The Love After | A JJK Werewolf AU

01: The Love Taken Away

"___, I merely had to tilt my head to see a man's boxers hiding underneath your bed," he corrects, prompting you to turn towards that direction. "But yeah, well, I can smell him, too," Taehyung continues, sniffing the air. "He doesn't smell that nice."

"He smells like sex, Tae," Mi-Rae, also a werewolf, sniffs out your room. "You act like you don't know what that smells like," she smirks, flustering her boyfriend.

"Yeah, but he smells like the city, is what I mean," he explains. "How can you manage that, ___?"

"Well, I can't smell him the way you two can, obviously," you groan, scooping the undergarment with a plastic bag then tying it. "That jerk really thinks he could leave this shit here and come back for another round."

"Well, will he? Will you let him?" Jimin asks.

"No, he was alright. The guy the other night was better," you shrug.

"There was another one?!" Taehyung shrieks, as you all head out and you throw the boxer-filled plastic bag in the garbage bin outside your building.

"You don't have to act appalled," you roll your eyes. "Plus, what's wrong with it? It's literally like my bachelorette party or something. I'm enjoying my possible last few days of freedom because who knows what's gonna happen when I get home? I might not have this kind of fun ever again."

You all enter the car and the three already know where this conversation is going, but they let you continue anyway. Aside from knowing that there's nothing they can do to change how you feel about the Ceremony, which is the only reason you take the 6-hour trip back home once every year, they also can't blame you for it.

"I'm not appalled. I just..." he trails, getting a look from Mi-Rae saying not to push it. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you."

You brush him off, saying he doesn't need to apologize. You get where he's coming from, though. As a werewolf who never spent more than a few hours outside of the town where his wolf pack and your human clan reside, and as one who found his mate before they even knew they were mates, Taehyung has a different approach to things.

The four of you grew up together. Jimin is your only same-age cousin, who'd gone to your town's community school with Taehyung where your mother still teaches. Mi-Rae's family came from a pack that dispersed and they were welcomed to your town and into Taehyung's pack 12 years ago. She was your neighbor, and you were a quartet of 13-year olds then who enjoyed running about in your large garden and occasionally venturing out to the nearby town to watch movies and play arcades.

Taehyung and Mi-Rae grew close, the latter's playfulness a perfect match to the former's innate curiosity and innocence. It wasn't a surprise when 2 years ago, they were matched during the Ceremony of Fates, an annual gathering of the town composed of your clan and the wolf pack where Amma, your great leader and Interpreter of the Moon, announces those who are fated as mates.

Your two friends hadn't known love and intimacy outside of the other, hence Taehyung's reaction to you having sex with the men you meet, surprisingly, at the library where you work at. Your friends had known this for a while, something you brought yourself to do after a year of living in the city - it was your way of coping, you'd said, and well, loneliness and heartbreak could do that.

It was never serious, though. You never kissed them either. They were a warm body, a means to sate your needs. But deep down, you knew they were more of a distraction, or maybe, a reminder that you were still capable of feeling anything other than anger.

Perhaps it's the idea that you'd been doing it days before the Ceremony that Taehyung is uncomfortable with. You'd been attending since you were 18, as all werewolves and humans in your town are asked to, since it's the age where both creatures are said to have reached the level of physical maturity for the act that mating would require, although you've never heard of anyone being announced as fated to a mate at that age.