Two Worlds | JIKOOK ✅

19.

"Dal said he was getting his backpack when I saw him
just now."

"Is he leaving early today?"

"Yeah, Trenton is coming to
pick him up and show him
some bug nest he found or something on the way."

Better him than me.

"They do have that whole
science thing in common."

I emptied the hot water and
filled dalsu's thermos and then did the same for Jungkook as
my son came bouncing into
the kitchen.

"Is he here yet? It's going to
be amazing."

I had to believe him on that
one, I wasn't a huge fan of
bugs on a good day.

"Super amazing, I am sure."

"Here is your lunch."

I put the thermos into the
family-size cooler because
that was how much he was eating lately, along with the
rest of the things I packed.

"Now let's wait on the porch
for Trenton."

We didn't have to wait long before the two of them
skipped off like they were
about to find treasure.

Bugs were not treasure.

It saddened me that I had to wait on the porch with him
and that adults needed to
escort him everywhere.

He was at the age where a
little bit of freedom was
good—needed even.

And yet, thanks to his
birthright, I couldn't risk it.

"What happened?"

Jungkook set down his coffee mug and rushed to my
side as I hobbled in.

"Nothing."

"He just went with Trenton
to see some kind of nasty
flying thing that can bite."

"Happier than most kids at Christmas from the size of
his smile."

"Then why are you so...is
it sad?"

I walked around Jungkook
to find a seat.

My foot wasn't aching yet
but I did have work this afternoon and I wanted to
save it for that.

"I'm not sad."

"I was just thinking about
how cautious I need to be
with Dalsu."

"He can't even walk a few
houses down without me,
thanks to his grandparents."

"Oh." Was all he said as he poured a cup of coffee, fixed it the way I liked and carried it over to me.

"For you."

"Thanks."

We sat there together, drinking slow sips of coffee and not speaking until my mug was almost halfway depleted.

"I talked to Joon about that yesterday." He broke the
silence with a bang.

Any thought that I was just
being paranoid flew away like those creepy things Dalsu
was off to investigate.

If Jungkook and his alpha were talking about it, the issue was just as bad as I had feared.

"He thinks that since Ari has been gone a long time, they would have made their move already."

"They had to know he was a wolf."

"How's that?"

"Wasn't it like a fifty-fifty
shot?"

I didn't have any real
knowledge of wolf genetics
but one human and one
wolf had to be fifty-fifty I
would think.

"I don't know about that but
wolf labors have certain indicators."

He sucked in his bottom lip
and gnawed on it briefly.

"But if that was the case, why didn't they grab him then and raise him up as a wolf so he could take his rightful place."

"It doesn't make sense."

"You think they were still watching her?" I tried to think back and see if she'd done anything that stood out in this light and was coming up blank.

"There was no way they
weren't." He downed the rest
of his coffee.

"If they let her leave the pack like that, it was out of her family's weakness."

"How so?"

Maybe they had a class on pack history or rules or something.

Because the more I learned,
the more I saw how very
little I knew.

And like it or not, I was living with a pack, one of only two humans and Grams just got
back from her cruise so I'd
spent a grand total of five minutes with her so far.

She seemed nice though.

A bit eccentric but nice.

The woman gave us a welcome card that had been sent to her with our name written above
her scribbled-out name
and it had a dollar bill in it.

Weird.

But sweet, for the thought.

"Her crime should've been punishable by death."

My breath caught.

"If they let her go, they
hoped she would return. "

"Death?"

"Yes, death."

"It is the old way."

And far away from the they should've murdered my wife
for loving me.

"She never went into labor."

"Dal was a planned C-section."

"One of the tests had him..."

It hurt to even think about
that time.

"Let's just say they thought
he needed immediate surgery and a C-section was deemed safest."

His body stiffened. "Did he?"

"No, it ended up being a
clerical error or a misread of
a scan or something and he
was perfectly fine."

"Do you think maybe it wasn't
an error?" Jungkook asked so softly, as if doing so would
make the implication less horrifying to me.

How much of my life with
Ari had been a lie?