Got my claws in you

Chapter 81- the cost of a wish

(Y/N) POV:

"...you're blonde."

"I know!"

"You're blonde."

"Isn't it great?"

"You're blonde."

"I think the colour suits me-I'd personally say a bit more honey blonde but..."

"And your curls... they're gone."

"They'll come back, the treatment isn't permanent."

"Tae your curls!"

I can't look away from him, can't look away from the starkly different tiger that stands in front of me, fingers carding through straight, long strands of honey blonde hair, brushing the long mullet and bangs from his eyes, dark feline eyes bright with excitement. Can't look away from the fact that his ears and tail aren't orange and black stripes but a golden hue to his fur, that perfectly matches his hair.

There's something about the colour that changes him so drastically and not at the same time. He's still tiger, he's still my tiger, my Taehyung... but something about the honey blonde straight hair does something to my insides, twists my stomach and upturns it into a mass of butterflies. Mourning the loss of messy black curls all the whilst I can't take my eyes off the honey blonde even if I tried. There's something decidedly more... predator in this shade on his hair and fur, something disarmingly beautiful about the bright shade and yet it makes the lines and angles of his face seem sharper, angular, the feline intensity of his eyes more prominent.

"Don't you like it?" fingers carding through the messy strands, beanie cast aside as he looks at me, eyes soft and dark, watching and waiting. The slightest wilted droop to a gold and black striped tail and it snaps me out of my stupor, out of my addled brain that's fixated on the way his hair makes his skin glow, the way it makes the golden warmth of his skin radiant-

"I love it are you kidding me? Wow... it's... fuck... wow." Words stuck in my throat, mouth dry, eyes skimming over him over and over, almost feverishly as if blinking will shatter the golden glow around him and the blonde will vanish. Eyes drinking in the way his smile curls upwards, tail perking upright and the saccharine sweetness of strawberries radiating off him. His own gaze sparking with a different sort of interest when he catches the betraying tell to my own scent, cheeks flushing when his voice dips lower. Honeyed rich baritone.

"Oh? Does the blonde turn you on cub?"

"I..."

Skin feeling flushed, warmed, prickling pinpricks of heat that skim across my limbs, an involuntary shiver that dances across the back of my spine when he takes a step forward, then another, the movement making him appear larger, looming imposing height that crowds closer to me, that swarms me with his scent and him.

"I wanted to show you first and suddenly I'm really, really glad that I did." he murmurs, voice low, the slow purposeful steps he takes forward makes me feel cornered, hunted even in the open room, even despite the space around me being ample opportunity to twist and run-some part of my biology itching with the flight-or-flight urge that begins thrumming incessantly through my veins. A faint trembling jitter to my legs that tries to push me into motion, that recognises the pure predator in Tae's veins, in the ambling hunter's gait of a man, of a tiger who knows he's got time to toy with his prey, with his hunt.

"No-one else has seen?"

Suddenly I'm not sure if this is real or a fever dream, a heat induced delirium from all the blanketed nests and the furnace that Joon's body is even with the window open at night. I don't know whether I've conjured the blonde tiger in front of me, feet cemented where I stand and I can't wrench my eyes away, can't move the slightest bit as he grows closer to me, fingers restless with the need to reach out and confirm, to feel the blonde hair under my touch. Skin feeling flush and pulled tight around my bones, a dizzying rush of pheromones that makes my skin pulse as he's finally...finally close enough, body crowding my space, demanding the very air in my lungs, the curl of his lips beckoning, tilted head appraising and the heat of his own body brushing to entangle against my own.