Chapter 10

Hours later, the sun long set in the sky, Niklaus found Milla perched on one of the rocking chairs on the front porch of his cabin. He'd left her at Elijah's to return to the airport, but when he came back found that she had left. She was waiting patiently for him here instead. Her shoulders were bent and her lean body was drawn tightly with tension, making her appear smaller.

"I was restless." She told him as he mounted the steps. Milla rose and stepped into his arms.

"I am glad you are here." He told her, moving close and hovering near her mouth before he kissed her.

"Elijah says those men were Weres." He told her when he leaned back.

Milla drew a deep breath of surprise and seemed frozen in place at the news. He watched her mind working through the information, her eyes wide.

Finally, she said, "I can't imagine what they would want from Dad."

He pulled her close, tucking her to his shoulder, hanging on tightly.

"I have put feelers out. I know a lot of people and we will locate him. I promise." Reassuring words rushed out of him, hoping to calm her.

He took her hand and led her inside. Sitting on the couch, he gathered her across his lap and held her close, running soothing hands over her back and shoulders while she had legs draped over the couch and her arms wrapped around his chest.

She had been a bundle of worry and tension when he found her waiting on the porch. After only a few minutes, she was calm and relaxed in his arms.

"You, my girl, will leave this to me." He whispered to her as she breathed deeply. She nodded against him, her eyes drifting closed.

Milla woke hours later on the couch in Klaus' cabin all alone. Her arms were wrapped firmly around a pillow and she smiled. It had been him she'd been wrapped around when she fell asleep. She turned and found that early morning light was beaming through the windows. If she had to guess, he'd probably held her for a long while as she slept and substituted the pillow when he had to leave.

Her phone buzzed at her from the end table where he'd left it.

It was a text from Elena. Come back to the house.

Milla gathered her phone and her keys, headed out after only a breath for the car.

Elena met her at the front door, her dark eyes concerned as they moved over her face.

"You're going to have to stay calm. Can you do that?" Her voice was a whisper, her brows furrowed.

Milla nodded tightly. "What's happened?"

"Klaus found your father. Jack's upstairs. But he's in rough shape, honey." Milla pushed past Elena and headed for the stairs at a run.

She found him in the bed he usually slept in when they stayed here. He was pale and sweat stood out on his face. Dark circles wrapped around eyes that were closed. With her first steps into the room she smelled the infection.

Silver.

If silver was left in a wound for their kind it set up rapid infection. His arm was partially untucked and she saw a ghost of a shadow along his forearm. Pulling the cover back without disturbing him, she found dark streaks that ran nearly up to his elbow around a bullet wound in his wrist. A fresh bandage suggested the bullet had just been removed.

Milla bit back a gasp and moved to the other side of the bed. The other wrist was the same. Moving to the foot of the bed she found his ankles were in the same condition. Silver bullets had been shot into his wrists and ankles, the shots fired against a solid surface so that the bullet remained lodged. Torture. Weres had tortured her father and nearly killed him. After only a few hours, the infection would spread, leaving the streaks that wrapped around all of his limbs. Once those dark tracks reached his heart or his head he'd be gone.

Jack made a sound, a gasp and a cough, and amber eyes opened.

"Millicent?" Her given name was only a whisper in what had always been a deep booming voice to her. He seemed frail and small now. It made her chest hurt.

"Daddy. I'm here." She stepped close and laid a hand on his face, blinking back unshed tears.

"I didn't tell them." He gasped, drew a deep breath and turned to press a kiss to her hand. After a second he blinked like he wasn't sure if she was real.

"Tell who, Daddy?" She asked, fighting tears.

Jack drew another halting breath. "Jamie." The name was a breathy gasp.

Milla's heart let out a silent roar of fury. Jamie had been her father's Beta for twenty years. When he stepped down, Jamie became Alpha of the pack. Her father's best friend had done this. The wolf inside her clamored for control. With all of her might, she pushed it down.

His eyes had drifted closed again. Shaking, Milla reached to touch his face again and his eyes opened.

"What did they want from you, Daddy?"

Amber eyes met hers again. "You."

Milla's hands shook as the wolf roared to life inside her. Turning, fearing what she would destroy, or who, she ran with everything in her, pushing past Elena who had been standing in the doorway unnoticed.

Milla went sprinting down the stairs taking them three at a time, but Klaus, emerging from the shower saw her intention. He jumped the railing so quickly no one saw and was standing blocking the door when she reached it. Her eyes had gone completely golden, with only a tiny pinprick of a black iris in the middle, the way her wolf's eyes looked when she stood in the light.

When she spoke it was a low, inhuman rumble still contained by her voice, for now. "Move, or I will hurt you." Klaus could see she was fighting for control.

"If you need to do damage, do it to me. I can take it. But there is no scenario where I let you walk out that door." Her eyes met his and she was gasping, a growl building in her chest.

"I don't want to hurt you of all people. But I have to get out of here. If I bite you…or anyone…" She shook her head as the growl deepened to a roar.

"If you lose control and bite me…nothing. Nothing happens. I am immune." Her eyes swung to meet his and he saw a glimpse of her instead of the wolf in her surprise.

"You have to think clearly. He will recover. And he took being drugged and tortured to protect you. Managed not to give away your location under all of that. You cannot just run out after them, delivering yourself to their doorstep. Do not let his strength and sacrifice for you be wasted."

Klaus stepped close and wrapped both arms around her. She went instantly still but remained stiff. He leaned against the crown of her hair, propping his cheek there and ran a single hand over her back slowly. The rumbles became gasps of air and her breathing began to slow after a few minutes.

"I will kill every last one of them and lay them at your feet as a gift if you want. But I will not lose you to this, to them."

She closed her arms around him then, finally leaning in, accepting the comfort he was offering.

After several minutes of silence, Milla leaned up and kissed him, making him forget about Weres, threats or even where they were standing. A pointed throat clearing from the hall made him freeze after a second try. He broke the kiss, his nose next to Milla's ear.

"I think the cat is out of the bag." He whispered.

They had never planned to keep their relationship a secret, it had just happened that way. But Milla covered her mouth with one hand to smother a shy smile as he wove an arm around her shoulders.

They turned together to find Elena and Elijah both standing in the hall at the foot of the stairs wearing contradictory expressions. Elena looked horrified and Elijah was smiling broadly. Elena turned to look to Elijah for support and swatted his arm with a groan at his expression.

Elijah raised both hands in surrender, addressing Elena, "What can I, of all people, say? I was recently reminded that I was following a sixteen year old you around like a lovesick puppy not so very long ago." He turned with a shrug and walked wordlessly back up the stairs to the sound of quiet laughter from Milla and Klaus.

Elena, still flushed from Elijah's comment, fought a smile as she pointed a finger at Klaus.

"Don't you hurt her." He pulled a straight face, met her eyes and nodded.

She then turned the same expression on Milla.

"Don't you hurt him." Milla mirrored Klaus' expression and nodded too.

"And both of you keep in mind that you'll continue to be family even if this…whatever it is…ends. Because family doesn't." Her eyes moved between the two of them as the humor faded and they both nodded again.

Milla turned and kissed Klaus on the cheek.

"You're good at that. Thank you." She hugged him quickly and headed back up the stairs to sit with her father.

Elena stepped aside as she passed, her dark eyes watching Klaus' face. When Milla was gone, Elena came to stand in front of him.

"She's right, you know. No one's ever been able to calm her except her father. And that was a full blown wolf-out you just stopped." She tipped her head up and dark eyes moved over him again.

"I love her." Klaus admitted with a shrug.

Elena was quiet for a moment, absorbing that. "It seems she loves you, too."

He only nodded once and shrugged again.

"You're clearly good for one another." Elena turned, heading toward the kitchen shaking her head in wonder. Klaus watched Elena's retreating back.

"My fate was sealed even before she wrecked her car." He admitted quietly and Elena spun.

She smiled up at him as she said, "I guess that explains a lot."

"I just want you to know that this is not some game I am playing with her heart." He told her, hoping to make her understand just a little of him. He knew that Elena was protective of her god daughter and he respected that.

Elena smile deepened. "I know you well enough now to know you'd never do that. But thank you."

Klaus' chest burned at the trust he read in Elena's eyes. He hoped one day to deserve it and would do anything in that moment not to betray it.

A few hours later Milla took the cool rag and wiped her father's brow. He looked exhausted and the fever hadn't let up yet completely, even though the silver was gone. His eyes were red rimmed and sweat beaded up on his face but he was more aware than he had been before.

Her father was her hero and Jamie had nearly broken him. Cold fury made a home in her chest. Getting her teeth wrapped around the people responsible became her silent focus.

Elena came to stand with Elijah who had been pushing Jack for information about what he heard or could remember. Her father, a little stronger, was explaining what he knew.

"Ten packs have united. They've decided they want Milla after all, but not as an equal. They just want her. Her strength, her freedom. Their goal is to come for her. To test her, steal from her, breed her and take her apart. They stole the flight plan, I guess, of your jet, and were waiting when I got off the plane." The room filled with wind and Klaus was standing by Elijah at the foot of the bed with his arms crossed, his blue eyes hard.

Milla watched her father's eyes go wide, his frail body tensed at the newcomer.

Jack was struck squarely with a flash of memory beyond the drugs and pain that felt like it went on forever. He remembered hearing grown men scream. The warehouse he'd been kept at had echoed with the sounds of them. He was still tethered hand and foot to the concrete floor, but the sound of the splatter of blood was unmistakable even if he couldn't see the source.

Jack had seen six men through the whole ordeal. The only one he'd recognized was Jamie and he'd been the one holding the gun, firing the shots one at a time into him trying to force out Milla's location. But that had been hours ago and Jamie was long gone.

He had braced himself when all went quiet to be relieved of his misery by whatever had killed the others. Instead, a tall figure covered mostly in blood had appeared at his side, broken the thick chains that held him with one hand and Jack was lifted up. The next thing he knew he was at Elena's home in a warm bed.

He studied the blonde stranger standing next to Elijah. The profile he'd seen in the dark was the same.

"That was you." Jack said, addressing the stranger.

The man, who was probably not really a man, only nodded once, his lips a thin white line.

Jack blew a sigh of relief. He had been a little worried he'd hallucinated the whole thing.

"Thank you." He paused to meet blue eyes. "And I'm glad you're on my side."

The stranger smiled but remained silent.

Still seated next to her father, Milla took one of his fingers, to avoid touching his wounds.

"Dad, this is Klaus." The least she could do, she decided, was introduce them. "He's Elijah's brother."

Her father's eyes went wide moving between Klaus and Elijah. She could almost read his mind from his expression. Oh, God. There's two of them.

But Milla wasn't done. Even though the room was full, her dad needed to understand the truth, that there was more here than met the eye.

"He's also my…" Her voice trailed off. They hadn't discussed any of that. The future, commitment, roles. Words flashed through her mind to finish that sentence and some of them made her want to cringe. Lover? Boyfriend? Man? Mate? She didn't know which one applied and looked up into Klaus' eyes to find him smiling warmly down at her.

Klaus' eyes spoke for him where her words had failed her. He stepped close and held out a hand to her father.

He said, "I am Niklaus. And she has it right. I am hers. I will be to your daughter whatever she will allow me to be."

Jack took Klaus' hand with one of his bandaged ones and shook it solemnly before he turned and gave Milla the -we will talk later- look she knew so well. Milla was smiling though, and couldn't seem to stop. They were facing a nightmare and she was smiling like an idiot.