Accepted | Jikook

24

"Now that we have Lukas in custody, we can get the full story later," he murmured to Taehyung. He deeply breathed in the beta's scent, forcing himself to pull away and manage his responsibilities. "Right now, we need to look after Jimin. Something happened to Jungkook on the way here, and after seeing Jimin's wound, I'm sure he's experiencing the same pain, if not worse. They need us."

Taehyung wiped his eyes with a resounding nod, grasping Namjoon's hand and practically dragging him out the door in his sprint. Outside, he found Jungkook and Jimin sprawled next to each other. All of the alphas on forest patrol had shifted to their wolf forms, three of them carrying Lukas, Jin, and Hoseok while the others trailed behind and began to walk in the direction of the village.

Not wanting to separate Jungkook and Jimin, Namjoon offered to carry them both if Taehyung helped get them on his back. While the Alpha shifted once more, Taehyung ripped a piece of cloth from his mate's forgotten trousers and placed it against his brother's neck, instructing Jungkook to keep it there. He frowned when all he got was a weak nod, although the young alpha did manage to follow his order.

Once the couple were safely situated on Namjoon's back, Jungkook still squeezing Jimin within an inch of his life, Taehyung allowed himself to shift and walked beside the Alpha on the way home.

-==-

On a normal day, the pack house would be full of men, women, and children from all ranks seeking comfort, warmth, food, or plain conversation. It was a safe haven, a place where everyone was welcome and could relax without fear of hate or discrimination, whether someone needed a break from home or were residing in one of the house's many rooms until they could get back on their feet.

Today, the pack house was silent.

Beneath the common room in the basement that had been untouched for years, Kim Namjoon stood before the alpha whom he had once trusted as the pack's secondary doctor. But now, he was seeing Lukas Flint as a murderer, a kidnapper, and an abuser.

In a second basement room, Kim Seokjin was awaiting his own questioning and allowing himself to rest while he could. The omega, after what felt like hours upon hours of endless pain, was finally feeling well enough to get up and move although his neck was continuing to throb. When he sat up from the makeshift cot in the windowless basement room of the house, the first thing his eyes fell upon was a small mirror on the wall opposite the bed.

Shifting slightly to meet his reflection in the glass, he froze when he caught sight of his neck. The self-induced scars were still there, the claw marks from when he had tried to scratch away Lukas's bite. But that wasn't what forced his breath out of his lungs.

The bite itself was gone.

And when Jin, for the first time since being mated against his will, opened himself to the emotional bond he should have had with Lukas, he felt nothing.

Immediately the omega was out of bed, the fatigue in his bones being promptly ignored as he raced to the door of the barren room, only to find it locked. He had seen firsthand what happened to people when they were marked by someone besides their destined mate, but he had never encountered a situation where a bond was... broken like this.

A lack of a mark, a lack of a bond between him and Lukas... there couldn't be any other explanation.

Jin wanted to scream in pure unadulterated joy, but with the knowledge that he wasn't bonded to Lukas came an incredible amount of dread. Because he had watched as Lukas bit into the brunet omega's neck, and if his theory was correct, then this situation was even worse than it had been before.

Jin wasn't Lukas's mate. But now an innocent, already mated man, had been forced to take his place.

-==-