Traveling through the void this time is quite strange. There's a line as if it some tether held us to the ascending man before us. This time, instead of resting upon a dragon, we were accelerating at an immense speed that threatened to dematerialize our very bodies. I feel nauseous and exhilarated all at the same time, the kaleidoscope of colors flashes as we zoom through what can only be thought of as eternity.

Everything is loud, extremely loud, and yet so quiet in the continuous nature of the foreign tone. The longer we remain in this void, the more I wonder if we will ever leave. Unable to move, breathe, or speak, it's completely weightless if you lose consideration for the immense pull on your very essence. 

All at once, reality returns and we hit the water barrier at a speed that causes my ears to ring. For once, I remain conscious, if only to realize the impact of water slapping one's face is quite painful. Taking deep gulps of air, I desperately try and right myself as I slip and stumble into the porcelain vat I'd been deposited into. 

Vaguely aware that there is light, I attempt to turn my face towards it. 

Where had we been deposited? What mysterious land had we been cast into? 

He could have taken us anywhere and he chose hell as I couldn't even stand. My legs slipped and slid, unable to find purchase as I was surrounded by near-boiling water. "Helen?" I managed, my tone sounded strangled even to me. 

The blinding light made it difficult to make out any of the shapes crowding around the space, I held up my hand, ready to kill whoever dared attempt to take me. 

The power surges to my fingertips, the water grows ever hotter and I feel as I though I might perish in the immense heat. In the echo of the room, I hear Helen scrambling just as I am. Disorientated, I wonder if our friend faired any better in his descent? 

"You've got someone in your bathroom.." A female's voice cuts through the echo and I fire a shot at her blurry form. "Holy shit!" 

The rumbling of her feet assures me that I've at least gotten close, I aim again, rubbing my eyes with the back of my hand to try and gain some sort of sense. Water pours out onto the floor all around me, they must be trying to drown me.  

"I swear to the gods, Bet, if you are stealing my blasted bath I will-" 

The voice sounds so familiar and yet, odd to me. It stops, suddenly, and the room is quiet once again. My eyes begin to focus, gaining some sense of self as I lower my hand to touch the water surrounding me. The low rush of a faucet rumbles beside my ear, interrupted by the high-pitched squeak of the handle switching to off. 

Reaching up, I grasp the face of the being leaning over me, making out the blurry form as I squint. Carefully, a thumb skirts over my lid and I flinch away at the sting. "Darling, you have soap in your eyes." The voice is soft and gentle. "Frankly, you have soap all over you." Plush and soft, the towel carefully brushes over the bridge of my nose and I eagerly grab it to scrub away the sting. 

My heart races as I remove the towel, desperate to see, hoping beyond hope. My eyes meet his, the icy gaze clouded with concern as his hip rests on the edge of the basin. "Um, hello?" The woman snaps, unable to extract an ounce of consideration from each of us. 

He produces a knife from his pocket, throwing it with an amount of malice that nearly clips her ear as it punctures the door frame. She gasps in surprise, scowling. "You're such an ass! What do I do with this naked chick and this... bloody man?"

She's succeeded in distracting him, he glances but I catch his face in my hands and pull him to me with the unrelenting force of all my desperation. Making a sound of surprise, he catches himself on the wall, at my mercy as my lips hover over his. 

I feel untamed, unhinged even, "Are you truly here?"

"I think I should be asking you that question, darling. You are the one in my bath..?" I note his shirtless body, his chest bare for me to see.  Throwing my arms around his neck, I kiss him. My tongue traces over his lower lip, savoring the taste, as his stubble tickles my chin. 

Sighing against his lips, I roughly pull him to me only to gape in surprise as he loses his grip and falls into the tub with me, effectively drenching us both. 

I couldn't possibly care about the weight of him on me or the fact that he scrambles for freedom. I attack him, kissing him, clinging to him only to have him leap out of the tub with such force that I practically soak myself all over as I painfully slip back into the sudsy water. He stands before me, panting as if I'd tried to murder him, and where I expect to see lust I only see sheer terror and panic clouded on his face. 

Rinsing off with Helen, I try and come to terms with what had just happened. In my underwear, I stand under the warm stream of the shower as I scrub the debris and soap from my skin.

 Was it me? Did he no longer want me? The look on his face haunts me as I help Helen buff the grime from the tunnels off her porcelain skin. 

"Where's Gabriel?" She whispers, as if she feels my tension as if she understands that I feel like a stranger in this room.

"Randy's got him, I'm sure it's fine."

We hurry through rinsing our bodies and toweling off. The woman from earlier seems quite displeased as she provides us with clothes. I slip into the heavy sweater and wiggle into the jeans that are way too long and a few sizes too wide, they would do for now. Handing Helen clothes from her wardrobe seemed to be the most distasteful thing of all. 

I eye the woman, she seems dressed conservatively enough, in evening wear of a simple shirt and pants. Nothing sexy, nothing to attract attention. We follow her into the main room of the suite and I spy Verando tending to Gabriel's shoulder. 

"What are you doing?" I demand roughly, earning a look of shock that would make me fall to my knees in remorse if he hadn't run from me as if I were the plague just moments before. 

"Tending to your prisoner." The retort causes me to purse my lips as I march towards him yet I'm not so sure what I'll do once I arrive. I feel much like a cat with a bird, the desire for such action is there in my blood but having the bird felt unnatural, harmful even. 

Before him, I dare not falter yet I swallow down every ounce of his presence and its effect on me. 

Gabriel doesn't look amused, he isn't enjoying our quarrel, and he seems accepting of his fate. His hands were shackled with braces meant to keep them still and apart and his feet were much the same. Verando carefully uses tweezers to remove the shards of debris, though it would seem the wound was already trying to heal. "This is going to hurt, you're healing too fast."  

"Do what you must." Gabriel's tone is even, tilting his head back to watch the ceiling as the lycan shoves his finger into the hole to keep it apart so that he may remove the rest of the debris. The only discomfort the man indicates is a slight wrinkle of his upper lip. "Are you a doctor?"

Verando hesistates, unimpressed. "No. You have caused a lot of injuries, I'm getting quite good at repairing them. War and what have you." 

My stomach threatens to flip. "Care to inform me why we are helping Gabriel? The man who's trying to kill us? The man who's trying to end the world...?"

I can't tell if he's unhappy to see me or afraid of me. He keeps his eyes on the task, his shoulders tight. "Because nobody deserves to suffer." My mouth drops and he inhales, shutting his eyes for a moment. "He saved my life. I owe him."

Gabriel shrugs, once, ignoring the ruptured shoulder. "I wouldn't say that. I merely did not cut you to pieces as Caspian wished I would have. I let you go, in exchange, you did not kill me. It seemed quite fair. Your hair is very soft, I enjoyed stroking it." 

There comes a moment when things reach a tipping point, where your mind believes it's gone to a faraway land and the world around you can't possibly be real. Racing through my memories, Stefan's words surface first and foremost. 

"He was different. Something happened."

He had been in Caspian's clutches? 

The tight jaw confirms my theory as he shoves packing into the hole in the man's shoulder, without much consideration for the discomfort. "Should have let you drown." He seeths and Gabriel scans his face curiously. 

"Should I have let you drown?"

Standing abruptly, Verando wipes off his hands with as much control as he can muster. "You did." 

I want to be included, I want to understand where this relationship comes from, and why Gabriel chose to come to Verando instead of going back to Caspian himself. Helen stands beside me, guarding me in a way, as if Verando were suddenly the threat and I can only assume it's Malka triggering the difference in his energy. 

Two Alpha's trapped in one room, one in a more vulnerable state, I feel as though there could not be a worse place to be. 

"Everyone stop!" I command, unable to stand it any longer. 

For the past few weeks, I had been in complete control. There was order and structure. As the room comes to a halt, as I stare at Gabriel, I know what I should do. I should interrogate him, torture him until he gives me Fergus, but looking into his eyes I see the steady calm of someone who is exactly where he needs to be. 

He wanted to come here, whether he thought I'd follow him or not. 

Verando's relaxed nature, around our enemy, assured me that his threat to us was limited. "Can I speak to you? Alone?" My tone is so cutting that the woman he called Bet flinches, hiding into herself as if she regretted my actions for me. 

My husband flinches, two sides of him torn, the part that wants to come to me and the part that is struggling to even look me in the eye. "Nic.. we have a prisoner to attend to and information to gather." 

"I'll do my best to be forthcoming." Gabriel feigns acceptance. 

Closing my hands into fists, I refuse to give this demon spawn one more ounce of my life. "We came through a subway tunnel, Gabriel came through, we fought then followed him back here. He seems to want to be with you which has been confirmed since you say he saved your life. He knew you would save him because I fully intended to kill him. To be honest," I charge my fingertips, the threat like venom on my tongue. "I still intend to."

Verando takes a step to close the gap, putting himself in the visual path of me and Gabriel. Around his form, I can see the small eyebrow arch of an impressed man. "Extraordinary. I have dissected lycans, multiple creatures really, but you only ever hear of the loyalty... magnificent creatures."

Unable to stop myself, I lurch and Verando catches me as I reach for the passive bastard seated way too comfortably for my taste. "And you're killing them!!" I shout bitterly through clenched teeth. 

To my surprise, this silences my progeny. Shoving away from my husband, I stagger back onto my heels in an attempt to reign myself in. If I'm going to kill Gabriel, I'm going to have to get a grip on myself. 

With a quick glimpse at Gabriel to make sure he is calm, he nervously turns his attention to me. It's one of the first times I think I've ever seen such an emotion cross his face. 

"We do need to talk. But not yet. Tonight. I promise." I'm too good at avoidance to not recognize it. 

Cautiously, he reaches for my hands and carefully pulls my knuckles up to his lips to kiss them. It's as if he's afraid to even touch me. 

"Your promises are becoming less and less faithful. You missed our wedding date, asshole." My words cut him, and he kisses a trail down my palm to my wrist, softly inhaling my scent. 

"Tonight. I promise." He reiterates softly, earning a gagging noise from Bet. 

"Put a damn shirt on, ya pansy." She throws a v-neck at him and storms off to flop down in a rocking chair, staring at us with the assumed duty of guarding us. 

I learn nothing about her, she gives me no name and he gives me no introduction. I feel out of place doing absolutely nothing as he cleans the bathroom from the soapy explosion at our entrance. 

Gabriel calmly meditates and Helen follows me around like a lost puppy. I remove my phone from my soaked jeans and set it out to dry as it now flashes red at me to warn me it has been damaged. 

I pace. 

I watch him as he seems to avoid me at every opportunity. Finally, he sneaks into the kitchen when he thinks I'm not looking and begins the process of what I would assume is dinner. This is not the rekindling I'd hoped for, normally our reconnected moments felt like forest fires of passion, unable to be snuffed out. 

Today, I smoldered on my own in a lonely pile of ashes. 

Making my way into the kitchen, I stand idly by the counter and watch Verando devote all of his intensity into cutting vegetables. Through the manic energy, it's difficult for him to stand in one place so I slowly begin to fill in the gaps. 

Lowering my energy, I force myself to resume the role I'd grown accustomed to these past few weeks. The more space I occupy, I notice that he begins to settle, his shoulders start to relax and he breathes more evenly when I near him. 

The urge to pry is immense yet I know that interrogating Gabriel is the last thing on his mind. He had reached some sort of familiarity at some point, that much I can be assured. Spying the solomonari out of the corner of my eye, I see that he hasn't moved, has hardly breathed, his form still in deep meditation. 

We eat in silence, it shocks me that he dares eat the provided 'human' food. Helen naps, completely exhausted, on the couch. Gabriel remains unmoving. Finally, it's Bet who breaks the silence. "So we're interogate him in the morning?"

Warning her with his eyes, Verando sets his bowl down and folds his napkin back to perfection. "I want him to have plenty of time to think about this. We're not going to interrogate him, for now, he's just our prisoner."

I slam my hand on the table. "He has Fergus!" I choke, bewildered. "Who the hell are you because my husband sure as shit wouldn't allow this piece of trash to-" 

His lips crush against mine, stopping my verbal assault for only a moment before I pull away from him. There was no doubt in my mind who he was after a kiss like that. 

"A lot has happened, Nic. Also, you're being quite hostile." A warlord telling me about hostility, the thought makes me chuckle.

"I don't know, Randy, I just want to protect my country and the planet... simple things. Considering that we have... mmm.. seventeen days now?" 

"What happens in seventeen days?" Gabriel asks curiously.

I glower at him, fearing my teeth might crack under the pressure of my gaze. "That unicorn that you're purging on? He dies. Then that's it. The world goes dark, everything goes dark. The. End."

 The feeling of the steel vice of Verando's hand on my arm almost goes unnoticed until I realize I can hardly feel the blood in my hand. I jerk out of his grasp, unwilling to side with him when he chooses to allow the enemy to live. 

"Nic, stop."

"No. He needs to hear this. He needs to know he's destorying the planet. You're going to kill us all with this insanity and you're doing it for an asshole like Caspian!"  

"Nicolas!" Verando's harsh tone nearly brings me to heel but I'm not done. 

"You want to know something?" I demand, rising from my chair. "You're not honoring your fathers wishes. You're mutilating them for a psychopath, if you had read any of your father's works, any of his papers, you'd know his damned name! I am your father!" My voice rises as I cross the room, standing before him. 

The dark eyes, the ones that match my own, regard me with wonder and pain. "I knew you were my father, I took your DNA and tested it, you bleed a lot when you fight so it was quite simple. The stab on your chest..." He glances towards the ground and exhales, the corners of his mouth pulling down. 

"It was easier to pretend, I suppose, that you were dead. I allowed for this on a whim, hoping you'd join me, hoping you'd see the dream that I helped to form, that we could-"

I see the dysfunction clearly on his face. This man is so damaged from his time with the dragons, I know because I've felt the same despair. 

I compose myself, "We could do this together. You don't have to be on the side of Caspian... You have to let Fergus go, Gabriel."

I think he's coming around, I hope beyond hope, yet as the moments tick by his body begins to tremble. Finally, he shakes his head roughly, clenching his fists impossibly tight. "It's to late for this. What's done is done. It's been.. enlightening."

 I jump for him but he's gone, vanished into thin air in a whisp of inky black smoke. Panting, I grasp the hardwoods as if I could retrieve him; as if I'd follow him once more on the vapor trail into the abyss. He's gone and we didn't kill him. 

We wasted this opportunity, we wasted our one chance to end this here and now. 

Enraged, I wheel around. "Are you happy?!" I scare myself with the intensity of which I yell at him for the person yelling doesn't even sound like me. Yet, he's not looking at me, he's leaning over talking to Bet.

"Did you get a read on him?"

She nods, showing him the scanner. "Got him. Big energy impulse, following him right now, any minute we will have his coordinates. With any luck, he will lead us right to Fergus."