*******Namjoon's POV*******

Hurry up!

'Would you calm down? I'm not supposed to be there until 11. It's not even 10:30, yet.'

The sooner you get there, the sooner you can find out why he has my mate locked in a cage, and the sooner you can talk him into letting Delwyn out!'

You do realize that that won't all be happening today, right?'

And just why wouldn't it?

'To be honest, I don't think that he's ready. I barely got him to agree to helping me. Just calm down and let me take it slow with him.'

Of course. Let you take it slow. Because you don't care.

'What the hell does that mean?'

It means that you have no stake in this. You don't care about him. You don't want him as your mate. If he never lets Delwyn out of that stupid cage, then you lose nothing. While I...I lose everything.

'I didn't say any of that. That's coming from your assumptions.'

Then please, explain which part of that is wrong?

'I am still trying to come to terms with the fact that my mate is a man, okay? Just give me time to get used to the idea. He seems like a decent person. I might change my mind once I spend some time with him, away from his doctor tent.'

You will not. You keep insisting that you're not gay. So why would you care?

'Stop it, Osian. I'll try, okay? That's all that I can promise for now. Who knows, maybe I'll fall head-over-heels in love with him, and not even care anymore that my mate is another guy.'

What're the chances of that happening?

'You know, when you mumble, I can still hear it, seeing as it's in my head.'

I'm just saying that you seemed pretty set against it when you found out that your mate was a man.

I paused for a moment to think about it, and came to a realization.

'What if...What if I'm not?'

*********************

'Hey!" Isaac said as I stepped inside his tent. He was straightening up his supply area. "Give me just a minute. I'm almost ready."

"Take your time," I told him. "I'm early anyway."

I sat down on one of the chairs just inside the tent, that were there in case patients had to wait to see him, and watched Isaac as he moved around, cleaning up his tent. He seemed to be a very neat person. Maybe not Hobi's OCD level of neatness, but still neat and tidy. 

The complete opposite of me.

"Can I ask you something?" I asked him as he closed a box of gauze and put it on a shelf.

"Of course," he said without turning to look at me.

"Why don't you have a nurse helping you?"

"Oh...I..." he finally turned towards me and shrugged his shoulders. "I'd rather work on my own. I don't like most people."

I couldn't help but laugh at that. "Do you think maybe you picked the wrong profession?"

He laughed with me, the sound light and kind of breathy. It was cute.

"You might be right about that," he told me, turning back to put away a couple more things. "But it's too late to back out now."

I laughed again and he went over to his makeshift sink and washed his hands, then looked at me again as he dried them on a paper towel.

"Okay, I'm ready now," he said.

"Any suggestions where we should go for me to practice?" I asked him. "You know this base a lot better than I do. I've mostly only seen the field where we've been running drills, and the barracks I'm staying in, and then your tent."

"I have an idea where we can go," he told me with a smile.

"Is it a long walk?" I asked him.

He gave me an even bigger smile. "Nah. I travel in style."

"What does that mean?"

"Come on," he said. He grabbed my hand and I felt a small shock run through his fingers and into mine just before he dropped it. "S-sorry. Follow me, please."

I frowned as I walked behind him. HIs voice changed after he touched me. Much less cheery than the past few minutes. He went around the side of the tent, then walked over and climbed behind the wheel of a golf cart.

"Get in," he told me, his voice still sounding tight.

I did as he said and got in next to him, not saying anything for a few moments as he started driving towards wherever he was taking me.

"Isaac, are you okay?" I asked him, when the silence got to be too much for me.

"I'm fine," he said with his teeth still clenched together.

"You don't seem fine," I pointed out. "You did before...before you touched me. Now you seem mad."

"I'm mad at myself, Namjoon," he told me. He still wouldn't look at me, though. "I'm not mad at you. It's not your fault."

"What's not my fault?"

"I shouldn't have touched you," he said, like that explained it all.

I turned my body on the seat and bent one of my legs, pulling it up in front of me with the ankle under my other leg, so that I could face him better. It took a little adjusting to make sure that my leg wasn't touching him. I didn't want to after what he just said.

"What's wrong with touching somebody?" I asked, confused.

"It's not other people," he said, finally glancing at me for a quick moment, before looking forward again. "It's just you."

"I'm sorry?" I asked it as a question, because I really didn't see what could be so wrong with touching your own mate.

"I told you that my wolf, Delwyn, that I did a spell to lock him up inside my head, right?" He asked, making sure he had explained it to me before.

"You did," I answered him, no less confused.

He sighed as he drove the golf cart. "I haven't been able to hear him in almost nine years. That spell was strong. Really strong. After I did it, I slept for three days, because it took so much out of me to do it."

"Okay?"

"I've heard him twice in the past few days," he explained to me. "And both times, I had just touched you."

"So you think he's what?" I asked him as I tried to make sense of what he just said. "Breaking through the spell because you touched me?"

"I did a little research, called a few other wolves that I know, and a couple of witches," he said, glancing at me again, a little longer this time. "I think that when I touch you, your wolf gives mine strength that he doesn't normally have. Strength enough to create a small hole in the cage, so that he can talk to me. Or...well...Yell at me is more like it. He's pissed."

"Because of the spell?"

"Because I keep trying to push you away," he explained. "Because I don't want to admit that you're my mate. Because I don't want a mate even when mine is standing right in front of me. Because he wants to talk to his mate, and I won't let him. And also, of course, because I did the spell in the first place. I uhh...I kind of tricked him into it."

"How did you do that?" I asked him, turning to look as he drove the golf cart down a path in the forest at the back side of the base.

"I told him it was just for a little while," he said, sounding a little ashamed about it. "That I needed a small break after what happened to my parents. That I just needed some time to get past it. But, like I told you, that was nine years ago."

"Ahhh..." I said, some of it finally making sense. "I can see why he would be mad about that."

"I can, too," he told me honestly. "I get it. I do. But it's too much. He's too much. Meeting you is too much. Hearing him again is too much. I don't know how to deal with it, and it's giving me a headache."

"If you don't want to do this, because being around me is 'too much', then I understand." The thought of him backing out kind of hurt, but I really did understand.

"No, I...." he stopped the golf cart and looked at me. "If it's okay with you, can I not show you how to properly load your clip today?"

"Oh...sure." I knew that I sounded disappointed, but I couldn't help it. I liked being around him, even if he didn't like being around me. "You can take me back. It's not a big deal."

He shook his head. "No, I...I don't want to take you back. I want to do something else."

I looked around the secluded place in the trees where he had stopped, then back at him.

"Did you bring me out here to kill me?"

He laughed and rolled his eyes at me. "You're bigger than I am, dummy. How would trying to kill you ever work out in my favor?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know. Forcing me to load a clip properly at gun point seems like a good idea. But I'm just making sure. What is it that you want to do, then?"

"I thought we could take a walk," he said, pointing towards a walking trail that started between some of the trees. "And that I could tell you about what happened to my parents."

"I thought that I had to earn that?"

"I decided maybe it's best if I just tell you now," he explained.

"Well that's good," I said with a small chuckle. "Because I just realized something."

"What's that?" he asked me.

"I forgot my gun." 

****************************

A/N: Just in case you're invested and wondering... Funko Pop Hobi still hasn't regained consciousness. Please leave comments. I thrive on them. -------Kat