Safe With You | Yoonmin

Chapter 33: Ashes

| Namjoon |

HOWLS OF TRIUMPH ROSE UP into the night sky as the rogues began running. Those who were capable of running, anyway. They turned and fled, abandoning their dead, their wounded. Disappearing into the black forest. 

Some of the warriors who had defended the village gate gave chase, picking off a few foolish stragglers who refused to drop their plundered sacks of food and other valuables. These inevitably weighed them down, making them easy targets for the vengeful Black Mountain pack’s alphas. 

In the midst of the trampled barley field where the battle had once raged, Namjoon watched these events unfold, feeling strangely numb and detached, blood dripping from a sizable gash high on his sword-arm, rivulets of red trailing down to his fingertips. 

In the final moments of the battle he had felt it. The loss of something – someone. His wolf, which had been snarling just under the surface moments before, had gone strangely quiet, its anxiety palpable. Immediately Namjoon’s mind had jumped to the worst possibilities – that one of his family might be dead. The Kims did not cower from battle, after all. His father, his brothers, even his mother, any of them could have–

“–mjoon!” called a voice he had not heard in many days, distant and desperate.

Namjoon spun, wide-eyed, searching the faces of the warriors and injured closest to him. He began picking his way back toward the main gate, using his good arm to help an injured palace guard up off the ground as he did so. 

A palace guard. 

So that’s where the reinforcements had come from, Namjoon realized.

The battle had been a close one, up to the very end when the Black Mountain pack’s forces had magically increased by almost a third, a fresh wave of fighters sweeping down from the north to beat the rogues back while the gate was secured.

“Namjoon!” The voice was much closer now.

“Jin?” he called back, hope rising in his chest as he continued to search the crowd around him, but there were too many faces, to many flickering shadows cast by the fires, and–

A hand landed on Namjoon’s shoulder, turning him roughly before he found his arms pinned to his sides within Seokjin’s crushing embrace.

“Gods, Jin,” Namjoon gasped, wincing at the pressure against his wounded arm. “How are you here? What happened?” He pulled back, taking his brother’s face in both his hands, needing to confirm that Seokjin was wholly unharmed. Apart from a cut on his brow and a few scrapes and bruises on his hands, the handsome alpha appeared the same as ever.

Then Seokjin’s eyes landed on the large red gash on Namjoon’s sleeve, alarm flashing across his face.

Namjoon was quick to move his sword over to his good hand, raising his bloody arm and wiggling his fingers to prove that the important muscles and tendons remained intact. “See? Not as bad as it looks…” 

“Still,” Seokjin muttered, slinging his bow across his back and then removing the cloth sash from around his waist, hastily wrapping it around the wound. “Let’s get you to a healer. Best we get you away from here quickly, anyway.”

There was something in Seokjin’s tone that gave Namjoon pause, stoking the dread he felt deep in his bones – the hollowness both he and his wolf had felt. “Wait, Jin. Who… who is it? What happened?” he asked again.

His brother looked around cautiously, “Let’s get you home first–”

“Jin.”

Seokjin shook his head, looking anxious and bewildered, “This is not the place. First we should find father and mother.”