AN: And we're back. Shock-horror. Another collaboration between me and Teddy R. Lupin. Merlin I love that kid. Warning, it gets rather dark.

Chapter 1

Remus Lupin stared at the waning moon, his fingers stroking absentmindedly over his infant son's forehead, brushing lightly through the ever-changing colour of his hair. His lips curled upwards into a small smile, leaning down to press his lips to the boy's head. Before Teddy, the aged werewolf had never thought himself good enough for anything - and certainly not good enough to be a father. But the truth was, he was in awe of this little life he held in his arms. His child. Teddy was so innocent, so trusting. No more than a month old, Remus reminded himself, their son relied on he and Nymphadora for everything. Sighing, he laid the child back in his cot, quietly closing the door for the night.

Turning, he met his wife's gaze. He didn't want to leave Teddy alone - he couldn't help it, nothing was safe. They had wards around the house, but wards could always be broken. "We should get to bed," he murmured quietly, offering Dora his hand. And then the next day, they would do it all over again.

Except they didn't. For, when Tonks went to check on their son around dawn, surprised he hadn't woken her crying to be fed, she found the cot empty. She wasn't overly concerned, as she thought that Remus may have picked him up during the night and Teddy was asleep with him.

She headed back to the bedroom to check. Remus didn't have him. She felt the blood drain from her face. Tonks shook her husband awake, cheeks ashen with fear. Where was their baby boy?

Remus had been snoozing peacefully, for once - when he was sharply awoken at the crack of dawn. He gazed at his wife confusedly, for a whole minute, until he realised that both her hair and face had turned to violent shades of grey. And that if nothing else proved to him that something had indeed gone wrong - what was it? Had Harry been sighted, had Harry been killed? He sat up like a shot, eyes wild, borderline feral as amber orbs met grey. "What is it?"

"Teddy," Tonks whispered the name between lips gone numb with terror. Please, dear Merlin let Remus have him. Please. Where was their son!? Why would anyone take a baby? So, her Aunt had issued some threats against her "half-breed shape-shifting spawn" but she hasn't thought. Oh Merlin... She swayed on the spot. The wards! What had happened to the wards?

At his son's name, Remus went ghostly pale. "No," he whispered, his eyes wide, his heartbeat doubling in speed. There were so many people after their family - Voldemort for the Order, Bellatrix for her blood-traitor relatives - but the wards, what had happened, for Teddy to have been stolen right from under their noses? And if they had been just as in danger as their son, why had they been left untouched? He pulled the duvet back and stumbled across the room, wand out as he burst down the hall, reaching Teddy's room in record time. It was just as Nymphadora had said. Cot empty, but otherwise the room appeared untouched. He punched the wall, narrowing his eyes, letting out an almost feral growl. Whoever had taken their son...was going to wish they'd never laid a hand on him. That was when he caught a familiar scent. It was close enough to the full moon that he would recognise the foul stench anywhere...even if it was too faint for his wife to notice. "No!" he shouted, before falling to his knees, his head bowed. "No..."

Tonks followed her husband back down the hallway, hoping against hope that this was a bad dream. She wasn't awake yet. She couldn't be. Her baby boy wasn't missing... he hadn't been snatched away from her, from them... Remus' shout of denial jerked her out of her stupor and she swung around to stare at him. What had he... sensed? "Who?" she choked out, knowing, without knowing how she did, that he had immediately detected who had taken their son.

Remus clenched a fist, his eyebrows narrowing in anger. He was so angry, he couldn't - no, that was it. He had stopped making sense of anything from the moment he'd caught that wretched scent on Teddy's cot. The same smell as on that night, oh so long ago...when his life changed forever. The man that wasn't a man - the one that transformed before him, biting into his shoulder and changing him into someone that would be feared and not understood. Turned him into a werewolf. And now, that was the same fate that awaited his son. As he stood, he gritted his teeth, his normally warm amber eyes cold and unforgiving. "Greyback, that bastard," he growled out. This time, he was coming for blood.

She would never tell him this ever, but in those few seconds before he revealed the name of their son's abductor, her husband's cold gaze unnerved her. It was when that bastard's name, the one that had caused her husband so much pain and grief over the years. And her own anger rose to match and possibly surpass his, after all, it had been she who had carried the babe under her heart for those long, long months, through fear, through betrayal, through pain. She who had cradled him in her arms at mere minutes old and silently promised to never let anything happen to him... It was Tonks who had not awoken when he was stolen... She who had not been quick enough... She hadn't even been able to identify whom had taken her baby. "I will make him pay," she whispered, voice low with evil intent. After all, she was half a Black. And nobody did insane, evil protectiveness (twisted protectiveness sometimes sure but protectiveness non-the-less) better than a Black. Greyback was going to regret touching a hair on her baby's head when she was done with him.

He approached his grief-stricken wife, the coldness in his eyes softening only slightly as he met her gaze. He didn't want to scare her. But this was the man - no, this was the monster - who had stolen his entire world out from under him and thrust him once again into the darkness that surely he deserved for something he'd done in his long life. First he'd been bitten, to pay for his father's sins. And then he was left to watch as his friends destroyed each other from the inside out, Sirius wrongly imprisoned and Peter living peacefully while the truest man suffered day after day. And Remus, well - he had dragged himself to an abandoned cottage on the outskirts of Yorkshire and remained there until Albus Dumbledore had dragged his sorry arse out of his pathetic life and given him a chance. By the end of that year, his luck had run out, and he was forced to retreat once again. But this time, he had a chance for happiness, he had been cocky, and he had been so sure that no one could take this away from him. He should have known better, he should've smelled it. But for once he had ignored his instincts, and now, his infant son was paying the price. And Remus swore to himself right then that no matter what his fate may be, Teddy would not carry his curse. He would not be responsible for ruining a child's life - he would not be. The boy would grow to be ashamed of him, and Remus would sink further into his guilt - he hadn't been clever enough, fast enough, or brave enough to prevent his son from suffering the fate of the full moon. "No, love," he murmured to his wife, pressing his lips to her forehead as he drew his wand. "No. Fenrir Greyback has tormented me since I was a child. It is I who will make him pay."

Tonks bared her teeth in a dark, vicious grin. "Finder's keeper's love." If he was very lucky, she might save him a piece. The world would learn, anyone that touched her son was going to be torn to shreds. Her mother had been a Black for Merlin's sake. It was time for the other side to determine just how "wishy-washy" these particular Order members were. She would give them hell and enjoy it. They were about to learn just how much of grievous mistake they had made.

At that, Remus was hesitant. The last thing he wanted was for his wife to bear his curse just as surely as his son would. But at least he knew that the wards around their home had been broken, somehow, and that if anything, she would be much safer with him, hunting for the monster who had ripped apart their family, rather than staying here and being the hunted. His lips quirked into a wry smile as he offered her his hand, a symbol that they were indeed in this together. That he'd left her once - he'd abandoned her and their son once, and he had absolutely no intention of doing it again. He had almost given up everything that meant anything to him, and his days of self-sabotaging were over. He didn't know where Greyback would have gone, he didn't know if his son would survive the night. But he wasn't going to wait, and he certainly wasn't going to stop for breath until their child was safely in his arms. "Come on then," he growled. "I'm not afraid to make him suffer. I warned him that one day he would go too far. That day is today, Dora."

Slim fingers twined around Remus' and she squeezed his hand in acknowledgement. "Good. Suffering. I like suffering." Pain. She wanted the monster that had taken her son to feel some fraction of the pain he had caused them both. She wanted it to last and she wanted it to be lingering. Hmmm, lingering. Blood. Plenty of blood and screaming. Greyback was going to regret taking Teddy with every fibre in his body and long for death before she was through with him. He was going to beg for her to kill him. If she was feeling merciful (a highly unlikely scenario) she might kill him quickly. She was leaning more towards slow, lingering, painful bloody death though. Maybe she could see how long she could keep him on the brink of dying... A slow, evil smirk spread across her face and in that moment it was startlingly easy to see the family resemblance between her and her "dear Auntie Bella".

Remus would never admit this to his wife, of course, but the moment he caught a glance of the evil smirk on her face, shaded by the darkness of Teddy's bedroom, he thought she bore a striking resemblance to the Aunt she so hated, the Aunt who had sworn to kill her before this war was over. The Aunt who had killed his last, best friend. He squeezed her hand in return and retreated from the room, heading down the hallway and down the stairs, out the door. The wards had long since been broken, and while he had half a mind to check on Andromeda, he sensed that the danger had passed and Greyback had no quarrel with the Blacks. He had come for Remus, he had come for Teddy. He had come for the Lupins - at their last meeting, the feral wolf had warned him that he was going to regret choosing 'the wrong side.' And that if he had any say in the matter, Remus would have died at his hands long ago to spare him this insolence. Now he was sure that Greyback's mode of getting back at him was very much the same as it had been all those years ago...biting the small child of the man who had wronged him. Except Greyback had messed with the wrong family. They may have morals, but code could be broken, and there was not a single thing Remus wouldn't do to have his infant son back in his arms. He wanted to make the wolf pay, he wanted the monster destroyed. And he would not leave until Greyback's bloodied corpse lay across the rocks of whatever cave he'd found shelter in this time. "Where do you want to start?" he asked Nymphadora, eyes searching her revenge-driven face. But before she could answer, he closed his eyes over and opened the rest of his senses. He followed the scent of rotten meat and a thousand maimed corpses. He couldn't have gotten far. Not yet.

Instead of attempting to answer her husband's question, Tonks waited as he closed his eyes and stilled and sniffed. What could he smell, she wondered. Could he follow the murderous, feral being that had taken their baby? A shiver of emotion whispered through her and she steeled her heart. She could break down when she had their baby boy back. The sooner she was holding that small, soft body in her arms the better. Which way did they need to go?