privy to the full breadth of Mother’s existence or reasoning, no matter how close to her we feel.”
Before Jimin could even formulate a response, the Starglitter lifted his skirts up to his knees, and stomped on the ground sharply. A gust of wind rippled over the forest floor, a tornado of leaves rising into the air and exposing a trapdoor lodged between the burly roots of the oak. The Starglitter found the handle and tugged the trapdoor open with a laboured grunt. A winding staircase made of the same glowing marble that decked out the entirety of the temple descended into inky black air.
They began walking down into the darkness, the staircase too narrow for them to walk side by side. After a moment, Jimin finally mustered the courage to break the silence.
“How is it that you can see some part of the future but not others?”
He was prepared to be ridiculed but his ignorance, but the Starglitter only hummed in thought.
“Because fate is not singular. There are threads of it I can touch, and those are the veining in the marble, twisted and interrupting themselves, but they do not change. There are others, ones that only Mother knows of, ones that she creates when she lets her blood drip into the river of the world. It is there, but it dissolves, comes and goes and we can choose to drink the water or stay away, or wait until the water is clear. This night is in marble, so is my death. And so is Min Yoongi’s destiny.”
The stairs finally ended, stretching out into a cavernous space, a large opening on the other end bathing part of the cave in bloody moonlight. Alcoves were cut into the walls, each accompanied with a row of letters etched into the stone. To the side from the staircase there was a large platform protruding from the wall.
“The Moonkeeper Mausoleum,” Jimin whispered in disbelief. “I didn’t think it was real…”
The Starglitter hummed.
“No one does.” He walked toward the opening of the cave on the other side. “No one knows the location of this place other than the Bloodhounds.” When Jimin didn’t answer, blinking at the other omega in confusion, the high priestess sighed, almost exasperated. “The ones who guide the dying high priestess to the other side. They are the ones who bring us here at the very end, attend to us in our last moments, then bury us here.”
Jimin nodded slowly, walking closer to the Starglitter, looking closer at the alcoves, realizing only now the words etched into the wall were in the old tongue.
“They are names,” the Starglitter explained, gesturing at the writings. “The given one and the ritual.”
“I see.” Jimin turned to the omega. “Did this place come to you in a vision, too?”
The Moonkeeper nodded, his eyes slipped closed. “I led my mother here on the day of my tenth birthday. She was so distraught.” He opened his eyes and gestured around the space. “No parent wants to be brought to a place like this by their child.”
Jimin’s arms itched with the desire to reach out and hug him, but he wasn’t sure he could, or that it would actually help. The Starglitter gave him a look, as if he knew what Jimin was thinking about, and then pointed further down the cave, toward the mouth. “Let’s go. You are almost out of time.”
They stopped at the last alcove on the right, the details of the burial smudged in the low light of the moon. There was a stone chest sitting on the ledge in the middle of the marble slab that guarded the dead.
“My predecessor,” the Starlight offered, his voice hollow. “She speaks to me from beyond the grave often, calms me down when I get lost in the prophecies. She was so good. I wish I could have actually met her.”
He stepped forward, running his fingers under the protruding edge of the box’s lid. There was quiet click, and then the Starglitter gasped in pain.
Jimin jerked forward. “Are you okay?”
The Moonkeeper waved him off.
“I’m fine. Listen carefully to me now, Park Jimin. My fate is marble, but yours isn’t. You are on the riverbank, watching water turn crimson, and you can choose to walk away, look for another water source. Or you can wade into the stream and let Mother’s blood wash over you, follow the flow of what she envisions for you.”
The box clicked open.
“I don’t understand,” Jimin whispered.
The Moonkeeper turned to him, and for the first time, there was something like sympathy in his eyes.
“Min Yoongi is the Judicator, the one destined to bring about the end of this calamity by staging a great trial. He will fulfill that destiny no matter what, and he will have a priestess guide. You can shoulder that responsibility if you want to; if not, there will be someone else.” He gestured to the box. “The contents of this chest are Mother’s offering to you; it is yours to keep or leave. If you choose to leave it… well, make sure to pass it on.”
“To whom?”
The Starglitter smiled and stepped away from the alcove. “You will know. There will be many others, though they will take some time to appear.” He walked over to the mouth of the cave, and only now Jimin realized that it was a cliff, dropping sharply into a ravine, the river bubbling viciously far below. “A flicker of a dying star is nothing but a moment, one that never overshadows the moon’s glow.”
Jimin looked between the priestess’ billowing, blood-bathed figure and the box. “Do I have to choose now?”
The Starglitter shook his head. “No. You have some time.”
Jimin walked over to stand next to him, a gust of wind washing over him. The cliffs on the other side rose high up, the jagged line of the treetops cutting into the sky.
“It is a strange thing,” the Starglitter said as they looked out into the darkness. “My life always had so much meaning, so much purpose to it. The temple elders hailed me as the most prolific prophet since the Founder, and though they never said it aloud, they hoped I would be the one to save them all. And I fell for it. I was as deluded about who I am and what my life is as they were.” He inhaled deeply. “I should have known better. Everyone is but a tool, myself included.”
Jimin watched his beautiful face, the pretty curve of his jaw and the shadows his lashes cut into his cheeks. He didn’t know how to comfort him because his own life’s principal meaning was only survival. “What happens now? Do you go back?”
The Starglitter shook his head.
“They will torture me if I do, and I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing me in pain. No,” he turned to face Jimin, a trembling smile on his lips. “I die here.”
Jimin’s eyes widened. “No, I can’t-”
The Starglitter laughed. “Oh, you sweet child. Don’t worry, I would never ask you to be the one to end my life. No, no,” he looked down into the valley, “you only have to bear witness to this moment. That’s all.”
He closed his eyes and tipped his head back, face turned up to the sky.
“It is the moments when we decide to drink the bloodied water that makes us human,” he whispered, and it carried through the space, echoing against the rocks. “We are tools, and yet we have these small choices, the illusion of control over our lives… I used to think it was cruel. But now I think it is the surest evidence of Mother’s love for us. The little bits of freedom she has the power to take away and yet doesn’t. She lets us be human, however vile, however stupid, and loves us anyway.”
For a long moment they stood there in silence.
“I’m stalling, aren’t I,” the Starglitter chuckled. “Go take the box.”
Jimin did, picking up the chest with a grunt, surprised at just how heavy it was.
The Starglitter’s next words shocked him still. “I am sorry for how much I hated you, Park Jimin. You are no more at fault for my fate than anyone else is.” He turned and their eyes met, Jimin’s blood turning ice cold. “Thank you for seeing me through this. It would have been so lonely otherwise.”
He took a step back and dropped into the void.
In that moment of Im Chanwook’s death, eighteen years ago, Jimin’s mind flooded with visions of the future.
He saw himself and Yoongi, standing under Mother’s statue, looking down at something in their hands. He saw glimpses of an old tome, strange illustrations and long segments of text on the paper, though he couldn’t make anything apart. A flash of an abandoned house, walls caving in and windows empty. Then Yoongi, seemingly halfway feral, crouched down on the snow, panting heavily. He saw himself again, dripping some kind of liquid into Yoongi’s slightly parted mouth. He saw Yoongi presiding over a great trial, eyes severe with sorrow, but his mouth open in a commanding shout.
He saw another boy, with sharp face and eyes endowed with knowledge, a crown of pearls hugging his temples. He would have been better at this, Jimin realized, he knew more, or so he thought. He saw a battle of wolves, a swarm of multicoloured coats, blood in the snow and Yoongi’s greying hair. It would be a long, long time until that battle came to pass. He saw Yoongi at the top of a mountain of bodies, looking over his shoulder, face weathered and empty. Lifeless.
There was a barrage of different faces, different genders, slowly increasing in age, all wearing the same pearly crown, all in varying states of distress. Finally, he saw Yoongi again, naked, hunched over and chained to the stone floor, his body distorted, a strange mixture of human and animal in his features, spit dripping down the long fangs protruding from his mouth. His eyes were entirely black.
You have a choice, little one. Doesn’t mean there is a right one.
—
Yoongi stood at the edge of the platform, desperately fighting to stay conscious as a cacophony of scents, sour and burnt with terror and confusion, assaulted his nose. As he watched the Envoy’s body being carried away, a cloud of skin disintegrated into ash following him, he remembered a particular ceremony he attended at the House seven years ago.
Three years into his training, Yoongi’s wolf settled down just as it was supposed to, only to then become so quiet and absent, it began worrying the Council. It was a delicate balance the young shifters were supposed to find – their wolf had to be present enough to warrant their high status within the pack, but tame and restrained enough so that the Council didn’t have to worry about them going feral. Out of his entire cohort, Yoongi was the only one fall on the “lacking vigour and vitality” side of the spectrum. There weren’t many perks to being in that position, the intensity of his training spiking significantly, but at least he was allowed an occasional supervised public outing.
This time it was a minor ritual at the House, requested by a hunter whose youngest son had been born a few months prior. The baby, Yoongi remembered Sungha telling him on the way to the House, was sickly and nearly died a few times, so the priests were going to ask Father for a blessing, for the child’s health to improve and for the baby to have a long and happy life.
“Do they do that for every pup that is sickly?” Yoongi had asked. Sungha chuckled at him fondly.
“Nothing else would get done at the House if that were so. The father is a great hunter and a tradesman, so he can afford the offering payment.”
Something about that didn’t sit right with Yoongi. “That doesn’t seem fair.”
He remembered the look she gave him, somewhere between disapproving and startled, almost fearful.
“It is like that for a reason,” she had yanked him along by the hand, voice ice-cold.
The ceremony was going as it regularly did, the high priest and his twelve apprentices up on the platform, surrounding the baby in its crib, voices high and clear, the words of the prayer flying up to the ceiling. For Yoongi, by that point, the novelty of the House and the ritual had long since worn off; he no longer experienced the kind of full-bodied awe he used to when he was little. So, he stood there, eyes trained in the empty space between the Envoy’s blanketed figure and the edge of the golden sun shimmering in the distance. Sungha, though, seemed to take his disinterest as rapt attention; he caught her full-of-pride glances multiple times but chose to ignore them. He was tired, his body achy from the intense close-combat training Sunghyung had put them through the night before. Some of the other alphas in training took that as an opportunity to express their less-than-fond feelings for Yoongi.
Everything was going fine, the prayer crescendoed, the pup’s faint cries interlaced with the ancient words of the song, the parents stood at the foot of the platform, tearful and hopeful. Yoongi suppressed a yawn, shifting his eyes to look out of the narrow window, longing for the forest. He wondered idly how soon he would be allowed on actual hunts, then about what the dining hall at the den would make for dinner that day.
And then a gasp rolled through the sparse crowd.
He snapped his eyes back to the platform just in time to see a beam of concentrated sunlight, refracted in mid-air seemingly by nothing, pointing straight at one of the priests in the circle. There was a moment of perfect stillness, when no one moved or breathed, before the priest suddenly crumbled in their spot, nothing more than a heap of dark grey fabric.
As soon as the thud of body against the floor rang through the hall, everything exploded. He saw uniformed officers of the guard materialize seemingly from thin air and rush toward the platform, grabbing the shellshocked alpha father of the child from behind; four of them sprung up onto the platform; the Envoy, without so much as a glance toward their fallen apprentice, rushed down the stairs. The murderous beam of sunlight flickered in the air for another moment and then disappeared.
Before Yoongi could so much as open his mouth to ask what the hell just happened, Sungha already had a vice grip on his arm.
“We have to go,” she barked, dragging him along to the exit. “Now.”
He knew better than to resist her when her voice took that strange, congested tone, but he still managed to sneak a look over his shoulder, witnessing the guards dragging the wailing omega mother away from her mate, and the alpha frantically pleading for mercy, before one of the guards kneeled him in the stomach.
The last thing Yoongi remembered was the man’s eyes rolling back in pain as he slumped in the guards’ arms.
The only thing Yoongi knew about the aftermath of the incident was that the alpha father spent a long time in the dungeons underneath the Council Hall, something that he overheard the Kwon twins whisper about, along with the snippets about the evidence the guards collected, and I wish the Council would assume control of the investigation.
He also knew that death by sunbeam was the punishment Father reserved for the worst of sinners amongst the clergy. As he watched a squad of guards led by Commander Song jog up to the platform, the shock-induced fog in Yoongi’s head broke, and he shook himself out, standing up straighter. I have to move fast.
“Commander Song,” Yoongi called out, raising a hand to indicate the men to stop. “Let’s wait until the pups are out of here, at least. They do no need to see any more of this.”
They waited until the last of the crowd filed out of the House, only the Council members, Namjoon, Sunghyung and the guards left standing in front of Yoongi.
Yoongi caught the Commander’s eyes, cautious but surprisingly calm. “Am I under arrest?”
Song hesitated, then the sound of his gruff voice broke the fragile silence of the room. “You were in trance.”
“Bullshit,” Sunghyung spat out, his hands visibly trembling. “He was on the platform, it’s-”
“Do you suppose the Heir somehow induced the beam to appear?” Elder Hwan interrupted. “He hardly has that kind of power. No offence, Heir Min.”
“None taken,” Yoongi murmured.
Sunghyung looked close to exploding. “There is a protocol-”
Yoongi already felt the headache starting behind his eyes induced by the squeaking in his voice. “And we will be following it to the letter, Maester Kwon,” he turned to the commander. “Are you able to officially establish the cause of death?”
Commander Song looked over at one of his people.
“Sunbeam,” she said evenly. “The apprentices are just unconscious; they should be okay.”
“Can you send a healer to attend to them?”
The woman nodded. “Jung Kyungseok was in the back of the crowd, she has volunteered to assist the House healer.”
Yoongi nodded. “Good.” He inhaled deeply. “Death by sunbeam,” he repeated the officer’s words, looking between the elders’ confused and worried faces. “We all know what that means.”
Sunghyung snapped again.
“I will not let you insult the Envoy under Father’s likeness,” he growled, his entire body shifting lower to the ground, readying to pounce. “I will rip you apart, you fucking-”
There was no way Yoongi could have kept his wolf down even if he tried. He roared, incisors elongating before he could even realize what was happening. Several people gasped.
“Stay down,” he growled, twisted satisfaction blooming in his chest at the sight of Sunghyung’s head jerking to the side on instinct, throat bared. Yoongi stared him down, slowly reeling the shift back in, until his teeth fit into his mouth properly. “Your affection for the Envoy is no excuse for accusing me of murder, Maester Kwon. We all know the Scripture. There aren’t many explanations for what happened here, but if anyone has an alternative option, I am all ears.”
The crowd stayed silent.
“Commander Song,” Yoongi called out. The man stood at attention and nodded. “As far as I am aware, the guard guild has lead investigations like this in the past.”
“That is correct, sir.”
“Then you are in charge from here on out. You and four of your people will accompany me and three elders to the Envoy’s chambers to collect evidence. Send someone to comb through the House archives for any records penned by the Envoy’s hand. The House members are not allowed to participate in the search.”
“Yes, sir.”
Yoongi considered his options for a moment.
“The investigation is to be conducted in the guard’s den. I don’t want any potential interference from either the House or the Council.” He saw a few elders’ mouths open in protest and held up a hand. “I want you all to imagine Jeon Haesol’s reaction when he hears about this. Think of the risks if there is even a suggestion that the investigation was tampered with. The guard guild is sworn to impartiality, are they not, Commander?”
The man nodded. “Blood-bound.”
“I don’t want to deal with Jeon’s suspicions any more than you do.” Yoongi drew the robes tighter around him, watching as the elders nodded slowly in comprehension.
Sunghyung was the only one still glowering.
“This is ridiculous,” he spat out, shoulders trembling. “You dare to stain the purity of the faith, and I am expected to let it happen? Entertain the denouncement of Father’s Envoy over the accusations of a clueless pup, are we-”
This time, even the elders have had enough.
“Excuse you,” a woman piped up from the other side of the crowd. Elder Im Dahee, Yoongi‘s mind supplied helpfully, the one responsible for the creation of the training curriculum for young shifters. “You are insulting not only the leader of this pack, but also the program which reared him! A program, might I remind you, Maester Kwon, that you were a part of in not-so-distant past!”
“And I regret my involvement in it dearly if this,” he jabbed a finger at Yoongi, “is the best you could come up with!”
Dahee opened her mouth, a barrage of insults on her tongue, but Elder Hwan chose this moment to strike the floor with her cane. Her annoyance was obvious even beneath the many folds and wrinkles on her face.
“Enough,” she snapped, “both of you are out of line. We have enough to deal with as is, without this Council devolving into chaos as well.” She sighed, leaning down on her cane heavily. “Heir Min, would you afford Maester the privilege of accompanying you to collect the evidence from the Envoy’s quarters? I know that could be problematic in the future, but I think it would allow us all some peace of mind.”
Behind her shoulder, Sunghyung had the look of a reprimanded puppy.
Yoongi sighed, exhaustion settling over him like a blanket. He wanted to go to sleep. “Sure. Send someone back to the den, if my grandfather is awake then inform him of what happened, but do not disturb him if he is not. The lunch at the Hall is cancelled; give the food out at the square and let people know that the situation is under control.” His head throbbed. “Is there anything else?”
An elder raised her hand.
“Yes, Elder Gu?”
“There is the matter of your visions,” she said meekly. “We do not know if any of the apprentices will be able to relay what you saw, so we don’t have a way of confirming…” She trailed off, unsure.
Yoongi hummed but before he could respond, the Commander spoke up.
“We can always conduct the flame trial,” he said evenly, eyes jumping between Yoongi and Elder Gu. “It isn’t as sure as a priest’s testimony, but it would confirm the truthfulness of the Heir’s account.”
Yoongi considered him for a moment. He was right, a flame trial would give the Council the assurance that he wasn’t lying — the problem was, Yoongi hadn’t decided how much of his visions he actually wanted to relay.
He looked over at Sunghyung. “How long would the trial take to set up?”
The man gestured to the side and a shadow scurried across the room. “They can bring it over here right now.”
Yoongi nodded. “Okay, then that is what we will do. Commander, send two of your people to guard the Envoy’s chambers. No one is to go in there without my knowledge.”
Song nodded toward his squad. Two officers peeled off from the group and left.
The shadow returned, a large contraption with a gold cauldron atop it in their hands and climbed up onto the platform.
“Turn to face Father,” Sunghyung commanded, and Yoongi did so without protest. The shadow settled on their knees in front of him and lifted the cauldron up until it was level with Yoongi’s midriff.
Something crackled in the air and then white flame burst out of the cauldron, so brilliant, it blinded Yoongi for a moment.
“What did you see?” Someone asked, though Yoongi suddenly couldn’t tell apart the voices around him, the fire hypnotizing him much like the priests’ singing did earlier.
Do not tell a lie, someone whispered in his ear. But do not tell the whole truth.
Yoongi’s mind flitted through his options, the memories of his visions passing through him in a sequence.
“I saw abeoji,” he said slowly, watching as the flame danced above the rim of the cauldron, its light simultaneously welcoming and menacing. “He showed me my papa and… someone else. I think it was a priestess, but I don’t know, I’ve never seen them. He told me-” He breath hitched. “He told me he didn’t make the final decision in time and that it was now up to me to do so.”
Distantly, he heard the elder murmur to each other.
“What else?”
Yoongi forced his eyes to stay open, straining against the brilliance of the fire.
He knew well enough what it was that he had seen but he was suddenly paralyzed with fear. Don’t tell them, the same whisper sounded in his head. They can’t know or you will lose the advantage.
“A-a big fire,” he croaked out. “Some people I’ve never met. They were all… in pain.” He remembered the man from the very first vision, but the words wouldn’t come out of his mouth. “There was… a library, or something. A lot of records and papers on a large table.”
He was struggling to breathe, the smoke emitted by the fire suddenly suffocating him.
“What else?”
“That’s all.” Yoongi swallowed back a gasp. “That’s all I saw.”
“Bring forth your right hand and pass through the fire and may Father’s righteous fury burn you if you lied.”
Yoongi forced his arm up and forward, raising his eyes up until they rested on the golden sun in the distance. He wanted to pray, maybe, or beg Father to protect him from the white flame but the words didn’t come. His mind was empty.
His hand moved through the flames.
Nothing happened.
After a moment of stillness, the priest in front of him shifted. The fire gave one last crackle and died, as if it were never there. The shadow rose to their feet and nodded, then walked off.
Yoongi turned around, greeted with what felt like a sea of awed faces. Even Sunghyung’s mouth was parted slightly, as if the Maester didn’t expect Yoongi to pass as easily as he did. After a moment, the elders began murmuring between themselves, hesitant glances thrown Yoongi’s way every now and again.
Yoongi righted his robes, giving himself a moment to clear the acrid smell of the smoke from his airways.
“Well,” he said finally, stepping down from the platform. “Now that that is over with, we can attend to the more important matters. Will you lead the way, Maester Kwon?”
—
“-okay?”
“I don’t know, I think so. We need to move him soon, or he won’t be able to walk.”
Jimin became aware of himself slowly, the sounds of the world around him coming back first, the birds’ chirping, the rustle of the forest, the worried voices somewhere nearby. He tried to move, and immediately his whole body exploded with pain.
He groaned and tipped sideways. Something heavy sat on his lap and the movement made the object slip from his knees, but he grasped at it before it could hit the ground.
“Oh! He is waking up!”
Someone’s warm arms caught him and Jimin leaned into their embrace heavily, letting out another pained sound. Taehyung’s cherry scent was sourer than usual.
“Jiminie,” his brother’s distraught voice sounded right above his ear. “Oh, thank the Moon, you are alright…”
It took him another few minutes to blink his eyes open, the brilliance of the midday sun almost unbearable against his retinas. Hoseok and Seokjin’s worried faces greeted him when his vision finally focused.
Hoseok brought a water skin to his lips. “Here. Drink this.”
Jimin expected it to be water, but the liquid that touched his lips was herbal and bitter. He sputtered a little, but Hoseok didn’t let him pull away.
“No. You have to finish this.”
So Jimin did, pulling mouthful after mouthful until the water skin was empty. The bitterness settled at the bottom of his stomach unpleasantly, but the pain subsided.
“You have to move,” Hoseok said next, gesturing at where Jimin had been sitting on his legs for who knows how long. “I can hold the chest while you-”
Jimin shook his head. He didn’t know why, but he knew he couldn’t let anyone touch the box that sat on his lap. “No, its okay.” He strained his arms, lifting the chest up just enough so that he could fall back on his butt and stretch his legs out. Blood rushed through them painfully and Jimin groaned again. “Fuck, that hurts.”
But Hoseok’s potion did its thing, and the pain settled after a moment.
“What happened?” Jimin asked, looking up. They were sitting under a huge, ancient oak, shaded entirely by its sprawling branches. For a moment, confusion filled Jimin’s head — he didn’t remember a tree like this anywhere close to the temple.
And then the vision came back to him.
He gasped.
“Did I actually walk all the way here? Asleep?”
Seokjin bit his lip and nodded. “You did. Hweein alerted me when you walked out of the temple and then we followed you here, it was…” He settled down onto the ground heavily. “The most terrifying thing I have ever seen.”
He shifted slightly to the side and beyond him, Jimin saw the trapdoor to the crypt. “Did you see, then?” He nodded at it. “The Mausoleum?”
They all shook their heads.
“We couldn’t enter,” Taehyung explained. His voice was tight, as if he were holding back tears. “It was so scary, Chim, you just walked down there and wouldn’t respond to our calls!”
Hweein wandered from around the tree, her mouth moving soundlessly as usual. She walked up to them and settled on the ground, eyes glued to the chest on Jimin’s thighs.
“Keeper’s jewels,” she mumbled. Seokjin turned his head to look at her. “Keeper’s jewels. Starglitter’s gift.”
Seokjin’s head snapped back to Jimin, eyes wide. “Is that who you saw?” He demanded. “The Starglitter?”
Jimin nodded and, in short sentences and taking breaks to sip water from another skin that Hoseok produced from his bag, he told them what happened in his vision, omitting only the visions of the future he saw when Chanwook fell into the ravine. They were too unclear, details of them blurred in Jimin’s memory; they felt too precious to be put into words.
By the end of it, Taehyung was crying silently into Jimin’s hair, Hoseok’s jaw was almost touching his chest, and Seokjin was deep in thought.
“A purging of the filth,” he repeated Jimin’s words. “I suppose that’s a way of putting it…”
“That’s insane,” Taehyung gasped out. “Why would Mother need to cleanse her own clergy? She loves us more than anything…”
Seokjin shook his head. “I don’t think that is what the Starglitter meant. It wasn’t the cult that needed cleansing, but the pack as a whole.”
Hoseok squirmed in place, his face drawn tight.
“What?” Jimin asked him. The beta looked up, startled. “You look like you have something to say.”
Hoseok’s mouth opened and closed a few times, first surprised that Jimin would call him out like that, then hesitant.
“Look,” he sighed finally, “I don’t mean offence, but a third of the population died that night. What kind of ‘filth’ could justify that kind of killing?”
Jimin looked down at the chest on his lap. He didn’t have a rebuttal to that, mostly because he understood exactly where the healer was coming from.
“The Starglitter said that Mother had averted something like the betrayal many times before, right?” Taehyung spoke up after a short silence, his voice still thick with tears. “So why would she actively make it happen that night? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Because she didn’t. Something else went on that night, and she just wasn’t able to stop it,” Seokjin said decisively. All three priestesses looked over at Hoseok, and the beta held up his hand in surrender.
“I am not saying anything to the contrary,” he said quickly. “I don’t know what happened. None of us were old enough to know what exactly went on that night.” He smiled at them placatingly, in that disarming way of his. “Besides, I always though it was strange.”
Seokjin’s eyebrows rose, curious and surprised. “What is?”
“The story the Council told to the pack. I mean, if the Moon wanted to gain an upper hand over Father, decimating her entire cult isn’t exactly the most effective way to go about it.” He hummed, pensive. “I guess it would make sense if there was another catalyst and she just wasn’t able to intervene… and maybe she used the massacre to get rid of the ‘filth,’ whatever that was…” He tapered off with a sigh and shake of his head.
“But that would mean that person or people are already dead,” Taehyung said slowly. “And if so, then who is Pack Alpha Min supposed to judge?”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Seokjin said decisively. “It’s been a mystery for two decades, and we aren’t going to solve it now. More importantly,” he pointed and the chest on Jimin’s lap, “I think its time we see what the last Moonkeeper’s gift is.”
They shifted around a bit so that Jimin could settle the chest on the ground and with bated breath, he touched the lid. It clicked open softly, gleaming light spilling through the gap. With another glance at his brothers, Jimin lifted the top, shivers running down his arm and chest.
At first, he thought the box was just filled to the brim with river pearls of every shape and colour, the gems glowing in the sunlight. As his eyes adjusted to the sheer brilliance spilling everywhere, the contours of a diadem came into the view and the gentle gleam of silky fabric under a cascade of pearls became apparent.
He recognized the diadem immediately. It was similar to the one the Starglitter had on in his visions, but even more ornate and intricate, long strings of light grey and white river pearls swinging in the air when he lifted it out of the box.
“Woah,” Taehyung breathed out next to him.
There was something so familiar and yet so alien about holding the crown. It was like a living being, pulsating with warmth and spirit, the sheer amount of history and time accumulated in this single piece of what Jimin could only describe as art. He knew intuitively that this diadem was older than anything he’d ever touched, older than any living being, maybe older than even the temple itself. He ran his fingers over the silver wiring to which the pearls were attached, and the metal hummed against his skin, alive with all that it had seen, with the memories and experiences of every person who’d ever worn it.
Next to him, Taehyung reached into the box and lifted out the dress. It was just as beautiful as the crown; done in similar colours, with long, swirling strings of pearls clicking gently against each other in the wind. It didn’t seem real to Jimin, so much so that he reached out to feel the cool, bumpy texture of the stones to convince himself.
The four of them stared at the crown and the dress in awe, lost for words.
“Wait, there is something else here,” Hoseok exclaimed, pointing at the bottom of the chest. Jimin set the diadem down into the box, and picked up the other object, which turned out to be a thick envelope, a slip of paper folded several times over inside.
Jimin opened it and read aloud.
Dear Luminary,
I am using your ritual name that Mother revealed to me, because I do not know your given name yet. The truth is, I will never know beyond doubt, because your soul is still a star, and just like there are many stars, there will be many souls, and many faces you will take. The stakes are too high for Mother’s hopes to be placed on the shoulders of just one of her servants; so, there will be many of you. Even knowing this, knowing that the fate will fulfil itself even if you refuse the call of it, I ask that you consider the offer and the choice you are faced with carefully, as if you are the only one who can usher the end of this terrible era we have found ourselves in.
The terms of the deal offered to you are thus. In the chest you will find the traditional ceremonial garb of a high priestess — the diadem has been passed down from Moonkeeper to Moonkeeper since the time of the Founder and the dress was recreated based on descriptions by my predecessor, the Seeker. At the time of writing this, the Elders’ Council believes the dress and the crown to have been destroyed decades ago; the Seeker, though she did not possess the gift of prophecy like I do, had decided to feed this lie to the elders in hopes of preserving one of the most important relics of the faith in the event that something terrible happened to us.
Her foresight has paid off.
Your acceptance of this gift is an oath to see Min Yoongi’s fate through. He is the Judicator, the one who was destined to bring about the judgement to the pack and restore the strength of the Primordials to what it used to be. Unlike you, Min Yoongi does not have a choice; he will fulfil this destiny no matter what. The question is, at what cost? That is your role. To guide him and aide him on his path, and, if you can, protect his mind, because the weight of what he will have to go through and do might just shatter it. There are those who will actively work against him and his mission, and, should you choose to accept the gift, you shall try your hardest to shine light onto those schemes.
There is no benefit for you to reap in this; whatever you choose, the path is one of blood and stones, and I would not blame you if you chose to walk away. I wish more than anything that I could be the one to shoulder this burden; but it is too early still.
I cannot tell you more, for this is the kind of path you must walk to know fully; I can see parts of it, I know the destination, but I cannot guide you on this journey, and for that, I am sorry. I can only hope that the longing in your heart for a better future is stronger than the fear of the suffering you must endure to get there.
With hope and sorrow,
The Starglitter
Jimin’s arms fell down onto his lap, the paper slipping out of his fingers. Seokjin snatched it before it could hit the ground and read the letter again, lips moving without sound.
“You cannot tell anyone about this,” he said to Hoseok once he was done. “Not even Yoongi.”
The beta looked at him in disbelief. “How do you want me to keep this from him? Shouldn’t he know? This is the kind of thing you can't be kept in the dark about!”
Seokjin shook his head. “Didn’t you hear? He doesn’t have a choice. Knowing that there is some higher plan in place for his life — which we don’t know the specifics of, by the way, — won’t do anything for him other than make him overly conscious and anxious. You know how he gets when he starts to worry too much,” he added when Hoseok went to protest. “This will happen, whether he want to or not. It doesn’t matter if he knows.”
Hoseok exploded. “It said that he might lose his mind during this!” He jumped up to his feet, and for the first time since Jimin met him, the beta looked truly angry. “You want me to lie to one of my closest friends about something that could potentially cost him his sanity? Or worse, his life? He is a shifter, Seokjin, and we both know what shattered mind means for them. If,” he gasped for air, infuriated flush high on his cheeks, “if, Father forbid, he goes feral, I will be the one to watch him die! Me! Not you.”
Before any of them could react to the beta’s outburst, Hweein stood up and took hold of Hoseok’s trembling hands, looking up at him.
“In a river,” she said quietly. Hoseok blinked at her. “Have to row no matter what. If know about waterfall — tremble, the boat turns over. Drown. Waterfall is the scariest until you look over the edge. Turns out, it is not that high. But river is fast, and rocks are sharp — fall into the stream, die before the waterfall is ever in sight.”
Hoseok stared at her, mouth open.
“It’s a story from the Moon’s Rise,” Jimin whispered. His head was spinning, trying to comprehend the gravity of the choice the letter offered him. “One of the few surviving ones.”
“Don’t take your eyes off the Moon any longer than what it takes to confirm the charted course,” Taehyung quoted just as quietly.
Hoseok stared between them for another moment, then deflated.
“I won’t say anything myself,” he said quietly, “but if he asks me, I don’t know if I can lie to him. He will be able to sniff me out anyway.”
For a few minutes, they sat in silence.
“We should go,” Seokjin said finally, folding the letter back into its envelope and placing it gently between the side of the chest and the dress, then closing the lid. “It’s a long walk and you have a big decision to make, Jimin-ah.”
—
Twenty minutes into searching through the three rooms that made up the Envoy’s quarters, and Yoongi started to doubt the brashness with which he ordered the investigation.
There was nothing. They rifled through the high priest’s desk and the contents of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that lined the walls of his study, and yet the most incriminating thing they found was a few jewelry pieces, something that Father’s servants generally abstained from. The writings strewn across the desk were mostly theological musings and reinterpretations of the Scripture; the most offensive thing there, was a rather unfavourable assessment of some of the Council members that the Envoy scribbled in an untidy handwriting into his personal journal.
Yoongi stood in the middle of the room, watching as the guards went on their third round of searching, and pretended like he didn’t want to erase the smug expression on Sunghyung’s face with his fist.
The door to the chambers opened and Namjoon walked in, frowning.
“Nothing?” He asked after looking around the room. Yoongi shook his head and motioned for his friend to come closer.
“It doesn’t make any fucking sense,” he said in near-whisper, turning around to face away from the rest of the room. “Judging off of his quarters, he is as clean as the first snow. But then why the beam?”
Namjoon hummed, eyeing the room. “Mind if I take a look, Commander?” He called out to Song. The alpha raised an inquisitive eyebrow at Yoongi, and he nodded.
“Namjoon is the most observant person I know.”
Commander gestured toward the room.
“Be my guest, Alpha Kim. Your eyes are fresh, might see something we’ve missed.”
Namjoon circled the study slowly first, then went into the adjacent bedroom.
“Admit it, Yoongi,” Sunghyung spoke up for the first time since they walked into the chambers, smugness overflowing in his voice. “Your plan failed.”
Yoongi didn’t even try to hide his exasperated sigh. “And what do you think my plan is, Maester?”
Sunghyung shrugged. “You wished to replace the Envoy with someone who would be… more amenable to you.”
Yoongi stared at him, stunned.
“To what end?” He asked incredulously. “And also, how would I summon the beam? Is something like that even possible?” He looked over at the commander.
Song tilted his head to the side, in thought.
“I suppose in theory,” he replied, words slow and deliberate. “If you were to accuse the Envoy of something while communing with Father, but…” he paused. “I’ve never seen anything like that. You passed the flame trial, and besides, no one, yourself included, doesn’t know anything about the Envoy. Not even his name.”
Across the room, Sunghyung huffed in annoyance.
“There is no evidence here,” he barked. “You should just arrest him and start searching elsewhere.”
“Yoongi hyung, Commander Song,” Namjoon called from the bedroom. “Come here.”
He was standing against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, eyes fixed on the bed, a contemplative twist in his brow. When they walked in, he didn’t look up.
“Does it look weird to you?” Namjoon asked gesturing at the furniture, lips pressed into a thin line.
Yoongi stood next to him, considering the bed. It was large; way too large for one person who kept celibate.
“Too big,” he murmured. Namjoon hummed in agreement.
“The style… I haven’t seen one like this anywhere in the compound, I don’t think.”
Now that Namjoon pointed it out, the oddness of the bed frame was all Yoongi could focus on. It was a four-post bed, the top was solid wood instead of a canopy. The mattress sat low to the ground, as was common for the pack, but the proportions relative to the height of the frame seemed off — there appeared to be no space between the floor and the frame at all. Flanking it were two long, low-lying benches, wedged perfectly between the side of the bed and the wall, leaving no empty space. They were clearly intended to serve as nightstands, yet their surfaces were entirely bare, devoid of any personal items or even a single candleholder.
“Move the benches?” Yoongi asked, already walking toward the left one. Namjoon only hummed in response.
Yoongi lifted the bench — too heavy for what it was meant to do — and passed it off to one of the guards.
“There are skid marks on the wall,” he said, fighting to keep his voice unaffected, though his heartbeat quickened. I fucking knew that there was something. “As if it can move to the side.”
Namjoon made another humming noise, clearly deep in detective mode. His eyes flicked between the bed posts, the headboard, the top beam of the frame, then the bottom one. He lifted the mattress, and his face cleared, a satisfied smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“Aha,” he murmured softly, reaching inside to press something on the inner side of the frame.
A mechanism whirred to life, followed by a soft click — like a latch coming undone.
“I think we can push it,” Namjoon said, motioning for Yoongi to join him.
They braced against the posts of the bed and with a little effort, the entire structure shifted, lifting up slightly before sliding forward. A large square opening in the floor came into view, revealing a wide stone staircase that descended into dense darkness below.
Several stunned gasps echoed through the room. Yoongi and Namjoon shared a look.
“Get a torch,” Yoongi ordered evenly. “Maester Kwon, I will ask you to stay back until we figure out where this leads to. Stay with him,” he added, nodding at one of the guards.
Someone produced a torch and lit it, the flame crackling to life.
“I’ll go first,” Commander Song offered. Yoongi twisted his lips, ready to argue, but the the man stepped over to the opening. Torch in one hand, and an unsheathed sword in the other, he began descending the stairs with careful movements that spoke of years of practice.
Namjoon and Yoongi had no choice but to follow.
The descent wasn’t as long as Yoongi had anticipated — barely a dozen steps in before the staircase ended. They emerged into what appeared to be a basement of sorts, the graveyard chill of the underground space quickly seeping into Yoongi’s skin. The faint sound of tiny feet scrabbling against the ground broke the silence. Yoongi’s eyes, now adjusted to the dimness, followed a fat rat skittering from one corner of the room into the darkness beyond.
“There should be some kind of lighting here,” Namjoon murmured. A rustling sound followed, and then light burst through the room, — a string of wall-mounted torches connected by a flammable rope igniting in succession.
Before them stretched a labyrinth of bookcases, made of unpolished light wood, their shelves packed tight with scrolls and books and glimmering chests.
They stood in stunned silence for a moment before Commander Song emitted a rueful chuckle.
“Well,” he said, glancing at Yoongi, “here is the evidence you promised us, Heir Min.”
Yoongi had expected to feel the same smug satisfaction Sunghyung had exuded earlier in the study; instead, his chest churned with unease and a creeping sense of foreboding. He ran a hand through his hair, inhaling the cold, stale air of the basement.
“Get your people in here,” he ordered sharply. “Take everything and transfer it to your den. Go through all the items one by one and make a detailed log. Keep me updated.”
“Yes, sir.”
Together with Namjoon, Yoongi climbed up the stairs back into the Envoy’s chambers, the cold of the underground crypt slowly receding. He nodded at the guards, and they scrambled down the stairs. Across the room, Sunghyung’s eyes met his, burning with hatred.
“You still have nothing,” the Maester spat, his whole body trembling with fury.
Yoongi shrugged. “We shall see. The guild will take charge of the evidence now. Once they have looked over it, we’ll know if I have something or not.”
Sunghyung growled low in his chest, the sound more frustrated than threatening, and stalked over to the windows.
“I will go see what is happening at the Hall,” Namjoon muttered.
Yoongi nodded, grasping his friend’s forearm in silent gratitude. “Thank you,” he mouthed without sound. “I will see you back at the den.”
The door clicked shut behind him, and for a few minuted, the room was silent. Yoongi wandered around the bedroom again, his gaze sliding aimlessly over the dark red bookcases lining the walls, mind spinning.
“If you think that this will be good for you,” Sunghyung’s voice cut though the quiet, “if you think this will bolster your position with the Council and the pack at large, you are delusional.”
Yoongi exhaled, long and slow. “For fuck’s sake-”
But Sunghyung didn’t let him finish.
“The Council might absolve you of any wrongdoing, but that doesn’t mean the people will. Death by sunbeam is the highest punishment a priest can receive. It marks them not just as a sinner, but as a traitor to the faith. Having it happen during an Heir’s guidance…” He shook his head. “It stains you, too. You will be scrutinized, no matter what your investigation finds.”
Something in his words snagged on Yoongi’s attention and he stared at the back of the man’s head for a moment too long.
Sunghyung turned around, an eyebrow raised. “What?”
Yoongi shook his head. “Nothing. You are right, though, I will be scrutinized, but I already knew that. This has never been easy, and I never expected the ascension to change that,” he continued to walk slowly around the room, his former tutor’s gaze a physical touch against his face. “This will complicate matters, though, you are right about that.”
His eyes fell on a small book, sitting on the middle shelf of a bookcase near the bed. Barely larger than his palm, and yet it stood out like a sore thumb. In a room full of black and gold and red, it was a stark blue and silver, an embossing of a crescent moon in the middle of the cover and a row of tiny freshwater pearls running all around the edge.
Yoongi turned around to face Sunghyung, folding his arms behind his back. “What was he like?”
The alpha blinked, clearly startled. “What?”
“The Envoy. What was he like? From what Sungha noona told me, the two of you were quite close.”
Sunghyung turned back to the window, silence stretching for a few beats. Yoongi took a minute step back, his fingers brushing against the wood of the bookcase.
“He was the father I always wished for,” Sunghyung said at last, voice heavy with emotion. His scent, usually subdued by age, soured, the neutral smokiness of it becoming a full-blown fire, heavy, as if someone were burning wet logs. “I could hardly hope for Father’s blessing, after everything…” his voice wavered, “after everything that went down six years ago but I didn’t need it. The Envoy forgave me and that was enough.”
Yoongi’s hand searched for the book, grazing over the pearly bumps and the rough, warm texture of the cover.
“I suppose his position made him more god than man in my eyes,” Sunghyung continued, voice quieter now, lacking the acid it had before. “But he was mortal, just like the rest of us. Susceptible to sin, even though he was closer to Father than anyone else in this pack.”
Yoongi’s fingers finally found a firm grip on the book and with one smooth motion, he yanked it off the shelf and into the pocket of his outer robe.
“I am withholding judgement until I get a report from the guards,” he said evenly.
Something in his words made Sunghyung turn around with a bewildered, almost fearful look in his eyes.
“Whatever he was doing, might’ve been for the benefit of the pack,” Yoongi added when the silence stretched. “However misguided.”
Yoongi strongly doubted that was the case, but that conversation would have to wait.
Sunghyung studied him for a long moment. “And if that turns out to be true? Then what?”
Yoongi tried to think about it, but the book was burning against his thigh even through the fabric of the pocket and the heavy, suffocating weight Sunghyung’s scent pressed against his chest.
“I suppose there isn’t much any of us can do, is there? He is dead now, by Father’s hand no less. It is as the Scripture says,” he stepped over to the door, placed his hand on the doorknob, “truth unknown to most is still the truth.”
Sunghyung turned back to the window with a sigh.
“I suppose that is so,” he murmured.
Yoongi left without another word.
Notes:
hi!
so, first of all, i wanna apologize for disappearing for several months. i started university (again) at the beginning of september and that really fucked with my ability to write for my own enjoyment, but here i am, back back back again
i am not going to promise a consistent update schedule from here on out, but i want you all to know that i am not abandoning this story at all. i intend to finish this fic even if it kills me lol. so yeah, rest assured, updates are going to come, even though it might take several months
and on that note, to all those who have left kudos and comments and subscribed — thank you so so so so much i truly cannot tell you how much it means!! i promise i will be back with a new chapter for all of you so thank you for your interest and support!
Somi_YM on Chapter 1 Wed 15 May 2024 01:31AM UTC
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Irg on Chapter 4 Tue 28 May 2024 01:40AM UTC
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dulachodladh on Chapter 6 Sun 01 Dec 2024 11:30PM UTC
Last Edited Sun 01 Dec 2024 11:34PM UTC
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