Monster Contract: My Pets Will Bring the Apocalypse

The Wolf Beneath the Skin

Seojin woke before his alarm. Not jolted, not groggy, just there, eyes open to the faint blue of early morning threading through the blinds.

The apartment was still, just the hum of the fridge and the occasional thump of a pipe somewhere in the walls. He sat up, dragged the blanket off his legs, and pulled his uniform down off the hook by the door, freshly ironed the way his mother always left it.

From the rug near his closet, a familiar grumble stirred. Fenrir stretched lazily, his smaller form barely as tall as a beagle but somehow still regal about it, golden eyes cracking open into slits.

"Why are you up so early?" Fenrir said, voice rasping through Seojin's head.

"I have school today."

"The prison of fear and boredom, you say, why would you ever willingly go there?"

Seojin huffed out something close to a laugh and reached for his bag, then paused when his fingers brushed the guild card still sitting on his desk from the night before. He picked it up, turning it over once, and on a whim pressed his thumb against the small emblem etched into the corner.

The card warmed slightly, and a thin shimmer of light unfolded from its surface, tracing a line up along his arm and across his shoulders before settling into the shape of a sleek black jacket layered over his uniform, the same wolf fang crescent glowing faint white across the back.

Seojin stared down at himself in the mirror, turning side to side.

"Okay," he muttered. "That's actually kind of awesome."

Fenrir let out a low, unimpressed huff, but Seojin was already grinning at his reflection, adjusting the collar until it sat right. He decided then and there he was wearing it, whatever it took.

The courtyard was buzzing with beasts by the time he reached the gate, dogs with plated spines lounging on the steps, lizards shimmering like oil along the railings, ravens with too many eyes perched overhead. Seojin walked through without slowing, and heads turned anyway, the way they always did, though the whispers had a different edge to them this time.

"Is that Han Seojin?"

"Wait, that's a real guild emblem, isn't it?"

"No way, the zero percent guy?"

He heard all of it, every word scraping past his ears, but none of it stuck the way it used to. His spine remembered how to be straight. A few students stepped aside without meaning to, just an inch or two, enough to notice.

"Look at my old friend."

The voice stopped him cold, smooth and familiar; that mock-friendly tone poured over something sharp underneath. Seojin turned to find Choi Minjae standing near the old courtyard fountain, flanked by his two minions, one with red streaks in her hair and a wolf ape curled around her leg like a scarf, the other with a floating eye-shaped shield beast hovering behind her shoulder.

Minjae's uniform looked personally tailored for him, with sharp creases and a small black bolt-patterned badge shimmering on his collar. His own beast, a sleek, long-legged cat with arcs of electricity skipping through its fur, lounged under the bench nearby, watching with lazy interest.

He walked over, grinning too wide. "Didn't think they gave out jackets for charity cases."

Seojin adjusted the strap of his bag and kept his voice level. "I'm not looking for a fight, Minjae."

"Course not." Minjae's grin didn't waver. "Just wondering who signed off on a loser."

Seojin tried to step past him, and Minjae shoved him hard in the chest, hard enough to send him stumbling back a step. A few of the students nearby went quiet.

"Oh, sorry," Minjae said, not sounding sorry at all. "Did that hurt your feelings?"

Seojin caught his balance and said nothing, and that seemed to bother Minjae more than an actual answer would have, because his hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of Seojin's collar, dragging him half a step forward before slamming a fist into his stomach.

The air went out of him all at once. He doubled over, one hand braced on his knee, and heard Minjae laugh above him, that same easy, practiced cruelty he'd been on the receiving end of for years now.

"There it is," Minjae said. "There's the face I remember."

Seojin's jaw tightened. Something in his chest had been sitting coiled for a long time, years of exactly this, exactly him, and it was finally starting to uncurl. He wanted to swing back. He wanted to plant his fist somewhere that would make him regret ever touching him.

But his body wouldn't move the way he needed it to, muscle memory built entirely out of flinching and folding, and the gap between what he wanted and what he could actually do felt like the widest thing in the world.

"Do you want me to help you deal with this pest?"

Fenrir's voice cut through, calm and direct, with no theatrics in it at all.

Seojin straightened slowly, still catching his breath, and something in him finally stopped fighting itself. "Yeah," he said under his breath. "Please."

The shift happened fast. Fenrir's presence surged forward, not stealing control so much as stepping into the space Seojin had just opened for him, and when Seojin's eyes lifted back to Minjae, they carried a weight that hadn't been there a second ago.

Minjae's smirk faltered. "What, you gonna cry now?"

Seojin's hand caught his wrist before the next shove could land, and the grip that closed around it was nothing like his own. Minjae's face twisted in pain almost immediately, and he yanked back hard, stumbling as his own momentum betrayed him.

"Get him!" Minjae barked, and his cat beast was already moving, sparks crackling along its fur as it lunged forward toward Seojin's leg.

Fenrir didn't even bother summoning anything of his own. He simply moved, a single backhanded strike catching the cat mid-leap and sending it sprawling across the courtyard stone with a yelp, skidding to a stop against the fountain's base, dazed but unhurt.

Minjae's face went pale. "You," he started, but didn't get to finish, because Seojin's body was already closing the distance again, unhurried, almost casual about it.

"Someone with a beast that weak, thinking they can put their hands on me," Fenrir said through Seojin's mouth, voice low and even. "That's almost funny."

He caught Minjae by the collar, the strength behind the grip lifting him half onto his toes, and that was when the girl with the wolf ape snapped out of her shock and shouted something sharp, sending her beast lunging in from the side with its long arms already swinging.

Fenrir didn't so much as turn his head. He caught the wolf ape's wrist mid-swing and used its own momentum to throw it sideways into the fountain's edge, water sloshing over the rim as it yelped and scrambled back to its feet, more startled than hurt.

The second girl's shield beast drifted forward next, its floating eye pulsing as a faint barrier shimmered into place between her and Seojin, and Fenrir simply stepped through the gap at its edge before it could fully close, driving a palm into its center hard enough to send it spinning off into the grass, the shimmer flickering out entirely.

"Anyone else?" Fenrir asked, still holding Minjae aloft, voice utterly unbothered by any of it.

Neither girl moved again. Minjae's throat worked around a swallow, his usual composure nowhere to be found. "N-no. We're done. I'm done."

"Good." Fenrir's grip tightened just slightly. "You don't get to touch me again. Not with your hands, not with your beast, not with your friends. Understand?"

"Yeah. Understood."

Fenrir held him a beat longer, just long enough to make the silence uncomfortable, then let him drop. Minjae hit the ground hard and scrambled back on his hands, and around them the courtyard had gone almost completely quiet, beasts shrinking back toward their owners, students watching with a mixture of shock and something closer to respect.

The weight in Seojin's chest eased, and control slid back into his own hands as easily as it had left, his shoulders dropping, breath coming a little unsteady but his own again.

He looked down at Minjae, still sprawled on the ground, and felt none of the guilt he thought he might.

"Thanks, Fen," he murmured, quiet enough that only the wolf curled somewhere behind his ribs could hear it.

"You should let me do that more often," Fenrir said, something almost pleased in his tone now.

Seojin allowed himself a small, tired smile and turned without another word, stepping over Minjae's legs and continuing on toward the school entrance. Nobody stopped him this time. Nobody laughed either.

The courtyard doors slid shut behind him with a quiet hiss, and he walked the hallway with his shoulders back, jacket still glowing faintly at the seams, feeling lighter than he had in longer than he could remember.

One class at a time, he thought, and for the first time in years the idea didn't feel like something to survive. It felt like something he could actually win.