Irritably, you paced around your tiny cell of a room. Annoyingly enough, Seungmin had denied Ryujin and Yeonjun's offers to bring you back to your room, insisting that he wanted to do it himself. You weren't quite sure what you were expecting, but Seungmin had managed to get on your nerves yet again, and you regretted the light conversation you had held with him towards the end of the ball, no matter how casual and non-friendly it was.
Seungmin had pulled out the familiar silver key from his pocket, unlocking the door and pushing it open with his foot. You walked in, half-expected him to follow you, but he started closing the door without another word. "Wait!" you had said hastily, and he paused, finally making eye contact with you.
"What?"
Regretting your forward-ness, you clamped your mouth shut.
As if he could read your mind, Seungmin's pouty lips formed a cruel smile. He stepped closer to you, gripping your chin roughly and tilting your head upwards so he could look at you closer. You swallowed hard, wishing you had just shut up. "Did you expect me to come inside with you?" he had asked, voice dangerously soft.
"No." Your voice quivered.
"Did you think that just because you're my fiancé to the public that I would treat you as such in private?"
"No."
"Are you sure?" His eyes glinted in the morning rays coming through your open curtains. "Why did you stop me then?"
"I misspoke."
Seungmin let out a short bark of a laugh, his parted lips revealing his white fangs. He let go of your chin, pushing you back slightly in the process. "I wouldn't ever sleep with a human," he said smoothly, making your jaw drop in disgust.
"That's not what I—!"
You were cut off as the door slammed shut. The lock clanged into place, and you were left alone, red-faced, embarrassed, and still stuck in your disgustingly heavy gown. Which brought you to your pacing, trying to calm yourself down.
With force, you tugged off your heavy skirts, leaving the stretched fabric strewn across the floor. You yanked off your metal hoopskirt and kicked off your shoes and accessories, tore the itchy hair pins out. You sat there, panting and free from your fashionable confinements. You sat back down at the silvery vanity, realizing that someone had left warm water and a washcloth for you to wash your face, along with a few expensive looking face creams and a matching silver hairbrush. Looking around with suspicion, you finally took a deep breath and used the soft towel, dampened with the water, to scrub at your face. You ignored the face creams and hairbrush, not wanting to use much of what Seungmin was providing for you in retaliation, although you doubted he would care anyways. You dressed yourself in the silky nightclothes reluctantly, realizing there wasn't any other choice in terms of comfortable clothing. You sat there on the stupidly comfortable bed, realizing just how much you were relying on Seungmin, and you hated it. You hated how it was your only option, and how you secretly liked all of the expensive clothing and materials you were provided with. You were a prisoner in the world's most comfortable prison.
Trying to ignore the guilt eating away your stomach, you slid under the smooth, cool covers and laid your head down on the perfectly fluffed pillow, effortlessly falling into a deep sleep, fueled by your exhaustion and the humiliation you had suffered.
---
You awoke to a tapping noise. At first you thought you were at home, and you were ready to skin your annoyingly concerned neighbor, a paranoid middle-aged woman who had a habit of knocking on your door every so often, claiming she had to warn you of some foreboding event that never actually ended up happening. But you ran your hands along your sheets and sat up, realizing that you were still a prisoner in a terribly comfortable bedroom, and the tapping was coming from your window, where the curtains were still drawn. There was some light seeping in through the small cracks where the curtains parted, and from what you could see it was sunset once again, the familiar orange light leaking through. Hesitantly, you tiptoed over to the window and peeked through the tiny crack. You let out a small yelp and jumped backwards, your twitching eye being met with the desperate gaze of another. "(Y/N)," the person hissed, "open up!"
You shoved the curtains aside, nearly crying out with happiness at the people who were frantically waving at you from outside your window. You unlatched the window and pushed the heavy glass panes aside, sticking your hand through the thick bars to grasp onto Jeongin's. "You came!" you cried, jumping up and down excitedly, "you're here!"
"Of course I am," he said in a hushed voice, calming you down.
"How do we get these damn bars off?" Felix grunted, and you peered around Jeongin, finally realizing that he didn't come alone. Felix and Chan were balanced behind Jeongin on his broomstick, looking just a little ridiculous. The three men looked like they would surely snap the thin stick in two, but the magic carried them well, although Felix and Chan looked like they were hanging on for dear life. All three were wearing long, tan cloaks that made them look like any other human villager.
"Shut up, I have to think," Jeongin hissed, closing his eyes.
"How did you find me?" you whispered to Felix, who had looked at the view beneath him and immediately held on tighter to Jeongin.
"I was at the ball last night!" he exclaimed, "I had to keep a low profile though, so I stayed away. Jeongin had a hunch that Seungmin had taken you, but Chan and I didn't believe him. Seeing you at the ball only confirmed everything, so here we are!"
"Jesus," you muttered, "took you long enough."
"Is that really the way you're going to speak to your saviors?" Felix complained, attempting to put his hands on his hips in a sassy stance while still holding on tightly to Jeongin's waist.
"You saw what a disaster the ball was," you murmured, "Seungmin was a complete ass afterwards too. He thought I wanted to sleep with him, for Christ's sake. Imagine that!"
"Not surprised, he's a slimy one," Felix grimaced, "he hides it well with his stupid cold, emotionless act, but he's one of the nastiest vampires I've ever met."
You shook your head, as if the motion would shake off the memories of the past night. "He proved his sliminess, that's for sure."
"Alright, alright, be quiet for a minute. I think I got it," Jeongin mumbled, and both you and Felix shut your mouths. "(Y/N), you got everything?"
"Yeah, I'm ready," you said quickly, not even bothering to look around.
In an instant, Jeongin disappeared from the broom, sending Felix scrambling to grab onto the broomstick, and appeared in your room. Brow furrowed with concentration, he grabbed your hand, and you felt an odd sensation, as if your eyeballs had separated from your material body. You spotted you and Jeongin reappearing on the broomstick outside the window, but it took you a moment for your eyes to catch up. "What the fuck," you said, blinking rapidly, "my eyes didn't follow for a second."
"Thank god they caught up," Jeongin said, breathing a sigh of relief, "I've never been able to transport a second person along with me before. I had to keep the broomstick afloat at the same time too, that was horrible." He rubbed his temples, groaning quietly. "I'm gonna have a massive fucking headache after this."
You tenderly pressed your cold fingertips to Jeongin's head. "Thank you for saving me," you whispered, and you felt his skin heat up beneath your touch.
"Of course," he said back, looking away nervously.
"Can we please go," Chan hissed, "in case you forgot, we're hovering right outside the castle, and we could be spotted at any second."
Jeongin cursed under his breath, and guided the broomstick away from the open window. He dove just out of sight as several guards casually walked by the grounds below your window, chatting casually.
As Jeongin sped away from the castle, the coming night blanketing the four of you under the safety of darkness, you swallowed past the lump in your throat, pressing your cold cheek against his back, hugging his slim waist tightly. You vaguely registered Felix's touch as he held onto you behind you, but your mind was elsewhere. We don't have long. He'll be bound to notice soon.
When you deemed it safe enough to talk, you let out a breath you didn't notice you'd been holding. It seemed to shake everyone out of their silent stupor, and in a small voice, Chan asked, "What do we do now?"
Felix exhaled loudly, the breath ending in something between a laugh and a sob. "We have to hide (Y/N). Better, we take them far, far away. Hopefully we escape without our identities being revealed. Just by trespassing on their property we made ourselves enemies of the entire Kim bloodline."
"We're anonymous enemies, at least," Chan murmured, and you tried to ignore the way Felix's grip on you tensed.
"Yeah, for now," Felix muttered, "we have to hurry."
"(Y/N)," Chan said softly, "are you willing to go through with all of this?"
"To keep the three of you safe, I'd do anything." You tried to ignore the gnawing feeling of guilt and worry. You'd never left the comfort of your village, and you had no clue where you would go, or how you would survive without your found family, the only people you could trust.
"My pack," Chan said, seemingly reading your mind, "they live deep in the woods. You can stay there for a bit while we figure out what to do next."
"It's not like we have any other options," Jeongin said bitterly, not liking the idea of you having to get by in the woods with a bunch of werewolves.
Everyone went silent again as Jeongin landed in front of your house, shoes skimming the stone-paved ground as he skidded to a stop. You all hopped off, and you unlocked the door as quickly as possible, shooing everyone in before closing it.
"Finally, I feel like I can breathe again," Felix sighed, and you heard him slump to the floor in relief, chuckling as you fumbled around for your oil lamp to light up the room, which was shrouded in complete darkness.
Finally, your fingers enclosed around a glass container, and you felt around for the familiar knob that would create the flame. The large lamp lit up the entire room for just a moment before you let out a bloodcurdling scream as you looked straight ahead, where three tall figures stood. The brief flame lit up their faces for a split second before surrounding you all in darkness once again, revealing the identity of the one person you had hoped to never see again.
You waited in the pitch black room, knees knocking together as you shivered; the temperature seemed to have dropped ten degrees. For a moment, you thought that maybe you had imagined it, but then you felt cold fingers close around your neck gently, caressing your throat as you whimpered. "Did you really think it would be that easy to escape?" Seungmin whispered.
You let out a cry of fear as you heard scrambling, a howl and a shout, sounding terrifyingly like Chan and Felix. You strained your eyes, trying to see something, anything in the darkness, but you only heard faint whimpers, and then silence. "Don't worry," he whispered, dragging his teeth along your ear, "they'll be fine."
Your blood ran cold at the distant shouts that reached your ears. They sounded so far away. Too far away.