The Lone Wolf - Marcus_S_Lazarus (2024)

Chapter 1: The Worst Night of His Life

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It had been a year since the accident, and Michael Corvin was still amazed that he'd managed to keep it together as much as he had.

The experience of losing Samantha in the car crash would have been bad under any circ*mstances, but when he'd also had to deal with the memory of that… thing… he'd hit… like something from a horror movie had just walked off the screen…

God, if it hadn't been for those scratches on his arm, he probably would have assumed it was all just some twisted nightmare, but even at his worst, he wasn't sure he could have imagined any of that, particularly when he'd been totally sober that night. He'd been told that the other driver had been the cause of the accident because the man had been drunk, but Michael still wondered if the man had been that drunk or if it was just because he'd seen the same thing Michael had and had less control of himself.

The image of that giant wolf still made Michael shiver, no matter how long it had been or what had happened to him since then. He wasn't sure what something like that had been doing in the middle of a busy road, but somehow the thing had been stupid enough to run into the street just in time to get caught between him and that other car. Sam had barely had time to scream before the engine hitting her in the chest had left her breathless and unconscious, while the other car (from what little clear memory he had of the accident) must have basically pulverized the wolf's spine and most of its organs, its head crashing through the windshield. Michael only briefly registered its fangs digging into his arm as he tried to push it away, but eventually he and the wolf must have both blacked out.

When he woke up a short while later, the wolf had vanished, but the fact that both cars were still pinned together made it clear that the accident itself had been real. Sam had been half-delirious from the pain, only able to ask him if he was all right before she finally lost consciousness, dying just a few minutes before an ambulance arrived. Michael had tried to convince himself that he'd just imagined the parts involving the wolf, but even if he'd wanted to be rational about it, that scratch on his arm had been itchy enough that he had a few suspicions about the whole thing no matter how much he tried to tell himself that it had been caused by the shattered glass.

It hadn't been enough for him to want to tell anyone else about it, especially when he had Sam's funeral to worry about, but Michael was relieved beyond words that an old friend's interest in horror movies had inspired him to take the time to find a suitably isolated spot for the night of the next full moon after the original accident. The old warehouse he'd found had mainly been useful because it was so isolated, but after he'd spent most of the night waiting for something to happen, he'd almost been relieved when he actually felt himself changing and knew he hadn't gone to all that trouble for nothing. The first moments of the change had felt like his body was being kicked apart from the inside, giving him a disturbing image of the Alien movies before he'd basically blacked out, but when he'd regained control of himself he'd felt a bit more relaxed, as though he'd just woken up from a deep sleep.

It was still disorientating to go through the change, of course, but at least he came through the whole experience without getting anyone else killed.

There were times when Michael wondered why he hadn't met another werewolf yet, but frankly, if the thing he'd seen on the road that night was any example of what the average werewolf was like, he was almost glad he didn't know more of them. Every time he blacked out at the full moon he was terrified of waking up and finding bits of other people in his teeth, and as it was he still kept finding the occasional local news report of animal attacks the next morning no matter how securely he tried to lock himself up. He was starting to get a better sense of what he did when he was in that wolf state, but the memories still felt like a bad dream when he 'woke up' the next morning, and he was still amazed that he'd managed to avoid embarrassing public nudity charges; his wolf had always stuck close to wherever he changed, even if it never stayed in the warehouse itself.

Learning about his new dietary requirements still slightly puzzled him, since he was fairly sure vampires were the ones meant to prefer blood, but through trial and error in private he'd managed to work out that raw steaks were close enough so that he could at least train his body to keep them down if he was on a night out. Even the occasional drink with friends was tolerable so long as he didn't over-indulge, so he tended to always volunteer as the designated driver for nights out to give himself a plausible reason not to be shown drinking much.

In any case, when he'd felt the need to get away from the memories of Sam and what they could have had, coming to Budapest had seemed like the best way to get away from the painful old memories and try and explore a few more pleasant ones. His grandparents were dead or had moved on by now, but they'd left him enough to find a flat, and he'd even managed to make arrangements to reserve an old storage locker on the outskirts of town that he could basically lock himself in every month. He'd managed to establish a complex little favour network at the hospital that ensured he always got the night of the full moon off by trading shifts with others; since an apparent side-effect of his new condition was a lesser need for sleep, it was easy enough for him to cover a few day shifts to make up the numbers. He'd even done a little private analysis of his own bloodwork, which had been enough to tentatively identify whatever had infected him as a kind of mutated rabies, but attempts to treat his blood with a rabies vaccine hadn't produced any kind of result, and he didn't have the necessary expertise to try and devise a better treatment himself.

It wasn't a perfect arrangement, but so far the wolf hadn't punched through the door or done any serious damage to the storage locker, so all Michael had to do was take a change of clothes there with him each night and hope nothing went wrong until he returned to normal. Until he could work out if there was any kind of 'cure' for this thing, or at least some way to keep the wolf under control apart from locking himself away each night, Michael supposed he should just be grateful that he had enough savings to cover the cost of the storage locker on top of everything else.

It was a lonely life, but he just had to hope he'd find some better way to control what had happened to him eventually…

Chapter 2: An Unexpected Sighting

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It might appear like a contradictory phrase, but in Selene's view, the most frustrating thing about the modern world was that it was so easy to find any lycan activity.

It made it straightforward enough to find lycans when the beasts showed themselves, even by something as simple as mysterious cattle deaths or anything like that, but those same connections meant that she knew when there was no legitimate sign of any lycan activity.

She was fairly sure that the lycans hadn't become extinct yet, as there were enough reported lycan attacks without any sign of an accompanying corpse to tie to them, but it had been so long since there had been a report worth following up that she was feeling particularly frustrated. With Kraven constantly inviting her to accompany him to some of those 'parties' he was always trying to set up, Selene would take any opportunity she could find to get out of the mansion, but there were times when she worried that she was using up even Khan's respect for her by following up so many potential leads.

Still, at the moment she was on a routine surveillance mission that even Kraven couldn't object to. For a veteran Death Dealer like Selene, one advantage of living in Budapest was that there would always be an opportunistic lycan or two who would try their luck against penetrating the mansion's defences to take out the sleeping Elders. With that in mind, it was important for them to keep a close eye on local hospitals in case lycans tried to raid the blood supply for quick food; lycans could eat raw meat, but blood was still a staple of their diet.

It was a relatively small-scale assignment, but with the recent lack of more public lycan activity, this was still Selene's best chance to find something interesting. One advantage to immortality was a sense of patience, and she refused to be like Kraven, who constantly favoured instant gratification without any real appreciation of the hardships required to do a proper job.

How he ever managed to be a Death Dealer for any length of time I'll never understand; he would have complained the minute he missed a chance to groom himself…

Selene's thoughts trailed off as a familiar scent reached her nose. Her thoughts shifted from berating Kraven to the task at hand, her eyes urgently scanning the area below her as she sought the source of the scent. After a few seconds, her gaze settled on a young man with long hair walking out of the hospital's rear door, wearing a dark coat and walking with his head facing downwards. On his own the figure was relatively unremarkable, but the scent of blood in his pockets would have been a clue even if the scent of lycan wasn't apparent once she concentrated on him.

A lycan working in a hospital?

Selene knew that a few vampires maintained some form of regular employment to avoid attracting too much attention, but most of those were in Ziodex and other affiliated agencies. The idea of a lycan actually working somewhere felt strange to Selene, even if she could see the logic of it; working in a hospital would give the lycan access to blood and body-parts, depending on their choice of diet.

For a moment her hands hovered over her Berettas, but she quickly dismissed that tentative plan; killing one lycan might be satisfying, but lycans never travelled alone in her experience. For all she knew, this man was just the immediate human contact for a larger group; shooting him would be satisfying, but it would leave his associates free and clear just because she was impatient.

Her mind made up, Selene began to move cautiously along the rooftops, until her target headed down the stairs into a subway. She jumped down to follow him onto the train, but remained at a cautious distance, staying on the other side of the station until he got into the next train. She followed him onto the train, but remained in a carriage at the opposite end of the train from her target, cautiously peering out of her carriage door at each stop just in case he got out. She attracted a couple of questioning looks from the humans on the train when she did that, but another advantage of her Death Dealer leathers was that it reinforced the impression that she wasn't someone who would react very well to being questioned.

Eventually her target got off the train and Selene followed his example, again taking care to maintain her distance while keeping him in sight. With the thick crowd masking her scent from a casual sniff, so long as the lycan didn't suspect he was being followed, it should theoretically be safe enough to keep an eye on him without being spotted herself, but she had to be careful…

After a few more minutes' walking, the lycan walked into an apartment block. Selene paused outside the building to consider her options; the building seemed an unlikely place for a lycan nest, and looked more like the kind of place that a mortal medical student would stay in, but she couldn't ignore the implications of that man walking into it. Eventually, she came to a decision and walked carefully into the building, hands hovering over her weapons without making it too obvious. Once inside, it was easy enough to confirm that her target was the only lycan in this building given the single distinct scent, which she followed up a few levels to Apartment 510, where the scent following ended. She paused in thought outside the door for a moment, but decided against it; charging into the room wouldn't help her determine if there was more to this whole situation than one apparently lone lycan.

She'd find out who this man was and then keep an eye on him for the next few weeks until she had worked out where his pack was and their size. Once she'd determined where the rest of his pack were, she and Kahn could lead an assault and take them all out in one go, and that would be that.

Anything to get me out of the mansion for a few nights with a legitimate excuse…

Mind made up, Selene walked briskly down the stairs and out of the apartment, glancing at her watch before she decided to take the train again; it wasn't that much quicker than walking, but she could use some time to consider her next steps in her new project, and it was easier to think sitting down in case she wanted to make any additional notes.

Obviously the first step would be to do some background research into her apparent target and see if that held any clues, but if she was careful, Selene might be able to find more out from a discreet visit before she 'had' to confront this man directly…

Chapter 3: Lycan on Lockdown

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After a few nights of searching for anything new on Michael Corvin, Selene wasn't sure how far this private little enterprise was going to take her.

Once she'd returned to the mansion, it had been easy enough to access the city records and establish that her new lycan target was Michael Corvin, an American medical student who had moved to Budapest from Long Island in New York less than a year ago. His nationality had been a surprise, but it wasn't as though the lycans had confined themselves to Europe any more than the vampires had. There were even rumours of one or two older lycans over in America building up a power base for themselves, but as these rumoured leaders seemed content to wait and gather their strength, Amelia had concluded that it was best to focus on the more active threat in Europe before turning their attention to a group that seemed content to be left alone so far.

That said, even if it was possible that Corvin was some representative of the American lycan packs, Selene wasn’t going to attack him until she knew for certain what to expect. His scent confirmed that he was a lycan, and once or twice she’d seen him react to such close calls as a cyclist passing too close to him to be sure that he had lycan instincts, but he had yet to actually do anything that might suggest he was in contact with more lycans. A quick check of his personal history didn’t reveal anything more significant than a brief period in the United States Marine Corps that ended with a discharge after less than a year, and she couldn’t find out more about that without drawing more attention to this endeavour than she was ready to. Apart from that, the only thing that stood out in his personal history was the car accident that had killed his fiancé shortly before he moved, and that could be easily explained as the catalyst for his move.

If she brought in more of the coven’s resources, she might be able to better tap Corvin’s communications and other details, but once she approached Kahn about her suspicions of a lycan presence he would be obligated to tell Kraven about her activities. She appreciated that Kraven would have to learn the truth eventually, but if she brought Corvin up now she was concerned that Kraven would just dismiss her concerns as her looking for trouble and have Corvin killed as a lone lycan before she could find out anything more.

The first few nights had been nothing but fairly standard surveillance, with Corvin working night shifts at the hospital and occasionally making calls when he returned to his apartment before bed. On her first night tracking him, Selene had infiltrated his apartment by the window and spent some time taking in his scent so that she could track him more easily in future, as well as a quick check of his computer system. When Corvin arrived home earlier than expected, Selene had managed to find a good position to listen to some of his phone calls while she waited just outside his window, but everything she heard seemed to be nothing more distinctive than an American medical intern catching up with a few old friends back in his home country. As much as she suspected that he was talking to his lycan colleagues, just interrupting Corvin's phone call to try and question someone that way would be stupid at best, and tapping the line was another thing that would require more focus being paid to this search than she was ready to draw in yet.

As the night of the full moon approached, however, Selene knew that she would have to change her tactics. Most lycans active in the present could control their transformations, but they still had some kind of reaction to the full moon, and Selene couldn't afford to lose track of Corvin at any point around this stage. She had managed to track his daily activities easily enough so far, but she couldn't afford to take the chance that the American lycan would get away from her if he changed his tactics during the day when she couldn't follow him.

Fortunately, one advantage of Selene's focus on her role as a Death Dealer over her social status in the coven was that she had a very large bank account that was used for relatively little apart from keeping her equipment in order; even her few fancy clothes were mainly there because it was easier to appease Kraven's insistence that she join him by giving him such occasional small victories. With that in mind, Selene had done some research and decided to hire a private detective to follow Corvin during the days of the full moon, taking her time to find a suitably skilled person before she made her choice, as well as buying a burner phone so that they could talk without anyone else in the mansion being aware of it. With a suitably large amount of money on hand, Selene had called the detective's office and hired him to follow Corvin over the few days leading up to the night of the full moon. She had affirmed that she had no reason to believe that Corvin was explicitly dangerous in the sense that he wasn't attacking humans at random, but it would be best for the detective to remain at a distance and keep track of his activities from sunrise to sunset.

It had been a very involved assignment for the agency, but that was another advantage of the current time of year, as the sun rose so late and set so relatively early that they didn't have to follow Corvin for long. Selene had agreed to get in touch with the detectives an hour after sunset and an hour before sunrise, claiming that she wasn't as concerned about Corvin's nightly activities. In practical terms, she appreciated that this could still be a risk in terms of exposing mortals to their existence, but she had to know what Corvin was doing during those days.

On one level, Selene was ashamed to acknowledge that she didn't know exactly how lycans were affected by the full moon if they still lacked control of their transformations, since every lycan she tracked was an experienced enemy, but she saw no harm in taking precautions by having Corvin followed for the days immediately preceding it just in case. She could track him during the nights for most of the month without any problem, but she needed to be absolutely certain of his activities around the time of the full moon, which meant that she had to know for a fact what he did in the daylight on those days. She made it clear to the detective that he should have a man on Corvin every hour of daylight available, phrasing it in a manner that simply suggested Corvin's activities at night shouldn't concern him that the man could interpret as he wished.

The first couple of days' reports met with nothing more interesting than the news that Corvin was working a couple of morning shifts at the hospital as well as the night shift Selene had already known about. It was a surprise, but it wasn't entirely unexpected; Corvin's lycan nature would mean that he didn't have to sleep as much as a human, so he probably took on extra shifts now to make up for what he'd miss when transformed.

In a strange way, Selene had to admire that part of Corvin's life; she maintained a certain distance from humans for their own safety, but there was something commendable in how he maintained the responsibilities of his human identity.

Finally, on the night of the full moon itself, Selene received a text message on her burner that Corvin had finished a morning shift at the hospital and then spent a few hours in his apartment before leaving for a storage facility. Selene had run a search and found that Corvin had rented a storage locker in that facility for the last few months, but that didn't explain to her why he had it. On the bright side, a check of the building's schematics confirmed that there were only a couple of doors that could allow anyone to enter or exit the building, and there was no sign that Corvin had the skills to get out of a place like that without being seen, particularly given the shape he'd be in tonight. She had no idea why he was staying in a storage facility, but at least it looked like he was going to some lengths to keep himself contained on the night of the full moon.

As the sun began to set, Selene left the mansion and made her way to the storage facility; all the coven's cars were equipped with tinted windows if they had to make any urgent daytime trips, but most of the time they only went to specific locations where they could be sure of being protected from the sunlight. When she reached the storage facility, Selene called the detective, confirming that Corvin had gone inside and hadn't left yet. Once the man had been dismissed with promises of a bonus, Selene got out of the Jaguar and examined the building to confirm the accuracy of the plans she'd studied, before she quickly picked the lock and walked into the facility. She took a few moments to confirm that the interior layout matched the plans she'd found before she set off down the corridor and up the stairs towards Corvin's assigned locker.

From what Selene had seen of this place's design, she had a sneaking suspicion about what Corvin was doing here, but it was hard to imagine that she could be right. The mere idea that a lycan that young could hold down a job in the human world and still have trouble with his true self…

When she heard the faint roar from further up the stairs, Selene picked up the pace until she reached the right level, but paused outside the door to the relevant corridor to look through the glass window. Seeing no sign of anything in the corridor, she picked the lock once again and carefully made her way down it, keeping an eye on the numbers on either side of the lockers until she was close to Corvin's locker. As she heard a familiar growling, she paused a couple of doors down from the relevant locker; the doors were fairly solid from what she had seen in the plans, but she didn't want to risk the possibility that the doors couldn't withstand an enraged lycan who was having a bad reaction to the scent of a vampire…

After waiting patiently for a few minutes in the corridor, Selene was surprised to find that nothing was actually happening. The lycan that Corvin had become was still growling, but compared to the noises she'd heard from enraged lycans in the past, Corvin actually seemed to be almost… Selene hesitated to use the word 'tame' to describe a lycan, but he definitely wasn't acting like the raging monster she had come to expect.

Was it possible that Corvin was everything he seemed to be? That he really was just an American medical student whose status as a lycan had no greater impact on his life beyond him needing to lock himself up to stop himself hurting anyone else?

The idea that any lycan could be capable of that kind of selflessness flew in the face of most of what Selene had believed she knew about her enemies, but she couldn't ignore the gathering evidence.

She looked at the door to Corvin's storage locker for a moment, but soon decided to leave it for the moment; the lycan seemed tame enough at the moment, but she doubted that trying to talk to him in that state would accomplish anything.

She'd give it a couple of days for her to work out the best way to approach him, and then…

Chapter 4: The Death Dealer and the Loner

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Under any other set of circ*mstances, when dealing with any other lycan, Selene would never have considered doing what she was about to do, but she'd spent enough time over the last month to confirm that Michael Corvin was far from a regular lycan. She didn't know why he was acting on his own or why he was working so hard to blend into life with humans, but if he wasn't a regular lycan, it would at the very least be interesting to learn the truth about why he was so different in the first place. She had kept the private detective on retainer for another day or two to make sure Michael didn't do anything too unexpected, but after she confirmed that he had just returned to his original schedule after the full moon had passed by, she had terminated her contract and paid the man for his services.

Now the only thing Selene had to do was something she would have once considered impossible; have a civil conversation with a known lycan.

More importantly, as far as she knew, she was about to have her first conversation in centuries with someone who knew nothing of the war before she came to them. She appreciated that she was at least potentially violating the Covenant, but Michael wasn't, strictly speaking, a lycan in the sense that he was fighting with them, and Selene had no intention of revealing that she was a vampire as soon as she made contact, so she felt that there were enough loopholes to justify her planned approach…

She was surprised to find that she was hoping this would work out; for the first time in as long as she could remember, she wanted to do something more to a lycan than kill it. Michael Corvin might seem like he was living an ordinary human life, but the fact that he was a lycan living such a life…

Chapter 5: Safehouse Request

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If Selene had been asked, she wouldn't have been able to explain it, but for the last few days, she'd genuinely found herself enjoying Michael Corvin's company.

It was strange, but even though she'd never really thought about romance since she was rescued by Viktor, there was something about Corvin that appealed to a part of her she'd never consciously thought about. When he spoke about his work in the hospital, it was with a genuine sense that he appreciated what he was able to do for his patients, taking pleasure in saving lives when she'd grown so used to judging people by their ability to cause death. He was curious about his new state, but he always seemed to know when he was approaching a topic she didn't want to talk about when talking about lycans, and Selene in turn was starting to recognise when she was risking crossing the same lines when talking with him.

Selene would never have expected that she'd become this fond of a lycan, but everything she learnt about Michael Corvin made it clear that he was only a 'lycan' because he'd been bitten by one. He'd expressed no interest in learning more about his new species beyond what he needed to know in order to survive, and as strange as it was, Selene genuinely believed he wouldn't be a threat to her on his own accord. It was still possible that his transformed self would be a danger to someone if he couldn't work out how to control it somehow, but Selene wasn't going to judge Michael because of something his more feral counterpart would do.

The story he'd told her of how he had been turned was unusual, but for the moment Selene had no reason to believe that it was anything but the truth. It actually matched up rather well with the brief reports she'd heard about lycan activity in America. With the lycan gangs there relatively disorganised compared to whatever old lycans remained over here trying to uphold Lucian's vision, it wouldn't be impossible for a random wolf to get caught in a car accident like the one Michael had described. She had to wonder how Amelia let enough lycans come together for one to change Michael under those circ*mstances by accident, but it wasn't hard to imagine a few cunning lycans managing to stay undercover just enough so that even Amelia could underestimate their numbers.

For the moment, as interesting as new potential lycan targets might have been under normal circ*mstances, Selene couldn't afford to worry about the situation over in America. She had no reason to believe Amelia or the American coven were in danger of an upsurge in lycan activity when she only had 'evidence' of one idiot, but she could be fairly confident that Michael would be in trouble if any of her more impulsive fellow Death Dealers found out about him. If she was going to help others accept that Michael was an innocent victim who had never chosen to become part of this war, she needed to help him gain proper control of his transformation. She had a tentative plan to help him find a safe environment where he could 'practice', but it would require her to share a bit more with another party than she was completely comfortable with…

She shook that thought aside. She was a loyal Death Dealer who was making a rare personal request of a close friend to protect a potential asset; there was nothing about this situation that compromised her oath or the Covenant in any way, and everyone would benefit from it in the long term. She wasn't going to ask Michael to do anything he wasn't comfortable with, but if she could help him get control of his wolf side, there were definite possibilities.

Her mind made up, she found herself standing outside Kahn's office, prepared to make the request that would at the very least change how a man she trusted saw her.

"Kahn?" she said, amazed at how anxious she suddenly felt now that the moment had come to make her request. She had faced off against transformed lycans with little fear for centuries, but the prospect of revealing any kind of personal information to someone else…

Even if she was exaggerating the extent of her association with Michael, this was still putting herself out there in an emotional manner she wasn't used to, but it was the best way to get help without telling anyone something they couldn't know too soon.

"Selene?" Kahn stood up from his desk to look at her curiously. "Is something wrong?"

"Not… wrong, exactly," Selene said, hesitating for a moment before she fully entered Kahn's office and closed the door behind her, looking firmly at the Death Dealer's official leader. "Kahn… do you trust me?"

"Trust you?" Kahn looked at her incredulously. "Selene, how can you even-?"

"Kahn, this is serious," Selene looked solemnly at him. "This isn't just asking you to trust me in the field to save your life. This is asking you to trust me when I tell you that, even if my actions seem unusual or strange, I would never do anything to break the Covenant or jeopardise the secrets of the coven."

"…All right," Kahn looked tentatively at Selene. "I can't imagine why you'd think I'd ever assume something like that of you… but I trust you."

"Thank you," Selene nodded at him, before she gave her friend a tentative smile, hoping that he would interpret her next words the right way. "I've… met someone."

"Met someone?" Kahn repeated in confusion, before his eyes widened in understanding and an incredulous grin split his normally stoic face. "You have met someone?"

"All right, there's no need to make that big a deal about it," Selene shrugged self-consciously, cursing herself for sounding so uncomfortable. "Just because I think Kraven's a pig doesn't mean I'm completely against the idea of… something, you know…"

"True, but after all these centuries?" Kahn observed, still grinning at her. "I knew you'd had your flings to vent, but the idea that you met someone? Who is…?"

His voice trailed off as he looked at her with a new sense of understanding. "He's human, isn't he?"

"A situation that is not without precedent, as you know-"

"I get that, but it's still… I mean, it's a surprise that you'd connect with someone enough to even say something like that…" Kahn shook his head with a smile. "How did you end up meeting a human?"

"It's… still early, but I like him," Selene said with an awkward shrug. "I saw him when I was on surveillance at the hospital, thought that he might have something to tell me about something that turned out to be a dead end, and ended up… well, we started talking, and from there…"

"Things just happened, right?" Kahn smiled at her in approval before he looked more serious. "Anyway, you're not here just to tell me about your romantic life; what's this all about?"

"Well… for various reasons, Michael isn't interested in becoming one of us yet, but I would like to be certain that he's got somewhere safe to go if things… become difficult," Selene said; she obviously couldn't tell Kahn that Michael was a lycan, but she also didn't want to directly lie to him if she could help it. "If this goes beyond what you're willing to do, just say the word and we can pretend none of this ever happened, but if you…"

"Selene," Kahn cut her off with a warm smile. "I know you'd never ask me to betray the coven directly, so just tell me what you want and I'll see what I can do."

"A private safehouse."

"A private safehouse?" Kahn repeated in surprise.

"I know that they're not always easy to set up, but it would be… good… to know that Michael has somewhere safe to go if the wrong people find out about him," Selene explained tentatively. "We both know that Kraven would take it personally if he knew that I actually preferred someone else over him; I'm going to keep this quiet for now, but in case something happens before I'm ready… well, it would be good to know Michael has somewhere safe to go so we don't have to force him into anything."

"I see," Kahn said, his smile shifting as he looked more seriously at her. "You realise that I'm officially obligated to keep the coven in the loop about any and all safehouses in the area in case we ever need them for anything?"

"I recognise that."

"And it would cost a considerable amount to set up a safehouse that only you and I know the location of?"

"I'm willing to contribute to the funding myself-"

"Which is why I'll do it."

"You will?" Selene was genuinely surprised that Kahn had agreed that quickly.

"Selene, you've never made a personal request like this from anyone in the coven as far as I remember," Kahn explained with a reassuring smile. "If you're going against that for this man, he must be special to you, and if you want to be sure he's safe… well, I might be loyal to Viktor, but I'm not going to turn down a chance to play a discreet little 'trick' on Kraven."

"Thank you," Selene smiled at Kahn.

"Just give me a couple of weeks; I've got a couple of sites I've been keeping in reserve for the right opportunity to expand our local resources. Is there anything in particular I should include?"

"A secure panic room, an armoury, and local surveillance," Selene affirmed. "Anything else I can sort out myself, and I would be willing to cover the cost."

"Shouldn't be too difficult if I'm careful," Kahn nodded at her. "I'll let you know when it's ready."

"Thanks again, Kahn," Selene smiled before she left her friend, heading to the range for a bit of target practice before her nightly patrol.

She'd partly expected that Kahn would accept her cover story, mainly due to the relative implausibility of the idea that she would ever associate with a lycan beyond killing it, but the thing that surprised her most was just how easy it had been to sell her cover story to Kahn. She'd needed to imply that her interest in Michael went beyond a friendly, semi-professional relationship to justify her level of interest without attracting too many questions about him, but when she actually started talking about it…

The strangest thing about it all was that, when she actually started talking about the idea of her and Michael that way, it actually didn't seem that strange. As much as she had enjoyed his company so far, she actually wouldn't be that adverse to the idea of… taking things further…

She pushed that thought to the back of her mind almost as soon as it had occurred to her. Just because she was helping Michael stay safe from himself didn't mean that there could be anything more between them than their current professional dynamic.

He was a lycan, for the Coven's sake; just because she recognised that he didn't mean her harm didn't mean that she was… attracted to him! She was just helping him now so that he could be a useful asset later; there were too many possibilities offered by the idea of having an inside man within the lycans themselves.

She ignored the nagging voice in the back of her mind that reminded her that she didn't need to have some sick attraction to the wolf to appreciate the man she'd been getting to know these last few weeks…

Chapter 6: A Mournful Anniversary

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The more time Michael spent with Selene, the more uncertain he was about how they were getting along in the first place. He appreciated that they hadn't exactly spent much leisure time together, but it had been weeks since they'd met and he still knew almost nothing about her beyond that her family had been killed by lycans and she'd spent her life hunting them down in revenge.

It wasn't like he didn't trust her; everything Selene had told him about his new lycan heritage so far had been fascinating, even if he privately found himself taking everything with a grain of salt considering what she'd told him about her own history with the werewolves. They still hadn't been able to do much about the possibility of him getting better control over his transformations, so he'd spent another couple of nights back in his storage locker, but Michael appreciated that she had volunteered to cover some of the costs for his rent of that particular locker in the absence of a better solution.

Right now, he was using a rare non-full-moon-related day off to deal with a more human pain; the second anniversary of Sam's death. He'd resisted the temptation to just go to a bar and drink away his sorrows, but he knew that he wouldn't be fit to work on this date, so he'd already taken the precaution of requesting the day off last month, and was just grateful nothing big had happened that might have forced him to stay on-call. He'd still ended up sleeping a fair portion of the day away just because he'd been so exhausted after his last night shift, but he was ready for his private memorial.

A glass of blood and a rare steak on a tray in front of him, Michael sat down on his couch and turned on the DVD he'd rented from a nearby shop, smiling thoughtfully as the screen displayed that strange drone thing searching through the wreck of the Titanic.

Maybe watching a film about a doomed romance to remember his dead fiancé would seem strange to outsiders, but Sam had always liked the film ever since it came out, and he liked to think that she wouldn't want him to forget what she'd loved just because she wasn't there any more. If he wanted to remember her, wasn't it better to focus on what she'd enjoyed in life rather than fixate on memories relating to her death?

As the film progressed, Michael let the story just wash over him for the first few minutes, taking in the moment when that archaeologist found the vault and the sketch of young Rose, but then he heard a sound from the side just as old Rose was looking over the drawing on the expedition's boat. He paused the DVD and turned to the source of the sound, only to find himself looking at Selene standing in the door of his small living room.

"What are you watching?" she asked, looking curiously at the screen.

"Uh… Titanic," Michael said, suddenly embarrassed that the woman who'd heard him howling in a storage locker had caught him watching a romantic film. "It was one of Sam's favourites, and since this is…"

"The anniversary of her death," Selene said, curiosity shifting to sympathy. "And the anniversary of the day you-"

"I… don't think of it that way," Michael cut her off, rubbing the scratch on his arm that he had tentatively identified as the wound responsible for his transformation. "I mean, I get that that's when it happened, but it's not like I knew that anything else had happened until a few weeks later; I tend to think of the day I first… changed… as the actual anniversary…"

"I understand," Selene nodded in understanding, before she looked at the screen. "Titanic… after the ship?"

"Yeah, it's set on the Titanic itself, looking at…" Michael trailed off as he took in her reaction. "You haven't seen it, have you?"

"I don't really have much time for the cinema in my line of work," Selene said, looking at the screen with new curiosity. "But I admit… I have heard about the ship…"

"Really?"

"You have to keep in mind that my organisation have… we've had some history hunting lycans that goes beyond my own membership," Selene explained, with what Michael could almost swear was a smile on her face; at the very least the corners of her mouth were turned up. "I… I believe that one of our members was actually on the Titanic when it sank; he… left written accounts of his experience-"

"He?" Michael looked at her in surprise. "You have a written account of a guy who survived the Titanic?"

"He was left in the sea after it sank, was picked up by a returning lifeboat, and spent the next couple of days huddled up in a mass of blankets to cope with the hypothermia," Selene explained, before she tentatively indicated the other half of Michael's couch. "If you wouldn't mind…?"

"Uh… no problem," Michael said, realising what she was suggesting. It was a bit strange to suddenly have to adjust his plans to include someone else in his planned private viewing of the film, but it wasn't like Selene was being pushy about it, and he had to admit that he wouldn't mind having someone else here…

Chapter 7: The Safehouse

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When Michael received the text message asking for him to meet Selene at a certain address, he wasn't sure what to expect from it. He liked to think he and the mysterious woman had become some kind of friends, but it was still a change for her to arrange a meeting place rather than just show up at his apartment to talk with him about something.

Still, when she was the best chance he had at regaining any kind of normality in his life beyond his job, he wasn't about to question her when she had done a good job so far. He was saving money on maintaining the storage locker and clothes now that he didn't have to worry about covering the rent by himself or replacing his clothes (even if he wondered how she got in and out of the building without being seen), and a couple of her meditation techniques had stopped the change feeling quite as painful even if he still couldn't stay in control once he was the wolf.

It had taken a couple of days for him to arrange a suitable meeting time for him to get to the address in question, but he was grateful that Selene didn't mind about the night-time visits that seemed to have become part of their schedule. Ever since his change, he might need less sleep, but even with his predominantly night shifts at the hospital he still preferred to leave the days when he felt alert enough to walk around his new home city and take in the sights.

It might seem like just superstition, but on some level, he felt as though he had to keep anything relating to his werewolf/lycan/whatever heritage restricted to the night, as though it would just be easier for him to accept this if he didn't have to face it in the light of day. He hadn't voiced it directly, and Selene always seemed to prefer meeting at night anyway, but he had to wonder what he'd do if she ever proposed a daylight rendezvous…

He forced down the part of his mind that tried to remind him that he might actually like the fact that he had a beautiful woman as basically his exclusive companion at night. They might have talked a bit and watched a film together, but he didn't exactly know that much about Selene beyond that lycans had killed her family, and if she'd been young enough when that happened to train up to the point where she could face what he became and live…

Shaking his head at how he'd let his mind drift, he glanced at the map he'd managed to print out to confirm that he was at the right address. Selene's message had directed him to what looked like another apartment building, but where he liked to think of his building as having character, this one looked like it was just a few bad storms away from being declared outright derelict. Cautiously, Michael opened the door, and was relieved to find that the immediate interior looked a bit more solid than the exterior had, heading up the stairs to the top level. He was just about to start looking around when a door opened and Selene walked out.

"You're here," she nodded at him.

"Uh… yeah," Michael nodded tentatively, hoping that his next question wouldn't offend her. "So… is this your place?"

"Actually, it's essentially our place."

"Ours?" Michael looked at her in surprise, fighting down the strange moment of pleasure he felt at the initial idea; he knew that Selene couldn't mean they were literally going to move in together…

"Look," Selene said, opening the door and standing aside to let him in. Walking past the leather-clad woman, Michael wasn't sure if he should feel impressed or subdued. On first glance, there wasn't much in the apartment, which included what looked like some kind of laboratory in an open area of a large room that looked like a lounge, judging by the couch and the television opposite. However, as Michael looked around, he noticed a couple of additional doors in the walls that he didn't immediately understand until he registered that the nearest door looked significantly newer than the others.

"Uh… is this entire floor one flat?" he looked at Selene in surprise.

"The entire upper level was converted for our purposes."

"Our purposes?"

"To be exact," Selene added as she opened one of the new-looking doors, "this is your new transformation room."

Michael was about to ask what she meant when he stopped to take in the room on the other side of the door. It had to be at least the size of the other half of this floor of the building, but without any windows, and the walls clearly lined with some kind of metal. Michael was surprised to see a couple of holes in the ceiling, as though something had been removed when the rest of the place appeared completely finished, but he had a feeling he wouldn't like the answer to any questions he might ask about that detail. Checking the room interior, he wasn't entirely surprised to see no sign of a handle on this side of the door; if this was to be his 'transformation room', it wouldn't exactly help keep him locked up if the wolf had any opportunity to open it.

"…Looks secure," he decided to say, before he looked back at Selene. "How did you set this up?"

"My people have safehouses scattered all over the city in case we need to interrogate or examine lycans rather than just kill them," Selene explained. "The head of our… security team… owes me a favour or two, so I was able to arrange for this safehouse to be constructed basically 'off the books'."

"Which means… nobody else knows about this place?" Michael looked at her in surprise.

"Only myself and Kahn, and he won't tell anyone," Selene nodded. "As far as he knows, I just requested this place so that I would have a private place for us to meet; I told him nothing about what you are."

"And he'll accept that?"

"Like I said, what you are goes against basically everything I believed I knew about lycans; Kahn has no reason to believe I would ever do anything like this for a lycan, so the idea won't occur to him."

"But he'd believe that you want a private place just to… be with me?" Michael asked, hoping he'd interpreted her explanation correctly.

"The current head of our operations in Budapest has a long-standing… obsession with me," Selene said, her lip curling in a manner that made it clear she didn't want to discuss that situation any further. "If he knew that I was spending any time with a man for reasons other than hunting lycans… well, let's just say it wouldn't be good for your health."

"Ah," Michael observed, deciding not to overthink that particular warning. "Not a nice guy?"

"He's been riding on his reputation from a victory he achieved… a long time ago, and since then I'd be surprised if he's done anything more than attend parties and buy fancy clothes."

"So it's all about him and what he wants rather than actually doing anything to help your campaign, huh?" Michael replied, smiling slightly at the thought of some apparent arrogant rich prick trying to win Selene over with money. "Yeah, I can see why you wouldn't like a guy like that."

Granted, he didn't think that he would have a serious… chance with her- if he was interested in anything like that- but the difference was that he wasn't going to force his attentions where they weren't wanted.

"Quite," Selene said, a bitter edge to her voice before she smiled and continued her explanation. "In any case, my associates and I have used rooms like this to keep lycans contained during the full moon in the past; I can safely confirm that even if your wolf truly loses its temper, it's impossible for you to do enough damage to break out of that room before the sun rises."

"I… see," Michael said, taking in the transformation room one last time before he walked out of the room and turned his attention back to taking in the rest of the flat. There was a computer set up in the area he'd identified as the 'laboratory', along with a few test tubes and a couple of devices that put him in mind of the medical testing equipment used for analysing biological samples, but it generally looked rather basic. "Is this it?"

"Kahn decided it was easier to put this all together if he just focused on providing the bare essentials," Selene explained. "I picked up a few items like the television after he confirmed it was complete, and he's still going to need to provide me with contact details to set up the security system properly, but I thought that you would prefer to help me… decorate, considering that you're the one this place was created for."

"…Thanks," Michael said. Walking further into the flat to take it all in, he wasn't entirely surprised to find a cupboard with a large collection of weapons in it; considering Selene's history, it made sense that she'd make sure any place she might be staying would be able to properly defend itself. There were a couple of bedrooms (Michael refused to feel disappointed that there were two separate rooms), a basic bathroom, and a few books and a desk in a small room that he immediately thought of as a 'study'.

"Looks good," he glanced back at Selene. "I… well, thanks,"

"You're welcome," Selene nodded, before she indicated the television. "In the meantime… if you have time, shall we watch another film?"

"Another?" Michael looked at her with a smile he couldn't entirely supress.

"If you don't… well, it just struck me after we saw Titanic that I haven't done anything just for fun for… well, it's been a while," Selene said, looking surprisingly tentative for the strong woman Michael had become used to. "I rented a film that I thought looked… amusing…"

Looking back at the television, Michael saw the rental DVD lying alongside it- the same shop he'd used when he rented Titanic, he noted- and opened the box to look at the contents.

"The Mask?" he looked back at Selene with a smile.

"It seemed… unconventional," Selene shrugged. "A way of just… getting away from it all for a while, you know?"

"Yeah, I've seen it a while back; it's pretty good," Michael nodded at her. "If you've got the time, I'm up for it if you are."

It wasn't a conventional 'date movie', even if Michael dared to consider what he was doing with Selene any kind of dating, but considering that he was a werewolf and she was a werewolf hunter, surely they deserved a chance to watch something at least a bit funny?

Chapter 8: Two Views

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Kraven had no idea what was going on with Selene these days.

He appreciated that he didn't always understand her at the best of times- why the woman enjoyed going out every night to fight lycans rather than appreciating the status she would gain as his partner he would never comprehend- but recently even what little he thought he understood about her seemed to have been thrown out of the window. Where it used to be hard to get Selene to do anything but go on patrol for any recent lycan sightings, in the last few weeks she had been apparently taking nights off to go out into the city for reasons he hadn't been able to find out.

He didn't think that she knew anything about his current association with Lucian- if there was any evidence of that, she would almost certainly have tried to use it to expose his current plans- but he was certain that something about Selene had changed recently. He only maintained a general awareness of the patrol patterns of most of the Death Dealers, beyond making sure they never went too close to any territory that Lucian had identified as his own, but he took care to keep track of when Selene was on duty, and she had definitely been going out on a few dates when he was sure she wasn't scheduled to do anything.

The problem lay in how he could find out what she was truly up to without pushing his luck too far. Ordering her to tell him would give away the fact that he had some reason to be concerned about what she was doing outside of patrols, and he couldn't use the excuse that she was potentially jeopardising their activities without risking questions about why he was so concerned about that risk in the first place, considering the efforts he and Lucian had gone to in order to be discreet about the growing lycan presence in the city.

He greatly preferred the benefits of his current position as a relatively removed 'administrator' to the hazards of fieldwork, but this was the first time in several decades that he regretted withdrawing from a more active role in the Death Dealers. He didn't doubt that he had their obedience, but he didn't have the social contacts necessary to learn exactly what Selene was up to without tipping the rest of the coven off that he was concerned. He recognised that his interest in her wasn't unknown, but the last thing he wanted was to make anyone else think that he was some desperate waste so pathetically eager to get the attention of one girl.

Unable to calm his mind enough to focus even on his current companion in the bed, Kraven finally put the current female out of his mind as a bad effort, shoving her to the side and getting out of the bed. He shrugged on pyjama trousers and a robe and walked out of the room, with some half-formed thought of grabbing a drink from the kitchen, only to be surprised when he found Selene in the corridor, wearing casual clothing that was almost more dramatic than her usual Death Dealer leathers. The dark leather jacket she wore bore some similarities to her usual attire on her patrols, but the sight of her in a white shirt and dark blue jeans was a particularly bizarre sight to him.

"Selene?" he said, feeling a need to confirm what he was looking at. "Is… where are you going?"

"I'm going out."

"You," Kraven looked sceptically at her. "You are 'going out'."

"Is there a problem with that?"

"There is if you're not available when we need you-"

"In which case Kahn has my number and can call me if something comes up that urgently requires my attention," Selene shrugged, before she fixed him with a grim stare. "The last time I checked I was still entitled to some free time when I'm not on duty; there's nothing wrong with that. If you don't like the way I do things, Kraven?" Selene paused to give him a strangely exaggerated smile. "Somebody stop me."

Kraven could only stare at her in confusion at that statement, trying to work out where she had come up with such an odd turn of phrase. If he didn't know that Selene didn't really do anything for entertainment, he could have sworn that she had just been quoting something…

"Well, I'm off," Selene said, nodding at him in brisk understanding before she turned and walked down the corridor, leaving Kraven staring after her in confusion.

The most frustrating thing about Selene's observation was that he couldn't deny that she'd made a valid point. He might have been subtly encouraging Selene to try more leisurely pursuits in the hopes that she'd do them with him, but he didn't exactly have the authority to make her do anything outside of patrol.

He couldn't even rely on his planned seduction efforts; if he hadn't been able to win her over so far, he was just going to have even more trouble with that plan when she was doing something he didn't know about and had no way to compensate for.

Having her on side would make the transition of power so much simpler, but she was so set in her own vendetta that he knew he could never make her accept his vision until there was no alternative available…

Chapter 9: Changing in Lockdown

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It was strange for Selene to admit it even to herself, but she actually missed how she didn't have much of a choice in her current attire.

She would deny it if she had to explain it to anybody else, but she had enjoyed the chance to actually have something to do on her days off for a change. She acknowledged that she'd started out following Michael just because she wanted to find another lycan nest, but since she'd started talking to him, she'd been surprised to find herself genuinely enjoying his company. She'd never truly abandon the war so long as her people needed her, but with Michael to inspire her, she'd found herself expanding her interests and seeking out more human activities than she'd ever considered before.

Unfortunately, right now she was in the safehouse for a more practical and potentially dangerous purpose; Michael was going to transform tonight, and she had to be there to make sure he didn't break out and hurt anybody.

She had faith that Kahn's efforts would have made sure that the room could hold a transformed lycan, but with Michael's first transformation since the safehouse had become available, it would have been irresponsible not to take every precaution. Michael had managed to take the previous day off work, and Selene had been able to borrow one of the mansion's cars with specially-tinted windows to get here before sunset, but even with the delays caused by the afternoon traffic she'd forgotten to take into account, they'd still arrived here with time to spare before the moon rose.

"How is it the moon still affects me even when I'm inside?" Michael mused as they stood in the safehouse flat. "I mean, in most of the movies it only happens when the wolf sees the moon… or the moonlight hits the wolf, anyway…"

"The popular theory is that the rising of the moon triggers some side-effect in the water in the human body that causes certain chemicals to rise and shift inside the lycans to trigger the transformation," Selene explained. "Obviously it's not something we can easily analyse even if we managed to capture a lycan in time to study their body chemistry as they change, but it makes as much sense as anything."

"And the older ones can control that change to do it whenever they want," Michael nodded at her in understanding before his expression became less certain. "So I get that you have faith in the guy who made this room, but are you sure that you can't just… drug me or something to keep me human?"

"It wouldn't work," Selene shook her head. "Lycan physiology is too advanced to be affected by simple drugs; the amount we'd need to do anything to you would actually start threatening your life."

"And you're certain of that?"

"The… my associates have experimented with all possible means of taking down lycans as technology developed, and their reaction to silver is still the most consistent weakness they have," Selene affirmed. "There are rumours that the lycans themselves have been working on enzymes to help their new recruits retain their human sides if they risk transforming in a public location, but to be frank, we would never be able to hold any lycan prisoner long enough to test that theory ourselves."

"They wouldn't let you find a way to do something like that to them, huh?"

"To say the least. And before you ask, I'm not a scientist myself and I don't know anyone with the necessary biological expertise that I would trust enough to tell about you just yet, so we can't work out if there's actually a way to do that. Once we have more evidence that you're not dangerous, I will look into it, but right now anybody I might talk to would just see you as a useful specimen."

"Right," Michael said, an uncomfortable expression on his face before he looked more directly at Selene. "Is it harsh to say your group is a bit… obsessive?"

"Considering the potential danger of a rampaging lycan, we often have to be fast and decisive," Selene observed solemnly. "In any case, right now the best alternative I could offer to this room is shooting you in the arm or something else non-fatal that might retard your body's transformation, but there's the possibility of long-term damage to your system if we do that on a regular basis."

"…Yeah, let's not do that."

"Quite," Selene nodded, before she indicated the door to the secure room. "I appreciate that this is basically just trading one cell for another, but I can offer you my assurances that you won't break out of this one, and I'll be there to keep you contained if anything does go wrong."

"Without killing me, right?" Michael smiled tentatively at her.

"I know a trick or two to put you down at least until sunrise," Selene nodded back at him. She might prioritise killing lycans when she was in the field herself, but there had been a few occasions where she'd been forced to bring them in alive for questioning. "In the meantime, you should get inside; we might as well see if this will work."

Swallowing in apprehension, Michael shrugged off his shirt and kicked off his shoes before he walked into the secure room. Selene moved to close the door, but paused long enough to allow him to toss his trousers out before he closed the door behind him.

Despite what they were about to do, Selene smiled at that particular touch. Michael had taken to buying new trousers from a charity shop before his last few transformations so that he would only lose something relatively cheap when he changed, but clearly he didn't want to lose his better trousers in this situation.

Moving back to the observation room, Selene smiled as she saw Michael crouching in the middle of the room; he evidently recognised the need for this room to be under observation, but he still didn't feel entirely comfortable putting himself on display. It was a funny example of human modesty, but Selene wasn't going to tease Michael about it when he had so many other issues to deal with right now.

Besides, he looks rather good…

Selene put that thought out of her mind as Michael let out an agonised roar and his body began to twist and change; whatever her thoughts about his human body, they weren't going to apply in the next few minutes. Selene could recall some of the biology lessons she'd received about lycan transformation as their understanding of the condition developed, and she tried not to get distracted by the thought of the pain Michael must be experiencing right now. Even as the transformation became more natural for older lycans, they would still experience agonies such as their bones breaking and re-shaping themselves, their skin being torn away as fur emerged, their muscles and skeletal structure twisting and growing…

In an academic way, it was fascinating to have the opportunity to see a lycan transform and know that she was relatively safe. Most transformed lycans basically treated their wolf as something they could point and aim at their enemy, but this was a rare occasion where she could be certain that the transformed lycan wouldn't attack her the moment she let her guard down. Watching Michael scream and roar in pain as his body twisted into its new shape, Selene suddenly wondered how much of what she'd always taken as lycans' feral roars was actually them trying to hide the pain of their transformation, but put that thought to the side; they were always transforming with the intent to kill, where Michael was only changing now because his body was making him do it.

It took a couple of minutes, but eventually the screams of pain were replaced by the more familiar feral roar of an enraged wolf, all trace of Michael's human form replaced by a large lycan that howled in rage and slammed itself against the nearest wall. Selene allowed herself a moment to be impressed at how Kahn's work stood up to Michael's assault despite how little time he'd had to put this place together, the walls barely bending beneath his attack, but when he turned to charge towards the window, she shifted to prepare for an attack.

"Michael, stop!" she yelled, slamming her hand against the button that activated the room's internal communicator; it was instinct more than anything else, but she had to assure herself that she'd tried everything-

Michael stopped.

It wasn't a quick stop, and he was looking at the window with a feral edge to his expression that made it clear he wasn't entirely sure why he'd done it, but the fact remained that after she had spoken, he'd scrambled to halt his charge towards the window, and was now looking at it with a curious expression that she'd never seen on a lycan before.

"…Michael?" she said at last, her tone cautious. "Is… is that you?"

The lycan let out a curious growl that Selene wasn't sure how to interpret, but she wouldn't worry about the finer details of how to communicate with Michael in this state when something bigger was going on right now. For the first time in as long as she could recall, she was facing a transformed lycan that genuinely looked as though it wasn't about to try and tear through her and anyone and anything between them both.

Granted, the transformed Michael still looked tense and uncomfortable as he paced around the room, but every time he looked at the mirrored glass… even if he couldn't see her directly, he seemed to calm down as though taking comfort in the knowledge that she was there.

"I… I don't think I've told you about my family, have I?" she said at last, feeling a need to say something as Michael looked at the window separating them. When the lycan simply looked at her in silence, Selene steeled herself and continued. "We lived on a farm that was basically run by my brother-in-law, but my father worked as an architect for a wide range of clients, renowned for his unique design ideas. My mother enjoyed the status we got from his work, but she always spared the time to take my nieces for horseriding lessons each day…"

As the lycan sat and watched the window, Selene wasn't sure if he would remember any of this when he returned to human form, but she was surprised to find that it didn't matter to her either way. If he remembered, she trusted him with that information, and if he didn't remember, she would tell him again later.

She didn't know when she'd get around to telling him this when he could ask her questions about it in turn, but it felt… good… to know that she trusted him with it.

She was suddenly struck by the thought that her father would approved of Michael if they'd had the chance to meet, but pushed that thought down; as much as she'd loved her father, he was long gone, and she and Michael didn't have that kind of relationship…

Chapter 10: Humanising the Dealer

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It was almost surprisingly how easy it was for Selene to arrange for another night off the next full moon. It wasn't as though there was any obvious reason to be concerned about lycan activity in Budapest- Michael aside, she hadn't seen or heard of clear lycan activity in the city for the last few months- but when she had spent so long making sure she was on duty on these nights, Selene had to admit that she was slightly surprised nobody had noticed this break in her routine so far even if this would only be the third such night. She wasn't complaining about it, and she had made it clear to Kahn that she would be available as fast as possible if anything significant happened to any of her comrades, but so far only Kraven and Kahn had shown any sign that they noticed her taking time off, and Kahn only knew anything because she'd told him some of what she was doing in the first place.

Of course, even Kahn didn't know that she had taken the time to set up a camera outside Michael's apartment building with video-feed sent directly to a particular channel on the safehouse television, but that was just a necessary precaution. The hospital where he worked was already under constant observation that she had been able to tap at her leisure, but it hadn't been hard to use some of her accumulated pay to set up a new camera watching the apartment. If anything happened to Michael at his apartment or the hospital during the day, she could check the cameras and find out what she was looking for as soon as she had any reason to believe something was wrong.

She appreciated that putting this much effort into keeping track of Michael and keeping him secret wouldn't be practical long-term, but public lycan activity was relatively quiet right now. If she wasn't needed in the field, it made more sense for her to focus her efforts on helping Michael rather than hunting for something that might not even be out there. She would need more time to confirm that his last transformation hadn't just been a fluke event even if she couldn't explain what might have been different about that one time, but if Michael continued to show such progress once he transformed, she might still have a chance to persuade Kahn in particular to accept her new… friend… as an ally…

Friend…

Selene shied away from the idea that Michael might be anything more than that to her; she was helping him control his lycan side so that he could be a potential asset to their war, but the idea that she could be… that she might want to do anything more…

As she looked around the safehouse for something else to think about, Selene found herself smiling at this strange example of normality she'd made for herself in the last couple of months. Actually getting to the safehouse during the day had been tricky at first, but once Selene had taken the time to get her Jaguar's windows reinforced with tinted glass, it was relatively simple to make the trip. It was an optional 'upgrade' some of the coven had been making to their vehicles recently which Selene had just never bothered with earlier as she wasn't one of the vampires who regularly interacted with their human contacts, so once again, it was a feature that might strike others as odd, but would be easy to explain if anyone asked her why she'd done it.

For what had started out as just a convenient place to take Michael when he transformed, the safehouse had become surprisingly comfortable over the last few weeks. It still wasn't a permanent residence, with the only food there being a few raw steaks in the freezer for if Michael felt peckish while he was using it (Selene had taken care to never be present when he was eating in case he asked her why she wasn't doing the same), but the safehouse was building up a surprising range of creature comforts. Aside from practical additions such as a cupboard or two to serve as an offsite armoury, the original couch had been replaced with a more comfortable one, and a couple of smaller chairs had been added to either side in case either she or Michael wanted to sit somewhere different. The walls were still relatively bare, as neither she or Michael had a particular interest in decorating the place, but the television had built up a large collection of DVDs, both rented and purchased, as Michael unwittingly expanded Selene's knowledge of popular culture. Ever since they'd watched Titanic, it had become almost tradition for the two of them to meet up at least once a week and watch a DVD or two together, and Selene had been increasingly surprised to find how much she enjoyed most of them.

She wouldn't admit it to anyone else, but while she'd watched Titanic out of historical curiosity, some of the other films they'd watched since then each had their own strange appeal. She'd gone into The Mask expecting something slightly whacky considering what she'd heard about the main actor being a comedian, but she found the film to be musing and thought-provoking in its way. As cliché as it seemed, there was something to be said for the fundamental message that all a person needed was to have faith in themselves rather than rely on a more dramatic approach that wasn't truly them…

Of the films they watched later, Selene had never quite been able to engage with Spawn, as she found the villain's agenda to be rather basic; she could accept that the lycans killed because they were animals, but a sentient being making a plan to unleash a virus that could destroy the world just because he felt like it strained her credulity too far, even with the 'explanation' that he was a demon to justify it. By contrast, she had found herself cautiously intrigued by The Mask of Zorro and X-Men, as the villains in both cases had the more plausible agenda of personal power and protecting their species respectively, even as she could appreciate the heroes' determination to protect the innocent from their schemes in turn. Even Sleepy Hollow had managed to be an interesting mystery in its own way, with the Headless Horseman a supernatural threat that managed to operate on a relatively clear set of rules and limitations to make an unconventionally intriguing murder mystery.

The film that had surprised her the most was when Michael had produced a copy of Dracula, made almost a decade ago and starring Gary Oldman as the titular vampire. She had obviously heard about the original novel, but like most of the coven she had never paid more than peripheral attention to its various adaptations. It was sometimes amusing to consider how humanity could misinterpret what vampires were capable of, but Selene had never been especially bothered about it. She had been turned back when the only thing known about vampires were relatively generic folk-tales of demons who drank blood; she could vaguely recall there being rumours about the local lords that had employed her father, but back then she'd been focused more on spending time with her sister and her nieces…

Selene was startled to realise how easy it was to think back on that part of her life these days. It wasn't that it had stopped being painful to think back about her mortal life and the people she'd lost just before meeting Viktor, but talking about that part of her existence with Michael had given her the chance to remember something other than their deaths for a change. She'd never managed to actually ask Michael if he remembered what she'd told him about her family during his last transformation, but it had still been… nice… to actually talk about that part of her life with anyone.

Still, the Dracula film had been interesting in its way, even if she recognised that it was only one particular interpretation of the infamous count and vampires as a whole rather than a clear example of how humans saw her kind. She had been discreet about the extent of her interest at the time, but watching Dracula had inspired her to do some additional research into what humans thought of vampires in modern popular culture. Most of the coven were aware of some of the stranger myths about their kind- how anyone had developed the idea of 'vampires' as floating heads in some parts of the Middle East Selene had no idea- but it was amazing how many diverse interpretations existed in present popular culture. She hadn't dared suggest watching the Blade films in case Michael started to draw certain conclusions, but what she'd read about them suggested a disturbingly accurate interpretation of how vampires blended in to modern society, with human servants and exploring modern ways to feed in safety, minus the idea that her kind sought to rule humanity. She'd even found herself watching a few reruns of shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer out of idle curiosity when she'd come to the safehouse on her own, although she identified more with the likes of Angel, where the vampire character struck an interesting balance between being a 'natural' predator and defending humans against the worst excesses of other vampires. The appearance of that werewolf character in the earlier seasons had been an interesting detail, but aside from Oz's transformed state looking more like some kind of demon monkey than an actual wolf, Selene had noted that his transformed state was actually easier to contain than a true lycan would have been.

When she'd looked up a few vampire-themed novels, she'd focused on anything else featuring Dracula, which had also led to a few interesting other vampire-themed novels as well. Salem's Lot had offered some interesting ideas even if the plot itself was relatively straightforward, and Anno Dracula had been a surprisingly engaging idea about how a vampire-ruled society might have worked in the Victorian era, even if she had to look up the names of various minor characters.

Selene had actually been surprised when a graphic novel trilogy she'd purchased featuring the superhero Batman becoming a vampire had turned out to be a surprisingly engaging read. She felt that the main character had been a bit too hard on himself about how he had broken his personal code against killing, considering how he never killed anyone who hadn't taken lives themselves first. Still, even if she disagreed about that detail, she could appreciate the sentiment behind the hero's horror at what he had become when he couldn't resist his thirst, especially when he started thinking about how he would eventually start attacking innocent people.

There were some flawed ideas out there, to be sure, but there were also some interesting ones; she'd have to find a way to suggest to Michael that they start watching a few more vampire-themed films that would avoid giving away her personal reasons for such interest-

The sound of a ringing phone broke off her train of thought.

"Michael?" Selene answered in surprise, even as she was relieved she'd taken the precaution to give Michael the number of her new burner phone. "What's wrong?"

"There's been an accident," Michael replied, his tone grim.

"Accident?"

"As the hospital," Michael explained. "There was a bus crash; we've got a mass of patients here, and… well, we're all working overtime to deal with the numbers…"

"Which means you can't get off?" Selene finished for him, her mind already considering the scale of the problem.

"I could probably get out of here if I had to- fake some kind of personal medical emergency or something, you know- but I need someone to help me get somewhere safe before… I mean…"

"I understand," Selene nodded grimly as she glanced out of the window, scanning the streets for a suitable vehicle.

Michael could probably hold onto himself for a few more hours, particularly after his lycan self was so relatively passive last month, but she'd rather not test him if the full moon triggered a transformation in the middle of a hospital full of vulnerable human targets.

If she couldn't get down to the hospital as fast as possible with a vehicle capable of getting Michael to safety relatively discreetly…

She wasn't sure if the humans or her fellow Death Dealers would be the first problem, but either way, she was on a potential time limit right now and she had to move fast.

Chapter 11: Evading Both Sides

Chapter Text

The moment that she had ended her call with Michael, Selene had immediately leapt into action. She had made it to the ground level in practically record time, and had spent the next few minutes searching the surrounding street until she found a suitably-sized car for her new self-appointed mission. The day was cloudy enough that she wouldn't have to worry about the sunlight on her way to the hospital, and while a part of her regretted whatever inconvenience she might be causing to whoever owned this car, she had to prioritise the risk to Michael and whoever he might attack if he was allowed to transform in public. A Range Rover wasn't exactly a perfect way to keep a lycan contained, but theoretically she should be able to get Michael into it and render him unconscious so that she would only have to worry about people seeing the large 'dog' in the back before she got him back to the safehouse.

I just hope I'm remembering those pressure point techniques correctly…

Hotwiring the car was at least something the coven constantly kept up-to-date on when training, considering the advantages of being able to drive to safety as fast as possible if they were caught away from the manor when the sun began to rise. Grateful that she'd brought her traditional leathers along just in case, Selene had pulled on her black leather gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints and made her way to the hospital as quickly as possible. She'd been forced to make a couple of detours when she encountered signs of what must have been the road accident that was causing Michael's current predicament, but after a few quick detours, she finally reached the same hospital where she'd first seen Michael all those long weeks ago.

When she parked the car a short distance from the familiar building, she found herself smiling at the thought of how her life had changed since she first saw Michael come out of this building, but that thought was pushed to the back of her mind as she scrambled out of the stolen car; the priority right now was to stop Michael hurting any innocent people.

Walking into the building, Selene fought down her instinctive thirst as the scent of blood from the recent accident hit her nostrils; she could fight down her urges as much as she wanted, but a part of her would always long for the taste of what she'd never allowed herself to indulge in.

As far as she could tell from the conversations taking place around her, a couple of tourist buses had swerved to try and avoid a group of motorcycles and had collided with each other even as the drivers put on the brakes. Most of the passengers didn't have anything more serious than broken limbs, but there were a few close calls that were requiring more urgent attention…

Considering her options, Selene decided to focus on checking the area for immediate arrivals; as much as Michael would want to help the new patients, he'd also recognise that he couldn't afford to get caught up in anything too intense this potentially late. She had to pause at a couple of points in order to stop herself being particularly tempted by the scent of fresh blood near a busy operating theatre, but eventually she made her way to the wards around the hospital's main entrance, where she saw Michael handing a patient on to another doctor before he moved over to stand in a corner. A quick glance was enough for Selene to confirm that he still looked human, although he was definitely paler than normal and smelled more keenly of sweat even at this distance. It wouldn't take an expert to see that Michael didn't look well, but so long as he was able to keep working most of his colleagues would assume he was just tired and stressed due to the busy environment.

But that just makes it more important I get him out before he loses that control…

"Ah Mr Corvin," she said, adding a slight accent to her voice as she walked up to him. "Did you forget?"

"For- Selene?" Michael turned to look at her in surprise; evidently the accent was more effective than she had anticipated.

"Yes, quite," Selene nodded at him, adjusting the emphasis so that it wouldn't sound quite as exaggerated. "It's your turn to assist in observing the samples, remember?"

"Turn to assist?" another voice said, Selene and Michael turning to see an older doctor walking towards them, the name 'Daburck' sewn onto his jacket as he looked curiously at Selene. "Mr Corvin, who is-?"

"Selene Veneau, Doctor Daburck," Selene said, handing Doctor Daburck the Ziodex ID card that she always kept with her in case of moments such as this. "I represent Ziodex Industries; Mr Corvin has been assisting us with a couple of research projects."

"Ziodex?" Doctor Daburck looked at her in surprise before he turned his attention to Michael. "Why didn't you tell me that you were working with Ziodex Industries?"

"It… didn't seem like that big a deal?" Michael shrugged, shooting Selene an anxious glance at this sudden turn of events. "I mean, it's just an occasional bit of work I do in my spare time; I didn't want you to think I was neglecting my studies here…"

"Plus, Mr Corvin signed confidentiality agreements prohibiting him from discussing his work for us in depth with anyone," Selene added with an apologetic smile. "I only bring it up now so that you understand why he has to depart on short notice."

"Depart?" Doctor Daburck looked at her in surprise. "This situation-"

"I am sure that you have many hands on deck to keep things under control here, but you must understand that Mr Corvin's work cannot go unmonitored," Selene explained. "I assure you that we will take further steps to ensure that you are kept in the loop and given advance notice of any future demands on Mr Corvin's time, but for the moment, it is important that he be allowed to accompany me out of this building."

"…Very well," Doctor Daburck nodded at her in understanding. "Like you said, we have enough people to deal with the remaining patients in this hospital, and so long as you can give me the guarantee that Mr Corvin will make suitable arrangements to prevent this from happening again in future…"

"No problem," Michael nodded, fighting down the urge to wince as he felt his body twinge; the sun must be going down now. "I… well, like I said, I've been doing pretty well with double duty so far, so I guess I was just worried you'd think I wasn't committed or something…"

"And with that resolved, we must be off," Selene said, firmly taking Michael's arm and heading down the nearest corridor. "Thank you for your time and understanding, Doctor Daburck."

Lost for anything better to do, Michael gave a parting wave to the older doctor as he was led down the corridor, keeping silent until he and Selene were in a relatively quieter corridor.

"OK," he looked curiously at her, "not that I'm not grateful for the save, but how the Hell do you have an ID for Ziodex?"

"Because I work there."

"What?" Michael could only stare at Selene in surprise at that declaration.

"Well, I don't work there directly, but it's basically one of the major front corporations my colleagues maintain," she explained as they walked briskly towards the exit; on one level, she recognised that she'd never given Michael a reason to think otherwise, but it still slightly hurt to realise he'd never given this matter particular thought. "You didn't think that my associates and I just made money killing lycans, did you?"

"…Guess I didn't exactly think about it," Michael conceded, looking apologetically at her. "Or if I did, I assumed you were… I dunno, some kind of bounty hunter…"

"A fair enough assumption," Selene conceded as they walked out of the hospital. "Anyway, we'd better get moving."

"Where-?" Michael began before his body bent over as the moonlight struck him directly.

"Hurry," Selene said, quickly wrapping her arm around Michael's shoulders, trying to ignore the fangs emerging from his mouth and the hair spreading across his arms. The streets behind the hospital were quiet enough that she was able to get Michael into the van before anyone who might have been passing by was in a position to clearly see what was happening to him, but Michael's muffled screams made it clear that he was fighting to keep quiet as the change threatened to overwhelm him.

Once again hoping that she was remembering these moves correctly, Selene quickly struck a few key pressure points in his neck, sighing in relief when Michael slumped to the floor of the van in an unconscious state. His body was still changing, but hopefully she'd taken him down early enough in the transformation that she wouldn't have to worry about him waking up before she got him to safety.

Selene was about to start driving back to the safehouse when she realised a potential problem. She'd been able to make her way to the hospital safely enough because the sun was still high enough in the sky that the Death Dealer patrols for the day wouldn't have been dispatched yet while the shade from the buildings protected her from the sun, but unless her usual attention to detail was failing her, her route back to the safehouse would cross at least one patrol route, and the sun was low enough that they would have started by the time she got to that area…

Grateful that she'd dedicated so much attention to memorising most of the relevant patrol routes of her fellows in case she ever needed help one night, Selene soon turned her attention towards Sandor's current patrol route; he was a strong fighter but relatively predictable in his routine. After a few moments, she had picked out the best route and driven away from the hospital, but remained tense for the first few minutes as she moved. Michael was being quiet enough in the back, and she could at least be fairly sure that he'd remain dazed for a few moments after he woke up which would give her time to put him back to 'sleep' before he endangered anyone, but the prospect of driving with a lycan through downtown Budapest was not one that she wanted to face for longer than she had to…

Scanning the streets, she nodded in approval as she reached the junction she'd identified as the best place to make her next move. She took a moment to make sure that Michael hadn't shown any sign of movement, and then carefully got out of the car and hurried up the side of the building. She preferred to go through buildings from the inside when possible, but right now scaling the outside would be a better option for taking her target by surprise.

As she climbed up the wall, Selene's mind shied away at the implications of how easy it had been for her to think of another Death Dealer as a 'target'; she was just making sure Sandor didn't do anything that would compromise a potential asset and keeping Michael safe until she was ready to tell anyone else about him.

Once she reached the top of the building, she crouched down beside a suitably-sized chimney and waited a few minutes until she heard the sound of hurried footsteps from further down the street. Glancing out from her hiding place, she gave herself an approving nod as she saw Sandor approaching, glad that her memory of the patrol schedules had been correct. She waited for a few moments until Sandor had reached the corner of the building she was currently on and paused to assess the street below; he shouldn't spot Michael in the van at the moment, particularly when no Death Eater had ever seen a transformed lycan using a car before now, but she just had to be sure…

Once she saw Sandor looking out at the street, Selene carefully sneaked out from behind the chimney and crept up towards him, until she was standing just behind her colleague. Grateful that this wasn't Rigel or Nathaniel- those two were experienced hunters, where Sander wasn't quite as good- Selene lashed out with her fingers to strike a key pressure point on his back.

As Sandor began to fall forward, Selene got to her feet and grabbed him before he could actually hit the ground, carefully setting him up against the nearest wall in a manner that would give him the impression that he had just slipped or dozed off for some reason. From what she knew of Sandor, the younger Death Dealer had a tendency to avoid admitting to his mistakes if he was sure that nobody had been hurt by them. If there was no sign of any actual lycan activity during his period of unconsciousness, Sandor would likely avoid bringing up his brief 'doze' out of embarrassment, and nobody would be any the wiser that anything had happened here in the first place.

"Sleep well," she said briefly to Sandor before she leapt off the roof and back down to the ground, walking briskly back towards the van, relieved to see no sign of activity through the windows. As she got back into the driver's seat, a quick glance was enough to confirm that Michael was still 'asleep before she started the car again, taking another moment to confirm her route before she resumed her drive towards the safehouse.

After another half hour of tense driving, constantly keeping her eyes peeled in case another Death Dealer chanced across her, she finally reached the apartment building. Climbing out of the van, she opened the rear door and pulled Michael out, carefully adjusting her efforts when she heard his claws start to drag along the seat coverings; the less trace she left of what she had been using this car for, the better.

Once Michael was out, she slung his arm over her shoulder and walked briskly towards the door, gradually making her way up the stairs towards the apartment. The lycan was difficult to carry, but she was strong enough that she could shoulder the weight easily enough, and his current state of unconsciousness made him easier to move…

She froze when she sensed movement near her feet, and looked down to see Michael's legs beginning to cautiously move alongside her own. Looking up at his face, she quickly confirmed that he hadn't fully regained consciousness yet, but he was at least alert enough to realise that he could help her by walking a bit. For a moment Selene nearly dropped him out of instinctive apprehension at the notion of being this close to a conscious lycan, but she swiftly realised that Michael wasn't showing any signs of actual hostility towards her…

It might just be the unique circ*mstances of Michael's own transformation influencing his current behaviour… but was it possible that other lycan could show that kind of control? After all, every lycan she'd ever faced in a transformed state had been reacting to the threat posed by her or another Death Dealer; maybe they were just automatically reacting to the immediate threat, rather than reverting to their 'default' psychology…

A brief snarl from Michael followed by a shake of his head prompted Selene to redouble her efforts to get her lycan companion up to the apartment safehouse. Whether his apparent calm was an example of her being wrong about lycans or he was just still recovering from his recent unconsciousness, it would be best to get him somewhere secure and contained just to be sure.

She spent the rest of the night sitting anxiously in the safehouse, watching from the window as Michael paced around the secure room, occasionally looking more thoughtfully at the one-way window she was sitting behind. She couldn't be sure what he was thinking right now, but there was definitely something more behind those eyes than she had expected to ever see from a lycan.

She just didn't know what that meant in terms of her larger conflict with the lycans; was Michael just a lucky case, or had she been misjudging an entire species… and what did that mean for the lycans who had killed her family?

The worst part was that she couldn't even tell herself this was all in the name of using Michael as some kind of double agent in the future. She didn't know how to define what she felt about him right now, but she was sure that this went beyond simple concern for an asset, no matter what she'd been telling herself earlier…

Chapter 12: Growing Apart

Chapter Text

Michael had never been entirely comfortable hanging out in bars even before he started to become more aware of the heightened senses that were a side-effect of his new state, and those senses just made this situation even more awkward.

It wasn't that he didn't appreciate the invitation to join some of his colleagues at the hospital for Jake's leaving drinks; the other man had been a useful mentor for him and Adam in helping them both find their way in Budapest, and it was good to see that he'd made an impression on other people.

It was just that… the more time he spent thinking about the revelation that he was basically immortal now, the harder he was finding it to really connect with people. He was still committed to the job, of course- if he wasn't going to die of natural causes himself it seemed like a good use of his time to help other people stay alive- but was it worth trying to form longer-term bonds with anyone? If Selene was right, he was potentially immortal unless somebody got lucky and tried to kill him the right way, which raised some very worrying questions about his future…

"Everything OK?" Adam asked as he walked over to join Michael at the bar, sitting down beside his friend with his drink. "You haven't even-"

"Just… pacing myself," Michael replied, making a mental note to work out a suitable system for dealing with his drink. From Selene's tales, he shouldn't actually be able to deal with regular food, but he was working out a careful system where he could have enough to at least look sociable without affecting his health.

That said, as far as his werewolf state went, Michael was starting to rethink a few details after his last transformation. The whole experience was still more of a blur than anything, and he wasn't sure how much of anything he recalled was true and how much was basically just him wanting it to be true, but he really felt like he had some… vague memories of what had been happening around him while he was in his wolf state, as opposed to the blank sense of rage he'd felt the last few times he'd changed. There was even some indistinct image of Selene helping him walk up the stairs, but it was hard to be sure how much of that was something he actually remembered and how much was just him imagining what that evening had been like…

"Probably a good call," Adam smiled at him before he indicated the others. "I mean, with Jake gone, we're going to have to step up a bit to make this work; get a better feel for what the other doctors are willing to let us get away with, that kind of thing…"

"Always tough being the new guy," Michael nodded tentatively.

"Y'know… you're not exactly doing yourself any favours hanging out on the edge like this," Adam looked at him with a sympathetic shrug. "I mean, if you want to be part of the team, you need to at least make the effort to fit in…"

"I'm… setting my own pace," Michael said, lost for anything better to say even as he recognised the point Adam was making. He didn't exactly want to live in isolation for the rest of his existence, but how long could he keep this kind of life up without someone realising he wasn't getting any older? Right now the only person who knew the whole truth about his current nature was Selene, and he still wasn't sure if either of them had a true long-term plan to keep him safe beyond making sure he didn't kill anyone when he was transformed…

He tried to keep himself aware of what Adam was talking about, occasionally making a brief response to what his friend was saying, but for the most part his mind was focused on trying to work out what he had gone through during that last change. Had he actually had some kind of control, or did he just want to make himself think he remembered something from that mess…?

"Doctor Corvin?"

"Selene?" Michael was so shocked to hear her voice that he momentarily forgot to use the surname she'd established on her last encounter with a work colleague. "I-I mean-"

"Oh, so this is the mysterious Miss Veneau, huh?" Adam smiled at Selene before Michael could finish his own sentence, although Adam's grin suddenly faltered as he looked uncertainly at the woman. "Uh, it is Miss, right? I mean, you didn't introduce yourself as a doctor, but-"

"'Miss' is fine," Selene nodded in understanding, once again putting on her slight accent, Michael shocked to realise that she was wearing dark trousers and a blue shirt rather than her standard all-leather ensemble. "I merely work for Ziodex as an affiliated operative; I do not take active part in their scientific research."

"Uh… right," Adam looked at her uncertainly. "What does… I mean, if you're an 'affiliated operative'-"

"My official duties are classified," Selene cut him off. "Mr Corvin had to sign considerable confidentiality documents to get permission to work with me on relevant projects, and I cannot provide further details for you at this time."

"…Check," Adam nodded, an expression of tentative understanding on his face as he walked off.

"Huh," Michael looked thoughtfully at Selene. "So… is that actually what your job title is?"

"The advantage of being one of the people who own the company is that I can essentially make up whatever title I wish," Selene observed. "So long as it looks good for tax purposes, the important thing is that we don't draw attention to ourselves."

"Must… have its benefits," Michael said with a brief nod. Since the topic had come up, he was frankly ashamed that it had taken him this long to even start to think about just how Selene's alleged organisation funded its activities; hunting werewolves wasn't exactly the kind of skill you could easily advertise. "Uh… do you… do anything with… what you hunt?"

"What do you-?" Selene began, before her eyes widened. "Do you think-?"

"I mean, I don't seriously think that you're just going to dissect me or something like that, but… well, why would a major company be hunting lycans if you weren't using them for something?"

"That is… a fair theory," the dark-haired woman nodded thoughtfully, before she looked more solemnly at Michael. "The reason why we do what we do is a complicated one, but I promise you this, Michael; whatever my superior's wider motivations, I have always done what I do to protect innocents from suffering the same fate as my family… and regardless of what you become on the full moon, you are an innocent."

"…Thanks," Michael said, turning to look uncertainly at his gathered colleagues drinking at the other end of the bar. "But it's… hard to think that way, isn't it?"

"Think what way?"

"That we're just… innocent," Michael clarified, waving a hand between Selene and himself. "I mean, I'm not saying either of us are bad people, but what we know about the reality of the world… we can't just act like the lycans don't exist and everything's fine even when we're not out there hunting for them. I've been stuck with this… curse… for the rest of my existence, and you lost your whole family to them…"

Selene sat in silence, but reached out to hold his hand with a sympathetic smile.

"I… know what you mean," she said after a few moments. "When I started in this life… my brother-in-law was away when the lycans attacked, so he was spared even after I lost the rest of my family… but I never bothered to get back in touch with him after I began hunting them in earnest."

"Was he-?"

"He wasn't a bad husband to my sister or anything, but it was more… what could I say to him in such a situation? I wasn't sure how he'd cope with the knowledge of what was really out there, and on a personal level, he and I…"

Lost for a good way to conclude that sentence, Selene just shrugged. "You know how it is with some people; it's not that you dislike them, and you can talk with them when you're alone together, but it's more that you…"

"Just don't click with them, right?" Michael finished for her.

"…Yes," Selene nodded in a contemplative manner. "I… didn't click with him…"

As she gave Michael a brief smile, Michael was suddenly struck by the thought that he wished he could see her look at him like that more often, and quickly pushed the thought aside.

He already appreciated how much Selene had done for him when her training should have led to her just shooting him in the head the moment she'd confirmed what he was; the idea that she could… that there could be anything more between them than this weird friendship was just a happy dream at best and a dangerous delusion at worst.

They might be able to share moments like this when time allowed, but eventually Michael would have to find some way to adjust to his immortality in a world that would soon notice he wasn't aging any more… and he would have to face the fact that Selene would grow old herself.

It wasn't like he was going to try and ask her to stop hunting lycans- he knew enough about her to realise doing that would be stupid at best- but the thought of her growing old while he stayed young…

Typical, Michael mused bitterly to himself. As though my luck couldn't get any worse, the only good thing to come out of this mess so far is a friendship that suddenly isn't enough for me any more…

When he noticed Selene looking curiously at him, Michael just smiled back at her and hoped that she wouldn't ask him any 'dangerous' questions; he really didn't want to talk about anything he'd just been thinking about…

Chapter 13: Subway Showdown

Chapter Text

Before she met Michael, Selene had never really thought about the fact that she didn't spend much time dealing with humans beyond the occasional appointment at Ziodex or questioning possible witnesses when tracking potential lycan sightings. It wasn't that she didn't basically like humans, but she hadn't really bothered to connect with any human for decades at best. Even in her role at Ziodex, most of the humans she associated with at the company only knew her as one of the higher-ranking shareholders, and even then she only spoke with the ones who knew she was a vampire so she had a reason to have only limited contact with them without them asking too many awkward questions.

Frankly, that was another reason Michael intrigued her from the beginning; even with his status as a lycan, he was basically the closest thing she'd had to a human friend for years, as opposed to a human who was basically only associating with her because it was part of his job. The films they'd watched together had given her some interesting new insight into what humans were actually like these days, but it was Michael's fundamental nature that had drawn her in, even if she still wasn't sure how to define their relationship precisely. She had started out with just an idle idea of helping him cope with his condition so that he could become an asset to future campaigns against the lycans, but ever since she'd actually met him…

It seemed such a foolish thing to worry about, but in the last few months, the thing that surprised Selene the most was her growing inability to properly define her relationship with him. She liked to think that she still had a few friends in the Death Dealers such as Kahn, even if Kraven and Soren in particular made it hard to connect with other vampires because she could never be sure if they'd choose Kraven over her at some future point, but Michael…

Michael might have needed her help to work out how to 'control' what he'd become, but he didn't need to let her stay with him all those times she'd joined him for their new film nights or other such activities. Without even trying, he'd opened Selene's eyes to a world she'd long considered unimportant to her core goal and made her realise just some of the things she'd been missing out on over the centuries. She'd even gone to that night out with Michael's hospital colleagues with an idle thought that it might be interesting, but she'd soon found herself basically gravitating towards Michael, any thought of talking to other people even as a social experiment put aside in favour of just spending more time with him.

She could never let herself forget that he was a lycan, but Michael made her feel normal for the first time since she'd lost her family… it didn't seem like a crime to enjoy that acceptance before she shook up his world even further by telling him what she really was.

After all, while Selene didn't like to consider the issue in depth, eventually Michael would gain enough awareness of himself that he'd start to acknowledge that she was something other than human herself. She refused to consider the idea that he'd start attacking her once she told him what she was; the transformed lycan had to be aware on some level that she wasn't human and he had come to accept her in that state, so as long as she didn't come across as threatening she doubted that Michael would do anything to her when he was human.

Still, even if he didn't subconsciously see her as a threat, when most modern fiction tended to make vampires the villains whereas werewolves were often treated as victims of something they couldn't control… was it that wrong of her to want to keep her true nature secret for a while longer?

As a distinctive scent reached her from the street below, Selene shifted her attention back to the matter at hand. For the moment, her priority had to be the current hunt, the first 'official' lycan hunt since she'd found Michael, which she was committed to completing before the full moon. Some of Kahn's contacts had reported sighting Raze himself in Budapest over the last few nights, accompanied by another lycan their intelligence had tentatively identified as 'Trix'; Selene guessed it was intended to reflect how he was tricky to pin down in a confrontation.

In any case, taking down an alpha lycan as old as Raze should help to affirm Selene's commitment to her duty; if she was going to argue leniency for Michael once the war was over, anything she could do to prove her dedication to ending the war would help support her case. When she had been assigned to her current observation point at first, she had been puzzled at how familiar she had found the tower, which was apparently close to what their contacts had identified as Raze's apparent regular route through the city. It really shouldn't have been a big deal, considering that she'd spent enough time in Budapest over the years that every part of the city was familiar to her for some reason or another by now, and the current storm made everything a bit harder to see even with her enhanced night-vision, but something in her mind couldn't get past the idea that she was familiar with this area for a reason…

When she finally saw Raze's distinctive form walking out from around a corner, Selene was grateful to have the opportunity to focus on something other than the possible future of her relationship with Michael. After taking a glance around at nearby rooftops to confirm that Rigel had recorded Raze's presence with his camera (damn Kraven's fixation on evidence instead of just trusting their competence), Selene jumped discreetly down to the ground and quickly fell into place with the rest of the crowd around the two lycans.

The rain might be an inconvenience when it came to tracking their opponents at a distance, but so long as she and the others were discreet, the bad weather should make it easier for her and Rigel to follow Raze and Trix, rendezvous with Nathaniel, and determine what the lycans were doing in Budapest in the first place. The obvious assumption was that this had something to do with the coven's presence in the city, but even before she met Michael, Selene recognised that lycans weren't just feral animals. Attacking the vampires on their home ground was a bold plan, but attacking them during an Awakening would be a risky move however she looked at it.

There was nothing to indicate that the lycans had the numbers necessary to overwhelm Ordgahz's defences, and even if a large number of Death Dealers would be in the chamber itself when Amelia awoke Marcus, there would be sufficient other defences to stop the lycans from getting close enough to the Elders' chamber to do any real damage…

Pushing theories about the lycans' intentions to the back of her mind, Selene walked after the two powerful figures, taking care to maintain the appropriate distance. The rain should limit the possibility of either of them detecting her scent, particularly when they weren't looking for her, but she could still keep them in visual range. The lack of an umbrella or rain-protective attire might make her stand out, but her leathers should give the impression to most that she was just coming home from a Goth party of some sort that had started before people knew what the weather was going to be like.

If she recalled the plan correctly, Nathaniel should already be waiting for the lycans at the entrance to the nearest underground station. He would have moved on if they had called in to report that the lycans had taken a different route, but this way he could also confirm if they didn't show up within the estimated time frame. A brief check of her phone confirmed that Nathaniel had seen Raze and Trix enter the station with no sign that they'd seen him in turn, leaving her to head off to the other entrance just in case their targets tried to leave the station from the other end.

Rigel would join her in the station and Nathaniel would be nearby if they needed backup, but she had confidence that she and Rigel could keep two lycans contained; neither side would attract attention with an open attack…

As she descended into the underground station, a more familiar scent reached Selene's nose now that the rain had ceased to be an issue, prompting her to glance up to see an unexpected figure looking at her in turn.

Once she realised that Michael was in the station, she cursed herself for not realising why she'd found that tower familiar earlier; she'd traced that route herself back when she'd been tracking Michael in the belief that he was just another lycan who might lead her to a nest.

Actually, now that she thought about it, Raze's recorded route through Budapest was a close match, at least in part, to the route Michael took from his apartment to this subway station when he needed to get to the hospital more quickly than walking would allow…

It's just a coincidence, she told herself sharply; if Raze knew that there was a lycan active in Budapest already, he would have tried to make contact with Michael directly. This station was just a useful means of getting around Budapest and Raze and his associates had set up a base in this area by chance.

For a moment, Michael looked curiously in her direction, but when Selene shook her head briefly in his direction, he turned to walk into the station, only giving her a last look before he took his seat. Selene would probably have to explain what she had been doing here later, but it wouldn't exactly be a hardship to assure Michael that she'd successfully hunted down another pair of lycans…

She suddenly found her gaze focusing on Raze, who was disturbingly close to Michael's train for Selene's comfort. The large lycan might just be planning to catch the train rather than specifically following Michael, but if he got on board, it wouldn't be difficult for him to identify Michael by scent, and he wouldn't care if Michael didn't want to be part of the war-

When Raze froze in the middle of the station, Selene could already tell that this was going to be bad. When the lycan opened his coat to reveal two large weapons hanging by his side as he yelled out "BLOOOOOOOODS!", any thoughts Selene might have had about the risks of Michael seeing her in action were forgotten in favour of surviving the sudden shoot-out.

With Raze having opened fire in Rigel's direction, Selene took a moment to confirm that Rigel had managed to get to safety and drawn his own weapons before she draw her Berettas, making sure that they were armed and ready as she tried to find a good opportunity to start shooting herself. As far as she could tell from the screaming and other sounds around them, Raze was firing wildly, but so far the humans had managed to get down enough to avoid being caught in any potential crossfire, even if she was prepared to guess that there were a few injuries caused by the broken glass. A part of her mind noted the odd blue glow of the bullets being fired, but decided not to worry about that right now; in any gunfight, the rule was to do your best not to get hit, so as long as she stuck to that rule she should be fine no matter what these bullets could do…

When Trix appeared from around the pillar to fire at her, Selene dived for cover on the other side, only to realise in horror that the bullets had hit Rigel instead. For a moment she was prepared to run to help her friend- so long as she could get the bullets out Rigel could still have a chance to heal the damage- but that idea ended when she realised that Riger was literally burning up from inside himself. As a blue glow emerged from inside his body, Selene could see her comrade becoming burnt from the inside, as though someone had lit a fire inside his body, affirming her worst fears in a matter of moments.

For a moment, her thoughts filled with rage as Selene moved out from around the corner and fired her own guns at Trix, forcing the lycan back. Humans ducked for cover as he hurried for safety while Selene continued to fire at Trix, only to be forced back into retreat when she heard Raze open fire all over again from another angle. For a moment Selene remained in hiding behind the pillar, but sound of a bullet striking flesh and a pained scream drove Selene to glance around her cover to see a young woman lying on the ground, a distinctive wound in her shoulder. Based on Trix's position behind the newsstand kiosk, Selene guessed that the woman had been struck by one of Trix's bullets when he tried to shoot at Selene as she was making for cover and the lycan missed his target.

For a moment Selene was trapped, pinned down by Raze's assault and Trix's own position- he might not be firing now but it wouldn't take long for him to start- but that changed when Nathaniel appeared on the scene and ran to confront Raze, forcing the large lycan to retreat. As Selene turned her full focus back on Trix's position, she was spared from worrying about the injured woman- she prided herself on avoiding collateral damage during her own missions where possible- when she saw Michael crawling out of the subway carriage and heading towards the fallen woman. He couldn't do much in this situation, but when a human was suffering a shoulder-injury from ammunition capable of doing that to Rigel, any medical training was better than none right now.

With Raze inside the carriage and Nathaniel stalking him from outside, Selene kept a careful eye on the area where she had last seen Trix hiding behind the newsstand; her friend could keep Raze contained for the moment, but if Trix got out he could be a problem. When she saw the lycan in question come out from behind the newsstand and move to grab Michael, Selene could have sworn her blood felt cold if she wasn't operating at a lower body temperature already. Whether he was targeting a convenient potential hostage or knew what Michael was, either way she wasn't going to give him a chance to get at her… friend (why was it so hard to define what Michael was to her?). As soon as Trix grabbed Michael's shoulder, Michael had turned away from the girl to hit the lycan in the face, but both men were clearly taken aback when the blow just sent Trix back a couple of paces without any significant harm.

Selene could guess how that had happened easily enough- Trix had expected that Michael wouldn't be able to hit him that hard and Michael hadn't wanted to use his full strength on a human in case he killed whoever he hit- but that single act could put Michael at even greater risk than if he'd done nothing. Whatever Trix had been after that drove him to grab at Michael, if he realised that Michael was another lycan there was no telling how that would affect their plans.

Before Trix could do anything about this turn of events himself, Selene unloaded a quick series of bullets into his chest, forcing the lycan to retreat into the nearest carriage with at least two bullets in his chest. Selene took a moment to confirm that Trix had run in a different direction from Raze, so at least Nathaniel wouldn't be outnumbered for the moment, which gave Selene time to hurry over to check on her friend.

"Selene?" Michael looked anxiously at her even as he tried to pay attention to both his patient and his recent attacker. "What's going-?"

"I'll explain later," Selene said, taking a quick look at the fallen woman- injured, but the bullet hadn't hit anything vital and Michael should be able to do something about the wound right here- before she focused her attention on Michael. "As soon as you can get this woman to the hospital and get out of work, get to the safehouse; I'll join you there as soon as I can."

She had briefly thought about sending Michael to the safehouse, but if she was going to tell him the truth about herself, it was more important that he feel in control of the situation to better assure Michael that she meant him no harm.

Right now, as she grabbed Rigel's camera and hurried into the sewers, she just had to deal with Trix; Nathaniel was already hunting Raze, which should be enough to keep the lycan contained until she could rejoin him, and she had to finish this hunt so she could talk with Michael…

Chapter 14: The Truth

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As far as hunts went, Selene wasn't sure if she should classify the last mission as a success or a failure. Tracking Trix had been comparatively straightforward once she got into the tunnels, considering that his injuries stopped the lycan from transforming him before she could corner him and deliver the final blow. However, when she'd been intercepted by Raze while checking Trix's body for clues, she'd been forced to drive the larger lycan back with her silver shuriken and escape without following up on those voices she'd heard in another, deeper tunnel.

She had reported back to the mansion as protocol demanded, which had at least allowed her to show Kahn the new bullets the lycans had used to kill Rigel, but Kraven's lack of reaction had been as frustrating to her as always. She could understand why Kraven may not want to believe the theory that there was a large pack of lycans in the tunnels, but the idea that the man who was meant to lead the coven in Viktor's absence would be so dismissive of even a potential threat was just another mark against him as far as she was concerned.

Under normal circ*mstances, she might have tried to talk to Kahn about her concerns, but right now she had a very personal lead that she wanted to follow up as swiftly as possible. With Kraven focused on preparing for the arrival of Amelia's envoy, it was easy enough for Selene to slip out of the mansion and depart for the safehouse without even Kahn aware that she had left. To make sure she stayed under the radar until it was necessary, she chose not to take her car for the moment, sacrificing comfort and speed for practicality as she left her Jaguar behind and departed the mansion via her window.

After all, she knew where she was going and knew that she would be reasonably safe there. In the event of a worst-case scenario, she had even arranged for a car to be left in a nearby public car park just in case she had to go anywhere else quickly, either back to the mansion or get to Michael's apartment.

The only thing she couldn't guarantee was that Michael would at the safehouse to meet with her when she go there. She'd obviously confirm if he was either still at the hospital or had gone home, but if he chose not to meet with her…

As much as she wanted to say that she would respect his decision, the idea of never seeing Michael Corvin again hurt in a place she hadn't felt since the death of her family.

Chapter 15: Meeting the First Descendant

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Selene was prepared for a race towards Michael's apartment to intercept the lycan attack when she left the room, but at the same time she wasn't entirely surprised to hear what was clearly another lycan strike force climbing the outside of the building. Whoever was after Michael, the lycans probably knew his home address from his personal records, but it wouldn't have been hard for them to follow him here if they were keeping him under close observation.

And they'd certainly be paying attention if Raze noticed what he did to Trix… Selene reflected, cursing as she recalled Michael throwing off his would-be abductor at the station. She would never blame Michael for defending himself, but demonstrating enhanced strength to a lycan would have made him more interesting to them even if they didn't realise what he was straight away.

Still, at least the safehouse apartment would be secure against any direct attacks, and the deserted building meant she wouldn't have to worry about collateral damage while she was dealing with this new threat. She suddenly found herself regretting that the other apartments would give the building a vulnerability to focus on, but it would have been far too much to ask Kahn to upgrade the entire building when it was easier to protect the safehouse apartment on its own.

As it was, Michael would be secure against direct attacks for a time, but the rest of the building would be easier to penetrate, and from there it was only a matter of time until they got to him. Her best strategy right now was to fight off the first wave of lycans and then get Michael somewhere else to plan her next move. She paused to confirm what her ears were telling her and then ran towards the roof of the building, relieved to see that the upper levels were at least strong enough to resist the first attack. There was definitely something walking around on the roof above her, but if the lycan attacker could have entered through a window he would have done so already. With the more obvious entrances secured, the lycan's only way in would be through the door to the building's roof, which meant that she still had a chance so long as she could hold that door for the next few minutes…

She made her way to the foot of the relevant stairs just in time to look up and see the first dent form on the door at the top of the steps. Pulling out her Berettas, she forced herself to wait until the door was literally punched off its hinges, subsequently leaping over the flying door and firing at the lycan on the other side before it had time to register her presence. The first few bullets were just enough to hold the lycan at bay, but the surprise of the shots gave Selene the chance to get up close and fire a further series of rapid rounds directly into the wolf's skull. The wolf let out a strangled, gargling yell of pain from the attack, staggering away from the door, before Selene finally got up close and struck its chin with such force that the head was forced back and the neck cracked.

It was a risk, but when she had started training in hand-to-hand long before guns became a practical weapon, Selene liked to get up-close when making the kill when she could afford to do so. The bullets and the broken neck together might be overkill, but it was the best way to ensure that lycans stayed down for good in her experience-

The sound of another snarl from the edge of the roof was enough of a cue for Selene to turn and run for the source of the sound, looking down over the edge just in time to see another lycan coming up the side of the building. Not letting herself think about it, she kicked out at the nearest large claw as it reached the top of the building, the loss of contact sending the lycan falling backwards even before Selene pulled out her gun and fired another bullet at the falling lycan's head. She couldn't guarantee if she'd scored a direct hit, but she was satisfied that she'd made enough of an impact to leave the lycan off-balance so that it couldn't land 'safely'.

When she saw the lycan hit the ground in a sprawling manner that even an amateur could tell would at least cause serious injuries if not be outright fatal, Selene nodded in grim satisfaction at another threat eliminated. A quick check around was enough to confirm that there were no further lycans on the roof at the moment, but her good mood ended when she heard a snarl followed by a yell of pain from the side of the building where the main entrance was located.

MICHAEL!

Chapter 16: Blood Tests

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Selene hated abandoning the private safehouse like that, but no matter how secure it was there was no way it could stand up to another lycan attack if whoever was behind this decided to try again. If she had been more cautious, she might have taken steps to sort out a private safehouse on her own accord after listening to Kahn explain how he did it all at his end already, but she had been hoping that Michael would only need the one hiding place if they were careful enough.

Looking to the side at the figure pacing alongside her, Selene couldn't restrain an incredulous smile at the image she would have made if anyone from Ordgahz had seen her like this. The idea of her running alongside a lycan with neither party attacking the other… it would have been an impossible image even to her just a few months ago, but by now she found it almost more ridiculous to imagine Michael ever hurting her. She had only seen him in his lycan state on a couple of occasions, and definitely not when he was outside of the containment room, but when she had first seen him confronting that other lycan, she had known that Michael wasn't going to do anything to her no matter how angry he was with his opponent.

When did I become so sure of his self-control?

Even Selene didn't know the answer to that question, but as they approached the nearest empty safehouse she had been able to remember, she knew that it didn't matter. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt as though she could understand those films or TV shows where people just knew things about other people without needing actual evidence to prove their belief. She wasn't going to claim that Michael was outright harmless in his current state, but she was increasingly sure that he would never attack her when he was like this.

As they reached the safehouse, Selene took a moment to assess the building before deciding to go for the rooftop entrance. There was nobody on the street right now, but the rooftop entrance and exit was typically less closely monitored, and there was no point testing Michael's self-control just to make it easier to get around. Decision made, she leapt for the final rooftop, waiting for Michael to land beside her before she turned to look at him.

"We're here," she said, once again partially hoping that Michael would understand her and partially sure that he would. She still wasn't sure if it was her old prejudices that were wrong or if Michael was just an exceptional example of lycans, but the important thing was that he understood her. "Let's get inside and you can… change back?"

Looking at the clothes she still had under her arm, Michael made an approving grunt and then began to shrink as she opened the door. As she led the way into the safehouse, Michael had already lost his snout, and by the time she had reached the 'control room' a quick glance was enough to confirm that Michael had lost the last of his fur, Selene dropping the clothes she was carrying as she kept walking to let Michael preserve his modesty (she didn't particularly bother about seeing her fellow Death Dealers in various states during training or missions, but she appreciated that Michael wasn't like them). While Michael got dressed, Selene logged on to the mansion's networks and confirmed that the current location was not listed as an active mission site; it would retain the usual essentials, but nobody was expecting to use it for anything unless an emergency came up on patrol.

Which doesn't guarantee that there's not going to be one… Selene mused grimly to herself.

"For once I'm glad Kraven doesn't listen to me," she mused out loud.

"Kraven?"

"Technically he's meant to be in charge of our operations, but in practice he just likes to lie around in comfort and ignore the idea that anything might be out of his control," Selene looked back at Michael, smiling when she saw that he was human and fully dressed once more. "Are you all right?"

"A bit… uh…" Michael began, before his voice trailed off and he looked down at himself with a bemused smile, taking in his shirt, which was now hanging open as most of the buttons had been torn off when he changed. "Can't believe I got this off before I got too big for it…"

"Michael."

"…I have no idea how to describe this," he said at last, looking at his hands. "I mean, it was always… it always seemed like the moon would rise and that was it for my mind for the next few hours. I mean, I felt good when it was happening, and I could remember some bits of what I did afterwards, but it was like some kind of… sick drug high I didn't even want…"

"And now?"

"Now… I don't know," Michael replied, looking up at her with a slight trace of anxiety in his manner. "It's like… I was in danger and I knew that I needed the strength… I'd had all this anger and rage building up inside me since Sam died and suddenly there was a reason to use it right now…"

His gaze returned to his hands for a few moments, but then he looked back at Selene as she looked patiently at him. "I don't know if I was actually in control… but maybe it's a… Hulk thing?"

"Hulk thing?"

"Right, vampire… you really didn't read much?" Michael gave her a strained look that made her think of someone trying to make jokes rather than go mad.

"I was… very focused on my work," Selene decided to reply. Even if Michael seemed to have accepted the idea of her as a vampire, she accepted that there was only so much he could take in one night, and talking about her experience hunting lycans would obviously be in bad taste right now. "Hulk?"

"Basically this brilliant scientist gets exposed to radiation and turns into a superhuman monster when he gets into trouble," Michael explained. "I've only flicked through it, but the way a friend of mine explained it, most of the time the scientist doesn't have much control over when he changes into the Hulk, so the only way he can really be a hero is that he transforms in a position where his other side will basically start fighting the bad guy on his own."

"That… might work as an analogy, actually," Selene nodded tentatively, once again surprised at how elaborate fiction had apparently become since her own mortality. "And this 'Hulk'… I take it his transformed state responds well to people the scientist cares for when he's human?"

"Unless they're both really ticked off about something, anyway…" Michael nodded, before he looked at her with new understanding. "You mean… my wolf followed you here?"

"You didn't even seem to want to attack me in that state."

"Wow…" Michael looked at her with a soft smile that Selene wasn't sure how to respond to before he looked down at his hands, raising them in front of his face as though he'd never seen them before. "This is… a lot…"

"Quite," Selene said grimly. "You were fighting another lycan, but he… do you remember anything?"

"The guy at the bottom of the stairs?" Michael checked, pausing in thought when Selene nodded in confirmation. "There was… he tried to bite me at first, and when I threw him off, he started talking about how I'd only heard one side of this war… he acted like the idea of what happened to your family was just some random lycan having a bad day…"

He winced as he shot Selene an apologetic look. "Sorry; that was-"

"Understandable," Selene nodded reassuringly at him, reaching over to give his shoulder a squeeze. "But… thank you for apologising."

If anyone else had brought up her family to make a point, Selene was aware that she would have been angry about it, but she could see that Michael regretted his impulsive words and had only done so because he was affirming his loyalty to her. In a dark way, Selene truly appreciated that show of support, as Michael finally met another lycan face-to-face and chose her over them despite what he'd just learned about her secrets.

"Although on that topic," she said as her gaze shifted to a warning glare, "the next time I tell you to do something, maybe just do it?"

"What's- ah," Michael said, eyes widening in embarrassed understanding as he realised what she meant. "Right… sorry, but I… I mean, everyone was going up and I wasn't sure if… it just made sense to get away at the time…"

Seeing Michael awkwardly apologise for his disobedience at least made Selene feel better about their close call. As Michael had said, he couldn't be held entirely responsible for acting on instinct and trying to get away from the fight when he'd never been in one before, particularly when he didn't truly know what she was capable of when it came to fighting lycans. She briefly cursed that she hadn't taken the time to confirm that the lycan that had attacked Michael was dead, but once she'd forced him back it had been more important to get… her friend… to safety rather than make sure one lycan was dead.

Right now, she had bigger problems than a potential survivor; this was getting beyond the point where she could just keep Michael safe on her own…

Chapter 17: Bring in the Quartermaster

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Kahn wondered if something had actually gone wrong all of a sudden or if the coven had been building to this moment for an unknown length of time and just hadn't been aware of it. For the last few decades, it seemed as though the hunt for the remaining lycans had been reduced to tracking down a few random strays that cropped up across the continent a few months apart at least, and suddenly they found themselves facing two prominent lycans engaging in virtually open warfare in a public place and Selene expressing concerns that something bigger was going on.

…All right, so things had been strange for a few months, but since the only strangeness back then had been Selene's request for a private safehouse Kahn hadn't thought it was that big a deal at the time. He'd been curious when Selene had made her request, but her explanation that she had someone to protect had seemed plausible enough, and he was hardly going to deny her the chance to get away from Kraven for a while to pursue something in private. He respected Viktor's choice of regent, and he would never go against the Elder's decision, but there was a difference between respecting Kraven's authority and actually liking him as a person.

He hadn't been certain how Kraven would react if Selene actually chose someone else over him, but Kahn knew that he wasn't going to be the one to expose her secret relationship. As he'd told Selene, she had never made a personal request in all the time he'd known her, and while he respected her for her dedication that didn't stop him regretting the necessity of it. If she truly had found someone who made her want to explore something outside of her duty, Kahn would do everything in his power to make sure his friend was happy.

When an alarm had been tripped for Selene's safehouse, Kahn hadn't known what to do about it. He had set up the system so that only he would be alerted if anything happened, but that was based on the idea that he would be able to alert Selene if her lover was in danger. Faced with the prospect of the safehouse being under attack and no news from Selene, Kahn had been grateful when the alarm stopped after a minute, as it at least suggested she was already dealing with the issue himself. A discreet check of the relevant security systems had revealed no sign of anything moving in that area, but Kahn couldn't stop himself worrying that the lack of movement was another sign that Selene's lover was in trouble…

He was pulled from his grim musings when his phone rang at last, Kahn practically dropping the new gun he was working on to answer that familiar ringtone.

"Selene!" he said urgently. "Your safehouse-!"

"I know," Selene cut him off. "I was there."

"You- you were there?" Kahn repeated, surprised at the confirmation despite his own suspicions. "I thought you were-?"

"I was pursuing a lead and it meant I had to get Michael to safety, and from there… well, things have become complicated," Selene explained. "I need you to meet me at the safehouse opposite the perfume billboard; I'll explain more when you arrive."

Selene hung up the call after that cryptic request, which left Kahn to shake his head at her brisk manner as he turned his attention to the safehouse system. He couldn't leave this open for anyone else to find the alert system for Selene's private safehouse, but he just needed a moment to confirm what safehouse she was in now…

Chapter 18: Historic Secrets

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Their current plan was probably more of a desperate hope than anything else, but Kahn knew just as well as Selene that it was their best chance. Even if he could tell that Selene wasn't ready to admit to herself just how attached she was to Michael, Kraven's own ego would never allow him to let the young lycan live, but fortunately they had an alternative, higher authority to appeal to on his behalf. Amelia was scheduled to arrive in a couple of nights for the Awakening ceremony to pass power on to Marcus, so it should be easy enough to keep Michael in hiding for that amount of time. The lycans might be actively hunting for him, but they generally didn't like going out during the day any more than the vampires, which would give Kahn and Selene more time to make plans. Their enemies might not be completely confined during the day like the vampires were, but it was generally considered to be similar to the reasons most nocturnal animals didn't get out much, as the lycans wouldn't be operating quite at their peak and would find it harder to transform without exposing their existence.

When Michael had expressed concern about how his work would react to his absence, Selene had called the hospital and explained that Michael's side project with Ziodex had reached a critical stage that would require his full attention for the next few days. Kahn had been privately impressed that Selene had come up with such a cover story herself, but had decided not to bring the issue up with her when there were other matters to focus on for the moment.

Privately, Kahn would also admit to wondering if it would have been kinder to advise Michael to cut himself off from his human life before it became too difficult to hide his lack of aging, but he appreciated that such a thing had to be Michael's choice. He was used to new vampires who chose to abandon their lives after lycans killed someone close to them, so the very notion of an immortal who might still want to maintain a life outside of their new existence was… well, it was a novel one, in its way.

In any case, with Michael secure in his current safehouse and his secret safe for the moment, Kahn had accessed the networks to delete any record that this building was in use, leaving Michael to get some rest as he and Selene returned to the mansion before sunrise. There was no obvious reason why anyone would need that particular safehouse before Amelia's arrival, and it had some food there in case one of their human contacts ever needed a place to hide, so Michael should be safe enough there until they were ready to take the next step.

Kahn had considered whether they should tell Kraven about the lycan attack at least, but Selene had reminded him that Kraven hadn't believed her earlier and had even less reason to do so now, particularly when she couldn't risk telling him about Michael to provide further evidence of her claim. While Kahn felt guilty about keeping a secret from the coven's leader on one level, he couldn't ignore Selene's point about their lack of evidence, and it wasn't like he seriously thought Kraven would do anything with the information anyway. Once they had returned to the mansion, Selene had passed off her night out as following up on a few leads that hadn't panned out, and had required Kahn to collect her after her car ran out of fuel.

The lie was a bit embarrassing, but Selene had accepted it as the better option if it meant keeping Michael Corvin secret. Kraven had been so focused on appreciating the chance to criticise Selene about something that he hadn't stopped to consider the idea that she might be lying, and Kahn's long history of loyalty worked in his favour this time around. Once their cover story had been resolved, the two had spent the morning resting, but they'd each planned to wake up earlier than their usual routine. Selene had voiced some plans to do additional research for reasons she'd declined to share at the time, which left Kahn to do additional work on his own new projects.

Strangely, when he started working on the silver nitrate gun he'd been working on the previous night, he suddenly felt a sense of apprehension as he looked at the weapon. He was still as committed to ending the war as he had been last night, but after spending time with a lycan who genuinely didn't want to be part of this conflict… and when Selene was clearly suspicious of other parties in the mansion…

"Look at this."

Kahn was so taken aback at the idea that someone would interrupt him in his lab that he only confirmed that Selene was the one who had spoken when she placed a book on the table in front of him. Looking at the text, Kahn was initially struck by the sheer size of the leather-bound volume, but the firm expression on Selene's face made it clear that she had a reason for this. Opening the book, Kahn began to scan through the pages, trusting that Selene would let him know if he missed what had attracted her attention.

It didn't take long for him to conclude that some of the history recorded here would have been disturbing even if he could believe it wasn't real. The battles between horse-mounted Death Dealers and transforming lycans was the kind of brutality he could understand, but when the pictures seemed to show the old Death Dealers actually branding lycans, Kahn definitely didn't like the look of that. Even before meeting Michael he had preferred to keep his kills clean and simple; the idea that any of his forebears might have enjoyed treating sentient beings like that…

There was killing enemies in war and depriving them of their dignity, and Kahn liked to believe that vampires had moved beyond that kind of attitude when they stopped drinking from humans.

"Where did you find this?" he looked up at Selene.

"In the historical archives."

"The archives?" Kahn couldn't conceal his anxiety at that news. "Selene, that's-!"

"I'm starting to feel that many things that were forbidden were done for more personal motives than we might have been led to believe," Selene replied, even as she indicated the book once again. "Keep reading; you haven't found the most… interesting part yet."

As intriguing as the book was academically, Kahn knew Selene well enough to know that she wouldn't have brought this to his attention if it was just a matter of historical interest. As he returned his attention to the text, he paused for a moment at the curious sight of a half-torn page in one of the books, leaving only the body of an apparent lycan with the face on the missing part of the page. He pondered the mystery for a moment, but followed Selene's cue and kept turning the pages until he stopped on a page with an elaborate battle on it, accompanied by a paragraph headed 'The Fall of Lucian and his Army'.

Of the scores of brave souls who entered Lucian's fortress a single Vampire survived: Kraven, who was richly rewarded for not only setting the great blaze but for returning with evidence of the Lycan master's demise; the branded skin, cut from Lucian's very arm.

The sight of the branded skin just over the next page felt like overkill, but Kahn could have put that aside as just a particularly gory trophy if it wasn't for Selene's next act. Before Kahn could say anything, Selene took the skin out of the book, flicked back a few pages, and laid it next to the sketch on the torn page, indicating a similar brand on the shoulder of the lycan in the picture.

"So you think that this page depicted Lucian?" Kahn looked at his friend, curious to confirm where Selene was going with this.

"More than that," Selene observed, taking the skin away to indicate a distinctive pendant lying against the lycan's chest in the picture. "I saw that pendant on a lycan that attacked Michael last night, and from what I recall the body shape was very similar to the one in this picture."

"…Hold on," Kahn looked at Selene with a new sense of uncertainty after he took a moment to confirm he was following her train of thought correctly. "Selene, I'm prepared to help you find a way to guarantee Michael's safety, but if you're looking for-"

"I'm not saying I'm right, and I appreciate that I don't have hard evidence of it, but the facts aren't looking good," Selene cut Kahn off. "Branded skin doesn't guarantee that it was taken from a dead body, and when you think about it, aside from this skin we only have Kraven's word that he did it."

"Viktor believed him."

"…And how much of that could have just been because he didn't like Lucian?"

"You think-?"

"I think we need to be cautious," Selene said. "An appeal to Amelia is still our best chance; I'd rather not entrust something this significant to a newly-awakened Elder, and… well, I think we're both in enough trouble."

Kahn was relieved that at least Selene wasn't desperate enough to consider trying to wake up Viktor herself yet. He'd concede that the evidence they'd found so far raised some worrying possibilities, but he wasn't prepared to go that far when Amelia was still an option.

Chapter 19: Catching Trains

Chapter Text

She would always prefer to be out in the field rather than analysing data, but Selene was surprised to find that her current research was actually proving to be rather interesting. The implications of the early historical records of the war were disturbing, but when she started looking between the lines she found herself wondering more about what the coven hadn't been told over the centuries.

There were obvious records about Lucian's first attack on the coven, when he had rallied the local lycans to mount a daylight offensive that only the Elders and a few others survived, but there was very little about what had actually provoked that initial attack in the first place. In the past Selene would have accepted that as Lucian just deciding that it had been a good time to attack, but after meeting Michael, she had to admit to herself that it couldn't be that simple. If Lucian had as much self-control as Michael did, it was hard to imagine a lycan with that much of a sense of self just charging a vampire fortress for no reason, but as it was there was nothing in the archives to indicate the catalyst for Lucian's attack. If there had been time, Selene would have been interested in following that avenue of inquiry further, but as it was she had to prioritise protecting the coven and Michael from Lucian's schemes.

She had become so desperate that she had even considered suggesting to Kahn that they could Awaken Viktor ahead of schedule to make an appeal on Michael's behalf, but it hadn't taken long for her to realise that wasn't a practical solution. Even if she could convince Kahn that it was worth the risk, neither she or Kahn had the mental training necessary to give Viktor a full memory 'download' of her suspicions. Kahn didn't know enough about the situation to give the Elder a clear picture, and if Selene tried anything herself Viktor would likely end up focusing on the memories of the months she'd spent helping Michael over her more recent suspicions about Kraven. No matter how much she wanted to trust her sire, his hatred of lycans was so deeply entrenched that he would almost certainly focus on that detail and not properly register everything else she wanted to share with him. Viktor's commitment to the vampire race couldn't be questioned, but that meant he would be too uncompromising at any suggestion of betrayal no matter how justified Selene felt she had been.

Looking back, this was the first time Selene regretted focusing on her weapons and combat skills over other, less obviously combat-relevant skills. Viktor had done his best to encourage an interest in the wider politics of the coven, but Selene was only now starting to realise that she should have taken more of an interest. She'd told herself that she was focusing on what was really important, but without her reputation as a Death Dealer, she didn't have the connections to be sure anyone else would believe her about Kraven's scheme.

When Kahn came back to her room, Selene was frankly grateful to have something else to think about in this complicated mess, even if he was carrying a large bag with what could only be weapons. Whatever he had to tell her, it would at least be an opponent that she could likely handle more directly than this historical research.

"Kraven's sending Soren and his men to collect Amelia."

"Soren?" Selene repeated in surprise, before her eyes narrowed in contempt as the pieces fell into place. "Oh, of course he would…"

"What?"

"If Kraven is working with the lycans, do you think he'll let any Elder have a chance to interfere if he can stop it?" Selene observed. "Obviously Amelia and Marcus would be at risk during the transition, and Viktor's obviously no threat to any plans in his current state, but if any of them had the slightest suspicion of anything they would have the authority to order a more active investigation into Kraven's activities then what we've been able to do so far."

"But… attacking an Elder?" Kahn looked at her with growing incredulity. "Selene, we can't even be sure what he's planning-?"

"But we both know that the coven is essentially vulnerable during an Awakening," Selene pointed out. "We may consolidate our forces here to ensure the Elders' protection, but if an enemy knew where to go it wouldn't be impossible for someone to get inside and do some serious damage before we could properly retaliate."

"…True," Kahn acknowledged. He wanted to object to the idea that he would ever do less than his best, but as Selene had observed, the security required for an Awakening was always a challenge. With the right inside man, it wouldn't be impossible for an enemy to get inside the mansion if they had a suitable plan…

"So what do you suggest?" he looked uncertainly at Selene; when he felt this off-kilter at so many uncertainties, he wanted some kind of assurance of their next step. "If Soren is involved, we can't exactly warn Amelia before she arrives-"

"Can't we?" Selene grinned.

"What are you thinking?" Kahn looked at her with a thoughtful smile.

"Whatever Kraven's done, I think we can both agree that he doesn't have the imagination to do anything particularly elaborate if he's going against Amelia," Selene explained. "I'd guess that the plan is simply to intercept her train when it arrives at the station and let the lycans attack, so all we need to do is intercept the train before it arrives and warn her own forces what to expect."

"…Risky, but workable," Kahn nodded cautiously as he considered the idea before he indicated the window. "I took your window off the security alarm, so we can leave right now if you want."

"Out the window?"

"I have a feeling we don't want Kraven to know we're going anywhere," Kahn observed. "I've left orders with my staff to keep an eye on things while I deal with some personal concerns; they'll call me if something happens."

"And until then, they have plausible deniability," Selene nodded in understanding as she stood up. "Let's go."

Chapter 20: To Save an Elder

Chapter Text

Nobody explicitly said it, but there was a definite air in the train that the only reason Kahn and Selene hadn't been killed by the security team was that they were known figures in the coven whose reputations ensured that people would at least listen to their side before taking any action. Selene was privately ashamed to wonder if it was her skill in the field or Kahn's record as the coven quartermaster that had given them this opportunity, but either way she was grateful that Amelia was giving her this chance at all. They still had to wait a few minutes as their own weapons were confiscated and the appropriate arrangements were made, but in the end it only took a few minutes for her and Kahn to be brought before Amelia as she sat in her private cabin in the train.

The female Elder could have set aside an entire carriage for herself, but she contented herself with a larger-than-average compartment, allowing her to meet with guests in one area while setting aside another for when she wanted to sleep. Amelia was already wearing an elegant silver gown, in preparation for the Awakening ceremony that she would be taking part in when she arrived, but she still gave every sign of being ready for whatever threat might come at her.

"Greetings," she nodded politely at the two vampires as they were shown in. With Selene and Kahn already disarmed, they were left alone in the cabin with Amelia; there were other Death Dealers just outside, but Selene knew all too well that Amelia wouldn't need any help to deal with her or Kahn if either or both of them turned out to be hostile.

"Greetings, my lady," Kahn nodded at her. "I am Kahn, the master of arms at Ordgahz; this is Selene, one of our best Death Dealers."

"My lady," Selene nodded. Unlike with some of the nobles Kraven invited over, Amelia had enough of a reputation as a warrior to have legitimately earned Selene's respect, even if they hadn't met that often.

"Well," Amelia looked at the two with a slight smile, "would you care to explain how you came to be here before we arrived at the station?"

"We believe that Kraven is working with the lycans and planning to attack your train when you arrive."

"Kraven?" Amelia raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Viktor's regent?"

"Indeed," Kahn nodded.

"And you… have evidence of this?"

"Not entirely," Selene said, feeling a need to take over; Kahn had helped her come this far, but she was going to take her share of responsibility for this situation. "I am sure that Kraven is going to do something soon, and I… believe that Lucian is involved, but I cannot give you any proof…"

"Lucian?" Amelia said, a new edge to her voice as she looked at Selene. "Lucian is alive?"

"I believe he is, at least," Selene nodded. "I saw a lycan that greatly resembles available images of Lucian during a recent confrontation, but… circ*mstances prevented me from confirming his identity at the time…"

"Battles are always difficult; you cannot blame yourself for not keeping track of everything in such a situation," Amelia acknowledged, giving Selene a brief nod before she settled back in her chair. "In any case, you have yet to explain your reasons for being here?"

"Kraven ordered me to let his men pick you up at the station rather than leave it to my own forces, and Selene… expressed concern that Kraven intends to assist the lycans in ambushing you," Kahn explained. "We thought it best to make direct contact and warn you about the situation in person."

"I see." Amelia stared at Kahn in a contemplative manner. "You truly doubt Kraven's intentions?"

"I trust Selene, my lady," Kahn replied. "Kraven has been a… competent leader in the absence of an Elder, but are we so set in our ways that we would allow an individual to coast through immortality on the strength of one alleged victory centuries ago? At the very least, his actions of late have demonstrated a growing willingness to ignore possible lycan activity if it doesn't fit his own views…"

"Enough," Amelia held up a hand as she looked firmly between them. "On the one hand, you must recognise that I cannot act against Viktor's chosen regent solely on your word-"

"We're not asking you to act against Kraven-" Selene began.

"And I recognise that, which is why I will take your advice and take appropriate precautions," Amelia cut the younger vampire off, glancing at a clock on the wall. "We are due to arrive in ten minutes; that should be enough time to prepare…"

Chapter 21: The History of the Corvinus Clan

Chapter Text

Selene wasn't sure if Amelia's decision to accompany her to meet with Michael on her own was motivated by simple curiosity or some deeper concerns, but for the moment at least she was grateful for the Elder's presence. Once Amelia had established that only Kahn was aware of Michael's existence, the Elder had informed them both that the best strategy for now was to let most of her forces return to Ordghaz to prepare the mansion for the apparently planned lycan assault and put Kraven under arrest. The guards had reported that a few lycans had escaped the assault on the train, but Selene doubted that any of their enemies would be able to alter their plans quickly enough to attack the mansion this quickly.

For the moment, Amelia had also declared that the Awakening was essentially on hold until the current crisis was resolved, to ensure that the lycans couldn't take advantage of the temporary power gap during the day when Amelia would fast and Marcus would be fed blood to restore himself to health. It was unfortunate, but at least there was a precedent for such situations; there had been a few occasions where Awakenings had been postponed until some sudden crisis had been resolved. Amelia's forces were under orders to keep Kraven contained and his followers under house arrest until they had clear evidence of Kraven's agenda, which should at least ensure that he couldn't do anything to alert Lucian or his associates without making it obvious.

Selene still wasn't sure how they were going to convince the rest of the Death Dealers to spare Michael, but at least Amelia was willing to meet with her friend in private before making any decisions about his fate. Amelia had agreed with her that it was best to keep Michael's existence secret until they had a plan for how to explain the situation to the rest of the mansion residents, but she insisted on talking with him before she made any official proclamations. As far as the rest of the group were concerned, Selene was taking Amelia to Ordghaz via a different route from the main party to throw off possible pursuit, but only Kahn knew where she was really going. The car was one that Soren's team had used earlier, but Selene wasn't petty enough to waste time going back for her preferred vehicle when Michael's life was potentially at stake if he remained unprotected for too long.

"How did you first make contact with this Michael?" Amelia asked, once the two of them were some distance from the station.

"It was… I was lucky, really," Selene said with a thoughtful shrug. "I spotted him while I was on my latest patrol and caught the scent of a lycan leaving the hospital."

"He was ill?"

"He works there, actually," Selene clarified with a small smile. "After he lost his fiancé in the accident that turned him, he decided to leave America to get away from his memories of her and began training so that he wouldn't be so helpless as he was in that accident."

"Commendable," Amelia nodded. "May I ask why you didn't just kill him?"

"At first I reasoned that he was likely part of a larger pack and it made more sense to keep an eye on him until I knew where the rest of them were," Selene explained. "By the time I realised that he wasn't part of any kind of pack, I was also satisfied that he wasn't… well, that he wasn't an active part of this war."

"Because you never saw him attack any of us?"

"Because he actively locked himself away every full moon to ensure that he wouldn't harm anyone," Selene clarified, careful to keep her tone respectful as they moved deeper into Budapest. "I could accept a standard lycan living alone to avoid detection, but I couldn't imagine a lycan so concerned for innocents that he would lock himself up like that."

"Quite," Amelia nodded thoughtfully. "That is… certainly unusual behaviour."

"Have you ever seen something like that before?"

"There were… a few back in the early days of the werewolves who attempted such things, but they naturally didn't have the same opportunities as someone would have today…"

"Werewolves?" Selene looked at Amelia curiously. She was aware of the popular term, but something about the way Amelia said it suggested some more significant distinction between werewolves and lycans.

"In the early days of the immortals, what you know as lycans hadn't yet come into existence," Amelia explained. "Back then, the werewolves were essentially trapped in their transformed state after the initial infection, reduced to nothing more than feral animals; at least lycans have a mind for tactics and can return to human form depending on the demands of the situation."

"So they were the animals we're taught to think of the lycans as?" Selene said. It was only after the words had passed her lips that she realised what she'd just said; thinking of Michael as an exceptional lycan was one thing, but actively thinking that other lycans could be like him was something else.

"Essentially," Amelia nodded. "In the early days, some humans who were bitten on the last nights of the full moon were able to resist the transformation long enough to get out of sight, but they simply lacked the means to secure themselves somewhere where nobody could find them."

"How… courageous of them," Selene said, struck by a sense of sympathy at the thought of those long-gone humans. Even if most people didn't believe in them these days, modern media had at least given people some idea of the 'rules' that defined vampires and lycans and how to cope; Michael's example alone was proof of that. The idea that anyone from a culture so primitive that they dated back to Amelia's humanity could have had the courage to at least attempt such a feat was something to be commended, even if it apparently hadn't worked.

Have we just grown used to underestimating humans? Selene found herself wondering. Amelia's policies in the last century had encouraged a greater awareness of human achievements, but it was easy to just see how humans had advanced technologically and think that was it. Michael had spent months thinking of himself as a monster, unable to share his nature with anyone else, and he'd still had the courage to find a way to protect others from what he had become…

When Selene made the final turn into the street with Michael's safehouse, she was immediately shocked to see an unfamiliar van on one corner, the strong scent of a large group of lycans filling the air as soon as she stopped the car and opened the door. Selene glanced at Amelia, but it was clear that the female Elder was ready into action despite the fact that she was still wearing her elegant gown.

"If you see a fair-haired male lycan, don't hurt him," Selene said, hoping that the Elder wouldn't take offence at her words. "Michael should be more focused on getting away than fighting in a situation like this, so I doubt he'll transform, but if he's defending himself he could be in the middle of the fight…"

"Understood," Amelia nodded, shoulders tensed and a slight smile on her face as she took in the building before her. That detail clarified, the two women emerged from the car and advanced towards the building, the scent and sound of transformed lycans already clear. Selene drew her weapons as she advanced, although Amelia just flexed her arms; with the raw strength of an elder behind her, she shouldn't need more than her bare hands to deal with a group of relatively random lycans.

"Michael!" Selene called out as she entered the building, stealth irrelevant in the face of the threat to the man she'd come here to save. "Get out!"

The sound of growling lycans from above confirmed that the safehouse was already under attack, but Selene couldn't let herself wonder how they'd found this place so quickly. The priority right now had to be to get Michael to safety and stop this current wave of lycans; questions about the reason they were after Michael had to wait. Looking up, Selene's eyes widened as she saw four lycans jump off the stairs above her, two transformed and two more still in human form.

Selene quickly turned her berettas on the human-form lycans while Amelia leapt up to intercept the ones that had already changed, grabbing a neck in each hand before she spun around to slam them both against the ground. The large creatures struggled against her grip, but the strength of an Elder was more than enough to keep them pinned as Selene fired at the humans. One lycan went down swiftly when Selene's shots struck it in the chest and head, but she adjusted her aim to hit the other one in the knees when she registered the contrast between him and the usual lycans she saw in the field. The older man was clearly a lycan if he had attempted that jump in the first place, but in Selene's experience vampires and lycans turned the young and healthy unless they had a reason to make an exception, and there were several questions about this situation that still needed answers.

Satisfied that her immediate attackers weren't a threat and that Amelia had her own enemies under control, Selene ran up the stairs towards the safehouse level, but her hopes of an easy resolution were halted when she found that the door had been broken down. Even knowing that it was likely hopeless, she ran into the safehouse, quickly confirming that Michael had already been taken before she headed for the window. Looking out, she saw Michael being forced into a police cruiser by two other lycans, these two disguised as police officers to go with the false car. Lost for better ideas, Selene leapt from the window down to the ground, but by the time she had reached the street the car was already too far away for her to catch up.

"sh*t," Selene allowed herself a moment of lost self-control before she turned back to the main building. She might have lost Michael for now, but if she was right about that older lycan…

When she re-entered the building, Selene was grimly satisfied to see that the older-looking lycan was still alive, even if he was still too injured to move from where he'd fallen. The transformed lycans had already had their necks broken by Amelia, but Selene wasn't too concerned about that; hiding the bodies for later disposal would be easy enough when they were already in a safehouse.

"Michael?" Amelia looked up at Selene as she moved to stand over the last living lycan in the hall.

"He was abducted," Selene said, before turning her attention to the lycan. "But we have a potential source right here."

"Do you believe that I will talk?" the lycan glared up at her, managing to look reasonably defiant despite the pain on his face.

In response, Selene walked over and slammed her foot down on the lycan's still-bleeding knee, refusing to allow herself to smile when her prisoner let out a yell of agony. As satisfying as it was to have a clear enemy, this was about finding someone important to her rather than punishing a lycan.

"We have time," Selene said, hoping that she wasn't faced with some other time limit she didn't know about. "Tell me why you are interested in Michael Corvin, and we'll see about getting you medical attention and a comfortable cell."

"Cell?" the lycan repeated with a pained smirk. "That is actually an option?"

"We are willing to consider it," Amelia observed, moving to stand beside Selene as they looked down at the lycan. "Which is admittedly more than you deserve considering your forces took part in an attempt to kill me and my entourage less than an hour ago, but it is becoming clear things are more… interesting… than I expected."

The lycan stared up at them for a few moments, but when Selene ground her heel into the lycan's knee, he nodded in pained resignation. Selene moved him to a position close to the wall so that he could lean against that, which should hopefully give him a sense of dignity about his current situation, and then moved back to stand alongside Amelia as they looked at him.

"For some time now, we've been searching for someone with a special trait…" the lycan began, his expression trembling as though he didn't like giving away what he was saying now. "A direct descendant of Alexander Corvinus… Hungarian, a warlord who came to power in the early seasons of the fifth century, only to watch a plague ravage his entire fiefdom."

Even in the current situation, Selene was intrigued to see that the lycan's explanation was picking up speed. Recalling some of the films she'd watched with Michael over the last few weeks, she wondered if he was one of those people who just liked to talk about his knowledge to anyone who would listen, even if it was an enemy.

"Corvinus was the only survivor," the lycan continued. "His body was able to shape the illness, somehow… to mould it to his benefit. He became the first true immortal…"

"And years later, he had three mortal children, one of whom became the first lycan, another the first vampire, and the third who inherited Corvinus's mortal titles while Corvinus himself vanished," Amelia finished with a bored shrug.

"You know the truth?" the lycan looked at her with a curious expression.

"Marcus has his flaws, but he was honest when he brought Viktor and I into the fold," Amelia replied.

"What truth?" Selene asked, confused at this apparently irrelevant turn in the conversation. "What does Marcus have to do with this-?"

"Marcus's full name is Markus Corvinus."

Despite herself, Selene could only stare at Amelia as she processed that declaration.

She had spent so long believing that Viktor was the oldest and strongest vampire alive, and now Amelia had essentially revealed that Marcus was actually the first vampire? The older Elder had no reason to lie about that in this situation, but that also raised questions about why anyone had started telling that particular lie in the first place…

"Which doesn't answer why you would go to so much trouble looking for a mortal descendant of Corvinus," Amelia turned her attention back to the lycan. "We know that Kraven has been working with Lucian for centuries; what was stopping you from getting to the Elders' chambers and taking a sample from Marcus?"

"Aside from the fact that we did not wish Kraven to know our full agenda?" the lycan replied with a grim smirk. "There were… concerns… that the vampire traits in Marcus's blood would contaminate the sample and make it… unsuitable… for our intended purpose."

"But that's not a problem with Michael, is it?" Selene looked cautiously at the lycan. "But… why is that so important to you?"

"As to the first, with my own knowledge of the lycan gene, it was simple enough to identify the original virus in Michael Corvin's genetic code by screening out the lycan elements from the sample," the lycan affirmed, his expression briefly becoming more regretful as he continued. "As to the second, for years we've been trying to combine the bloodlines… and for years we failed, as though even on the cellular level our species are destined to destroy each other. With the Corvinus strain taken from Michael, we can achieve a perfect union; a triple-celled platelet, which holds unspeakable power… which was where you came in."

"Me?" Amelia looked at the lycan with renewed curiosity. "I thought that… Kraven just knew the cover story for the attack against me, correct?"

"Killing you would cause chaos among the vampires, but that was not our sole goal," the lycan confirmed with a smirk. "With the blood of a pure-born lycan mixed with the blood of a powerful Elder… such as yourself… along with a sample of Michael Corvin's blood…"

"A hybrid?" Amelia looked curiously at the lycan scientist.

"Half-vampire, half-lycan, but stronger than both," the scientist affirmed.

"Which is how Lucian intended to enforce his 'treaty' with Kraven after the Elders were dead, correct?" Selene cut in.

"How did you guess?" the scientist asked.

"Kraven is too much of an egotist to just let the lycans live given how he feels about them, and I doubt that Lucian is stupid enough to trust Kraven not to try and betray him eventually," Selene clarified. "Kraven would at least recognise that he needed to let Lucian's forces kill the Elders so that he could come away from the deaths relatively clean, but after that Lucian would have wanted some guarantee that he could maintain his own power no matter what kind of limited numbers the lycans might have."

"Quite," the scientist nodded, his expression grim even as his eyes retained a slight sense of satisfaction that his work was being appreciated. "The hybrids would guarantee Lucian's ability to surpass any threat that Kraven or the rest of you could make against him, and Kraven's ego and Viktor's prejudices would ensure that none of you could explore suitable alternatives to oppose him if they survived."

The scenario sounded overly complicated to Selene, but there was a reason she'd never been very interested in politics, and at least she understood enough to establish what Lucian had been intending to get out of this particular scheme. The treaty he was intending to create with Kraven would still be valid either way, but the existence of the hybrids would give Lucian a useful trump card. If they were as powerful as Lucian apparently believed they would be, he could use them to enforce his own authority, and thus ensure that Kraven could never turn against him later. It would be more of a détente than a true peace, but Kraven would have power and Lucian would have dealt with his enemies, so each would be satisfied.

"Lucian would do all this to end the blood feud?" Amelia asked.

"Blood feud?" the scientist chuckled as he looked at Amelia. "Has Viktor managed to conceal the truth from you for this long?"

"What?" Amelia glared at the lycan scientist with new intensity. "What are you talking about?"

"Lucian has his reasons for hating your kind, but be assured that Viktor is the one who started this particular conflict so many centuries ago," the scientist explained.

"Viktor?" Selene said, fighting down the instinctive urge to reject that accusation. She couldn't pin down the moment that she had lost her former admiration for her sire, but the moment she had acknowledged that Viktor would just treat Michael as a lycan without showing any concern about his unique circ*mstances, she had been forced to acknowledge that he wasn't the ideal warrior she had perceived him as for so long. She wasn't ready to completely abandon her past respect for him, but the idea that Viktor had helped to start the war suddenly wasn't as impossible as she would have tried to dismiss it as before she met Michael…

"What did he do?" she looked cautiously at the lycan. "How did Viktor start the war?"

"You wouldn't believe me without evidence," the scientist said, adjusting his posture for a moment before he turned to Amelia. "But if you wish this evidence… I want a guarantee that Lucian will be allowed to speak his piece, rather than face summary execution the moment he is discovered."

"You will give us the location of Lucian's base?" Amelia asked.

"And the most direct route to his location, so long as you guarantee that he will not be harmed… any more than is necessary to bring him in," the scientist affirmed.

"And you believe that I will do this?"

"I believe that Selene here wishes to ensure that Michael Corvin survives, and I believe that you are more… reasonable to the evidence," the scientist shrugged. "Viktor has his own prejudices, of course, and even Marcus has a questionable history in this regard, but you?"

"You trust her to be reasonable when you were planning to kill her as part of your existing plan?" Selene pointed out, unable to stop herself.

"Lucian and I are adaptable," the scientist shrugged, although Selene was grateful to see that Amelia was looking at the lycan in an assessing manner as he turned his attention to her. "If it helps, your own death was merely a convenient part of the scheme; neither Lucian or myself bear any true grudge against you…"

Amelia and Selene stared at their lycan prisoner in silence for a moment, considering the implications of his offer. Selene wasn't sure how to react to the offer that this lycan had just made, torn between her long commitment to the war and the part of her that had been inspired by Michael to find another way of doing things. Despite that, as she looked at Amelia, she found that she had a cautious faith in the female Elder's ability to do the right thing at this point, suddenly certain that the older vampire would take a more practical view rather than continuing the apparent cycle of violence that had started for a reason she was starting to suspect almost nobody knew the truth behind…

"Very well," Amelia nodded at last. "You will provide me with a suitable entrance point for your headquarters, and then I will return to the mansion to ensure that Kraven has been secured and enlist a team of my most trusted Death Dealers. Selene will take you to your chosen entrance and you will accompany us to make it clear that we are here to talk rather than fight."

"Understood," the lycan nodded, wincing as he tried to stand up; his wounds might be healing, but the silver bullets would still be painful.

"And be warned," Selene said, walking over to stare directly into the lycan's eyes. "If you betray us, I'll make sure you die before any of your fellows can save you."

"And be sure that Michael Corvin survives," Amelia added, giving Selene a brief smile as she looked back at the Elder in surprise. "I trust that, given the history between our people, we can both accept the need for self-defence before we can establish terms, but I would prefer not to talk over the blood of an innocent."

Innocent…

It was the ease with which Amelia used that word that allowed Selene to relax for the first time in what felt like months.

Having Kahn on her side had been one thing when he was a friend who trusted that she wouldn't betray the coven, but to have an Elder support her belief that Michael was a victim rather than an enemy…

Selene didn't know what she should expect from what was about to happen, but it was good to know that Michael had at least one more important ally in the coven who seemed ready to speak up in his favour.

Chapter 22: The First Lycan

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As Michael stirred himself back into consciousness, he allowed himself a moment to wonder if he was in the middle of some kind of warped dream, until he felt the straps around his wrists and legs and realised what must have happened to him. Glancing around confirmed that he was currently being held in what he could only think of as the equivalent of some back-alley criminal's unofficial medical clinic, the kind of thing used by people who couldn't go to official hospitals for some reason or other.

In other words, Michael thought with grim terror, I've been caught by the werewolves.

It might be a leap when nobody had even spoken to him yet, but he doubted that normal criminals would have even had the nerve to get involved when they saw even one giant wolf attacking that safehouse, and he was fairly sure he remembered seeing another one before Selene told him to get out. He couldn't quite remember what had happened in the next couple of minutes, but it was obvious that things hadn't gone well for him…

It was only when a familiar face walked into the room that Michael began to appreciate the extent of the trouble he was currently in. He'd only briefly met this man before, but when that confrontation had been the catalyst for his first deliberate transformation to date, it wasn't the kind of moment that he'd easily forget.

"Ah, you're awake," the lycan said politely to him, a nonchalance to his manner that left Michael feeling even more frustrated. "I apologise in advance if you're feeling a bit groggy; given your reaction in our last meeting, it was thought best to give you an enzyme to stop the change-"

"My 'reaction'?" Michael repeated, fighting through his confusion to look at the lycan in outrage. "You mean… when you acted as though your side eating people… eating kids… was just something that happened…?"

"That… came out wrong, and I regret it," the lycan said; to his credit, he actually did appear ashamed as he looked at Michael. "If lycans were responsible for the deaths of Selene's family before she joined the Death Dealers, I can assure you I always shared the vampires' opinions regarding attacking humans. I began work on essentially weaning them of that particular hunger as soon as I assumed leadership of a pack and did my best to make that policy large-scale, but as you can imagine, it takes time to abandon such an… ingrained habit-"

"OK, so you didn't let them keep feeding like that; doesn't change the fact that your people did that in the first place," Michael spat, relieved to find his mind becoming clearer as he spoke. He still didn't feel physically focused enough to change, but at least he could think clearly enough to come up with an argument.

"They are your people now, too-"

"No," Michael said firmly. "I was just scratched because some other wolf tried to bite me in its death throes and killed the woman I loved in the same accident; I'm not one of you."

"If you think that the vampires would see it that way, you're mistaken," the man said. "You may be associating with Selene for now-"

"She's actually been helping me cope with this sh*t, which is more than any of you might have done for me," Michael retorted. "If that wolf had survived the accident, I'd have just been dragged off and forced to take part in this particular war just because of who bit me, right?"

"The vampires would have just killed you-"

"I've spent the last few months being kept safe by a vampire, and a lycan was the one who ruined my life," Michael countered. "Seriously, do any of you even remember why you're doing this? Do two entire species have nothing better to do then try and kill each other?"

"Believe me, Michael, I know exactly what started this war," the lycan said, glaring at him even as he walked over to stick a needle in Michael's arm and withdraw a new blood sample. "That is why I'm relying on you to help me finish it."

"Me?" Michael repeated, anger replaced by confusion at this sudden shift in the conversation. "How am I meant to do anything here? If you think I'm going to help you-!"

"I have no intention of forcing you to do anything yourself, but your family history is of particular relevance to me," the lycan said with a smile, stepping back as he held up the syringe full of blood. "Are you aware that you are the last known descendant of the original immortal?"

"Excuse me?"

"For what it's worth, I doubt that even your 'dear' Selene is aware of that, considering how much work Viktor put into hiding the truth about our origins, but the facts don't lie," the lycan affirmed (Michael wasn't going to over-analyse the implications of the way he'd referred to Selene; right now it was more important to keep track of his story). "Your blood contains a very unique genetic quirk that will allow us to harness the kind of power no other being on the planet has ever achieved… and I will finally be able to avenge her."

"Her?" Michael latched on to that comment, looking at the lycan with new incredulity as the implications of that last statement sunk in. "Has this seriously been all about the fact that the vampires killed your… wife?"

"This is about how the vampires are such heartless monsters that their leader killed his own daughter because she fell in love with me!"

The way the lycan fell silent after that declaration somehow did more to convince Michael that this man's words were sincere than anything else he'd heard so far. It was only when Michael took a moment to process them that he realised the full weight of that statement and the implications that went with it. The mere concept of what he'd just heard would have struck him as bizarre even if he was just dealing with the idea in a film or TV show, never mind when he was faced with the reality of an increasingly twisted situation.

A vampire and a werewolf?

Then again, when he thought about his own feelings for Selene… the way he'd come to look forward to seeing her… the way that she made the worst thing that could have ever happened to anybody somewhat bearable because it was the only way he would have ever met her…

He wasn't sure if he could say that she felt that way about him, and he certainly wasn't expecting anything in turn, but there was something about Selene herself… the way she'd done so much for him and never asked him to really do anything more for her in turn…

"…How did it happen?" he said at last, looking curiously at the lycan. "You and… that vampire, I mean?"

"…We were slaves once," the lycan said, his tone low and solemn as he looked between Michael and the blood sample still in his hands. There was a wistful expression on his face that at least assured Michael he was hearing the truth, even if he had to wonder how such a relationship had come about. "The daylight guardians of the vampires. At the time, I bore them no ill will… even took a vampire for my bride."

"And… her father was their leader?"

"Viktor," the lycan affirmed grimly. "The oldest known vampire… and he killed his own daughter, for no greater crime than loving me."

He shot a glare in Michael's direction that could have meant anything from contempt to amusem*nt, given how often it seemed to change even as Michael looked at it. "And then he went and turned your own vampire to try and be some kind of substitute for her."

"Selene was…?" Michael shook his head for a moment before he collected himself and glared at the older man. "You can't blame her for that; it's not like she knew anything-!"

"And that excuses it?"

"I'm not saying it does… but you can't just kill an entire species because you blame them for one man's actions…"

"After Selene spent centuries blaming our kind for her loss?"

"Because she thought your kind would do that to other families and nobody ever gave her reason to think otherwise!" Michael protested. "Did this Viktor guy have any reason to kill your wife apart from that he didn't like her marrying you?"

"He… objected… to our child," the lycan said after a significant pause, looking away as though it was too painful to see Michael's reaction to that statement.

"Child?" Michael repeated in surprise despite himself, mind racing at the implications (and not for personal reasons). "That's actually possible?"

"We were in love-"

"I didn't mean…" Michael replied, suddenly struck by a need to clarify his choice of words. "Look, I just always thought from the stories that vampires were basically the walking dead, and I never really… I mean, that's not the kind of thing you can just ask someone about…"

"The myths about our kind are… mixed," the lycan nodded at Michael in cautious understanding, at least showing no sign that he was offended at Michael's mistake. "They are correct regarding our weaknesses to sunlight and silver, although pop culture was ironically only correct about the extent of that weakness later. However, despite what some have thought… and as much as they come across as unfeeling… vampires are still biologically alive in the essential details."

"You watch films?"

"It's something to do when we have to stay hidden," the lycan shrugged, a smile on his face that actually made him look slightly embarrassed before he focused his attention back on Michael. "In any case, Sonja and I did conceive a child, and were making plans to leave and spend our lives in secret… but when our relationship was discovered, Viktor had me whipped for several hours and then made me watch as he opened the ceiling to expose her to the sun."

Michael could only look at his captor in silence at that revelation. It wasn't hard to imagine what sunlight might do to a vampire after what he'd seen during the fight at the station, but the idea of watching that happen to Selene…

"I am sorry about that," he said at last, hoping that the older lycan accepted his words. "And I can understand wanting to make this Viktor guy pay for that… but you can't wipe out a whole race because of that."

"Because it's not 'right'?"

"Because if you can justify doing that to the vampires, how is that any different to why Viktor killed her in the first place?"

"HE MADE ME WATCH-!" the lycan roared, moving so fast that he was suddenly right in front of Michael's face, only to be cut off when Michael slammed his forehead into the other's nose to force him back.

"And that was evil, but acting like every other vampire would do that if they had all the facts is just like Viktor deciding we're all nothing but animals," Michael continued, as his adversary reset his broken nose and looked back at Michael. "If you had the chance to talk to a vampire who'd actually be willing to listen to your side… would you do it?"

The lack of response wasn't encouraging at first, but the longer the lycan's apparent leader stood in contemplation, the more Michael began to hope he'd at least made a point. The way his gaze remained fixed on the blood sample he'd taken earlier suggested that he wasn't going to abandon that part of his plans either, but the fact that he hadn't rejected Michael's question yet gave the medical student hope that there might still be a way to resolve this without the vampires and lycans just trying to kill each other…

A door opened and another figure (obviously another lycan; Michael doubted they allowed humans down here) walked in, looking over at Michael's companion.

"We've got company," the figure said.

"I… take it that this isn't the type of company that's going to immediately start shooting at us?" the first lycan said, moving the sample into a safe as he looked back at the new arrival.

"Not right now, but it's only a matter of time," the new arrival said. "You know what they're like…"

"Indeed," the clearly lead lycan said, looking back at Michael for a moment before he sighed. "Well, I should see what he wants before things get more complicated."

As the others left the room, Michael bit back the urge to call out after him. As much as he wanted to continue their talk, right now the only thing on his mind was Selene's safety if she came here to get him out, and giving the apparent leader a reason to think he was only making these arguments because of her wouldn't help.

If he could just focus his thoughts enough to let himself change on purpose again… he just needed to break these straps and find some way out of this place to talk with Selene…

Chapter 23: An Unprecedented Meeting

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Considering the challenges of the past century, Amelia supposed that she should be feeling frustrated at this turn of events. She had been anticipating the chance to actually get some rest after the chaos of the last hundred years, as human technology advanced to a level where they become dangerously destructive and medical technology required several adjustments to be made to conceal their own natures from other parties.

As it was, she hadn't even arrived back in Budapest before she found herself faced with the unexpected warnings of Selene and Kahn and the warnings of treachery within the coven itself. The protocol to delay an Awakening had rarely been invoked, but all relevant parties agreed that the current situation made it more important to keep Amelia in action rather than risk even the temporary delay that would be caused if Marcus took power as planned.

Amelia wasn't ready to acknowledge that there was a deeper reason for her concerns in that regard, but for the moment the priority was to take advantage of the opportunity presented to end the war. She wasn't sure if it was overstretching even her authority as an Elder to make plans to end a conflict that had defined the vampire species for the better part of a thousand years, but if Kraven could plan to end the conflict for his own benefit she didn't think it was unreasonable to explore her own end.

The thing that she intended to keep quiet was the implications of Singe's claims regarding Michael Corvin's genetic potential. Assuming that they could intercept Lucian before he could actually transform himself into a hybrid, Selene had expressed confidence that Corvin wouldn't be interesting in that kind of power on his own. Amelia might not have met Corvin herself, but she chose to have faith in Selene's interpretation of him unless she knew otherwise.

As she and Selene reached the mansion, Amelia had to admit that it had been pleasant to get back into the field for a while. She had enjoyed the challenge of using her tactical skills in a business environment for most of the last century, but there was something satisfying about dealing with adversaries in direct combat, rather than making complex deals and negotiations in a boardroom. She had even enjoyed travelling in a personal car rather than with an entourage; the Elders might demand security and protection, but she, Viktor and Marcus were so strong they weren't exactly in danger if they went out on their own, and in this case Amelia had been accompanied anyway.

"My lady," Kahn said, the Death Dealer commander already at the door as Selene and Amelia got out of the car, a small group of other vampires behind him.

"Kahn," Amelia nodded at the younger vampire, before she opened the back door and led out the still-bleeding Singe. "Take this lycan to the dungeons, treat the worst of his wounds, and have someone clean the seats of this car."

"Of course," Kahn said, handing the injured lycan off to one of the guards.

"And do nothing further to him," Amelia added as she noticed the vampire start to tighten his grip on Singe's shoulder. "For the moment, we shall shortly require his services as a guide; his fate will be decided later."

She wasn't going to outright declare peace until she at least had a chance to talk with Lucian, but if such a goal was possible she wouldn't achieve it by hurting a prisoner who'd provided useful information.

"Where is… the other lycan?" Kahn said, looking cautiously between Amelia and Selene.

"Captured by our opponents," Selene said, fixing Kahn with a particularly intense stare. "Where is Kraven?"

"…Escaped."

"Escaped?" Amelia repeated, now directing her own firm stare at Kahn. "He escaped?"

"I can assure you it wasn't on my watch; some of Kraven's forces from the train assault got back to the mansion before any of my own forces did and managed to evacuate Kraven and his remaining men before I could order their arrests," Kahn said, tone defensive even as he looked respectfully at Amelia. "I've dispatched a few Death Dealers to trace their route, but based on what we've found so far, coupled with Selene's earlier observations…"

"He's going to Lucian," Selene finished.

"Which makes it all the more imperative that we get down there immediately," Amelia said, looking down at her elegant dress in frustration. "Tell your men to prepare while I change."

"You intend to lead us, my lady?" Kahn looked at her in surprise. "But the Awakening-"

"Has been suspended due to an active ongoing crisis; we cannot afford to leave the coven vulnerable during the transition of power," Amelia cut him off, before she looked at Kahn in a reassuring manner. "Your dedication to duty is admirable, but sometimes we must allow ourselves to be flexible to deal with matters as they arise."

"Of course, my lady," Kahn nodded in understanding before his expression shifted into a brief smile. "It… will be a pleasure to be alongside you and your men on this assignment."

"The pleasure is all ours, I assure you," Amelia smiled back at Kahn before her expression became more solemn. "Make sure that the Council are secure and protected by some of your most skilled men, and then have your most trusted men ready to join Selene and I."

"Trusted?" Kahn looked at her curiously. "What is the mission, my lady?"

"I intend to confront the lycans in their den and confer with Lucian."

Amelia would be lying if she told anyone that she didn't enjoy the shocked expression on Kahn's face at those words. She recognised that Kahn wasn't to blame for how things had unfolded since he and Selene had revealed that Viktor's regent was intending to attack them, and while Selene's association with Michael Corvin would be questioned by some Amelia understood that the Death Dealer had taken all appropriate precautions when bringing the young lycan into the fold. After so long dealing with the complexities of mortal business, it would be refreshing to have something as simple as a raid to look forward to, even if the raid would not end the same way as others.

On the other hand, there was a reason she had requested his most skilled associates for this part of the mission; if things worked out the way she hoped, she had to be sure that nobody was going to do anything impulsive once she made contact with the lycan leader…

Chapter 24: Rejection and Reunion

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Considering her age and reputation, Selene was aware that this particular plan was probably a petty step on her part, but she doubted that anyone would complain about it. She had spent the last few centuries basically forced to put up with Kraven's advances due to his status in the coven, but now that she had a valid reason to actually punish him she was going to enjoy it. Once the initial contact with Lucian had been made, Amelia had been generous enough to give Selene permission to confront Kraven herself so long as she didn't do any serious damage to him in the process, and Lucian had even confirmed that she was free to retrieve Michael afterwards.

Selene didn't entirely like the idea of 'retrieving' Michael that Lucian had implied, as though Michael was just an interesting specimen rather than the most surprising… friend… she'd made in almost all her centuries as a vampire, but right now she had to think of the wider picture. Lucian had assured her that Michael wasn't currently in danger, and as surprising as she would have found that thought just months ago, she believed him. Michael might not be comfortable at this point, but he would be safe, which meant that her main goal now was to punish the traitor.

When she walked into the room Lucian had informed her was Kraven's current location, Selene literally felt like laughing when she saw the hopeful expression on the former regent's face when he saw her.

"Thank God!" he said, trying to look at her with a sense of urgency that seemed pitifully exaggerated. "There must have been a traitor in the coven; I was lured down here-!"

"You came here," Selene corrected, not even bothering to draw her berettas as she looked at Kraven. "You were in league with Lucian from the moment you claimed you'd killed him."

"What?" Kraven said, his acting almost exaggeratedly bad as he looked at her in desperation. "That's- how could you-?"

"Soren confessed to everything after he was caught at the train station, and Singe and Lucian confirmed his testimony," Selene cut him off, folding her arms as she continued to glare at the man who had spent so long revelling in a status he had never truly earned. "Did you honestly think any of this would work? You were going to let Lucian kill the Elders and then present yourself as the man willing to negotiate with the lycans? Even if you got away with your reputation intact after you let the Elders die under your watch, the idea that any of us would accept that you were smart enough to negotiate a deal where nobody else could… even you should realise that you're incapable of that."

"I led the coven for centuries; how dare you-?"

"We both know that you only had any kind of authority because of Viktor's orders," Selene glared at him. "How long do you think you would have lasted once he was dead and you had to depend on your own reputation?"

"When I only had a pack of lycans to contend with?"

"You don't even know what Lucian had planned, and you underestimate the lycans if you think they would have fallen for any of your 'plans' that easily," Selene countered, shaking her head in exasperation. "I know of many of my colleagues who wouldn't have gone along with your orders once you had failed to save the Elders no matter what excuse you came up with, even if I like to think some of us might have listened to Lucian's side-"

"WHAT?" Kraven yelled (Selene couldn't believe that he had the nerve to look indignant at that declaration). "You would- you dare to suggest that an animal would be-"

"We might have seen lycans as feral beasts, but I know that I never considered them idiot monsters the way you seem to," Selene countered, giving the former regent a scathing glare. "You continue to underestimate everyone and you have a very inflated opinion of yourself."

"Inflated- how dare you- how could you do this?" the former regent sputtered until he finally yelled at her in exasperation. "The whole coven knew I had plans for us-!"

"There would have never been an 'us'," Selene said, hoping that her gaze demonstrated all her accumulated hate and disgust of everything she had been forced to endure from Kraven over the centuries. "If you honestly thought that I would ever do anything with you beyond tolerate your presence in my life, you're a bigger idiot than I thought you were, and I already wondered how you could think of anything beyond your next bag of blood."

"Idiot?" Kraven repeated indignantly. "When I managed to fool everyone-?"

"Because nobody could believe that you would be deranged enough to make a deal with our kind's greatest enemy to ensure your own advancement," Selene cut him off, shaking her head in exasperation. "I suppose Lucian was the one to make the offer while you were cowering in a corner or something like that?"

Kraven's indignant expression said more than a verbal protest ever could, and suddenly Selene wasn't interested in hearing any more. She had allowed her frustration with Kraven to define her life for several decades, on and off, tolerating him only because he had Viktor's approval, and now that she didn't have to put up with him any more she ultimately didn't care about anything further. Finally free to do what she'd been longing to do for literally centuries, Selene drew back her fist and punched Kraven in the face, allowing herself the satisfaction of feeling his nose break under her fingers.

Sent flying backwards with an agonised yet mumbled yell of pain, Kraven tried to get back to his feet, but his counter-attack was almost pitiable as he flailed desperately in her direction. Selene wasn't sure if it was just the broken nose throwing him off or if he was genuinely that bad at fighting, but decided not to question it, simply grabbing Kraven's outstretched arm and pinning it behind him.

"Please stop before you humiliate yourself any further," Selene said, tightening her grip on his wrist as she glared at him. "As much as I would enjoy it-"

"SHUT UP!" Kraven yelled, sputtering through his bloody nose as he tried to turn around to face her, only to be met by an upward elbow that sent him flying back into the wall. Walking over, Selene nodded in satisfaction as she confirmed that his nose was now certainly broken and there was a gash on the back of his head. His natural healing should help him recover from the damage easily enough, but she'd already said everything she wanted to say to this idiot.

"It's over, Kraven," she said, hauling him to his feet and taking a grip of his wrists once his hands were pinned behind him. "Amelia can decide what to do with you now."

Selene could already anticipate that any trial was going to be interesting at best, particularly given what Singe and Lucian had already implied regarding the lycans' motives for their actions, but right now she had more immediate personal concerns.

Chapter 25: The Awakening

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Even when she'd formed her initial tentative plan to make contact with Michael and eventually persuade him to be an inside man with the lycans, Selene had never imagined that she would be accompanying him to a meeting of this level of importance. The mere idea that Lucian was still alive would have been impossible enough on its own, but the fact that she was accompanying him and Amelia to take part in the Awakening of Viktor and Marcus was an even greater kind of impossibility.

Selene was aware that there were protocols in place to Awaken all three Elders if the situation merited a truly significant decision, but she couldn't recall if any such occasion had actually happened in the history of the coven. Even the war against the lycans had been declared by Viktor alone rather than consulting the other two, and while she had never questioned that decision before meeting Michael, she found herself wondering about it. Lucian had asked Michael not to share what he had spoken with him about until he was ready to disclose that information himself, and Selene had chosen to respect Lucian's desire for privacy.

It was a strange thing for her to realise that she was willing to respect that kind of silent request from a lycan, but the more time Selene spent with Lucian, the more she realised that Michael wasn't as unique as she believed. The lycans might be dangerous enemies, but they weren't all just the mindless animals so many Death Dealers had liked to dismiss them as over the centuries.

The journey back to the mansion had been relatively tense, with the vampires and lycans mixed between the various cars heading for their destination, but Selene liked to think that Michael in particular helped in that regard. When so many of the other vampires and lycans saw a relatively young lycan being so comfortable interacting with Death Dealers with the reputation she and Kahn had earned over the centuries, it was almost like they were daring others to have Michael's courage.

Selene was still careful to stay close to Michael as they left the cars and entered the manor, ready to act if anyone seemed ready to threaten him. At the same time, she took care to keep just enough distance between them that it wouldn't be obvious she was protecting him unless she had to. 'Bodyguard' wasn't a role she'd assumed very often, but on this occasion she had to keep a balance between being ready to protect Michael without giving the impression that he was vulnerable.

With her self-appointed duty to Michael taking precedence, Selene wasn't as involved in Amelia's subsequent talk with Lucian as she might have been, but she had faith that the Elder and the lycan would come up with a fair decision. She noticed some stares from some of the other Death Dealers at her being so close to a lycan, but Kahn's obvious acceptance of Michael seemed to help cool the more obvious issues. She even noticed that a couple of her closer acquaintances seemed to be directing teasing smiles at her and Michael, as though they were already guessing at something she wasn't entirely ready to define to herself…

Despite Selene's initial concerns, it seemed to take relatively little time before she was part of the group standing in the chamber containing the coffins of Viktor and Marcus, as well as Amelia's own currently empty coffin. The lycan attendees had been provided with smarter clothing to ensure that at least the spirit of the usual formalities of an Awakening were being observed, but the vampires had agreed to compromise on a few lesser issues in recognition of the tension and stakes of the current situation.

"My fellow immortals!" Amelia proclaimed as she stood in the centre of the chamber, addressing the gathered vampires and lycans with calm dignity as they stood on the outer ring, the central floor empty of all save for the Elder. "We are gathered here for a significant moment in our peoples' long and difficult shared existence on this world. In recognition of this fact, something is about to happen that is unprecedented even in our long history, and I would ask for you all to have patience."

Looking around the chamber, Selene was struck by the differences between the current ceremony and the ones she had attended in the past. Even with Lucian and Michael serving as an example to the rest of them (Raze was noticeably doing his best to stay calm even if he was clearly following Lucian's lead), there was still a sense of tension in the room. Selene was certain that even Michael was aware that all it would take was one wrong move from either party for this fragile stability to come to an end, but at the same time that left her all the more certain that neither party would break the peace first.

"Honoured guests and warriors," Amelia continued as she turned around the room, taking in everyone present from her position in the middle, "for many centuries, while mortal rulers come and go, engaging in negotiations and open conflicts for power, the coven has existed in stability. Why?"

"Because of the Chain," Selene replied with the other vampires, falling back on the traditional response even as she mused that she was starting to doubt that particular statement had ever been completely true.

"My fellow Elders and I have not engaged in conflicts between each other in pursuit of absolute power, nor have our different views and instincts ever led us into conflict. Why?"

"Because of the Chain."

"Just so," Amelia affirmed. "The Coven has existed in harmony because we Elders divided eternity among us, a century at a time, to offer you each the continued benefits of our power without the conflict of our differing perspectives. This tradition has endured for centuries, each of us trusting the other to guide the vampires through the next two centuries as we enter our sleep… but now, we face the most potentially significant moment of our long history, and I will not deprive my fellow Elders of their right to have their say in our final decision."

There was silence in the room for a few moments as everyone looked around the room in apprehensive silence, the vampires and lycans looking around each other as though waiting for someone else to act.

"This is the appointed hour when I would normally return to the earth and leave you all in the hands of Marcus," Amelia continued, as though satisfied that nobody was going to do something to break this truce. "However, this has been no ordinary night, and you are not here to observe something that has happened before."

With that declaration, Amelia stepped forward, her words somehow demonstrating a sense of weight that Selene had never imagined could be given to mere speech. "Let the Awakening begin… Lady Selene, Lord Kahn, you may proceed."

Selene and Kahn nodded at her in acknowledgement as they stepped forward to place their hands in the bronze discs at the top of Viktor and Marcus's coffins. Once Selene's fingers were in the circle, she carefully turned it to the left, setting the complex gear system in motion as the circles just outside the central V turned on their own accord, followed by the outer lucks moving inwards as the symbol descended. The main seal descended a few crucial inches before it split into four, allowing the ornate 'coffin' to rise from the lower level. Selene glanced over to make sure that all was going well at Kahn's end, confirming that he had also released Marcus's coffin before the two adjusted the locks on either side and lowered the coffins to a horizontal position.

The figures within looked almost impossibly frail and withered, bearing more resemblance to unbandaged Egyptian mummies than anything living, Grey skin was stretched over the bones like parchment, white fangs bearing through withdrawn lips and eyes closed, dark trousers the only clothing worn by either even as their ribs were clearly visible. Selene heard Michael let out a gasp of shock from behind her, but she wouldn't draw attention to that. He was being asked to deal with a great deal at this time, so some shock when faced with something this unfamiliar was only natural.

Her attention back on the coffin, Selene moved the metal rod containing the crucial pipe up to its position over Viktor's mouth, while Kahn did the same for Marcus. That done, the coffins were carefully rotated so that the two were basically in line with each other, still separated by a metre or so but making it easier for Amelia to take the next step.

"Now let the sacred rite commence," the female Elder declared, stepping forward and positioning her wrists above both coffins. Tradition would normally require her to cut her own wrist for this stage, but since both Viktor and Marcus had to be awoken at the same time, this had become another of Selene and Kahn's duties, each having been provided with an ornate dagger for the next stage. As the tip of their blades pierced Amelia's flesh, Selene resisted the initial thirst she felt at the scent of an Elder's blood before Amelia turned her wrists to drip blood into the pipes above her fellow Elders.

"My blood to thee, my thoughts to thee," Amelia said, turning her head so that she was looking at both of the other Elders one after the others. "Partake of my memories, my fellow Elders, so that the Chain may endure."

After the blood had been trickling into the coffins for a few moments, Viktor and Marcus's eyelids flickered, their chests moving with a faint sense of breath. Selene and Kahn looked at Amelia in anticipation, and the Elder's nod prompted them to move forward to place their fingers against the necks of the figures in the coffins. Selene just fought down the urge to smile as she felt Viktor's pulse underneath her fingers, but she nodded at Amelia just as Kahn did the same at his end.

"They awaken!" Amelia proclaimed, stepping back and turning her wrists upwards. "The Chain endures!"

The vampires cheered in approval at that declaration, while the lycans simply nodded in awkward acknowledgement at this development. Selene noticed that Michael in particular was looking somewhat uncertainly at the two coffins, evidently unsure about the full significance of these events. Selene reminded herself that even few vampires witnessed the Elders in this kind of state, so Michael was only showing a normal, human reaction to the sight of what seemed like two corpses being treated with this kind of reverence.

"Many thanks for attending this hallowed event," Amelia said, once again falling back on the traditional words of the ritual, "but now urgent business must be discussed. Those who are to remain here will do so; the rest of you must depart and allow us our privacy for a time."

With that final command given, many of the other attendees departed the room. Selene noticed Lucian looking at Viktor with a particular edge to his glare that left her worried he was going to do something, but ultimately he nodded as though coming to some kind of personal decision and joined Michael and Raze as they left the room. Selene would have liked Michael to be present at the next stage, but appreciated that allowing lycans access to the Elders at this stage would be asking too much of everyone else.

It would take a couple of hours to connect Viktor and Marcus up to the latest life-support systems required to give them enough blood to replenish their systems, but under the terms of Amelia's deal with Lucian, the other Elders just needed to be able to talk for the next stage of their plans…

Chapter 26: Viktor's Secret Appetite

Chapter Text

Michael couldn't believe that his life had reached this point as he stood in the main hall of the manor once again, unable to keep his eyes off the doors leading down to the chamber they'd just visited. He still wondered how people could actually choose to end up in that kind of state that he'd seen earlier, and the notion that anyone would let people lead them when they basically spent a third of their existences in some kind of suspended animation…

He was reminded of something he'd read or heard somewhere, which had people observing that so many things in the world were basically done that way just because everyone was used to doing it that way by now, but he still had to wonder how something this complicated had even started. He'd keep his questions to himself for the moment, since the upcoming trial was clearly the more pressing issue than satisfying one guy's curiosity about something that everyone here thought of as normal, but he hoped that Selene or someone would give him some answers later.

As it was, he felt some comfort in the fact that nobody present seemed to know exactly what to do with themselves. Since the Awakening had apparently been completed, only a few previously-chosen vampires had been allowed to remain in the chamber to do whatever had to be done to help Amelia get the other Elders in a suitable condition for the upcoming… again, Michael wasn't sure what the appropriate term would be. From everything Lucian had told him, it sounded like this Viktor guy had been the main catalyst for everything that had happened between the two species, but Michael also had to remind himself that he'd only really heard one side of that particular story. 'Trial' was the obvious term that came to mind for what was about to happen, but he still felt reluctant to actually label everything that way… did he even have the right to have a say in anything when he felt like he was the only person in this room who wouldn't be dead if they were all only human?

That's f*cking morbid… and I probably need to think about how I'm going to deal with that issue soon anyway…

"Does it bother you?"

"Huh?" Michael turned around to find Lucian standing a respectful distance from him.

"The knowledge that you were only being kept around as a… I admit I'm not sure what term would be most appropriate, but-"

"Michael was not being 'kept' in any sense," Selene cut in, her tone defensive as she walked over to look firmly at the lycan leader. "I took my time to confirm that he wasn't in contact with any other lycans before I met with him directly, but I only offered him my help in keeping himself contained during his transformation."

"And I needed that," Michael cut in, anticipating what Lucian might say next and wanting to stop that particular argument before it could start, appreciating how Selene was standing beside him to show support without being too near or far either way. "I don't know how long it takes for you all to get control of the wolf or if I just had some kind of problem from the start, but I was basically just an animal whenever I changed at the start. I was wasting money renting storage lockers and trying to find places to hide so I wouldn't hurt anyone else for the last few full moons before Selene found me, and the first thing she offered was somewhere I could lock myself up safely without having to worry about any of that crap."

"You honestly believe that was only offered out of the kindness of her heart?" Lucian studied Michael with a probing gaze that the younger man wasn't sure how to interpret. "Did you ever think that-?"

"And has it occurred to you that I was f*cking freaking out?" Michael cut Lucian off, only just remembering to keep his voice low as he walked up to stand close to Lucian, keeping his voice low. He wasn't sure how sharp other immortals' senses were in human form, as he'd never actively tried to listen to other peoples' conversations when he was in human form, but he hoped that everyone else would at least have enough taste not to eavesdrop on a private conversation. "I'd spent the last few months terrified I'd read some news report that would prove I'd been eating people the previous night; Selene was the first person to give me any actual help dealing with what I'd become."

"We would have helped-"

"Yeah, it's easy to talk about what you would have done, but none of your lycans even knew I was… like you," Michael countered, still keeping his voice low as he glared at the older wolf. "You basically just stumbled into me when you were doing something else; how many people like me are left behind because you let wolves go out and do whatever?"

"I have done my best to ensure that my people know that they are not to attack or hurt humans-"

"Which doesn't work since I ended up like this and nobody ever stepped in to help-!"

Michael wasn't even sure where he was going with this particular argument any more, but it ultimately ended when the door to the underground chamber opened and Amelia walked out. The elder vampire looked solemnly around the room for a moment, taking in the way the various vampires and lycans were scattered around the hall. Even Michael could see that the rest of the people in the room were tense, finding it hard to relax even as they were all clearly making an effort to avoid doing anything that might provoke some new conflict.

"Viktor and Marcus are ready to meet with us," she said, her tone authoritative and her gaze making it clear that nobody was allowed to object. "Those previously chosen to attend will join us."

With that instruction given, Michael followed Selene back down in the chamber, accompanied by Lucian, Kahn, and a few other previously-chosen vampires and lycans. The thought suddenly crossed Michael's mind that he should have made more of an effort, considering that he was just wearing a coat Selene had given him over his usual clothes, but looking over at the lycans assured him that he wasn't that out of place. The Death Dealers and the lycans might each wear black leather as their dominant attire, but the Death Dealers at least looked like they had a kind of uniform; the lycans gave the impression of mostly being attendees at some kind of punk rock concert or whatever the term was…

Thoughts of gatherings in the human world were basically forgotten when he joined the group back in the underground chamber and found two skeletal figures sitting in large thrones set up above the place where the coffins had emerged from the floor earlier. Both figures were still pale and basically skeletal, but if Michael ignored their greyish skintone he could assume that he was just looking at two people who had been starving themselves for a while rather than people who had basically been corpses just a few hours ago.

One figure was bald and wore a red robe trimmed with gold, while the other had a faint trace of stubble on his chin and was wearing a simpler robe in blue with no trim. Both still wore dark trousers, but their chests were bare under the robes, and thin tubes led into their bodies from the two thrones. Even in the dim light, it wasn't hard to guess that the tubes were feeding blood to the sitting Elders to continue their restoration to peak health. The bald figure was taking in everything around him with a pointed stare while the other gave the impression that he was currently content to take in everything around him.

"Amelia?" the bald figure said, fixing his pointed stare on the female vampire. "What… is the reason… for these lycans…?"

"That would be me," Lucian said, stepping forward to stand in front of the thrones as he gave Viktor a mocking glare. "Hello, Viktor."

"You?" Viktor glared at Lucian with renewed outrage, actually trying to stand up before the tubes in his back forced him back into the throne.

"Me," Lucian nodded, holding up his hands with a cool smile. "You can relax; I've promised Amelia that I won't do anything-"

"And we should… believe-?"

"You can believe that every vampire here will act to stop the first lycan who tries to do anything against you," Selene cut in, moving forward to stand close to Lucian as she faced Viktor.

"Selene?" the withered vampire actually seemed sad as he looked at her. "You would… side with these-"

"I am seeking an option that means we don't have to continue sacrificing vampire lives to settle a feud that has defined our lives for almost a millennia," Selene cut her sire off, her tone the cool professional one that Michael had come to recognise as her being particularly focused on her chosen goal. "If they have committed genuine crimes against my people, I will act… but I will not punish a species if their only crime is to exist."

"They were… animals… and they… turned on us…"

"When you kept us as nothing but slaves even when we proved ourselves your equals," Lucian glared at Viktor. "I risked my life to save a vampire's, and your idea of mercy was whipping me for hours on end before killing me instead of just killing me straight away."

"You should have… been more lenient… Viktor," the other withered figure spoke up, a wistful smile on his face. "I always told you… you underestimated them…"

"You would take… the word of an animal… over the word… of your fellow?" Viktor glared over at the other vampire. "I accepted… your pleas… but do not assume… that you can trust this beast…"

"This from the man who would break his own rules and slaughter humans for a snack?"

Michael was briefly confused when he recognised the voice as the one person he hadn't expected to speak, but a glance around soon revealed the source. The vampire who had been previously identified to him as Kraven was standing in a corner of the room with his arms bound behind his back and two Death Dealers on either side, but he must have been invited to serve as a witness at some point in this trial.

"What are you-?" Amelia looked over at Kraven with a sceptical expression.

"He lies!" Viktor cut in, but the sudden strength in the skeletal vampire's words somehow did more to convince Michael that this was a lie than anything he'd heard so far.

"If I'm going down for this mess, I might as well make sure you're going down with me," Kraven countered with a glare at Viktor before he looked at Selene. "You might like to ask your dark father who was really responsible for the murder of your family."

Michael could tell he wasn't the only one surprised that this particular topic had suddenly come up, but the way Selene looked at Viktor with new intensity was enough to make Michael realise that there was something in those words. Selene might have spent centuries believing that it had been the lycans who had killed her family, but judging by the expression on her face, once the idea that it had been Viktor was brought up, she couldn't shake the suggestion off so easily.

"You did that?" Amelia looked at Viktor with an even more critical glare. "You broke our own rules?"

"It was a brief indulgence… centuries ago; what does… it matter now…?" Viktor said.

"It matters," Selene cut him off, walking over to stand in front of Viktor with a harsher stare. "They were my family… my nieces had barely even started their lives… my brother-in-law likely never knew what happened to us… and that was all because you decided that you wanted something that tasted good?"

"I have given you… so much in return…"

"And I would give away almost all of that if it would bring them back," Selene interjected, as though refusing to give Viktor the chance to finish his sentence. "Forget this trial for a moment, and answer me one question, here and now; is that true?"

Michael wondered if he was being overly optimistic to think that the old vampire actually looked ashamed when Selene glared at him as she asked that question.

"…Is this immortality… this purpose… not fair compensation?" Viktor said at last, his tone sounding so sickeningly sad that Selene didn't immediately say 'Yes' that Michael felt he truly wanted to hit the vampire for daring to even ask that question.

Selene didn't even reply herself, but the sheer contempt on her face as she turned away from Viktor said it all even before she made her way to the chamber exit. Michael briefly moved to follow her, but Selene turned back and gave him a brief smile even as she shook her head.

As much as Michael wanted to be with her, he knew enough about Selene to recognise that she wanted some time alone to process what she had just learnt about the man who had apparently been her mentor figure since she originally became a vampire.

And there was me thinking that this trial was going to be shocking enough for what it would reveal about the lycan side of things…

Chapter 27: The Trial of Viktor and Lucian

Chapter Text

From the moment that she had been told that Lucian was alive and interested in pursuing peace, Amelia had been prepared for the idea that she would learn some interesting things about the start of this conflict, but the notion that he had violated his own rules was still a surprise. For all his fanaticism about the superiority of vampires over lycans, Viktor had always been particularly focused on protecting the vampires and keeping their existence secret, so the notion that he had defied his own rules…

She could certainly see how Viktor might have given into temptation, and she wasn't going to deny that she had occasionally been drawn in by the smell herself despite her own reputation for being particularly tolerant of humans. However, there was a difference between giving in to the thirst when in a state of heightened emotion during the heat of battle and deliberately going out hunting for a snack, and that was before she considered the implications of Lucian's attitude in contrast to Viktor's past claims.

"How did you know about that?" She looked firmly at Kraven, deciding to settle the main question in front of her first.

"His role in those deaths?" Kraven shrugged dismissively. "I cleaned up after him and kept his secrets; it was one of my more… unofficial responsibilities."

"It was… only on occasion…" Viktor said, his tone defensive despite his physical weakness.

"Seriously?" Michael Corvin glared at the Elder, the young lycan's already-short temper pushed even further by this weak defence. "I spent months going to all the trouble of locking myself up to make sure I don't hurt anyone when I transform because I couldn't control myself! You're meant to be the leader of the side allegedly protecting innocent people from the monsters, and you think it's all right to just go out and kill people because you… wanted a tasty snack?"

"Resisting nature… is difficult… and I chose… to acknowledge… the food chain…"

"The food chain?" Michael walked up to stand in front of Viktor's throne, fists clenched as he glared at the weakened Elder. "You know, when Selene told me about this whole blood feud, she presented it as the vampires protecting humans from other lycans, and so far you're the only immortal I've met who actually set out to hurt innocents just because you felt like it."

Amelia had to give Michael Corvin due credit; for only having been a lycan for less than a year, he was maintaining good self-control despite the current full moon. The vampires immediately surrounding Viktor and Marcus were ready in case he made a move towards the Elder, but the young man was keeping a respectful distance regardless of his temper.

"I kept… the lycans… contained… for decades…" Viktor began.

"And enslaved us in the process," Lucian cut in. "Do not pretend you ever did anything for any purpose other than your own self-gratification."

"Would this tie in to your declaration that you were punished for saving a vampire?" Amelia looked curiously at Lucian, deciding to get the trial back to the most important matter. "Who and why?"

"Sonja, Viktor's daughter," Lucian said, a wistful edge to his voice for a moment before he turned to address Amelia more directly. "She was being pursued by a wild werewolf outside Viktor's old fortress, and at the time… I was one of the coven's servants. I trust you remember what that meant for lycans before… everything?"

"The silver collar."

"Silver collar?" Michael looked at Amelia curiously, stepping back from Viktor even as he still shot the occasional glare at the withered Elder.

"Lycan servants in the early days of the coven were obliged to wear collars with silver spikes pointing inwards to their necks," the female Elder explained, noting the surprised glances from some of the younger Death Dealers and making a note to look into what other vampires knew of their history later. "The collars were carefully designed so that the wearers would be relatively safe while they remained in their human forms, but should they transform…"

"Quite," Lucian observed as Michael rubbed his neck and winced at the mental image. "I had forged a key for my collar some time ago in my role as blacksmith, but I had promised I would not use it to escape… but I did use it when I witnessed Sonja in danger and the only way to save her was the extra power of the change."

"And once she had been saved you returned to human form to await judgement?"

"Naturally," Lucian nodded at the female Elder.

"And after all that you were going to kill him anyway?" Michael looked over at Viktor incredulously. "What the Hell? Someone saves your daughter's life and you decide to kill him for it?"

"The laws… were in place… for a reason…"

"Which would mean a lot more coming from someone who didn't break the rules just because he wanted something tasty to eat," Michael countered. There was a certain incredulity to the young man's face as he spoke, as though he couldn't believe he was talking back to a vampire Elder like this, but Amelia would simply be impressed at his courage for now. "If you're going to be a hypocrite because of your appetite, at least give other people a break when they do it for the right reasons."

"You think… you have the right…?"

"Michael Corvin is part of the reason that we are having this trial in the first place; regardless of his age, he has the right to ask these questions," Amelia glared over at her fellow Elder before she turned back to Lucian. "So if you took such a risk to save Sonja that night… you were not the one who killed her?"

"…What?" Lucian said, briefly stunned into silence before he turned to look at Viktor with renewed outrage. "You- you told people that I killed Sonja?"

"Uh… you didn't know about that already?" Michael looked uncertainly at Amelia.

"What?" Amelia turned to look at Michael, her tone cool as she stared at him.

"I-I just meant- Selene told me that whole Awakening ritual is about sharing your memories with each other, so I thought that you'd all know the truth about what had happened back then already…" Michael waved a hand as he looked at Amelia in an awkwardly apologetic manner.

"…An understandable assumption," Amelia nodded in acknowledgement at Michael; there was no sense being offended by a man when he had a reasonable theory based on what he knew so far. "But to answer your question, we Elders each retain some of our personal experiences for ourselves with each Awakening. We are expected to keep each of us up-to-date on global events when we share knowledge at each Awakening, but obviously we take it for granted that the other two won't share everything with each of us, such as certain personal details."

"So you assumed that any gaps in… whatever Viktor was sharing with you… was basically just him hiding personal information?"

"Precisely," Amelia gave Michael an approving smile before she directed a firmer glare at Viktor. "So, Viktor, what justification do you have for breaking out rules to satisfy your appetite and upholding them to the point that you provoked a war?"

"I provoked-?"

"If Lucian was willing to remove his collar to save Sonja's life, I strongly doubt that he was the one who killed her," Amelia glared at Viktor. "And if he didn't kill her, someone else must have… and considering Lucian was already established as the leader of the lycan servants, I find it hard to imagine that any of them killed someone Lucian clearly wanted to protect."

Viktor glared at Amelia in defiance, but that glare faltered as the female Elder walked over to stand directly in front of him, the healthy vampire staring grimly down at her withered counterpart. Regardless of Viktor's age and greater experience as a warlord, right now he was obviously in a far more frail condition, whereas Amelia was at the peak of health even if she'd been fasting to prepare for her planned hibernation.

"You cannot think…" Viktor began, staring back at Amelia with a defiant glare.

"You have spent years lying to us about one part of Sonja's death; I have no reason to believe anything you told us about the rest of it," Amelia glared at her fellow Elder. "Admit what happened."

"The covenant… had to be upheld…" Viktor affirmed, in a tone that basically answered the question without explicitly saying it.

"And for that you killed your grandchild," Lucian glared at him in outrage.

"That abomination-" Viktor began.

"Child?" Amelia and Marcus said simultaneously as they looked at Viktor.

"Sonja was pregnant?" Amelia shifted her gaze to Lucian. "And… you were the father?"

"She… theorised that our being born into our current state made it possible," Lucian said with a tentative shrug, even as the pained expression on his face made it clear that this was a difficult topic for him. "She didn't even tell me before everything happened… she had tried to help me escape so that we could go off and live our lives in peace…"

"It was… a betrayal of the covenant," Viktor said, looking at Lucian with renewed indignation as he raised an accusing finger. "You… corrupted my daughter-"

"I did nothing to her that she did not want me to do," Lucian cut Viktor off. "Unlike you, I recognised that Sonja had her own mind and desires; we did nothing but love each other, and the conception was simply a happy accident."

"That… abomination-"

"Was an unborn child," Marcus cut in with an indignant glare, breaking his silence as he looked over at the other withered Elder. "You were human first… purity is not that important… and you would kill your daughter…because of it?"

"Lucian killed your son-!"

"When he had just insulted Sonja and was about to kill me," Lucian interrupted Viktor once again as he looked over at Marcus. "I… regardless of how long it has been, I'm sure you can agree that there is a difference between killing someone in self-defence and chaining a vampire up to be burned to death in the sun."

"What?" Amelia only realised that she wasn't the only one to be outraged at that particular revelation after she spoke. When even Michael Corvin was horrified at what had just been revealed, when he couldn't know the full scale of just how deeply ingrained that particular fear was basically ingrained in the psyche of every vampire, that just reinforced the horror of the idea that Viktor had inflicted this on his own daughter.

"You did that to Sonja?" Amelia glared at Viktor with renewed contempt.

"I repeat… the child… was an abomination…"

"And it was also innocent," Marcus cut in with a contemptuous tone to his voice; evidently his lycan sympathies remained even after so many centuries of war. "The covenant… can cope with… a few variations… but you broke… the most sacred vow… of any parent…"

"And what about… avenging the deaths-?"

"If you would invoke… the name of my son… when you killed your own daughter…"

"Because she betrayed everything-!"

"Are you actually implying that you killed Sonja because she made you go that far?" Every time Amelia thought that her opinion of Viktor couldn't sink any lower, she learnt something new about his situation that made her feel even more outraged at the true past of the man she had once trusted as an ally in war and in peace. "We are each over a thousand years old; we are all capable of taking responsibility for our own actions, rather than passing the blame on to others."

Viktor could only glare back at Amelia, unable to provide a proper response to that denouement from his fellow Elder even as he clearly refused to actually admit that he had ever done anything wrong.

"Very well," Amelia said, after waiting in silence for a response that never came. "I take it that we are all satisfied that Viktor is the true instigator of the blood feud that has driven our people into conflict?"

The sounds of affirmation from the other vampires prompted a satisfied smirk from Amelia as she looked at the stunned expression on Viktor's face.

"No!" the Elder protested, trying to stand up even as he clearly kept his hands on his chair. "I am your ruler-!"

"One of three," Marcus cut in, his own mocking grin even more vivid than Amelia's as his bright white teeth stood out against his grey skin. "You've been a respected leader for the last few centuries, but you haven't been good enough that we're going to overlook this."

"And you betrayed our trust when you chose to kill your daughter in the name of your own ideals and perceptions of purity," Amelia said contemptuously. "Add in how you have violated our rules simply to satisfy your own appetites, and you have proven unworthy of your power and position among the ruling council."

"And was I not right?" Viktor protested, ignoring the growing looks of disgust on the faces of the vampires around him as he tried to stand up while pointing a finger at Lucian. "Look at what he has done…"

"When you killed the woman he loved in what may be the most horrific manner any of our kind can die in and made him watch?" Amelia retorted. "I can imagine many of us being enraged if we had been allowed to know the truth… which is not to say that Lucian will not have to answer some questions now."

"Huh?" Michael glanced over at her.

"While I will concede that Lucian did not provoke the war, the fact remains that he has been the aggressor against the coven for several centuries," Amelia observed as she turned to look at the lycan leader. To his credit, Lucian stood still as he stared back at her, his hands out in a halting gesture that it was easy to determine was directed at the other lycans still attending the trial. "I will assume that any larger campaigns the lycan forces carried out against us over the last few centuries were planned by you?"

"For the most part," Lucian conceded.

"He is responsible for-!" Viktor began.

"Deaths in war are inevitable, but this war was not," Amelia cut Viktor off. "If you are going to continue interrupting me, I will be forced to take more drastic measures to ensure your silence."

Viktor glared back at her in response, but he seemed to get her message, his mouth somehow appearing even thinner as he frowned.

"Now," Amelia continued as she looked back at Lucian, "considering the circ*mstances of how this particular war began, I am willing to… overlook your role in the general campaign."

"Seconded," Marcus put in with a smile. "Avenging the loss of your lover… especially under such terrible circ*mstances… justifies many things."

"What about him trying to abduct me?"

Michael seemed as surprised as anyone that he had spoken when the three Elders and Lucian turned to look at him, but to the credit of the young lycan he stayed resolute as he looked between them.

"I mean…" the medical intern looked uncertainly at the Elders for a moment before he nodded in resolution. "Well, I get that it maybe doesn't mean much in the grand scheme, but from what I saw in the lab… it looked like he and his science guys had been taking people for a while before they got to me…"

"You were the last potential descendant we were able to trace to complete our experiments, but… there were others," Lucian said, looking at Michael with a new sense of regret. "And I… will confess that we had abducted quite a few humans before we found you."

"Quite a few?" Michael repeated, looking at Lucian with a new sense of apprehension. "How many are we talking about here?"

"I was… not keeping count," Lucian said, and he at least had the dignity to look slightly ashamed about it. "We attempted to simply acquire blood samples at first, raiding hospitals and blood banks for traces of our targets, but it is difficult to remain discreet when your enemy literally cannot know that you are alive."

"Even when you had that Kraven guy as an inside agent?"

"I am still here, you know," Kraven pointed out as he glared over at Michael before tunring his attention to Amelia. "And for the record, the most I ever did was deflect attention from certain areas on Lucian's request. If lycans were discovered on the surface in sufficient numbers I couldn't exactly tell anyone not to go and investigate those rumours."

"Good to know you had enough self-awareness to know what we wouldn't do on your behalf," Kahn cut in, giving his own glare at Kraven.

"So you abducted those last few humans for your experiments because you weren't sure that you could conduct your research more discreetly without alerting us?" Amelia looked critically at Lucian, even as she took care not to say too much. A hybrid birth was one thing, but the notion that an adult could become a hybrid of vampire and lycan might be too much for certain parties to accept when Amelia was already dealing with a tense situation.

"Desperation makes us all do things we would never have believed ourselves capable of," Lucian replied, his tone solemn with regret as he looked between Michael and Amelia. "I was determined to gain the advantage over Viktor… but I only resorted to those methods when all alternatives had been exhausted…"

"And that is something we will discuss later," Amelia observed, before she turned back to Viktor. "But ultimately, there is a difference between being driven to desperate measures in war and killing your own child because you disapprove of her choice of partners."

"That thing… was an abomination…" Viktor protested, already looking weaker as though his initial anger had worn out his remaining stamina.

"It was a child," Amelia retorted firmly. "You chose what was 'best' for all of us, and in doing so you condemned your own daughter to death and started a chain of events that have led to many innocent deaths because you could not accept lycans as equals."

"What?"

"We were your servants at first, and if you had accorded us more respect I know that I for one would never have turned against you," Lucian pointed out, smirking slightly as he looked at Viktor. "Consider that; every vampire I killed was because you provoked me, not because I was some rabid monster waiting for an excuse."

"Indeed," Amelia said, raising her head to address the whole room as she looked at Viktor. "Viktor of Hungary, for provoking over a millennium of conflict, killing your daughter and heir, and inspiring a feud that has led to the deaths of many innocent vampires, humans, and lycans, you shall be condemned to death."

"Seconded," Marcus put in, a smile on his face that looked particularly twisted given his still-withered skin.

"No!" Viktor protested, trying to rise from his chair once again, only for Amelia to place a hand on his shoulder and force him down.

"You claim deference to the Covenant, and that means upholding the laws even when they go against you," Amelia said, stepping back as Kahn and a few other Death Dealers moved forward to take up position around Viktor. "Your blood supply will be restricted to limit your strength, and you will be left in isolation until the execution can take place within the next week. Communication will be restricted and monitored, and any attempt to break out will be seen as an act of treason against the coven and be met with immediate execution."

"You brought this on yourself," Marcus gave Viktor a cool smirk, the now-former Elder only able to stare around in growing horror at the contemptible expressions on the faces of the surrounding vampires and lycans. Amelia noted that the lycans were more obviously amused at this turn of events while the vampires just seemed angry, but the important thing was that the sentence had been passed. She would need to keep an eye on Viktor for the next few days while the appropriate execution was arranged (and Marcus would merit her own attention just to be sure he didn't try anything himself, but the important thing was that judgement had been delivered to the worst offender.

"As for Lucian," Amelia turned to look at the lycan leader, "while war crimes must be considered, most of your campaigns against us have been relatively direct and you never resorted to attacking the innocent."

"Mainly because every one of you is capable of defending yourselves if pushed," Lucian put in, but there was a slight smile on his face that suggested he understood where Amelia was going with this.

"True," Amelia conceded, before she gave him a firmer stare. "But your actions in experimenting on humans will merit a firmer response."

"If I might-?" Marcus began.

"No," Amelia cut him off; she could anticipate that Marcus would make some appeal for mercy, but this wasn't the venue for it and his track record regarding his brother was too vivid in her memory for her to have faith he'd do a good job. "Regardless of how desperate Lucian might have become because of what Viktor provoked him into doing, deliberately bringing non-combatants into a war is always a crime, even if they are not actively forced to fight."

She would consider the implications of her words and Michael Corvin's situation later; how many lycans had the vampires killed just because they found some young wolves on their first few full moons and didn't take the time to learn more about this particular situation?

"I understand," Lucian nodded, his words breaking off Amelia's grim thoughts before they could go further. "I only ask that my people be spared any such response; many of them had no knowledge of my plans in that regard, and the few who did were sworn to secrecy on my orders."

"The lycan breed as a whole will not suffer for your actions," Amelia nodded at him; obviously going back to the old ways wasn't an option, but if lycans could stop fighting she could trust that they could find their way in peace-time. "As for what will happen to you… that must be determined, but I will assure you that you will not be executed."

"I won't?" Lucian looked at her in surprise, Viktor giving an indignant yell even as he was forced to remain in his seat.

"You have already suffered much because one we thought we could trust delivered such a serious blow against you," Amelia observed, before allowing herself a slight smile. "Besides, given your reputation among your kind, killing you as we attempt to negotiate peace would not be a smart move."

The smile on Lucian's face was a cautious one, as though he wasn't prepared to seriously consider the idea that he might have actually found a way to achieve his goal without his planned hybrid, but Amelia would accept that as enough for the moment. The vampires and lycans were still looking cautiously at each other even as Viktor was taken away yelling in indignant rage, but at least the way everyone had reacted to the revelation of his true role in events affirmed that they all understood there had been only one villain here.

Amelia wasn't going to fool herself into believing that everyone would just accept this particular turn of events and accept Viktor's upcoming execution that easily, but she had faith that justice had been served and most of them were satisfied with it.

Chapter 28: The Execution

Chapter Text

Ever since Viktor and Kraven's trial had concluded in her absence, Selene had felt as though most of the coven were walking around her on eggshells after Viktor's true role in her families' deaths had been exposed. She still regretted just leaving the trial like that, worried that it made her look weak, but Kahn and Michael had each separately assured her that they understood why she had left when she did. Michael's fresh experience of losing his fiancé gave him at least some insight into her own feelings, and while Kahn had been a vampire almost as long as Selene herself he knew her well enough to understand how important her family had been to her.

The most sickening thing about Viktor's revelation was how Selene had been forced to face the fact that she actually knew basically nothing about her vampire sire. She had worked so hard to become a Death Dealer in the name of defending innocents from lycans because she believed that was what he had done for her, but that he had been the one to actually cause that carnage…

Still, it had been gratifying to see that it wasn't only her personal friends who had been angered to learn of Viktor's role in the deaths of her family. She was far from the only Death Dealer to become a vampire after suffering such a significant personal loss, which affirmed that she was far from the only vampire to understand the pain of losing a loved one and how it could drive someone to choose this life. Every vampire had struggled with the desire for blood at least once in their lives, but the idea that Viktor had basically ignored everything that they were meant to stand for just because he wanted a tasty snack had enraged so many that Selene was sure only Amelia's authority stopped them from even trying to vent their anger on him.

With all the focus on Viktor's execution, Selene liked how the coven weren't making as big a deal about the fact that Kraven's execution was scheduled for the same time. When Kraven had spent the last few decades since Viktor went to sleep establishing his hold on the coven, it was gratifying for her to see him treated as nothing but a relatively minor detail. Death was still a terrifying prospect for the former regent, but the way his death was being dismissed would hurt Kraven's ego far more.

Viktor had made a few attempts to escape, but in his current condition those attempts hadn't amounted to much. Kraven had made a more successful attempt to break out, exploiting his knowledge of the mansion's security upgrades, but he'd only made it to a phone before he was caught. Kahn had tried to trace the number dialled, but it appeared that Kraven had called a burner phone, and whoever he spoke to had disposed of the phone after the call had concluded.

There was some concern about who Kraven had spoken to before he had been caught, but Kahn had assured Selene and Amelia that he'd take all suitable precautions for the execution and otherwise chosen not to worry about it. Kraven had been an incompetent for years already, so the idea of him suddenly showing any kind of skill was disconcerting, but Selene was personally prepared to bet that the person at the other end of the line was the one who had actually been competent enough to stay in hiding. If Kraven had spoken with someone who might be a problem, Selene would deal with them when the time came, but until she knew more, her priority was to focus on making sure that Viktor and Kraven met their final fate.

On the topic of legal sentencing, Lucian's past experiments were still a contentious topic for both sides even after the trial itself had concluded. Lucian and Singe had confirmed that they had done their best to only take samples from some of their potential candidates, but as it became harder to access blood samples without attracting attention, the analysis involved taking the humans in question directly to their labs so that the lycans would have immediate access to the blood samples in the event of a successful test. Some subjects had been released after being given a heavy dose of some kind of drug that would blur their memory, but Lucian had admitted that a few subjects had been allowed to die if they had become ill during the lycans' experiments. A couple of lycans had come forward to confirm that they were survivors of the experiments who had been bitten and turned, but Amelia wasn't entirely prepared to rule in Lucian's favour on that ground since he couldn't have known they would survive when he'd bitten them.

At this point, the best option anyone had come up with was for Lucian to be demoted from his current role as alpha to a more minor position among the lycans. Symbolically, it would serve as a suitable punishment for him from a public perspective, but on a personal level Lucian would be fine giving up his current responsibilities in favour of ensuring the peace he had basically fought so hard to create. Michael had jokingly compared it to something in Star Trek when Selene mentioned that detail to him, but he hadn't elaborated on it at the time and Selene wasn't sure she was ready to discuss that in more detail until everything had been finalised. Amelia and Marcus agreed that the lycans should retain their freedom rather than return to their apparent original role as the vampires' slaves and daylight guardians, but it was hard to find a suitable potential leader for the pack who hadn't been involved in Lucian's plans.

The thing that surprised Selene the most was that Marcus hadn't shown much interest in everything. He had voted in favour of the execution and the peace process, and had obviously voiced his agreement with the plan to put another lycan in charge once Lucian was demoted, but even as he was restored to full health, he seemed to be more concerned with trying to find time to talk with Lucian and Singe in particular about their experiments. Selene wasn't sure if Marcus had some interest in science he hadn't been able to properly explore before now or if there was some ulterior motive she wasn't aware of, but with everything else going on in the coven right now Selene didn't feel that this was the time to properly analyse that question.

Finally, the day came for the scheduled execution of Viktor and Kraven. Lucian's fate remained a question-mark, but for the moment all parties agreed that the lycan leader could 'officially' remain in charge so long as he didn't actually try to give any significant orders. Even if his final fate was open-ended right now, Lucian's presence at the execution of the man who killed his lover was important for reasons of its own. The actual execution was being recorded to be sent on to other sources so that everyone present could see justice done, but for the final execution, only a few key people were to be present. Selene had been surprised that she and Michael were on that list, but Amelia said that Michael's role as a key catalyst in inspiring this treaty merited such a response, and they seemed to treat him and Selene as a package deal at this point. Lucian had been allowed to bring Raze and Singe as his companions, and Kahn had picked out a few key Death Dealers to act as security for this event, but Amelia and Marcus would be the ones to deliver the final sentence to Viktor in particular given his position and the scale of his crimes.

Standing around the large chamber that had been set aside for the execution, looking solemnly at the chair set up in the middle of the room, Selene wished she could be sure how she should feel about this particular mess. She had spent so long basically priding herself on her self-control when in the middle of intense situations, but it took meeting Michael to realise that there could be situations where it was acceptable to feel, and now she was lost for how to feel in one of the most emotionally difficult moments it seemed as though anyone should experience.

When Viktor and Kraven were led into the chamber, Selene could at least be satisfied at the sight of Kraven in tattered clothing and scraggy hair, his previously immaculate appearance ruined by just a few days in captivity. Viktor looked less corpse-like than he had when Amelia woke him and Marcus, but he clearly wasn't at his physical peak, looking around the room in a manner that made it clear he was still weak. Kraven, by contrast, was just a mess, his hair looking scraggy and his clothes a mess as he hadn't been able to change for the last few days. Looking around, Selene was satisfied to see how the assembled witnesses for the execution were a mixture of lycans and vampires, including herself and Michael. It was a small thing, but it was a good step in their efforts to unite the two species, as they both watched the execution of the man who had started the war.

Granted, Kraven's main crime had been against the vampires rather than the lycans, but he'd only formed his original alliance with Lucian for his own benefit rather than any sense of wider altruism, so nobody was bothered about what happened to him. When deliberating the methods of execution, it had been considered to use a firing squad armed with the lycans' ultraviolet ammunition, but when a major element of Viktor's conviction had been the manner of death he had subjected Sonja to, anything involving exposure to sunlight felt too extreme. Selene appreciated that starving Viktor was still a potential extreme response, but when dealing with an Elder, there was no other way to keep him weak enough that he wouldn't escape while ensuring he'd survive long enough for his sentence to be carried out.

In the name of giving Viktor and Kraven a quick death, it had ultimately been decided to have them both killed through decapitation, with Angelo, one of the older Death Dealers, delivering the blow. Angelo wasn't one of the most experienced Death Dealers, as he was a large man who didn't blend in well in crowds, but he was certainly one of the most physically powerful, which meant that he would be able to finish it quickly.

"Welcome," Amelia said, once the last attendee had arrived. "We are gathered here to witness the execution of Viktor of Hungary and Kraven of Leicester for crimes against the immortals. For their role in initiating and prolonging the war between vampire and lycan for no greater purpose than their own hatred and desire for power, they will now have their heads severed from their bodies and their lives ended."

Here Amelia paused to indicate where Angelo stood near the centre of the room alongside a simple wooden block, suitably carved so that the heads of the accused could be placed on the block before the moment of decapitation. The block hadn't been used for an execution for some time as far as Selene could remember, but one benefit of immortality was that you learned to never throw anything away in case it could be useful later.

"Sentence will be carried out immediately," Amelia said as she sat back in her throne alongside Marcus. "The accused will be given an opportunity to make their final statement before sentence is carried out."

"You can't do this to me!" Kraven yelled, the sheer terror on his face reinforcing the already low opinion Selene had of him. "I was your leader-!"

"Regent," Amelia corrected. "You were only ever the leader because other people gave you the authority rather than earning it on your own."

"And that was a position you only earned for killing me, which obviously never happened," Lucian added with a grin of his own. "If you're going to claim that you deserve to be spared, at least argue that you should be let off for something you actually did."

Kraven opened and closed his mouth for a few moments, but soon fell silent, as it became clear that he couldn't present any argument that would follow the point that had just been made.

"You will regret this," Viktor said, standing up to his full height despite the tremble in his weakened limbs. "Everything I have done has been in the name of protecting the purity of our species. If you allow the lycans to mix with us, you will destroy our way of life-!"

"Everything changes," Michael pointed out. "It's not always for the best, but if things just stayed the same… well, how would anything get better?"

"Michael Corvin is correct," Amelia nodded at the young lycan before she turned her attention back to Viktor. "You have never allowed yourself to grow beyond the warlord you were when you became immortal, and as a result your actions have become stagnant. You have been a good leader in war, but we are no longer at war; even if you had not instigated this conflict, your own skills will soon be… surplus to requirements."

Viktor glared around the room in rage, but his gaze finally softened as he looked at Selene, his expression shifting to a pleading one.

"Please, Selene…" Viktor said, the once-proud Elder unable to do more than weakly beg for his life. "You cannot let them do this… I have given you so much…"

"And none of the things I appreciate about that are what you wanted me to enjoy," Selene countered. She was still proud of her reasons for joining the Death Dealers, and she was at least satisfied that most of the lycans she had killed had been about to kill people if she hadn't interfered, but everything she had learnt about the origin of the war made it clear that the vampire in front of her had been the real cause of all her pain. "Whatever you wanted me to become, I will spend the rest of my life defying those expectations and working for something better than war."

"You… would do this?" Viktor said, apparently gaining new confidence as his pleading gaze shifted to a cooler glare. "You betray me… for an animal-"

"Who is a better man than you ever were," Selene cut him off. She might still be working out exactly how to define how she felt about Michael, but she knew that she was grateful for the chance to explore those feelings in greater depth now that they didn't have to hide. "You chose to kill your own family and condemn an entire species simply because you didn't approve of your daughter's choice of mate; if you still can't see that you were in the wrong, you were clearly never the person I thought you were."

That said, she walked away from Viktor, pausing only to deliver a firm punch to Kraven's face.

"What-?" he sputtered, clutching at his now-bleeding nose.

"I've just always wanted to do that," Selene observed with a slight smile before her gaze shifted to a cold stare of contempt. "Goodbye Kraven… and for what it's worth, you never had a chance even before I knew you were lying."

Satisfied that she had done everything she wanted to say and do, Selene walked back to join the observers, smiling over at Michael as she settled into position beside him.

"Just one of those things you've got to do, huh?" he whispered to her.

"After getting on my nerves for the last few centuries?" Selene observed. "It might be petty to do it when he's about to die, but he had that blow coming for centuries; I just had no justifiable reason to do it."

"The sentence will now be passed," Amelia declared, standing from her throne and nodding over at Angelo. "Begin the execution."

The tall vampire gave a solemn nod and turned his attention to his assigned task, picking up the axe that had previously been set aside for the execution. Viktor still tried to struggle against it, but the limited blood rations had left him without the strength to fight back. Kraven seemed to have resigned himself to his fate, simply slumping over the block and letting his body go limp as he waited for the final blow.

As she stood and watched the execution take place, Selene found herself reflecting on everything that had happened over the months since she had met Michael. She had come so far from the Death Dealer who had only thought of Michael Corvin as a potential asset in the conflict, but even if she could never have imagined rejecting Viktor like this, she had no doubt that this was how everything had to be.

Peace was a concept that she could never have imagined without victory, but looking around, as she saw vampires and lycans gathered together, neither side even trying to attack the other, she found herself looking forward to exploring the future. She allowed herself a moment of regret when Angelo's axe severed Viktor's head from his body, but even with her limited emotional experience, she knew that she only regretted the loss of what Viktor had been to her before she learned the truth rather than mourning the man she now knew that he was. Kraven's execution immediately afterwards was almost anticlimactic, the former regent so broken at the knowledge that his centuries of planning had come to nothing that he couldn't even bring himself to struggle as he was made to kneel on the block. Once the sword was swung, as far as Selene was concerned other people could worry about Viktor and Kraven's remains; she was just satisfied to have them both out of her life.

When she felt Michael's hand reach out to caress her own in a small gesture of comfort, Selene knew that, no matter what happened next, she would have the kind of support she'd never really had before. Viktor had helped her become a warrior, but after the last few months in his company, she had faith that Michael could essentially help her learn how to be human again.

Chapter 29: A Long-Held Agenda

Chapter Text

In the centuries since the Chain had been created, Marcus could safely say that he had never experienced such an interesting Awakening.

Obviously the fact that all three Elders were awake at the same time would have been a notable event on its own, but the news that he had been awoken to pass sentence on Viktor himself was so amusing that Marcus almost couldn't believe his good fortune. He had spent so long regretting his agreement to the Chain from the moment it had first been established, but the effort involved in trapping William had been so much that the concept of taking time out had appeared a good idea at the time before he actually woke up a few centuries later.

When he realised how his own influence over the coven had waned by the time he woke up after that first 'sleep', he was left fuming about how much damage Viktor had done to his own reputation, even as he had to admit that the other vampire had at least been relatively honest about everything. Marcus would stand by his decision to try and protect William from other vampires, but he had to concede that he could have avoided being so desperate to help his brother that he had put the lives of his new soldiers at risk. He couldn't believe that Viktor had gone so far as to cover up his own role in the history of the vampire race, but it served to undermine Marcus's own reputation with the vampires.

By the time he had been first Awoken, he still had enough of a reputation that he was trusted to lead the coven while Viktor and Amelia slept, but they had enough agents in place that Marcus knew he wouldn't be able to find William even if he managed to get any other vampires on his side. He had briefly considered working to set up his own coup against the system, but he knew from the start that trying to outright kill Viktor would only make him a pariah among the vampire race if he couldn't prove that Viktor had done anything more serious than work to keep a dangerous lycan contained.

Marcus had learnt enough through the Chain to confirm that Viktor had moved William from his original prison to some new location after he had entered hibernation, but he'd only learned more details once he and Viktor spoke in private during the transition of the subsequent Awakening. When Marcus had asked Viktor for news of his brother, the other Elder had expressed subtle 'regret' about how the key he had designed for William's prison had been permanently destroyed when his daughter had been killed by a former lycan servant at the start of the current war. Fortunately, by that point the lycans were basically an uncoordinated mess, so all Marcus had to do was focus on keeping up his usual old routine of cleaning up after his brother's creations and not think too much about waging a more active campaign against the other immortal race, but it still rankled at him to know that he had lost any hope of getting through to his brother.

With the present situation, however, Marcus had been faced with a range of intriguing opportunities and conflicting emotions from the moment he awoke to learn that Viktor was on trial for provoking the lycan war, and those had only become more intense since the final execution. He could appreciate how Amelia chose to give Viktor a swift execution rather than something more torturous, such as exposing him to sunlight in the same manner that he had killed Sonja all those centuries ago, but he still wished that she had chosen to indulge her anger. He supposed that he could recognise the symbolic value of appearing as though they were the more benevolent option after exposing Viktor's sins to the rest of the coven, but there was something to be said for the goal of making the true villain hurt…

On the bright side, that method of execution should also ensure that Viktor's half of the key to the William's prison remained reasonably intact. If Marcus could just get access to Viktor's body, and assuming that he was right about what had happened to the other half of the key…

Chapter 30: Exposing the Truth

Chapter Text

The more things came to light, the more Amelia had to resign herself to the idea that she was almost certainly not going to be getting any kind of rest for the next few decades at least. Once Viktor's true crimes had been exposed, it was basically required to execute him for everything he'd done to provoke this conflict, and while the peace treaty with the lycans was still being properly defined, she liked to think that everything was making progress. She had come to accept that Viktor was far from the noble warrior he had wanted to present himself as, but the discovery that Marcus had attacked Lucian and Selene raised further questions about whether she had ever truly known her fellow Elders.

"And this was all unprovoked?" she looked urgently at Lucian and Selene as they stood before her in the throne room. Michael Corvin, Raze and Kahn had joined Lucian and Selene once they had heard about the situation, as though acting on some unspoken request for support, but there was nothing wrong with having additional support.

"I was simply sitting in my room when he came in, asked me various questions, and then made every effort to bite me before moving on to attack Selene once she arrived to help," Lucian affirmed.

"This attack is a dangerous violation of our new truce-" Raze began.

"Which was not authorised by any of us," Kahn affirmed. "None of my Death Dealers had any part in Marcus's actions."

"And I believe you," Lucian nodded in acknowledgement at the Death Dealers' coordinator, before he turned back to Amelia. "In any case, Selene and I were able to subdue Marcus and move him to the cells, but I'm certain that was only because he was so focused on Selene when she arrived that he basically forgot about me in the moment."

"That would fit Marcus," Amelia mused with a slight smile. "He had a tendency to become so focused on the final goal that he didn't always think things through in terms of how he would get there."

"And this guy's one of your leaders?" Michael looked cautiously around the room. "I get that I'm new here, so maybe there's social things I'm missing…"

"But why is he in charge if he made such a stupid mistake?" Kahn guessed, giving Michael a slight smile of approval.

"Marcus was generally a good leader when he had time to plan for more general goals, but when it came to personal matters he could get… I believe the modern term is 'tunnel vision'," Amelia clarified. "Marcus could take care to make plans most of the time, but he made certain mistakes when focused on particular issues."

"What kind of issues?" Raze asked.

"That is something we shall have to talk about with him directly," Amelia said, stepping up from the throne. "Shall we deal with this now?"

The consenting nod from the group was all that was needed for Amelia to stand up and lead the group to the prison cells in the lower basem*nt. The cells had been used only rarely over the centuries, since the nature of their war meant that neither side took prisoners on a regular basis, but they were still available if needed. Everyone present knew that the metal bars or secure transparent walls wouldn't seriously hold an immortal if a prisoner was really determined to escape, particularly one as strong as Marcus, but there was an understanding regarding prisons like this. Much like what Amelia understood of certain Japanese warriors, such as the samurai, in some ways prisoners in these situations were bound by a code of honour not to attempt escape, with the addition that they were aware that they would receive greater punishment if they did make such an effort.

Neither vampires or lycans had ever properly taken part in the Geneva convention, but there were still certain unspoken rules and expectations regarding prisoners. Everyone present knew that the cell wouldn't hold Marcus if he made a genuine effort to escape, but in his current situation, Amelia guessed that the last thing Marcus wanted was to make things worse for himself. His position in the coven had always been tenuous since Viktor had made it clear that he wouldn't tolerate Marcus's brother being allowed to roam freely after everything that had happened. Amelia doubted many were aware of that part of Marcus's history these days, but there was still an underling atmosphere where Marcus was essentially the least of the three Elders. Even with Viktor dead, Marcus couldn't afford to turn the coven against him too openly, particularly when they were working on something that, in Amelia's view, the other Elder should have been after from the beginning.

Which makes it all the more significant that he went this far when he already got his most obvious 'wish', Amelia mused to herself as she stood in front of her fellow Elder's cell. Her fellow Elder sat in the cell with as much dignity as possible in his situation, despite the dried blood from his ears that now stained his shirt and the new crooked angle of his nose.

"My friends," he said, nodding with a surprising sense of dignity despite the slight whistling sound coming from his bent nose. "I… thank you for this opportunity to talk-"

"This is about William, isn't it?" Amelia cut him off, directing a critical glare at her fellow Elder.

"William?" the other vampires and lycans repeated in confusion.

"He is still alive," Marcus responded, his arms folded as he stared back at her.

"After this long in his transformed state?" Amelia countered, focused on this particular argument over answering the questions of the others. "You can't seriously believe that there's anything left in there that's worth saving."

"If he lives there is a chance-"

"Are you even aware of what we have learnt about the brain since the days when William was imprisoned? He has spent over a thousand years as a feral animal; what kind of guarantee can you offer that there's anything of his original identity left by now?"

"I have to try!" Marcus yelled, storming up to the cell bars only to step back as Selene and Kahn drew their weapons. The weapons wouldn't do much to a vampire as old as Marcus, but the fact that vampires were drawing their weapons on an Elder was enough to confirm that things had changed. Amelia and Marcus stared at each other for a few moments, but Marcus eventually chose to step back, leaving Amelia to glare at him.

"You are aware that such ideas are the reason you and Viktor clashed so often," she said.

"And I am also aware that Viktor is now dead-"

"Which doesn't change the fact that he was right to be concerned about your approach to everything," Amelia cut Marcus off. "I can respect your loyalty to William, but you cannot simply decide to go after him now and believe that everything will have changed."

"Uh… sorry if this is a stupid question, but who's William?" Michael asked, looking increasingly awkward as Amelia and others turned to look at him. "I mean, I get that it's maybe just one of those things nobody's told me about yet…"

"It is not," Selene said, giving him a brief smile of understanding before she turned back to the two Elders. "Michael makes a point; who is William?"

"The original werewolf," Amelia said.

"And my brother."

"Brother?" Kahn looked at Marcus in shock at that news.

"As in your direct brother?" Raze asked.

"He and I were twins, yes," Marcus nodded.

"Hold on…" Lucian looked at Marcus with a thoughtful smile. "If the original werewolf is your twin brother…"

"Werewolf?" Michael cut in. "I thought we referred to ourselves as lycans?"

"By the time we reached a point in our development when we had a degree of control over the change and remained in human form most of the time," Lucian clarified. "The term 'werewolf' refers to someone who is essentially trapped in their wolf state after the original infection; it took some time before the condition progressed to the point where the average lycan is like you or I."

"And William never had the chance to reach that level," Marcus put in. "He was bitten by a rabid wolf when he saved my life, and I ended up transforming into my current state after a similar encounter with a rabid bat, due to our… unique physiology."

"Which is where Michael fits in," Selene indicated Michael.

"Huh?"

"According to myth, the first true immortal was Hungarian warlord Alexander Corvinus, born over fifteen centuries ago," Amelia took up the explanation. "What few outside this room are aware of is that Marcus and William were his mortal sons before their transformations into the first vampire and werewolf… and, by process of elimination, Michael Corvin is the descendant of the younger mortal brother."

"…Oh," Michael said, his tone cautious but clearly intrigued at this new information. The gap between himself and Marcus was so great that Amelia doubted he was that bothered about any potential blood ties in terms of his relationship with Marcus, but it was still a point of possible interest.

"So Marcus was the original vampire?" Lucian put in, a thoughtful smile on his face. "Viktor wasn't the oldest?"

"He was the first person I intentionally turned into a vampire, but he wasn't a vampire before I was, if that's what you mean," Marcus clarified.

"I see…" Lucian said, his thoughtful smile developing into a mocking smirk. "Would that be why Viktor attempted to arrange a marriage between Sonja and Nicolae?"

"Those rumours were true?" Amelia looked at him in surprise.

"They were never more than rumours, particularly when Nicolae was absent when the first plans were being made. Viktor was working to make arrangements for their marriage, but Sonja affirmed to me that she would never have been interested in Nicolae-"

"Hold on; Nicolae?" Kahn repeated curiously. "Who was that?"

"Marcus's son," Amelia gave Kahn a teasing smile. "He was discussed during Viktor's trial, remember?"

"But- oh, right," Kahn nodded in new understanding, even as he looked apologetically at Marcus. "Sorry if that… seemed offensive; nobody mentioned your son's name at the time…"

"An easy thing to overlook," Marcus responded with a dismissive smile. "I admit that I was never that comfortable in my role as a father anyway… frankly, when I look back, I don't think I was ever much good in any kind of authoritative role."

"Which was one of the reasons you agreed to the Chain in the first place, as I recall," Amelia noted with a slight smile.

"Hold on," Kahn looked between the two Elders with a renewed air of apprehension about him. "If Marcus was the original vampire…"

He groaned in frustration. "Did Viktor just enjoy rewriting history? Was anything he told us about our history even remotely true?"

"To be fair to Viktor, he was actually older than Marcus; he just let you all assume that meant he was a vampire first," Amelia observed.

"He was older than you?" Raze looked over at Marcus.

"He was a warlord dying of a terminal illness when I originally turned him," Marcus explained. "I needed his army to help contain William's contagion, so I received his assistance and tactical expertise in exchange for essentially saving his life."

"And I actually sought them out to seek escape from a terminal disease in my own family bloodline," Amelia added. "I also had an army of some repute at the time, and once Marcus had turned Viktor and I, we turned others to create an army that could contain the spread of the werewolf infection until William was contained."

"Contained?" Lucian asked. "Not killed?"

"I believe you may have been born towards the end of that particular campaign, which led to Viktor using you to create his own group of lycan guardians," Marcus put in. "I allowed that in the hope that it would encourage further leniency towards William, but I had also planted the idea that killing William or myself would have eliminated all of our progeny."

"And he believed that?" Michael looked at Marcus in surprise.

"This was the sixth century, boy; what we had become was more easy to regard as a kind of magic than an elaborate virus," Marcus pointed out. "It ensured that Viktor would not openly move against me in open warfare, and meant that he would work to keep William contained to avoid losing his servants, but didn't stop him from… working to undermine my influence."

"Is that why Viktor set up the Chain?" Kahn looked critically between Amelia and Marcus.

"The initial suggestion was mainly successful because Marcus had been active for so long by that point," Amelia said with a slight smile. "He was grateful for the chance at a break and didn't realise the wider side-effects of such an arrangement."

"I had a lot of responsibility-!" Marcus protested.

"And I am not denying that you did good work," Amelia pointed out. "Creating an entire species and culture is not a task that just anyone could achieve; you simply lacked the training and experience to ensure that you maintained control afterwards."

"Which I assume is how Lucian and I defeated you so quickly," Selene observed as she gave a critical glance at Marcus. "You got sloppy; you were so focused on one target you basically forgot that there was still another party available to fight."

"…True," Marcus conceded with an awkward smile, before his expression became grimmer. "But if you had learned that the secret to your brother's freedom was potentially under your nose after centuries… wouldn't you be eager to get it?"

"Huh?" Michael said, a glance at the others confirming that he wasn't the only one confused at Marcus's word choice.

"You… aren't just talking about Viktor's death, are you?" Kahn looked thoughtfully at the imprisoned Elder. "Something else came up…"

"He makes a point," Amelia looked over at Marcus. "To be blunt, if retrieving William was as simple as killing Viktor, we both know you would have done it long before. Regardless of Viktor's own beliefs, you would have only gone this far if something had changed beyond Viktor's death; what was it?"

"I… became aware of a clue about the location of William's prison."

"Just now?" Lucian looked sceptically at Marcus. "What was that clue?"

"The timing of when Viktor targeted Selene's family."

"My family?" Selene looked at Marcus in shock. "What do they have to do with this?"

"The fact that such lengths were taken to conceal the event from the rest of us… intrigued me," Marcus observed with a cool shrug. "Amelia and I were both aware that Viktor had William relocated to a new prison once he found a suitable architect, but we were never aware of the identity of that architect or the location of that prison…until now."

"Until…" Selene began, before her eyes widened in realisation. "The island…"

"Island?" the others repeated.

"My father… he made a castle on an island…" Selene said, her gaze shifting to the locket around Lucian's neck. "And that… the locket… I held it when I was there…"

"This locket?" Lucian looked at the item in question in surprise. "You… you held this? When you were human?"

"There was something…" Selene said, her expression cautious as she reached over to take hold of the locket without removing it from Lucian's neck. The lycan leader seemed uncertain of the motion, but held the locket out to her for a moment, allowing the Death Dealer to take it in her hands. Cautiously placing her thumb on the central green gem, Selene pressed down, and four small, jagged pieces sprang out from the edges.

"What in the world?" Raze looked at it in surprise.

"What is this?" Lucian looked at the locket in surprise.

"It's half of a key," Marcus explained. "Viktor kept the other half on him, and he trusted the second part to Sonja without her knowledge. I was able to see enough of Viktor's blood memories to perceive where he kept both parts of the key, but I think he only revealed that much to taunt me with the knowledge that it would be impossible to assemble the key even if I could find where he had imprisoned my brother in the first place."

"And when he believed I had died with the locket in my possession, he had every reason to believe that the key was lost for good," Lucian observed, even as he took the locket back from Selene and 'locked' it again before he looked back at Marcus. "So you believed that you could take my half of the key and then use Selene's memories to find your brother's prison?"

"I had already retrieved the other half of the key from Viktor's body," Marcus shrugged, indicating one pocket of his coat. "Once I had your pieces of the puzzle, finding William is a matter of time."

"From memories from that long ago?" Michael asked.

"Blood memories can be particularly potent," Amelia observed with a shrug. "If you know what you're looking for, and- if I may be blunt- given Selene's lack of mental training… it could be possible…"

"Possible?" Marcus looked at Amelia with a hopeful smile. "Are you saying-?"

"I am saying," Amelia interjected firmly, "that when you consider that we are already intending to forgive Lucian and the lycan breed for a centuries-long campaign against us… operating on the premise that William has never done anything to hurt anyone with deliberate intent…"

She paused to look at her fellow Elder with a cool glare. "If you are willing to work with us… under specific conditions… it may be possible to at least look into William's situation."

"My lady?" Kahn looked at Amelia incredulously. "With all due respect, if half the tales of the werewolf rampages are true-"

"Many of them are," Amelia cut him off. "But if we are willing to forgive Lucian for his acts, it sets a precedent where we must at least work to give William Corvinus a chance. Ultimately… Marcus's actions can be traced back to a desire to help his brother cope with a terrible illness; if there is a chance to help him now… we must explore the possibility of doing so."

"You really-?" Marcus looked at her with a grin.

"On the understanding that we shall give this one significant effort," Amelia cut her fellow Elder off, holding up a warning finger. "William will be kept under constant observation while lycan and vampire doctors analyse his condition to determine if there is any way to make him better… but if we cannot find a way to help him, he will be dealt with."

"Dealt with?" Marcus repeated, a new edge to his voice.

"We no longer believe that the deaths of William or yourself will automatically kill the rest of us," Amelia pointed out, the same edge to her own voice as she looked at Marcus. "I accept your desire to help your family, but you must also recognise that William is too powerful and too dangerous to be simply allowed to go around unchecked. I will give you access to every resource necessary to try and help William, but you must be prepared for the idea that he cannot be helped."

Marcus simply sat in silence as he looked at the group of vampires and lycans assembled in front of his cell, but the slight nod he gave them was enough for them all to recognise that he accepted the decision.

Amelia just had to hope that her decision to establish a more benevolent authority presence wasn't about to backfire on her with her first and most significant decision in the post-Viktor political climate…