Jae
"You need to eat, Jae. Braden would want you to eat a lot."
I flinched at the name, but wordlessly pushed another bite of whatever was on my plate into my mouth. Mechanically, I chewed and swallowed but never tasted it. I couldn't tell if I was hungry or full over the persistent gnawing in my gut.
Hyung dragged me down to eat, now sitting across from me in the crowded dining room watching me with the perpetually concerned looked. It's the same look everyone in the pack has been showing me for the last two days.
Two days!
No Braden. They found where he had been fighting but his scent was dragged along with other rogues briefly before all the scents were covered and lost.
I've learned a lot in the last two days. That a werewolf can turn into pack-less creature called a rogue. Someone that only takes care of them self, unlike the tight-knit, family-like group that I've come to know. Alec tried to explain that being a rogue didn't necessarily constitute being evil, that it just meant something happened in their life that cut off their ability to form a connection with their pack.
Hyung still tried to find something good in those wolves, even after they attacked the pack to get to him. Even after Braden disappeared fighting them off. I couldn't listen to any sort of positive explanation.
I wouldn't have come down to breakfast if Alec hadn't told me that Christopher had returned. Now, I have to sit here across from hyung and his mate, even after finding out that the Alpha hit another dead end. Reed still hasn't returned, apparently this rogue keeps slipping through their grasp.
I'd tried to stay positive, when the Alpha went out again to search. He's come back three more times, only to switch out the team of warriors and head out again. Last night was the first time I've slept since Braden didn't come home.
I can't sleep in the bed, not without Braden's warm body to cling to. Going out of my mind, I spent the day yesterday cleaning his room. I wiped down all the surfaces, scrubbed the floor and straightened everything I could. Getting it ready for his return.
Unfortunately, I stumbled upon his closet. It was a mess and at first, I straightened it, finding the array of childhood toys I'd found mixed in with a pile of clean and questionable laundry almost humorous. When I found a box labeled 'Old Toys', I immediately dug right in. Only to wish that I hadn't.
The old tee shirt of mine he was wearing when I first arrived. My sweatshirt. The pictures hyung had taken of us, awkwardly in the hotel room that first day we met, lovingly encased in frames. The internet's worth of pictures of me. All those stupid little things he'd so obviously treasured.
The tears had fallen hotly down my cheeks, faster and faster. Sobs rose in my chest unbidden, one after another. I cried even after my eyes were swollen and my throat was hoarse. Eventually, I fell into an exhausted sleep, surrounded the small amount of pictures that showed Braden standing by my side.
Hyung woke me up this morning, the evidence of Braden's shrine mostly packed up again. The framed photographs were placed alongside the bed and on the desk.
"This is where he had them before, I believe," Alec had told me with a small, cheerless smile.
A fresh wave of pain washes through me at the memory. There's so much I need to make up to Braden. He has to come home.
"Jae? Jae." Hyung's voice pulls me back to the present. He's watching me with that careful expression, the Alpha still eating next to him.
"Uh?"
