C44 - Soul-ed MATE

“Jimin!” The shaking jolts me back to reality, to the dark interior of the limo, to the swerving motion of the vehicle, usually so smooth. To Yoongi’s fierce golden eyes. “Are you hurt?”

I swallow past the lump in my throat, struggling to get myself under control. “Is Jihyo okay?”

“She’s fine,” he mutters, but his attention is on his hands. He runs them over my arms, down my body, my legs. He’s touched me a hundred times, but never like this—impersonal, efficient. Like he’s trying to find an injury.

“I’m fine,” I tell him. “Not hurt.”

His eyes glow with a ferocity that seems otherworldly. “Where did you go?”

He doesn’t mean physically. I went somewhere in my mind, someplace dark. A memory? A dream. “I think…I don’t know. I went into shock or something.”

“I’m taking you to the hospital.” He drops his fist onto a panel of buttons. “Baek. Central Hospital.”

The thought of being tied down with tubes makes me cringe. I still remember the smell of disinfectant from taking care of my father for months. “No. Please. I promise I’m okay.”

His nostrils flare. “Jimin.”

I press my forehead to his, the way he did in the restaurant. “I’m fine. I’m one hundred percent fine.”

“You scared me,” he admits gruffly. “I thought you’d been hit.”

My hands run over him without thought, driven by the same instinct that made him examine me. “Are you hurt? Do you need the hospital? Yoongi!”

He grunts when my fingers brush over something wet on his neck. “It’s nothing. A graze.”

“A graze from a bullet? Oh my God.”

He presses the button on the door again. “The Inferna.”

“No! You were going to take me to a hospital, but not yourself?”

“There’s supplies there. Not that I need much for a scratch.”

I hold my fingers up to the flicker from the streetlights passing by. Red flashes under each glare, turning dark and inky when we reach downtown Daegu.

An inch.

That’s all that separates life from death. The only reason he’s alive.

“What happened?” I ask softly.

I can’t shake the dreamlike feeling from when I was on the floor, huddled beneath the dinner table like it was my mother’s vanity. Even before that, walking the halls of Yoongi’s mansion like it was a place that exists only in my mind.

The only thing that grounds me is the hard, heated body beneath me.

He’s holding me in his lap, his grip strong enough that I don’t think he’ll let me go anytime soon.

“We’re still figuring it out,” he says, clearly furious. “He got the drop on an ex-SEAL on the left side of the building.”

My stomach clenches. “Is he—” Dead?

“Unconscious.”

I shake my head, uncomprehending. “Are you sure this was Kim Yongdae? There were a lot of important people there. A lot of people with enemies. Someone else could have been the target. And how would he be able to knock out someone trained like that?”

“He could have had hired help, but he likes to get his hands dirty.”

“I don’t understand.”

Yoongi sits for a moment, the secrets almost tangible in the air. “Kim Yongdae—he’s not really an alpha. Not an animal, either. That’s what makes him so hard to pin down. He’s like a shadow.”

“You make him sound supernaturally demon-like.”

“Most people believe in God. Would it be so hard to believe in the alternative?”

I think of the myths that I study. They’re just stories to us now, but the ancient Greeks believed them. They meant something then. They mean something now, because stories are important.

“Yes,” I say honestly.

He gives a low laugh. “He’s real enough, Jimin.”

“I know.” And that knowledge sits deeper than I’m willing to admit.

I curl into Yoongi’s arms, shivering at the words. Maybe it would be more comforting to think of him like a ghost.

Maybe he could haunt us without actually hurting anyone. The slick blood against my temple, dripping from the wound on Yoongi’s neck, proves the threat is real.

“He knows this city better than anyone, every crack, every corner. And he’s fearless. Other people behave in certain ways, even when they’re well trained. Instinct. Human nature.”

“Then how will you find him?”

Yoongi doesn’t answer, but maybe that’s answer enough.

How can he find something he can’t see?

How can he fight a force that doesn’t breathe or walk or eat, at least not like any regular man does?

At least that’s how he sounds.

In that way maybe the myths are true.

There could have been a man powerful enough to seem like a god, calloused enough to play with humans like they were toys, strong enough to defy death.

A sense of inevitability overcomes me, the same as watching the moon rise in the sky. There’s no way that we can change the tides.

All we can do is cling to the mast, the way that I’m clinging to Yoongi now. He’s my ship, my anchor.

My only hope for surviving the night.

!!~~~~!!

The night of my auction there was a man in the Inferna, his eyes a frosty blue and his hair white blonde. It might make another man look soft, but his broad shoulders strain his white dress shirt, muscles bulging beneath the fabric.

He looks like some kind of Nordic warrior, pillaging a village.

He takes one look at Yoongi and scowls. “Sit down before you fall down.”

It’s a sign of how affected Yoongi is that he actually listens. He takes two steps into the nearest sitting room and reclines his body on a leather armchair.

It could be casual comfort. Only a scratch, like he wants me to believe. But the way he closes his eyes proves it’s more than that.

He can finally lower his guard now that we’re somewhere safe.

Blood stains a dark line down the front of his crisp white shirt.

I wring my hands together, torn between wanting to help him and not wanting to make it worse. “You said there’s a first-aid kit?”

“Namjoon will get it,” Yoongi says without moving.

Wild eyes flash with ice. “It would serve you right to bleed out.”

I take a step forward. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but he needs you to help him. And that’s what you’re going to do.”

One pale eyebrow rises. “Your kitten has claws, Yoongi.”

“Hey,” I snap. “He’s not talking to you. I am. And I’m telling you to get a first-aid kit now.”

After a long look the man stalks down the hallway. I kneel beside Yoongi and take his hand in mine.

His eyes slit open. “I liked that.”

“Him calling me a kitten?”

“I liked you standing up for me.”

My heart aches. He’s been so alone, without even knowing it. These men at the Inferna, they’re his friends.

But they’re also tough assholes, used to hurting each other as much as helping. A group of lost boys, all grown up but still searching for a home.

Yoongi hasn’t had anyone to look after him. Now he has me.

Namjoon returns with a black leather bag. I expected something small and white and plastic, maybe with a strip of gauze and a small tube of Neosporin.

Instead, he pulls out a stainless-steel tray that contains metal tools wrapped in plastic, like some kind of portable surgical table.

Yoongi moves to take off his shirt, apparently unsurprised by the setup.

“You said it was a graze,” I accuse.

“It is,” Namjoon says, wiping away blood with a wad of gauze. “A graze that needs stitches.”

Yoongi shrugs and then winces. “You don’t have to watch. Wait upstairs for me.”

I’m not going anywhere.

“You’ve done this before?” I ask Namjoon even though he handles the tools with a cool efficiency clearly born of experience. He doesn’t bother looking up.

“Once or twice.” I ask again.

“He’s a doctor,” Yoongi says.

“Was a doctor.” Namjoon snaps on a pair of plastic gloves. “My license was revoked.”

My mouth drops, though I’m not sure what’s more shocking—that this large, rough-hewn man, a hint of violence in his every move, once made a living healing people, or that he lost his license. “What for?”

“What else? Killing patients.”

I move to stand between him and Yoongi. “Wait. Are you serious? Should you be doing this?”

“He went to medical school, bluebell,” Yoongi says from behind me.

“You should go to a hospital,” I say without turning. “Where the doctors still have their licenses!”

Something dark passes over Namjoon’s expression—maybe grief. Maybe fury. But when he speaks, his tone is droll. “Well, sure. He’ll lose another pint of blood in the process and the hospital will have to report the gunshot wound, which will lead to the police knocking on your door.”

“Better than you chopping him up,” I snap back. I don’t know where this protective instinct comes from, but it’s hard and hot.

I want to stand up for Yoongi the way no one ever has before. I want to stand up for him the way no one did for me when I needed help.

Large fingers take mine.

I turn to see Yoongi holding my hand, his mouth taut with pain, his eyes bright with a shared fervour. “Bluebell.”

I can’t even mind him calling me that, not with blood slick on his neck. “I’m sorry,” I whisper because it feels like my fault. His blood. My fear. Everything that’s happened since the auction.

He pulls me close, until I’m standing between his legs. It should make me feel vulnerable, being small and captive within the confines of his body. Even injured he could hurt me a thousand times over. Instead, I feel like he’s worshipping me. I always thought of the men as gods—powerful, angry. He makes me feel like a goddess, beautiful and divine.

“I’m one hundred percent fine,” he murmurs, echoing my words.

Only then do I realize the breath I’ve been holding. Yoongi worried about me, but I wasn’t injured.

He was, and the knowledge pains me in the deepest way. I step aside without another word, clinging to Yoongi’s hand even as Namjoon pulls up a chair.

“He warned me about you,” I say, dropping onto a smooth leather ottoman a few feet away, my fancy emerald dress wrinkled and ruined above my knees.

“Did he?” Yoongi says, sounding unconcerned.

“He told me I should run away from you.”

Sex for money. I guess it’s more honest work than your Dad did, but just as dirty.

“You didn’t listen.”

“No. I spent the first eighteen years of my life listening to the alphas tell me what to do. And then I realized that they were going to judge me no matter what I did. They were going to sell me and buy me and do whatever they wanted, so I may as well get a cut.”

Yoongi’s golden eyes glint with pride. “That’s right.”

“And how’s that working out for you?” Namjoon asks, his voice dry, the unspoken answer obvious as he unspools a length of suture tape.

“Things weren’t exactly safe before he came into my life.” I can’t quite shake the memory of the mystery man outside my window when I was alone in the house with my father bedridden.

Was he sent by Kim Yongdae?

Or someone else who hated my father?

I didn’t get a good enough look at his face.

For all I know it could have been Namjoon.

The only reason I know it wasn’t Kim Yongdae himself is because I would be dead.

Your father stole from Min Yoongi, and nobody gets away with that. That’s why he got knocked down. But Yoongi wasn’t the only person he stole from.

“I won’t hurt him,” Namjoon says without looking up.

“I know,” I say. Yoongi wouldn’t let the man near him if he wasn’t competent. He wouldn’t be at the Inferna at all. “I’m sorry I freaked out.”

He glances at me briefly before dabbing a solution over the area, wiping away bright blood onto a cotton swab. “I’ve done this a hundred times before, on Yoongi alone.”

“You know, surprisingly that doesn’t make me feel better.”

Yoongi slants me a taut smile. “No bullet can bring me down, Virgin lily. So don’t get any ideas.”

I have the sudden realization that he’s teasing me to take my mind off the shooting. That’s how much he cares about me, how much he cares for me. That he would protect me, covering my body with his. That he would pull me out of a dangerous situation and take me to safety. That he would joke with me so that I wouldn’t be shaking with anxiety while his injury is tended.

“Yoongi,” I whisper. His expression doesn’t change, but I feel the moment when Namjoon pushes the needle through his wounded flesh. The pain pulses through my body like it’s my own. “Take me home. After this, take me home. I won’t fight you anymore.”

I don’t care how much it hurts me to stay in the gilded prison.

In this moment I don’t even care how crazy I might become, the voices that I shouldn’t hear.

!!~~~~!!!!~~~~!!