🔞𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞 (𝙅𝙠×𝙔/𝙣×𝙁𝙚𝙖𝙩.𝙆𝙩𝙝)

🖤Chapter:- 47🖤

It was nearly dawn, and the world outside his window was a colorless thing—blue-grey and slow to wake.

But Taehyung was already awake. He had been for hours.

Sleep rarely visited him anymore.

Not when *you* were under his roof again.

Not when his **cub**—his sweet, wild cub—was finally back where she belonged.

And yet... he couldn't rest.

He sat in his private study, the one room untouched by any maid's hand, surrounded by shadows and memories. A glass of wine sat on the desk beside him, untouched, long gone warm.

In silence, legs crossed in the leather armchair. The fire burned low behind him, shadows dancing along the walls like memories that refused to die.

The surveillance monitor glowed across the room—her figure faint on screen, unmoving in bed.

But his mind was far away.

Back to a winter no one else remembered.

---

He had always been dark.

Even as a child, Taehyung knew there was something monstrous coiled deep within him. The way he liked to twist truth, test boundaries, push until people snapped. Other boys played with marbles—he played with minds.

But not with her.

Never in the way he played with the minds of others.

He'd first seen her at the foot of his father's study, small and uncertain, hiding behind her father's legs like a kitten too timid to belong in a mansion of predators.

She was only twelve.

He was already seventeen.

Too old. Too dangerous. Too far gone.

But still... the moment their eyes met, something *moved* inside him.

Something quiet.

Something *human.*

She never said much. Never tried to get close. But the few times their paths crossed—when she bowed politely, or thanked him softly for the hot chocolate he "forgot" on the garden bench—he felt something anchor in his chest.

A strange, stupid *hope.*

He'd never been hopeful before.

Taehyung slightly looked towards in hand which held a small object. A charm.

A tarnished brass pendant—*your* old necklace, the one you dropped during training in childhood. The chain had snapped, and Jungkook picked it up before Taehyung could.

He remembered the way Jungkook smiled at you when he returned it. The way you smiled *back.*

And in that moment—*that one fucking moment*—Taehyung had tasted what it was like to be nothing more than the second choice.

The shadow behind Jungkook's light.

You had always treated him kindly. That was the worst part.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jungkook knew.

He always knew.

Even when Taehyung never said a word.

Jungkook was colder than most. A man of action, not feelings. A man of violence disguised as silence.

But around her... he softened.