Notes:My apologies for taking so long to update. I hope to finish this rather than leave it hanging.

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She could tell from his furrowed brow, he was confused…and upset. She did do the exact thing that he warned her not to, a handful of patrons; a few waiters and a host would have stood no chance if Vera had decided to put an end to her game and just went straight for Adalind's throat. Instead of sitting nonchalantly, sipping on her butter tea, who knows what Nick would have found, had Adalind's poking burst that fake façade bubble the Hexenbiest had carefully constructed around herself?

"I am sorry," she said quietly to him, feeling chastened for her recklessness. It was not easy for Adalind. She wasn't used having someone genuinely care for her wellbeing, not even her own mother ever claimed that title in the thirty and some years she'd lived on the earth and Nick, the only person she knew that had a right to not care was the one defying every expectation she had. He loved her and she didn't even know why, let alone how.

"Are you alright?" he asked her finally calm, judging by the thumping of his pulse against his neck receding to a soft tap until it was barely visible to the naked eye.

"I am, now that you are here." She reassured him.

Nick waited until the waiter came to taken his order and left them alone before his keen detective eye rested back on Adalind, waiting for her explanation. Ironically, it was like the good old days, rather the bad old days, the first time they had met.

"I know you have a lot of questions and I want to give you those answers but I don't think this is the time and place for that conversation.

"Addie…." He said softly as he curled his fingers, intertwining them with hers. Just the way he said her name made her want to melt but reducing it to a term of endearment mad her want to melt in his arms. He was the only person ever to call her by that name and it made her love him more.

"We can talk tonight, but for now, let's just enjoy this…this moment. I just want to have lunch with my fiancé and I don't particularly care who knows at the moment."

It was oddly freeing to come to that realisation.

Being what they were was a risk in and of itself, so them being together was nothing different. Hiding, not hiding what did it matter? People would always come after them, for one reason or another.

She kissed the top of his reddened knuckles, making note of how she'd never seen them not bruised for more than a day since he took her home from the hospital after Kelly's birth. She'd known it was not from his job as a cop but his life as a Grimm that had clearly robbed him of a normal quiet existence. "I love you," she said.

"I love you too." He told her with a sincerity that thrilled her to her bones.

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Getting back to the office was a mission impossible after the day she had. They'd rehashed their old song and dance of leaving vs. maintaining the status quo at her office, to carry on as normal….

"…But for how long?" was the question he'd left her with before they went their separate ways.

A fearsome storm was brewing and the time for pretending otherwise had quickly ended.

Somehow, Nick had convinced Renard to tap Sandra's phones. Adalind didn't question the speed with which he got his warrant to spy on her P.A. While he could not walk her back into that office without raising further suspicion and shining a very unwelcome spotlight on her, at the same, time he was not ready to simply let her go back into the lion's den unprotected, claiming if Sandy so much as said the wrong word, he'd be there at her office within minutes.

Adalind suspected the endeavour was futile, there'd be no further correspondence between Sandy and Vera after her trap had sprung.

Vera was a wounded animal and those are always unpredictable. They could strike at anytime, anywhere and Adalind would be foolish not to heed Nick's words to be careful. Rosalee thankfully, had offered to watch their son for a few days until they could come up with a more permanent solution as they had finally decided it was no longer safe for him to accompany Adalind to work every day. She however, could not stay away from B.R.&A.

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Adalind hadn't expected to work late into the night. Her easy workload had doubled suddenly and while a part of her was relieved for the work, getting her mind off the looming situation with Vera, she longed to go home and hold her baby close to her heart and curling up to Nick's protective arms as his slow breathing lulled her to sleep.

Berman calling her to his office to pay her some plaudits for all her hard work since returning to the firm didn't even have the effect it would have garnered six years ago when work was the only comfort she had. The pride in her lawyering skills had long since ceased to fulfil her after having her children and falling in love with the best man she knew.

She spent the day distracted, thus stretching it longer than she wanted mulling over many thoughts on Vera's deadly game with Nick, her strange attachment to her and its true endgame.

Was Vera's real plan to kill all of Nick's loved ones and not just to torment him alone? How did she even find out about her relationship with Nick when no one outside of their friends had any idea?

Ultimately, after a very long day of getting all the necessary documents ready to file an injunction on behalf of one of her clients and fast tracking the acquisition of a hot property for a merger, Adalind had had enough. She wanted to go home to her family.

She called Rosalee and was surprised Nick hadn't collected Kelly after work. She looked down at her wristwatch and confirmed the evening was long in the tooth. It was likely that it would be midnight by the time she picked up some take away and Kelly before returning home to the loft, she checked her phone and there was missed text from Nick, informing her he'd be late, so much for having a little more than some cuddling with Nick, she thought regretfully.

Adalind sighed as she shut down her worktop and headed out the door.

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She hadn't waited long for him to come home before she heard the heavy pulling of the elevator rising up to the loft floor and the metal grate fold open. She flicked the bedside lamp on, bathing their bedroom in a soft light that chased away all the hard shadows.

"You're awake," he said a little relieved as he made his way to her and planted a deep kiss on her lips.

"Yeah," she said breathlessly.

She scooted to the side, making room for him to sit by her side after he'd taken off his badge, gun and boots.

"Did something happen?" She couldn't help asking. Nick, she'd learnt to observe and much to her delight in the few months they'd spent holed up together in the loft, was always affectionate, overtly so after a hard day at work. It was a 'tell' he'd failed miserably to hide from her.

In the beginning, before she dared let herself feel for him openly, when they were nothing more than awkward parents and bed mates, he'd confused her with his kindness, his intimate consideration for her and her needs. It had made her feel things so intensely but she had no outlet for any of it except a few occasions.

Nick was a light sleeper but sometime he'd fall asleep deeply and his nightmares began, Adalind had found her arm sneaking across his chest resting just above his racing heart. She wanted to calm him from all of his cares and just as quickly as she'd stolen that single touch, her hand burned with a heat that fanned its way to every cell of her body. She wanted more; to tough more of him and desperately so but at that time, she had no right to want that. Now, she could hold him for as long as she wanted, and not feel like a thief for doing so because he was hers to hold forever.

"Nick, something did happen…."

He looked away from her concerned gaze. Instead, he grabbed her hand tightly, "I don't know how to tell you but Sandra Grootbaum's body was found in her apartment earlier this evening."

"What? No."

"Yeah, I got the call as I was clocking out. Addie, I'm sorry but it's her, and…." His emotions got the better of him and he turned to face her and held her face between his kind and soft hands. "I have never seen anything like this, not as a cop, or even as a Grimm and I have seen some horrible, horrible things. She looked like she was sleeping peacefully but not according to the examiner. He couldn't understand it. He said her X-rays showed every bone in her body had been shattered then put back together and re-shattered. She was tortured to death and suffered longer than necessary before she eventually died; if his preliminary report is accurate.

"She did this. Vera." He said in such a dark and furious tone she hadn't heard from his lips in a year.

He was right.

She had expected Vera to retaliate after that scene at the restaurant, but what Nick described was so much worse than anything she could have ever imagined. She felt a stream of tears roll down her face for her hapless assistant, a strange thing for Adalind. An unfamiliar wave of emotion washed over her, from guilt to anger, remorse and even sadness, which made her nose twitch with irritation. She wasn't used to having any feelings for anyone other than those she loved like her children, Nick and Rosalee and she wanted that feeling to go as quickly as it's had come.

Nick hugged her tightly against his chest and she let him as more tears fell much to her annoyance. She hated feeling vulnerable like this, it meant that someone had power over her to hurt her and she didn't want to give Vera any more than she had taken already. It reminded her of these first few days, weeks after taking the suppressant and had to hide from the Royals and an unhinged Juliette.

Something in the back of her mind clicked suddenly.

"I am going to protect you and our son, I promise you. I already told Renard this. Someone's coming after my family and right now, I am not a cop anymore." Nick said as he drew her away from thoughts of the past. It was the same promise he had made with his own body at the precinct when he stood between her and Juliette, the same promise he made the day they left the hospital with Kelly, the day the moved out of his house and into a barren factory loft and each time, Nick has kept that promise. She didn't doubt his ability to keep his promise now against this Hexen-Grimm even as he said the words with a fire behind them. She trusted him implicitly and kissed him.

Several minutes passed before either of them spoke, the comfort of the silence and each his arms making it difficult to address the elephant in the room.

"You said Vera wasn't really a Grimm," he finally said, breaking the spell of that sweet moment.

"Right about that" she remembered. "Yeah, she's a Hexenbiest, from what I could surmise. She's not exactly an experienced one but she's clearly a powerful one. It takes a lot to maintain a spell as long as she has the Verfluchte Zwillingsschwester."

"How could you tell?" she felt the warm whiffs of his breath brush against her temple.

"It's a little complicated," she said somewhat uncomfortably.

She'd never opened up to Nick about the ins and outs of what she was. He'd mainly been on the receiving end of her abilities and thus Adalind had remained hesitant to share that part of her life with him, especially when she was afraid it could drive a wedge between them so soon after their budding relationship. "Let's just say, as a very studious Hexenbiest, I am versed in some talents that other Hexenbiest neglect for the more flashier bits. The Verfluchte Zwillingsschwester for instance, not many are aware of it and what it entails. I didn't know myself past remembering what my gran told me in a story once." She said, her skin growing hot as she remembered the first and only time she used that particular spell.

"We can multitask better than anyone but after about a minute with Vera, I realised that all that skill was concentrated towards keeping the façade up so I could prod and poke as freely as I was able. I was searching for any cracks without raising suspicion and I found what I was looking for or rather what I hadn't expected to find, a familiar signature that Hexenbiests leave behind/emanate when performing spells. I am assuming even though she already knew what I was she was oblivious to my discovering her duplicity, so she'd foolishly lowered her defences, not counting on me detecting her presence at all, so to speak."

"None of this makes any sense. I would have much rather be dealing with an actual, normal serial killer. Finding out it was a Grimm that perhaps had something against me for being friendly with the enemy wasn't easy but at least I could deal with that. I mean I have long expected a blowback ever since I met Monroe…."

"And now you have a baby with a Hexenbiest, and re actually engaged to one." She said sarcastically.

"It's not like I've had many dealings with Hexenbiests to warrant having a target on my back," he said without a hint of sarcasm. "Nobody knows about us, not even your firm." He said but it sounded more like a question than a statement.

"We've been very careful except…." She said as a thought began to take form in her mind. The clearer it became, the more regretted it, she wished she hadn't anything at all.

"Except…?" He said, hanging on her every word.

"I have been trying not to think about this all day. I don't know. Maybe I was hoping it would somehow go away and we'd get some semblance of normalcy, call it a schoolgirl fantasy. Nick I have never had normal, not ever before I got my abilities as little girl. I don't know why but I want that cookie-cutter picture-perfect life for us, where nothing outside of the ordinary happens even if it's just for a day." She lifted his right hand, shining the bruised knuckles under the warm light and rubbing them gently, "Unfortunately, I know that at the end of the day, that will never happen. Having you in my life is more than enough, more than I ever dared to dream, what I'm about to say, I wish I didn't but I know I need to whatever that means for the dream I have….

He didn't understand, she could see it in his eyes.

Shut up, a familiar and selfish little voice screamed at her in the back of her mind.

"There's only one person I can think of that maybe knew about us…kind of, someone that had a huge score to settle but she's dead, isn't she?" she looked deep into his stormy grey eyes looking for confirmation but he wasn't following or he was being uncharacteristically obtuse.

"I have made a lot enemies Nick, plenty of people who want to see me dead or something worse than that but no one who would want to come after your friends just as much, including Bud of all people, unless they all played a role in protecting me once."

"Juliette?" He said, incredulously and maybe even a little hurt.

"It makes perfect sense. Vera inserted herself into my life not long after the death of that first victim who has a very strong colouring to Juliette and as far as we know, the only human victim in all of this and this has nothing to do with me being vain or self-centred, wanting everything to be about me. It was weeks before she met with Rosalee and then tried to strike up a creepy friendship between the three of us."

"This is crazy, Juliette's dead."

"Are you sure?" She didn't want to hurt him but Adalind had to ask.

Their last time together that fateful night, had turned ugly and violent from the little she heard from Rosalee's account after the Royals had killed his mother and kidnapped her daughter. Juliette had died in Nick's arms but now she wasn't so sure they knew the whole truth.

"Trubel had…." His voice trailed off as he got lost his thoughts, which made Adalind feel more terrible for bring this up now. She had lost her child once more that night but she'd never truly considered all that Nick had lost as well. Unlike her, he'd loved his mother, and she had loved him in return. Then there was Juliette, whose descent into villainy was partly Adalind's doing….

"I never saw her body…" he began. "After I mean, and for weeks, I couldn't find Trubel to ask her what had happened. Eventually I let it go. I had you and Kelly to think of. I couldn't afford to think about anything else. It was great to have something to focus on, to keep my mind off things and I am grateful for that." He said with a reassuring tight hug around her shoulders. She knew what he was saying and wanted to drink in the meaning of his words, something she needed to accept deep inside even after all of this time.

"So it's possible she is alive." Unfortunately for Adalind's weary hear, her rational mind gnawed away for answers as she dug deeper into this dreadful subject, ignoring that tiny little voice yelling for her to keep her mouth shut tighter than the reserve bank and just enjoy the feel of Nick's arms around her body.

"Even if she was alive, it doesn't change anything, he said with a very measured tone. "And I don't think she's behind the killings, we have the killer's DNA and a partial print and unfortunately, she's not in the system and Juliette certainly is."

"With the Verfluchte Zwillingsschwester, I'm sorry to say, but that may not be true. While the spell is in effect, you take on the other person's genetic printing, down to the last atom. If Vera can hold the spell for longer than is usual as I suspect, then whatever DNA or print you have will do the same but it's all subject to change since she can't hold that spell forever…."

She let his words sink in.

"You want me to go over everything again?" he sounded uncertain, almost reluctant.

"I want you, to get married and live the rest of my very long life with you and I don't think either of us could do that without knowing the truth and dealing with it once and for all." she said with a creeping sadness.

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