Beast, Blood, & Soul

* 34 *

The sun rudely peeked through a break in the curtains and found my face. It didn't take me long to start waking up and trying to move out of the morning sun. Turning my head, I felt the bunny snuggled into the curve of my neck. I felt warm fur on my side and sure enough, there was a wolf snuggled next to me.

I tried to move to get away from the annoying beam of light but a certain tiger in human form was draped all over my legs. Clearly, V and his cat are very much alike. I look around me and I see each one of them sleeping soundly. Some human, some animal. This bed really has a lot of room. I don't want to wake them up, but now that I'm awake, I really need to go to the bathroom. I gently move until I free myself and climb out of the center of the bed. How I didn't wake up anyone is beyond me.

But then again, we had a really hard day yesterday.

I'm washing my hands afterward and I look at myself in the mirror. I can see the stress of the last 24 hours is still in my face. I slept fitfully all night. My brain didn't want to stop reviewing the day's events and all its gory detail. I may have had my boyfriends surrounding me, but I did watch those same men brutally eviscerate an entire pack of wolves.....by hand.

How does one forget that?

The answer is, of course, you don't.

I leave the bathroom and look into the room with everyone asleep. Jungkook, Jin, and Jimin are all in their animal forms, everyone else is humanoid. They look utterly exhausted. I don't want to know how difficult yesterday was. I have enough of it haunting me at the moment. Watching them sleep, I realize I can't lay down again.

My brain is too active with all the horror of the day before. I didn't reject them, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna forget that I have seen them at their most dangerous. I have been seriously reckless in dealing with this situation. I was so infatuated with being in love, that I didn't care about the reality of their supernatural existence. So taken with the idea of seven soulmates that are just for me, that I was being blase about the problems of the damn thing.

I turn from the room and head downstairs to the kitchen. I might as well make breakfast for everyone. Nothing extravagant, but something to fill bellies and replenish energy. I figure a breakfast bowl would be easiest. I grab eggs, sausage, and some potatoes. The effort to brown and cook everything gave me something to focus on instead of the never-ending memories of gore that filled my mind. As I thought over the day I could focus on what I remembered of each man's actions. It wasn't just Jungkook ripping the wolf in two that bothered me. It was seeing V disembowel another with his claws. It was watching Yoongi snap the neck of another wolf-like it was nothing. Jimin smashed another wolf in the head and took it down. Namjoon bit into the neck of another and tore it out with his teeth. I closed my eyes against the images that were ravaging my brain and creating a deep fear of what these men were capable of.

"Good morning," a soft husky voice says gently from the stairs. I open my eyes and look up into V's eyes. I can see the sorrow in them. "You're suffering is transmitting over the strands. The guys upstairs are crying over what they've put you through." V enters the kitchen and keeps to the other side of the island, allowing me to have a barrier between us. I appreciate the sense of safety he's affording me. I concentrate on the strands and sure enough, there is fear and remorse thrumming through them.

"Yesterday was hard for everyone," I murmur as I focus back on breakfast.

"Yes, but we're used to what we are. You are not." V counters.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I ask him. My eyes plead for the truth, but my heart is afraid of it.

"We didn't want to scare you. We've spent a long time hiding who we are. Why would we expect you to understand just how monstrous we really are?" V settles on a stool, watching me cook.