Your group continue with the journey, heading to the next safe house where Jackson is planning to unload a few of the weapons he had retrieved from Lucas for safekeeping.

"I won't be needing all of them at once. Maybe unloading some of these will help us move faster too. Just in case we're getting some new stuff to retrieve at the Wiccans," Jackson said before the trip started.

The journey had begun smoothly at first. Jimin takes the lead as his speed allows him to move past the trees like the wind, while you run in your wolf form close behind and Jackson on his stealth motorcycle. You are just another hill away from the safe house when Jimin suddenly stops and makes a signal for you to stop running.

He gives you a minute to shift and put your clothes back on before he leads the three of you to huddle close by.

"Why are we stopping?" Jackson asks him, though he is already on alert.

"There are humans ahead. Looks like they are heading to our safe house and are now loitering on the open ground just downhill from it," he says. Sure enough, just as you take a deep breath, you smell their scents nearby. Followed by a few other scents which indicate that they are not your regular humans. "From the looks of it, they're Hunters."

Your wolf growls from within you. "I thought nobody else was supposed to take this path."

"If they are from the same group Lucas was, then it would only mean one thing," Jackson says. "Either they have lost their tracker or that the safe house they were heading to had run out of supplies and they were trying to find others around and had found a way to this one."

"What should we do?"

"They've probably noticed that someone has been on this path since I was just here a few days ago. Let me go see them and find out what they want. I might be able to lure them away," Jackson offers. "Let's just hope that they are from a different group so I can convince them to leave."

Jimin seems to contemplate it for a moment before agreeing. "Alright, we'll stay close and observe. If things go wrong and they're not cooperating, I can't promise you that we can hold back a fight."

Jackson looks between you and Jimin, nodding to agree. "I expect that you won't," he says. "If they are just regular Hunters, they won't stop at nothing to bring you down. Especially if they find out that I've been spending time with you guys."

After making a quick plan of luring the Hunters away and a getaway plan in case things fall south, Jackson hops back onto his motorcycle and makes his way to the Hunters. Jimin moves closer, standing by in hiding while using his powers to shield himself. You quickly shift back into your wolf form and move closer so you will have the ability to see and hear things better than you would if you were in your human form. And you would be ready to fight in case everything fails.

You watch closely from behind a set of boulders, crouching low on the ground as Jackson drives closer to the Hunters. You can faintly smell blood and dirt on the other Hunters' bodies, but you cannot see them clearly as the wounded are resting close to the cliff and under the shades of trees, while the strong ones are standing tall around them, creating a barrier to keep them safe.

"Hello, there," Jackson greets the group once he comes closer. He sets the motorcycle to rest aside as he hops off and walks closer to the one who acts as their leader.

"Hi, we were wondering where you were. Are you the one watching this place?" their leader asks Jackson with a friendly look on his face while pointing at the safe house that is now visible on the top of the hill with his thumb.

"Sort of," Jackson answers him. "I'm just passing through. This one is on my route home. What brings you here?"

"We've been travelling back after a mission and some of us are wounded. We left the ones who were in critical condition back at the last safe house, but we didn't have enough medicine to tend to the others. We also lost our tracker, so we can't contact our home base," the tall Hunter explains. His face looks terribly exhausted and stressed, but he has less visible wounds on his body compared to the rest. "Do you have any communication device here?"

"Yeah, there's one that I would usually use when I pass here to contact home," Jackson answers him. "I'm Jackson, by the way."

"I'm Johnny," the other Hunter says, shaking Jackson's hand, oblivious to Jackson's plan of driving them away from the safe house.

You look away as they continue to chat, trying to take a closer look at the wounded ones behind them. Taking a few steps closer to the scene, your wolf takes a good sniff of them, and then your hackles are instantly raised as you recognise the stench.

'_______,' your wolf hisses. 'Their bodies reek of Rogues.'

Holding back the growl brewing in your throat, you turn to Jackson, trying to figure out a way to alert him, or to Jimin who is standing much too far away on the other side of the open ground. Yet, before any of you could do anything, the Hunter who has been talking to Jackson turns his eyes away and his gaze falls on the luggage hanging on Jackson's motorcycle.

Your whole body shudders with fear and anticipation when he narrows his eyes on a certain object.

"That bow belongs to my younger brother, Lucas. Our tracker," he says with clear recognition in his eyes, before it quickly turns into rage when he turns back to Jackson. "Where is he? What did you do to my little brother?"

Everything blows up so quickly after Johnny recognises the bow that Jackson had looted from Lucas.

But it was one of Johnny's crews who made the first shot. It was out of luck—and years of training—that Jackson was quick to defend himself. Because by the time you jump into action, the other members of Johnny's team have risen and are ready to blow Jackson's head off.

None of them even cared to hear Jackson's explanation, and your young Hunter never had a chance to try and weasel his way out of the attack when things suddenly blew up.

You have taken down two unwounded Hunters when you catch Jimin from the corner of your eyes, moving faster than the wind from one spot to another and tossing Hunters left and right with a mere swipe of his hands. You bite off the hand of a Hunter who is trying to slash you with his silver dagger before turning to find Jackson, just as he is pinned on the ground with Johnny hovering on top of him.

"You're working with them? Who the fuck are you?"

Jackson responds to him with a sly grin, chuckling wickedly as he answers, "Definitely not your friend," before hitting the Hunter's head with the back of his rifle and starting beating the crap out of him.

Relieved to find him capable of fending for himself, you focus on the Hunters who are coming at you. You fight back against two Hunters attacking you from upfront, only to have an arrow stuck on your hind legs. The shocking pain has you standing still for a moment, waiting to see if the arrow will have any effect on your body, only to find that there is nothing else but the slither of pain from the pointy end of the arrow.

'Not silver,' your wolf laughs wickedly inside your head, before you let her take over and she turns her head to pull the arrow out. The arrow leaves a small tear and your blood keeps dripping to the ground as she rips it out of the torn muscle. But with your beast taking control, you barely notice the pain, knowing that the small wound will take no time to heal.

Her instinct to hunt and kill becomes stronger with the rippling fight happening around you and she keeps trudging forward, knocking whoever tries to come in her way as she reaches the foot of the cliff to find your attacker.

The archer is a young Hunter who has already been wounded, one of the casualties from the Rogue battle. He had taken two nice, deep wolf bites on his legs and now he has nowhere else to go, completely paralysed by his wounds that have yet to heal. The only thing he can do is crawl backwards to try and get away as he watches you coming with fear in his eyes, all while raising and aiming his bow and arrow straight at you.

'Poor thing must have run out of silver arrows on the rogues,' your wolf sneers as you catch the sight of his makeshift arrows—forged from regular woods with its tip carved roughly by what looks like a pocket knife work.

Focusing on your attacker with a vengeance as he keeps shooting arrows with his shaking hands towards both you and Jimin, together with another wounded archer who is standing with his own weapon beside him, you dodge a few more Hunters lunging your way, all with handheld knives and close-range weapons while a few stray bullets fly past your body from across the field. The flying bullets stop when you hear Jimin transporting himself towards them and knocking them aside, and you keep going until you reach the pathetic boy who is whimpering and crying between how he doesn't want to die and how afraid he is of turning into a wolf from the bite.

In other circumstances, you would have rolled your eyes. Just like what Jackson had once told you, these Hunters are terribly informed as to the only knowledge they have ever had was the words spread from the old Wives' tales about Supernaturals and their powers.

'Shall we grant at least one of his wishes?' your wolf sasses as she saunters towards him and his other archer mate.

'Just get this over with and get the others.'

You take the bow and arrow which he is holding towards you with a sharp bite, crushing them all between your jaw while he watches with fear in his eyes. With one swipe of your front paw over his head, you knock him down unconscious, then you do the same to the other archer who has been frozen in place, both from his wounds and his fear of death.

'Go to sleep,' your wolf curses at them before you turn to face the other Hunters who are coming your way.

Tossing one Hunter into the air, you don't even bother to see where he had fallen to before lunging at another Hunter aiming to ambush your path. You bite off the hand that manages to swing a knife at your side, wounding you with its sharp tip, before pulling him into you so you can rip him a new one.

Your next target is the only Hunter left with a riffle who has been shooting bullets your way. With nobody else still standing and being the only one left with a loaded rifle, his attention is diverted which allows you to bite him right on his legs, dragging him down on the ground before tossing him off to join his unconscious friends by the cliff's walls.

Coming from behind you, you can hear Jackson fighting against this Johnny guy and another male, while Jimin is busy with a few others who are trying to knock him over and plunge their stakes into his heart.

None of them are capable of wounding him as he moves too swiftly for the attacker to compete in their condition. Not when he is capable of using his power to knock down a few Hunters on each attack, and his power alone is enough to shake the ground and trees on each blow, much less send regular Hunters flying against the rocky walls and the trees around them.

The fight had started with three fighters on your side against ten Hunters, with at least half of them still wounded, counting the two archers who were unable to save their own asses. Once Jimin sends the last few ones flying against the trees with no sign of them coming back up, you turn to Jackson just in time for you to see him shooting his gun at Johnny right after he had just taken down the other attacker.

"You're not getting away with this. Our people will never stay down for this betrayal," Johnny swears at Jackson as he tries to run with a couple of Hunters that still remain.

Your wolf pushes forward, her rage leads her to chase the young wounded Hunter with her eyes locked on his throat and a deep growl vibrating from within you, while you see Jimin moving towards him at the same time from the other side. But Johnny turns to see you coming at him, and in his last defense, he tosses a bomb straight your way.

The bomb moves fast and you try to dodge it, turning back to where you came from, but you are not fast enough. The bomb falls right in front of you, sending debris and silver clouds of dust on its blast while your body flies back upon impact. Except that the moment the explosion erupts, the pain you feel from the fall and the blast on your body is muted, as another has shielded its blow. Your eyes grow wide and your wolf growls in rage when his body falls against you, coating your white fur with his blood.

'No!'

"Jimin!"

"In here!"

Jackson helps you carry Jimin's wounded body—tattered and bloodied after the blow—into the safe house. You had shifted into your human form, though you could only put on your oversized shirt in your haste and use your jacket to cover the open wound on Jimin's chest before you lifted him in your arms together with Jackson.

The safe house is slightly bigger than the rest, more like a small cottage than a simple hut like the rest of them, with a single room that has been set up as a small clinic. This was the reason why those Hunters had chosen to try and get into this one to tend to the wounded.

"I got this," you turn to Jackson once you have found the room. "You clean up the mess outside before somebody else finds their way to this place. Go!"

Jackson looks conflicted for a brief moment, looking between you and Jimin before nodding reluctantly. Then he runs outside, back to the bodies of all the dead Hunters left just downhill from the safe house, while you carry Jimin into the room.

Jimin's body keeps convulsing as you lie him down on the old, worn-out bed. Dark blood keeps seeping through his shirt and soaking down on the sheets. He lets out a few rough snarls and cries over the pain, letting you know how much he is hurting. And even as you keep your eyes on each wound, each ripped part of his skin, it is obvious that he is not healing.

"Why are you not healing?" you ask him, frantically searching for a sign, any sign that his wounds are slowly closing as you press down your palms over the blood, with enough strength to hold him down as he keeps on fighting.

"Fuck—" he growls, slowly losing his breath and consciousness. "I don't know—" he whimpers.

Sparks start to run through your hands the longer you press down on his chest, sending his pain through your veins, the same throbbing pain he is feeling now running through your body as you try to take his pain away. But you know that you are running out of time, and out of options, the minute a loud gasp escapes through him and his eyes snap wide.

"Drink my blood."

The words come out flowing before you realise it.

"What?" He snaps, bewildered by your offer. "What the hell are you—fuck!"

"Yes! Yes, please Jimin. Drink my blood. Please, trust me."

For a fleeting moment, sparks of contemplation appear in his eyes. Both of you know that it would work. The blood of the wolves is the main reason for the long hatred that has been persisting between the creatures of the night. The healing power, the strength, everything that any creature has wished to have. An aphrodisiac to Vampires and monsters of ancient times. And as a creature who is much older than you are, Jimin knows better than you do what your blood would do to his body. But he also knows what it would entail.

It has been a long time since he drank pure blood—any blood. It has been far too long since he felt the hunger.

"It only takes one drop of blood to bring the hunger back," he says, gritting his teeth to hold back the pain. "Just one. I can't let myself—"

"Jimin, please," you beg him. "You will die."

He responds to you with a bitter laugh. "Well, it's a long time coming, anyway."

You grimace at his hoarse voice and at the blood he spats as he speaks. If only he was not hurting and right on the verge of death, your knuckles might have landed on his face to knock some senses out of him. But the worries are far much too great as you take in the sight of his vulnerable state.

You can't let him die. You just can't give up now.

With desperation taking over, you jump onto the bed, planting both knees on his sides and hovering above his body. "Jimin, I will not ask you again. Please—" you beg him, cupping his cheeks to force him to look at you. His eyes were glowing with pain and unshed tears. Time is running out and both of you are too stubborn to let the other win. "Drink my blood. It will heal you faster. Please."

He is starting to waver, you can see it clearly in his eyes. The pain is much too great for him to fight with his strength alone and he is losing. His eyes flicker to the vein in your neck before they return to your eyes, and then he starts shaking his head, stubbornly refusing. 

"No, I ca—" A scream cuts him off when he feels like he is falling apart and weakening as every second passes. "No."

"Jimin—"

"What if I drink too much? What if the hunger takes over?" he snarls, but his gaze is filled with concern. Over you. "What if I drain you?"

Your chest tightens. How on earth is he still worried about you when it is he who is on the verge of failing to fight his own demise? "You won't, I promise. You can take as much as you can."

"No," he whimpers.

"Please—"

"I can't, I will only hurt you."

Your cries turn into a long growl when he screams out in pain right after. Extending your sharp claws out of your fingers, you wound yourself, making a deep tear just an inch away from your wrist until your blood starts flowing out, and you shove your bleeding forearm over his face to let the scent overflow his senses.

Using your free and healthy hand to push him down by his shoulder, you press your wounded one over his lips. He tries to fight it at first by looking away from it and pulling back, but the temptation of your blood, the need, and the conviction in your eyes are breaking him apart from his boundaries. His hunger is clearly taking over and that is when you force him once more with a sharp growl—

"Drink, damn it!"

He takes your arm with his shaky grip before he starts drinking your blood with vigour. His eyes flare with a foreign glow, wild and feral, the kind of gaze that screams out the pure sin that sends shivers through your body as he takes and sucks your blood with pure thirst.

He never looks away, keeping his eyes staring at you. His breathing feels hot on your skin, and the flow of your blood leaving your body makes it throb everywhere. The feeling is highly intoxicating, even as you are starting to feel like your strength is being pulled away from your body at a rapid speed.

His grip on your arm tightens, and his growls are so deep that they vibrate through your core. Your head is spinning as he keeps on drinking, and drinking, with no sign of stopping. You watch as his wounds are rapidly healing, the open gashes forming long red lines as the torn skin begins closing, the colour on his skin returning from its pale tone, showing more life in his body. While the more he drinks, the more you are feeling you are losing grip of yourself. You are starting to feel sleepy from the loss of blood.

"Jimin—" you whimper his name, suddenly noticing how your nails are digging into his shoulder and the arm that he is feeding on is losing its sense of feeling. Your heart is pounding wildly inside you, sending pulses of heat that run straight down south at your core until you cry out, not from the dark spots and the weakening breaths, or how you are slowly getting pulled into the darkness, but for a different kind of hunger which you feel throbbing between your legs.

"Jimin, sto—"

He takes a long drink, as if he needs that very last drop of your blood, before he roughly takes his mouth away from your arm. His long growl echoes in the room, followed by your ragged breaths and soft cries. You try to pull away from him, only to have him gripping your hand tighter and slipping his fingers between yours.

Holding his dark, feral gaze on your face, he starts lapping his tongue over the gash on your skin which he just fed on. And he keeps licking, sending rushing heat on your skin, never stopping even as the wound is closing tight and disappears, as if you were never wounded.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, while kissing your wrist gently and at the previously torn skin that is now left with nothing but a red, burning mark which will disappear within minutes. "I drank too much. I didn't mean to drain you."

Sending him a sleepy gaze and a lazy smile, you only shake your head. "You didn't. I'll be fine. I'm a Warrior Wolf, I heal faster than most."

With a gentle pull, he brings your body to lie on top of him with your hand still in his grip. Your bodies are both exhausted from the fight and growing lax as the healing process progresses, and neither of you cares enough about the bloody mess on his clothes or the state of near undress you are currently in.

"Thank you. You saved my life," he says, before laying a kiss on your temple. "Now get some rest. You need to gain your power back."

"You need to sleep too," you answer him with a yawn. Your thighs are still quivering on top of his stomach, and your knees are still too weak for you to move. "Is it okay if I stay here?"

"Yes. Please. Stay," he sighs, wrapping his free arm around your waist to hold you still against his chest. "Don't leave me."

A soft chuckle rumbles in your throat as you start drowsing to sleep. Your wolf begins to purr while you nuzzle your face into the nook of Jimin's neck. "Hmm—I'm not going anywhere."

"Good."