Chapter Text
The fat squirrel's head bobbed up and down, disappearing under the river's waves before appearing again. The creature squealed; water splashed in nearly collapsed lungs. Stupid thing would freeze to death if it managed to pull itself onto the bank.
He ought to put it out of its misery…perhaps even have himself a little snack. However, the thing smelled rancid, doubted even the newborn would enjoy rotted blood. That was if the boy did not fall ill from whatever diseases the vermin hosted.
A final gurgle sounded before it stilled, eyes bore into his … almost condemning.
Maybe the divine power in the sky, that all talked about, would add another mark to his chart. If the Being did... There was no sign; he made his way back to the cabin.
The cries echoed throughout the forest; even a mortal would hear the ear-piercing screams if they dared set foot in the coven’s territory.
“I’m afraid his condition hasn’t improved.” Kai’s eyes lacked their usual glimmer; he hesitated, “perhaps his inquiries were too severe.”
There are some ailments even venom can not mend.
He does not wait for the older to set down the corpse he lugs, simply leads him into the room where their newest resident lies.
“Please make it stop... It hurts- please, it hurts so much.”
The boy on the bed babbles all day and night, calls for family that have made no effort to find him. Soobin swept sweat-soaked hair out of the man’s face, heated and patchy with fever.
The voice, hoarse from screaming, broken as he sobbed into Soobin’s hand; “Let me die…Please just let me die. Kill me if you must, please- please, I don’t want this.” He cried out to no one in particular. Perhaps he prayed to a god, Soobin would not know; he stopped believing in the divine centuries ago.
“I will not kill you child; you are far into the transformation now.” Soobin regarded him the way one might a sickly dog. Perhaps he should treat the boy with more empathy, for it was not his fault that the one to stumble upon his bleeding body was a vampire.
He recalled watching Kai’s creator; the way she would dote over him as a newborn. The pet names that rolled off her tongue as she fussed, checking him over and over. ‘Dearest, sweetheart, little one.’ It was no wonder the boy grew up to be so tender-hearted and delicate… What a waste.
The young prince's eyes filled with tears again, his body tensed as another round of flames erupted from within his veins.
Kai was uncharacteristically quiet as they made work of draining the body. His steady fingers traced the girl's arteries, a polished surgical scalpel slicing a neat line. However, the usual humming, singing, or ranting that the older had grown used to was nowhere to be found. All that sounded throughout the grimy room was the thick gurgling of blood into glass jars and sawing through bone.
Centuries ago, the younger had begged for upgraded working tools. Humans left antiquated shears for thin and precise knives; his pupil decided he, too, needed the technologies of the day.
“Soobin, won’t you say that you will?" He had pleaded on his knees, "My shears are so dull… Do I not deserve something pretty to work with?” Soobin was cold-hearted and merciless; he did not care for mortals’ futile attempts to improve themselves nor for the pleading of the fledgling. He told the boy so; he was not to waste money on such a self-indulgent want.
The next moon cycle, a lovely pair of scapels sat on Kai’s bed, neither mentioned it. However, Soobin praised the younger's handiwork a little more than before.
Soobin huffed, setting down what was left of the previous catches' corpse. Its mangled body sat in heaps of limbs, perfectly drained; now being portioned and scrubbed clean of any venom. Neither of them paid it much attention.
“Are you to be acting as if you have no tongue, or do you no longer wish to be my companion?”
Kai shuffled his feet, a nervous habit that seemed to have stuck with the boy, though immortally, he averted his eyes, pretending not to hear.
“Kai? Have you gone deaf as well as mute?” The boy did not respond yet again; perhaps he thought Soobin would drop the topic if he failed to answer. He would not.
“Kai, I ask that you refrain from vexing with me right now,” Soobin snapped, “between this order and the god damned prince hollering down the hall, I do not have the patience to be playing with you.”
The boy shrank into himself instinctively, Soobin’s fangs glinted from where he had barred them in his frustration.
“I apologize, it is not important. I am simply worried about Beomgyu.” His voice was strained, too cautious to be fully honest. “I thought you could save him.. That we could be a real coven, a family perhaps.”
He got no answer, only cold, dead eyes. “I was not aware he was noble, nor the extent of his injuries.” If he had the ability, Soobin was sure tears would have welled up in his eyes. “He looked so pathetic on the ground…the knife still lodged in his abdomen. I thought he would look so beautiful an immortal.”
Soobin stepped forward. He ignored the droplets of blood that fell on the floor as he came to stand in front of Kai. The boy flinched away from the fingers that came to pry the scalpel from his.
Gentle are the hands that smooth down wrinkles on his sleeve. Silent and patient are his eyes, “You ought to have left him there to die, the boy suffers because of your foolish desires.”
Perhaps a sneer would have been more effective, the barring of fangs or disciplinary scruff that any other coven leader would surely have executed.
The younger vampire does not respond, tense but pliant as Soobins’ touches linger. He buttons and unbuttons clasps, straightens out the already straightened apron.
“Even worse than the pain, you might have sentenced the boy to a fate worse than death.” A cold hand comes to tilt Kai’s head up. He grips him by the chin when the fledgling tries to free himself. Soobin tightens his hold. “Can you live with yourself if he dies? Perhaps he burns with hatred when he wakes up and realizes we have made him a monster. Would you be able to kill your creation?”
“I was not the one to bite him.” He is not challenging the older, as young and reckless as he is, he knows his place under Soobin. However, his eyes hold defiance, and Soobin sneers.
“It may be my venom running through the princes’ veins, but you are the one who sentenced him to this life.”
If the mortal was to be one of them, Kai needed to learn to stop trying to push boundaries. They would not crumble with a little pressure.
The fledgling hesitated, “I should not have forced your hand in biting him. I apologize, Soobin; he begged me to call for the town medic as I found him. Told me he had an older brother waiting for him to come home, that he was not ready to die.”
The boy was never going to make it to a medic; he was coughing up blood by the time Kai sat him on the covens’ table.
“Kai, darling, I am not angered that you possess a kinder heart than I. The centuries have not been kind to me, and I am afraid they have made me cold. I'm glad at least one of us has a heart.” He waited for Kai to recoil in disgust; the pet name had escaped him before he could register. The boy simply shook his head, finally freed from the older’s iron hold.
“You are not cold; you are simply more levelheaded than I…more self-control too, I suppose.” Kai tilted his head to look up into Soobin’s eyes. If they were anything more than two glorified corpses, Soobin supposed he would be able to feel the younger’s warmth, for they stood that close.
He ached to cup Kai’s cheek, just as he did when the boy was a newborn, to soothe the pain of growing in fangs. He remembers how obedient the fledgling was while his creator instructed him to open his mouth. He always stayed still and pliant as she ran her fingers along his teeth and venom glands, logging even the smallest growth of his fangs.
He could never do that again; Kai has fully matured, he has been for decades… no need for keeping track of such things. For a non-mate or creator to do such an intimate gesture. To even think of doing such things with a man, let alone him? Soobin was raised a decent man, and no matter how many millennia pass, he would hold tight to his morals.