Nothing to say except... NEW UPDATE! Enjoy and review my lovely lovelies :)

Disclaimer: I do not own The Vampire Diaries, Beauty and the Beast, the characters, or their likenesses. Just borrowing for funsies.

Damon made his way down the hall to his study, absently twirling a glossy black feather between his fingers. The study was off limits to all but those in his trusted circle. The punishment for trespassing was death and it had been enforced on more than one occasion. It was his sanctuary where he stored all of the little treasures he had gathered over the years and little pieces of his hidden life decorated the room: a Croix de guerre nestled in a blue velvet box, a battered copy of The Brothers Karamazov with a scratchy Cyrillic inscription on the front paper "Piridayte Friedrich ot minya privet. –F.D."**, a hand-colorized photograph of him and Mata Hari in her London hotel room.

He swiped a blood bag from the small refrigerator under his desk and emptied it into a crystal tumbler. Dream manipulation had gotten easier as he got older, but it was still taxing, especially when he had to break some stupid human boy's neck. He wondered if Elena had such a boy waiting for her back in town. The mere thought set the hairs on his neck bristling and his fist contracted around the empty blood bag in his hand. There was something about that girl that unsettled him and he chuckled at the absurdity of the notion: an urbane, worldly man with over three centuries of experience tied in knots over a small-town teenage girl who probably hadn't set foot outside of Virginia.

He reclined further back into his leather chair and took a long pull of blood from his glass. He stared blankly into the flames that were ablaze in the fireplace and wondered what to do with the girl at the other end of the hall. He should have wanted to march to her room, ravish her, and bleed her dry. He should have ached to taste her, but who was he kidding? He wanted to wrap that infuriatingly stubborn girl up in soft down blankets and cradle her to his chest in front of the fire while she read one of those books she was so fascinated by aloud to him.

"There's quite the nasty rumor circulating involving you and a new pet," a woman's voice cut through the silence. Rose, one of his oldest and most loyal friends. They had gone through every permutation of a relationship in their time together, they had been friends, enemies, and lovers, but now Rose was the only one in the entire coven with the backbone to call Damon out when he was out of control and the only one foolish enough to intervene in his personal affairs. "A new pet who happens to be the Petrova doppelganger."

"It's not a rumor," Damon mumbled resigned to the berating he was undoubtedly about the get. "It's the truth. I found her and I'm keeping her, it's well within my rights as leader of this coven."

"I figured as much," Rose said with a shrug and a dramatic roll of her green eyes as she poured herself a glass of bourbon from Damon's special reserve decanter. "Damon Salvatore, purveyor of his own destruction."

"That's all I get? An eye roll?" he asked, surprised that he hadn't been thrown against the bookcase yet. The last time he took a pet, Rose disapproved to say the least. She broke both of his arms and three vertebrae before compelling the girl to forget everything about the Manor and releasing her.

"Since when did talking to you ever make a difference?" she asked sarcastically.

"Touché."

"Besides, I think this may be good for you."

"What about your 'purveyor or destruction' theory?"

"Oh I still believe that with all my heart," Rose smiled and took a seat in one of the overstuffed reading chairs. "But then it occurred to me that this girl may be the one to break the spell and—"

"We're done," Damon cut her off abruptly and stood to pace in front of the fireplace, his one and only nervous tell.

"And since time is running thin, I have decided to help you win her heart."

"Win her heart? Are you even listening to yourself Rose?"

"Well Salvatore here are your options: give it a try or be doomed to remain a vampire forever along with all of us. I don't need to remind you that the majority of your house has been lusting for their freedom for quite some time. They won't tolerate your obstinacy much longer. There are already murmurs of mutiny."

"Who would dare to challenge me?" Damon growled, stopping in his tracks. He had established himself as a merciless leader by enforcing a draconian litany of rules with an iron fist. He had never enjoyed the hard-line approach and often wished he could cut loose a little more with his coven, but he couldn't trust the majority of them not to drive a stake through his heart the moment that he let his guard down.

"Who wouldn't? You made a promise to us that you would do everything in your power to break the spell and return our humanity to us. Loyalty only extends as far as honesty, Damon. Stefan, William, and I will be with you straight through to the end, but not everyone has such scruples."

"And I've tried everything!" he groaned, draining the last of his blood before refilling his glass with bourbon.

"Except love," Rose quipped with a pointed look. Damon shook his head stubbornly at the very mention of the word and Rose could see him start to withdraw from the conversation. "That was the witch's spell, only when you love and accept love in return can we have our humanity back. Your humanity, Damon. You may have everyone else fooled into thinking that you don't care anymore, but I know better than that. I also know better than to believe that you brought that girl here because you were 'worried about what would happen to her' out there."

"What was I supposed to do, leave her to the inbreed flea-ridden mutts? Why should those mongrels get a prime cut like that before we do?" he smirked crassly, hoping to derail Rose's argument.

"You brought her here because she made you feel something the moment you laid eyes on her."

"What am I supposed to do Rose?" Damon sighed and set his glass on the mantle. "Fucking compel her to fall in love with me?"

"I know you're not this stupid."

"You're out of line, Rose."

"Yes, out of line, challenging your authority, blah blah, I've heard it all before, Damon. So come on," she set her glass down next to his and gestured for him to come closer. "Snap my neck, let's just get this over with so we can get down to the real issue at hand."

Damon just shook his head, unwilling to admit that Rose was (as usual) absolutely right. He turned his back to her and focused again on the flames that licked against the heavy logs in the fireplace.

"What are you so afraid of? That it will actually work?"

"This conversation is over," he growled, digging his fingernails into the flesh of his palm to distract him from the anger that was boiling up within him.

"Bullshit."

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me, I'm calling bullshit on you. You're afraid of what will happen if this girl really does have feelings for you. You're scared of losing yourself in someone else again like you did with Ka—"

"Do not say her name."

"Like you did with her."

"And I'm not scared of anything."

"This girl could be different, Damon. She's your last chance to make good on your promise to this coven. Keep that in mind."

"I get it, alright," Damon snapped. "I get it, Rose." He stared at the ornately carved wooden box on his desk. The box that held the fabled Cure which would give him his human life back. The only way to unlock the box was true love or some rot like that, witches and their ridiculous notions of romance. "What could she ever seen in me? I'm a monster. I've made myself into a monster, and I've enjoyed it, Rose. She could never love something like me."

"Perhaps you should let her decide that for herself," Rose suggested, placing a comforting hand on Damon's shoulder before she made her way out of the room. Before opening the door she turned and asked a final question over her shoulder. "Where did you lodge the girl, by the way? I haven't seen any lights in the basement on."

"She's in the Ivory Room," Damon grumbled knowing what Rose would make of his housing choice for Elena.

"Uh huh," Rose smiled. Damon designed the Ivory Room himself shortly after he was turned. He filled it with the most luxurious and beautiful furnishings and outfitted it to a royal standard. He never admitted it to anyone, but Rose knew that he had created the room for his princess, the woman who would fall madly in love with him and break the spell so they could live happily ever after. He had the room dusted daily and the fireplace stocked for fifty years but no one came, so he covered the furniture and closed the door.

Despite his hard exterior and spotty track record in the ethics department, Rose knew that Damon was a hopeless romantic and true love was perhaps the only thing he wanted more than his humanity. The real task would be to chisel off the centuries of heartbreak and betrayal in the next six weeks and show Damon that he is capable of love and worthy of being loved in return. With the whisperings she heard from the lower ranking vampires at the Manor, Damon's life could very well depend on his ability to win Elena's heart.

A/N: ** The insciption in Damon's book is "Say hi to Friedrich (Nietzsche) for me."

I hope you all liked this chapter, we're getting a little more into Damon's past. If you liked it, hated it, meh'd it, leave a review! I'm kinda hoping there are more readers than reviewers because response has been pretty dismal, let me know if I should keep going. Stay tuned for tomorrow's update... it's gonna be a good one ;)

XOXO ~Anna