A/N: Hii, sorry again about the late chap, but thanks for the reviews, faves, and alerts! ;)

We're speeding up to the episode "Masquerade", which means that Cosette is a lot different from before, so... let's see if Damon can tell that :D

Enjoy!

xoxo Ascha

Chapter 21:

The Lockwood Mansion was filled with masked people outside as well as inside when Cosette arrived in Mystic Falls. She too wore a beautiful dress and mask, but she knew that even with the mask she would be recognized by her friends.

Before she stepped out of the car she leaned forward towards her human chauffeur and bit down into his neck, draining him for blood and ripping his throat open, but carefully trying not to stain her dress. She knew that she was going to want to kill again soon, but for now he would do. She took out a tissue and removed the blood residue and then stepped out of the car.

Cosette headed towards the massive crowd of people at the entrance and scanned the beautiful 19th century mansion for anyone she knew. She instantly spotted an old friend of hers and the smirk on her lips grew wider. She hadn't thought that it would be that easy to find Katherine, but that only meant that Katherine was still trying hard to get what she wanted, which of course was Stefan.

Calmly, Cosette walked up to Katherine and the dark skinned witch she was talking with and saw the frightened look on the witch's face when they accidentally touched. She winced back, but when Katherine spotted her she smiled and that made her friend relax a bit.

"Cosette? What a surprise to find you here!" she said, taking a bite of a red strawberry.

"Tell your little witch to leave us alone for a moment," Cosette said without showing any emotion at all in her face. This alarmed Katherine, but she told her friend to leave. "I'm done playing games with you, Katherine. Why are you here? And don't tell me it's only because of Stefan or because you want to kill Klaus, because we both know that there's no way for you to do that."

"What's with the sudden change of personality?"

Cosette smirked and stepped closer to Katherine with a sinister look in her eyes. "Katerina, you sure you want the answer to that?"

When Katherine didn't say anything Cosette decided to leave and took a glass of champagne with her outside where she saw another massive crowd of people. It seemed that almost the entire town had come tonight to the masquerade and it was particularly on nights like these where Cosette liked to go hunting. Not only were the teens too distracted with having fun, but they were also drunk and unable to see her coming, until her teeth were in their skin and they were being ripped apart.

"Cosette!" she suddenly heard someone familiar exclaim.

Cosette took a sip of her drink and turned around to face Damon, who was all dressed up in a simple black suit and who too wore a mask that covered half of his face. Damon was obviously relieved and shocked about seeing her there alive, while she remained emotionless and unable to understand what her human side loved about him.

"What… happened to you?" Damon asked worriedly, cupping her face in his hands.

"I… honestly don't remember much of what happened," she lied as Klaus had told her to. "One minute I was standing outside the university and the next I was locked up in a cellar. Yaotl held me captive for what felt like months, but… I managed to escape and just ran as fast as I could back to Mystic Falls. Damon, I'm so sorry…"

Cosette wrapped her arms around him and let out crocodile tears, but Damon seemed to believe her and hugged her tighter than he'd ever done before. He kissed her, wiped her tears away, and told her that he'd been searching for what actually had been months for her. A part of her still cared about him and loved him, but that part was being suppressed by the predator inside her.

"God, you're shaking… You really shouldn't be here." Damon said, looking worriedly around.

"No, I'm not leaving you again, Damon. I'm staying, but… is there a reason why you're here?" Cosette asked, noticing how tense he was tonight.

Damon nodded and showed wrote down in a text what they were up to, so Katherine wouldn't find out that they were actually trying to capture her. Cosette was surprised to hear that they were actually trying to capture Katherine, but it was a pleasant surprise because that meant that she didn't have to do it for Klaus. She offered her help, but Damon was more concerned about her well-being, so he told her to wait at the parking lot instead.

"I'll text you if I need your help," he said, caressing her cheek gently. "Just go to Bonnie and Jeremy and wait with them."

"Okay, but be careful Damon. I was the one who taught Katherine how to fight, so you better do it quickly before she gets to you…" Cosette said and pressed her lips against hiss, kissing him passionately and feeling a weak tingling sensation in her body.

Damon smiled and said those three magical words that used to make her feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but she didn't reply back and just left. She couldn't make herself say it, because the predator was trying so hard to make sure that her old self disappeared completely. But she found Bonnie and Jeremy in the parking lot and to her surprise Elena was also there, dressed in her normal clothes and looking worried of what was going on.

"Elena!" she exclaimed and hurried to hug her.

"Cosette! Oh, thank God you're alive!" Elena exclaimed, distracted from the reason why she even came to the Lockwood Mansion in the first place.

Cosette told Elena, Bonnie, and Jeremy the same lie and finally heard how they were planning to capture Katherine. However, Elena suddenly began bleeding from different places on her body and wounds appeared out of nowhere, which made Cosette smirk mentally. She was impressed by Katherine's backup plan, but she didn't want this backup plan to be Katherine's way out of their plan, so she used her powers to remove the linking spell and eased the pain Elena was feeling. Once Elena was healed I left the parking lot and hurried back inside the mansion, finding Damon, Katherine, and Stefan inside one of the rooms upstairs. Damon was pinning Katherine to the wall and threatening to stake her, but Stefan pulled him away.

"Ah, Miss Moody has come back," Katherine said, smirking smugly. "Have you told Damon that Cosette is no longer present in your mind?"

Damon frowned and looked confusedly at Katherine and then at Cosette, who tried looking innocent and like her old self. Luckily, Katherine's friend showed up and distracted them all, but unfortunately she had the moonstone that Cosette knew belonged to Klaus. She would know, because she was the one who helped him find it after it was used to curse him.

"Stealing things that don't belong to you? Now that's not very nice Katherine, is it?" she asked, knowingly that Katherine knew who the stone rightfully belonged to.

"Says the girl who is hiding a monster worse than… another certain monster," Katherine answered, her smirk turning mischievous. "Go ahead. Tell Damon about how–"

The moment Katherine was given the moonstone by her friend Lucy she collapsed and began gasping for air. She eventually fainted and the Salvatore brothers helped each other carrying her out to the parking lot and drove her to the tomb under the ruins of Fell's Church where she should have been all along.

Cosette didn't say a word during the entire trip and stayed in the car when Damon took Katherine to the tomb and locked her inside it. He returned with a somber look on his face and drove them back to the Salvatore Boarding House and just as Cosette thought that she would actually get away with her lies and make him accept that she truly was back just like that, Damon suddenly stopped and turned to her.

"What did she mean when she said that 'Cosette is no longer present in your mind'?" he asked.

"I don't know," Cosette lied. "Maybe she was just trying to get between us. That's what she does, Damon. She's a manipulative and egocentric bitch and she'll always be that."

Damon hesitated, but nodded understandingly and pulled her in for a tight embrace that made her heart beat a little faster. The predator inside her tried ignoring it, but it was hard because this part of her that was in control now had been dormant for so many centuries. It needed to regain its strength and the best way to do that was to kill someone.

"I'm truly happy that you're back," Damon whispered softly in her ear, kissing her gently on her cheek, jaw, and neck. "I love you so much."

There it was again.

Cosette kissed him instead this time and felt the longing for her in his kisses. She let out a soft growl and allowed him to deepen the kiss. She felt her feral instincts take over and jumped up him, locking her legs around his waist. She kissed him more ferociously and the intensity of the burning desire inside her was almost too much for Damon to handle, but he let her tore his clothes off and took her to his bedroom in a flash.

Cosette pushed him down on his king-size bed and tore her own clothes off quicker than Damon could blink. She held him pinned to the mattress as they made love and her behavior became wilder and more animalistic for every minute that went. Damon winced in pain as she clawed him, but he was determined that her wild behavior was nothing but her missing him more than he thought.

However, Cosette realized what she was doing and restrained herself much to her pleasure, so Damon wouldn't suspect anything. She let him love her like in the old times and could sense that her good side was enjoying this more than the predator's wild and ferocious behavior.

"Someone's been missing me…" Damon said teasingly, pushing a sweaty stray strand of hair behind her ear. She smiled and ran her fingers through his dark hair. Parts of him reminded her of Klaus, but she knew deep inside that Klaus was out of his league in just about everything. "Since when did you become so… wild in bed?"

"Since I spent months in a dirty old dungeon," she lied, but in reality she had just been out hunting with Klaus and killing dozens of innocent people. "But tell me what you've been up to while I was gone. I want to help and make sure that Elena is safe."

"Cosette, you've just fled from Caleb, who has been holding you prisoner. Are you sure you're ready to continue?"

Cosette hesitated on purpose and that was enough answer for Damon. He kissed her gently and let her rest her head on his shoulder.

"Let me take care of this. You've done enough and deserve to rest," he said. "And from now on you tell me if something is wrong. I know I'm not into all that emotional crap, but… for you I'll try."

Cosette smiled weakly and gave him a real kiss – one that both her sides wanted to give him. "But you really don't have to worry about me. I've been through worse."

"Yes, I do. I'm your smoking hot boyfriend, remember?"

She giggled and the old part of her managed to shine through, but only because the predator allowed it, so Damon wouldn't become suspicious.

"You can be such a sweetheart, you know," Cosette teased, making Damon wrinkle his nose in disgust. "It's a good thing, silly. But that doesn't mean I want you to become a saint."

Damon sighed in relief. "Thank God! I wouldn't want to become a vegetarian like Steffie..."

Neither would the predator.

Thanks for reading and please review! :D