A/N: This is it! This is the end of Promises Made. As usual, first ten reviewers receive a drabble of their choice! Also - be sure to read the note at the end!

Disclaimer: I don't own Darkest Powers or any other characters from Women of the Otherworld.

Chapter 10: Promises Held

Theo hung up the phone and let out a whoop of excitement. It echoed in the living room and caused even Lauren to peer out of her room from upstairs to see what was going on.

"They got 'em! They found them all!" He yelled again. Nate seemed happy with the news and even Carter let out a small smile. Chloe found that Derek's face sported a small grin of his own.

Her own face had remained frozen. It was a done deal then. Their fates had been sealed by Malcolm's success. They would be staying with the Cains … possibly for life. If Malcolm held true to his absurd plan on taking on the Pack, they may not have much time left.

If she was going to escape, it had to be between now and before Malcolm's return. She would have to just let the instructor part of the deal go. For all she knew, he could just simply be planning on giving her The Dummy's Guide to Necromancy and that was it.

She looked up and Lauren had already returned to their room. It wouldn't take much to convince her that they needed to leave now. She had been ready ever since Malcolm left. Lauren never said exactly what she knew about Malcolm, but she hinted that he was not someone to cross or owe. Leaving would be crossing him, of sorts, but she wanted to keep living. Malcolm didn't seem the type that would be too upset if non-werewolves were caught in the crossfire.

"Cheer up," Derek nudged her. "You'll have all of your answers before you know it."

She couldn't believe that he was going along with all of this. This all had to be a façade of sorts. Surely Derek wasn't this thickheaded.

She pulled him aside for a walk later that evening. They walked in silence until they were decently in the woods before she could bring herself to look at him.

"I don't understand you," she said, looking him in the eyes. "We are supposed to decide things, we are supposed to plan things and now … now you have us signed alongside a werewolf that wants to go on a murdering spree."

Derek remained silent. Rage filled her.

"You better start explaining things and quickly," she snarled. "You're gambling my life, my aunt's life, your life on this all working out. You really think you can go and help him murder the Pack and whoever else he has on his list?"

"It's not a gamble. I have it all worked out."

"And would you care to share that with me? I believe I have the right to know how you're planning on getting all of us of here unharmed."

Derek looked at Chloe and sighed. "I thought you would understand. I guess they were right. You … yes, you were an experiment but I was raised as an experiment. You had a happy home –"

"You know that isn't true," Chloe seethed. "You know that of the two of us, you had the far happier childhood. Kit took you in. Simon took you in as a brother without hesitation. I had my mother die and watch my father fade away and my aunt circling us like a hawk. No – if this is some sort of pathetic wish for revenge, I get that but we're not doing it that way. Kit raised you better than that."

Derek spun on her and pushed her against a tree. She panicked. Derek had only done things like this to protect her before. He wasn't protecting her now. She felt the buzzing in her head increase and she tried to calm it down before it got out of hand.

They were both breathing heavily. She couldn't bring herself to look at his face. She stared at the ground as she tried to focus on her exercises. The fond memories of them together in the movie theater would not come.

As much as she hated herself, but her thoughts were racing back to Lauren's remarks. She had warned Chloe that one day that Derek would lose himself. He would be angered and that something would snap inside of him. The Derek she knew would vanish and all that would be left was that beast that lived inside his skin. Lauren warned her for years about how it wasn't about if it would happen, but when. Perhaps that would explain why Derek had seemed different. He had seemed different ever since he returned from his training session with Carter in the woods and he seemed even more different after the twenty-four hour separation they had as a training punishment.

Perhaps the Derek she knew was gone. Her breath caught in her throat as the thought raced across her mind.

"Shit," Derek said, his voice husky. "Chloe … I … I didn't mean," he said slowly, backing away from her, unpinning her from the tree.

She still couldn't bring herself to look at him. She continued to stare at the ground. She could feel that there were more dead rabbits in the bushes not too far from her. It wouldn't take much to push her over the edge and reanimate them.

"You really need to explain yourself," she said softly. "The Derek I know ...," she trailed off.

He rubbed his face but didn't answer her. She started to say something but stopped herself. She needed to know that his answers came from him, that they weren't something that he agreed to placate her.

"Being with the guys … it just feels different. It's … nice, I guess, not being the only one."

She nodded for him to continue. He began to pace.

"I … I don't really know, Chloe. I know that's not an excuse or answer, but I don't, really. I just know that it's nice not being the odd one out. It feels … right, I guess, being with them. I don't know how much of it is nature, but wolves run in packs, right? And you know that there is the Pack, so obviously there is an acknowledgement of how things are better when we're in a group. It's one of the things that the Pack doesn't allow mutts to do. They don't allow them to have their own packs, their own groups where they can just … belong. And," he took in a breath, running his hand through his hair. "I don't know, really, I'm rambling hoping an explanation pops out."

The old Derek wouldn't ramble, hoping for something to appear. The old Derek would remain stubbornly, obnoxiously silent until he worked something out in his head. How had he changed under her nose? How did she not notice that he was slipping away from her?

"Leave," she said.

"I don't really think –"

"I don't feel comfortable with you around right now," she interrupted. She slowly forced herself to look at him and instantly regretted it. Her eyes welled up with tears the moment she saw his face and she looked away.

She watched his feet as he walked back towards the house. She knew that he wouldn't go back to the house. He'd stay out here in the woods as long as she was, but he would give her space. Or at least, she hoped that he would. The old Derek would, she didn't know about this new one.

She couldn't bring herself to leave the tree that Derek had slammed her against. The solidness against her back rooted her. She replayed it over and over in her mind.

The buzzing her simmered back down to its normal level. She was clutching her necklace – when did she do that? Was it before Derek left or after?

Her face felt wet and she rubbed it. How long had she been crying? She felt disconnected from her body.

She knew that he was out there, watching her. The thought once comforted her. Now it sent chills down her spine.

Could she leave Derek behind? Simply take her aunt and leave in the middle of the night? They might be less inclined to hunt them down. It was Derek who they were really after. If they managed to leave a few days before Malcolm returned, there was a chance that it would … work out.

She swallowed hard.

Chloe never thought that she would be at this impasse. She and Derek had been a team for so long, it was natural that where one went, the other would follow. She never dreamed that they would be torn apart not by others but by a choice one of them made. They weren't a team, not anymore.

It seemed as something that would happen only in a nightmare.

A twig snapped nearby and she glared in its general direction. She waited for him to emerge from the foliage. It wasn't Derek that stepped out. It was a bear.

She watched as it slowly lumbered towards her. She couldn't find her voice to scream. This was it. This was how it was going to end for her. She was going to be mauled by a bear because she had a fight with Derek.

A beam of moonlight hit the bear and she found her voice to let out a gasp. The bear's side was open, intestines slipping out along with a foul stench.

"I … I'm sorry, I didn't mean it," she said to the bear.

"Chloe!"

She looked but didn't see anyone.

She heard her name yelled out again.

She found the source of it. It was Liz but it took a moment to realize that she was inside the border constructed by the runes.

"Chloe, you need to get inside, like right now," she yelled, running over to her. Chloe felt a shove from Liz and it snapped her out of her trance.

"Can you tell me what is going on," she gasped out as they were running.

"Bad stuff, serious stuff," Liz replied. Chloe noted that even Liz was panting even though she didn't even need to breathe. "You really shouldn't have summoned that bear."

"I didn't mean to," she replied quietly.

The cabin was in sight now and Liz gave her another push.

"I'm serious, Chloe," Liz said again. "No summoning, nothing. If as so much a fly is resurrected, I can't guarantee that I'll get to you in time."

"What are you even talking about?"

"I'll come back once I get everything straight. Right now I have a whole lot of half-truths and speculations. Once I get something concrete, I'll come for you. I know where you are, I should be able to slip past the border again. It probably isn't a good idea for you to leave the house."

"Liz, you don't even know what is going on here. Things are bad –"

"I promise you things are a whole lot worse on the other side, trust me." Liz said as she looked around the yard. "Just … try to hang in there the best you can. We can have a proper catch up next time, but I really have to go."

And she vanished, just like that.

Derek came roaring out of the woods. He must have heard her while she was with Liz.

She didn't wait for him.

Somehow Lauren knew what had happened before Chloe could explain. She wasn't sure if it was written across her face, if the Cains had followed them and reported back and she overheard, or if she could recognize that she was in a bad place. Perhaps Lauren was right; perhaps she had been preparing herself for this day when it would inevitably come.

"We will get out of this," Lauren reassured her, rubbing her back. They were in their room, holed up against the world.

Chloe let out a stifled sob and let the tears fall.

Lauren was looking at files when Chloe woke.

"Those aren't…" she trailed off, her voice thick with sleep.

"No, these are the files from the first raid. I'm just looking over them, making sure I didn't miss something."

"Like what?"

Lauren sighed. "I'm looking through Derek's file. I'm double checking the werewolf psychological profile we had drawn up. It wasn't of any one specific but more of a general look at their race." She flipped through a few pages, furrowed her brow and muttered something to herself.

Chloe rubbed the sleep from her eyes and then her face. She needed to wake up. She didn't know how much time they had left for their escape – and last night's hurried talk with Liz hit her and she realized that there would be no escape. Liz rarely barked orders at her and last night she was not merely suggesting that she stay inside.

"Werewolves, when they hit a certain age, try to find a group to fit in. Under Pack law, there aren't any official packs, so typically they split off into groups of twos, occasionally threes. There isn't any logical explanation for it. Several of our experts attributed it to them searching for a pack of sorts. Now when that happens, there tends to be a similar structure to a pack. One of them will be the boss and the other or others will follow orders," Lauren explained.

"So you're saying there is a lot of groupthink."

"There is. There is also the fact that what is happening … was inevitable. It was bound to happen eventually. Another werewolf would have tracked him down and made him an offer. He might have refused the first, but according to this," she tapped the page, "it only grows stronger as they age."

"So … he's with them, for life?"

Lauren shrugged. "Their lives typically aren't very long. I imagine disagreements happen. Pairs split off and form new bonds with someone else."

"Not always," Chloe replied. "Ramon didn't. We … ran into him on the way to New York. He was by himself. If he had partnered up with anyone since Liam, he wasn't with them now."

"Reputation matters a lot in their world too," Lauren added. "Derek has one. He might not have wanted one, but he has one first for being a Cain, another for being Zachary Cain's son, and also for what he's done."

Murder – it was self-defense. She would have died if Derek hadn't. He would have died if he didn't. There wasn't another option on the table. It was no different than what she had done.

"If the Cains know about the experiments, there is a decent chance that others may know as well. You have to take that into consideration as well," Lauren said, returning to her papers.

"I … I saw Liz last night," Chloe said quietly.

Lauren quickly stood and sat down next to her on the bed.

"Good, good," she whispered. "Did you ask her to help us escape?"

"She said I needed to stay here."

"What?"

Chloe nodded. "She said it wasn't safe. She said that … things are bad on the other side. I guess this," she fingered the pendant, "isn't working like it used to."

"I don't understand, why –"

"I don't either. She didn't finish. She popped in, got me back to the house and then left. She told me that if I summoned anything, things would get bad and fast."

"And … she say anything as to why?"

"No."

Lauren sighed. "Then I guess we'll be staying put until we come up with something better."

Chloe ignored Nate's good intentioned conversation starters at dinner. She found herself sitting next to Carter. She couldn't bring herself to indulge Nate nor could she even think about sitting next to Derek. He had put them all in a spot where they were likely to all be killed without even asking her opinion.

"This spat," Theo said, "it isn't good to ignore such things. Although, if you'd like, once Malcolm returns with the rest of your files and trainer, you're free to go. We won't keep you here any longer than we have to."

"I'll consider it," she said coldly. "I'm finished here," she stood up, her plate barely touched. "If Malcolm returns, knock on my door."

She was halfway up the stairs when Derek caught up with her. She recoiled when he grabbed her arm to stop her.

"Chloe, you can't mean what you've said –"

"I was unaware that I wasn't allowed to have my own opinion where my life goes," she said, staring him down. "Let me go."

"Chloe," Derek insisted.

She yanked her arm away and went to her room.

A rap at the door nearly gave her a heart attack.

Lauren looked at her, neither one of them made a move to open the door. If it was what they both thought it was, it was game over. Time had run out on the clock and they were even more stuck than they were five minutes prior.

"It's Carter. I just want to talk to you for a few moments," he said. After a few moments he added, "Malcolm isn't here."

She opened the door a sliver and saw that Carter was alone. She left the room, closing it quietly behind her. She didn't know why she tried to be quiet. It wasn't as though the rest of the house couldn't hear her.

"Let's take a walk."

Their walk was less walking and more sitting on the porch. Chloe mentioned that she didn't feel right leaving the house and Carter didn't push the subject matter.

Instead they sat out on the porch in the blistering northern wind.

"What was it that you wanted?"

Carter was squinting. She could barely make out that his eyes were different than the rest. He had the same eyes Keith had, brown eyes instead of some shade of vivid green.

"I just … I just wanted to tell you to be patient. This," he gestured back at the house, "is a lot to take in. Put yourself in Derek's shoes and see if you wouldn't want the same thing."

"I would at least talk to him before signing his life away."

"Yeah, well," he mumbled softly, "I wouldn't be one hundred percent convinced that it's all said and done. I know – when I first met him, I didn't want him to have anything to do with us. It's changed, a lot has changed," he trailed off, letting the words slip away with the wind and into the night.

"I just want you to keep an open mind. Things around here aren't always what they seem to be."

She ignored Derek for the next few days whenever he tried talking to her. She couldn't talk to him, not yet. She was too angry with him. Despite Carter's attempts of salvaging some good will towards him, she was unmoved.

Lauren was eager to try to find some way. She would periodically ask if Liz had shown up. Chloe didn't dare try summoning her, not after the last time she saw her.

She hated that she couldn't bounce ideas off of Derek. She hated that the reason she couldn't was because Derek had been swept up in some sort of weird werewolf bonding that defied reason.

Her gut told her that whatever came would not be good.

Keith arrived first. He had several boxes in tow and the guys busied themselves with bringing them inside.

Chloe watched all of this from the living room. No one had asked her to help and she did not volunteer. She had been summoned downstairs shortly before Keith had arrived. Theo wanted her to see everything that they had managed to recover from the St. Cloud cabal.

Once they finished bringing in the last box, she got up and went to grab one to take back upstairs.

"Sorry, these have to stay down here," Keith grinned. "If you want to look at them, you'll need to leave your chamber of solitude."

Chloe managed to talk Theo into letting them move all the boxes into a spare bedroom downstairs. She had reasoned that by keeping them in a small room, there was less chance of things becoming misplaced or unorganized. Chloe had to concede to keep the door open at all times.

It wasn't ideal, but at least she could turn her back to the room and do her best to ignore the others.

Lauren spent more time than anyone in there. She wanted to verify that these were the original files, not something that they came up with in order to fulfill their end of the bargain.

Chloe wasn't sure what Lauren was rooting for, the files to be true or to be fakes.

She wasn't sure what she was hoping for either.

"You can't avoid me forever. Training is going to get really intense and you're going to be a part of it," Nate told her after dinner. She ignored him as she gathered up the plates. It was Nate's turn to wash. Before, she would help gather the used dinnerware and keep him company while he washed. Despite her current feelings towards Derek, she didn't want him to find out about their indiscretion.

"I mean it," he whispered. "Things are going to jump up to an eleven now that those files are here."

"My aunt hasn't verified that they're the actual files."

Nate sighed and rolled his eyes. "They're the legitimate thing. No way would Grandaddy let something like that fly, not when it's as important as this. He wants Derek to be here. Derek wants to be here. You can be here with him, there isn't anybody standing in the way."

Chloe glared at him, dumping a pile of plates on the counter.

"Really, no one? I can think of at two, off the top of my head. There is no way that I'd be able to live with them nearby. This is, you know, assuming that they don't get us all killed with that idiotic plan with the Pack."

Nate started working on the dishes.

"Everything will work out. Everything will. Something this big, this … the Pack has run the world for far too long without any challengers. History will be made. Don't you want to be a part of it?"

"I'm not a werewolf. Up until when you kidnapped us, Derek had never had a civil conversation with one. Now he's drinking whatever Kool-Aid you're selling and you're expecting me to shut up and go along with it."

Nate turned to her and grinned. "I'm not. I know that you're not that type of person. I expect that you have several ideas floating around that noggin on how to escape or find a loophole to get out of one of your deals you made with Malcolm."

Chloe finished gathering the glasses and started out the door.

"If you're going to find one," he called out to her, "it needs to be soon."

Chloe tried her best to ignore the painful groan of flesh meeting flesh. Malcolm was here watching the training today. He had brought along Keith. It was the first time Keith had seen Derek in the field, so to speak, and he did not seem pleased. He tried whispering something to Malcolm several times but each time Malcolm shut him down.

It made her uneasy. She had never seen Malcolm do that to Keith, nor see Keith try to interject his own opinion on something. His usual spiel was just Malcolm's words.

It did strike her odd that someone like Keith could be related to the rest of the Cains. The others never seemed particularly ambitious. She gathered that most of them simply wanted to be left alone and that going against the Pack was going to be the way to ensure that they could continue being left alone for good. Nate had told her about how they were constantly on the move, moving from state to state, sometimes even moving under the cover of darkness. She empathized with wanting a permanent, stable home, but she could not get behind going up against the Pack to do it. There surely had to be some way that they could settle and the Pack wouldn't notice.

Theo explained to her that they had tried that. The Pack still found them. He explained that the Pack keeps track of all mutts and of their locations. If they sent someone to check on the Cains and found that they were still in the same place? The Pack viewed it as the Cains taking territory. Only the Pack was allowed to have territory. It had been Pack law for countless of generations now. Theo wasn't sure exactly how long it was, but as far back as he could trace back through the written accounts of previous Cains, they had never been Pack. They had always been mutts.

Chloe still thought there was a better way. Theo knew that he wasn't going to convince her of anything and that it ultimately didn't matter. He didn't need her to be on board with the plan. He only needed Derek.

A yell snapped her back into the present day. Derek had immobilized Carter and had now shifted his attention to solely Nate. She wasn't sure what she wanted to happen. If she could vanish into a wisp of smoke, that would be a nice alternative.

Instead she forced herself to watch. She noticed the small things now. Derek still fought the same, but he had made minor adjustments. He was able to read his opponents better. He was better at dodging and taking blows. They were minor, detail oriented things that gave him the overall advantage.

If he could make this much progress in the time that they had spent here, what would have he been like if he had a proper instructor back in Badger Lake? Or what if the Cains had managed to steal him away the first time when he was sixteen?

She had drifted off, lost in her thoughts again. Derek was now standing in front of her. He had a gash on his right arm. It didn't look serious but it probably needed stitches. She looked over to the observers. Malcolm and Theo were talking quietly. Keith was watching her, smiling.

"Chloe, we really need to talk about a few things," Derek said quietly.

She finally found the strength to lift her eyes up to his. "A little bit late for that, isn't it?"

Derek cast a look over his shoulder. Carter was helping Nate off the ground. Neither looked too battered but with time, they would all have various bruises.

"It's about the files."

Chloe sat in the designated room. She and Lauren were waiting for Derek to finish his quick shower so that they could talk about whatever he had managed to find in the files.

He strode in silently. Chloe didn't even know he was there until he picked up a binder and started flipping through it.

"Lauren, could you read this passage here? Is it really the original?"

Lauren took the binder from him and retreated to the opposite side of the room. Chloe wasn't sure why Lauren was giving him such a wide berth. She thought she would have been happy with Derek's behavior lately. There was a large wedge between them and it was looking like they were going to have to split up. It was everything that Lauren had been wanting for years.

Chloe looked over at him. She wasn't aware that he had spent more time reading. She thought he would have been too busy being with his own kind. The surprise made her smile a little. Perhaps he wasn't as far gone as she had written him off.

Lauren started reading but before she could even finish the page, Theo popped his head in.

"Just put a pause on that," he said, "and come out into the living room. There is something that we all need to get over with. Chloe, Derek, follow me."

Chloe looked over at Derek who shrugged. He followed Theo and waited at the door for her to follow him. She begrudgingly stood up and walked out into the living room.

Keith and Malcolm weren't there, neither was Carter or Nate.

Theo left them alone for a moment. Derek offered his hand but she did not take it. Derek left it there, sitting beside her.

Keith and Malcom came in through the door, carrying a large burlap sack between them. Chloe's stomach sunk when she realized it was the same size of bag that they used when they brought Lauren here. It looked as though they had brought someone else into this mess as well.

"Now, before we all introduce ourselves," Malcolm said as Keith took over the bag and laid it on the floor. "I want to refresh everyone's memory of the deal we made. I got you not only the files the Nasts had but the ones the St. Cloud cabal did not turn over. In return, Derek was trained under my supervision and Chloe would receive training. In addition to this, Derek has also agreed to join me as we set out to right the wrongs that have been done to us."

Malcolm strode over to the bag and began loosening one tied end.

"Now, you're both fairly intelligent creatures. You probably already figured out that this is Chloe's trainer. I keep my word," he muttered. He looked up at Chloe and Derek.

"And you will find that not only was I able to find a trainer, I was able to find one that while … not particularly powerful, at least has the knowledge necessary for you, Chloe. It was really an all-in-one package, really. She has the knowledge, she's the necromancer representative on the council, and she just so happens to be the partner of one of the werewolves at Stonehaven."

Malcolm finished opening the bag. Chloe couldn't see her face but could see that she had red hair. She found Derek's hand and took it without thinking.

"Chloe, meet Jaime Vegas."

A/N: This is the end of Promises Made but not the end of the story. I've been at work on the sequel for a while and ... well, simply put, the story became too big. I'm currently working on chapter nine of the next story and we're barely really getting into its main arc. I didn't want this to become a big conglomerate of everything, so I picked where thematically it made sense to end.

The next installment, Oaths Sworn will be uploaded in two weeks. It looks like I'm adopting an upload for Oaths on the second/fourth weeks and updating my Bitten story on the first/third weeks on Fridays. As usual, drabbles for the first ten reviewers. Drabbles for OS will be uploaded as part of Tales. I may skip my usual DP update week in two weeks to give me a little more time to get further ahead with OS (meaning it'll be 4 weeks to the first chapter of OS), but we will see. I will at least upload the drabbles for the last chapter of PM two weeks from now.

Haven't watched Bitten? You should! You get to see Derek's dad and I'm just really happy with how they have handled his character in season one and I'm looking forward to seeing what they have in store for season two.

A huge thanks for everyone who has reviewed, favorited, and/or followed this story! I hope you enjoyed it. Likewise reviewers, I hope that you all have enjoyed your drabbles.

Speaking of - just another reminder about drabbles! Be the part of the first ten and have a drabble of your choice! Need some Chlerk fluff to balance out all of the angst I typically dish out? All you have to do is review. :)

Another short reminder about the forum for Atoning! You can find it in the DP forum list under 'Atoning' or use the link in my profile. We are due for a new chapter in a few days! Kelley has been putting them up a day or two early, so be sure to be on the watch for it. I'll post a new thread for the chapter once I've finished reading it and I hope to hear your thoughts on it!