Sorry about the crapiness of this chapter, I wasn't in a good place when I wrote it and I haven't had the time to fix it yet.

She was panting, literally dripping in sweat by the time she managed to drag Lorelei home, arm trembling under the strain as of placing him on the sofa.

It appeared he was studying something. All around them were bookshelves, absolutely brimming, barely any space of wall visible. The room was cluttered, diagrams of wolves lining the walls. Whoever this was, they were extremely well read. Upon his desk, paper packed with cursive handwriting was literally overflowing onto the floor, open books littered around them.

Examining him, she found herself curious about Lorelei, someone who was supposed to be Tamer's friend, but for some reason, she hadn't met before. Tamer had called them a he, but he had a rather petite frame that was light enough for even her to carry.

This person was alsl supposedly immortal, but he didn't present in any old fashioned away. In fact, she would have said his style seemed quite modern - at the very least, it wasn't a style she'd seen before. He wore pants, but they weren't baggy like she was used to seeing on men. There was a red waistcoat with boxed shoulder-pads that made his shoulders appear broader, and ruffled open-collared shirt that was unbuttoned to show a dip of his collarbones. In the position he was on the couch, there was a peek of what appeared to be something wrapped around his chest.

Is that a bandage? Winter thought. Did he hurt himself?

She noticed he had a very delicate face, lounging upon the sofa with the dainty kind of beauty like someone out of a classical painting, long hair like threads of gold tumbling over his shoulder.

Curiosity sated, Winter wandered to his desk, examining the diagrams of wolves.

She heard him groan. She bolted away from his desk, not wanting to pry. Not long after, his long eyelashes fluttered.

He sat up, shirt, blinking his eyes with a shake of his head.

"How...?"

His eyes landed on Winter. They lit up immediately.

"You must be the famous Winter I've been hearing so much about!" He was so excited he didn't even question how he got here and how. Voice brimming with enthusiasm, he ran over, shaking her hand a million miles a minute. "I'm such a big fan of your work!"

"H-hello, Lorelei! Thank you!" Double-taking, she shook her head. "Wait, what work?"

Lorelei's expression softened. "I love that Tamer's always smiling when talking about you!"

Winter blushed. "You love his smile too?"

"Yes!" Lorelei beamed. "I would start a religion based entirely upon it!"

She nodded repeatedly very fast. "I understand; his pure, genuine smile, it like a ray of golden sunlight."

Lorelei frowned. "That being said, he is determined to bare a very heavy burden alone. I worry that he has no-one to confide in because of his own selfless nature - it's certainly not your fault, that's just the way he is." Lorelei touched his heart. "I'd like to become someone who he feels he can talk to about his own troubles. Someone that can ease his burden."

Winter felt a tinge of sadness. She wanted to be the one who could comfort Tamer best, but instead she was burdening him. The other night in the lake meant a lot to her because she felt for one of the first times Tamer was starting to communicate to her about his own feelings, but Lorelei seemed to understand Tamer very well. It made her a bit uneasy. There could be someone Tamer could be more comfortable, or could be comforted by talking about his feelings than with her.

She might have even been a bit jealous, not understanding why Tamer hadn't introduced them before. But in the end, she was simply glad he had another friend to confide in.

She glanced around her. "So what is it you're studying?"

"I'm a lycanologist. I study Lupine for a living. I used to also help werewolf hunters capture serial man eaters. That ended when I got..." Lorelei's fingers raked across his trousers. "Let's just say I got hunted by the beast I thought I was hunting." He managed to force himself to smile. "Now I just focus on whether man-eaters can be rehabilitated or not."

"Oh... I'm so sorry, Lorelei. I can't even imagine..."

"As strange as it may sound, the incident helped shape me into the person I am today, and I'm happy with that."

"Can I ask how it is you survived?"

Winter knew Lorelei was immortal. She wanted to know why.

"I am a vampire. I... got eaten all right. But I cannot be killed."

"V-vampire?!" she spluttered.

Winter didn't actually know vampires were real. They were incredibly rare to the point of urban legend. Essentially, people weren't too bothered about them considering how much more vicious the Lupine are.

But, after learning how unique and pleasing her blood was....

Lorelei noted the drumming of her fingers. "If you are worried then Winter, please do not feel the need to be afraid. I am not going to hurt you. Even if I had the desire to, I do not kill people when I drink from them, nor would I ever be crazy enough to try it on Tamer's partner. Lupine are actually very vicious when it comes to the idea of someone else drinking their mate's blood. It is considered almost on par with cheating in their eyes, and Tamer is my dearest friend. Although, if I may just say...it just strikes me as odd that you'd be wary of me, and yet every day of your life share your heart with a Lupine fearlessly, those who eat flesh in its entirety."

Her head bowed. It was hard to understand to be fair on his part.

"I want to trust him. There's a good person there, it's just helping him through the rough. Are you saying I should have reason not to?"

Lorelei shook his head. "I know he'd never prey upon you. However..." His fingertips touched into a thoughtful pyramid before his line of sight. "With Tamer's core desires being to protect you, the idea of him forced into violence... Well, I worry if he is forced to kill that he may lose his own mind."

Winter's gaze flickered to the ground. Tamer was often timid because of his upbringing, if he became numb to acting violent because of his desire to keep her safe, the person she knew would no longer exist.

Winter was also part of his core existence, what fuelled his desires. She wondered if in a blood-lust state, an insane Tamer could turn against her. His desire to become one with her forced in the most gruesome way possible.

She clenched her teeth. No. If that happens, it's because I failed him. Because I didn't give him the support he needed to get through this.

"Would you know if my blood was appealing to Tamer right now?"

"Well, I guess the one to ask would be he himself, but more than likely, yes. But it's not for necessarily sinister reasons. If the one you loved was hurting, you'd do anything to stop it, right?"

"Right."

"It's natural for all wolves to clean each others wounds. They're healing them. With Lupine, they can't help but feel a strong desire to do the same, to the point a wounded mate will actually agitate them. Although, the urge can border on obsessive sometimes. I have read of instances where they will bite or scratch each other purely because they enjoy the taste of each other's blood, but that usually is associated with Marking."

She flushed for some reason, snapping quickly back into reality.

"A Marking?" she stuttered. "What is that?"

Lorelei scowled, muttering under his breath, "this really should be a topic for you and Tamer to discuss, not us. But its not something he'd ever tell you about, so if you're curious then I suppose ... Marking is, essentially, the Lupine equivalent of engagement, but more... er? It is considered very controversial or weird even among them, and it's only a small minority of them that do it. It's biting or scratching to leave a permanent mark."

"O-oh," Winter spluttered. "Tamer never told me about such a thing."

Lorelei laughed awkwardly. "I can see why."

"I wanted to ask you, Lorelei," she began. "If you know so much about Lupine, is there much you know about the Maiden? Of me, and of the past?" She toyed with her thumbs, somewhat fearing the answer. "Wolves and the maiden are connected right? I wanted to know what became of them."

Lorelei's smile vanished. From the way he dipped his head, it seemed as if he didn't want to say it, but Winter wouldn't take her questions back. She had to know.

"They died, Winter," he said quietly. "They were ganged up upon and brutally slaughtered, as of yet, there is no record of any surviving."

Winter slunk into the couch.

"Don't get me wrong," Lorelei interjected quickly, "none of them had a Lupine companion by their side; the fact that you and Tamer have made it this far is a testament already, no one ever surpassed this. You are not only the first from your village, but perhaps even the first from this country."

"Lorelei, how do you... know this? I thought records on this were hard to find?"

Lorelei took a very long pause. His lips curled inwards before his usually chirpy tone became more stern. "You can't tell a soul about this Winter. I mean it. Not even Tamer. This could cause extremely horrible things to happen to me; I'm trusting in you because I trust in Tamer, and how he speaks of you."

"I promise. But if it is that dangerous for you, then..."

Lorelei cut her off as if itching to tell her anyway. "Now don't get excited, but I've met the king."

"Wh-what?" Winter's mouth fell agape.

"I said don't get excited, haha. I only know very few things because he seems to be able to erase memories. I don't even know what he looks like. I just know that I was unbelievably in love with him. I have no idea why this would be the case knowing what he did but I believe he must be incredibly charismatic. The King was the wolf preying upon me. I was just so in love with him somehow that I didn't realise this at the time. What I do know is because I wrote it down in my notes - unfortunately, I did not write everything about him because I wasn't expecting to not remember later.

"Basically, the king told me all the fairytales about himself, stories passed orally by commoners who couldn't write about him, stories from before the reputation he has now. Fairytales are unlikely true, distorted by the constant passing between people, but I still cannot disclose the possibility that there could be some truth within it. In fact, I think there is; I believe the king chose to relay unclear information like this to charm me personally. I was a detective on a murder case, so he presented himself in the form of the mystery - 'figure me out using your head, basically.' I strive to gain knowledge, so this was incredibly smart way of endearing me towards him. The person I was attracted to presenting themselves as a mystery.

"This is what I was told: Legend has it that the King took particular interest in a village supposedly blessed with white roses in the Winter. Despite it being many miles away in, the white rose was told to remind him of a past lover he still had feelings for. The stories portray him as incredibly soft-hearted for the women he loved. When he got there, he found it was a woman who grew the roses. The King asked if one day, he could come back and see if she could make the ice roses bloom in his own kingdom. Honoured, the woman and her family agreed.

"She stayed with him for some time, and they fell in love. Now, no one really knows what happened to the girl after he brought her back home. Despite numerous lovers, Cerberus has had one queen, and rumour has it that Queen Diana may have been this girl. But that's it. Some time after she was coroneted, it was announced that she was dead, and no statement was released as to how to the public. Since then, he has gone out of his way to kill girls born on the day roses bloom in the snow."

Winter hadn't realised how captivated she'd been in Lorelei's words until he stopped. It was fascinating learning about the Maidens, a little piece of her own history she never knew had existed. She'd always saw Cerberus as a monster - which he was - but even then it was interesting to know he was portrayed as someone with having a heart.

She leaned on the edge of her seat. "A broken heart?" she said with a scowl. "Isn't that how all these old stories go? A broken heart drove him to insanity, and ever since then, he's had to kill those girls who reminded him of her?"

"Who knows? That does seem a bit drastic, never mind completely insane, does it not? My personal idea was that there had to be more to this tale than just a tragic love story. The truth is, if this story is real, it's more than likely Cerberus killed her himself, since he went on to kill all the later Maidens. There were mentions that Cerberus ate her; that in the end, he loved her so much, that he ended up devouring her. But one, and only one, said something else: it said that as his lover, in the sharing of strength via a mate bond, the woman had the power to destroy him."

Lorelei frowned. "It's funny. I mostly was just sharing the story for the sake of curiosity, I believe everything that can be written about should be if it's not been written before, but did I share an exact expert of what he did at that moment, as if I thought retaining the clearest image of his body language could be relevant to unravelling the mystery. I've read it so many times I recall the words exactly."

Lorelei wanderer to the book on his desk an opened it, finding the exact page immediately as if it had been opened a thousand times before. Clearing his throat, he began to read.

"I thought the chuckle he gave was of arrogance. Laughing at the idea that a lover could destroy him via mate bonds, as if a person that sharp could be that stupid. A 'I'm just that powerful, even if you are smart enough to figure it out, you like me that much that you won't tell anyone, and even it gets out, it's not like anyone out there can harm me.'

But then, in confides of the church, as the two of us sat before the cross, he gave the most cunning clasp of his hands, like the man who hated gods the most was praying. Upon his face was the most devilish grin, and he had the most curious twinkle in his eye.

It was like he wasn't dismissing the challenge of destruction via love. But rather, he longed for it."

Lorelei leaned closer, almost falling off the edge of his seat.

"This concept has always intrigued me. Though this might be a romanticised telling of the tale since fairy-tales like to often include themes of love and yearning. It's worth noting that mate bonds cannot be entered unless consensually from both parties, he would have to want to be destroyed for this to happen. But still, even if not by those means, I like to think that the first Maiden, and all of those after her, had the power to destroy Cerberus, to kill him. Even though the current actions of Cerberus seem to indicate fear, with the withdrawal of information, the slaughtering of those who protect the Maiden, the person's action I knew seem to indicate a desire for it.

"Winter, I want to tell you another secret," Lorelei said lowly. "But even though it is only a rumour, if I share it with you, you can tell no one, especially not Tamer. Even talking about these kind of manners can get a person executed by gods."

Winter's heart began to beat hard and fast. It was as if her entire reason for living and dying were to be revealed right here and now, even though she knew it couldn't be disputed as solid fact.

Her hands were clamming.

"Okay," she whispered.

Lorelei shut his eyes. He bit his lip, as if having difficulty talking about it himself.

"It isn't an uncommon idea that Cerberus isn't really the king of Lupine. Artemis is their goddess, the goddess of the moon, wolves, and hunting. The only one they should be worshipping is her. And yet, in modern day, the idea of Cerberus being treated like a god is becoming more and more commonplace. But the question is this: if the Lupine god is Artemis, then how is that this king is treated like a god? Why was a king appointed when Artemis is the true queen?"

Lorelei took a deep breath. She could hear the nervous shake in his voice; it had transpired to her own body.

"Winter, I cannot tell you who told me this, nor can you tell anyone else. You must promise me," he said.

"Lorelei, I promise." Winter said quickly. She looked him dead in the eye, a fear determination radiating from her own. You could cut the tension with a knife, but she could feel a sense of anticipation riding between the two of them. She wanted to know this more than anything in her life.

"The truth is Winter, is that the Lupine cannot survive without a God. As such, Cerberus has become their god."

"But why would such a thing happen in the first place?" she demanded. "What about Artemis?"

Lorelei stood, edging close to her, as if fearful of even saying it aloud, whispering, "Artemis is dead, Winter. And she has been for a very, very long time - somehow, an immortal being was killed. Some say that the Maiden are her incarnate and, within them are only beings who hold the key to destroying Cerberus."

Winter's mouth fell open.
She recalled that when she touched the white rose, the image of a woman with hair woven with the night sky curled up within the moon itself.

A figure who's image perfectly fit the idea of a moon Goddess.