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hexonthepeach · 2 months

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a gentle tongue breaketh the bone | 27: wild

pairing: fem hybrid fox omega!reader/hybrid Alpha!nct 127

tags: reverse harem, non-traditional omegaverse hybrid! cyberpunk au, pack dynamics, polyamory, slowburn/slowbuild, angst & hurt/comfort, heavy content warnings inc. torture, graphic violence, suicidal ideation, explicit sexual content

summary: the year is 2127. decades of eugenics and warfare have led to the rise of designated populations: the ruler Alphas and their rare, prized omegas sequestered from the Beta population. in the aftermath of the War of the Two Tigers, New Goryeo ushers in an Imperial dynasty determined not by birthright but by the alliance of the Syndicate’s clancorps to choose the best pack of your generation. you are destined to take your place within the Imperial harem as a queen, and–perhaps–Imperatrix herself

but you have a secret, written into your skin and bones–one that could easily kill you, depending on who finds it out

ten years ago you chose your Alpha and their pack in a fateful meeting

now, you must make them choose you

[masterlist & glossary] [read on AO3] [26: fallen]

wc: 7.3k

warnings: action violence, mild omega slander

recommended listening: box - nct dream (truly enjoying this ep)

Your face is buried in a strange texture, the scent even more unimaginable. Dirt–real and rich as a forest floor, scattered with dead leaves and flakes of bark. Rot and green and something carbonized as well, a scent map that transports you back a decade and a half, hundreds of clicks due north on the 127th meridian.

Home.

It can’t be. This dream is too real–trees rising on either side, the chittering of insects and birds echoing from their tops, the moon centered above beyond a green haze of aurora–

No, you think. That shifting light is too distinct in its pattern, too geometrical to be a natural phenomenon. Your head throbs as you slowly register the familiar bright rectangles of color visible through the leafy canopy, the sound-dampened rumble of voices.

“Welcome back to the main event. As our guests return to their seats from the intermission let’s set the scene. Tonight we have a very special stage, a little corner of the Wild carefully transplanted for your entertainment.”

The announcement through a speaker sounds underwater, but Key’s voice is unmistakeable.

You’re back in the arena. But that’s also impossible–there’s no way the breadth of this space could fit even in that huge room. This is something different. A botanical garden? A zoo? Enclosed, you think, much warmer and damper than the Neo Seoul night you’d shivered against earlier on the rooftop.

“For the safety of our esteemed guests we have transported our participants in tonight’s death match to a confidential location, to demonstrate the resources granted to us by our newest corporate sponsor, Zhirafa Technical Manufacturing.”

Zhirafa? The name has no meaning to you.

“This display of our Park clan ally’s newest offerings for private and public security celebrate their new investiture to our NSMP response teams. Let’s hear a few words from our sponsors.”

You pick yourself up, tripping on the ridiculous train of your gown, shaking a small storm of leaf litter free. Your slippers are gone, feet deadened by cold and inactivity, coming back to life with your pacing around the opening in the forest.

“Help!” you shout.

You hear your voice echo in the vast structure beneath the music of some distant advertisement, muffled by the dense trees. Based on the autocar-thickness of the trunks and their building-tall height this isn't new growth–this must have been here for years. That the treetops haven’t broken through whatever is containing them overhead is a testament to how well-architected it is against it.

“The classic Savannah line has been modernized for Neo Seoul’s most prescient threat: the cyber-fitted feral alpha. Tonight’s demonstration is proof that in the war of organic and robotic, the apex predator will always be the one that can’t be killed.”

The music swells above you, scored to a video you can’t see.

This is where real fear finds you, remembering anthems played in the distance over speakers. The constant chatter of gunfire, the arc of rockets overhead. You taste metal and gunpowder just the same. Kicking at the ground with your bare feet displaces weathered shell casings and bits of exploded plastic beneath the leaves.

There’s no way you’ve been transported North. It would take days, not minutes. They don’t even know you’re gone if this stupid game was proceeding with you at its heart.

No, it dawns on you. This must be an NSMR training ground.

You knew them best from the melos, places where new recruits from Seoul had trained to fight against Neo-Manchukoan guerilla forces, acting out their deaths before inevitably meeting them in the Wild.

You have to alert the audience somehow–get out before the event begins. Even if you don’t have a mic and tracker there’s the familiar low-register buzz of drones overhead, you just have to get the attention of one.

“Is anyone out there?” Your voice echoes a little less, the artificiality of the soundscape revealed in how the birdsong and insects continue unphased.

There is something–though–the rustle of leaves nearby that makes you twist around. Your ears swivel towards the noise, hunching low out of instinct and searching for something to use as a weapon.

“No more surprises, please,” you speak without saying, backing away from the unnatural gleam of blue-white in the thicket.

[Present identification, citizen.]

The voice is electronic and uncanny, different from your kidnapper’s in being devoid of any humanity at all.

“I’m not a citizen,” you say, calmly, “I’m Lee ____, born–”

There’s a metal-on-metal sound, pneumatics hissing as the thing breaks free of the bushes, four-legged and bristling with attachments of dull chrome.

The robotic construct is built like and yet unlike any large cat you’ve ever witnessed–larger than Johnny in his original form. It’s surprisingly smooth in its movements despite its clunky profile, its metal claws and chain-like tail just as ridiculous additions as the grenade launcher fixed to its back.

[Scanning] the drone says, giving you the grace of a few moments to keep searching for a weapon as a white net of light is projected from the thin rectangle of its eyeline.

You think for a moment you might have made it before the scanner pulses from white to red, metal jaw opening wide, fangs sharp past the light.

[Level 3 security protocol in effect. Unknown intruder detected. Countdown T-10 to detainment. Do not attempt to flee.]

Terror rushes through you, animal brain screaming to bolt while your rational self tells you to hold, to not give the drone a reason to chase you. It’s absurd, treating an artificial creature as having an instinct but a step to the side is answered by a mirror-like movement.

“Is there anyone there?” you plead. “I was abducted here. Get me out.”

[6 . . . 5 . . . 4 . . .] the impartial countdown continues.

“Nine hells,” you mutter, ripping off your outer robe and approximating the stance of a matador with an angry bull as you begin to back away.

You don’t have experience with these kinds of machines but you understand programmed intelligence–the limitations are cartoonishly absurd no matter how many years of advancement have tried to make them as reactive as a human mind.

[ 3 . . . 2 . . . Engaging protocol.]

You wait until the drone lunges at you, wait longer to watch it break to slam its stun-paneled flank sparking from conduced energy, before throwing the swatch of weighted fabric towards it.

You have seconds of its head and body being covered to turn and bolt, path of retreat already erratic before you glimpse a red-shaded observation camera in front of you, the blink of another–

It’s visible for an instant ahead of colliding with cold metal and 50,000 volts pulsing through you in a heartbeat.

You can’t even scream.

Your body seizes and rolls across the ground–stunned. Heavy thuds hit the earth around you as the drones close in, mechanisms grinding and whirring. One of those wicked three-pronged paws bears down on your chest before you can curl away, pinning you to the earth.

[Cease resisting, citizen.] the drone’s pre-programmed voice is oddly calm. [Further resistance will be met with deadly force, comply until additional units can be engaged.]

“Fuck . . . you . . .” you wheeze with the remaining air from your lungs, screaming once you’re able to pull in air. “Get OFF OF ME!”

Something–someone–rumbles overhead, guttural and loud.

The drones attention on you breaks, met with a flash of chrome as the unoccupied Savannah Panther darts up the side of the nearest tree. It’s absurd watching that stupid thing claw the wood uselessly, unable to fight the pull of gravity on its dense chassis.

The shadow above takes advantage of its struggle, attacking as the drone is sliding down, before its hind paws can hit earth again.

The impact shakes the ground, metal screeching as black furred arms tear the drone’s jaw from its skull with barely any give, a fluid movement stabbing the jagged metal deep into its visor. Sparks fly from the downed Panther, unable to see but further assaulted by that shard pulled out and dug into its neck.

Your own Panther makes the choice between continuing to hold you down and dealing with the more obvious threat–suddenly you’re free. You twist in the soil against the awful pain in your chest, struggling to get up and finding the exposed back of the predator creeping towards your savior.

Without thinking you pounce, climbing on the back of that wretched thing.

You have to hold on for dear life as the drone drops and rolls you both, limbs and head rotating to try and dislodge you. You grasp the cannon-like protuberance from its back, claws digging into the exposed pneumatics at its base to disable its hindquarters before several hundred kilos of angry robot can buck you off.

“Why don’t you just self-destruct–” you hiss, tearing your hands raw hooking into the gaps of its plating for its more-fragile innards. A rotor dies, the cat stumbling as you feel the launcher under your chest whir into life.

[PleaaAAAse comp comp comp–]

The electronic voice jitters into intelligible speech as you rip another cable or hose–some snakelike thing spewing gas in your hand, the entire forest floor blinking red from the malfunctioning unit as the launcher fires.

You brace yourself against an explosion–realizing that the cannon lacks compression and ignition when there’s a pop and the grenade rolls to the ground, barely out of range. The sight of that palm-sized canister makes your entire body go cold, fear breaking your fight into flashes of horror.

Faded green writing on a metal can, leaves in a circle. Biotechnica.

“It’s a bomb, eomma?” you ask.

“Spring,” your mother corrects. “Bom, not bomb. But yes, a bomb.”

She pulls the seedling blooming from the torn canister, showing you the remaining markings in English.

“Nothing is burning. Where did everyone go?”

You’d looked around you at the new growth, strange for it being in the middle of what had once been a bustling refugee market. No people remain–wrecked stalls enveloped in fresh herbs and blooms out of season, bamboo and fruit trees bursting through the cracked pavement of the train station.

“A long time ago someone predicted the planet would go silent, if we kept destroying and polluting it.” Your mother says. “Men made this to try and stop it.”

You accidentally kick something at your feet–a dense twisting of vines and mushrooms that appears to be vaguely human-shaped, like someone curled onto their side. Spores rise up into the cold winter light, like specks of gold.

“When you see this, don’t touch it, don’t even move towards it, ____, just . . .”

“RUN!” you scream your order, looking up to see that dark-furred hybrid bash its opponent drone a final time into the shuddering, splintered remains of a tree trunk.

You can make it, you can get out of here, both of you–

Crunch.

The sound is more horrible than the pain with the adrenaline rushing through you, metal jaws closed on the back of your thigh gripping you in place and pulling you facedown into the dirt.

You fight against the stuttering hold, feeling cloth and muscle shred between twin fangs, crawling towards the protector who’d taken your instruction literally, but towards you, not away–kicking something just past your head–

The explosion compresses the air inward before blowing it out, the force of its blast throwing you free and against the nearest tree.

You know it’s not an incendiary grenade. There’s no red flash or the heat of fire–no sound except the ringing in your ears from the sonic boom.

Your vision streaks with green-yellow, a swirl of dust washing over you and that familiar smell . . . something like the rain after a drought. It's burning so deep with each lungful you can only cough as the scent fills your lungs and nostrils, trying to get it out.

Through misty eyes you see the thing beside you, booting back to life, cat-like jaw working beneath its blinded visual sensor. The battered Panther drone picks itself up from newly-formed moss and plant-life, red lights blinking on its chassis casting the newly grown meadow in shades of horror. You claw weakly at the grass, cringing away from the metal claws.

And then, a roar–

–not from the drone, but him.

He’s so real and loud it breaks past the damaged muffle of the explosion to resonate within you, that black belly and the ghost of its weight over you so familiar it hurts more than the oozing, aching awfulness in your leg or the internal damage from your pathetic fight.

You’re back in that abandoned building, terrified and dying as Taeil and Yuta try to keep you amongst the living, your unlikely savior a thing with no resemblance of the man buried within.

It’s not an easy fight for him, at least, not with the Panther drone recognizing the threat of 1500 PSI of bite force in the jaw closing around its armored neck. The cats rise in a two-legged, clawing grapple, the earth drumming beneath you with each stomp of claws beside your face, metal and organic, dirt and contagion blinding you as you shrink away.

Not a thing, no. Your mate.

“Youngho,” you whisper, realizing too late it's the wrong time–the jaguar pausing for a moment in its battle to twist around towards you, yowling when metal claws rake across his thick black hide.

“Left side,” you gasp. “Wires, left side.”

The jaguar hears you, at least in the backwards turn of those gold-dusted ears. He uses the unbalanced weight of the construct against it, climbing atop it the way you had, but much more elegantly, rolled with less visible damage.

Sparks fly as he tests each weakness with yellow-white teeth embedding in the metal and synth plating, ripping chunks free until the repeating electronic scream of that thing dies, the grenade launcher in its back unable to fire with the critical point of information cut clean.

It drops to the shifting ground, just so much scrap. Leaves twine around it, growing slowly at least, shoots erupting through a metal carcass.

The flesh-and-blood cat roars over its frame, triumphant, clawing and kicking roots over its destroyed corpse. He’s unaware of the danger, only visible to you as the self-destruct cycle begins, numbers streaking across the lit visor screen where its eyes should be.

“Run,” you say, having already given up, cheek pressed into the familiar scent of home.

Jaws close on your back, snagged in the fabric, picking you up as he drags you away like just another kill. You make it as far as the brush, leaves ripping at your face, before the world explodes again.

This time in fire.

Everything about this entire ceremony-turned-circus has been sucking him down into the last point of control but this is the final straw on the camel’s back. Mark is incensed, claws out without any conscious control to hide them.

He’s starting to understand what Johnny had said about it hurting every time, that after a while the pain of them piercing the skin barely registers. The constant burn in his ears and his spine is more worrisome.

“We need to speak to the Crown Prince,” he says, shoving Haechan back when he slithers up beside him. The younger Canid is on a warpath, having already chucked the last Kim attache’s tablet into his face so hard it knocked him unconscious.

“Against the rules.” The servant seems to be enjoying the experience of saying no to their ragtag Nyctos contingent–all four of them with Renjun limping beside him, supported by Taeil. Yangyang had already been transported to one of the medical centers, unable to be roused from the stun that had crashed his system while Yuta went to security to investigate the feeds.

The man’s eyes keep flicking up between a personal roster of wagers and the modified stage behind them with its ghostly phantoms of trees and lights in the 360 degree model of the next arena.

The fight should have already started a long time ago, but Key has stopped announcing anything besides advertisements, agitated murmurs in the crowd revealing that something is deeply wrong beyond the obvious absence.

This ends now, Mark thinks. If they want their bets and bloodsport it can wait.

“Tell him the Princess Consort has been kidnapped,” he finds himself saying, earning the immediate attention of the men–no, the buzzards–flocking around his cousin and pack leader. They look down on them from the vantage of their booth, Choi Siwon laughing.

“Impossible,” Elder Bang says, leaning over the edge as he pokes slowly at his agent. “This building is secure.”

“We were attacked by an unknown assailant, a solo,” Renjun reports, tail whipping behind him. “Check the security footage in the west side service corridors.”

“Did you see her taken?” That gray-haired old doctor makes his way down, AR glasses scrolling with information. Mark’s nose wrinkles at the lavender-like scent of the tobacco on him, something oily and metallic underneath.

“No,” Renjun says. “They knocked me out before I could go after her–”

“Contusions, skull fracture–” he assesses the fox, signaling to Duke Kim to call for additional medical support and security.

“We’ll send a team to the site and investigate,” he says to the Duke. “Quietly. We don’t want anyone panicking.”

“We can’t track her without an agent or a biochip,” Mark says. “We’ll need to check all exits–”

“First and foremost, keep quiet, we don’t need to raise an alarm,” Duke Kim says. “Is the Tenth Prince secure?”

Mark gestures towards the illuminated royal box, frustrated already with the lack of response. “Does it look like he’s missing?”

“Check yourself, Lee.” His uncle-by-law threatens, fixating on Renjun with a measured look of disgust. “You’ll watch your tongue or we'll let this fall on your heads.”

Mark immediately feels the surge of anger that’s been so quick to strike aflame these past few days–the recognition that another is attempting to dominate his Alpha.

“This is on your security, not mine,” he warns, eyes flashing up past the crowded entrance to the booth. “I will speak with our pack lead–”

“He’s occupied,” Elder Park joins them on the stairwell, looking entirely unsurprised by the news. “You’ll report to me.”

Mark takes one look at his smug, modded face and makes the decision to breach the fifteen-foot gap between the outer arena floor and the heavily-decorated exterior of the Syndicate booth, fuck formality.

He’s been itching to use his new claws–wishes he had a tail to make scaling the wall less awkward.

The Syndicate’s security response is immediate in the barrels of several guns aimed at him by the time he peers over the ledge, teeth gritted against the ache deep in his shoulder as his boots skid on carved wood.

“What in nine hells,” Taeyong stands along with a number of Syndicate guests, disrupting an entire table of drinks, credit chips scattering.

Mark is grateful when he reaches out to take his arm, sheathing the claws digging into Taeyong’s red military jacket as he pulls him over. “What are you doing?”

“____ is missing,” Mark hisses, heart pounding in his chest, turning between the multiple barrels pointed at them both, moving to guard his cousin despite knowing they’re treating him as the threat. “They almost killed Liu, too.”

“Stand down.” The Crown Prince is–mostly–himself, though he’s slurring heavily and reeking of liquor. He looks down at Duke Kim, brows lowered, until the elder gestures dismissively for security to lower their weapons.

“We’ve already deployed a team to search for her–”

“And I’ve got our NSMP representative on it. The whole building should be put on lockdown–” Mark begins.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Choi asks, moving to Taeyong’s side. “We don’t need Ten–the Imperial contingent finding out.”

“Relax,” Elder Bang adds. “That one is still safe in his box with his guards.”

“Right,” Park agrees. “She’s probably still in the building. Best to continue with the event and track her down before that freak can find out she’s given him the slip. We’d never hear the end of it.”

Duke Kim sidles over to their meeting, tablet in hand. “Entrance scans are negative. She’s still in the building. Reinholdt will find her.”

“See?” Taeyong pats Mark on the shoulder, handing him a drink that hasn’t been overturned. “Our Princess will be fine. We were just celebrating the good news, you should join us.”

There’s a familiar drumbeat on his shoulder as his cousin and pack leader embraces him one-armed, as the Syndicate heads and their entourage of cronies and Lottery escorts raise their glasses in a toast Mark refuses to participate in.

Mark doesn’t even realize he’s being signaled, distracted by the sheer number of recognizable enemies in this booth–-cold eyes fixated on him. Faces his mother had made him memorize, when they’d first been taken hostage.

“Such a smart boy,” she’d said, inspecting his homework, the artificial breeze of the Dome ruffling the pages in her manicured hands. “You still have so much trouble with your English spelling. Your father did, too.”

It had struck him that it was a lie, even then at twelve years old, with the books he’d grown up with in multiple languages in his father’s study–the ones his mother never seemed to want to read for herself or him besides Scripture. None of them, here, now in the Palace.

“You don’t have to learn any of that nonsense, precious child. Just learn the codes. Learn how to speak the language of the enemy,” she’d said.

O-K-A-S, is what Taeyong is saying in code. Okay, wait. Over and over again.

"Our clan finally has a 4th gen representative," Taeyong says aloud, proudly. "Reinholdt will do a determination of the hereditary profile once we've wrapped."

Mark pulls away from that repeated tap on his shoulder, letting his real anger out.

“Is that all you care about? Would it kill you to show some concern for her?”

He ignores the familiar bark of Haechan arguing with a guard below to maintain eye contact, watching Taeyong’s ruddy eyes blink at him, a lazy smile sliding across his mouth.

“C’mon Mark. Don’t be like that,” the Vulpine says, leaning in to whisper loudly in his ear. “Even if you didn't get a chance the kit's still your family–”

Mark grabs him by his jacket front, surprised by how easy it is to handle his cousin, realizing too late how drunk he is. Doyoung’s absence is worse than he’d ever imagined.

“She was raped,” he spits out.

Taeyong laughs in his face, quickly joined by the rest of the booth. Choi moves to intervene, waved off by the Crown Prince.

“That’s just omegas, right?” Taeyong drawls. “Always asking for it.”

More laughter. He knows his cousin isn’t like this–doesn’t believe any of the lies about his own designation–but it still makes him sick to acknowledge the words coming out of his mouth. For the first time in his entire life, the brother he’s chosen, the one he’d risked his life and limb for, is unrecognizably ugly.

“Did you take advantage of her, too?” Mark asks, tone deadly.

“She begged me for it.” Taeyong says with a shrug, earning more of a response from the corpos and their escorts. Mark lets him go, disgusted.

Taeyong turns to their audience, lifting his glass. “You’ll forgive my cousin, he’s never had the pleasure–”

“Fuck you,” Mark says, waiting only as long as it takes for Taeyong to turn back to wink at him before punching him across the jaw.

Fresh shoots spring from the ground, stringy tendrils catching at your skin and blossoming into flowers crushed under your weight as you’re dragged away.

Buried deep–a part of you kicks and screams and fights to return to it, to be enveloped within the decomposition of the environment and recreated as something new. Only your fox would remain, flesh melted down to the bones, the human side of you disappearing into the new forest.

But, no. You have to fight back. Those despicable bastards had brought the Wild to Neo Seoul.

Not just the aesthetic sensibility of it but the bioterrorist weapons used in the war, the bombs that melted human flesh into raw organic material, feeding new life. You’d been exposed before–thankfully never close enough to alter you fully.

It wouldn’t kill you–no, but contamination would pull you back to the animal you are. You might not be able to shift, not with your therapy, but you'd be in jimseung.

Even now your fox twists and lashes out with her claws, rending flesh, feeling it in your chest—your neck–as you’re dropped to the earth.

The rage makes you incandescent, fur rippling ruddy and black across your arms as you sneeze and paw at your face, half-expecting to find the fox’s snout where your nose remains as human as ever.

You’re far enough away from the strike zone, you hope. You might be able to fight the influence of the contaminant but an Alpha without anti-shift doesn’t stand a chance.

Indeed, Johnny has reverted past the point of communication, the jaguar’s movements purely animal. You try to drag yourself away as he circles you, chin pulled in with a display of dominance. His mouth is open wide, giant teeth exposed as he tastes your scent.

You bare your own canines and growl a warning. Back off.

The jaguar vocalizes in answer, a chuff almost like a laugh. Then he’s rolling you with his massive head and paws as he greets you with unadulterated excitement. When you mewl out in pain he freezes, tongue mid-swipe over your face, dropping down to sniff at your chest and the bloody wound on your thigh.

You yelp when he rips at the torn skirt with his teeth, having a moment of panic at the thought of him deciding you taste good enough to eat and pushing back on the cat’s heavy brow. His orange eyes flick up at you, gently cleaning away the drying blood and dirt as he blinks slowly at you.

At least he doesn’t seem to think you’re food. You’re being treated like a kit, pushed down by a paw when you try to get back up, all so he can continue grooming you. You roll on your back in submission, breath sucking in at the pain in your chest.

“You still in there?” you ask, weakly.

If the Syndicate is watching it would be dangerous to order him again but you know if you don’t he’s going to lick the top layers of your dermis off trying to treat the bone-deep wound.

He rumbles like an engine in answer.

“Come out,” you whisper your order.

You feel him change back, heat and moisture roiling over you from the release of mass and energy. He lifts up from your legs in a daze, eyes still bright with his cat.

“You’re safe,” he says, lisping a bit with the lingering changes to his teeth.

“Neither of us are safe here, you fool,” you scold him, coughing at the dryness in your throat. “You most of all. You were supposed to run away, not into it.”

You roll to your side to spit out pollen-yellow saliva, trying to ignore the bloom of fungal spores and ground cover from the thick wad.

“Don’t even get a ‘thanks’,” Johnny retches a little, coughing up his own lungful of goo. “What in the hell is this stuff–?”

“Spring gas. Jimseung poison,” you say. Of course he’d never encountered these bombs, as far as you knew he’d never made it that far North. “They must have wanted you to fight feral.”

“How are we–”

“We were lucky,” you say, tiredly, testing your leg and crumpling back to the ground. Somehow he’s managed to catch you by the ankle, the both of you wheezing as you succumb to the effects, unable to fight against him as he pulls himself over you.

“It’s old ammo–probably degraded,” you explain to distract yourself from the press of his body. “High enough heat can burn it off–”

“You’re here.” The way he whispers the words tugs on your heart, all dreamy and wistful.

You don’t acknowledge it. “Yes, I’m here. I can keep you out of jimseung, I think. We’d have to stay together–”

“You’re here,” he repeats, forehead pressing yours as he rubs his nose against yours. “My precious little kit.”

You push on his shoulder where the echo of his rosettes are burnt black into his golden skin, muddying his re-emerging tattoos.

“Don’t you get it, you idiot? You’re in danger, they want to kill you–”

“So I should be thanking you,” he says, drowsily, looking down at you with unfiltered affection. “For saving me.”

Johnny is mostly human–eyes dilated so wide only a thin ring of honey-colored iris remains. His ears and hands have remained changed, tail swatting at the air beyond the clean lines of his naked body, fur still visible where his hair grows naturally.

You know he’s struggling against his cat, a feeling like fire racing over his skin as he finds the only therapy available. You’re lifted up bodily with a cry, going limp as his face buries in your neck and rapid breaths douse your shoulder. Claws prick and unprick through your clothing where he’s wrapped completely around you, nuzzling against your racing pulse.

“God, I missed you,” he says. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

He folds down with you still at his mercy, heartbeat slowing marginally as your pheromones bring him to a calmer state.

“Stop making that godawful noise,” you protest, wriggling in his grasp.

“You don’t like it?” That only spurs him on more, licking at your neck as you cry out, fists uselessly pressed to his bare chest. Johnny rumbles in contentment as he rubs his cheek over and over again against you protectively. As much as you try to wrest free he holds on to you tighter, unable to get enough. He's warm and tender–all things unwelcome in this place.

“Get off of me, you pig!” you bark. You can’t order him here, can’t reveal anything that might compromise you both, but you can still try to extricate yourself from what feels like a more dangerous situation than the one you’ve just fled. This isn’t the time or place for an intimate moment.

Johnny lets you go. You only make it a few inches, pushed down face-first into the soft leaf litter and further assailed by searching hands over your leg. His touch sparks a new flame through the ache, your fox desperate for him to continue comforting you physically.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“Feel like I was hit by a truck,” you groan, inhaling sharp when his tongue traces your oozing wounds again. “Stop, please.”

“You do taste different,” he murmurs, idiot’s grin in his voice. “Sweeter, like candy.”

“If you don’t stop this nonsense I’ll make it so you can’t speak, again,” you say over your shoulder. You can’t let this continue, not with your body’s reaction to this much-longed-for care.

The unspoken threat carries through–he eases off of you, still straddling you. He leans down to nudge the side of your face with his nose. The intimacy has you more dizzy than the contamination, body surging up unwillingly as your tail swats between you.

“Even with everything I’m so glad you’re here,” he says, lips trailing over the side of your face. Your heart is racing, the world blurring beyond as you avoid kissing him back, eyes clenched shut against his attention.

“My beautiful little kit,” he murmurs. “When we get out of here I'll take care of you so good. Make you a nest just right for you to–”

“How much blood did you lose?” you ask, too aware of the hot drip of it from his side.

“‘M fine,” he says, licking at your ear. “Felt like dying not knowing you were alright.”

You are most certainly not alright. You struggle to turn over beneath him, meeting him with your mouth against his jawline.

“Johnny,” you say. “We’re being watched.”

“They know who you belong to.” He’s high as a kite, you realize–probably more on pheromones than the gas. It’s so incredibly stupid considering the circumstances but then so is everything about this trial. He seems to realize it as well as something passes over him, a moment of consciousness.

“Was this part of your plan?”

“No! What plan?!” you put a hand to his mouth as he smirks down at you.

“Someone dumped me here to complicate this knowing you'd be dosed,” you whisper as quietly as you can, shoving at the blanket of his wide shoulders. “But it's good. If I wasn’t . . .”

You both know he wouldn’t be here at all–just the jaguar. You think the smallest push would send him reeling back into his true form, without even a sliver of the humanity he’d spent years learning how to keep surfaced while in full shift.

“That doesn’t matter,” he says, shaking his head. “We'll get you to safety, we can’t risk any harm to–”

“We can’t risk them seeing you feral, or fully shifted,” you deflect. “We just need to find Jae–”

Johnny hisses, not as comical as it should be with the rage you can see twisting his expression. You instinctively snarl back, scratching at his shoulder. It snaps him out of it, retreating in an instant, looking as hurt as if you’d yanked his tail.

“Control yourself,” you say, scuttling back, testing your injured leg. “He’s not your enemy. Who knows how many more of those things are out there. We need to work together.”

“He’s not taking you. Over my dead body,” Johnny says. It’s really a wasted effort to try to speak to him with the Alpha in charge, his body movements whiplike as he listens for a threat, nose twitching against the thick smoke from the embers of the explosion drifting in your direction.

“You’re mine, I told him you were mine–”

You try a different tactic, placing your palm in his wild hair to calm him. It works like a charm, his shoulders rounding as he leans into the touch and butts his head against your chest.

“Of course I’m yours,” you soothe.

He looks up at you warily, tail stilling. At least he’s smart enough to know your words don't match your intent.

You push your luck a little more, bringing his head against your breast and massaging his scalp behind his velvety ears. The Alpha quivers with excitement, making a sound deep in his chest as he rubs his human face into your belly instead.

Though you cringe at the gesture there’s a trace inside of pure peace, especially when he reaches around you to hold you again like his life depends on it. That motor-like attempt at purr is back, loud and vibrating you in a way that makes your resolve melt.

Whatever compulsion he’s feeling, the only thing motivating him is ensuring his mate is safe. It makes him brainless but it’s also endearing–and your fox is no wiser. She’s never been more satisfied with herself–you’d be rolling in the dirt in pleasure if you weren’t fighting to stay alert.

“If you want to protect us you’ll do what I say, won’t you, Youngho?” you ask, feeling him nod as a whine-like noise comes out instead of words.

“I can only trust you if you stay in control. You need to stay in control.”

Only enough to be believable, you think. You can’t forget your audience, after all, as sweet as this might appear to an outside observer, his tendency to submit to you can only be considered a weakness. No, there has to be a limit.

“We’re going to find Yuno,” you begin, carefully enunciating the other’s birth name while pulling away. “He can help us get out of here–”

He manages at least two seconds before he stiffens and breaks, rising up over you. Your fox is submitting immediately, unabashedly aroused by this display of dominance.

“Not. Him.” he says between clenched teeth, fangs pushing into his swollen lips. “You can't trust him in jimseung. He doesn’t care about you the same way I–”

“Snap out of it,” you say, struggling away from him. “None of us are making it out of here if we don't work together.”

“You want him more than me?” He looks just as baleful as before, panting. “You want to make me kill him?”

“I want you to protect us,” you yell. “He’s your pack–”

“No one can take you,” he repeats, nostrils flaring as he crouches over you. “You’re mine.”

You can hear something stalking towards you from the darkness–unnoticed by Johnny in his cresting anger.

“Fine. Prove yourself and kill those things. Kill all of them,” you order, reaching mentally inward and snapping the thin thread of control you can feel keeping you from becoming your animal. His eyes blaze yellow, startled as the change begins.

It's just in time for the Panther drone to attack.

Johnny whips around, instantly more beast than himself, claws raking metal as the scent of fresh blood overtakes the perfumed air. You take the chance to run, hunted down by another of the drones bursting from the brush.

Climb, you think, stumbling towards the nearest tree. It’s only pure instinct and adrenaline that gets you up the first branch, hearing the snap of a metal jaw inches from your ankle. You cling to the limb above you with all your hybrid’s strength, unable to pull yourself higher–

Your perch dips down. For a moment you’re afraid that you’re being pulled by the awful thing snapping at your heels before you recognize the tension is in your clothing, snatched up by the back of your underdress.

It’s just in time as something explodes beneath you, heat searing your skin and nearly shaking you both out of the tree you’re being bodily swung up into.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire, you lament–seized around the middle and dragged upward by clawed hands.

This time, at least, the Alpha who has captured you is still human.

Boom.

The projection in the middle of the arena is scattershot with fireworks, sparks flying and shrieking beneath the opaque grid as the returning audience rushes in to see what’s going on. Mark’s blood goes cold seeing the shadows of trees lit bright by another grenade burst, some deep fear response unlocked by the sound of bombs.

Across the box, Taeyong ducks instinctively, ears pulled back as he fights out of the circle of the other Alphas keeping him separated, his drawn face scanning the room for threats.

“They haven’t announced the match start yet, I haven’t finished my calls–” Bang stands up, only one of many whose attention is turned to the screens above the open interior of the stadium as they flash to black from displaying the usual wash of corporate advertisements.

A series of bright green digits and flashes preface the hacked signal, cohesing into one principal symbol: a circle with an unbroken horizontal line beneath it.

He knows it well–too well. The unbroken omega.

[Respected members of the Syndicate,] a modulated voice invades the speakers, stilling the room. [Your attempts to set the terms of this tribunal have revealed your greed, stupidity, and most of all–your hand.]

Footage plays of a fight he never expected to see. You and what looks to be Johnny struggling against a pair of Savannah Panthers, no weapons or resources except your claws and teeth. He’s most surprised by the sight of you rushing head-first into the fray, as if you could do anything against those nightmare creations.

Somehow, you both gain the upper hand–at least until the grenades are fired. The fight ends with a flash of green, dead and broken Zhirafa drones swallowed up by a nightmare explosion of plant-life bursting forth from the radius of the strike point.

“What the fuck is that?” Choi barks. “We didn’t clear using–”

“Kill the feed,” Duke Kim hisses, order ignored as the attache beside him struggles with his agent.

“We don’t have a way–production says they lost communication with the control crew entirely–”

[Let’s make a wager without the house having advantage. Your greatest prize is contained within the field before you, trapped with your entire illegal stockpile of biological weaponry and the Alphas you’ve consigned to die by it.]

Bang’s tablet slips from his fingers, clattering against bottles of imported liquor. Shrieks and shouts follow, as those witnessing the show realize this isn’t just entertainment.

[You have one, simple step to fulfill, to regain your investment. Proceed with the trials and execution of the son and heir of Lee Taeri, one Lee Taeyong, for his father's crimes against our kind and for the millions of innocent souls whose blood stains your Council's hands.]

[Then, and only then, will we release your so-called prize.]

Mark looks up at Taeyong, seeing genuine shock on his elder’s bruised face. The Vulpine turns to him, instinctively, shaking his head with his lips parted.

He didn’t know. It makes Mark even more angry at being left in the dark on whatever Taeyong had planned, all of it blown open with their blindness to this unanticipated weak point.

[Open the field and die with them. Alter the rules of the game and you will be subjected to the same carnage inflicted upon you as handed down in your judgment. May your punishment match the crime.]

The feed goes dark, projection still flashing with burning trees and the reports of gunfire before the hologram disappears. The arena floor is blank but for a simple reminder of the message: a taegeuk rotating on the field, under the watchful eyes of that monstrous xiezhi statue over the royal box.

A royal box, he sees, is now completely vacated.

In the strangled silence that follows the end of the message, chaos erupts. Half of the audience is fleeing, turned back at the door by security guards waiting for an order. Mark forgets himself to move towards his cousin, crowded back by the hulking guards that had been assigned to keep him seated as the clan Elders dealt with the ongoing crisis.

“The entire control suite is offline,” Kim stutters. “No in or out, we’re working on retaking the signal but–”

“Sokolov wants the demonstration canceled or they pull sponsorship,” Park says. “We need to make sure nothing happens to the . . .”

He drifts off as he realizes what’s happening beside him, Taeyong moving across the crowded space to close on Mark with the same aggression they’d been separated from earlier.

“Did you know they’d take her?” he accuses, tail bristling behind him.

“What, no?!” Mark yells.

“It was your recruits who last had her. And this–”

One small gesture at the screen burnt with a symbol of a movement his father hadn’t started but had been responsible for in the end–the very same reason Fourth Prince had faced execution when the Exodus forces were brought to heel.

North and south, all over again, he realizes, far too late. This time he’s tight in the clutches of the enemy, no ally in sight with Haechan and Taeil taking care of the wounded and Yuta investigating the crime.

“This is a set-up,” he argues. “We have to find them first, make sure they can get out without being kill–”

“We finish this,” Taeyong says, rounding on the other members of the Syndicate Council. “Tell Key we can expedite the final match.”

He doesn’t understand this game Taeyong is playing, and doesn't even think he’s in control of it with how shaken the Vulpine looks before he turns his back on him.

“Where did you take our enforcers?” Mark’s words are for Duke Kim, who’s leaving the box as if he doesn’t want to see the outcome, scurrying away from his responsibilities as always. “We need to get down there before they try to get out–”

“No. You come with us,” Choi says, raising a flashy chrome pistol at Mark’s face. Park and the others don’t move to stop him, Taeyong regarding him over his shoulder with a dismissive look.

“We proceed with the trials, cousin,” Taeyong says, expression grim, and resigned. “We’ll let the heavens decide which of us deserves to walk out of here alive.”

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