"Sam, are you awake?" Lia's voice followed a soft knocking on my door some time later.

My mind, like the sea outside, was heaving and swelling with all the things Stoker had said, making me toss and turn in my bed restlessly. I couldn't fall asleep, I was too scared to face a new dream after all those weeks of silent void, afraid of where I would find Vlad...

"Come in!" I called, sitting up and switching on my reading light.

"I couldn't sleep," Lia said, coming to my bed and sitting down, "and thought that if, by chance, you can't sleep either, we could decorate the Christmas tree. It's the twenty-fifth, I don't understand why you haven't done it already."

"I've been waiting for you! But you said you were too tired when you arrived, so I thought we would do it in the morning. Not at... two o'clock at night." I added incredulously, as my eyes strolled to the small alarm clock on my nightstand.

"Well I'm up now, and so are you. Let's do it before the men come back." Lia insisted.

"Back from where?"

"I don't know exactly, but Abraham went out a while ago and I think Lucas is with him. You know how they have... friends everywhere, those individuals Abraham helps, for instance... Some of them only get out at night..."

"Oh, do they?" I mumbled, realising that Lia already knew more about the present day vampires than I did.

"Anyway. Let's decorate the tree, then we'll go back to bed."

"Fine," I agreed, scrambling out of the bed and wrapping myself in my dressing gown before I followed her downstairs.

We were still in the sitting room, admiring our work nearly an hour later, when the men returned silently from wherever they had been.

"Do you always decorate Christmas trees in the middle of the night, girls?" Lucas teased from the doorway while his uncle approached Lia, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her passionately, making her glow like a candle.

"Only since my best friend dates a vampire who wakes her up when he disappears in the middle of the night." I couldn't resist saying.

"Samara!" Lia protested.

"Well, your friend is right." Stoker told her without even looking at me. "I'm sorry. You need to sleep." He cupped her face in his large hands and kissed her on the forehead. Then he took her by the hand and tugged her out of the room, making her follow obediently.

"Good night!" I called after them, smiling. They were... cute together. That made me wonder...

"Did your uncle tell her who he really is? I mean, his real name..." I whispered to Lucas.

"I did, Samara, you don't need to worry about anything." Stoker's voice reached us from the top of the stairs, followed by Lia's, "What did she say?"

I shook my head, amused. Of course he had heard me.

"Now you." Lucas said. "You need some sleep too."

"Soon." I said, picking up a few boxes in which all the decorations had been stored and carrying them into a cupboard under the staircase.

Lucas switched off the lights and we climbed the stairs together.

"Where have you been, anyway?" I asked him curiously when we both stopped in front of our rooms.

"Close by. We would never leave you two alone, especially at night." He said, vanishing inside his room and making me understand that this was as much information as I was going to get from him. Vampires and their secrets.

"Good night, Lucas." I muttered as I walked in my own bedroom and closed the door behind me.

When I curled under the blankets this time, my copy of Dracula in my hand, I was finally tired enough to fall asleep immediately.

I was startled back to consciousness when my bare feet touched a cold stone floor. My breath hitched and my heart missed a beat as I realised I was in my other world. Breathe. This is your dream. You created it. My subconscious reminded me. You decide the rules here.

Turning around I tried to understand where I was, but the room was too dark to see anything. I was cold, and blind... Fire. I thought, concentrating on the heat and light I needed right now.

The sound of burning wood somewhere behind me made me jump and as I turned around I saw it-- a small fire burning in the library's fireplace. I was at home, in the castle. Stoker was right. I can do this... I needed to try his other theory as well. Closing my eyes I imagined my wolf, my friend whom I missed so much.

"Shadow." I whispered and as soon as I sat down on one of the furs spread on the floor by the fireplace, afraid that Shadow, in expressing his joy at seeing me after such a long time would make me tumble to the  ground, the door leading to the corridor connecting the library with my chamber burst open.

My wolf was suddenly on me, his grey fur filling my whole field of vision and his large, warm and wet tongue all over my face. "Behave," I giggled, running my hands over the wolf's large body, revelling in his warmth and softness. "I missed you, too." I whispered even as I heard quick footsteps approaching us from the direction of my room. And as I pushed Shadow to the side to be able to see... I saw him.

Vlad was standing on the threshold looking at me warily, my grey, fur-lined blanket in his hand and his eyes glittering with... tears? The sight of his beloved face, lined with new, deep wrinkles of sorrow and exhaustion made my own tears well up.

"I thought I'd never see you again," he whispered as I willed Shadow to lay down at my feet and stood up, trying to ignore the pang in my heart. You mustn't make him suffer anymore...

"They let you go, you are at home," I whispered back, unbelieving, as I did not really expect to find him here. But of course he's here, my subconscious scolded. Otherwise you would be in that awful prison cell with him and not here.

"Are you really here or am I only dreaming?" He asked approaching me carefully, his face bearing the evidence of recently shed tears threatening to break my heart.

I ran over to him. As he wrapped the blanket over my bare shoulders I wrapped my arms around him and pressed my face into his chest, wanting to hold him together, and as close as I could.

"Why are you always... undressed and barefooted when you come to me," he mused making me smile as he scooped me up and I settled in his arms, where I belonged.

"I'm wearing my night dress, my lord," I teased. "It's nighttime. And... in a way... we're in my dream."

"But you must be cold..."

"No." I said, realising that it was true. I could... will myself to feel however I wanted.

Shadow preceded us into my chamber, then disappeared through the half-open door leading to the corridor.

Vlad laid me on my bed and I looked in his eyes, reflecting the moving flames of the lambent fire. There were thousands of questions to ask, hundreds of things to discuss, but all that I really wanted right now was to feel him next to me, holding me tight, never letting go of me again.

As if he read my mind he joined me in the bed, kissed me, then pulled me close and wrapped me in a bone-shattering embrace, making me sigh contentedly.

"I really thought I had lost you... forever." He muttered as I leaned my head on his shoulder.

"You'll never lose me," I promised. "I'll be back."

"I'm not sure you can come back, my love," he said, his voice laced with despair. "It might be too dangerous for you, if not impossible."

"But I'll manage." I insisted. "I love you. We need you." I took his hand which had been playing absently with my hair and placed it over my belly. "Our daughter needs you."

I heard his breath catch before he said, "You've... grown."

"She has. Not me."

"My daughter..." he murmured.

"Yes... Her name is Aurora and she is as big as an artichoke this week." I recited the information memorised from a pregnancy blog I read daily.

"As big as what?" He asked, and finally I caught a hint of a smile in his voice.

"Never mind." I giggled, realising that he has probably never seen an artichoke.

I wanted to ask him about Clara, and Junior, Katerina and Mist... but I was too scared to ruin this precious moment with the questions I could ask tomorrow. So we just laid there, holding each other silently, listening to our entwining breaths and heartbeats, and the small sounds of the sleeping castle filling the space around us, until the darkness behind the window started to fade.

"I want to show you something," I said when I noticed the first streaks of the new day brightening the night, knowing that I would wake up soon. "Hold tight."

Everything around us vanished momentarily and when our surroundings reappeared, the castle was gone and we were in Brighton. We stood on top of the tall chalk cliffs, breathtakingly close to the precipice, holding hands.

"How did you...?" Vlad asked.

"I don't really know. But there's my house," I pointed towards the white villa across the road, noticing Vlad following an approaching car with his gaze curiously. I cupped his face and smiled at him, making his eyes meet mine again. "Look there." I said, turning his face towards the sea and the remote horizon, where the first rays of the new-born sun pierced through the night's black clouds, stirring the nature to life.

"That's... wonderful," Vlad whispered as he drew me closer, the wind that had suddenly picked up as the sun rose, whipping my hair around us.

"I need you to sleep as much as you can," I said, feeling him dissolve in my arms. "I'll be back!"

And before I could wake up completely, a thought settled in my mind. If I couldn't stay with him in my other world forever, maybe... maybe I could make him come over here with me...