Thank you so much to everyone who still reads and patiently waits for the next update of this fic! I'm so sorry for the delays. Life is happening so much at the moment.

More notes at the end.

Chapter 15 – It's Not About Love

Disclaimer: I don't own Underworld nor any of its beautiful characters.

.

.

.

"Selene."

She had to admit she had forgotten all about Michael.

Turning on the spot to face him, her breath was caught in her throat for the very first time since the fighting began. Only he could ever take her breath away.

Steadily holding her gaze, he nods his head before slowly circling around her, all while curling his knuckles by his sides.

Selene couldn't help herself as she realizes what he was exactly trying to do. She shakes her head after a moment, smiling, then catches his eyes again.

Then she gives him a grin, almost playful.

I'm not the most powerful immortal alive.

"Good," she says. "I've been waiting for you." And unknowingly she really had.

"You—" Whatever he wanted to say she doesn't let him finish. She runs to him in a haze, stops mere inches from where he stood, as her hands push his chest with such strong force that he's thrown off his feet and slams straight into a wall, boring a huge hole right through its metal surface.

As everyone gasps Selene counts silently. Expectantly.

1, 2, 3…

A dark grey hand—shining a metallic sheen—with talons in place of normal fingers, reaches out and grips one curved side of the hole.

I'm not the most powerful immortal alive, she thinks again with another smile.

Michael Corvin is.

.

.

.

"Did I hurt you?" Michael asks, already knowing the answer.

"No."

He nods at her turned back. They were the only ones left in the Training Room now, both still slick with sweat and trying to catch up with their normal breathing. He regards her through the dark, wet hair that hung just above his eyes. Her attention was on the weapons. She examines one after the other, then laying them on one of the round metal tables, pretending to organize them — in what order Michael could only wildly guess. He himself was also pretending to give a shit about what she was doing by remaining silent and just standing guard behind her, waiting for her.

And he was still in his hybrid form.

His senses were so sharp right now. Every move, every sound and smell, and every feeling he felt so intensely at this very moment that he suddenly wants to crawl out of this very skin — this skin that's so new to him and yet feels so familiar, so real.

"How about earlier?" He tries again, distracting himself from how ten times more stunning Selene looked in all black.

Just like her hair, Michael thinks, falling more hopelessly in love with her by the second.

Her hair that was so much just like his hair right now.

He drops his wandering gaze and soon realizes that staring at her strapped boots was no good, too. They were as sexy as every inch of all the leather she's wrapped around in.

"No," Selene repeats.

He sighs and restraints himself from reaching out and touching her, from telling her how stupid they both were acting right now.

You can't ignore me forever, Selene.

"Is 'no' the only thing you can say?"

There was a nervous pause before Selene gently puts down a particularly strange-looking gun. Then with both arms she hurls the array of weapons she's been neatly arranging for the last half hour right off the table. They all fell with loud clangs that reverberated across the silent room.

Michael takes a few steps back and could only stare at her. He was surprised not to feel any kind of fear in her presence then and there. Anybody else would have bolted out of the room in an instant.

Selene finally turns to face him.

Her eyes were magnificent white and he finds himself forgetting to breathe.

Jesus Christ.

Before he could reacquaint himself with seeing white in her eyes again instead of her vampire blue, she moves with impossible and near invisible feat to stand right in front of him, closing the distance between them faster than any mortal's eyes could see.

Their faces were almost touching now.

"No…" She says very softly this time, breathlessly, very much unlike her — the her he was so used to encountering. She says this while gazing straight up at his eyes, blinding Michael with those striking orbs. Then, slowly, and looking almost guilty, she glances down — down to his lips. Still sounding breathless, she mutters:

"My mouth really isn't up to talking right now."

Later, when asked, Selene would disregard this as their second kiss. Just because of the simple fact that it was so much more. It was almost animalistic in nature, the way she clung to him now, kissing him within an inch of his immortal life. Hands alternately raking through his long hybrid hair and clawing at his bare back, pinching and leaving crescent moon marks on its gray smoothness. She pulls away with a gasp for a second, then pushes herself up using his shoulders as leverage. Understanding what she wants, Michael helps her, holding the back of her thighs to support her ascent, hands locked around her legs in a death grip. Both seek the other's lips again in a searing kiss after. The force of their clash results in his back slamming on the cold metal wall, but neither of them takes notice. Not even Michael himself.

Taking advantage of how she towered over him now, she devoured his mouth with renewed enthusiasm, using both hands to push strands of his now jet-black hair away from his face. Then cradling his head, she kisses her way from his mouth to his cheeks, up to his closed eyes. She goes all the way down again to his jaw and lower still...She bites his neck without warning, making Michael groan out loud, breaking the consistent outpour of their moans.

It sounded almost like a howl. It was unadulterated, unfiltered, raw from within his primal state.

She finds herself loving the sound.

She bites him again, still playful, still not drawing any blood but enough to reward her with another groan from him.

I want you to forget your love for me.

Selene's words from earlier came unwanted and yet utterly expected in her mind. Like most rational musings she has concerning Michael, she ignores it.

This isn't about love, she rebels against her own voice somewhere inside her head as she pulls away again.

More than anything right now, she wants to see exactly what she was doing to him.

Dazed black irises stared right into her white ones. With sudden, electric excitement, she realizes this was the very first time they got intimate when Michael's still in his hybrid form.

This isn't about love, she thinks again, looking at Michael. Dark, strong, and beautiful Michael. With his admiring face bathed in a dark blue-gray shine. Gazing up at her now, he lets out shallow breaths from both the struggle of holding her up and controlling himself from tearing her apart. Because he can do it, she knows. She knows because that's what she's doing right now, too — restraining herself from hurting him, from marking him.

Mine, mine… Mine.

And she's barely succeeding.

But she also knows it's taking less from him than it was taking her. There never was any fight in him.

My pure, sweet, and soft and beautiful Michael.

Even being touched again and again by a darkness only she has ever brought to him, he had remained the man he was. The man she fell in love with. The only man she's ever loved and will ever love.

She caresses one side of his face and feels her heart constrict.

This isn't about love, she reminds herself again, her inner resolve sounding weak this time. A tear falls on one cheek, down into Michael's face.

He loosens his hold on her legs and gently puts her back down the floor. One hand reaches out to her, a thumb wiping the lone tear away. The same hand moves across her cheek to the back of her head as he pulls her face to him.

She sees him close his eyes before leaning in and kissing her forehead. Gently. Ever so sweetly. So… Michael.

It was the most beautiful kiss he's given her.

He slowly reverts to his human form as Selene wounds her arms around him, embracing his warmth.

She cries silently into his chest.

Michael doesn't say anything for a while, just holds her, and kisses her hair softly again and again.

"Tell me how you defeated Selene."

Varga chuckles before planting a kiss on Katie Smith's neck. "That's restricted information," he murmurs at the smooth expanse between her neck and freckled shoulder.

"Modest all of a sudden, are we?" She giggles. "Here I am thinking that's the golden anecdote you tell every girl you want to sleep with."

He faces her and playfully brushes her nose with his own. "Believe me, I don't plan on sleeping with someone like you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

But they both really knew what he meant.

"Katie."

She sits up from the bed, letting the sheets fall off her barely clothed body. She moves to find her clothes from the floor of Varga's chambers.

"Katie—wait. I'm sorry—"

"—Save it, Varga." She's got her arms wrapped around her, a hurt expression on her face. "Save it for a vampiress."

"I…" He tries again. "I'm not proud of what I did," he says, talking to himself more than her. "I almost killed Selene with it."

Katie froze.

"With what? I mean," she continues pacing around the room, crouching every now and then to find her Sundal garbs. "Is killing her even possible? She's—"

"I know, I know. But that nightshade—"

The flicker of something in Katie's eyes was enough for Varga to know the gravity of his mistake.

They were both silent now, turning strangers again. Much like the moment they first met each other.

Varga from the past would have clung to this, would have held onto this false sense of hope, the hope of loving a broken person enough for them to want to change. He doesn't hold on to that bullshit this time.

"Whatever you're planning to do, it's not going to happen." He says, losing his charming voice now.

"What are you talking about?"

"You'll never hurt her…

She won't but you already have, Varga. You've hurt your queen. You've failed the only woman who's ever cared for you.

...or Eve."

Katie doesn't take her eyes off him while she dresses up. When she's done, she gives him a smile. A playful, knowing one. "Who said anything about hurting?"

Then she leaves.

heiots: Awww, thank you so much! It really means the most to me when someone says I get their characterizations right. For me that's the most important thing, more than the story itself. I'm so happy you're enjoying reading my fic :)

DeathWarrant118: Yep, I'm aware Michael is a hybrid.

The thing is, Michael lost all of his blood — both vampire and lycan when Marius "killed" him by draining him dry. In my story, It was only when Gregor's blood, a lycan's blood, (if you've read Chapter 4) that "restarted" him into being again. I know it's ridiculous (and when Selene did it in Evolution he was still a hybrid when he came back to life) but again, in my story, that young lycan's blood made him come back only as a lycan — having only consumed a lycan's blood. In the latest chapters Selene made him drink hers and that's why he's a hybrid again. I know she should have bitten him to transform him again but I just imagined it like being Eve and never having fed since her birth. I imagined that one taste would "restart" the vampire part of Michael when Selene fed him with her blood, and therefore now having both lycan and vampire in him wake.

I was about to write this into a scene in a later chapter (a Selene and Lena conversation) but I don't want to ignore your review so...that's the gist of it.

I know it's lame but hey, this is all fiction after all :) and tbh, I just wanted to get the story out and this is just a version of how I imagined Michael be brought back to life again. I'm sure Len Wiseman and the original writers have better ideas.

Also, I thought I was clear on conveying all that lycan to hybrid thing but...it seems not...and for that I apologize.

I'm also sorry for the others who understood what I was trying to say and...now may partially have the story ruined for them by my explanation…Haha

Juliana, Spring, uff, and AmericanWildDog: LOL. I'm so sorry for the angst! (I'm really not. Haha) But of course what's life without a little angst? A little drama? Believe me, no one is suffering more than me when I'm making them so stupid like this. I hope this knowledge makes you all feel a little better. Haha

JerricaHMcfarl3: Thank you so much! :D And so sorry for the delays..