To the Moon and Back (Marked Sequel)

Chapter Nine: Awake

Her spine hurt. She didn't know why, but her spine hurt, and she needed to stretch. Her arms extended one flattening against a pane of glass, the other bumping into the face of a very warm, very alive, very male body.

Oh god, she thought, turning to stare at the man currently sleeping in the driver's seat of her car. This is not good, definitely the opposite of good.

The city around them was awake already, people milling about, ignoring the car and the two inside it.

She poked him, then poked him again. He was snoring slightly now, and didn't seem to be waking up.

"Rap Monster. Rap Monster, please wake up. You need to get out of my car. I need to get home; my parents are probably worried sick."

He mumbled something unintelligible, and turned his head toward the window, directly into a beam of sunlight that was snaking its way through gaps in the buildings around them.

"Shit!" he cursed, long legs jumping up to hit the steering wheel. "What- where?" He seemed more flustered than her, which was quite a bit, considering she had woken up to find the leader of BTS sleeping in her car.

"Hi," she peeped, and waved, then internally cursed herself for doing something as juvenile as waving at a man sitting not even four feet away from her.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Jade. Jade Prince. High school senior. And you're Rap Monster of BTS. You're also in my car, the events leading up to this development are a bit hazy, meaning I don't remember anything."

He rubbed at his eyes, then at the back of his neck sheepishly.

"I think I know what's going on, but it's going to sound crazy, so I need you to trust me, okay?"

"As long as you can promise that you didn't drug me, I think I can manage to listen."

"I did not drug you. I'm a werewolf."

She pinched herself for a moment; maybe she was still dreaming, and she'd wake up and chalk this all up to too much fanfiction and excitement for Pledis's new group's debut. She winced.

"Okay. Not a dream. Continue."

"I'm a werewolf, and hypothetically we do this thing called bonding? Something about our biology causes us to have a variety of symptoms when we meet the person we're meant to be with. It's a lot of theory, and there's not really a way to test which of the legends are true, but from what I can tell, that's the most logical explanation for what happened to us."

"Cool. So, I'm just gonna go," she opened her door and scrambled out of the seat, walking purposefully away from her car.

She blended into the New York sidewalk traffic perfectly, weaving in and out of business men and women. It was almost impressive when Rap Monster caught up with her, grabbing her wrist and pulling her to the side of a building, away from the main flow of people walking.

"Jade," he said, out of breath, and she was proud that she had managed to move that quickly. "This isn't going to work if you run away from me."

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"Welcome back," Yoongi muttered tiredly from the couch when Namjoon walked in.

"How were things?"

"Oh, the usual. Jane figured some stuff out, Tae went into heat, Tae broke out of the dorm. Nothing major."

Namjoon sighed and shut his eyes tightly before responding. "You should have called."

"You were busy getting on the future in-laws' good side. How did that go?"

"I think it's safe to say that they will not be thrilled about coming to the wedding," he chuckled. "Her mom definitely hates me. Her dad didn't say much the entire time we were there."

Yoongi shut his eyes again in a semblance of sleep, "Well, you're a pretty easy guy to hate. I'm not surprised the mother of the girl you got knocked up doesn't like you."

Namjoon sighed again,and crossed his arms. "Yoongi, what's really going on?"

"Dinah and I are a disaster zone, if that's what you wanted to hear."

"Not what I wanted to hear, but what you needed to say. What happened?"

"She hasn't been the same since we had Min-Jae. She's out all the time, and I'm always watching our son. I've brought him to the studio four times in the last week because it's been "my turn" to watch him."

________________________________________________________________________________

"You guys didn't have to come over," Jade said as Taehyung and Jungkook carried some of her bags up to her apartment.

"Yes we did," Jungkook murmured, "you couldn't carry all of these bags up by yourself."

"Don't you start with that, too. I only need one concerned baby daddy. If anyone else treats me like I'm breakable, I might just start screaming until this little guy comes out."

"So, you think it's a boy?"

"I think it's a little too active for my comfort. But I suppose that active is better than still."

Taehyung was uncharacteristically quiet, and Jade and Jungkook didn't notice until he finished peppering her with questions and realized that Taehyung was, indeed, there.

Some of Jade's mother tendencies must have been pushing their way through the barrier of her amnesia, because, in an instant, she was sitting him down and asking him what was wrong.

"I attacked her. I promised myself that I wouldn't one of those mates. That I wouldn't lose my head, even when I was in heat, but I did anyway. I hurt her, and now I can't talk to her."

"What exactly happened?"

"They were keeping me in the dorm, and I broke out, and I went after her, and if Hobi hadn't been there, I could have-" he cut off with a sob, burying his face in his hands and crying, and bless Jade's heart; she was in over her head, but she sat there, and she listened, and she tried her damned hardest to remember for him. She tried to remember so hard that she almost passed out, but her concern was about him, not about how dizzy or lightheaded she felt.

In that instant, she realized that she needed to remember, for Tae's sake, for Namjoon's sake, for the sake of her unborn child who deserved to have two competent, rational parents, not one who was, in effect, seventeen years old. They deserved better.

She deserved better.