𝐀𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐫 || 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐖𝐨𝐧

Chapter 9

After coming clean to Mingyu, Wonwoo’s instinct was to hide from the alpha, his cheeks heating each time he recalled how he’d broken down in front of him, how he’d spilled all—almost all—of his secrets. The whole hiding thing didn’t work very well when he was roused by a knock on his bedroom door early the next morning.

Used to waking with the sun, he was wide-eyed by the time the second rap came.

“Minghao?” he asked in confusion, realizing it wasn’t that long after dawn.

“It’s Mingyu. You coming or not?”

Groaning, he forced himself out of bed and padded to the door, easing it open just enough to see the alpha’s face.

“What?”

Mingyu was dressed in a T-shirt, sweatpants, and sneakers.

“Are you coming?” the alpha asked again, turning his head to the side inquisitively.

There was something a little endearing about the motion, but Wonwoo ruthlessly quashed that feeling. Mingyu might have been trying to help him, but he was still an alpha, and a bossy one at that.

“Coming where?”

“For a run, like we talked about.”

Wonwoo leaned heavily against the door, trying to kick his brain into gear despite the absence of coffee. They had talked about that, hadn’t they?

“When you said early, I didn’t know you meant the crack of dawn.”

Mingyu looked none-too-impressed at his reply. “Why waste the day? Are you in or what?”

Wonwoo wanted nothing more than to return to bed and bury his head under the covers. But part of the deal he had going with Mingyu involved doing stuff the alpha thought would help. Running was one part of what Mingyu assured him was a bigger picture. Baby steps they might be, but each step counted.

“Give me a minute.” He closed the door, rubbed at his eyes, and then dressed. The army had taught him economy of movement—getting the most done with the smallest amount of effort. He had his shoes laced up less than a minute later and joined Mingyu out in the hall. As they headed downstairs, he tried to tame his too-long hair with his fingers. If he’d still been on base, they’d have yelled at him and sent him to get it shorn back to regulation length.

It had been a while since he’d had enough growth to be able to run his fingers through it.

They waved at Jeonghan when they found him in the kitchen, baby in one hand and a cup of tea in the other.

“Morning, guys,” the omega called, smiling softly as the infant gurgled happily.

Mingyu paused right outside the back door and started warming up. Wonwoo followed his lead, though he had his own routine when it came to stretching. He finished first and found himself watching as Mingyu stretched out his calves, the moves showcasing the alpha’s lean strength. To finish, Mingyu reached his hands up toward the sky, his T-shirt riding up and giving Wonwoo a peek at his toned abs. He had to force himself to look away when he realized he was staring, lapping it up like he’d just crossed a desert and Mingyu was his first glimpse of water.

The alpha lowered his arms and tugged down his T-shirt, giving Wonwoo a slightly quizzical look that said his staring hadn’t gone unnoticed. But the alpha didn’t say a word, he just took off at a jog around the side of the house. A few seconds passed before Wonwoo’s brain kicked into gear, and he took off after him.

“This isn’t the way we went the last time.”

He liked the familiarity of routine, even if breaking down by the river wasn’t on his to-do list for the day.

“I like to change things up a bit,” Mingyu called over his shoulder. “Does the mind and the body good to have some variety.”

He sped up, and Wonwoo had to devote more effort into catching up and less to thinking. They ran down the driveway and out through the front gate, turning to follow the north wall of the orchard. The path was a shallow incline, just enough that he could feel the slightest burn in his calves. As the ground leveled off, he finally closed the gap between them, running by Mingyu’s side. He was too breathless to speak or to even think much beyond each footfall. As Mingyu kept their pace steady, he wondered if that was the point.

“See that path to our right?”

He managed to pant out a reply. “Yeah.”

“It loops around the forest and back to the main road. We’ll follow that today, take advantage of the shade.”

The temperature wasn’t particularly high, but the fall sun was bright, beaming down on them relentlessly from a cloudless sky. Running into the shade of the trees was an instant relief, dropping the temperature a few degrees.
Wonwoo welcomed the coolness, but any chance to catch his breath fled when Mingyu picked up the pace again, and all his effort went into keeping up with the infuriating alpha.

He found himself lagging behind, his feet sinking into the soft earth of the trail they were on. He tried to pick up speed, not wanting to give Mingyu the satisfaction of outpacing him so easily. A howl from somewhere nearby made him jerk his head around and take his eyes off the path. His foot caught, and he felt himself fall, but then strong arms were around him, righting him easily.

“Huh?”

He blinked up at Mingyu, and then looked back into the forest where the noise had come from.

“Jun’s out hunting from the sounds of it,” Mingyu said, his arms still around Wonwoo. “Did you go over on your ankle?”

Gingerly, he moved his foot.

“No,” he said slowly, breathing hard as he tried to catch his breath. “You caught me in time.”

“That was lucky.”

He was very aware that the alpha was still holding him, their bodies pressed close, his heart beating a mile a minute in his chest. This near, there was no way to escape the alpha’s scent, heightened by clean sweat and the fact that every one of Wonwoo’s senses was on edge. Distantly, he acknowledged the irrelevant fact that they were compatible, but he shoved it from his mind the second it surfaced and pushed away from Mingyu as he did.

“I’m good, thanks.”

Mingyu backed off, his hands held open in front of him before he dropped them to his sides.

“Good. Just in case, let’s walk it off for a bit. That way if anything hurts, you’ll know before you try to run on it again.”

Wonwoo nodded and started walking, aware of Mingyu’s keen gaze as the alpha fell into step beside him. Other than the slightest twinge, there was no pain, no sense that his ankle was on the verge of swelling up like a balloon. He’d had a lucky escape.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Mingyu said after a few minutes of tramping through the forest in silence. “You set the pace.”

He started slow, building up speed once he was sure his ankle could take it. Mingyu matched him easily but never outpaced him, keeping his word that Wonwoo was in control.

He ran faster, pushing himself, searching for that point where his thoughts and feelings couldn’t crowd him, when there was only the burning in his chest and limbs, the feel of the air whipping past him, and the sense that he was safe as long as he just kept running.

They reached the orchard gate once again and headed inside, Wonwoo consciously slowing as they neared the house.

He came to a stop just outside the door, turning to Mingyu.

“Thanks, for catching me back there.” The alpha must have had eyes in the back of his head to move that fast.

Mingyu grinned back at him. “What are friends for?”

Even as he said it, his eyes darkened, his gaze a little speculative. Had he noticed what Wonwoo had? Would it be a problem, or would he do what Wonwoo fully intended to do and ignore it? He hoped it was the latter. Right then, he needed all the help he could get. The last thing he wanted was to get sidetracked by hormones and volatile emotions.