PROLOGUE

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Old Hong of 'Ann-chi' tribe was telling heroic stories of ancient kings and kingdoms. He was sitting on a big stone slab under a douglas tree. Around him four little pups and a young man in his early twenties were listening to his words with unblinking serious eyes, understanding little of what he was saying.

It was afternoon. The weather was nice, calm in this sparse area. Sunshine was playing hide and seek throughout the day from the tree branches, but not so far on the crook of the mountain dusk had already appeared and that was visible from the rugged slab they were sitting on.

The dense forest consisted of pion pine, juniper, douglas, fur, yellow pine and many other wild fruits and flower plants. Around ninety years ago the late tribe leader cut all the big trees around one hundred acre rough land and founded their small village. Now more than three hundred werewolves lived peacefully there. Their main source of income was selling fruits, animal skins and timber logs in the town market under this mountain.

Old Hong was more than sixty years old, one of the few alphas of this tribe. His eyesight was poor, half deaf and lame in one leg---fighting with another alpha wolf cost that. But his voice was sharp, and he knew many stories of kings, queens and fairies, so he was pretty popular among their people, mostly among the pups. He was telling a story of an ancient king Ru-byun and his meeting with princess Sora. The young audience didn't know if that king actually existed, but as it was just past lunchtime and they were well feeded by their mother, they felt too lazy to play other active games.

The oldest among the audience is the main character of this story. He was quite tall, muscular and fair unlike other people in this tribal village. His head was round, face smaller with angular features, sharp eyes were sharper than his chiseled jaws, a small scar on his left cheek completed his fighter look. But his uneven curvy lips and a mole under his lower lip toned down his sharp features into a soft tender boyish type of look.

"Jungkook, what are you doing here?" A known hoarse voice called him from behind. He turned his whole body and found his mother leaning his body weight on a thin bamboo stick she was holding. Her hair was rough, grey, untidy; her face morose, displeased. She coughed, cleared her throat and spoke with difficulty, "I asked you to hunt deer and rabbit hours ago. But you're here sitting idly with kids. Why didn't you go?"

He showed her a big smile, two front teeth came out on display, making his face cute bunnylike. "Mother, I did what you've told me. I already gave them to our tribe's halmeoni [grandmother] for dinner."

"But that doesn't mean you can spend your time just sitting like this, doing nothing." His mother roughly coughed and immediately covered her mouth with an unclean handkerchief she was holding in her other hand. She paused for a moment and yelled, "I told you to run around the mountain and do other exercises. Why don't you listen to me boy? This kind of slothful life is not for you."

The young man lowered his head. "Sorry mother. I'm going right now." He gave one short glance to their tribe's grandfather Hong, who stopped telling stories seeing that beta woman's angry face, "Hong, can you please tell me the story again after I come back? I want to know what happened when the king proposed to the princess."

Old Hong smiled sadly at Jungkook, nodded and continued the story as the younger audience started nagging.

Jungkook bowed before his mother and started moving quickly towards the darker dense forest. First it was just a warm up, his knees moved up and down. Then he started running through the woods.

Though he was in the mountain forest, his mind flew to the Goryeo dynasty, where King Ruban met princess Sora. His body may be stiff but his heart was soft like the fresh flesh of a coconut. His mother always scolded him whenever he tried doing something girly-like playing hide and seek with other pups, picking flowers from the bushes and making garlands, going to shop with female wolves in the downtown market or just listening to stories sitting idly, but he loved doing all of these, and the last one was his favorite.

Moonlight Before Dawn ~ Vkook✔Where stories live. Discover now