Arrows, Swords and a Little Bit of Magic ( Rated M )

Hoseok : Part 1

(For some reason wattpad isn't letting me embed pictures so i'm not able to add my mood-boards here :( ...If anyone wants to have a look at them, do check out my twitter or maybe find me on AO3 )

Hoseok kept to a medium pace as he sprinted through the Whispering Woods. It was a denser part of the Woods; the trees were close-knit, the other shrubbery and flora overgrown – though still retaining its exotic beauty. It had rained that afternoon and the soil had that moist smell to it, the grey clouds still floated across the sky, nonchalantly blocking most of the moonlight that was the only source of guidance to Hoseok, even considering his wolf's enhanced sight.

His fur coat was still damp and moisture clogged despite Hoseok expecting that it would have dried by now from all the running. However, that hadn't been the case and now it weighed him down, the wet fur accompanied by his tiredness making his movements slower and more sluggish.

Hoseok had come from a particularly well-off noble family – well, maybe that was a slight understatement?

His father was currently one of the most prominent advisors on their King's council. His mother had been a healer in the palace. She had been serving the royal family since long before the Queen's death - before passing away herself, stricken by the plague that had broken out in the southern part of the kingdom and that she, along with a team of other healers, had been dispatched to contain. Hoseok had been around ten and Jiwoo six, making her barely retain any prominent memories of their mother.

It was that year, Hoseok guesses, that everything had started falling apart for the Jung family. Their mother was an only child and her parents - the Jung siblings' maternal grandparents – had passed a few years earlier, leaving no relatives on their mother's side. The Jungs came from a long line of imperial scholars and generals, Hoseok's father's generation also not disappointing. The young alpha's eldest uncle – his father's older brother – had been a renown general for the Lupa Kim Clan and his youngest uncle had been put in charge of the imperial treasury.

His eldest uncle had died on the battlefield only a year after his mother's passing, the second uncle following the year after that, assassinated during an attempt by a rival kingdom to sabotage the kingdom's treasury and resources. Hoseok and Jiwoo were left in the care of their father then, but since the man was almost always at meetings or court, the duty of raising Jiwoo had almost completely fallen to Hoseok. He didn't mind – he loved his sister, she was an angel. Maybe sometimes too wild and crass – Hoseok totally takes the blame for cussing in front of her during her younger years; the unseemly vocabulary was already permanently imprinted into her mind – but an adorable angel nonetheless.

In turn, Jiwoo had helped ebb away the loneliness he had become accustomed to.

As a child, Hoseok was incredibly extroverted, inquisitive and rowdy. He would slip away from their mansion mid lessons and wander the markets, he would talk to old grannies and other kids his age and people of all ages in general. But as he grew and the people in the city became aware of his identity, the number of people who approached him with genuine friendship in mind had dwindled considerably, leaving him with only a few people he could confide in.

Hoseok had always been rather short and lanky so he was expected to present as a beta – it had come as a rather unexpected but nice surprise to all around him when he'd presented as an alpha instead, albeit a little late at fourteen. As he grew broader and his body became sturdier he finally came to a conclusion as to what he wanted to be in life – Hoseok decided to follow in his uncle's footsteps and become an Imperial General. Thankfully, his father – who had by then become considerably withdrawn from both of his children and completely immersed in work – happily approved, showing him a proud smile, the first one since their mother's death.