Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Stay away from the woods. That was something you've been told time and time again since you were small. Scary stories told over the fire, of monsters that lurked in the shadows, waiting patiently for the time to strike. The little farming village you grew up in was flanked on all sides by that thick, dark forest, surrounding you like a cage and isolating your people from the rest of the kingdom. Nobody dared venture into the woods, not even the King's men. Your little village was all you knew for your entire life. The village and the monsters.

Surely it was all just tall tales meant to frighten children into staying indoors. A rumor made up by the lord of the manor to keep his people in line. But even the eldest of the village people look over their shoulders with real, tangible fear in their eyes. Young and old alike whisper to eachother about howls echoing in the dead of night, of rustling in the undergrowth, of the yellow glow of eyes peeking out from the darkness.

Sometimes, livestock are found gutted with their throats ripped out. The same would happen to you, your mother used to warn, if you strayed from her side and wandered too far.

And yet, the whistling of the pines have never been this enticing. The trees taunt you from your family's little cabin, their outstretched branches waving and creaking in the wind. As if beckoning you closer.

You can see them just as clearly from your parent's bakery as you can from your bedroom window. It's inescapable.

The shrill, tinny ringing of a bell snaps your attention away from the bakery window, your thoughts having consumed you entirely as you laid out fresh loaves of bread to cool off in the frosty air. You brush your flour covered hands off on your apron and turn to greet your customer, your polite little smile growing into a cheeky grin when you recognize the tall, lanky boy standing idly by your workbench.

"That's an awful lot to be doing all on your own." he comments with a sideways smile, running a hand through his auburn hair.

"I open the shop by myself every morning, Hee." you reply pointedly, rising to your tiptoes to give him a quick hug before brushing past him towards the towering stone oven. "You know Mother can't work this early anymore."

"Still, it's hard work for a woman. Couldn't you ask one of your siblings to help?"

You shake your head solemnly. You've had this argument with Heeseung countless times before. "They're too young to use the oven or mill the wheat, they'd be no help at all. It's not even that much work, really. Just baking and cleaning. I don't want to burden them with all of this on top of everything else.

Nothing has been the same since your father fell ill. The bakery was his and your mother's, a humble way to support your family and their quaint little village for decades. You were never particularly wealthy, but you had enough to get by. Consumption, the village doctor had called it. A truly fitting name. It consumed your poor, frail father whole, devoured him and left nothing behind, not even the bones. A mere shadow of a man that laid in bed all day, a ghost whose coughs have begun to sound like rattling chains. None of the tinctures and medicines the doctor prescribed ever worked, if anything they only seemed to be making him sicker. He said there was a hospital in the royal city, but your village was days away by carriage, and in order to get there you must go through the woods first. You and your mother had nowhere near the funds or the bravery to make the trip. Part of you was certain that your father wouldn't survive the journey either way.

Mother now spends her days caring for him, an apothecary's daughter clinging onto those last shreds of hope that her remedies will stave off the cold hands of death. You desperately wished you had the strength to feel her optimism, but you've already begun grieving.

"Mother said she'd stop by to help close up shop in the afternoon." you assert, leaving Heeseung no room for further discussion. You can feel his eyes on your back, watching you and you stoke the firewood and slide trays of dough into the oven. "You worry about me too much! I'm not a little girl anymore."

"I worried about you then, and I'll worry about you now." Heeseung laughs endearingly, erupting a swarm of butterflies in your belly. "You've always been a little too reckless."

His words remind you of your mulling thoughts, pulling your gaze back to the window. "Heeseung... have you ever known someone who went into the woods?"

Heeseung is quiet for a worryingly long stretch of time. "The Blackwoods? Not anyone who made it back. Why?"

Your mind is screaming at you to keep your mouth shut, but you just can't keep it all bottled up inside of you anymore. You've never hidden a single thing from your best friend, except this. "I was reading my mothers books the other day." you begin softly, keeping your back turned to avoid looking him in the eye. "In one of them, it said that there was a plant that grows in the Blackwoods. A kind of flower. It can cure any illness, even save people from the brink of death..."

"Y/N." Heeseung's voice is frighteningly calm. "You're not seriously considering going in there, are you?"

You hesitate for a second too long; he cuts off your reply with a scoff, stepping forward to spin you around and grip you harshly by the shoulders. His rough, calloused carpenter's hands dig into your skin. "You're being childish. There's no way that flower is even real, Y/N, it sounds like the stuff of fairytales. You can't go around believing everything that's written in your mother's quack medicine books."

"It was my grandfather's." you defend softly, finally looking up into Heeseung's eyes. The coldness you find in them unsettles you.

"He was a quack too." Heeseung insists, releasing your shoulders to swiftly slam the bakery window shut. Your loaves shake from the force. "There's no magical flower that's going to bring your father back, especially not in the Blackwoods. I love you, Y/N, seriously, but you can't keep believing in fairytales-- and you wonder why I worry about you so much! Promise me you won't go into those woods. Please. One step inside and you'll never come out. I can't afford to lose you. Your family can't afford to lose you."

"But what kind of help am I when all I do is keep up appearances? I know the truth, Heeseung, I know you've paid Sunghoon to lie about our tithes to his father."

Heeseung blanches. "Who told you?! Was it Sunghoon himself?"

"He wants me to marry him." you admit, watching with fear as Heeseung's face grows pinched and cold. "He told me... he said that my family won't have to pay Lord Park ever again if I accept his proposal. But I can't... I can't marry him, Hee. Not like this. The bakery is all my parents have, without it we're penniless. Sure, Mother wouldn't have to worry about tithes, but what about Father? His treatments are nearly a month's worth of work. But if I went into the Blackwoods and brought back that flower, Father could work again, and I can marry Sunghoon like he wants."

"You'll... you'll marry him?" Heeseung echoes emptily.

"For my family. But I can't with Father this sick, it's not right. But if I find that flower... my siblings will be able to live a better life."

"Don't do it. Don't go in those woods."

"Heeseung--"

"Please." he pleads, his face more serious and stony than you've ever seen it. "You'll die, Y/N. I told you I'd always take care of you and your family, you don't have to do this. You don't have to marry Sunghoon, I'll... I'll figure something out. I can talk to him, he's been my friend since we could hardly walk. He'll listen to me, he'll help your father, just-- don't go into those Blackwoods."

"...Okay." you relent, just loud enough for Heeseung to hear. "I won't. You're right. I'm being ignorant."

“Say you promise.”

"I... I promise..."

╱

You had made up your mind long before you had spoken to heeseung earlier that morning. He’s just a simple woodworker, he doesn’t understand a single thing about the healing magic that hides in nature. But your grandfather did. He wrote those books himself, a man who risked his life in the pursuit of knowledge, just to help others. You wanted nothing more than to continue his legacy, save your father and prove to your close-minded little village that he was anything but the insane, rambling idiot that they all viewed him as. Before and after his death. You’ve been preparing for weeks, reading as much as you can about the dangers of the Blackwoods, packing whatever you possibly could think of to help you on the journey. You might have overpacked, to be honest, your weathered leather satchel hanging heavy on your shoulder. If everything went as you planned, you would be back home before anyone would notice that you were gone.

Standing at the edge of the forest, your cold clammy fingers wrapped tightly around the strap of your satchel, you’re caught frozen in place. You just can’t seem to get your feet to step forward, your psyche screaming at you to turn back and run home. Heeseung’s words circle your thoughts, so all-consuming that you swear you can hear them in the howling wind— you haven’t told a lie since you were very young, and never once to Heeseung. The guilt nags at you to the point of nausea.

Your breath fogs in front of your face, reminding you of the hearth smoke billowing from your cabin’s chimney. You can still see it, just beyond the hill, its straw hatch roof just visible over the tall grass waving in the wind. You could turn back now, put all your things away and fall asleep in the safety of your bedroom. You could forget about all of this and wake up tomorrow morning as if you had never planned anything at all.

You will yourself to move your feet, frozen in your boots like the frost on the leaves, and you enter the ominous pitch-black dark of the Blackwoods.

The tree canopy is so thick that the moonlight barely breaches it, everything swathed in darkness as you walk farther and farther away from home. The flickering candle in your lantern does little to illuminate much except what was right in front of you. You focus on what you can see, the dead fallen leaves and frosty underbrush that crunch loudly underneath your feet as you venture deeper. It’s deafening in your ears, the forest eerily silent all around you, not even the distant call of an owl, the scattering of a chipmunk— you’re certain that any creatures hiding in the trees or in the brush knew of your presence.

Including the monsters.

None of the books you read would ever describe them more than just that; monsters that use the night as camouflage, that kill livestock in their pens and steal children from their beds. Any intruder in their own territory will certainly be made short work out of. But you're certain they're not real. They can't possibly be.

Distantly, cutting sharply through the silence, you hear the howling of a wolf. It sounded a safe distance away, yet it still sent you jumping. The sudden movement causes your lantern to extinguish, plummeting you into complete and total darkness. Your heart dropping, you curse, placing it on the forest floor against a mossy tree before opening the flap of your satchel and rummaging blindly through the contents for your matchbox. You try to steady your breathing, heart rattling against your ribcage, matchbox just beyond your grasp as you struggle in the dark.

You hear the rustling of leaves just to your right. Desperately, you tell yourself that you’re just hearing things.

Finally, you wrap your fingers around the familiar shape of your matchbox, pulling it out to fumble with its contents before you pick back up your lantern. With a strike of the match against the rough bark of the tree, you’re illuminated once again, carefully lighting the candle before putting out the match with a shake of your hand. Triumphantly, you turn to continue to venture farther into the woods, before stopping cold. Your breath knocks out of you all at once, leaving you gasping in the cold air.

Farther up on the oak tree, carved crudely into the bark, are three sharp claw marks you’re almost certain weren’t there before.

But they had to have been, because there was simply no way that something could have snuck up so close to you without you noticing. These woods were driving you mad, you feared, still trying to steady your breathing as you turn and step forward.

As you continue deeper into the forest, you swear you hear another pair of footsteps following your own. You stop abruptly to catch them, but you hear nothing— another thing you must be imagining… yet you set onward a little faster than before.

Maybe it was that wolf you had heard, you entertained as you examine the dark twisted trees. It sounded rather far away, but you couldn’t be one to discount the creature’s speed. Maybe it was just watching you to make sure you weren’t a threat, and it would leave you shortly.

That thought leaves you as soon as it comes.

A growl, deep and barely audible, rumbles from between the bushes. You break out into a wild sprint, gasping and panting, running deep into the unknown. The creature chases you with frightening speed, no longer trying to hide its footsteps as it weaves through the forest floor. You had no idea where you were or where you were going, but this beast… this was his home. The hunt was on.

Low hanging branches scratch and tear at your skin and clothing as you run, blood running down your face, legs and arms— you couldn’t feel the pain, the adrenaline numbing everything except for the terror in your heart. Now you were just easier to track, you agonized, but you couldn’t do anything but keep running, dropping your satchel and lantern to lighten your load as much as you could. Alas, you barely ran any faster. You were starting to slow down, exhaustion was starting to creep up on you, your chest aching and desperate for breath, your legs screaming in pain as you stumble and stagger through the labyrinth of trees. You couldn’t see a single thing in front of you, completely lost in the darkness, your arms outstretched to feel around as you ran.

The creature was advancing, its footsteps thunderous right behind you, its snarls and growls growing closer and closer. In a desperate attempt to escape, you sharply turn to the right to run in a different direction.

Just as you move to step forward, your boot wedges itself underneath an exposed tree root, and you are sent tumbling to the mossy ground. You try to break your fall with your hands, but you react far too late— you slam your head against a jagged rock, blinding white light flashing behind your eyelids before your world goes black.

The last thing you feel is pain, and the last thing you see are two bright, bloody red eyes staring at you through the darkness.

Chapter Text

The first thing you feel is agony. From the moment your consciousness begins to swim and struggle towards the surface; there’s an all-encompassing throbbing in your brain, a pressure so great it felt as if your skull would split open. The pain was so powerful that it has bile rising in your throat, tossing and turning in your soft bed. You moan weakly and bury your face into the feather pillows, but the worn fabric does little to quell the ache.

…Feather pillows?

The last thing you remember was being deep in the Blackwoods, far from any sort of shelter or comfort— had you somehow managed to make your way back home after blacking out? You can’t recall a single thing after you had relit your lantern, though you were certain that you were far too lost to find your way back home to the village. Perhaps your village had come looking for you and had taken you back to your cottage, where you were certain to catch an earful from both your mother and from Heeseung…

But these pillows you had at home were stuffed with wool and not feathers. This bed that you lie in did not feel like your own.

Slowly, you crack your eyes open, raising a hand to clutch at your temple— a strange wetness meets your fingertips, one that startles you enough into sitting up. When your blurry vision finally focuses, what you see is most certainly not your cozy bedroom.

You’re lying on a sofa, ancient and worn ragged, its fabric dirty and shredded with bits of hay and feathers sticking through. Pillows of various shapes and colors surround you like padding, stacked behind your head and around your feet to elevate your leg— your leg!

You gasp in horror. Your shawl is gone, and your dress and apron are torn to shreds, revealing your mangled and bloody calf, your horribly swollen and twisted ankle. The sight makes you realize that the aching wasn’t just from your head, but from your entire body; everything hurt from deep in your bones, and even the tiniest movements send sharp pangs through your being. You don’t dare to try and move your foot, just the sight of it alone enough to make you ill, though you do notice that someone had gone through the effort of wrapping it in some sort of bandage-like leaves and stabilizing it with all the pillows. You let go of your temple to study your hand, horrified at how it comes away covered in dark, semi-dried blood.

The events of the night before come rushing back to you all at once. The fear, the running, those brilliant red eyes that stared at you through the dark— as you fell, you were sure that you would die, torn apart and eaten by that bloodthirsty beast. But, aside from your head and your leg, and all the scratches and bruises along your arms, you don’t see any bitemarks or gashes from claws, and all the pain certainly meant that you were still alive. Mother always said that there was no pain in Heaven.

Somebody really did come and save you. Chased that horrible beast away and taken you somewhere safe, tended to your wounds. Wherever you were, this must be your savior’s home.

It’s a terrible excuse for a home, you quickly realize. While there was a small fire in the fireplace, the shattered windows let in icy gusts of wind that chilled you down to the bone. Wooden boards and threadbare blankets try their best to keep in the cold, but enough snowflakes managed to sneak through that small piles of snow were collecting on the rotten wooden floor. From the terrible whistling of the freezing wind, you assume that a snowstorm had begun sometime into the night.

You were in a living room of sorts, in what appears to be a farmhouse, though certainly it has been abandoned for some considerable time; spiderwebs and dust cover every surface, from the large antique fireplace to the rocking chair sat by your side. A staircase was off to your left, some of the steps caved in. The door by the stairs must be the entrance, rickety and swinging in the wind, its lock rusted and broken. To your farthest side, the living room opens into an elaborate decorative archway, leading into a dilapidated kitchen and dining room. You spot five worn chairs around the extravagant dining room table, seemingly scavenged as none of them matched the other. Another, smaller doorway was on the far wall beyond the table, barely visible as it was covered by a dirty linen tablecloth— perhaps it was broken or had holes, or maybe the door wasn’t there at all? It’s impossible that someone lives here, you think… though evidence of it lingers throughout the room. A pair of shoes by the entrance, a worn leather jacket hung over the back of the rocking chair, and most curiously of all, a chipped porcelain plate sat carefully on the floor by the sofa where you lay, bearing thick slices of bread and dried meat.

The sight makes your stomach growl, and you realize with a start just how hungry you are. You haven’t eaten since the evening before, and even that only consisted of a thin, watery stew; crops were poor this past harvest, the livestock frail and sickly from the bad weather, and as hard as you try to cook hearty meals for your family, there was hardly anything to eat. As starving as you were, however, you couldn’t bring yourself to pick off the plate. Anxious thoughts of poison consumed you, and while the stranger who lived in this farmhouse had saved you, it didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t up to something nefarious. You’ll leave, you decide, before the stranger comes back, and find some berries and nuts to fuel your no doubt painful journey home. It would be proper and polite to thank your savior, but you cannot sit around and wait any longer— surely your mother has noticed your absence and riled up the entire village with her worry.

Before you can do anything more than get your hands beneath you to sit up, an unfamiliar voice calls out from behind you, “You’re awake!”

A strange, unfamiliar man steps out from behind the hanging linen, his smile wide and full of teeth. You’re struck immediately by how handsome he is, with a square face and full lips, dirty blonde hair that hung in his face despite his bangs being pushed back. He was tall and well built, with defined muscles in his thick arms, visible through the material of his thin white undershirt. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing the strength and corded veins in his hands and forearms. The lacing on the front was loose and undone, exposing a wide sliver of his chest; your eyes are met with honeyed tan skin, gentle brown eyes that sparkle when he draws nearer. You have dozens of questions, thoughts scattered and spinning circles around your head, but you struggle to find the words for any of them.

“Wh-where am I?” you settle on asking, your throat raw and scratchy from misuse. The man’s smile softens, almost pitying.

“We took you home.” He replies smoothly and simply, like he was talking to a scared child; he’s gotten so close now, almost uncomfortably so. He kneels by the sofa, face hardly a foot from yours. “We found you like this, unconscious on the ground— how did you get hurt, little one? What are you doing so far into the woods?”

“Who’s we?” you insist, ignoring his questions. You don’t think you can answer them anyway. “There are others here?”

He looks at you in a way that makes your skin crawl, though not entirely in a bad way. The look in his eyes was far too familiar for a stranger, akin to the adoration of a loved one. It was as if he was looking through you, studying your insides by studying your face, like he could read your thoughts written on your skin. It makes your stomach flutter and your face burn; no man has ever looked at you with such intensity before.

Longing. He looked at you like he was longing. For what, you don’t know.

“My brothers,” he answers you, “They’re out hunting for now. You must be starving. Please, eat what little I could find for you— I know it’s not much, but you must get your strength up, at least until they come back with a fresh kill. The food will help with the pain, Taehyun can give you more medicine once your belly is full.”

He picks up the plate and offers it to you, but you push it away. “This is your home? Wh-what are you doing living out here, in the Blackwoods? In this terrible place no less! It’s far too dangerous, the monsters—”

“Monsters?” the man echoes curiously, “There are no monsters in this forest.”

“You’re mistaken!” you insist, propping yourself up higher on your hands; through the window you can see only dense trees, not a sliver of the sky, and it feels suffocating. “I saw one with my own eyes! Surely it will come looking for me again. I must get back home to my village, The Blackwoods bring nothing but certain death!”

You swing your feet off the sofa and plant them on the floor, gritting your teeth from the way your ankle screams in agony. Every part of you ached from the simplest of movements, but you cannot wait even a second longer in these terrible woods, like a sitting duck just waiting to be hunted. The man catches you before you make even one step, his large hands gripping your arms roughly. “What are you doing?!” he all but roars, face slack with shock and concern. “You cannot leave in this condition! We’ll keep you safe here, take care of you! You don’t have to worry, nothing can hurt you while you’re with me and my brothers. This beast you speak of, describe it to me and I’ll hunt it down for you. I’ll bring you its head. Anything to ease your fears, my star.”

He eases you back down onto the sofa, nursing your ankle in his large hands-- your head spins with his words, unable to digest any of them. What does he mean, when he calls you his star? He couldn't possibly be serious when he says he'll hunt down that beast, but the deadly look in his eyes frightens you. You couldn't fathom staying here, but it seems as if this man, and his brothers, have no intention of letting you go.

He talks to you like a mad man. Were you... trapped here? Held hostage? What was he going to do to you?

"It was a terrible thing." you whisper, almost to yourself. "Big and hulking, lurking in the shadows. With eyes redder than any I've ever seen, red like blood. It never came into the moonlight, I never got a good look at it outside of just its eyes..."

The man hums in keen interest, trailing his thumb gently over your ankle before guiding you to lay back as you were with your leg propped. "These woods are large and deep, vastly so. My brothers and I have only lived in this wood for a few moons, after we were ambushed and ran out of our old den... your description of this beast, you call it... it sounds a lot like the pack that ambushed us all that time ago. They must have followed us."

"A pack? like wolves?" you gasp, "How did you fight them off?"

"Not quite wolves." He laughs hollowly. "Men, dresserd in furs. You may mistake them for wolves, but none truly live in the Blackwoods. I would recognize them anywhere... they’re my kin, after all."

"What.. what do you mean? Are you saying that you're a wolf? I'm looking right at you and I can tell you myself right now, that you aren't."

The man cracks a crooked grin. "You'll come to find out soon enough. Stay with us, make this your home, at least for now. If the pack had followed us all the way out here, they won't stop until I've killed every last one of them myself. "

"What are you?” you ask in a hushed voice, half in rapture and half in fear.

Your mother always told you that you were too old to believe in magical creatures and beasts from the folklore, but your grandfather had told you countless stories of his own encounters before his death-- no one ever believed him, but you did. You do. And especially after your encounter from the night before, paired with this strange man's words, you'll believe anything. This man... he couldn't possibly be what he seemed.

"My name is Yeonjun." he answers you, which wasn't an answer at all. You accept it nonetheless, settling back onto the sofa though you eye him warily. He's given up on trying to get you to eat, and instead he just kneels by your side and watches you intently, his oak brown eyes deep and searching.

"My name is Y/N." you tell him quietly. For a second, for a reason you can't understand, he looks confused, but quickly covers it up with a warm smile and crinkled eyes.

"That's a beautiful name. It fits you, my beautiful star."

"Why— why are you calling me that? Your star? I don't understand, we've never met before, and I am certainly not yours. And this place is not my home, it will never be. I’ll entertain you and your insistence that I must rest, but only because I’m certain that I wouldn’t make it very far as I am now. Especially with that… thing out there. But the moment I am able I will be leaving this place.”

Yeonjun shakes his head as if you were an ignorant child, his thumb still working over your bruised ankle. "If that is what you wish. But the moon had told me that you would come to me, to us, completing our pack. A shooting star over our den, just like in my dreams... Once those wolves have been eradicated and your foot has healed, you can.... venture out back to your little human village."

Human village. You scoff to yourself.

If he won't tell you himself what ever kind of creature he is underneath his facade of human flesh, you'll just have to find out for yourself.

Just as you open your mouth to hound Yeonjun with another question, that rickety front door swings open with a terrible creak. The sound startles you and makes you squeak, and Yeonjun is quick to throw himself over your body to protect you. He relaxes, however, when he sees the four men who pad into the farmhouse.

"Ah, my brothers. They're finally back... and with fresh kill, I see."

The men make their way to you and Yeonjun, triumphant smiles on their faces. They all appear to be similar in age to their brother, though you note that they look nothing like each other at all, and you doubt that any of them were truly related. It’s just then that you see the large buck they have strung up and hog tied, drug across the floor behind them. It’s fur is matted with mud and snow. Blood drips from its gnarled antlers onto the wooden floor.

The sight of it sends a terrible wave of nausea through you, and you throw your hand up over your mouth to keep from gagging. The buck's throat had been sliced from ear to ear, jagged and deep enough that it was nearly decapitated, esophagus and arteries exposed. Patches of its fur were torn out of its pale flesh, body covered in terrible scratches and all four of its legs broken and bent in odd, unnatural directions. The buck had been young, evident from the fleshy, bleeding velvet that hung in tatters from its antlers, leaving them looking more like entrails or organs than horns. The four boys were all drenched in it's dark, musky blood, their clothes soaked through and their faces smeared with it, filling the farmhouse with the acrid, coppery scent of death.

The shortest one of them was the first to speak, his voice surpisingly light and airy for his strong build and chiseled face. "It's your turn to dress and cook it, hyung."

Yeonjun scowls at him like a spoiled toddler. "But you're better at it than I am. It's not fair to make me go out in the cold and the snow just to do a poor job."

The tallest one scoffs, his feathery black hair falling over his eyes. "You're so ungrateful! We were just out in that snow for hours! The least you can do is pull your own weight around."

"I have been, thank you. Watch your mouth." Yeonjun sneers. "I've been taking care of our lovely guest here, if you haven't noticed. She's just woken up."

"She's awake!" the boy next to the shortest crows excitedly. Like Yeonjun, he had downy, dirty blonde hair that hung in shaggy tufts over his face and ears. He grinned at you with an upside down smile. "I was starting to get worried she was never going to wake up. She's been asleep for days."

"I've been asleep for days?!" you gasp, swinging your head in Yeonjuns direction— he looks at you guiltily. "How long? Just how long have I been here?"

"About two or three days, give or take. Taehyun has knowledge in healing; he's been tending to your wounds..."

Your heart sinks in your chest, dread weighing down hard on your sloping shoulders. You’ve been missing for days— this is worse than you could have imagined. Your family, Heeseung, the rest of the village… they must all think you’re dead. Perhaps they've even had a funeral for you already, your mother having to spend her last few coins on mourning clothes.

“Oh, Mother, Father, I'm so sorry...." you sniffle, your body shaking like a leaf.

The shock and grief that takes over you is too much to bear, and fat tears began to flow down your cheeks in an endless stream. You sob into your hands as the five men watch over you in silence, all standing still and peering down at you with odd expressions. Yeonjun moves to comfort you, but you shrug him off with a hiccup.

"Let her cry." the fourth brother finally speaks up, his deep voice gruff and annoyed. "I’m starving and we have days’ worth of meat to prepare."

Yeonjun hesitates, but after a moment of hovering he does leave your side. They all filter out one by one; Yeonjun grabs his coat from the rocking chair and storms outside, the large blond brother following him close behind. He drags the buck’s carcass behind him with little effort, a frightening show of strength, its severed neck hung open and dragging across the floor, leaving behind an unsightly trail of smeared blood. The shortest and the tallest made their way through the far archway, while the dark-haired, unfriendly brother disappeared up the wobbly, creaking stairs. You were alone again, stuck on the moldy sofa and gritting your teeth from the lingering pain, your tears not stopping no matter how hard you tried to dry your eyes.

You learned how to cry in silence years ago, never wanting your parents or siblings to overhear; you always had to be strong for them, a pillar for them to lean on. Quietly you grieve for what feels like hours, not Yeonjun nor any of the brothers reappearing to check up on you— as painful as it was to be left to drown in your own sorrow, part of you can’t help but feel grateful for the distance. It gives you the space you need to think clearly, to work out what exactly was happening and what you should do.

Yeonjun was right, as much as you desired to fight him; you were in no condition to make it back through the forest, and you doubt that you could even manage to sneak out of this rickety, creaking farmhouse without alerting at least one of the brothers. And with that beast in the forest… from Yeonjun’s words it seemed as if there were more than just the one you saw, and the idea of coming face to face with a whole pack of them alone and injured sends an ice-cold shiver down your spine. You’ll just have to sit it out here, endure these men and their strangeness for as long as it takes for your foot to heal and for your path to be safe, and before any of them realize you’ll be gone without a trace.

How you were going to explain this to your village, you had no idea…. You’ll figure it out when the time comes.

The shortest brother— Taehyun, you believe his name is— reappears above you once your sobs turn to sniffles, a wicker basket clutched tight in his fists. He approaches your side cautiously, like you would a frightened animal. Your hands hang limply at your sides, and you don't move to look up at him; it doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest, settling down on his knees next to you in stoic silence before unpacking the contents of the basket. Out come clutches of leaves and herbs you've never seen before, and a roll of what looked like doctor’s bandages. It's surprising that he has them, and you wonder briefly where he could have gotten them from. Perhaps somewhere inside this farmhouse.

You hiss in pain when he takes your ankle into his hands, but he ignores you, bending your leg over the side of the sofa to examine the bruising and the open gash across your foot. It was just then that you noticed you had already been bandaged, the off white linen soaked dark red in blood to the point you couldn't distinguish it from the leaves or your skin. he unwinds the old bandage with careful precision and peels away the old leaves, inspecting the wound with an upturned nose before grabbing a few of the new, fresh leaves he had placed down on the dusty floor. You watch as he takes a pocketknife to the skin of the leaves, gently rubbing until the fuzz on the surface gave way and they became malleable and moist before wrapping your foot and ankle in the leaves. There’s a sharp burning sensation when the leaves first make contact with your skin, and you bite your lip to keep in any whimpers as he continues down the entirety of your foot.

"What are those?" you ask him under your breath, picking at the hem of your dress.

"Lamb’s ear." He responds simply, not looking up from his careful handiwork. There’s deer blood still caked and dried on his calloused, rough hands. "They're old, but they'll do for now. I’ll go searching for more later, once the sun comes back up."

"Why are you--"

"It'll keep it from getting infected, and it'll help with the pain. Do you always ask so many questions? I'm doing you a favor."

"Yeonjun asked you to do this." you say, a statement not a question.

Taehyun just nods tersely, his large brown eyes hooded and glaring down the slope of his angular nose. His thick brow was quirked in annoyance, grip on your leg a little rougher as he takes up the bandage and wraps it around over the leaves. He was soft-spoken, but something darker lingered beneath his clipped responses, and the intensity in his face intimidated you. You don't want to anger him any further, so you ask no more questions, instead staring unblinking at your lap as he ties the bandage off and stands back up.

“Hyung is Alpha. If he demands we serve you, then we will.” He says cryptically, matter of fact and hollow. “Stay off your feet as much as you can for the next moon or so. The more you rest, the faster you’ll heal, and the faster you can leave.”

“A moon?! Do you mean I have to stay here like this for a full month?! That’s preposterous, I can’t possibly—” you sit up suddenly, wincing from the way your body fights the movement.

Taehyun stops you with a single scathing look. “Living under this roof means you live as part of the pack. You’ll obey your alpha as we do, and you’ll obey us as well, omega.”

You open your mouth to ask him what exactly he means by Alpha, but it’s too late—Taehyun picks the basket up and turns to walk away swiftly, leaving you to gape at his retreating back.

The rest of the night goes by in a blur. The boys all wash up for their meal, something you couldn’t help but feel grateful for, even as your stomach turned from the chipped porcelain plates the brothers laid out on the kitchen table, crudely carved slabs of barely cooked venison that still bled when prodded with a knife. Yeonjun carries you to the table as if you were royalty, ignoring your desperate pleas that you could make the few feet yourself. He perches ever so gently on his lap even as you squirm and complain, and he insists on hand feeding you small slices of venison carefully cut one by one— you refuse every unappetizing, bloody piece he wags in front of your face, yet he persists until Taehyun convinces him to stop and eat himself.

The bread and cheese you had been offered earlier was laid out on the table, and as your stomach growled and you grew more ravenous you couldn’t resist from reaching over and picking at the crudely cut cubes and slices. The bread was stale and dry, and the cheese was bitter, but as hungry as you were you couldn’t find it within yourself to care. Yeonjun seems content with you having finally eaten something, and he leaves you be to sit silently on his lap.

Throughout the rest of the meal you’re unsure of what to do with yourself, torn halfway between cowering into Yeonjun’s side and bolting onto the table. The brothers eat like pigs and ogle at you the entire time, odd expressions creased on their messy faces as if you were a creature they had never seen before. You curl into yourself under their gazes, only free of them when Yeonjun finishes his plate and brings you to bed.

His bed. Just as dilapidated as the rest of the house, devoid of anything more than an iron wrought queen bed and a dresser. He gently lays you down gently on the feather mattress and tucks the blankets under your chin. You’re still bloody and dirty, and you feel disgusting, but the idea of bathing or undressing around this man makes your sensitive stomach churn. You lie there completely still, unable to even breathe until he turns and leaves you, but only after seemingly contemplating something within himself for a painfully long moment. The entire house creaks with the movements of the other boys, all getting ready in their own bedrooms, their laughter and banter echoing through the thin walls. Once the last brother goes to sleep you’re left frightfully awake in the silence and in the dark, not even a candle or an oil lamp to ease your fears. All around you was the sounds of the forest, almost deafening now, surrounding and trapping you as if it were alive. You toss and turn for hours, and you’re unable to fall asleep until the sun finally starts to peek back up over the horizon. All you can think of is home, the terrible creaking of the trees, and the violent wind.

As exhaustion finally overtakes you, you swear amongst the howling of the storm, you hear the howl of a wolf.