AN: Okay, wow. Your response to this fic has been amazing. As you can see, the day of updating has been changed. Honestly, it's just because I have more time on Sundays, so updating is easier than during the week. Now, without further ado:

Two.

Of the three, the woman was clearly the one most likely to go for her throat. It was with that thought in mind that Caroline subtly moved herself and the Healer, so that the dark haired woman would have to go through Sage to get to her Psy captor.

"Easy, Love," said the middle man, the Alpha once more. Caroline fought back a shiver. His was the accented voice that had set her so on guard. "We don't want to hurt you."

"RiverForest hates Psy," Caroline replied flatly. "Nineteen years ago your pack was attacked and decimated by a Psy group that was never found and never punished. The pack swore that they would kill any and all Psy that entered their land. As of my most recent data, exactly twenty-five Psy bodies have never been found, and the last time their presence was sensed on the 'Net was in this area."

Cold facts recited as though from a textbook, which they practically were. As Caroline had told Sage, she had come into this territory well prepared, and that included with knowledge. She knew the pack's history nearly as well as her own.

"Then I guess you're stupid," the dark haired woman growled. "If you knew all that and came anyway."

"My E was last sensed in this area" – Bonnie was in this territory. Somewhere, Caroline knew it, with the certainty that she knew her hair was blonde, and that she could kill the woman she still held still with a scalpel – "I made the decision to enter and find her. I have no interest in involving myself with your pack. Let me leave, and no one will get hurt."

"Easy, Kat," the dark haired man on the other side of the Alpha murmured. Caroline knew him too; Lorenzo, the Alpha's second in command Lieutenant. He looked at Caroline, and though he smiled, there was an icy glaze in his eyes. "Put down the scalpel and we can discuss this, Gorgeous."

"My calculations put my chances of survival at approximately six point seven percent if I release Sage," Caroline replied after a quick moment of thought. "It increases to twenty point four if I'm willing to use lethal force, but then my chances of leaving the den alive all but disappear. I'll keep my leverage."

"No one is killing anyone," Klaus cut in, his tone broking no argument. "Put down the scalpel, Love."

"I just explained why that won't happen," Caroline replied, furrowing her brow in frustration. She never understood this habit of Changelings, to repeat their wishes as though that would somehow gain them what they wanted. Sienna had fallen into the habit as well since mating Hawke, something Caroline had pointed out to her on many occasions.

You'll understand, someday, had been the redheaded Psy's response.

Caroline doubted it, but it hadn't seemed particularly expedient to argue, particularly not when Sienna had been wearing the dreamy, secretive smile that meant she was thinking of her mate.

"Then I suppose we're at an impasse," Klaus mused, taking a step forward that made Caroline tighten her grip on Sage. Klaus froze, his eyes flashing brighter, a sure sign that his wolf hovered just beneath the skin of his human form. "I cannot let you go."

They didn't need to be. Caroline had been cloaking her presence on the Net, but she could open herself up, call out to Vasic. He could be there in a second, have her out of there in another.

And she would lose her chance to save Bonnie. Elijah had made that very clear, when he had gotten her the supplies she would need, so Aden wouldn't be suspicious.

Once you're there, you're on your own. Aden will not, cannot, approve of this.

Why are you helping me then? Another annoying moment of curiosity, but she'd asked anyway.

You… love her. It is important, I believe. Love.

Elijah hadn't experienced the emotion, Caroline knew. Bonnie was also his E, but it was a bond formed because Elijah trusted Caroline, and knew that Caroline trusted the E with her life. Like her, he hadn't yet reprogrammed his dissonance. Caroline doubted he ever would.

Elijah had always been so distant, even for an Arrow.

But his words still echoed in her brain – and Caroline knew that she couldn't drop her guards and reach out for help. She needed to be here. Needed to save Bonnie.

"I guess we are," Caroline finally said, her words coming out slowly. I cannot let you go he had said, and that seemed an odd choice of words.

As Alpha, he should be able to do whatever he wished.

"She said I wasn't supposed to be executed," Caroline finally said, ducking her chin toward Sage. "I give you my word that I mean your pack no harm. Let me walk; you're the Alpha, you can do that."

"I mean your pack no harm," sneered the dark haired woman. "She says as she holds a scalpel at our Healer's throat."

"Katherine, be silent," Klaus snapped, and he took another step. Caroline's eyes flashed to the metal instruments that had fallen to the floor when she had grabbed Sage, and with a thought, she sent a small pair of scissors hurtling at Klaus to stop his forward movement.

It should have been easy for him to knock them out of the air before they made contact, but instead he let them bury in his shoulder and just continued his forward prowling. The look in his eyes still burned, and it made Caroline's stomach feel odd.

As though there were butterflies fluttering within.

She had seen that look before. In Hawke's gaze, when Sienna laughed – as though he would never grow tired of the sound. She had seen it too, in Judd's eyes, when Caroline asked after Brenna out of politeness, and his response was always good, but she could always tell that his thoughts had gone to his mate because of that look.

And Klaus was aiming it at Caroline.

Caroline didn't feel. She was cut off to emotion, except for those inspired by Bonnie, but after so much time with Changelings and Psy that had broken Silence; she had learned that emotions could be used.

It was a gamble… and Caroline couldn't be sure what she thought was true. If she was wrong, this would probably mean her death. But Klaus continued moving forward, and Caroline didn't wish to kill the Healer.

She released her hold on Sage, and the woman's forward stumbling made Klaus pause in prowling, so he could straighten her. Then he looked back at Caroline, the pleasure of the hunt written on his face.

That expression fell when he saw that she held the scalpel to her own throat. Caroline knew the humanoid body better than anyone, probably even the M-Psy, and she knew that the lightest pressure of the scalpel would mean she bled out. The way the color bled from Klaus' face said he knew the same. It also told her that her gamble was right.

Niklaus, alpha of RiverForest, believed that Caroline Forbes was his mate.

SALVATION

Fear was an insidious bile that tightened his throat and clutched Klaus' heart with ragged claws. His little Psy stood just feet from him, but she might as well be miles away, with the blade held to her throat with a steady hand, no emotion in her eye to let him know if this were just a gamble, or if she would actually use that scalpel to end her own life.

"What the hell?" Katherine demanded incredulously, and she moved toward the Psy. Klaus reached out, stopping her with an arm and snarling at her. She looked at him with wide, surprised eyes.

"Klaus, why are you-" Klaus turned his wild gaze to Enzo who immediately stopped talking to survey him, and then, "oh, bloody hell" – he looked at Psy, who still held the scalpel, her expression cold – "she's your mate?"

Katherine jolted on Klaus' other side, but Klaus ignored both of them to look at the blonde.

"Put it down, Love. You heard Enzo. What you are… I cannot hurt you."

"And will you let me leave?" Klaus remained silent at the question, and the Psy let out the smallest of huffs, so quiet Klaus thought he might have imagined it. "Then I guess we'll negotiate. You let me leave, or I never leave… and you never get a mate."

The words made Klaus jolt. He knew that it wasn't entirely true – Hawke Snow had found a second chance at having a mate, after all. But that was the first time Klaus had ever heard of such a thing occurring, and he wasn't willing to take the chance that he would get the same opportunity.

Not when this mate was a slim, beautiful creature with nerves of steel, holding a scalpel to her own delicate skin.

"I'll send out my people to find your friend," he promised at last. Of course, his people might kill the girl… but surely his mate need never know that?

"Not good enough," she replied simply. "Not when the remains of my people are scattered across your lands as a testament to your hatred. I won't let you kill Bonnie."

Klaus took a step forward and came up short when she adjusted the scalpel, dug it in just deep enough that blood welled and a drop slid down her neck, soaking into the neck of her dark t-shirt.

"Hardcore," Katherine murmured low, and Klaus thought there might be a hint of respect in her voice. Part of him agreed, but the larger part wanted to rage, hated that she was hurt, even by her own hand. His wolf whined and scratched beneath his skin. It wanted to save their little mate, wanted her to stroke them and realize that this Bonnie didn't matter. No, all that mattered was them.

"I'm walking out of here," she said slowly, taking a step forward. "And if you try to stop me, all it takes is a jolt, Klaus. One wrong move, and I'm dead."

She didn't sound at all alarmed by the concept, but then again, Silence meant one wasn't alarmed by much. Her cold expression was a harsh reminder that he was destined to mate with a Psy.

Yet her actions stank of a desperation Psy weren't supposed to feel.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked her. She remained silent, just continued to take slow steps forward. He forced himself to step aside and Enzo did the same, and the Psy carefully turned so she continued to face them as she moved slowly, her gaze never leaving them.

That unwavering attention became her own undoing, because she was so focused on them that when the door opened, admitting Davina and Josh, two of the pack's Adolescents, she was taken by surprise.

It was Davina who acted first, ever quick on her feet. She knocked the scalpel from the Psy's hand. The blonde whirled, and Klaus' hair raised in reaction the psychic powers that she wielded. But when she saw who had attacked her – Davina, young and seventeen, but looking even younger – she froze, and Klaus took the opportunity to wrap his arms around her, pinning her arms to her side.

"Give up, Love," he murmured into her ear. "You gave it a good shot, but you're caught."

"Thinking that I ever needed that scalpel is incredibly stupid," the blonde replied, her voice catching in such a way that Klaus realized she wasn't nearly as emotionless as he had originally thought.

It was a miscalculation on his part, and the warm blood that suddenly spurted over his hands, the look of horror that blossomed over Davina's face, made him let out an enraged shout as his little Psy's body suddenly slumped into his arms.

SALVATION

Bonnie woke slowly. At first, she thought they must still be shut, because everything was so dark.

Then her eyes began to adjust, and she was able to make out faint outlines – bars and cement walls. Fear choked her for a moment, when she reached out for Caroline and found that she couldn't feel the other girl.

That she couldn't feel anything. Not the Psy that were connected to her, not the other E's… she couldn't feel the PsyNet at all.

Panic rose in her throat like bile, and it felt as though she were choking on it. Bonnie had been part of the group that had saved the Net from the virus that had infected it. She wasn't the type to be frightened by high danger scenarios.

But this was completely foreign to her, and panic seemed to overwhelm her.

Light suddenly entered the room as a door opened. Bonnie felt herself recoil as the form of a tall man stepped into the cell with her. She didn't need a psychic connection to know that this man was dangerous to her. Cold disdain seemed to ooze from him, even as he dragged a chair to the middle of the room and took a seat on it.

"Miss Bennett, you're awake. That's wonderful."

"Where am I?" Bonnie asked, and she winced when her voice came out high and panicked. But she wasn't good at hiding her emotion, not like Caroline was.

Bonnie was a Cardinal E, and Silence had always been her greatest enemy. Letting it go had been so simple to her, embracing her emotions had been even simpler. But it also meant that emotion could get the better of her too easily. Bonnie closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, the exercise Ivy Jane and Sascha had taught them, and centered herself once more.

"The boy I was with," she said after a moment, when the man sitting in front of her simply remained silent. "Jamie. Where is he?"

"Dead."

Bonnie jolted at that, and thought of the leopard changeling with his kind eyes and quick smile. She wasn't sure if it would have come to anything in the end, but he had been kind to her, when changelings had been so foreign.

And now he was dead.

"This will be your home for the foreseeable future, Miss Bennett," the man continued, as though he hadn't noticed Bonnie's response to the news of Jamie's fate. Bonnie doubted that was the case however; she had been around Arrows enough to know that the truly dangerous knew how to use their words as well as their abilities. Oh, none of those loyal to Aden would do such a thing to Bonnie or any other E…. but she knew they were capable of it. And this man had hit Bonnie with that news precisely to throw her off.

"Why?" she asked, pushing herself further into the wall. She wanted to seem small and frightened. Caroline had always told her to seem small and frightened.

And then to take in every piece of information she could.

So that's what Bonnie did. She took in as much of the room as she could. It was small and bare, as far as she could see in the dim light the open door offered. Then she looked at the man. His face was cast in shadows, but she thought he might be blonde. And his accent was European – British, maybe?

"You are going to be the hope for a new generation of Silence, Miss Bennett," the man said, his words making panic crawl down Bonnie's spine. "We cannot survive without the Es, it's true… but Silence cannot be allowed to be lost forever. So you will bridge the gap for us, and we'll be restored to what we're meant to be."

Another beat of silence, and Bonnie stared up at him. She knew her fear was probably a stark creature on her face, but she couldn't help it.

To be Silent again, would mean her death.

"Tomorrow, we'll begin your reconditioning."

The man left, and Bonnie was left in darkness, but off from the Net and stuck only with her own terror once more.

SALVATION

"So you just gave the Psy what she needed to get onto our land?"

Klaus held up a hand to prevent Katherine from saying anything further. On the screen they sat in front of, Hawke Snow's, Alpha of the SnowDancer pack, eyes had gone flat. Klaus wasn't surprised by that, not when the woman Katherine had snapped at was his mate.

Sienna was a Psy herself, though her eyes weren't as flat as Klaus' own mate's were. But while she was looking at them, her head tilted at a stubborn angle, there was a shadow in her eyes that said she wasn't entirely sure she had done the right thing, in giving the other Psy what she needed to make her way onto ForestRiver land.

"We can send someone in to retrieve her," said another man, this one with tilted eyes and dark hair. Hawke had introduced him as Aden, the head of the Arrow Squad – a group that was, apparently, like the bogeymen of the Psy.

And his little Psy was one of them.

"And let you into Den Territory?" Katherine shot back. "Not likely."

Klaus agreed, his wolf rubbing against his skin at the thought of this man – an assassin – coming anywhere near the heart of his pack. He wondered if it had been this Arrow Squad, that had been responsible for the attack on ForestRiver all those years ago, the one that had killed so many.

"I would meet you on the edge," said another man, this one Aden's companion. He hadn't been introduced, and Klaus wasn't interested in his name. Instead, he let out a low, dangerous growl that had both the Arrows, and the SnowDancer members looking at him.

"You don't get her," he told the strange man, and he knew that his wolf showed in his eyes. But the stranger had spoken with such surety, as though Klaus' Psy somehow belonged to him. She didn't.

"She's your mate." It was impassionate observation from the dark haired man standing on Hawke's right. Judd Lauren – SnowDancer Lieutenant and Sienna's uncle. Klaus had always thought the other man seemed incredibly cold, and wondered how he'd managed to attract a wolf mate when he still seemed to be stuck in the icy claws of Silence.

Now that Klaus had found his own mate… he thought he might understand it.

"You don't get her," Klaus growled again, and his lack of acknowledgement was as good as admitting that his wolf had already claimed Caroline, though the bond had not yet formed.

It would. They had entered the mating dance when Klaus' gaze first landed on her unconscious form.

Judd's eyes flashed for a moment, and Klaus thought it was the first emotion he had ever seen from the other man.

"She's not… prepared, for something like that," he said, his words coming out with careful precision. "Caroline is not a Changeling. She doesn't understand emotion as you know it."

Caroline. Klaus wished he could say it out loud, but instead he rolled it around inside his mind. Caroline. It fit his little blonde Psy.

"You know her," Enzo observed thoughtfully from his spot at Klaus' left shoulder. "You might even be protective of her."

Aden and his companion's gaze cut towards Judd, and even Hawke shot him a quick, curious look, but it was Sienna who answered.

"If she doesn't find Bonnie, it won't matter that your wolf wants her. She'll fall back into Silence. Caroline doesn't know how to grieve, and she wouldn't see the point when she doesn't have to. She'd freeze the bond out."

"That's not possible," Klaus growled.

"You're not Psy."

It was a deadlock that had him glaring at the redheaded Psy, but she just stared back defiantly. It was clear by the way her uncle squeezed her shoulder and Hawke shifted nearer to her, that Sienna had the support of her pack. It made Klaus huff in frustration, though he hadn't expected anything different.

"I still can't sense her," said the unnamed Psy with a frown. "What did you do to her?"

Klaus's wolf snarled at the insinuation that he would be capable of harming his mate – both man and beast still chafed and hurt over the fact that she had hurt herself, leaving them helpless as she bled. He would still be at her side now, except that Enzo and Katherine had managed to learn that Sienna had given Caroline what she needed to teleport onto their land, and Hawke was demanding that they speak.

"Where is she now?" Judd's voice was like a whip crack that actually made Sienna jump in surprise.

"Judd-" Hawke began, his voice holding warning, but there was something in the other man's eyes that actually made Klaus answer.

"She's recovering in our infirmary," he replied, and then, with shame riding him and the wolf, he admitted, "she purposely hurt herself, when I wouldn't let her leave."

Hawke's blue eyes held pity, but Judd cursed violently, showing emotion that Klaus hadn't thought him capable of.

"Ming made her perfect that trick," the unnamed Psy said, looking at Judd rather than the screen.

"Trick?" Enzo asked, suddenly alert behind Klaus.

"She has a moderate secondary M-Psy gift that's made stronger by her Tk ability," Judd responded, his expression tight. He clearly didn't want to tell them this, but Klaus imagined Hawke had ordered him to be forthcoming during the meeting. "She knows the body – human, Psy or Changeling – better than any doctor I know, and the first lesson she learned was how to make a wound look far worse than it truly was."

Klaus remained still for a second, confused by what Judd meant. When it hit him – Caroline had been faking it – he was on his feet and out of the communications room before Katherine and Enzo had time to move. One of them would give his excuses to Hawke and the others, and if anyone would understand, it was the Alpha with his own Psy mate.

He ran into Sage before he reached the infirmary.

"Where is she?" he demanded of the Healer, pushing past her towards the room where he had left Caroline.

He reached the infirmary, stood gazing into the empty room as Sage stepped up next to him.

"I'm so sorry, Klaus," she said, her voice soft. The hand on his shoulder would have usually been calming, but in this instance, both man and wolf were far too enraged to be calmed.

"Find her," he ordered Katherine in a bark. "Get every able bodied soldier on it if you must, but find my mate!"

AN: There were some requests for a glossary of sorts, for some Psy/Changeling terms, which can be found on my tumblr, lynyrdwrites, and is linked in my profile. If you need any more terms added, don't be afraid to let me know! It also includes a few of the major Psy/Changeling characters you should know.

Let me know what you thought, and see you next week!