Daniel

We had fallen asleep quickly after our love-making session. I could feel her joy radiating through the bond and Garen's. The three-way connection surprised us both, but I'm glad it happened. They were both part of me, part of my life now and forever. I couldn't bear the thought of being without either of them.

I was jolted awake by a sharp pain in my chest. I sat up looking for the source when Garen whispered, "She's having a nightmare." My eyes fell on her small form, twitching under the sheets, her brow creasing in her dreams. She cried out a few times as he held her, trying to ease her fears, but in her sleep, we couldn't keep them at bay forever. Her fingers tightened around my arm, nails digging in, making me wince. "Mama," she muttered and whimpered. "Don't...help, please..." I felt my blood boiling as I realized what she was reliving in her dreams.

I pressed a kiss to her forehead and sucked in a hard breath when I found myself inside her nightmare. I looked around, my eyes meeting Garen's confused ones - how did this even happen? Her screams immediately drew our full attention. Despite being much younger, I immediately recognized her. Tears caused rivulets down her dirt-smeared cheeks as she desperately shook a woman's lifeless body. The woman, who I assumed was her mother, looked just like the Serenity I knew now, but her eyes were vacant, staring off at nothing. Snarling sounds came closer as a male voice yelled out. "Ren, you have to run, baby." He looked at her with such love as he drew the savage vampires away from her, but the smell of her mother's blood would pull them back eventually.

"Papa," she whispered, a small fist at her lips as she began to stumble and then sprint into the darkness.

"Keep her safe," the man said, eyes locking on us. Was he talking to us? I mean, we weren't even here. "She's more than you know. Keep her safe - both of you. Don't let them ruin her," he yelled at us, then cried out as one of the creatures sank its fangs into his shoulder.

My eyes watered as I stumbled backward, "I will, I promise, we will." I felt myself falling when my eyes opened and we found ourselves back on the bed with her still asleep between us.

"What was that?" he muttered, then swore, "How the fuck?" I looked down to see his muddy feet as he pulled back the blankets, then quickly discovered my own. We immediately began to look over Serenity to see if she too had any indicators of the dream, but found none.

"What did he mean - her father?" Garen asked. "Do you think it has anything to do with what her law firm was looking for?"

"Possibly, or the voice she heard," I replied. "I think we're both out of our depths here, brother." He nodded in agreement as we stared down at the small figure between us. "Who are you?" I whispered to myself.

Serenity never mentioned a nightmare the next morning so Garen and I decided to keep it to ourselves. We both agreed that with the way the meeting at Caffrey & Dahl had ended, this was one more stress she simply didn't need. She and Susan had gone with Matt and a small battalion of guards for a spa treatment while we looked over the family tree Matt had found from our receptionist along with other documents our crew had managed to pull from their servers.

Garen pinched the bridge of his nose, "This doesn't make sense, Daniel. First your mom and Drake, now this mysterious voice and that dream. None of it adds up. Humans just don't experience this kind of stuff."

"I know, but there's no way we both imagined it - at the same damn time!"

"Wait, what if we did, or at least something like that." He suggested.

"Are you telling me it was a hallucination?"

He held up his hands, "Hear me out. What if it was a spell or a false dream? What if the attack wasn't real in the first place? After seeing all of this, it seems like Serenity was selected based on her past trauma with vampires, yet I see no mention of therapy, a group home - nothing. She says she was taken in by a neighbor, but there isn't a name or address to support that. What if Serenity doesn't even know what happened?"

"Then why was her mom dead in the nightmare and her father telling us to keep her safe? Was that him or not?" I growled, my hand slamming down on my desk. "How the hell do we protect her when we can't even figure out what is or isn't real?"

"Do you remember the name of the people she said raised her?" he asked making me pause.

"I...it was...well, fuck, I can't remember if she ever did tell me," I muttered. We straightened when we heard the front door slam, the girls' voices filling the air. "Hello beautiful," I greeted her with a quick kiss. "How was the spa?"

"Heavenly," she said with an exaggerated moan. "I swear that masseuse has magical fingers. Every part of me feels relaxed."

"Should we be jealous?" I teased as she rolled her eyes. She leaned into my embrace and sighed.

"So what has you two in such deep thought?" Serenity looked at the papers we had spread out on the table. "Hey, what's this?" She picked p the ancestry tree we had been looking at. "Woah, where did you find all of this? Oh, that's not right," tapping the name above her mother, "Grandma was gone before I was born. I never met her."

"Are you sure?" Garen asked, looking at the information. "Matt found these at your old firm. We were talking about how odd some of the information was. Hey, maybe the people who took you in could help us verify the dates. What were their names?" He gave me a side glance as we waited for her response.

Serenity opened her mouth to answer, then frowned. She shook her head, "That doesn't make sense." I saw her expression fall as she looked up at us, "I can't remember their names, but that's crazy, right?"

Matt and Susan sat down with us as I took her hands, "Okay, let's just take it slow. How about we work our way backward, okay?" She nodded. "How long did you work for Caffrey & Dahl?"

"I'd been there just over a year when Mr. Krinnik put me in for the exchange program. I was surprised because everyone said you had to be a five-year employee to even apply."

Garen made notes as I asked her more questions. "Where did you go to college?"

"Durham University for my finance letters," she said. I continued asking questions tracing her life back, but when we got to high school her memory seemed to become confused. "Well, I must have finished high school if I attended uni, right?"

Author's Notes:  Hmm...just who is Serenity?