Leopolitan [Jung Jaehyun NCT, 18+, Bodyguard AU, Hybrid AU]

gratifying

Hi everyone! First I'd like to thank everyone who's been reading, voting and commenting on this book, it really cheers me up and these days a lot of you have been voting and it feels so good to come and see all the notifications hehe it makes me feel like this book is worth it.
Upto now as a Jaehyun fic there hasn't been much focus on his character or background so I'll be giving a bit of a backstory, and also one for Y/N to explain a few previous chapters. I hope you guys enjoy reading it!! Thanks so much and I love all of you!

Jaehyun followed you into the quaint house, ducking slightly at the door. The house had a soft cottage feel, as you switched on the lights. It felt homey, even though he'd never called such a place home. "You can use the shower downstairs. I'll use the one upstairs."

Jaehyun nodded as you took the small staircase up, still observing the house. Why would you suddenly come here? What had Lucas said? Or had he said anything at all? He pinched the bridge of his nose. He hadn't done so much thinking in a while.

Jaehyun had been living on the edge as far as he could remember. Living each day as itself, no promise of a tomorrow. When he was five, the government banned all hybrids. Back then, he wasn't at a house, with an owner. Not him, the rare snow leopard cub. It was called the Unique Hybrid Emporium. Before the law had passed, they'd experimented on hybrids, trying to make fancy varieties, keeping them captive to sell their "offspring" to wealthy folk that wanted strange pets.

He'd never seen his parents after they were separated from him, on his very first birthday. All he'd seen were other hybrid cubs, all being bottle fed, sleeping in the same hall, arguing, crying, waiting, for something, someone to come take them away.

The day they'd passed the law, the government required all hybrids to be handed over to the authorities. Profit making companies had to pay a tax. Whoever owned the Unique Hybrid Emporium abandoned the project, packed the money and left overnight. The security guard only knew one thing. If the hybrids were left here, the government would find them, and then it wasn't a secret what happened to them. So he opened all the cages and left.

The older cubs led the younger ones away, Jaehyun didn't even know that day, as he was leaving, that he was leaving them behind, those parents whose faces he could not remember. Most of the adult hybrids in the establishment had been so used and exhausted that they'd barely had the energy to leave.

Jaehyun would sometimes look up to the sky and apologize. But he couldn't even remember who they were, them that he was apologising to, what they had meant to him.

He'd barely survived for quite a while after that, sharing restaurant leftovers, doing spare odd jobs, running away from officers. He'd grown up in this city, sleeping in abandoned warehouses or under the smoky, open sky. His elders had taught him to steal, to evade, to live a life of survival.

And he would have continued to do that if he hadn't met his lucky stars. He'd been so ready to slip off the high-end brand watch from the hand of this important, rich gentlemen, when he'd realized a scent. How was a hybrid living a life like this? A life of tailored suits and expensive wristwatches?

So instead of stealing from the man, he had approached him. Jaehyun still didn't know where that bravery had come from. But that's how he'd met Kun. How he discovered there was another life for hybrids. It was still, in a way, a life of dishonesty. And of course, if secrets were revealed it would mean a life of even more horrible crimes. But with a real job, a real bed and a pillow, Jaehyun had finally realized that life had an essence.

They say old habits die hard. It was like his veins, his bones, missed the life on edge. More time to himself, more nights with a full stomach, meant his head would plague him with regrets, memories, ancient trauma. Images of how his parents must have starved to death, of his "brothers" he'd abandoned to join this life, of the many hybrids that didn't make the journey through life as far as he did.