"All packed and ready," Mark said, passing David and Jack their backpacks. "Evan will take your car while we're on the road."

"If there's even a scratch on it I'll—"

"Have his hide, yeah, we know," Jack and Mark both said in unison. They gave each other a funny look and bumped fists. Evan walked toward them with an approving nod.

David rubbed his face with a hand, shaking his head. "Children."

Evan scoffed. "Hey, you're the one who got caught by—"

"Yeah, yeah." He made a shooing motion. "We've got that covered already."

Mark snickered but changed the subject. "Where do we send them until we call? We'll have to have a safe space for her afterward."

"New Orleans," said Evan.

"That place is crawling with witches," Mark hissed. "I thought we were supposed to keep her safe; you know he's working with them!"

"Daphne has some people there," David bit out. "We'll hide there for a little while. He won't suspect that's where we're taking her."

"Yeah, because only a fool would."

David growled, and he snarled right back. "That's the best we can do right now! And we won't be staying there for long anyway; if everything goes well, we'll be clearing things with the Alpha and joining the pack."

Mark grumbled a few curses under his breath but otherwise remained silent.

"We're set to go. Are you sure you don't want anyone else with you?" Asked Evan.

"It will be harder to mask our scents, and a larger group is easier to spot. We'll come find you when we have her." He nodded and walked back to the others.

The cars disappeared through the path in the forest, and David nodded at the buckets of mud to his left. They stripped, put their clothes in their packs, and started to cover themselves with the mud. It was an effective way to hide their scents while they waited.

"How will we know if the Alpha is working for him or not?" Jake asked, spreading a handful of mud on his chest. He was a little shorter than him, and muscled from all the training. His eyes didn't have the blue hue theirs did when they shifted, but he had proved himself time and time again. Furthermore, he had a powerful incentive of his own. "You said he'll be weak on the day of her first shift, so there's a chance he won't try to communicate through him; so there's no way for us to know. How do we figure out if it's safe to go back afterward or not?"

"That's not our concern right now," said Mark with a sideways glance. "We're going to make sure she's okay, and bring her with us. We'll worry about him later."

Jake nodded and they shifted, jaws clamped around their backpacks.

They didn't reach their destination until nightfall, and David's legs almost gave up from under him.

"We're staying here," he finally said, dropping his bag. They were a mile or two away from the pack territory; far enough to not be spotted. It was a rogue territory that they'd be resting at before they talked to Daphne; a small piece of land unmarked by any of the other Alphas, serving as a meeting place between their packs when they needed it. As of late, it was mostly used for the treaty, but no wolf would be out there on a full moon.

Not one in a pack, that is.

Rest, he called over the mind link. I'll call Daphne.

~~~~~

Val was flung at a wall. She cried out, pain rushing through her spine.

"I've been looking for you," said a deep voice, filled with laughter and pleasure. She tried to get up but her hands had no strength to hold her.

A hand clasped at her hair, pulling her head up and dragging her forward. She lashed out with her hands but couldn't find purchase. With a chuckle, he tossed her body forward — right onto the broken shards of her bedroom mirror.

She cried and sobbed and begged, pulling the shards from her legs, but her wailing was only met with cruel, merciless laughter. She swung her arm around clumsily with a sharp piece, and he kicked it out of her hand with a click of the tongue.

She dropped to her knees; eyes blurry with tears, and snot mixed with blood running down her nose. She hugged the hand to her chest, putting pressure against the broken bone. Blinking rapidly, she managed to take a look at herself through the broken pieces; blond hair matted with blood, grey eyes wide open in terror, and a long cut running down from her temple to her chin.

"Please," she begged, as a hand clamped around her throat and pulled her up. Pain lashed at her face where he pushed at the wound.

"Such a waste of a pretty face," he mused sadly, forcing her to look up at the remainder of the mirror.

She couldn't see his face clearly. He was taller, much, much taller; and the mirror cut his face in half, only showing her a wide, malicious grin full of glee and dripping blood. She stared a moment longer at the bite mark on her neck.

"Are you going to kill me?" Val trembled while his chest shook from laughter. Again and again and again.

"What do you think I'm going to do?" he asked, bringing a clawed hand at the base of her ear, her collarbone — her neck.

"Please don't—" she choked on a sob. "Pl-please."

He hunched forward, and Val saw his eyes. Those terrible, terrible eyes; filled with wicked glee, and unquestionably — red. The red of an Alpha.

"Wrong answer," he whispered darkly, and slowly ripped her throat with his claws.

Val gasped, sitting up, a hand flying to her neck. She thought she'd been drowning for a moment, gurgling on her own blood.

"Welcome back to the land of the living." She whirled.

Damian was half laid on a fallen log behind her with his back leaned on the tree, and a hand casually draped over a bent knee. He watched as she sat against it under his legs, grey eyes alert and calculating.

For a moment she was back in that bedroom, staring at that mirror, a hand around her throat—

She snapped out of it, and an urge to hit something suddenly felt very overpowering.

She glanced sideways at Damian.

"How long was I out?" she croaked, throat dry.

"Just over an hour."

She looked around, a hand rubbing at her temple. They were still at the training grounds in the woods, and judging by the silence, they were alone. Her head spun; she hated those damn headaches! "The others? Zack?"

"Why, don't enjoy my company?" Her lips twitched upward at his lazy grin, but she couldn't manage anything other than that. Every time she looked at him she only saw that girl — herself — in that dream. He frowned.

"Zack was called back by the Alpha; said he needed to do something for him." He snorted. "The others went to Dereks'; their wolves pushed a little too hard. Alex and Ian helped them there. So here I am."

"Unhurt," she noticed.

"Disappointed?"

"Maybe a little."

He laughed, shaking his head.

"Hey, Damian?" He hummed. "Were you there when Ian's sister..." She couldn't finish the sentence; he nodded all the same. "What happened?"

He looked at her for a little while, then sighed. "I was still human back then." If he saw her surprise, he didn't comment on it. She knew he was a 'new' vampire, but she didn't know by how much. It always seemed easy for him to push back his urges, like he'd been doing it for years. "Ian was coming back from his last trip with his dad, and we wanted to throw a graduation party in his honor." He laughed then, humorlessly. "We brought drinks, and someone brought wolfsbane for anyone wanting to get drunk. After a while, a small group of rogues found us dancing around; they probably thought we were easy prey, too." He chuckled, throwing his head back at the tree trunk.

She glanced at him then, and she saw that his eyes were nothing like the ones from her dream. Those were wide, terrified; his eyes were just sad. She wasn't used to him without his walls up, and the image of him like that urged a reaction out of the thing nestled at the back of her head.

"I don't remember much after that. I was running toward his sister one second, then was flung sideways the next, with Erik sprawled on top of me." A muscle feathered in his jaw. "A rogue had been running toward me, and he thought it was a good idea to throw himself in front of me. I remember the wolf had bitten his shoulder and had taken a chunk out of me before Erik could stop him." He gulped, and an itch started to form on her arms.

"It was a little hazy after that. I started losing blood, and couldn't really see much about what was happening around me." Then his voice hardened. "I remember my dad; feeding me the vampire blood; choking on it; trying to spit it out — then nothing. They told me I hadn't died. That my body had somehow accepted the blood, the curse."

"So you're..."

"Alive, yes." He smiled, but there was nothing happy about that smile. "And a vampire," he added, "always a vampire."

"And you didn't want that."

"Would you?" he asked, and she hissed, drawing back her hand.

Her claws were out, and twin slices marred the skin of her arm, slowly starting to heal over.

"She's pushing again," he said. It wasn't a question.

"She's trying to." She balled her hands into fists. His eyes followed the movement.

"Hit me," he suddenly said, pushing up.

"What?"

"Hit me," he said again, much slower.

"Are you stupid? You know what happens if we try that. I just woke up from that." She jumped up, throwing him a ridiculous look.

"I might be,"—he nodded to the syringe at the base of the tree—"but you need to hit something, and I need to hit something. It's a win-win situation."

"You're not the one who'll have to stick a syringe in their leg." She narrowed her eyes when he started to circle her, and she instinctively mirrored him, more out of habit than anything else.

"Actually, I'll probably end up being the one doing that. And while I don't really hate that part, I'd, very possibly, hate it if you tried to bite off my fingers again."

"Way to give me ideas right from the get-go."

"See?" He grinned. "You want this. And we have the wolfsbane; so what's keeping you?"

"Self-restraint mostly—" he made a very audible 'pffft'. "You explain it to Zack when you go back with fewer fingers than the ones you started with," she growled.

"Deal." He lunged.

Val whirled, elbowing his chest and taking the air out of his lungs. This was stupid, so, so stupid. But she couldn't stop.

Damian drove a fist to her stomach; she whizzed.

"Oh, come on, I'm sure you can do better than that," he prodded, smirking.

"If I do, you might end up with more than just a few missing fingers," she leered, showing her fangs.

"As long as all the important parts are intact." He grinned wildly.

Val laughed and tried to slice at his arm. He caught her elbow and pulled forward, trying to make her lose her balance, but he only ended up pulling her onto him. She raised an elbow, driving it to his jaw, and he threw her back, staggering.

"Can I add on that intact list?" he asked, a hand rubbing at his jaw. "Because I'm very attached to my face. I don't wake up like this you know." An image flashed in her mind; of him sprawled on her bed when she hurt her leg; the tousled hair, the sleepy eyes. It was barely an improvement really.

She shook her head.

"I'll make sure it receives the care it deserves." She smirked. "Don't worry."

They went back and forth for half an hour, then an hour; she stopped counting after a while. All she knew was that she needed that, he needed that, and her wolf had surprisingly stayed docile for the most part — with a few well-deserved exceptions. At least no bones had started to break yet.

"I feel like you're tired," Damian panted, "aren't you tired? We can stop, if you want, we'll just call it my win."

Val doubled over, hands on her knees. The air burned in her lungs. "I'm just — getting — started—" she whizzed, forcing herself to stand upright.

She attempted to swing one last time, sure he'd try to grab her hand again, and pushed him back. They both fell, Damian landing on top of her with an elbow to her throat. "Give up," he said, gasping for breath.

"Never," she huffed, pushing him off to the side and straddling his waist. She didn't even have the strength to throttle him. They just stayed there, breaths evening out.

"Stubborn." He finally shook his head.

"Loser."

He pushed himself up on his elbows and pecked her nose. Val was up and away in the span of a second, stumbling over her own feet, barely holding herself up.

Damian laughed then; a roaring, hearty laughter that made blood rush to her cheeks. "I guess this is my win after all," he said, head tilted backward.

He pulled himself up and dusted off his pants, still struggling to breathe through the fit of laughter. She didn't think she'd ever seen him so carefree before, and it made some deep part of her happy to have been the cause.

Clear-minded and fuming, she glared at him through hooded eyelids. "Like hell it was!"

She was relieved to see the light color on his face from the exertion, probably a reflection of her own.

"Let's go." He beckoned with a hand. "We have to eat — and shower."

She let the jab drop with no retort — mainly because they both stunk — and followed him back with a click of the tongue.