Kill to Die, Die to Kill

Warmth

JAEKYUNG

Earlier

By the time he woke up, his head was hurting bad, and so was his body. Something was kicking on his foot, and when he opened his eyes everything seemed so blurry. His head spun around the same spot, and he immediately grunted as he slowly stood up. His rut is going to kill his head if he doesn't find shelter or Dan anytime soon, but his thoughts were immediately interrupted when he saw what was actually "kicking" on his boot.

A roamer without legs was gnawing on the rubber in the sole of his shoe, making the alpha forget any kind of dizziness he might be feeling and kick the beast with his boot as strong as he could, grunting as he completely destroyed its head. He stood up from the ground, looking around to find Dan's bat right on his side, immediately taking it and running back to the river side with the imminent threat of Junmin finding him before he did.

―Shit, shit, shit... ―he groaned as he ran, hurrying up his pace to catch up with the current, but it was getting darker and soon he'll have to guide himself only with...

Jaekyung stopped right on his tracks, sniffing into the air. Pheromones. He could feel the flowery ones from Dan on the other side of the river, but the downside were those close by that smelled like coffee beans. His eyes widened as something scratched him from the inside, looking towards the woods on the other side of the river as desperation started to settle in.

―Fuck...

The alpha groaned as he took off his shoes, walking through the shallow side of the river towards the other side, hurrying his pace upon the threat of Junmin finding Dan before he did. How didn't he realized it was him? How could he let himself be hit in the head like that? Now it hurts, and he wasn't sure if it was because of his fever or the bump.

As soon as he reached the other side, he quickly put back his shoes, starting to run in the direction his now enlightened senses told him Dan was. His rut was coming in the next few days, so it was only normal for Dan's pheromones to be even more perceptible than before, changing from the sweet and light flowers to a stronger one, resembling not a bouquet anymore but rather a whole field of them.

On the way, he could feel the remnants of the coffee scented pheromones lingering close to a tree, and with them the peony ones. In the ground near the tree, the rotting corpse of a roamer was laying down with a gunshot wound on its head, making Jaekyung widen his eyes as his inner self scratched inside his stomach again. Dan could be in trouble. He doesn't have a gun, he doesn't even have his bat, who else could've been here if it wasn't Junmin?

The dominant alpha focused more on the peony scent, sensing the trail that lead towards another area in the woods. More motivated than ever, he started to run in that direction, noticing that the coffee pheromones were growing weaker as he approached the other direction Dan had, allegedly, taken.

This didn't make any sense: it's completely against what Junmin had showed them to this moment. From what Dan had told him and the small conversation he had with him in the forest, he's obsessive enough to leave a message made in blood and corpses, track them all the way from the outskirts in Seoul into a whole different province and shoot at the group despite them having a baby in the team, and now that he was so close to Dan, why would he let him go just like that?

The fear grew in his heart as the peony scent got stronger, eventually finding Dan curled up in the floor, panting, crying, soaked in water but, fortunately for everyone involved, completely alone.