Chapter 4: The Awakening Silence

The wind was different tonight.

Not wild. Not still.

Waiting.

Taehyung sat beneath the ancient birch tree, his back pressed to its wide trunk, frost clinging to his skin like a second breath. His bare chest rose and fell slowly, no steam in the cold air.

He hadn’t dreamed in years.

And now—he had dreamed of him.

A name had been carved into his bones without his permission.

Jungkook.

It rang like a war drum in the back of his mind.

He stared at his hands. Slender. Elegant. But not delicate. Fingers long enough to cradle the throat of a king or snap the spine of a liar. He flexed them, feeling the way power curled into his knuckles.

He was stronger than he looked.

Bigger than they expected.

But Taehyung had learned to be quiet.

An Enigma wasn’t meant to be seen.

They were meant to be felt.

His eyes—sharp and dark, monolid like twin blades under the moon—scanned the snow-covered glade.

He had felt the pull across time.

Across blood.

And now it gnawed at him.

Not gently.

Not kindly.

Like hunger.

He rose to his feet, tall and bare beneath the moonlight. The Enigma mark—hidden along his spine—glowed faintly under his skin, a spiral of ancient symbols long forgotten by even the oldest packs.

His body was powerful. Built from survival. Carved by loss.

And it carried the scent of prophecy.

“Jungkook,” he whispered again, lips parting in the cold.

His voice wasn’t loud.

It didn’t need to be.

The forest listened.

Something inside him was stirring after years of silence. Something old. Dangerous.

The kind of magic that couldn’t be tamed.

Taehyung didn’t know when he would see the Alpha again.

But he knew he would.

And when that moment came…

One of them would break

____

The wind howled over the cliffs, and the fortress breathed in stone and frost.

Jungkook stood alone on the northern battlement, cloak billowing behind him. The moon was high—blood-bright—and it cast his features in soft contrast: the round curve of his doe eyes shadowed by fury, his lips pulled tight beneath the quiet trace of his bunny smile… a smile that rarely meant joy.

Below, the land stretched out like a frozen map. But he wasn’t looking at the horizon.

He was searching.

He could feel him.

He didn't know his name—not truly—but the bond had already begun its cruel seduction. It made his skin itch. It made his instincts rebel. He was the Alpha. A True Blood. He was never meant to feel this way.

Never meant to kneel.

And yet...

Jungkook!

The voice crashed through his head without warning. Sharp. Velvet. Deep.

It wasn’t a command.

It was a presence.

His breath hitched.

He gripped the stone edge of the battlement until it cracked beneath his hand.

____

Far away...

Taehyung moved like a shadow through the borderlands, the runes on his spine glowing dimly beneath his black cloak.

He hadn’t eaten.