Danny is back in England! The adventure continues as Danny and Sebastian continue to grow together and Danny fights to protect her family from being pulled apart - either from within, or from without.

This is the FOURTH arc in the Danny Hyde series. If you haven't read the first three arcs (Danny Hyde: One Reap - has arc 1 and 2 combined- & Three Reaps Full is arc 3), I suggest you go and read those as part of the epic (I MEAN EPIC) back story before this arc. I guess you can start here... but would you really start a book a third of the way in?

As always, like, comment, enjoy, and wait in sweet, sweet anticipation.

xxTL

Chapter 1: Sebastian POV

I found myself wanting to twirl the tresses of Danny's hair as she and the young Master came back from America. I settled the warmer jacket around her shoulders and she smiled, a radiant and beautiful smile. The two months she was in America the Master and I did a tour of England, cleaning out the dens we had once cleaned, and I was able to cleanse the building darkness that I had suppressed as I delightfully took in the light that Danny made me bask in.

"And so we have apples," the young Master was saying. I looked over at him and he was looking at Danny as if she was a goddess of his dreams.

I looked back at Danny and saw the sparks in her eyes as she looked down at him. Oh, my, we don't have time for all this to go out slowly, my Master. That I am sure of. I directed the young Master into the automobile and gently told him that although Danny was his Tutor and his guardian whilst in America, they were home, and in England the Tutor was like me, a servant of his father's. The pout on his lips softened as we rode from the docks, and soon he was asleep. I reached out and laced my fingers with Danny.

"How many did you Feed on?"

She looked at me with a start. "Sebastian," she hissed and glanced back, making sure that the young Master was not awake. I smiled; she knew he wasn't. She looked out the window and sighed. "Six."

I tightened my hand around hers and drew her closer. That was more than we had since we came back mid-summer for her three months at the Manor. "You can't shake it can you?"

She shook her head and I smelled the tears. I brought her fingers up to my lips and kissed them gently, letting her lean more into me as we drove on. "The Earl is going to have a fit," she whispered. "He… he just… smells so good."

I sighed and drove on. I remembered those days when the smell of a Soul would pull me to do anything - a number of horrible things - to a body to dig out the taste of that Soul. I looked at her hand and felt it growing hotter, burning with the need to Fed, to Seal, to make a Contract. By the way Danny was breathing and looking at the young Master I figured we may be getting to London's darker sides sooner than I had hoped.

"Sebastian, I am scared of what this will do to him… to the relationship that we have between tutor and student," she glanced back at the still sleeping young Master. "He acted out when I was sent away last year." She snorted, "Just last year. And then he actively sought me to bring me back. And now… I am back and with the promise that… that Soul will be mine."

"As long as he understands," I added, repeating the one ultimate condition to the taking and Sealing of his Soul as hers. I sighed and pulled her closer to me, laying a hard kiss into ther temple as I moved the car through town, turning into the outskirts of London and heading north. "And how has his lessons gone?"

"How do you teach a child about Demons and Contracts?"

I made a small noise of understanding and she sighed. "For the Master and I… we had an adjustment period after I made the Contract. It wasn't the best of circumstances when I made it," I said after a moment. "He had been kidnapped, and when I met him, around the same age as the young Master himself, he had been abused, terribly abused, and almost dead. His weakest cry in that dark time is what brought me. I had to fight off others who were also interested," I smiled as I recalled the meeting. "Even powerful Demons make enemies. And I told him plainly I would give him his wish - to find those who hurt him, who kidnapped him, who had killed his parents, shattering his world and give him the opportunity to exact sweet revenge - in exchange for something in return. The more visible the Mark, the more powerful the Bond."

"And you took his right eye."

I smiled again and nodded, the delicious feeling of the blood of a child and the singing of a wounded, broken, Soul once more seemed to reach out as I recalled it. "Yes," I hissed, licking my lips. "I took something that I thought I could use. A child was asking such simple things, and he would not need the world to see our Bond for very long. Even as a small child the Master had power rolling off him. Delicious sureness in that request. I took it under a very limited understanding of the Master's part. And I suppose mine as well." Danny shifted and rested her head on my shoulder, looking up at me. "I thought I would be able to have his Soul within a few weeks, a month at most. And now, so many, many years have passed and we get whiffs of group doing a few similar things to children as they did to the Master. Even destroyed one of the places and men who had been key to the original kidnapping. But that was only one of the requests, one of the pieces of a larger puzzle."

"It sounds as if the Earl was smart enough at the time to know how to trap a Demon into serving him."

I chuckled and turned to kiss her forehead. "The Phantomhives are smart and resourceful. They have dealt with Demons and Angels before. As the Queen's and King's chosen family to carry on the legacy of Watchdogs, I am not the first to walk beside a Phantomhive. That I learned afterwards as well. But the young Master… he is devoted to you. Perhaps history and religious lessons are to be introduced?"

Danny sighed and I soon heard her steady breathing as she too slipped into sleep. Demons didn't sleep. There was no need. But for a Born Demon? I smiled and smoothly navigated the outer areas of London. My beloved was a unique Demon, so unique even the Undertaker had not many answers when I went to him over the months Danny and the young Master were gone. He had been cautious to tell me most Born Demons had been hunted and destroyed because their assistant Demon, the one who had caused them to become Demons in the first place, usually abandoned them. There would be no abandoning of my exquisite Demon.

It was well after midnight when we arrived back at the Manor and I woke the young Master and delivered him to the waiting arms of the Mistress. He yawned and thanked me, walked sleepily up the stairs, and clung to his mother's hand. I sighed and understood the choice that Danny was facing acutely. She had to make a Contract, or she would face something - what that something was, wasn't clear. But her hand burned, her skin, when I saw her in America five months previous, had looked raw and ready to fester. I walked back to the automobile and saw Danny still asleep. She would have to work on getting the young Master to understand what she was now that he accepted who she was. I cursed the Master for his stipulation even so I understood his desire to delay the Contract. Seeing ones son offered up to a hungry Demon must be a very difficult thing to watch. I stroked Danny's face as I finished parking the automobile. Watching my Demon suffer was also difficult. I carried her into the house, trying not to imagine the horrors she had to deal with as her craving for the young Master's Soul had made her seek out and Feed more than we normally did. I laid her down on the bed, so grateful to have her home, where we could face this together.

"Tomorrow, my love, I will ask you formally to start to become mine." I held her close and nuzzled her neck, trying to breath in every part of her warm lilac scent. "We will face the young Master and the Master together."