I'm here to make good on my promise!

Seiya, and Rikku sorry to disappoint but you know that both Derek and Chloe are too responsibly-minded to get into in big-time drunken shenanagins! Don't you worry though, I make it up to you in this chapter ~.^

D&C4E, Silver Bird, Wolf Lover, and Mrs. Fic.- Glad I could entertain you guys! I've written other fanfics with other characters but I have to say that Derek and Chloe are my favorites to write, there's just so much comedic opportunity with him being all moody and growly and her being impish and sunny.

Amanda- My sweetheart and I are vegetarians too, he does it for some zen-y respecting life thing and I do it just because I end up cooking veggie for him anyway and it's just more convenient. I will guiltily admit to fantasizing about churrascaria's (basically Brazilian meat bars) every now and then. The biggest draw-back I've found is ordering in restaurants, there's usually only one-if any-veg options and even then it's always always always pasta and I love food as much as I love Kelley Armstrong (I know *gasp*).

Suzi- I seriously doubt she coudl bring bacon back to life but I think even just the teeny vague possibility that it might happen would be enough for her to go veggie forever.

Black Heart- Thanks for keeping me updated on the POV stuff! I definitely try to write Derek as a drier more focused character.


"Let's walk around the lake." Chloe nudged me out of my sprawl on the dock with the toe of her sandal.

I stretched and looked around, dad was fishing off the end of the dock, Tori was in a hammock reading and Simon was working in his sketchbook in one of the camp chairs. Everyone was happily being relaxed and low-energy. It was a perfect lazy afternoon, sunny and hot without a cloud in the sky.

"Come on! I want to explore the lake." This time the nudge was more like a kick and I squinted at her.

"Can't you see how comfortable I am?" I gave her my best kicked-puppy look, which wasn't hard since I was vaguely related to canines and she was kicking me. "Sit down, relax, enjoy the day."

"NOW." She glared at me.

I groaned and pushed to my feet. "We should take a water bo-" I stopped as she handed me a full bottle. "And you should bring-" She held up her sun hat and before I even started to say anything else showed me an energy bar and bag of beef jerky she put them into a shoulder bag and for good measure showed me the small tube of sunscreen she'd packed.

"Can we go now?" She put on the hat and looked so cute with it and her sun dress that I forgave her for making me get up.

I took her hand. "Yeah, we can go."

We started along the quasi-beach, Chloe furthest from the water in her sandals while I walked at the water's edge in my bare feet. Every now and then she would stop to look at a rock or a plant and I'd get a chance to look around the woods along the lake's edge.

I shaded my eyes and looked across the water to the sheer drop-off on the other side. Maybe I'd get Simon to go cliff-jumping with me, naturally he'd go from the lower outcropping but that higher one would be perfect for my more durable build.

Chloe looked up from where she had been luring minnows to the shallows with her fingertips, the smile on her face fading when she followed my gaze.

"Oh no. Absolutely not." She shot to her feet.

"Absolutely not what?" I replied absent-mindedly as I got a rough idea of how high the cliff was based on the distance from us and the angle of its slant into the water. I'd say sixty feet with a base that was ten to fifteen feet further into the water than the top. A manageable jump if you were a werewolf. The real trick would be the landing. Two boulders stuck out of the water on either side of the cliff, making the sweet spot less than ten feet wide. I smiled.

"Derek Souza if you even think about jumping off that cliff I will never make you oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies again!"

I glanced down at her, smile still lingering. "You've never made cookies." And with Chloe's idea of home cooking being delivery... that was probably for the best.

"Well then you don't know what you're missing do you?"

"Other than charcoal-poisoning I suppose I don't."

"Charcoal is used as an antidote for poison Bill Nye."

That's my girl. "But in large quantities it absorbs nutrients, leaving the body deficient."

She glared at me. "You haven't even seen me cook before!"

"And I suspect there is a reason for that."

She stomped off, I swallowed a chuckle and shot another calculating look at the cliffs. Well she forbade me from jumping… but not from diving. I went back to exploring before she caught me looking and forbade even that.

"Here!" Chloe exclaimed after another fifteen minutes of walking

I looked up from where I'd been scouting a deer trail. She had found a big flat rock that was just a short wade into the shallows and was already taking off her sandals. She was in the water by the time I'd reached the beach, holding her skirt to keep it dry with one hand and keeping her hat from flying off with the other. I followed as quietly as I could, that was the trouble with water, I could walk on pretty much anything else without making any sound but water had a mind of its own.

I heard a gasp and saw a wave hit Chloe mid-thigh, high enough to get her dress wet. Speaking of a mind of it's own...

She clambered up on the boulder before another wave hit her and shook out her skirt. I stepped up behind her, glad to be back on dry quietish ground.

"Gee it sure would be nice if I had a boyfriend who was like, oh I don't know, super tall and could have carried me." She turned to glare at me and yelped. "Jeez! Wasn't Simon going to get you a bell or something?"

I rolled my eyes and resumed the sprawl that had been so rudely interrupted on the sun-warmed rock. After a full minute of glowering Chloe lay down on her stomach beside me.

She made it a whole thirty seconds without breaking the comfortable silence. "Hey Derek?"

I raised my eyebrows so she'd know I was listening.

"What are you going to do after graduation?" Her voice was hesitant.

I looked up at the sky, mentally going over the academic timeline I had laid out for myself. I could have graduated high school long before but I wanted to accumulate as many college credits as I could so I'd only have to take classes relating directly to my major in undergrad and get into a PhD program as early as I could. I liked school but so many more interesting avenues of study were available with a PhD. Undergrad I didn't really care about, it was the doctoral programs that I wanted to go to a good school for.

"Not sure." I mumbled, keeping my eyes averted.

She leaned over me until I had to look at her or roll over to avoid it. I looked at her grayscale eyes; they had a depth to them that was completely unique to her. I saw my own eyes reflected there, green flecks, with enough color for both of us.

"Liar." She murmured.

I wanted to tell her about how hard it was for me, that for the first time in my life I was conflicted about what I wanted to do. The human in me, logical, objective, comfortable with emotionally distancing myself from potential complications was at war with the wolf in me, an animal, pure instinct and emotion.

The wolf knew exactly what it wanted. I had a mate, a real true mate and even without the physical bond I knew—from research and from my gut feeling—that I would never let Chloe go and pretending that what I had with her wasn't already permanent was just a lie to soothe my human half.

As I processed this I watched the reflection of my eyes shift, green iris's dominating the whole cornea with the exception of the black pupil and a hint of black in the corners. Wolf eyes in a human face.

I looked away.

Chloe turned my face back to hers and, looking into my altered eyes, kissed me. The wolf won and I pulled her on top of me, kissing her back fiercely, claiming every inch of her as mine.

Buried deep in her scent of strawberries, sunshine, fresh green plants and rich dark earth was my scent, which would always be a part of her. Even if I was gone, run away or dead, it would be there her whole life. The wolf in the field of strawberries.

I broke away abruptly, jerking my arm back from where I had been trapping her to my body and sliding my other hand out of her hair where I had been pressing her possessively into the kiss. I stared up at her, terrified of how much I'd given into the wolf's demands, and flipped us over, setting her down gently and getting myself out of arms reach.

"W-What's wrong?"

The look of confusion on Chloe's face barely slacked what I felt looking at her whole body tremble as she tried to catch her breath, at her dilated eyes and swollen lips. I closed my own eyes and took a deep shuddering breath.

"Derek?" She hesitantly touched my arm and I swallowed, pushing back the desires and the instincts until I felt the wolf reluctantly recede.

As soon as I was sure I was in control again I caught her hand and laced my fingers with hers.

"Derek talk to me, what's going on?" She held tightly to my hand and I could feel her pulse racing. "Please. What aren't you telling me?"

I looked at her and tried to speak but my throat constricted as if it wasn't made for speech.

"When's the last time you changed?" She asked suddenly.

I swallowed and tried again. "A while back."

"How long is 'a while'?" Her eyes narrowed. "You have to change AT LEAST every week. But Elena said twice a week is better."

I thought back. "The night before Tori's birthday party."

"Tor-… Derek that was two weeks ago. No freaking wonder you've been flipping out on me!"

"I have not been-"

"Oh yes you have! Lately whenever we start anything like this," She gestured vaguely between the two of us and where we'd been lying moments before but still blushed. "You freak out!"

I looked away. When she said it like that it made me feel like I was being angsty and dramatic and I scowled.

"Either you tell me what's going on in that overlarge brain of yours or… or next time I go swimming with Simon I'm going topless!"

"You wouldn't." I growled, glaring at her.

"So help me I will!"

I looked at her defiant expression, arms crossed and eyes narrowed and while I didn't believe she'd go swimming topless, I knew she would do something equally drastic if I didn't tell her.

"I… it's getting more and more difficult to stay in control." I said slowly, curling and uncurling my free hand into a fist. "The… wolf… part of me doesn't want to stop."

Her arms dropped and her expression turned to something else, something more like pain. "So… The human part of you wants to stop." She bit her lip. "I see."

"No! Damnit!" I slammed my fist into the rock in frustration and she yelped, immediately checking to see if I'd broken it. I pulled away from her, dramatic effect is fairly nullified when followed by first aid. "No part of me wants to stop!"

She gave a long-suffering sigh. "Derek. Have you considered that maybe you're trying to blame 'the wolf' for a little much? If you really want to see everything as split then fine, let's look at this from both angles. From a human perspective I am your girlfriend and we are teenagers and you are a guy, all of which means messing around is totally kosher. From a wolf's perspective I am your super-charged soul bound mate! Which since it usually implies that being mated is for life and beyond I am pretty damn sure that sometime in the next, oh say, ninety years you're going to have to get over this… this idea that touching me is bad! Between the two of them I'd say at this point the wolf is definitely the more romantic perspective!"

I stared at her. "The whole damn point is that we ARE teenagers. Teenagers don't have life-mates, they have flings and sweethearts that don't last through college. They do not commit themselves to another person forever."

"Well they sure as hell don't turn into wolves or raise the dead either!" She grabbed my shoulders, eyes emphatic. "How many times have you risked your life for me?"

I paused, surprised at the question. "I don't know."

"At least five but I can guarantee more." She scooted closer to me so she was kneeling in between my knees and moved her hands to my face. "What do you think I would give to save you?"

I saw the answer, literally and every day. She had snuck into the Edison Group's compound because she didn't want me going in without her. I was killed. I remembered her asking me to get up and trying to, but not being in my body any more. I remembered being separate from everything but unable to leave her behind and her saying to the man who killed me,

"You took him from me. Now you will bring him back."

And then the pain as she used her power to take his soul from him and use it to bring me back to life, not as a zombie, but like I'd never died at all. I'd snapped back into my body and into consciousness as her pendant broke and sent pieces of aquamarine piercing through her shoulder and chest like shrapnel but the damage to my heart still kept me paralyzed. I'd watched, screaming in my mind for her to stop as she started to fall, pushing the last of that energy into healing the rupture that had killed me.

I'd been able to move then, and ripped her away from where she held Davidoff's already cooling body. Dad and Simon had come then, dad took one look at Chloe and started shouting for help, a paramedic, an ambulance, anything. I had just tried to keep Chloe breathing until help got there.

Her heart stopped as we got to the hospital, she said my name and then died. I'd been there when they had the defibrillator, when they thought they couldn't bring her back and dad had said I owed my life to her. I told him I didn't want to live if the price for my life was Chloe's, and I hadn't. I don't think I really started breathing again until I felt her heart start.

The next few days were hell. She had so many injuries that it seemed like she was always in surgery or barely hanging on. Her father had been able to afford a private room with a bathroom which I was grateful for because I never left her. I didn't eat, I didn't sleep. Only when her vitals had stabilized enough that she wasn't critical I went to the cafeteria, knowing she was in a coma, not knowing if she would ever wake up.

I left Simon to watch her and I'd made it through the cafeteria doors when I felt it; she was awake. I felt it run through me like a shock, freezing me in place for about a millisecond before I turned and ran. Dad heard Simon talking, then saw me and preemptively started calming down the nurse who leapt to her feet as I slammed the door open.

And the first thing she had said; "You're alive… Thank God."

I'd promised the wolf then that I would always be there for her, even if that meant admitting to myself that I would commit my whole life to her at seventeen, and there was nothing I could do-or wanted to do-to change that.

I came back to the present where Chloe was watching me patiently, waiting for me to stop being an ass. I reached up and pulled down the strap on her sundress, bearing her shoulder and the dozens of narrow scars on it. I pulled the strap lower, folding down the top few inches of the dress so I could see everywhere that the jewel had stabbed through her body.

I wrapped one arm around her waist and let the other hand trace the marks she would always have from saving my life. I pressed my lips to her bare shoulder and hugged her.

"I'm sorry." I said against her skin.

She laced her fingers in my hair and I felt her smile. "For what?"

"For being an idiot."

"You're forgiven." She pulled my hair back until she could reach my mouth and kissed me. "Now let's head back and get some dinner."

I slipped my fingers under the strap of her dress and felt a sense of purely male satisfaction in watching her blush as I slid it back into place. "I don't think we'll be missed for another few minutes."

She smiled brilliantly at that, her nose crinkling the way it did when she was being impish. "No, probably not."

We lay back down and she put her head on my chest, ear over my heart while I pressed my palm against her back, feeling her heartbeat and reassuring myself that she was alive and safe.