Disclaimer:

Anything you recognise does not belong to me; I'm simply playing around with Alan Ball's and HBO's lovely universe and delectable characters.

Author's Note/ Ratings Warning:

Graphic, mature contents ahead. Sorry?

xXx

25

Eric woke me up by repeating my name and tugging on the arm I had wrapped around his shoulder while I slept.

I didn't want to wake – I'd thought I might dream of evil witches and dying snakes, but as it turned out, my sleep once again provided me with a lovely dream of Godric, though it was less sexual in nature than usual and probably brought on by being held safely against a strong, cool body all night.

But reality – and a persistent, pesky vampire – was calling, so I reluctantly peeled my eyelids open. "What?"

"It's almost dawn – I can feel it pulling." He stared down into my eyes, blonde brows furrowed. "You have to silver me."

Reality was a bitch.

Nodding groggily I sat up and scooted off his lap so I could regain my bearings, eyes landing on the bag of chains that was still on the floor.

It was funny, really. A few months ago the chance to silver Eric would frankly have made me quite excited. Now… I glanced at his blue eyes that were trustingly resting on my sleepy face. Now I was pretty sure it would feel like purposely hurting a friend. And a close one at that.

"Ok, let's get this over with." I got up and made it over to the bag, bending down to pick it up. However, all that happened was that my back cracked unpleasantly and I grunted in an unfeminine manner. The bag stayed put.

Just how many chains were in there?

I jolted as Eric appeared by my side, easily lifting up the bag. "If you were a vampire," he noted as I trudged over to the cupboard hiding his cubby, "you would be much stronger."

"And I would also spend my day chained in silver," I pointed out as I climbed down the ladder.

He jumped past me, landing on the floor and quickly reaching up to lift me the rest of the way down. "As soon as we have killed the enemy that will no longer be necessary."

I shuddered at the ferocious gleam in his eyes – the warrior in him had certainly not been obliterated by the witches' magic. "So you think that I should give up on sunlight so I can carry heavy bags easier, huh?"

The blonde shrugged, laying down on the bed with his arms along his sides. "You would also live forever; I think my Maker would want that. And you would be my sister."

Well, wasn't that sweet – the big Viking vampire was welcoming me into the family. I bent down to get out the chains and gaped at the amount of silver in the bag. Clearly, Eric was strong.

"Yeah well, if I stay human I get to be your stepmother instead," I sighed as I got out one of the chains and went over to the bed. "And that just packs more authority than being your baby sis. Hold still hun, this will hurt."

The next few minutes were not fun for either of us, though my discomfort over having to hurt Eric clearly paled in comparison to the agony he went through as silver was wrapped over his strong body and finally neck.

"I'm so sorry," I mumbled when it was finally all in place. Of its own accord my hand came up to stroke over his golden hair in an attempt at soothing away some of the pain.

He grunted in response, rolling his eyes up to catch mine. "Not your fault. Sophie… please don't leave."

My forehead furrowed. "Of course not – I'm not leaving you alone like this."

"No, I… Godric told me to keep a hold of you during the daytime, but I… I think I might hurt you if I flinch from the silver."

Oh, wow. Amnesiac Eric would actually defy a direct order from his Maker to not risk harming me. However much he needed to get his memory back I was going to miss the person he had been for the past few days when he did.

"Why are you crying?" he asked, and I realised I had been.

"I'm just going to miss you, is all. You know, when you get your old personality back." I patted his hand gently as to not disturb the welts caused by the silver. "I like having you as my friend; it feels right."

"We will still be friends," he promised, a bit of panic showing through the pained expression in his eyes. "Why wouldn't we? I will still remember this."

I chuckled as I glanced over his silver-covered body. "What, me wrapping you up in silver and crying over you when you can't get away? I think I'd rather you forget – the 'other' Eric is not going to be best pleased."

"I will remember you being there for me when I was scared and alone," he said softly. "Even though I've wronged you before. I will remember your kind heart."

It was so very, very strange to hear such words slip past Eric Northman's decadent lips.

I gently patted his cheek. "'I'm pretty sure your other self does not appreciate a kind heart, Sweety. I think you might drink from kind hearts as if they were Sippy cups, if I'm quite honest. But we'll see, right?" The last bit was added because the hurt in his eyes was tugging at whatever had made me start sniffling in the first place; I was pretty sure that there was no room for this person when the old Eric made a sweeping return.

Current-Eric sighed and let his eyes find the ceiling instead of my watery face. "You will see – I will remember," he mumbled. "And I could never hurt you."

We sat – or in Eric's case laid – in silence for a while, the only sounds being my breathing and the quiet sizzle of Eric's flesh, until he asked me to tell him a story. So I told him a story Godric had told me about when he an Eric had dressed up for some European king's court, and all the ladies had swooned at the sight of the tall Viking, which had led to a pretty jealous king and the two vampires having to hightail it through the woods with an entire hunting party after them.

"But we are vampires – why didn't we kill them?" he asked, after chuckling at my description of what I imagined Godric's exasperated face would have been like while running through a muddy forest in silk socks and a wig because his progeny was such a flirt.

"You were trying to stay hidden, then. I'm told you've slain armies together during the centuries, but if you take down a king and his entire court, there would be a worldwide uproar, even in those days, and vampires might have been at risk of exposure." I snorted. "And back then they didn't have TruBlood."

"Tell me how you came to meet my Maker?" he asked then, and I complied. Then I told him how we fell in love, because he asked, and even about when I left for Kentucky and why, though leaving out the details about Marcus. And then I told him about when he came to fetch me home.

His brows were thoughtfully furrowed after that. "So you are certain you want to be with my Maker always, now?"

An involuntary smile crossed my lips. "Yeah. I'm not scared anymore."

"Then why not become a vampire?"

Back to this again, then. I shot him a glare. "I don't want to be immortal. I want to grow old and die and be reincarnated, find him again and do it all over."

"But then we would lose you over and over," he stated, blue eyes flashing with discontent. "And how do you know you would find him again? It took you two thousand years to find him the first time."

I shrugged, a little uncomfortable with the whole 'lose you over and over' part – I didn't relish in the thought of causing Godric pain like that. "He would likely have killed me before realising I was meant to be his mate if I had met him sooner. He was a ferocious vampire for many centuries." The thought that we might actually have met and he had killed me was new and disturbing.

"And what does he say about this?" Eric questioned me, an unhappy note and something rather Eric clear in his voice.

"He agrees. He doesn't want me to be vampire."

"He lies," was the immediate response.

I blinked. "Beg your pardon?"

Blue eyes pierced me. "I felt his desperation when he thought you were dying; he is not at peace with your mortality. If he has said he is okay with this reincarnation plan of yours, he lies. To you or to himself, I do not know."

I gave him a good prod on a chain-free part of his chest. "Now you shush, mister. This is not your concern. Godric and I have talked this through, and I know that he isn't lying. Sure, the dying part sucks – a lot. But we are both at peace with it… though obviously, I need to actually live a full, human life so we can… get used to the idea."

His lips pinched and he looked like he wanted to say something else on the subject, but just then an uncomfortable prickle in my subconscious made me gasp – and then Eric's eyes glazed over as he convulsed, straining up against the chains.

"Eric!" I placed my hand on his forehead, getting up from my spot on the bed next to his pillow. "What's happening?"

"Sun," he groaned. "I need... the sun!"

Oh, dear Goddess. The spell. Godric had been right.

I knelt back on the bed and gently grasped his face between my hands, peering into his wild eyes. "Eric, listen to me, you can fight this." I silently prayed that the chains would hold him. "Stay here with me."

I saw a flicker of recognition in his orbs through the spell's effect, and he roared as he fought against it. But it still pulled mercilessly on his body, and all I could do was whisper soothing things to him while the chains dug bone-deep.

Sookie came down at some point, summoned by the Viking's shouts, her eyes wide. "It's the spell?" she asked.

"Yeah. Could you get us some TruBlood please? For when it's over? He will need to heal." I quickly wiped away the tears that clung to my eyelashes, swearing revenge on Marnie for this. Vampires were certainly not a bunch of saints, and Eric hadn't been a gentle soul, but in my book there was no excuse for this; whatever he was and whatever he had done, he was my friend, my mate's Child, and she was trying to kill him.

Twenty minutes later, as swiftly as it had set in the spell released its hold in the vampire, leaving him to sag down against the bed, breathing deeply through pained groans.

I quickly unscrewed a bottle of synthetic blood and held it against his lips, and he gulped it down, hissing as his flesh began healing and pushing on the chains.

"Another?" I asked when he'd emptied the first.

"There's no point," he sighed, pain still evident in his voice. "The silver will just burn through my skin again. How long until sunset?"

I glanced at the clock n my phone. "Six more hours, hun."

Eric muttered something in another language. If he mentioned witches I was pretty sure it wasn't anything nice.

But there were no more attempts at raising the undead into the sun, and I spent the time telling the Viking more stories, most of them movie plots (I even put him through a rendition of Vampire Diaries that had him laughing in spite of the pain) until finally my phone bipped, signalling that dusk had come.

"Freedom awaits, Great one!" I smiled, carefully lifting off the silver from around his neck.

He sighed in relief, despite the chunks of flesh I pulled off, but when Sookie climbed down the ladder to help, he stiffened, nostrils twitching. "No, you can't be here!"

We both stared at him.

"I-I'm sorry, but you smell too good," he whispered, looking an interesting mix of ashamed and predatory.

Oh. She really hadn't been kidding when she said she smelled appealing to them, then.

"Oh. Right," the small blonde squeaked. "I'll just… go upstairs then." She quickly disappeared again.

I glanced nervously at the vampire. "Er… will you be alright with my scent?"

"As long as I have TruBlood right away," he promised, and I continued unwinding the many chains from his marred body.

It took three TruBloods for Eric to stop casting hungry glances at my neck and wrists, and I made him sip on a fourth just to feel more safe as we climbed back up to re-join a still-anxious Sookie.

"It's alright, I've fed the beast," I joked, feeling mighty relieved that the long day was over, momentarily ignoring that we had an equally long night ahead of us. "Eric, why don't you go grab a shower and get all the… blood and stuff washed off?"

The tall Viking paused, glancing at me. "You should come."

…

"Uh..?"

"Godric said to keep you at my side at all times."

It really wasn't on purpose – my brain just went there on its own, but somehow the image of being at Eric's wet, naked side in the shower popped into my head, and I blushed profusely, causing Sookie to snicker from the other side of the room.

"How about I just wait outside the door, and then we can swap when you're done?"

He shrugged, obviously deeming me weird for not just doubling up on the shower time, and I slunk after him up the stairs trying desperately not to look at his arse in front of me.

We had both showered, dressed and ventured back downstairs, and I had eaten a sturdy dinner that Sookie had spent a few hours preparing when Eric suddenly went rigid, head snapping towards the door.

My heart skipped a beat in fright before he kindly explained: "My Maker is almost here – I can feel him."

The beating of my heart instantly restarted, this time in overdrive, and I jumped up.

Finally, finally!

Without caring how pathetic I probably came across I sprinted out the door and onto the porch, squinting into the dark to catch sight of him.

And just then he landed easily next to my rental car, shadowed eyes focused on my form.

"Sophie." His smooth voice reached me like a dark caress.

"Godric!" I ran to him and leapt into his arms, wrapping my long legs around his hips before planting a thorough kiss on his full lips. Goddess, he was a sight for sore eyes! My inner feminist would normally have writhed in shame, but after the horrors I'd experienced at the witch coven there was not a single part of me that didn't desperately need him to step in and handle the situation. I really did trust that there was not a single thing in this world my powerful lover couldn't take care of; he was here now, and everything would get solved somehow.

His arms tightened around my back and he returned the kiss, but it was short and he soon pried my legs off his hips and lowered my feet to the ground, pulling his head back from my eager lips.

I pouted at him – and paused at the look in his eyes. The night was very dark, but the amount of vampire blood I'd had over the past few months allowed me to easily pick up on the complete blackness that was staring back at me.

O-oh, Godric was still very angry.

"Hun?" My voice broke a little. It's not that I was frightened for my safety – I trusted him completely not to harm me in any way – but it is rather impossible not to have a small bit of primal instincts kick in when a 2000 year old, powerful predator is staring at you like you've personally offended it.

And then his hand snatched my jaw in a firm grip, pressing my head backwards while the other on my hip kept the rest of my body in place so my throat was exposed to him. I croaked in surprise.

"Submit." It was a low hiss that made goosebumps appear on my exposed skin – and a tingling sensation reach the centre of my body.

Godric being dominant was not exactly an unusual occurrence in our love life, but I really didn't think that right now was the time for those activities, with Sookie and Eric waiting inside, and the freaking vampire King of the state expecting us. "Sweety, maybe now is not the…" I stopped speaking when his hand constricted ever so slightly around the top of my throat, the pressure on my neck beginning to border on the painful.

"Submit. Now." His voice was dark and dangerous, and something stupidly primitive in my brain responded nicely as my body went lax in his grip.

The low growl emitting from his chest caused equal amounts of adrenaline and arousal to spike in my blood, which was fortunate as it made the experience of him grabbing my hair and ripping my head to the side before he buried his fangs in my neck more erotic than painful.

I whimpered in surrender as he drank my blood, but as always he only took a few mouthfuls – not enough to weaken me, but certainly enough to prove his point… and to spark his other, primal urges. As his tongue slid over the marks on my neck to start the healing of my flesh cool hands pushed up the skirt of my summer dress and pulled my panties to the side, fingers testing my folds.

The next second I was face-down on the rental car's bonnet, balancing with my legs spread wide. A yelp escaped me when he roughly drove into me before he clamped a hand over my mouth, the other resting heavily on the back of my neck, keeping me pressed down.

"You tell me I need to remember I am in a relationship with a human," Godric growled into my ear. "It occurs to me, you need to be reminded that you are mated to a vampire. Maybe I have treated you too gently…"

I screamed into his hand as he used his vampire speed to move within me, my flailing arms trashing wildly against the car until the friction alone sent me into that desperate climb towards release and my hands gripped frantically for purpose before my entire body convulsed underneath him in a climax that made it blacken for my eyes for a few seconds.

The vampire stilled his hips and removed his hand from my mouth so I could gulp down enough oxygen to not pass out.

"How many times have I told you to stay out of danger?" His voice was still dark velvet, anger lacing its smooth caress.

"I'm sorry," I gasped. "Godric, I'm truly sorry."

He ignored me as his hands found the round swell of my hips and he once again started moving, though at human pace this time. "Yet it always seems that you run head-first into any dangerous situation you can find, ignoring my warnings, ignoring how far I have stretched my nature to accommodate your human notions of independence."

I grunted as he thrust harder, my nails scraping against the paintwork. I was so not getting the deposit back from the rental company. Not that it mattered much – when Godric was claiming me like this nothing mattered at all, save him and the pleasure. I'm not sure if he truly was trying to punish me or if he was just working out his anger, but if it was the former then he was failing miserably.

"Sophie." His cool breath ghosted over my neck, raising goosebumps in its wake. "You ask if I see myself as your father… do you see yourself as my daughter?"

Well, that was a bit of a loaded question, seeing as he currently had me bent over a car, fucking the absolute living daylights out of me. "N-no." There was no point in being snarky – and I also lacked sufficient blood flow to my brain to achieve it at that current point in time.

Fingers dug into my hips as the pace increased and my hands scrambled down to ease the grip, only to be caught and pressed up behind my back, keeping me perfectly fixated. "Then why do you behave like a disobedient child, sneaking behind my back to get your way? I know you are young, and I have been patient… but if I cannot trust you to discuss with me decisions that affect us both – and my Child – then perhaps I shall also stop acting as if we are in an equal partnership. Do not fool yourself, little mate, we are equals only because I allow it!"

Normally, his brazen statement and harsh words would have infuriated me beyond belief, but apart from my temper being dampened by the guilt and regret I had from going to that coven the previous night, his words were followed by another slip into vampire speed, causing all my attention to centre on the merciless ravaging of my body.

My screams were once again quickly silenced by his hand, the other easily keeping both my arms twisted up behind my back so efficiently that my spasms of pleasure were contained to wildly bucking my hips against him while he drove me over the edge three times in quick succession. Godric only slowed down when a groan escaped his lips as his essence filled me.

"Missed you," I broke the silence by mumbling after he released my mouth and arms and leaned in over me, a hand on each side of my shoulders and his still-hard length buried to the hilt in me.

Soft kisses fell on my shoulder blades and then the cheek that wasn't pressed against the car. "Love you," he murmured. "So much that it aches."

A smile slipped onto my face as I sighed from the mental pleasure his presence and words caused. "Are you still angry?"

I felt a shift in weight, and then he slowly pulled out of me, righting himself next to the car. "A little less so, but yes. I will be angry for some time; you cannot understand the agony it was to feel your life essence drain from you through our bond."

Gingerly, I straightened up too before turning around and catching his hand. "You know I am sorry, right? I never meant for things to go so far, but once I was there… I didn't have a choice, or they would have actually killed me." I shuddered at the thought.

"I know. And that is why you should have talked to me first – I could have warned you of the dangers a coven that practices necromancy presents. It is the darkest form of magic and it will twist the very souls of the ones practicing it." The disappointment over my lack of judgement made me look away from his still-dark eyes.

"I will not make a mistake like that again," I promised quietly. "But at least my stupidity yielded some valuable information. I better get a shower so we can go meet that king."

"A shower will not be necessary," was his short reply, the ring of command clear.

I dared a glance up at his face. "But everyone will be able to…." My protest died at his pointed look.

"Yes,"

I groaned in annoyance, but he simply watched me dispassionately as I cringed while pulling my slightly mangled underwear back where it belonged before straightening out my dress and running a hand through my tangled hair.

"So is this to establish your ownership of me more clearly for the king's benefit, or..?"

He stepped closer to my side, placing a peck on my lips before grabbing my elbow so he could lead me up to the house. "It is mostly to make my claim very clear at this king's court."

I let him guide me into the house without further comments.

Mostly. That meant part of it was my punishment for not letting him know what I was doing the other night, and I suppose it was fairly perfect; what better way to teach your strong-willed, independent partner a lesson than to mark her thoroughly as your pet? I sighed. I wasn't exactly fond of the concept, but I accepted it. I hadn't treated him as my equal partner when I went ahead and put myself – and Eric – at risk without consulting him, so now I got to feel what that was like in return, though without having to go through the fear he had experienced.