Gavin stood in the empty alleyway with his panicked heart moments away from bursting out of his chest, surveying the signs of a scuffle around him. An overturned recycling bin with its contents strewn all over the ground. A blood-stained cobblestone path, the coagulated rusty puddle an indication the injury was more than just a scratch. Worst of all, no Aidan anywhere in sight.

The sudden ringing of his phone jolted the wolf out of his sinking dread, and Gavin immediately answered, "Where's the backup, Tyler? I can't search the whole city on my own!"

Tyler's voice crackled over the speakers. "Gavin, I'm sorry, man, I'm on my way to you, but no one else is coming."

"What do you mean no one's coming?! I need to find Aidan. He's still alive. I know he is!"

"The Chieftain disallowed it. She won't be risking werewolf lives for a human," the tall man replied, genuinely regretful and guilty.

Gavin was furious. "If she won't help, then she's lost one very powerful wolf. Me."

Tyler knew it would end this way. Too bad Emerie refused to see eye to eye with him on this. He answered his friend, "I know, man. Listen, you do what you've gotta do. In the meantime, I'll help you get the word out to the city folk to look out for your brother."

Gavin hung up, the panic running in his veins not receding one bit. He stared at his blank phone screen for a long while before scrolling through his contacts list and calling a number. It rang twice before the caller answered in an uncertain voice, "Hey, Gavin...."

Gavin could hear the hushed whispers of two others in the background, trying but failing to remain concealed. Tersely, he asked the trio, "What are you willing to do to earn my forgiveness?" There was a momentary silence in which Gavin knew Andy, Charlie, and Brandon were exchanging looks of agreement.

"Anything," Andy finally answered for the trio.

"Good. Get your asses to London. My brother is missing."

Elsewhere in London, darkness gave way to warm light while a feverish heat dissipated in the cool air of a quiet guest bedroom. Aidan's consciousness hovered at the precipice between wakefulness and sleep, past and present memories colliding in a disjointed mess and leaving him in a mental muddle. Bit by bit, they sorted themselves out like puzzle pieces falling into place, building a picture of two interconnected lives until his mind was clear once more. Gradually, Aidan's eyelids fluttered open, eyelashes casting shadows over ocean-blue eyes filled with clarity.

"Aidan, how are you feeling?" Emilia's worried face filled his field of vision as she leaned over him with a towel in hand, dabbing it lightly over his sweaty forehead. He blinked before hastily sitting up and wrapping his arms around the witch in a tight hug.

Even as her pulse quickened, Emilia was afraid to hope. She whispered, "Mathias? You remember?"

"Mmm," Aidan replied, his face buried on her shoulder, "sorry I'm late."

It took the witch a moment to digest his words before overwhelming relief hit her, much like a brick thrown at a glass cage. For Emilia, it was a metaphorical cage she had built around her heart, newly shattered and setting her free from her impassive prison of captive emotions.

She wrapped her arms around him just as tightly. "That's an understatement," she said through a sob. Seven hundred years was a long time, even for a witch.

Emilia couldn't remember the last time she cried, but it felt sweetly cathartic this time. Aidan pulled away to look at her tear-stricken face and gently wiped away her tears with his thumb. "My love," he said, smiling down at her before closing the distance to kiss her dainty lips. Emilia pulled him closer and raked her fingers through his honey-blond hair, touching him as if she couldn't believe he was real. Aidan deepened their kiss, letting the now familiar feelings of longing overwhelm him completely. He was whole again, and not just because he'd regained a splinter of his soul.

Memories of kissing Emilia in his past life intertwined with the present as Aidan traced gentle hands down her back, enjoying the familiarity of holding her in his arms. She was still the same woman who kissed him for the first time in the darkness of a little cave by the sea as he lay captivated in her lap. Beautiful, perfect Emi was the light in the darkness, and she was forever his.

Tracing trembling fingers over his cheeks and jawline before tenderly feathering touches down his neck to rest her hands on his shoulders, Emilia basked in the warmth of his skin, the feeling one she had craved for so long but was denied the pleasure. All the while, she had, in despair, ruthlessly pushed it aside as something lost for the remainder of her long and lonely existence. Except she was wrong, and how glad she was to be wrong.

Their kiss was love and passion, joy and contentment, hope and disbelief, a whirlwind of emotions trying to be expressed at a go. When they finally moved apart while gasping for much-needed air, Emilia said between breaths, "You aren't allowed to leave my sight, ever again."

"I'm down with that," Aidan said, chuckling while playing with a lock of golden hair between his fingertips.

Emilia cupped his face, studying his features carefully. "Is it weird, looking at me the way I am now?" Aidan asked, feeling a little shy.

"It's fascinating. It's like your looks are the inverse of how you used to be, and yet when I look at you, I see you," she answered truthfully, looking at the strands of light hair and dark blue eyes, such a contrast to the darker brown hair and light blue eyes in his previous life. "I don't know how else to explain it."

"But you still love me, don't you?"

She smiled, saying simply, "Always." She paused before playfully adding, "I must admit, it's going to take a while to get used to how short you've become."

Aidan dramatically gasped, "I'm not short! I was just abnormally elongated before!"

They curled together on the bed, facing each other and only a hair's breadth apart. "What happened that day?" Emilia asked him the question that had plagued her mind for centuries. "You said you were going to close the vampire portal, but you shut all three of them instead."

He let out a soft groan, "That so wasn't the plan. I honestly don't know why, but the three portals were linked together. Destroying one got rid of the rest. I died because my life force was used up shutting down three portals at a go." Aidan paused, feeling awkward talking about his own death in the past tense. It took him a moment for realisation to set in. He died seven hundred years ago. Aidan squeezed his eyes shut. Remembering it now was still a shocker to reconcile with, let alone getting used to suddenly having two personas, carrying similitude in some aspects in their personality pie chart, yet diverging big time in others. It was going to take a hell of a lot of getting used to.

"What about you? What happened after...."

"After you died?" Emilia filled in for him when he couldn't bring himself to utter the D-word again. "It was chaos on all sides. The portals were gone, and everyone felt trapped on Earth. The humans started a rebellion, and although they were weak, they vastly outnumbered us. There was no other choice but to alter their memories. Luckily for us, there was a witch with the power to do so. She did the memory wipe that made humans forget about our existence. Afterwards, all supernaturals went about erasing any proof of our presence. Ancient castles were destroyed, texts, armour, anything that connected us to this world was removed."

'But not all of them. Some were missed,' Aidan knew. His ex-boss, Robert Wallace and the Unified Research Centre was proof of that.

She slowly added, "When I heard the news of your demise, I was in denial for a long while. I kept going to our little hideout, certain I'd find you there. The crystal stopped glowing, but I ignored it. It only really sunk in when Netta confirmed the truth."

Her sorrow was still so visible in the way her eyes grew vacant, the tightness around her mouth, and the faintest tremor of her voice; it pained Aidan to know she had suffered in such despair when he died. Helplessly, he could only comfort her with a gentle forehead kiss. They lay in silence for a bit until he decided to lift the mood by saying rather lightheartedly, "I didn't think you'd keep in touch with my sister, considering her cranky behaviour and all."

"We did, once in a while, over the centuries." Emilia chose not to elaborate further, and Aidan didn't press her for details, sensing that it was a sensitive topic.

"What happens now?" Emilia asked as she gazed at him thoughtfully while reaching out to place a hand over his heart, its steady beat reassuring.

He reached out to place his hand over hers, "Good question." Aidan seriously wondered about his next course of action. "I'm a reincarnated vampire prince, reborn as a human, with a werewolf for a brother, a vampire for a sister and a girlfriend who's a witch. Aaannd, seven hundred years later, everyone's still at war with each other," he huffed loudly, feeling unimpressed.

Emilia gave him a wide grin, "Who else better to bring peace upon the supernatural world than you?" Aidan groaned. Hadn't Lannetta said something similar to him as well? "For now, all I want to do is enjoy this moment here with you, problems be damned."

Emilia laughed for the first time in a long while and snuggled close, practically glueing their bodies together. "I'm in."

While the reunited lovers basked in the glow of their long-overdue reunion, others plotted their downfall. Hidden away in an underground labyrinth few knew of, an elusive vampire aristocrat toyed with his favourite dagger, running a finger along the family crest of a shield with a two-headed bird etched into the base of the wooden handle. The man lounged on a comfortable armchair, a tranquil air about him, but the two vampires kneeling by his feet were anything but relaxed, having failed their mission again.

The duke spoke in a melodious voice, "Fail me once, I can forgive, but fail me twice?"

The dagger struck in tandem, and both men screamed their pain, clutching at bloody left hands, where both had lost half of their ring fingers down to the middle phalange. The duke wiped the dirtied dagger on a piece of cloth, unperturbed by their suffering. "The next time you fail me will be your last. Find the human, Aidan Summers, or your lives are forfeit."

The men staggered to their feet and fled, leaving the duke alone in the room. To say he was furious was an understatement, considering his plan had ended in such a catastrophic failure. It had seemed simple enough to pull off, if not costly, but the duke had money. Lots of it. The moment the wolves had Aidan in their grasp, he knew they would regroup at their poorly guarded lair, being the predictable pack creatures that they were. All that was needed was to overwhelm their almost non-existent defences long enough to find and end the human's life.

But the plan had combusted faster than a vampire in the sun. Subsequent tries were made and yet the human still breathed. A disgustingly weak human that defied the odds. Damn him! He was like a roach that just couldn't be squashed.

Stroking the dagger still in hand, he stared into emptiness, his eyes unfocused as he remembered something of the past. A smile tugged the corners of his lips upwards, and he muttered softly to himself, "You won't escape me, Prince Mathias Bloodreign."