I own nothing. Also, there is a lot of mention of abuse and rape in this. If you don't want to hear about it, then don't read it.

Ridley rolled over in bed and started awake when she came in contact with cold sheets. She sat up slowly and pushed the covers away from herself as she threw her legs over the side of the bed and reached for the closest bit of clothing. She stumbled into a pair of jeans and the tee-shirt Adam had worn earlier that day and then fumbled to pull her sweatshirt over her head. She wandered downstairs to the kitchen in a groggy daze and poured herself a glass of water, leaning heavily on the counter. She scowled grumpily at the large muddy paw prints on the floor and gulped down her glass of water.

"Panzer," she hissed, "you are in big trouble, Mister!"

She stamped her naked foot on the cold kitchen floor and stalked through the downstairs on tiptoe in search for the misbehaving dog. "Panzer! Come here, now!"

When Ridley came back to the kitchen, no sign of Panzer, she scowled at the large doggy door in the back door. She'd have to wait till morning to yell at him. She leaned back against the counter and looked up at the calendar on the refrigerator. There was two weeks until Evelyn's annual Christmas Ball that she'd skipped the previous year and then a New Year's Eve Fundraiser for Spenser's the week after. She shook her head as she looked over the calendar a second time. "Rich people sure do love their fancy dances."

She set her empty glass in the sink and turned back around to head back to bed when she noticed something on the calendar. Ridley flipped on the light and swore. Ridley really didn't think she could handle telling Adam he had eaten his dog when he turned into a werewolf the night before and wondered briefly as she opened the back door if she were insane. She grabbed the flashlight from one of the drawers in afterthought and stepped out into the backyard and screamed when her bare feet hit the partially frozen ground below. She hopped up and down for a second, cursing as she went.

"Panzer," she whispered into the dark, "if you're not dead, get your ass back here right now!"

Something whined off to her right and Ridley shined the flashlight in its direction. Relief washed over her when she saw him huddled up in a thick patch of bushes by the side of the house. "Oh, Panzer, come on, let's go back inside."

Panzer scuttled back further away from her and Ridley reached out toward him. "C'mon, let's go in." He whimpered and she hushed him. "Oh, come on, I promise I won't be mad for the mud if you come in."

He shrunk further away and Ridley caught the low rumbling behind her. Ridley's breath hitched in her throat and she felt herself begin to shake. "Please, don't be who I think it is."

Ridley turned slowly around and clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. She slowly backed up in Panzer's direction and she stared at the slavering creature in front of her. Ridley kept her hand over her mouth as she stared up at the wolf before her. It snarled at her, revealing its long razor sharp teeth and Ridley fought the urge to wretch when she caught wind of its rancid breath. Despite how petrified she was, she couldn't stop staring; if she were going to die then what did it matter if she did a bit of staring at the werewolf that was about to eat her? It towered over her, with a hunched back as it bent to stand face to face with her and dug its claws into the ground. For a moment all she could do was watch as it scraped the ground with its massive clawed hand like appendages, squeezing handfuls of dirt. Her eyes traveled back up and over its matted, thick fur and she was finally able to find her voice. She let out an ear splitting scream at its pointed ears and large, angry pale eyes and an entirely too canine face contorted as it smiled at her in an all too cruel way.

It flattened its ears as it moved closer and Ridley began to shiver in panic. It wasn't looking at her like it was hungry for food. Ridley thought of her father for a moment and panic and rage morphed into one and the flashlight flew out of her hand and hit the creature right in the face. Ridley might have laughed at its startled expression if she hadn't been aware of how dire her situation was, but she was alone, outmatched, and without any sort of weapon to defend herself and she screamed again. However, the flashlight seemed to have annoyed it enough that now she was sure it really was planning on only eating her and a small part of her felt relieved at that.

It gnashed its teeth and moved to step toward her, and Ridley squeezed her eyes shut at the thudding sound it made as it neared her and waited. And waited. And waited. She slowly opened one eye. It had backed away quite a bit and though it still looked more than a little angry and ready to gobble her up it wasn't looking at her. It crouched low to the ground and growled at whatever it was behind her that was approaching. The frigid air around her warmed slightly and Ridley jumped when a large huff of warm breath whooshed over her head. Whatever was behind her growled ominously and she actually felt the ground hum from the low sound; something in it was familiar and without hesitation, she backed up toward it. It stepped up behind her and she latched onto its foreleg and buried her face in its black fur. There was a surprised hitch in its growling and Ridley looked up.

Even as a werewolf, he still managed to give her that overly soft look that made her toes curl and her heart ache in just the right way. He looked away, toward the other wolf and the soft look was gone. Suddenly he was snarling and enraged and all sharp teeth and Ridley was a bit frightened when he opened his jaws and roared. Ridley wasn't given enough time to grasp the idea that werewolves roared because he'd had managed to shove her out of harm's way just as the other wolf lunged forward.

Ridley landed in a spindly bush and tried to push herself up from the ground and her eyes darted between the two frantically. The other wolf had managed to get him by the throat and he couldn't get a good hold on him. While he managed to slash deep into its torso with his claws, it wasn't enough to dislodge him and it was becoming harder and harder for him to catch his breath. Ridley looked around wildly for a moment for something to hit it with and fell over herself as she scrambled toward the side of the house and the rusted shovel half buried under a thick pile of dirt. Ridley ripped it from the ground and ran back with it, screaming, "Get off him!"

He turned toward her and Ridley brought it down on the other wolf's back forcefully, wincing at the crunch it made as it came down. It yelped in pain and promptly let go, turning toward her. Ridley swung again, catching it across the jaw. It staggered slightly and lunged toward her, but he was quicker. He swatted at it, raking it across the face and it howled in agony, but he didn't let up. His naturally blue eyes glazed over at the smell of blood and he tore into his adversary. Ridley sank back against the house, breathing heavily, and she let the shovel fall from her hands with a resounding thud. I'm not seeing this, she thought frantically as she watched him literally tear her attacker limb from limb. She covered her mouth with both hands to keep from crying out loud and shut her eyes tightly, only opening them when the sound of bones snapping and flesh ripping stopped.

He was staring down at the mangled body with an almost regretful look on his face and when their eyes finally met she saw just how sad he was. He let out a barely audible whine and Ridley picked herself up from the ground gingerly. She flinched at the body, particularly when her eyes came to rest on the unnatural way the mouth was open, jaw hanging halfway off of the skull. The large scar over one eye made her gasp. The strange man from the alleyway.

Everything finally sank in and Ridley gasped for air as she started to cry and she reached out an unseeing hand. He was there, licking at her face and hands and growling in an almost soothing way as he sniffed at her, his sharp eyes worried as he watched her. Ridley wrapped her arms around his muzzle and kissed him on his nose and every other place she could reach. He wheezed slightly and Ridley's heart seized in her chest when she realized how tired he looked. Remembering, what had happened, she ran her hand over his throat and started to cry again. "Oh, God, Adam, you're bleeding out!"

She led him to the front door and broke through the front glass and unlocked the door and she pulled him into the house. She tried to ignore the sound of his blood as it spilled to the floor or the way his breathing was beginning to sound wetter and more labored. His paws went out from under him and he collapsed on the floor pinning her legs under his head. Ridley whipped her sweatshirt over her head and pressed it to his neck and turned as far away from him toward the coffee table as she could, reaching for the phone. She managed to knock it off the edge and toward her and fumbled with it for a moment until she realized she couldn't remember Martin's number and instead started to call Burko. He whined up at her at her and looked to the phone in her hands and realized that she couldn't call for help. If she did, everyone would know.

"Adam, God, what do I do?"

"Please, you can't die, you can't-I love you, you can't die," she sobbed hysterically. His blue eyes looked up at her calmly, almost peacefully and he licked her hand. She could barely see past her tears and the phone dropped from her hand. "I never said it, did I-I didn't-God, it won't stop! I can't get it to stop-"

"Ridley." Ridley calmed down enough to see straight. She pulled him closer and backed up against the couch. She pulled the throw blanket off the couch and covered him with it. He was shivering. "Don't talk. Don't talk."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm-" Ridley stifled another sob, "I'm fine. It's you I'm worried about."

"I got a little banged up." He coughed and Ridley wiped the blood from his lips. "You took the wolf thing pretty good."

Ridley wiped at her burning eyes and pressed down harder on his neck. "I already knew. Stop talking. You don't have anything to say that can't wait."

He tried to laugh and ended up coughing up more blood. "You mean what you said?"

"What?" Ridley wiped at his mouth again. One of his hands clamped down on her shoulder in what should have been an iron grip but was instead barely grasping. "What you just said."

Ridley's eyes closed momentarily and she broke down as she nodded. "I love you. So much it hurts." He reached up toward her again and she bent over him and kissed his lips. "I love you."

"Good, tell me again when I wake up will ya," he croaked out and Ridley shook him when he closed his eyes. "No, no, no, no! Don't go to sleep! You have to stay awake. Don't you dare do this to me!"

"I'll be fine, I just need to sleep," he rasped out. Ridley shook her head furiously. "If you go to sleep, you won't wake up."

"I will, promise," he murmured against her sluggishly, "just don't…don't go."

Ridley inhaled raggedly and combed her fingers through his hair. "I won't. I'm staying right here."

His breathing lapsed into shallow pants and Ridley rested her head on the edge of the couch. She couldn't look at him right then. Seeing all the blood and knowing it was his was the most terrifying thing in the world to her. She looked back down at the sweater held to his neck and lifted it away cautiously. He wasn't bleeding very much anymore; it had almost completely stopped. But no matter how relieved she was at the sight of his blood having staunched, she couldn't stop crying. She threaded her fingers through his hair and rested her cheek against his temple.

She started when she felt a hand sweep over her tangled hair and pulled back to find him staring up at her with startlingly blue eyes. To tears that flooded her eyes were tears of joy and sniffed. He watched her wipe at the blood streaked across his face with a gentle touch. "You stayed."

"Of course, I stayed," she sniffed. He pulled himself up into sitting position, and brought a hand up to his neck, rubbing the wounded area. "That was pretty close," he muttered to himself. Ridley pushed his hand away and studied the gash. It was already closed up, but it was still an angry shade of pink.

"You're not supposed to keep secrets like this from me, Adam."

He looked dejected. "Are you gonna leave then?"

Ridley's eyes widened and she shook her head, cupping his face in her hands. "Never."

There was a pained expression on his face even though he seemed relieved. "Never's too long for you."

She watched him for a moment. "Guess you lied about a couple things to hide this."

"I didn't want to," he confessed, head hanging as she regarded him with a neutral expression. "But…you wouldn't have…you woulda never looked at me twice."

"Adam, I've been looking at you since I met you, you stupid man. Besides, I'm not exactly as normal as you think I am either. And if this was such a problem for you, if this bothered you so much, then why are you still here with me?" She watched as the sky outside fade into light, signaling the onset of dawn. "Why didn't you just walk away?"

"Because it hurts." Ridley's gaze snapped back to him at the painful note in his voice. "When you're not here-when I'm not with you, I hurt. And all I can do is think about how much I miss the way you make my blood burn and my insides tear."

He looked up at her finally and the helpless, loving expression on his face made her heart beat painfully. He raised a hand to cup her face gently. "I've been without you for so long, waiting for you to come back, that I couldn't walk away."

Ridley's brow furrowed in confusion. "Come back? Where'd I go?"

Adam smiled, but didn't answer. "I love you."

Ridley's confusion evaporated and she smiled at him shyly. "I love you, too."

He looked around at the living room and winced at the amount of blood. "Boy, I really did make a mess."

He pulled himself up off the floor and oblivious to the fact that he was naked. He scratched at his jaw. "I'm gonna start cleaning this all up. You oughta go back to bed."

When Ridley didn't answer he looked back at her to ask her if she was okay, but the question died on his lips at the way Ridley was staring at him. It was almost as if she was trying to decide between laughing or jumping him. He raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Um, you're kind of sort of really naked," she pointed out, the corners of her mouth turning up in amusement though her voice had that bedroom lilt to it. He looked down at himself, eyes tracking over the dried blood crusted against his exposed skin. "Huh. Got blood all over me, too."

Ridley nodded and he scrubbed a hand through his hair, staring at the front door. His expression darkened. "I'm gonna take a shower and…"

Adam's shoulders sagged lower the longer he stared past the front door. "…then I'll go clean up the mess outside."

He started toward the stairs and her voice stopped him. "Adam, who was that?"

He didn't look at her as he spoke, "My brother."

Ridley froze in place as what he had said sunk in and Adam ascended the stairs. He'd killed his brother to protect her. Like her, he didn't really rely on his family, wasn't close to them, but it had obviously been a painful thing for him to do. She tiptoed up the stairs. She could hear the sound of the shower running in the bathroom at the end of the hall. Ridley opened the door as quietly as possible and closed it just as quietly. She stripped off her bloodied clothes and slipped into the shower behind and silently wrapped her arms around him, resting her cheek in between his shoulder blades and her hands over his heart. He covered her smaller hands with one of his larger ones and squeezed them as they stood under the steaming water pouring from the shower head in silence.

Ridley was more than a little surprised to find Burko standing at the front door the next night with a trash bag full of clothes and his guitar. He had a black eye and the hand holding his guitar was bandaged.

"What the fuck happened to you," she cried, scowling at him as she yanked him through the door. Adam called from the kitchen, "Who is it?"

"Burko," Ridley called back in an annoyed voice, glaring at her best friend, "he got his ass kicked."

"Yeah, and then the landlady kicked me out of the house," Burko snapped back. He looked angry. "A bunch of people were over at the house just hanging out and then these guys I've never seen before come over and start tearing shit up."

"Wow, she actually kicked you out," Ridley asked in surprise, "I didn't think she'd ever do it! I mean, this is definitely not the first time a bunch of people you didn't know come to a party uninvited and start busting shit up."

"Yeah, well, these guys lit the house on fire," Burko grumbled. He flexed his injured hand, ignoring her astonished look. "They lit the fire when I told them to leave for practically ransacking the place looking for whatever the fuck they were looking for. One of them bit me!"

Ridley's mouth fell open and Adam emerged from the kitchen with an equally disbelieving look on his face. "He bit you?!"

"Yeah," Burko yelled, "he bit me!"

He began to peel back the bloody bandage. "And it hurt like hell!"

Ridley stepped forward to study the bite marks. She ran her finger over the angry, red, crescent shape. "Wow."

Burko frowned in consternation and yanked his hand away from her to study it himself, muttering, "It looked a lot worse earlier."

"Well, it still looks pretty deep…"

Adam picked up the trash bag and jerked his head in the direction of the stairs. "I'll put this in the guest room."

Burko continued to stare at his wounded hand as he asked her once he was sure Adam was out of earshot, "So, Sarah told me you didn't go to help set up for the ball today like you said you would."

Ridley nodded, though she knew Burko wasn't looking at her and couldn't see her silent admission. "Panzer ran off last night and we can't find him."

"He ran off," Burko asked in surprise, "but…he's like the best behaved dog I've ever met."

"I know." Ridley sat down slowly on the couch. "Adam's more upset about it than he's letting on."

Burko leaned up against the wall and rubbed at his face in a very tired way. "Weirdest thing ever…"

Ridley would have agreed if it hadn't been for the night before. Adam came back downstairs and she remembered the way he had filled the night before-how overwhelmingly big he had been. And she had thought before then he was big and intimidating, but now. Ridley wanted to be frightened and she knew she should be, but she couldn't bring herself to ignore all of it and leave. He leaned up against the wall opposite from Burko, arms crossed, muscles bulging. He nodded at Burko's hand. "You want anything for that? We don't exactly have things to take care of it, but I can pour some whiskey over it."

Burko looked over at Ridley with a look that said, "Is he for real?!"

She shrugged in a sheepish manner. "Well, it's not like we go around getting bitten by things. You really should have gone to Gloucester and gotten that looked at."

"Well, I kind of was in shock that a fully grown man lit my house on fire and then bit me!"

Ridley scowled at him and started to get up and Adam held out a hand for her to sit back down. She watched him questioningly, but eased back into her place on the couch and watched as he led Burko back to the kitchen.

Ridley leaned her elbows on her knees and ran a hand through her dark hair. She really didn't want to deal with Burko right then. She and Adam still hadn't spoken about what had happened or where they were going to go from there. He hadn't even attempted to explain this other side of himself and she knew she should be mad that he had hidden this important detail from her, but she still hadn't told her about the boys. She wasn't really sure it was her place to do so and it was possible that he had felt the same way about telling her. It was obvious it ran in his family.

Ridley thought about his brother; he'd killed his own brother to save her. It was more than likely he was in need of time before they talked, but if they put it off for too long, nothing could be done and they wouldn't last. She didn't want to read that book. She didn't want it to end up being the elephant in the room that they tiptoed around and she didn't want to read about it from some book. She wanted to hear it from him. To know how this would affect them.

The entire day had been spent in tense silence cleaning up the blood and broken glass. He had told her to stay inside while he buried his brother's body in the far corner of the yard, just near the thick lining of trees. She'd watched him through the kitchen window as he stood by the grave, smoking a cigar, eyes downcast. It had started snowing then and he'd looked so alone and it had hit her. He was alone in this all the time. Despite all the horrible things that had happened to her as she'd grown up, she had had Burko to lean on and then she'd had more people to get her through upon attending Spenser.

Even though it was clear he knew Nicky and Nicky was somehow involved and he had Martin, they all seemed so detached from one another. He did need her, just as she needed him. Still, the less assured part of her made her wonder if he'd only picked her because he knew she would accept it. How many other women had he chosen to share this with?

Just the thought of the possibility of another woman in her place, made her angry and propelled herself up off the couch toward the stairs. She didn't want to deal with Burko; he didn't like Adam and she knew he would snipe about something and like an irate idiot, she would snap back at him. Instead, she closeted herself in the bathroom and turned the shower on making sure it the water was as hot as she could get it. She stepped into the shower and let the steaming, burning hot water scald her skin, watched as her skin turned bright pink. It calmed her down some; she was now as tender and hurt outside as she was inside.

She heard the door to the bathroom shut almost silently and didn't need to guess who it was.

"Got the water on pretty hot."

"I'm upset," she snapped, shutting off the shower and stepping out. She tugged her clothes on angrily, staring heatedly into Adam's startled face. It took her a moment to understand why he was so surprised. She was fighting him, starting a fight with him. But it had to be done.

"You should have told me!"

His eyebrows dropped down and he scowled as he hissed out in annoyance. "So I was just supposed to say, 'Baby, I love you an' by th'way, I'm a werewolf'?!"

"Yes," she hissed back. He let out a disbelieving and harsh laugh. "You would have left me!"

"Like I didn't do last night," she shot back, trying to keep from raising her voice, "If I had planned on leaving you, I would have done it last night instead of keeping you from dying."

She remembered the sight of all of his blood pooled on the floor and the sound of his raspy breathing and covered her mouth with her hand and turned away from him. "You almost died."

"So did you." Just the soft tone of his voice, the hurt it held caused her to shake. His large hands closed around her arms and he gently tugged her back against his chest. She wiped at her eyes as he dropped a kiss on her shoulder. "Ugh, you still smell like that awful cigar."

"Smoke never bothered you before," he said quietly. She could hear the concern in his voice. "No, it didn't."

"You okay?"

She nodded against him and let him turn her to him. She let him hold her in silence. They both needed it just then and it felt so nice to have his bulk wrapped around her like an unbreakable shield. It was warm, safe, gentle, and loving inside, but hard, dangerous, and savage on the outside. She scratched at his back with her fingertips in soothing, looping circles.

"I'm sorry about your brother," she murmured into the center of his chest, feeling the thrumming and erratic beat of his heart against her lips.

"Don't be." His arms tightened around her. She looked up at him and stared into his impossibly blue eyes. "But it still hurts; I know it does-not having family."

He jostled her gently in his arms and kissed the tip of her nose. "You're all the family I need."

"You sure about that? Because I think you'd fit in pretty good with the set up I have with-"

He shook his head, cutting her off and she couldn't help but frown. "You don't know them."

"And they don't wanna know me." He rubbed a hand down his face. "And I'm worried about what's happening. My brother came after you. I didn't even know he was here. And now someone's bitten Burko."

"But why would anyone…why would your brother attack someone close to you?"

"I think that's something that we should talk about in our bedroom and not in the bathroom within earshot of Burko."

Reid seated himself on the wet steps and lit up his cigarette. He barely looked up when the door opened and he heard someone approach him. They sat down beside him and he caught a flash of blond hair. "What do you want?"

"I'm worried about my sister," Christine said, leaning close to him to try to get him to look at her. "She won't answer my calls."

"That's because you were a bitch to her." He puffed on his cigarette and stared at the burning end of it. "I apologized to her. You haven't. We did a lot of messed up shit to her."

"I want to apologize," she admitted, wrapping her arms around her middle. "But I'm still angry with her for what she said about our Dad."

"Your Dad is one fucked up asshole. How many times have you seen him, huh? Maybe he wasn't like that around you, which is good, but you don't know. You haven't seen what I've seen, what Caleb and Sarah and Tyler and Pogue and Kate have seen. You didn't see her after he-" Reid's voice broke and he looked away, "-you didn't see what she looked like after he raped her."

His face felt hot and he wiped at the dampness running small trails down his face. "She was just sitting under the showerheads in the locker room in her clothes, crying and scrubbing. Burko had to carry her out. God, I want to kill myself for what I've done to her. Knowing how terrible she had it and I still messed with her. I still fucked with her head."

"So it is true then," she whispered quietly, "it really did happen. All those terrible things she said happened to her were real."

"Why wouldn't you believe her? Why would someone lie about something like that, Chris? Why?"

She shook her head. "It was just easier telling myself she was lying so that I could pretend it never happened to either of us."

Reid couldn't feel his arms or his legs and his entire being filled with freezing pain at her admission. "God, Chris? Why didn't you ever say anything?"

"And say what," she asked desperately, "how was I supposed to tell my boyfriend that my father fucked me? That I was too afraid to do anything but let it happen and pretend nothing was wrong? Why do you think I was so happy to leave?"

She stamped down on a patch of snow at the bottom of the steps. "It was hard on me. Wanting and not wanting to leave. To get away from him, I had to let go of you. It wasn't fair."

Reid just stared back down at his cigarette and Christine rose and went back inside. He looked back out at the snow covered ground. "No, it never is."

Ridley paced back and forth at the foot of the bed. "So, you're how old?"

Adam winced. "I'm pretty old."

"But you can't just die of natural causes. Someone has to kill you." He nodded and she continued to pace. She tensed the slightest bit and looked up at him. "Were you latent?"

He sat up straighter in surprise. "What?"

She avoided hi startled gaze. "Latent? Were you latent?"

Adam shook his head. "Latency is rare. Hell, I've been alive for centuries and I've only heard of latent wolves. I mean, I suppose it's possible I've passed a couple dormant ones on the street…they're other half isn't awake so you can't smell it on them."

"You can smell it?"

He gave her a look. "Well, of course. At the country club, I could smell you the minute you stepped out of the limo."

She sat down on the end of the bed. "Why did your brother attack me?"

Adam let out a long sigh and mussed his hair in thought as he fell back against the headboard of the bed with a dull 'thunk'. "Well, that's kind of a long story. D'you want just the general gist of it or all of it?"

"All of it."

He shifted uncomfortably as if he hadn't wanted her to pick that option. "My father's pack still believes in the old ways and me and my brother were a part of it until we grew older and threatened his place as pack leader. We were thrown out. It happens to most males, except for the betas.

Well, in his pack-the beliefs they have-most of us don't believe in what they believe. They're perfectly fine with running down humans and killing them. They don't eat them; they do it for the thrill of the hunt. Sometimes, with women…"

His eyes grew infinitely sad as he watched her shrink at the implication of his words, but continued, "Sometimes, the women survive it and they kill them, which is better because the ones that get left alive don't really ever-they don't come back from it.

I never believed in that. I was kicked out earlier than my brother and I ran by myself for a while, but I met up with some others like me who didn't think it was right to kill unless it was for a greater good. Our pack was good, but my father's pack was poison. You had nothing with them. If you had something my father wanted, you gave to him without question. Loot, you share of a kill, a woman…he had six mates and all of them miserable. After I was born, my mother killed herself. My brother's mother killed herself, too."

"We killed some men ransacking…they killed the father and they had the baby and they were trying to get the mother to-we killed them." He rubbed at his eyes. "They were frightened, but thankful and we had an alliance with them for a time. We protected them and they gave us whatever we needed. It wasn't much, but at the time it was more than we'd ever get. But they were still afraid of us and then my brother came back."

Ridley placed her hand over his. She could feel the pain radiating from him. He gave her a thankful smile, but she could tell it didn't help much. "I don't know why, but my brother wanted back in our father's pack. And he spent years trying to win him over. When he saw the set up we had, he went back and told him and the two packs merged. There weren't enough of us and a lot of us were killed. Our pack had finally begun to find a place and we were starting to get along with the humans we were protecting and they came. And they took everything from us."

Ridley didn't know what to say and so she hugged him and kissed him until she felt him relax and the tension melt out of his body. "Somehow, I think you're leaving some things out."

"For the better." He looked at her seriously. "If my brother was here, my father isn't far behind."

She looked away from him for a moment. "You said you can be killed…how?"

He gave her a questioning look and she gulped. "Next time you may not be there."

Adam nodded in understanding, and wrapped his arms around her tighter. "There's the standard silver, but just touching it doesn't do a thing. Not enough of it penetrates the skin to do any more damage the an allergy rash. You gotta cut us with it. You can shoot the shit out of us, but you have to hit us where it's gonna hurt most and most people don't have very good aim and those that do get spooked when they see a giant werewolf barrelin' down on 'em."

He pulled away from her. "Honey, if you've ever got the chance, you shoot 'em in the stomach as many times as you can, it slows them down. But if you've got a shot at the neck, you take it and you empty your gun out on him."

"Is that all?" she asked. There would be no chance of survival for her if all she had to rely on was her aim with a gun. She'd never used one before. He must have understood her distraught look because he tugged on a lock of her dark hair and smiled at her. "I won't let nothin' happen to you. But you do need to know what to do, how to defend yourself."

He gave her a thoughtful look. "Don't know where you're gonna find someone who can do what it takes, but as lame and, well clichéd as it sounds on the 'things that go bump in the night' list: Magic."

She gave him an incredulous look. He laughed at her expression and rubbed her back with a large hand. "Hey, you may think I'm kidding, but it's out there and if it's powerful enough; just one hit can drop a wolf my size. I'd prefer to go out that way then at the burning stench of Wolfs bane. That way, it drops you, but your insides start to boil and you start coughing up blood. Used to be, back in the day, witches used it to catch one of us. They burned just a little; just enough to incapacitate one of us so they could catch us and cut us up for things. Even just a little burned is enough to make you sick. You start feeling like the world is fallin' out from under you and you're swimmin' in air and it gets hot like a furnace and then you start bleedin'; sometimes out your eyes, sometimes out your mouth, but they usually make sure it's just a nose bleed. Your eyes or mouth start leakin' like they done too much damage to you."

Ridley forced herself not to focus on the old lady in the shop. "People still hunt you down like animals, too."

"Those that know of us usually see us as one of two things: men and women, or animals no better than rabid dogs. Most people pick the latter more'n the former. I don't blame them. There's a large enough group of us out there who aren't any better than a rabid dog."

Ridley sat up and away from him and tucked her legs up against her chest. Adam watched her in concern. She looked so scared of him just then and his chest started to heave painfully. She picked at the sheets on the bed, ridding them of imaginary lint. "Adam, don't be mad, but I have something important to tell you."

He sat up straighter as well, his eyes roaming over her face. "What's wrong, Ridley?"

"You have to promise not to kill them or hurt them," she whispered, "I don't want them hurt."

He fell back again with a neutral expression on his face. "So the rumors are true then? They have the power."

Ridley nodded, hanging her head. "Don't hurt them, please. They don't know about you and I won't tell them. But you need to know. They may try to use it on you as a prank and if it could hurt you…."

He just nodded. "I won't hurt them," he promised, patting her spot beside him in bed. "Now, let's go to sleep. We gotta go look for our dog again tomorrow."

"We still have a lot to talk about."

"I know."

A/N: If this has gotten confusing, I'm really sorry, but I didn't want to put out there what exactly was going on. And there will be more explaining the further this goes. More characters will be added to both replace characters that will be leaving and to fill in spaces that need to be filled. I know this has been OC heavy the past few chapters, but it's going to deal with ALL of them in the end and this has pretty much been set up for upcoming events. I'm also sorry I didn't update this sooner because the next part is kind of Christmasy and stuff and now you it's late but my chritmas was drama filled and I didn't have time to even start cleaning up that chapter for posting.

If you have questions or are confused, I will be more than happy to explain anything you are having trouble with. When I have the time, I reply to reviews where people ask questions. So, ask away if need be and I hope you enjoyed this chapter.