A.N.: Thank you all for your patience as you waited for this new chapter! School totally killed me this semester and I really hardly had any time to write until recently.
In this chapter there will be some weird science about the werewolf virus and vampire venom that honestly doesn't make any logical sense. I promise I know this. It's just a fanfiction so please no nasty messages picking on me because I'm not a bio major lol.
Have fun reading and just enjoy it – it's my longest chapter ever at 72 pages!
Chapter 25 – Fever
Her head hurt a lot. That was the very first thing Castiel was aware of as she sat up with a groan. Her body felt so strange and the action of reaching up to rub her face felt unnatural as she opened her eyes to look around.
Where the hell was she?
She was sitting on the floor in a stone corridor – probably one of the hallways in the castle if she had to guess – and it was very dark. The only light in this hall came from a wall mounted torch about twenty feet away from her.
Castiel stood up, and the strange out-of-body sensation occurred again.
Was this a vision? She wondered as she walked in the direction of the light and tried to remember what bought her here.
Something had happened to her… something-
The mental image of a werewolf rising onto its hind legs and lashing out at her with a vicious roar and deathly sharp claws sprang to the front of her mind, causing her to instinctively step back and raise her left arm.
"Fuck." Castiel hissed, shaking her head as she tried to dispel the image. She moved her left arm in front of her face so she could look at it and gasped when turning her arm over showed no injury at all.
A bang drew her attention from her arm, and Castiel followed the sound down the hall.
It was so dark; the lit torches provided some light but not quite enough. She must be in one of the lower tunnels... but still, what was it with the lack of light fixtures here? All of the tunnels had florescent lights fixed into the ceiling, these wall mounted torches were only ever something she saw in the above ground levels – something Aro said he liked to keep since it matched the castles "aesthetic".
And there was also something… off… about this hall. The lack of electricity, the condition of the stone… it seemed so old. Old, but not quite worn down. Quite the contrary actually because the stone floors and walls looked to be in very good condition. Old but new? What the heck?
Something flashed by ahead of her: a shape darting into a doorway to her left.
Castiel hurried forward, finding the door and sliding through the small opening she had since it was left ajar.
There were more torches lit in this room so it was much easier to see, and Castiel was surprised to notice that where she was now held a similar feel of the throne room aside from a few differences.
This room was square and there were no windows here, only furthering her idea that she must be underground. There was a slightly raised platform at the back of the room with three chairs, and there were a few tables near both the left and right walls where there were guards in cloaks of the darkest grey gathered at them.
Elite guards then, and Castiel was surprised to see many faces she did not recognize.
She moved further into the room when she noticed Aro and Caius both standing on the dais with their backs to her, facing what was undoubtedly Marcus sitting in his throne.
And what in god's name where they wearing? Their outfits… Castiel couldn't even begin to place what time period these getups were from.
"Aro-," Castiel couldn't help trying to call for his attention, and she wasn't surprised in the slightest when he did not respond to her. No one had reacted when she entered so she knew this was a vision.
The quiet was broken by Aro's voice, he was saying something in a language that was totally unfamiliar to her.
It sounded like he was… pleading? To Marcus?
A very low whisper, something that came off as more of a sigh was the only response.
Castiel suddenly found herself feeling incredibly worried. What was wrong with Marcus?
She hurried to the dais, ascending the stairs on Aro's left side so she could see her mate.
Castiel froze.
Marcus was dressed the same strange way as his brothers, and one quick glance around showed Castiel that under their grey cloaks the Elite guards were dressed just as peculiarly. Furs, tunics, and pants that were obviously made by hand…
But the clothes hardly mattered to Castiel, what mattered was the look on Marcus' face.
Her mate looked… exhausted. There was no emotion in his face, and his eyes appeared glassy and blank. His irises were such a deep black that she was sure he must not have fed in a long time. Castiel could feel panic rising in her and looked up into both of her brother's faces to gauge what their reactions were to this... this horrible blankness.
Aro looked… sad, and Caius' jaw was clenched, his whole posture stiff as he folded his arms across his chest. Castiel didn't miss that his hands were balled into fists.
No one else spoke; there really wasn't any time too before a new, much more frightening sound caused Castiel to turn back toward the room as a whole. She heard as Caius and Aro turned too.
It was screaming, a voice – no more than one voice – was pleading in that same language she didn't recognize.
The door was kicked fully open, and two guards entered dragging a human man and two human women in with them.
Castiel could see as she looked at each of their faces that the humans were absolutely terrified. The man continued to plead, and one of the women was crying very loudly – unable to articulate any words through her tears. The last human women seemed too terrified to even utter a sound.
Aro sighed, and Castiel turned back to Marcus as Caius uttered what she was sure was a curse and pulled her mate to his feet.
Castiel could only watch the two of them, absolutely speechless and unable to look away as Caius physically dragged Marcus toward the humans.
She stood, and she watched in horror as Caius forced Marcus' teeth to the neck of the human man. She listened to his screams as Marcus' teeth cut into him and he drained him of his blood. Caius' assistance was no longer necessary after that first feed, and Caius came to stand beside Aro as Marcus grabbed the woman closest to him, his mind obviously fully focused on the hunt.
Her knees felt weak and Castiel sunk to the ground, unable to shut her eyes and not watch as the last human ran shrieking toward the door. Her efforts at escape were futile as Marcus was on her a second later and her screams cut off with a gurgle.
Fuck, holy fuck. Was all she could think when Marcus finally dropped the woman and stood. He turned to face his brothers, his eyes were scarlet, and his chin was smeared with blood but there was still that glassy blankness in his eyes.
Castiel felt hot and dizzy, without thinking about it she ran her hands over her face.
When she opened her eyes again, she was no longer in that underground room. This time she was sitting on grass and she was somewhere she recognized right away.
It was nighttime, and she was in the gardens at the castle, sitting at the feet of Didyme's statue.
Staring up into the stone face she had seen many times, Castiel got to her feet. The way the grass crunched beneath her told her that it must be coated in frost. She turned to face the castle, unsure of what she was supposed to be doing here, and realized she was not alone.
Marcus was there, sitting on a bench across from her, staring directly through her at the statue.
His eyes were black as night again, and the clothes he wore this time – again clothes from a time period she couldn't imagine – were undoubtedly coated in frost just like the grass.
How long had he been sitting out here, completely unmoving?
Going to him was automatic, her feet carried her forward with no hesitation. Unthinkingly her left hand came to gently touch the mate bite he had given her as if she were checking it was still there.
It was, she could feel the raised impression on her skin.
"Marcus?"
He did not respond; not that she was expecting him to.
Castiel was beginning to feel warm again, like heat was burning in her chest and her face. She knelt in front of Marcus looking up into his face as she studied his glassy eyes. There was no emotion – no life in him at all.
"Ma-Marcus-,"
Darkness crept into her vision, and Castiel leaned back so she could sit on the ground again, her eyes closing automatically.
When she opened them again, she was no longer outside.
She was in a house this time in what had to be the living room, and she was sitting on the floor in front of an unlit hearth.
The couches and chairs were… old, very old, but still new and obviously made by hand. It was like she had traveled back in time.
It was still nighttime... or it was simply nighttime yet again wherever she was. This room was lit by candles placed strategically around on the walls.
Whimpering drew her attention, and Castiel turned quickly toward the sound.
It was coming from a door at the back of the room. She might not have gone near it at all if there wasn't something familiar about the sound.
Castiel passed through the door like a specter, exactly as she did when she had these visions where she was a third party. But these could not be visions for she was definitely many years in the past.
Another sitting room, this time occupied by three people.
Three people she knew right away.
Athenadora was sitting on the couch and Sulpicia was beside her, comforting her as she whimpered. Caius was standing over them holding Athenadora's left shoulder in one hand while his other was braced on the top of her left arm.
Castiel covered her mouth with her hands to suppress her startled gasp.
Caius was reattaching Athenadora's severed arm – Castiel could tell this was what was happening as she watched the skin knit itself together – and Sulpicia was brushing hair out of her sister's face as she sobbed, her eyes full of tears that would never fall.
A sound, a sound Castiel would never ever forget came from the floor beneath her feet.
"AH!" she yelled, and she stumbled backwards and fell on her ass at the werewolf's roar.
She could feel her rapid heart, and she heard Athenadora whimper again at the sound. Sulpicia and Caius ignored it completely. Caius barked something at Athenadora though, and Castiel would guess that he was telling her that she had to hold still while he reattached her arm.
Castiel got to her feet, and without even deciding to, her feet carried her to another doorway.
In her visions she very rarely had a choice over what she did or didn't see once the vision started, and now this dream was taking her to where it wanted her to be.
"Oh no," Castiel swallowed, "Oh no no no no no."
She was having a nightmare, Castiel knew she was when she walked through the door and found herself at the top of a flight of very skinny stairs.
She descended them, knowing her expression was probably absolutely terrified as she got closer and closer to the bottom. She knew the basement was lit though, because an orange glow was flickering at the bottom of the stairs.
Words could not describe her horror when she finally found herself in the basement and her eyes took in the gruesome scene.
Blood.
There was blood everywhere. It was splattered against the walls, ceiling, and floor.
This basement was small; the floor was dirt, the walls were stone, and the only things in here were two people she recognized immediately and the bloody heap at their feet that was a very badly injured werewolf.
Aro's expression was terrifying, he was holding some type of weapon that looked to Castiel like a sword with a very thin blade that was coated in blood.
Castiel did her best not to look at the werewolf as Marcus turned, half of his face now in her view as he looked up at the ceiling – as if he were seeing through it to the rest of his family on the couch.
This Marcus was not glassy-eyed and empty. This Marcus' expression was one of unbelievable hate and rage. His clothes – a white shirt and brown pants – were much bloodier than Aro's.
The wolf on the floor growled again, and it moved as if it was trying to get up.
Marcus lashed out, his shape was no more than a blur, and when he backed away from the creature again his mouth was coated in blood too.
The wolf began to howl in pain, and Castiel knew that Marcus had bitten it.
And vampire venom was deadly to werewolves.
She was feeling hot again, much too hot as Aro and Marcus closed in on the creature, each of them snarling.
Castiel remembered this. She remembered this story. Caius, Aro, and Marcus told her about this time when Athenadora had her arm removed by a werewolf many years after Caius lead the hunt that almost drove their numbers to extinction. This was the situation that caused the second wave of werewolf killings across the globe. Caius said that every five centuries or so the werewolf population would boom, and they'd have to thin the herd again.
She had not been given these details though. She had only been told the catalyst of the hunt, not the brother's retribution by torturing the creature – that injured their at the time youngest family member – to death.
Castiel remembered Aro telling her that she didn't know Marcus as they knew him before she came along. That she didn't know the emptiness in him that was only replaced by righteous anger when the family was in danger… was that what this was? Was that what she was seeing?
The heat claimed her again, and she went back into the dark.
Castiel was dragged through many more scenes featuring Marcus and his emptiness, and each time she would be sent to a new place it was after feeling a rush of heat.
She wanted these dreams to stop. It felt like torture to her to see Marcus this way; to see him so empty and beyond help. It was also no benefit that between these visions of blankness she'd see Marcus enraged and doing things she was sure he would never have wanted her to see.
Castiel was in a new place again, she was staring out at a field that was sloping downward in the middle of the night, the scene only lit by a great orange brightness behind her.
When she turned around, she was unable to contain her gasp of shock.
She was on a hill and behind her was a village with houses made of stone with straw roofs. She could hear people screaming… but not many people. Maybe two or three. A horse was neighing, and she saw its dark shape as it galloped out of the village as if it were running from something. The light that had illuminated the field was fire. There was an incredibly large fire burning right in the middle of the village.
Castiel hurried toward the fire, sure that whatever she was meant to see would be there.
She made it there very quickly, much faster than she ever would have managed if she had been in this place in her actual body.
Never had she been more relieved that she had no sense of smell in these visions, because she could see from the end of the road – if it could even be called a road as it was no more than a wide dirt path between the houses – that the large fire was made up of sticks, hay, and human bodies.
Black cloaked figures seemed to emerge from nowhere. They gathered around the fire and cut off her view.
The Volturi guard.
Hurrying forward again, Castiel made her way through the packed area to the pyre and skidded to a halt ten feet from the flames as her eyes followed the gazes of the guards to see what everyone was looking at.
Jane, and in her arms a little boy who couldn't have been any older than two.
But the boy was wrong. His skin was white as snow, his eyes the same color scarlet as the blood that covered the lower half of his face. He was the most adorable toddler she had ever seen, but the wrongness of him kept her from wanting to get any closer.
"NO! NO!" A woman's shrill scream broke the night, it was the only sound beside the crackling of the fire. The other screams Castiel had heard when she turned to face this village had long since gone quiet.
A new vampire came into view, she was the one screaming no, and her eyes were focused on Jane and the child in her arms – despair clear on her beautiful face.
Two guards grabbed her, and the blonde woman hardly seemed to have noticed them even though she was straining desperately against their hold to get to the child.
Was she its mother?
The child was just as pale blonde as her, but there were no other similarities besides that.
Castiel watched as the woman struggled, only tearing her eyes form her when someone came up on her right.
Aro.
She had never seen his expression so grave. The look on Aro's face as he studied the woman showed nothing other than his sadness and disappointment.
In the time it took Castiel to blink, Caius was there too, standing beside Jane and giving the baby vampire a disgusted look before his furious gaze focused on the woman as well.
Looking around Castiel finally saw Marcus, with Afton and Chelsea on either side of him as he drifted at a human pace toward the woman before they all stopped about ten feet away from her.
At first, she had no idea what caused their hesitation, but Aro, Marcus, Caius, and all of the guard's heads turned in the same direction as if they were listening to something.
It took nearly a minute before Castiel could see what they were all focusing on. It was the appearance of three equally beautiful blonde vampire women, hurrying as fast as they could toward the one being restrained by the guard. One had straight hair, one had curly hair, and the other was strawberry blonde.
"MOTHER!" The girl with curly hair screamed as the three of them were grabbed when they collided with the circle of bodies that was the guard. "MOTHER!"
The mother spared the three newcomers a passing glance, but then her attentions were entirely focused on the child again. She continued to struggle with her captors to get to him.
Castiel's skin prickled and the heat was back. It felt so warm, her skin felt as if it were burning. All over she was prickling with pain.
She stepped away from the fire, backing toward the wall of guards as if distancing herself from the flames would help the heat.
It did not.
Hot. It hurts.
Castiel could barely focus on Aro as he went to the three women. She barely paid him any mind at all as he took each of their hands and read their thoughts.
"Marcus," Castiel whimpered sinking to the ground, knowing that this was a dream and no one knew she was there. Knowing that Marcus would not respond. "Marcus. Help me. It hurts."
She hurt all over. It was like acid was running through her veins. She barely noticed Aro talking, she hardly paid any attention to the scene anymore as she curled up on her side on the ground.
Castiel only watched as Marcus moved at Aro's solemn nod and came up behind the woman the three girls had called mother. The three girls screamed as "Mother" was ripped apart, and her dismembered body and the immortal child were thrown into the pyre.
Castiel screamed too, but her scream was not the representation of horror as the screams of the three women were. Her scream was a scream of misery and pain as the heat took her again and she was forced into more dreams of darkness.
"I really wish you could have been there Cas. I've never seen blue fire before. Apparently, there's something about the salt in the driftwood that changes the colors of the flames. You would've really liked the reservation. I wonder if the vamps would ever let you visit with me, I don't really know how they feel about shifters." There was the slight sloshing of water, and something cold and damp was placed against her forehead as Trent continued talking. "I really want you to meet Leah though. We finally have something in common now Cas. You and I are both two silly humans who are the objects of some supernatural creatures' affections. At first I was a little alarmed because like… that's one hell of a commitment but Leah… wow."
"She's probably really pissed at me right now though." Trent sighed, and Castiel felt as he ran something cold down her arm – a wet towel? "The Volturi really weren't all that shocked when they found out about me and Leah. They let me stay in Forks and everything after they destroyed that vampire army. I don't really know what the overall plan was or if they just thought I could live on the Res with Leah now, but anyways I got a call from Aro and heard you were hurt. They got me a plane ticket and I came back immediately. I called Leah on my way to the airport to tell her and she got really upset."
"They really hate vampires on the Res. Leah told me I was going to get myself killed but… but I couldn't just not come back here. Aro made it sound like…" Trent paused, and Castiel could swear she heard him swallow. "He made it sound like you were going to die."
Die? Castiel tried to move her lips. She wanted to talk to Trent, but it felt so hard to move. Her eyes just wouldn't open.
"But anyway." Trent took a deep breath, and he sounded a little calmer as he removed the damp thing from her forehead. Water sloshed again, and the wet towel was put back in place feeling much colder this time. "Dad's been calling every day. He told me to call him the moment you woke up. He wanted to come to Volterra but the Volturi said no."
Castiel tried to move again, and this time she succeeded. Both of her legs curled as if she were trying to bend her knees, and her arms twitched as she flexed her fingers.
When she moved, that prickling, burning feeling returned to her skin.
"Mmmm ahhh." She didn't know what the sound she was trying to make was. She just wanted Trent to know she could hear him.
And even though she moved, and she groaned, Trent didn't react as she expected.
"Easy Cas." Her friend said soothingly. It was as if she had done this before. "Don't worry. We're all taking care of you. You'll be fine."
She felt as something soft brushed her face, as if Trent was leaning over her to reach for something above her head.
It took all of her strength, and an unbelievable amount of effort, for her to reach up and grab his arm with her right hand. Her eyes opened to soft yellow light that still made her feel as if she were looking into the sun.
"Cas?" Trent sounded alarmed.
Castiel struggled to sit up, feeling strangely lopsided because her left arm was in a sling. She groaned as she managed to get into a sitting position, her skin still prickling with heat as she looked around.
She was in Marcus' rooms, in the little nook in the wall where their bed should be.
But the large king-sized bed was gone. She was sitting in a small hospital bed with rails and machines were around her taking up all the available space.
Trent was standing on her right side next to a chair where a bucket of ice water was placed on the seat. She could see a rag floating in the water, and her lap felt kind of damp showing that the towel that was on her forehead must have fell.
Castiel was hooked to an IV again, and she could feel the familiar thing between her legs that she knew was a catheter.
"Ugh," Castiel groaned. "I feel like shit."
It was so warm, and her body hurt. Not to mention the feeling in her stomach and head… she felt like she was incredibly ill.
Both of Trent's hands came to grab her face.
His palms felt cold and clammy to her, but then again, his hands were just in a bucket of ice water so that actually made a lot of sense.
His eyes locked with hers, and they stared at each other for a few seconds before Trent let her go.
"You're awake. You're actually awake, holy shit." Her friend immediately bent down and pulled out a black backpack from under the chair. His hands were shaking, and he was fumbling with the zippers as he frantically looked for his phone.
"Trent?" Castiel felt very confused, and his anxious eyes flashed to her face again as he successfully grabbed his phone from the front pocket of the bag.
"It's alright Cas, it's okay, I just gotta call…" He didn't finish his sentence, too busy scrolling through his recent call log and finding the number that he knew belonged to Aro.
He hit redial, and mindlessly reached his free hand out to Castiel, who took it with a confused expression on her pale face. She was glad she was holding his free hand, at least this was a method to trying to control Trent's anxious trembling.
'Hello?' Aro's smooth voice came from the phone pressed to Trent's ear after only one ring.
"She's awake. Castiel is awake. For real this time Aro she's looking right at me." The breathless relief in Trent's voice made Castiel's heart ache.
"Trent…" Castiel said quietly, wanting to sooth her friend but not knowing how. It was obvious by his words that she must have been unconscious for a very long time.
Aro obviously heard Castiel's voice, and he said something loudly that Trent couldn't understand – some exclamation of shock and joy – and hung up the phone.
Trent dropped the phone on the bed beside her, he wanted to reach out and hug her, but he didn't know how to do that without hurting her.
He settled for just squeezing her hand with the one he was holding.
"It's such a relief to see you awake," Trent said quietly, and Castiel just blinked at him.
"How… how long have I been asleep?"
Trent pursed his lips for a second, his expression showed how hard he was trying to not get emotional. "A long time… You've been out for almost three weeks."
"Three… weeks?" Castiel repeated, feeling like her brain was throbbing as she tried to process this. "I've been unconscious for three weeks?"
"Not… unconscious really." Trent said slowly, looking uncomfortable as he tried to think of the best way to explain. "You've been… you've been moving a lot and…"
He bit his lip, unsure if he should continue.
"And?" Castiel pressed focusing all of her attention on the conversation. She wanted him to keep talking, his words were the only thing distracting her from the fire under her skin.
"And… screaming."
"Screaming?" She sounded shocked.
"Shouting actually. It was terrifying." Trent swallowed. "When I got back to Volterra, they already had you in the hospital wing. You had multiple blood transfusions and the doctor here had to do surgery on your shoulder because you fucked it up really badly. Is it true you hit a werewolf in the face with a pipe?"
"What?" Castiel shook her head, "Surgery? I… no it wasn't a pipe it was a crowbar, but-,"
"You hit a werewolf with a crowbar or a pipe or whatever," Trent cut her off, "And you really wrecked your shoulder when you did. Don't worry about the incisions though, it was apparently really minimally invasive. You have three tiny scars that are each only a centimeter long. But anyway, when I got back they already fixed your shoulder and they were giving you transfusions because you lost a lot of blood but…"
Trent trailed off, and his eyes studied her face with a certain level of scrutiny that she wasn't used to with him.
"But what Trent?" Castiel snapped, feeling irritated that he kept trailing off like that. She wanted to know what was going on!
"But they had to keep giving you transfusions and keep doing some kind of bloodletting thing because you got really, really sick Castiel. You've had this insane fever ever since they bought you back here, and they've been doing everything they can because-,"
"Because your body was, and still is, fighting off the werewolf virus." Kemar's voice made both of them jump. Castiel and Trent hadn't heard the door open and they both turned to see him standing at the foot of her bed.
Castiel's eyes were round as saucers as she took in his appearance. Kemar was dressed in navy scrubs and he had a stethoscope around his neck.
Kemar drifted to her left side, raising both of his hands to press his fingertips to her throat just under her jaw.
"Don't panic though." Kemar continued as if he didn't notice her expression, "You do not smell like a werewolf and your own immune system is doing a rather good job at fighting off the virus. We've been keeping an eye on your white blood cell count, and the virus, while it is still multiplying, isn't overtaking your blood in any way because your cells are killing it at the same rate it is multiplying. I believe that if you do not change by the next full moon the werewolf virus will die off naturally."
"Is that why my skin hurts?" Castiel asked as Kemar's hands came off her throat.
"What do you mean?" Kemar's sharp gaze did not move from her face as she answered.
"It feels like my blood is acid." Castiel groaned, feeling the fiery prickling in her back and arms, "It's like I'm on fire and it hurts. It hurt in my dreams too."
Kemar turned away from her for a second and pulled something out of one of the drawers in the rolling cart by the head of her bed.
"Open your mouth." He commanded, and Castiel saw that it was a thermometer.
She did as he asked, and he held the metal rod under her tongue until in beeped.
"102.4" Kemar said aloud, and Castiel was surprised when Trent hurriedly grabbed a clipboard that was hanging on the foot of her bed and wrote down the number.
"I highly doubt what you're feeling is the virus," Kemar answered, turning toward her IV stand where there was a half full saline bag. "Your fever is due to your body trying to fight it off, but the burning in your skin… well I'm sure that's from this."
"Saline?" Castiel said confused, because there was no way fluid would make her feel like this.
"Not the saline." Kemar disagreed, "But the drops of your mates' venom that is in the saline… probably."
"What?" Castiel was appalled. Venom? But-
"There isn't enough venom in your system to change you, don't worry. It's so diluted by the saline that there isn't a chance of that. It was a crazy idea of Aroks'. We were worried that the stress of introducing venom into your body would kill you, but we had no choice."
"No choice?"
Kemar looked down at her, and his expression was very grim. "You almost died from blood loss that night. Bal removed a significant amount of infected blood from you. If it hadn't been for his action, there is no doubt in my mind that you would be a full-blown werewolf. When you were bought back here, they did everything to keep you alive, but it was noticed that your scent was changing. Even though the donor's blood you were given was gradually changing to your own scent, you still smelled off. At that time your immune system was not succeeding in killing off the virus faster than it was multiplying."
"Master Marcus was beside himself. He wanted to initiate your change, but there was too much werewolf infection in you. If he had bitten you, you would have died. Arkos immediately planned another blood transfusion, but this time we intentionally began draining your blood before introducing the new blood. We had to bring you dangerously close to death before starting the new transfusion. It was imperative that we got as much of the infected blood out as we could."
"Once the transfusion was complete, Arkos voiced the concern well all had – that your body would not be able to fight off the infection without more help. We gave you so many antibiotics and they worked to some extent, but something more had to be done."
"Even though you were unconscious, you were showing signs of pain in your forearm and in your neck. The sounds you made and the way you moved told us that the two areas on your body where vampire venom were trapped in your scars were hurting you. It was only a theory that in those areas where the vampire venom was present that perhaps it was burning away the werewolf gene in your blood. It was Arkos' idea that we introduce venom into your system to help your body fight it off. If we had any other option, we probably wouldn't have tried it because it was so risky."
"We set the first fluid bag and six drops of venom on a fast drip that you would absorb in an hour. You reacted to the venom, your fever got very high, and we had to put you in an ice bath to get it to go down. When we checked your blood a few hours later we could see that Arkos' idea was working. Ever since then you've been given two fluid bags a day on twelve-hour drips, and you get exactly 3 drops of venom in each. We have been unsuccessful in breaking your fever though, you fluctuate between 100.8- and 103.2-degrees Fahrenheit."
Kemar stopped talking, allowing Castiel a few moments to take all of this in.
He spoke again when he saw how tired and resigned Castiel looked as she stared down at the damp towel in her lap.
"I am sorry that the venom is hurting you. Everybody in that hospital wing was having kittens about you when you mumbled 'Marcus help me it hurts' after that first bag."
Castiel was sure she would have blushed if her face wasn't already so flushed due to her fever.
"Are we sure there won't be any adverse effects to this?" Castiel asked, motioning to the IV.
Kemar hesitated, "We can't guarantee anything, no. But it's become very obvious that the only thing the venom is doing in your body right now is waging war with the virus. I personally believe you'll be fine."
Castiel nodded, feeling like she couldn't look at him. She didn't want to see his pity.
"Can't you give her anything for pain?" Trent asked, resting his hand protectively on her shoulder.
Castiel was glad he asked because it meant she didn't have to.
"No. We can't give her anything other than what we are absolutely sure is working to kill that virus right now." Kemar sounded as if he sincerely wished he could have said yes.
"Trent said I was shouting… why was I shouting? What was I shouting?" Castiel asked a minute later to break the uncomfortable silence.
To Castiel's surprise, Kemar and Trent both shared a look before Kemar sighed.
"You were… screaming your head off about… things you were seeing in your dreams. In your visions I mean. Do you not remember what you were seeing?" Kemar spoke slowly, as if he was worried about how she would take this news.
"Visions?" Castiel repeated, hesitating before she shook her head, "No they were dreams. I wasn't dreaming about anything that was going to happen. Everything I saw looked like it was hundreds of years ago. And some of the stuff I don't even know was real – it was just me having nightmares of stories I was told-,"
"Everything you saw was real Castiel."
Aro's voice made Castiel and Trent Jump. Kemar turned to Aro as he came to stand at the foot of her bed.
"Aro-," Castiel didn't know why the sight of him made her feel so emotional, but all at once her eyes burned as if she were going to cry.
Aro was at her right side in a second and Trent stumbled back at his sudden proximity.
Aro was very careful as he leaned toward her. He placed his left arm around her shoulders and used his right hand to draw her head to his chest. It was an awkward hug, but it was the best he could do with her sitting down and her left shoulder still recovering from an injury.
"We'll give you two a minute," Kemar said quietly, motioning with his chin to Trent in an obvious indication that they should leave.
Castiel was a little surprised that Trent listened, and he and Kemar left her with Aro, but not until after Trent promised he'd be back in a little bit.
"What do you mean everything was real?" Castiel asked as Aro released her. He sat carefully on the edge of her bed, being very cautious not to jostle her or any of the wires and tubes that were connected to her.
"I've read your thoughts many times since you fell unconscious Castiel. It was the most efficient way for everyone to be sure you were still having normal brain activity." Aro explained sounding guilty, as if he needed to defend himself for reading her thoughts while she was unconscious. "I saw everything you were seeing and I'm… very sorry you had to see any of it to be honest. If I could have, I would have tried to hide what you were witnessing from Marcus too… but you were yelling rather loudly… It was pretty obvious what you were watching."
"I was seeing…" Castiel said slowly, trying to be sure she was getting it right. "I was seeing the past?"
Aro nodded
"But… but no! That's not how this works. I see the future. I don't see things that happened… that happened hundreds if not thousands of years before I was even thought of!"
"You were… incredibly ill Castiel. Your fever did things to you that even I don't understand. I had Eleazar read you to see what was happening with your gift. He said it was like your gift was turning in on itself, inverting and acting oddly. Even he couldn't explain exactly what was going on."
"Eleazar is here?" Castiel was surprised, she had thought he was in Denali.
Aro nodded, "Yes, he returned once we informed the Denali coven of your injury. Not only was he worried for your health, but he also came so he could give your father updates on you."
"I…" Castiel didn't know what to say. The prickling pain in her skin, the felling of illness in her head and stomach… it made it hard to think.
"You were seeing things that have happened over the course of our time ruling the supernatural world." Aro said gently, reaching over to take the wet towel off of her lap and dropping it in the bucket. "You saw Marcus as he was before you came along. You saw his emptiness, and you saw him when he would come out of his shell to fight on our coven's behalf. You even got a glimpse of the Denali coven a thousand years ago."
"What?" Castiel's head whipped around to look at Aro so fast her neck hurt and she winced.
"Yes," Aro sighed, "We told you about immortal children, but not any of the specific… incidences."
"You witnessed the aftermath of the utter decimation of a village caused by the immortal child Vasilli, and the subsequent reaction of his creator – his mother if you will – Sasha. The three women who came to Sasha's aid were Kate, Irina, and Tanya Denali before they were vegetarians and before Eleazar and his mate Carmen joined them."
"T-They – the Denali's I mean – created an immortal child?"
Aro shook his head. "No. Sasha created the child. Kate, Tanya, and Irina never saw the infant until that very moment in time that we came to destroy it. They were spared because of this."
"I-," Castiel didn't know what to say. To hear that all of those terrible dreams were real… it was almost too much to process.
"You were… shouting about the things you were seeing. It was one of the main reasons we had this set up," He motioned to the space she was in, and the absence of Marcus' bed. "To be honest it was inevitable that we would move you into Marcus' rooms because he hates seeing you in the hospital wing, but your yelling only sped up the process."
"Why couldn't I be in the hospital wing if I was yelling?" Castiel asked confused
"Because we couldn't be sure that you weren't going to see anything that was… sensitive." Aro said uncomfortably, "We didn't want you accidentally revealing any secrets. And it's a good thing we did move you. There were a couple of times…"
Aro didn't finish and Castiel knew what he was talking about. She had seen dozens of visions of the past, and a few things were scenes that she was rather sure were meant to be kept private.
"I'm… so sorry." Castiel mumbled, ashamed as she looked away from him.
"Don't be!" Aro gasped, appalled, "No Castiel do not apologize. Nothing you saw and nothing you said was your fault. You're very ill, nothing was said intentionally."
"Am… Am I going to be okay Aro?" Castiel said, unable to stop her voice from cracking. Kemar said she would be fine, but she wanted a second opinion.
Because to be honest she was scared to death. She felt hot and her skin – her fucking blood – hurt. She wanted to be comforted and reassured that she wasn't going to die, that she wasn't going to be sick forever, that she wasn't…
That she wasn't going to turn into a werewolf.
The image of the wolf that almost killed her, a sick mutation of human and animal, sprang to mind. But this time she imagined the creature as herself.
Suddenly Aro was standing, and he was hugging her in the same awkward way that he had when he came in.
"Yes." Aro swore, "You are going to be fine Castiel. We're going to break the fever I promise, and there is a very good chance that Kemar is right and that the werewolf gene will not be viable if it does not succeed in making you transform at the next full moon. You just need to be strong until then."
Castiel sniffed, she felt the hot tears running down her cheeks and she didn't try to stop them.
"Where's Marcus?"
She felt Aro still momentarily before he answered, "He's… occupied right now. He'll be here soon. The same with Caius."
"I've been unconscious for weeks." Castiel squeaked, "Why wouldn't he come when I woke up?"
Aro could hear the hurt in her voice, and he knew that he had to be honest.
"He doesn't know you're awake Castiel. He'll kick my ass later for not telling him immediately, but he was very serious about not being interrupted unless it was a matter of life and death, so I'm taking him literally and he'll kill me for using this loophole to avoid telling him you're awake."
"Why would you avoid telling him I'm up?" The tears stopped running down her face, her shock at Aro's words stunting them.
"Because it really is best that he sorts this out in one go and gets it out of his system. Being interrupted and still having a loose end to tie up will only make him a lot more aggressive. He'll be too focused on the fact that you're back with us and you need him and not focused enough on handling the things that need to be handled."
"What needs to be handled?" Castiel was a little curious and a little concerned at the same time.
Aro avoided answering her question by going off on a different tangent: "You haven't seen how aggressive he's been over the last few weeks. Not having you to calm him down and being so concerned about your health is really making him react instinctively to everything he perceives as a threat-,"
"Aro what is he doing-,"
"Kemar wasn't joking when he said we were all having kittens about you when we first tried the venom and you were in pain. Marcus was beside himself when you said-,"
"Aro!"
Marcus had tuned out the shrieking hours ago; he hardly even noticed it as his foot came down on the back of vampire who was trying to crawl away from him and forced him to his stomach on the ground. If he thought he knew pain, he was sorely mistaken because Marcus was only just getting started.
Guards lined the walls of the circular room, and some were sitting on the steps to the dais with their legs blocking the words that Castiel had laughed at because they were so predictable.
Only Marcus and Caius were standing in the center of the room, taking turns inflicting pain on one of the vampires that were responsible for Castiel's abduction.
The French nomad groaned as Caius came forward, bending down to grab a fistful of his hair and yank his head back. Marcus watched as his brother removed the nomad's tongue and his screams became suddenly guttural.
"Bring me the other one," Marcus said aloud, not bothering to turn to address any specific guard.
He heard the rustle of cloaks as a couple of guards left the room to retrieve the other prisoner.
Marcus turned his attention back to Maxx as Caius began slowly removing his fingers, it was really pitiful how little of a fight the nomad was putting up. Marcus hoped that his nephew would be a bit more entertaining.
He didn't need to wait long, only two minutes passed before the guards were back, dragging the struggling Lucas between them.
They forced the nomad to his knees, and Marcus moved toward him slowly, stopping only a couple feet away and studying him with obvious disdain as Maxx screamed again. Caius was doing something that probably involved the snapping of all of Maxx's bones if the crunching noises were anything to go by – Marcus couldn't be bothered to turn around and check.
Aro had already read both of the nomads, so they were disposable. Marcus didn't know where Aro had gone but figured his brother probably just wanted some time alone to spend with his mate and digest all the new information he absorbed from their captives. That or it had something to do with the phone call Aro received when they were in the middle of interrogating Maxx. Marcus had been too absorbed in what he was doing – strategically stepping on and twisting Maxx's torso to damage his spine so he wouldn't be able to walk properly – to hear what was being said. It took vampires many hours to heal from broken bones just as it took many hours for a limb to work properly again when it was reattached, and Marcus wanted to be sure that Maxx wasn't going to keep getting up to fight.
It hadn't really been necessary though. It became obvious very quickly that Maxx was the type to lie down and beg for his life like a bitch rather than stand up and fight back.
Hopefully Aro would find the time to check on Castiel and send him a text while he took care of his little imprint's abductors.
Marcus had saved Lucas for last. Aro had informed him that Lucas was Castiel's main tormentor, so Marcus made sure he took out all his pent-up aggression on Maxx first so he wouldn't act too hastily and kill Lucas before he really got to make him suffer.
Marcus and Lucas stared at each other for a long moment, and Marcus was pleased to see how Lucas' eyes flashed to the side to take in Maxx's shrieking form from somewhere behind him.
"Tell me Lucas," Marcus said slowly, a mock thoughtful expression on his face, "Have you ever seen a mortal girl about-," He raised a hand to indicate Castiel's approximate height, "Yay tall? With curly red hair and blue eyes that make you feel like she's seeing straight through you?"
Lucas tried not to react, but his mouth and the corner of his right eye twitched ever so slightly at the description.
"Ah, I see it does sound familiar to you. Good, that means we can get right to the point." Marcus' eyes flashed dangerously, and Lucas inhaled as he prepared to make a witty remark in reply.
And when he breathed in, he recognized the scent that had been all over the mortal. He understood now that they had not just grabbed the mate of a random guard.
"If I had known she was yours," Lucas drawled, his expression defiant as he stared up at Marcus, "I would have killed her in the street that day and left her body for you to find."
Lucas taunted Marcus because he had only ever heard of him as the silent king – the king who was no more than an empty shell after the death of his mate. He had heard rumors that the king had imprinted, but simply believed they were false since no vampire could have two mates.
He learned very quickly that Marcus was not the kind of vampire to play games with.
In an instant Marcus was in front of Lucas, both of his hand finding the back of the nomad's head before he threw him down in one swift motion, his knee coming up to slam into Lucas' face as his did so.
It was an explosion of pain. Lucas felt as cracks sprawled out along his face and his nose broke, but that wasn't nearly as bad as the pain as he felt some of his teeth fall out.
Lucas was on his hands and knees, spitting saliva, venom, and bits of teeth onto the floor before Marcus was beside him again.
His did not have time to react before he was kicked in the ribs. He felt part of his left torso cave in as his body slid multiple feet due to the force.
It was a world of pain; Lucas could hear Maxx gurgling something at the other king as Marcus walked slowly toward him. Maxx could not articulate any words, and Lucas was sure that they had mutilated him in some way so he couldn't speak.
"I'm glad I didn't know though," Lucas gasped, knowing Marcus Volturi was going to kill him and deciding that at least it was all worth it because after he died Marcus would have nothing to cling to in this life. "It's so much more satisfying to know that I caused your imprint to die at the hands of a werewolf the same way your first mate did."
Lucas couldn't be completely sure what happened next, he knew nothing but terrible pain for many minutes, the only sounds he could register being his own screams echoing around the room. Only some of the pain want away, and he was confused for a moment before he realized he was on his back, staring up at Marcus and Caius.
The brothers had removed his ears, fingers, chunks of his hair, and little bits of flesh from all over his body. Lucas could not hear Maxx anymore.
"Do you want to break the news to him brother, or can I do it?" Caius asked Marcus, a cruel smile on his face.
Marcus shrugged his shoulders in a small movement that was obviously a silent 'Go ahead'.
Caius crouched down near Lucas' head, grinning condescendingly as he said, "Well, I'm sorry to say this but I'm afraid you're dying for absolutely nothing. My little sister is still alive. Your werewolf did not succeed in killing our youngest."
The shock on Lucas' face at Caius' words was absolutely comical. Caius laughed as he stood again before bringing on foot down to stomp on Lucas' face.
There was an unpleasant crunching noise as fractures obviously formed in the nomad's skull.
Marcus sighed, lowly reminding Caius that while his enthusiasm was appreciated, Marcus still wanted him alive for a little while.
And so they continued, and the silence in the vast room was only broken by the nomad's screams as the brothers tormented him. Marcus wanted to make absolutely sure that Lucas regretted the very day he had been born into this new life. He made sure the nomad understood that his suffering was all because he had tried to harm what was his. Lucas learned and understood very clearly that Marcus Volturi would stop at nothing to be sure that all of his little mortal's suffering had repayment.
Lucas did not even know how badly the girl had been harmed, but he knew that she must have been injured to some extent, otherwise this extended torture would all be completely unnecessary.
That, or the Volturi was just as sadistic as everyone said they were.
The was a knock on the doors to the room, and Caius and Marcus both turned as Renata entered.
She had left the room long before they had gotten started with Maxx. She was just one of those guards who was a little delicate to be watching this sort of thing.
Renata looked as if she were a little queasy as she glanced down at the heap that was Lucas, her eyes only drifting to the pile of ash that had been Maxx for a brief second before her eyes caught Marcus'.
His clothes were stained with what was obviously venom, the sickly-sweet scent coming from the two brothers was enough to make any vampire's hair stand on end.
"What Renata?" Caius snapped, already impatient with how long it took the young guard to state the meaning of the interruption. They had been clear that no one was to disturb them unless it was a matter of the utmost importance.
Marcus held out a hand to Caius, silently instructing him to relax.
It was obvious Renata had come for him, and momentarily his heart seemed to constrict with worry.
A worry which dissipated the moment Renata spoke.
"Master Aro sent me," Suddenly a huge, breathtaking smile lit up Renata's face, "Castiel is awake."
"You knew!?" Trent said indignantly as Castiel gave him an apologetic shrug, a small smile on her face. "I can tell by your face! You knew about Leah? Why didn't you tell me!?"
Trent was standing beside her bed, Aro was sitting in the chair that had previously held the bucket of ice water, and Kemar was on her left side, checking something on one of her machines. Castiel tried not to acknowledge the fact that her IV bag was almost out, meaning Kemar was inevitably going to change it soon. She had a feeling that getting a new IV bag was going to suck balls and she really didn't want to think about it.
"It wouldn't have changed anything," Castiel mumbled guiltily, glancing at Aro who was staring up at the ceiling with his fingertips pressed together under his chin in an obvious leave-me-out-of-it kind of way.
Trent puffed out his cheeks and exhaled dramatically. "You know when I said you'd be the death of me? Yeah. That shit still stands."
Castiel laughed and Trent failed to contain his own smile in response. After a second though his grin faded. "It doesn't really matter anymore though does it? I'm sure she's unbelievable angry with me."
"Why-," Castiel began but Aro interrupted, unable to help himself.
"I'm sure your girlfriend is more worried about you than angry Trent. But the only way to tell for sure will be for you to call her."
Trent winced at the idea, "I dunno-,"
Aro sighed, "You have this very bad habit of avoiding talking about the complicated things with your lady friends. You'll never have a fulfilling relationship with anyone if you don't learn how to talk to your partner."
"Aro." Castiel reprimanded, feeling like he was being a little harsh.
"I'm only telling the truth." Aro defended, shrugging, "The imprinting of a shifter is different than the imprinting of a vampire, but it doesn't change the fact that Leah Clearwater is tied to Trent in an unbreakable way. I know if you were to run off to some unknown place and not contact Marcus, he would be worried sick. Is it so hard to believe that the same probably goes for Trent's wolf?"
Castiel looked thoughtful, and Trent looked uncomfortable – obviously beginning to feel really mortified.
"Look-," Trent began but cut off with an indignant "Hey!" is Castiel reached over to him and swiftly removed his phone from his back pocket.
Instinctively he reached for it, but he was stopped by Kemar who – in a very bodyguard like fashion – stretched an arm out across the bed, his hand coming flat against Trent's sternum.
Kemar gave a little shove that knocked the breath out of Trent and sent him stumbling back a step.
It had been a reflex to protect his very vulnerable charge, and he didn't like how close the boy had come to accidentally tugging on some of the wires that were connected to little sensors on Castiel's chest. She was too sick and too fragile right now to be messing around like this and he would have reprimanded both of the humans if Master Aro didn't shoot him a look that told him to keep whatever he was about to say to himself.
Kemar gave a small sigh that only Aro heard.
Castiel didn't really notice Kemar or Trent at all, she was scrolling through Trent's contacts on his iPhone.
"A call from Italy to the Washington is really expensive-," Trent objected, sensing what Castiel was doing but not daring to reach for his phone again.
She cut him off, not looking up from the device, "Oh I know, that's why we're going to facetime over wifi."
Aro laughed at Castiel's brazenness and only stopped chuckling when a small knock sounded at the door to Marcus' quarters and it opened a crack.
Renata poked her head in.
"Master Marcus needs clothes Master Aro," She explained, "He's in Master Caius and Lady Athenadora's rooms."
Aro nodded excusing himself quietly, not letting anything show in his expression when Castiel glanced up at him curiously for a second.
Aro was quite certain Marcus was probably covered in the bodily fluids of the two nomads he and Caius had been torturing, and it was probably Caius' doing that stopped Marcus from barging in here in a completely unpresentable state.
He grabbed a change of clothes from his brother's closet quickly and stepped out into the hallway with Renata while softly closing the door behind him.
"I think I should go with you Master," Renata said sounding nervous when Aro gave her a little wave of dismissal. "Master Marcus is rather…"
"Rather cross that I didn't tell him Castiel was awake a few hours ago?" Aro finished for her, "Yes I assumed he would be. Rest assured that I can deal with my brother dear one. He'll be too eager to get back to Castiel to really have a go at me anyway."
And with that teasing remark Aro turned toward Caius' quarters, leaving Renata fidgeting nervously in the hall.
"Aha! Got it," Castiel said cheerfully, clicking on Leah's contact and clicking the facetime option. Trent gave a very theatrical groan of pain.
"Cassy please-,"
The very familiar tune started to play as the call began, Trent holding his breath as he waited for Leah to answer while staying out of the view of the camera with a guilty look on his face.
Castiel rolled her eyes as she waited, Kemar and Trent standing on either side of her out of the camera's view. Trent looked too nervous to look at the phone while Kemar's gaze was sharp and focused. She knew Kemar wanted no part in the conversation and didn't plan for Leah to know he was even in the room, but he would be paying very strict attention the whole time.
Right when Castiel thought she was going to have to end the call and try again, Leah answered.
At first the video picture from Leah's end was nothing more than a green blur as she adjusted her phone, but it was corrected almost immediately when the other girl held the phone out in front of her, her hand steady.
There was a beat of silence as Castiel and Leah looked at each other – Leah only looking confused for a very brief moment. Castiel figured Trent must have talked about her to Leah and probably shown her pictures of the two of them because it was obvious that Leah knew who she was.
Castiel smiled and sat up a little straighter, pulling up her slightly too big hospital gown as it had slid down when she sat on it. Her movements were a little awkward too due to her left arm being in the stupid sling.
"Hi Leah!" Castiel said cheerfully, trying not to acknowledge how flushed her cheeks were from her fever in the tiny image of her cam in the corner of the screen. "I'm sorry no one reached out sooner. Trent can be kinda stupid when it comes to girls he really likes, and he was afraid to call because he thought you'd be mad at him."
Trent's gaped at her as she outed him, Kemar smirked, and the mention of Trent caused Leah to speak.
"Is Trent okay!?" Leah sounded breathless, and the extent of her worry was plainly obvious in her voice.
"I'm fine Leah." Trent said before Castiel could speak and he very carefully leaned over Castiel so his face was in the frame too.
But not carefully enough apparently, because he accidentally tugged on the tube that was connected to Castiel's IV in her right arm.
"Ouch!" Castiel hissed, wincing as Trent jumped back.
"Oops Cas, I'm sorry!" Trent said quickly, stepping back as Kemar flashed around to his side of the bed, hissing: "Take your phone and step away."
Trent did as he was told, taking the phone from Castiel's hand and being very careful not to show her or Kemar in the camera as he moved swiftly out of the way.
All Leah could see was Trent looking to the side as he moved toward the couch, watching the vampire leaning over his friend.
Trent had tugged her IV badly enough that blood was leaking from under the tape that held it to her elbow. Kemar worked fast, pinching off her line and removing it from the IV before carefully removing the tape, his thumb applying pressure to the flexible needle in her arm.
"Look away Castiel," Kemar said evenly as he grabbed a small piece of gauze and folded it up. "I'm going to remove this from your arm. I'll have to do a new one and I know you get squeamish around needles. Your friend will be in for it if you pass out before Marcus gets here."
Castiel looked away from what Kemar was doing, watching Trent on the couch. At her gaze Trent mouthed "I'm sorry" and then was distracted by Leah saying something on his phone.
She hissed in discomfort again when she felt the sting of a new needle – this time in the back of her right hand instead of in her elbow.
Castiel didn't look back at Kemar until he was obviously done. The wad of gauze was taped at her elbow and the new needle in her hand was already hooked up to the nearly empty drip bag again. Kemar moved around to her other side again, and she heard as he rifled in the drawers for a few minutes.
He had to reach over her to put the blood pressure cuff on her right arm. The tube to pump air into the cuff laying across her lap. The machine gave a familiar rumbling buzz as the pressure cuff inflated – it was the same sound Castiel heard from basically every doctor's appointment she had ever attended in her childhood.
When Kemar was done recording her blood pressure he checked her temperature again, and Castiel could tell by his face when he pulled the thermometer away that he didn't like what he read.
"What?" Castiel asked as he wrote the temperature down on the clipboard they had been using.
"103.0," Kemar said as an explanation, "I'm going to have you take some Tylenol. You'll need a new saline bag in just over an hour and we can't give it to you with your temperature being so high."
Kemar reached into one of the drawers of the cart and pulled out a little packet that had two familiar white pills in it. He opened the packet into a small medicine cup and handed it to her before disappearing.
Castiel looked around a little confused, blinking when Kemar appeared at her side with a glass of water hardly 20 seconds later. She recognized the glass as one of the expensive crystal ones from Marcus' office and assumed he had gone to the bathroom to fill it with tap water.
Castiel hesitated briefly as she looked at the pills. To her the idea of not getting a new saline bag was not exactly a bad thing. She hated the burning.
"Take them." Kemar said sharply, obviously knowing what she as thinking about, "I know you hate the IV Castiel, but your fever truly is too high."
"But-,"
"Don't make me force them down your throat Castiel." Kemar snapped. "Trust me I will do it, and I know how upsetting it will be if I do. Just take them."
Castiel scowled but tipped the pills into her mouth. She took the glass from Kemar quickly – when pills that were meant to be swallowed started dissolving on the tongue the taste was ungodly – and quickly gulped down a couple mouthfuls of water.
Kemar took the glass back, setting it down on top of the cart before turning back to her.
"Open your mouth."
Castiel blinked at him, confused, "Why?"
"Because I'm making sure you swallowed them. Open."
Part of her really wanted to roll her eyes at Kemar as she complied, but she didn't because he seemed like he was in a really bad mood. Castiel heard the door to Marcus' rooms open and close as Trent left, still talking on the phone with Leah and obviously wanting to go somewhere much more private for whatever conversation they were having.
Over the next few minutes Kemar busied himself checking her machines and recording things on her clipboard. Castiel leaned back into her pillows, looking out into the room with a small exhale.
It really was much more comfortable being here than being in the hospital wing. Maybe it was because she actually had a nice pillow and a real blanket, and maybe it was just because she was somewhere that she felt safe. But even though she knew her fever was off the charts and her stomach and head didn't feel too great, she felt better in here than she ever did in the hospital wing... she just felt more hopeful.
The door to the rooms opened again, and this time when Castiel looked up she felt like her heart leapt in her chest.
And it might as well have – her heartrate monitor was showing the spike in her pulse as her eyes found Marcus.
"Mar-," She didn't even finish getting his name out before he was at her left side, leaning down over her and holding her face in his palms.
His cool hands felt nice, and her eyes fluttered shut as he leaned down and gently started kissing all over her face.
She laughed as he did this and was relieved when he moved to press his face into her hair that he didn't take his hands off her too-hot cheeks.
He was speaking softly in a language she couldn't understand, but for some reason to her the words sounded like a prayer.
"My sweet, beautiful girl," he said quietly after a long moment, "I have missed you so much."
Castiel felt like there was an apple in her throat and she leaned into him, pressing her injured arm carefully against his chest. He released her face to put his arms around her. He seemed to know exactly where to put them too – as if he had a lot of practice in knowing exactly where all her wires and tubes were.
"I love you," she said quietly. And she felt Marcus let out a breath of air that sounded like a cut off sob.
Castiel didn't know how long they stayed like that, him resting his head on top of hers with her face hidden against his chest, but it had apparently been a little while because someone cleared their throat.
Marcus growled.
"Shit Marcus you're not the only one who's allowed to hug her," Caius' voice came from somewhere in the center of the room, and Castiel pulled back to peak around Marcus and saw Caius was standing there with Athenadora, Sulpicia, and Aro.
It became plainly obvious that the arm Caius had around Athenadora was restraining, because the second he dropped it she bolted over to Marcus' side so quickly that Castiel didn't even see the movement.
Sulpicia was a little more reserved, wanting to give Marcus space to be with Castiel before she accosted her human sister, but since Athenadora was already at her side she figured 'aw what the hell' and zipped to Castiel's other side – deciding to stand on the right side of her bed instead of on the left with Marcus and Athenadora.
It took everyone a few minutes to get settled; Aro disappeared for a short moment a came back with folding chairs for each of them. Of course, the vampires would have all been comfortable standing for countless hours beside Castiel, but they all know that leaning over her like that would make her very uncomfortable.
Only Marcus didn't accept a folding chair, and once everyone was rearranged, he was sitting on the edge of her bed by her waist on her right side with his left arm reaching out around her shoulders, his hand holding the left side of her face.
Aro and Sulpicia also sat on her right side in two of the chairs, and Athenadora and Caius stayed on her left.
They filled her in on the comings and goings of the castle in the three weeks she had been unconscious. The relief that she was awake was palpable and Castiel could tell as they told her about what had transpired the night of her attack that she had given nearly everyone in the castle the scare of the century.
"After you were taken," Caius said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees as he talked, "It was like a race against time to get to you before anything bad happened. Those of us who were returning from Forks were absolutely floored when we called to inform the castle of our impending arrival at landing only to hear that Demetri needed to begin tracking you right away because you had been abducted."
"Demetri and I took the first car available right off the landing strip and began heading in your direction. It wasn't looking very positive when we were informed that Afton had lost the van in a crowded city. He actually side swiped a car when passing through an intersection and cause a multi-car accident."
Castiel's eyes went very wide, and Marcus' look was extremely disapproving when Caius told her this piece of information. Just as she opened her mouth – undoubtedly to ask if anyone got hurt – Marcus interrupted.
"No one died Castiel – Caius please continue." No need for him to add two of the humans involved in the accident were still in critical condition in the hospital – he wasn't lying when he said no mortals out of the 9 injured had died though.
"Anyway, the news that the people who had taken you were werewolves had us all on edge. Marcus, Afton, and Kemar were ahead of us by… quite a bit… we assumed we would intercept them at some point on our way to you but…" Caius paused, looking over at Marcus who sighed.
Marcus removed his hand from around her shoulders, turning his torso toward her and taking her face in both of his hands again.
The relief at his cool hands was instant and she groaned, shutting her eyes. She knew he was only holding her face to keep the heat down and she was so glad he was.
"But we got sidetracked about… forty… maybe fifty miles west of where you were." Marcus continued, she felt as he leaned down to kiss the top of her head. "We didn't have an actual trail to follow. We were scenting for werewolves while following my instincts about your general direction. Our bond is useful in many ways, imprinting makes your soul so much a part of me that it was like following a compass North. I was able to follow the pull to you and Kemar and Afton followed. We only stopped when we caught the scent of a werewolf heading deeper into the woods we were in."
"We encountered a pod of maybe 15 of them total. It's so abnormal to come across more than two in a group. While werewolves aren't naturally predisposed to kill each other they still fight among themselves quite a lot. This grouping of them… they all had tagged ears like they were a herd of sheep. They were in a large clearing and being contained by some type of deer fence as if they were cattle. We understand now that they were from last month's grouping of kidnapped people by those two nomads who were responsible for your abduction."
Castiel didn't open her eyes, but Marcus felt her twitch at the mention of the nomads, and he could feel against his palms as her lips turned down in a frown.
His palms were warm now due to the heat of her skin and he dropped them from her face. Sulpicia stood when he let Castiel go and moved close to him, placing her cool hands on Castiel's cheeks instead.
Castiel could tell by the shape of the hands holding her face now and by the scent of a fresh bouquet of flowers that it was Sulpicia.
"Thanks Sully." She mumbled.
"Of course." He sister whispered tenderly back.
It was silent for a long moment; it was clear that Marcus was debating on whether to tell her the next part. Aro ended up making the decision for him.
"Marcus, Afton, and Kemar cleared out the werewolf pod in the forest while Demetri and Caius headed toward you." Aro chuckled, and Castiel opened her eyes at the sound because she was confused as to what was funny, "He terrified Afton and Kemar by singlehandedly eliminating 9 of the werewolves while the two of them took care of the remaining six. Afton thought he looked possessed and said he would have never believed a vampire could take on a werewolf pack of that size singlehandedly – especially when all of them went into a murderous frenzy at the scent of the vampires."
"I did not fight them singlehandedly," Marcus said, irritated. "Afton and Kemar did assist."
"Kemar also said that you really didn't need their help. They just took care of the stragglers while you took down the ones that were actually a threat." Aro said this with a slightly teasing tone, as if he was saying 'Just take the compliment, yeesh'.
"They weren't terrified," Marcus stated, ignoring Aro's words.
"Eh," Aro shrugged, lifting a hand a waving it in a yes-and-no kind of gesture, "They didn't want to step near you for at least two minutes after the slaughter. They truly have never seen anyone fight like you before."
Marcus rolled his eyes and looked down at his mate, surprised that she didn't seem at all upset by Aro talking about him slaughtering a bunch of werewolves that only a month ago had been innocent people.
Castiel's eyes found his, and her expression became sad.
"I'm glad the werewolves are gone. I've seen what they're like. I know they can't be helped." Her expression was ashamed, and it was clear that the reason she wasn't upset was because she was terrified of werewolves. She was glad her mate had removed more of them from the earth.
Sulpicia dropped her hands from Castiel's cheeks, pleased that it felt like her skin had cooled some, and gently brushed some of Castiel's hair back behind her ear. "It's okay that you're scared of werewolves sweetheart. It's not something to be ashamed of."
"I'm scared of them too." Athenadora said softly, feeling Caius put an arm around her shoulders.
"Anyway." Caius continued after another beat of silence where Sulpicia returned to her chair and Marcus put an arm around Castiel again. "Demetri and I were getting closer and closer to you in the meantime, when suddenly I received a call from Bal."
Castiel turned her head from Marcus' chest to look at her blonde brother, the mention of Bal sparking her curiosity.
"At the time I almost didn't want to answer. I really didn't have patience for anyone's shit at that moment, but I knew not to answer when a call we had told so many of our allies to be on the lookout for you was foolish. But Bal was not someone we had informed of the situation, and that alone had me curious. If it were a pointless call, I'd just hang up."
"When I answered, Bal told me he just got off the phone with Aro and was instructed to call me. He said that his men had found a little human girl about to be slaughtered by a werewolf at a new set of warehouses he owned. He told me they noticed the situation unfolding at his warehouse on their cameras and he sent his men to handle it. If you hadn't been wearing your crest Castiel… Bal's men are known to follow orders to a tee. They would have executed you if that one man didn't tear your shirt."
Caius' expression was severe "How many times do we have to tell you not to tuck the crest beneath your shirt?" he chided.
Castiel frowned, and her expression looked so sad and vulnerable that he groaned and rubbed his face with his hands. "God don't look at me like that. Don't give me that look. Just don't hide your crest under your shirt anymore okay?"
Castiel looked a little bewildered by the sudden gentling of Caius' voice, and heard as her family chuckled softly.
"Even Caius can't take the kicked puppy look," Aro laughed, winking at Castiel, "You truly do have some very dangerous weapons at your disposal."
Marcus sighed, "Stop teasing her."
He was relieved that when he looked down at her again she didn't look upset; just a little confused and even… a little amused as she registered what Aro was saying.
"Bal only realized just who you might be when his men relayed your description to him. All the details matched the information Marcus gave him to forge documents for you." Aro continued on Caius' behalf, "He was… not thrilled when he was told what office they placed you in and of your condition."
Castiel's eyebrows raised in disbelief at his words.
"Oh, I'm not talking about your injuries," Aro explained, seeing her look, "He wasn't pleased they had restrained you, and was furious to see that obviously one of his men had hit you across the face."
"Why?" Castiel asked, truly confused. She wasn't sure how she should view Bal – was he a good guy or a bad guy?
Okay obviously he wasn't a good guy just by what kind of… product he moved. But was he on their side?
"He was irritated that his men were so foolish as to manhandle you the way they did even with the knowledge of who you were connected to. How they treat you is a reflection of him, and he didn't want that reflection of him to be presented to the Volturi." Aro let out a long exhale, "He was disappointed he had to have one of his men executed for…" He trailed off when she winced, remembering how hard the said man had slapped her across the face.
Marcus rubbed her shoulders.
"He didn't have to…" Castiel started to say, stopping when Marcus growled.
"Oh yes he did. That man was very fortunate Bal extended that mercy to him." Marcus said darkly, and one look up at his face told Castiel that his fate would have been one thousand times worse if Marcus had gotten his hands on him.
"We wouldn't have expected any less," Caius agreed.
"Alright, that's enough of that." Athenadora said, steering the conversation away from the topic that was making both her mate and Castiel's mate hum with anger.
"Caius got there, and he and Demetri rushed you back." Marcus continued now, telling the story exactly as he was told it, just leaving out the finer details. "You passed out when they were not far from the medical van. They pulled you over and transferred you to it…"
"You stopped breathing." Caius said lowly, cutting Marcus off. His words were so quite Castiel almost couldn't hear him. "I had to do CPR in the car for two minutes before we got to the van."
"And as they were getting out of the car to transfer you to the van, you began breathing on your own again." Sulpicia said gently, her eyes on Caius. "You did well Caius."
Castiel's expression was tender as she turned to Caius, "Caius… thank you."
He shook his head, "There isn't anything to thank me for."
"I did notice," Marcus drawled lazily, an unexpected smirk coming to his face. "A certain strengthening of Caius' bond to Castiel even before that car ride… the timing lines up for when you were in Bal's warehouse…"
Castiel, realizing what Marcus was getting at, grinned. Aro must have told him.
Caius shot both of them a dirty look, daring them to emasculate him in front of Sulpicia and Athenadora.
And Castiel certainly dared, "Yeah. He told me he was scared you guys were going to lose me." Castiel was grinning so big her face hurt, "He told me he loved me and called me his baby sister."
"AWWWWW!" Athenadora and Sulpicia chorused just as predicted and Aro began laughing.
"Oh, Caius that's so cute!" Athenadora cooed, leaning heavily into her mate and putting her arms around him. "I knew you were such a sweety to everyone deep down and not just to me."
"And so the grinches heart grew three sizes that day." Marcus teased, both of his arms wrapping around Castiel as she shook with silent laughter.
"I hate you both." Caius said darkly.
They moved into less sensitive topics now, allowing Castiel time to decompress from the serious stuff and just relax as she was with her family. They were only interrupted when Kemar reentered the room 20 minutes later with Arkos at his side.
Arkos was pleased she was awake and he and Kemar lowly went over a few things on her chart while her family discussed something involving an ally in Switzerland. Marcus' attention was very obviously focused on the doctors and Castiel, and not on the conversation his family was having.
"Now Castiel," Arkos smiled down at her as he stood close to her left side using a lit up little handheld device to look inside her left ear, "Time for the million-dollar question. How are you feeling?"
Castiel shrugged. "It kind of feels like I have the flu. And it feels like there's acid in my blood." She mumbled the last part, and Arkos didn't seem surprised by what she said.
Marcus shifted minutely at her words and Castiel focused on the doctor to avoid turning to look at him.
"When you say in feels like you have the flu, you mean your fever?" Arkos asked before holding up a finger and telling her to watch it while he shined a light in her eyes.
"Yes, and I feel nauseous, and cold, and hot. I just feel… sick. And my throat started to hurt after I woke up."
At the mention of her throat Arkos had her open her mouth while he used a tongue depressor to check the back of her throat. He didn't see anything unusual but he noticed her wince when he used the tips of his fingers to press on her throat under her jaw.
"It's sore here?" he asked, removing his hands when she nodded.
"Yeah, it didn't hurt when Kemar checked earlier though."
"We'll just have to keep an eye on it." Kemar said, Arkos moving out of his way as he approached her with the thermometer. "It could be nothing. We'll double check in the morning."
Kemar checked her temperature, and when the device beeped both of his eyebrows raised. "100.9, I have to say I really am impressed. You went down two degrees in an hour."
"That's good," Arkos said cheerfully, "She should be able to switch to the new saline now."
Castiel's heart rate increased slightly, unable to help her anxiety at the idea of a new IV drip. Kemar's sharp eyes found hers and he held her gaze for a brief second before stating he was going to get the new bag. On his was out he brushed palms with Aro briefly and her raven-haired brother cleared his throat.
"We'll take our leave for now," Aro said, his words seeming to surprise her sisters, Caius only showing his curiosity by the slightest tilt of his head. "Castiel and Marcus could use some privacy I think. We'll come back later."
No one argued with Aro as he stood, and Castiel felt incredibly relieved that they all wouldn't be here to watch as she got the new drip. She knew it wasn't going to be pleasant and she really didn't want everyone staring at her while she did her best to hide everything she was feeling so she didn't worry anyone.
Their family left, and Kemar returned a minute after holding a new bag of saline.
"Thank you Kemar," Castiel whispered, looking down at her lap.
Kemar knew what she was referring to, and knew he had to answer Marcus' questioning glance as he hooked the new bag on her IV stand, disconnecting the empty one from the long tube to her arm. The IV stand had a small computer mounted on the pole that the IV tube ran though. It controlled the speed of the IV drip and it was how they monitored exactly how long she had between bags. Castiel's line was nearly completely empty, only the last foot or so closest to the needle in her hand still had fluid from the last bag.
Kemar connected the new bag to her line, clicking the appropriate keys on the tiny computer to set it to the presets they needed.
"I was fairly sure Castiel wouldn't want an audience for the new bag. This is the first new drip she'll have while she's conscious. We already know the experience is unpleasant because of how she would react in her sleep." Kemar explained.
Marcus carefully took Castiel in his arms again, pressing his lips to the top of her head. She was still looking down. Marcus could feel her shaking.
"The first hour of this drip will be the most uncomfortable Castiel." Kemar said, starting the drip and watching as the fluid ran down the line. Once the whole tube was full he set the computer to twelve hours and watched as the dripping in the little vial that hung below the saline bag slowed until it was at a snail's pace. "You're going to feel it in a couple of minutes. Arkos and I will stay through this hour."
Castiel nodded, shifting so she could lean into Marcus and look up at his face.
Marcus spoke softly to her, and she shut her eyes so she could tune into the sound of his voice and hopefully tune out everything else.
Marcus had only just begun telling Castiel a story of how he and Caius had to go on a trip by boat 900 years previously to retrieve silks and dyes through a port in Dubai and got themselves into a spot of trouble with a local group of vampires when Castiel stiffened in his arms.
He looked down at her and noticed how her expression was pinched in distress.
Marcus looked over at Kemar and Arkos, who were standing more toward the center of the room to not appear as if they were hovering. The two had been having a discussion about Castiel's blood tests and Kemar's optimism that things would start getting better by the time the next full moon hit in seven days. They had both paused when Castiel had went rigid, noticing how she had caught her breath.
Castiel seemed to be trying to hold very still, it was only when she turned her head away from Marcus and sat up straight that she groaned.
"It burns." She hissed through her teeth, and when she opened her eyes to look around her, her expression only became more pinched. "It's less horrible if I'm still but god it hurts…"
"Is there anything we can do to make this easier for her to endure?" Marcus asked both of the doctors lowly. He knew that what she was experiencing was a milder version of the fiery pain of the transformation to an immortal. Venom was one of those things that could be very weak or very potent – there were certain snakes out there that had venom so lethal that only a few drops could kill multiple fully grown men. Vampire venom was another one of those things that was very potent, giving it to her in saline had been their way of watering it down so as she received it over time it would not initiate the change.
They had hoped that she wouldn't feel the venom at all, but they had suspected that she would. Marcus remembered how much her neck had stung when he had used the trace amounts of venom in his saliva to heal the mate bite.
Kemar shook his head, "She already took Tylenol, and that's the only thing that's been acceptable to give her. We don't know the risks of giving her anything else."
Marcus knew that roughly translated to: We barely have a handle on this as it is, we can't risk fucking this up.
"Can I have a cold towel or something?" Castiel gasped, drawing everyone's attention back to her. She felt warm; so warm it was nearly extremely uncomfortable.
"Of course." Arkos said, heading to the bathroom to get the bucket they had left there. Telling Kemar he'd have to leave for a moment to get ice and to try to get Castiel to regulate her breathing – they could all hear her breaths were becoming uneven as she did her best to endure the burn.
Castiel was sitting up straight in the middle of her bed with her legs curled toward her. Kemar came to the end of her bed near her feet, telling her to straighten her legs as Master Marcus stood up.
"I don't want to move my legs." Castiel hissed, her back ramrod straight as she tried to be still. "I don't want to move at all."
"We know." Kemar sighed, "Look over at Marcus and follow his breathing. Straighten your legs slowly. We understand it hurts. We just want to try some things to make this more comfortable."
Kemar was both pleased and surprised when Castiel didn't argue. She turned her head and lifted her face to Marcus', following his breathing and grimacing as she straightened her legs as Kemar wanted.
She had the breathing thing down within a couple of minutes and closed her eyes when Marcus' hands came up to hold her warm cheeks again. Kemar surprised her though, her thinly socked foot twitched when he grabbed it gently, pressing his thumb into her instep.
She did not ask what he was doing, she only focused on the pressure of his thumb, not making a sound when he let her foot go and did the same thing to the other foot.
Over the next ten minutes, Kemar alternated touching and pressing points in her shins, knees and calves. At one point he ran his fingers simultaneously up and down the sides of her lower legs in a practiced pattern – never touching above the knee and keeping her full attention. Castiel barely moved when Arkos returned and Marcus gently laid a cold, wet towel on the back of her neck before wrapping her free arm in another damp cloth. Marcus applied pressure with his hands too.
Castiel's expression was significantly more relaxed at the end of those ten minutes. They knew the pain wasn't gone, but she seemed to be… meditating almost.
"Reiki?" Was all she said when Kemar went back to lightly pressing her instep. She said it like a question, but it was more of a statement.
She didn't see Kemar's lips twitch as he responded. "Yes. In the early 2000s I worked in a hospital in America while on voluntary leave from my duties with Daphne and Veronica's coven. I learned from a couple of the nurses there how to do Reiki in my time working in the cancer center. As you can see and obviously know Reiki isn't exactly massage but… it was something that really seemed to help those patients whose cancer was very aggressive. I mean the patients who were doing chemotherapy that made them feel more dead than alive even though they had such a low chance of survival."
"There were patients that could not eat, that could not sleep. They were in so much pain and no medicines would help. Focusing on the nurse's hands while they did Reiki… focusing on something that was not their pain… It really, truly helped some of them." Kemar stepped back from her bed then, turning to Arkos and mentioning that if they wanted to do the EEG like he said they should begin preparing it now.
Arkos agreed and left to retrieve what they would need for the test, and Marcus and Kemar were silent, both lost in thought while Castiel continued her practiced breathing.
"It helped me too," Castiel said quietly after a long moment had passed where none of them spoke. "Thank you Kemar."
Marcus switched to his bond sight then, watching the tie between Castiel and her guard as Kemar looked away from the two of them, obviously wishing to keep his expression hidden.
"You're welcome," His response was strangely stiff.
The bond between the two seemed to throb for a second and Marcus watched as the cord that bound the two together grew – no longer like a thin cord that was approximately half an inch in diameter. It swelled and solidified to something closer to a steel rope that was nearly two inches in diameter.
The only bonds Castiel had with a strength similar to this were those she had to their family – to her sisters and his brothers, and her father and Trent. Marcus felt like it was an honor to behold the formation of a bond like this – a true gift to be able to see the moment where two people came to truly understand each other… to see the moment where they began to car for the other person in the same way they cared for themselves.
Marcus didn't trick himself into thinking the two of them wouldn't clash and butt heads plenty over the coming centuries – if the relationship between his little imprint and Caius was anything to go by – but he was satisfied to know that as long as Kemar was her guard, she would always be in good hands.
"So, you're going to put all these sensors on my scalp and monitor my brain waves through that machine?" Castiel asked, glancing at what was basically a computer mounted to a pole with a shit ton of wires connected to it. Arkos has also wheeled in another machine that was basically just a black pole with a shoebox-sized black box mounted to it. In reality it wasn't a machine so much as a camera and speaker system – he said they'd be watching her over the next twelve hours and could speak to her and hear her through the speaker/mic combo.
"Yes," Arkos said, "We want to see how you respond throughout this entire drip now that you've regained consciousness. And we also want to keep an eye on you overnight… watching you while we monitor your brain activity will give us a new understanding as to everything going on. All the readings and video will be saved and recorded if you consent to this."
Castiel shrugged, feeling a fiery prickle in her shoulders and back when she did so. She tried not to make a face. "Sure… and what happens if I start thrashing around and… and seeing things again?"
Marcus, who had taken a seat in the chair on her right side reached over to gently lay his hand on her arm. He would have held her hand if it wasn't for the IV.
"How your body responds when you have visions is very unique." Kemar answered, Arkos stepping aside to allow him to stand on her left side – he was holding a tube of something in his left hand, "I believe we'll be able to tell the difference between your dreams and visions when you sleep. Master Aro is very excited to read the charts later."
"But I usually get all still when I choose to see things." Castiel argued, "I thought you guys said I was thrashing and shouting-,"
"You were." Marcus sighed. "No matter what's going on with your body – it shouldn't change how your brain responds to your gift."
"I wonder how different the readings would be if at all – if we were to also do an EEG in a few months while you had visions of the future instead of dreams of the past." Kemar mused, before letting out a small laugh, "Well I'm sure we'll test it out eventually. Now that I've had the idea Master Aro is going to be chomping at the bit to try it."
Castiel laughed because she knew Kemar was right, and Marcus let out a long-suffering sigh. He knew Aro would indeed want to do a study – gifted humans were so interesting to him – and he knew that Castiel would allow it.
"If you do agree to future tests to satiate Aro's curiosity." Marcus said with a small grin. "At least make Aro work for it. Figure out a favor he'll owe you in exchange."
"Ooooo that's good." Castiel laughed. "I'll have to think of something."
"Alright Castiel." Kemar said a moment later, holding up a tube of some kind of ointment for her to see. "This is a paste I'm going to use to stick the electrodes to your scalp. If you could move forward on your bed a little bit, I'm going to sit behind you and braid your hair. Just say something if I'm hurting you."
"Braid my hair?" Castiel asked curiously, scooting forward and feeling her skin prickle with heat all over. She made a face that clearly showed her discomfort and Marcus began gently rubbing her arm as a distraction. "How will that help?"
"I'm not give you a French plait like Marcus does." Kemar said. "I'm going to give you almost a dozen braids that are very tight to your scalp. You'll know them as Cornrows. You won't be used to it and I'm sure your hair has never been braided like this before, but it's the best way to get the electrodes in place."
"Oh," Was all Castiel said; feeling the bed shift behind her as Kemar sat down.
Kemar got to work immediately. The tugging and pulling on her scalp was not painful, the only thing that hurt was the fiery pain in her neck and shoulders whenever she'd lean her head back too much when Kemar was working. Arkos excused himself for the night while Kemar worked, telling Castiel that he'd be watching, and she could sleep whenever she felt like it – she didn't need to go to bed right away or anything. If she or Marcus needed anything at all, all they had to do was ask since he and Kemar would both be listening.
"Have you guys been giving me baths?" Castiel asked Marcus after a few minutes of peaceful silence, "I noticed that my hair is really clean, and I don't feel like I'm covered in dry sweat which is hard to believe if I've been having all these night-terror like visions and crazy fevers."
Marcus nodded, "Yes. Athenadora and Sulpicia usually help me bathe you twice a week. I washed your hair last night."
Kemar, who seemed to have not really been paying any attention as he braided her hair, said "The last person I did these braids for was my sister the day before she was killed."
Castiel and Marcus both froze, Kemar's hands stilled, and he seemed to realize that he had spoken his thoughts aloud.
Castiel's eyes found Marcus', her expression very clearly telling him to start talking to smooth over this moment. Kemar's rigidity showed that what he had just said was obviously something very personal and very private that he didn't mean to say out loud. It was just a classic case of the brain-to-mouth filter shutting off while being lost in thought.
"And speaking of last night," Marcus continued, "Raphael keeps calling and texting me. If you could call him tomorrow morning, I'd really appreciate it."
"Raphael called?" Castiel was actually distracted by this piece of information, but a small part of her brain did register that Kemar had resumed slowly braiding her hair. "That's apparently another person I need to call back. Trent told me my dad's been calling…" Castiel trailed off, and there was something about her silence that had both Kemar and Marcus' heads tilting curiously.
"What is it?" Marcus asked, trying to understand the confusing swirl of emotions that was coming from her so suddenly.
"It's just… my dad was ignoring all of my calls for weeks. But now I got hurt and he's in a rush to talk to me… I don't know what's going on." She sounded so dejected. Marcus was very disappointed he didn't have an answer for her.
He would get one though. He would find a moment while she slept tonight to find Eleazar.
"Done." Kemar stated suddenly, quickly standing up. He retrieved the bottle of paste and unscrewed the lid while he used his free hand to gather the wires to the machine and route them so they were resting next to Castiel on the bed. "You won't feel the electrodes on your scalp, and I'll just give you some forewarning now: this paste will be a bitch to wash out of your hair."
Castiel groaned at that, and Kemar got to work placing the electrodes at different points all over her scalp. When he was done, he attached the wires to them – they seemed to come together like little snap buttons, not at all uncommon to the heart rate monitor that was hooked up on her chest. Once the wires were all on Castile could see dozens of squiggly lines on the screen she was now hooked up to. Kemar started wrapping gauze around her head to make sure everything was held down – Castiel was sure she looked like something from an alien movie – and she was very intrigued to see how the lines on the screen would change when she could do simple things like turning her head and swallowing.
Castiel adjusted herself in bed when Kemar declared he was finished, Marcus helped arrange the few pillows she had so she could lean back into a mostly reclining position.
"It's good you won't have to get up to use the bathroom," Kemar said, collecting some papers as he prepared to leave for the night. "You won't be able to move more than a couple of feet off your bed on either side. I'll return to remove the electrodes in the morning."
"Can I have the catheter taken out tomorrow too?" Castiel asked – she hated the thing. It was uncomfortable and she wanted nothing more than to be able to get up and go to the bathroom like a normal person. She really wished she didn't have to ask Kemar about it though. The whole thing was embarrassing to her.
Kemar could see on her face she hated bringing attention to it, it was obviously something she was embarrassed about. But normal mortal bodily functions weren't something that bothered him – but that was probably because he had been a doctor for so long.
And vampires needed to pee too. No one was exempt from that little fact of life.
"I don't see why not." Kemar shrugged, turning his head so he could look at the black box that had the camera and speaker, "What say you Arkos?"
Arkos' voice crackled from the speaker immediately. "Of course. You'll need someone to assist you in walking to and from the bathroom though until we are sure you aren't a fall risk."
Castiel turned to look at Marcus who gave her a small smile. "You know I'll help you dearest. Whatever you need."
"Good." Castiel sighed, relieved, "Because you're going to have to help me get all of this goo out of my hair tomorrow."
Marcus laughed
"Alright. If that's all, I'm going to take my leave as well." Kemar said, turning to leave before he stilled. He turned back to her just before he was out of view, and Castiel was surprised to see he was smirking. "And do try to behave tonight. Don't forget that big brother is watching."
He jerked a thumb toward the camera. And Castiel giggled as he left.
Castiel had fallen back asleep six hours ago. It didn't matter that she had been unconscious for multiple weeks, she was still very ill and quite honestly very weak and low on energy because of how she hadn't been able to eat and all the nutrition she had been given was via IV or tube. She had lost a few pounds and Arkos had mentioned putting her on these protein bars that were sometimes given to malnourished children to help her put back on the weight. Marcus could tell that his sweet little mate was trying her hardest not to fall asleep – she wanted to stay up so she could be with him – but after Kemar had departed and she was able to be alone with him and relax, her fatigue took hold of her.
Arkos had him jostle her awake every forty-five minutes for the first three hours she slept, probably because he wanted to make sure she wasn't falling into that same deep unconsciousness she had been in before, and Castiel always grumbled and opened her eyes sleepily when Marcus would shake her good shoulder gently. They never talked when his did this for the doctor – the most Castiel would say was a sleepy "What?" and he would croon at her to go back to sleep – which she would do in seconds.
But now Arkos was content with rousing Castiel awake every two hours, so Marcus was able to take a break to search for Eleazar while she rested. He had about an hour before he was do to return to her; now that she was awake it was almost painful to leave her side, but he had to content himself with the fact that she was being monitored by camera and speaker as well as having Arkos and Kemar continuously watching her brain waves. She was being better monitored now than ever. Not to mention Kemar still swung by more or less every hour to take her temperature and blood pressure.
Marcus had just come to a hall that branched off to the left and right on his hunt for Eleazar and was debating taking a left when a call of "Master Marcus!" echoed from his right.
Marcus turned to see exactly the vampire he was looking for coming toward him, and by the scent that the man was carrying on him Marcus assumed that his search for the guard must have interrupted his personal time with his mate.
"Travis told me you were searching for me fifteen minutes ago." Eleazar explained, referring to the guard Marcus had stopped to ask if he had seen Eleazar when Marcus could not find him in the numerous entertainment and hobby rooms he had checked. "How may I be of assistance?"
Eleazar was curious as it was usually Aro who summoned him. He was almost certain that whatever he was needed for had to do with Castiel.
"I just have a few questions I'm hoping you can answer for me." Marcus said inclining his head, "I hope my search didn't er… disturb you."
Eleazar chuckled. "No, no it's quite alright. Ask away."
"I just wanted to inquire with you," Marcus began slowly, watching the guard's expression inventively to gauge his reaction, "If there was any particular reason as to why Castiel's father is ignoring her calls?"
Eleazar's reaction was unexpected. At first the guard simply looked surprised before guilt and embarrassment passed quickly over his face; after a couple of seconds though his expression was just confused.
But there was still a certain level of understanding in his golden eyes that only furthered Marcus' suspicions.
"He's been calling her every day but she hasn't been conscious…" Eleazar trailed off when Marcus shook his head.
"I'm being unclear," Marcus sighed, "I'm not referring to recently. I'm referring to all the calls he avoided from my mate before this attack. She woke up today and-,"
"Castiel is awake?" Eleazar interrupted, shocked and delighted.
Marcus gave the Spanish vampire a sharp look and he watched as the guard's expression became sheepish and apologetic.
"I am so sorry for interrupting Master." Eleazar bowed his head, "The news was just unexpected. I'm so happy to hear she's regained consciousness. Is she alright?"
"I'll fill you in momentarily on the status of her health so you can report it to her father," Marcus grumbled, "But right now I'd like to focus on my original question. Why was Castiel's father ignoring all her calls for weeks? She found out from Trent when she awoke that her dad has been reaching out and quite frankly, I hate seeing how hurt she looks when she can't understand why her father will only try to speak to her when she's gravely injured."
The golden eyed guard looked shocked, and remorse flashed across his face as he quickly tried to explain. "It's not like that! It is not like that I assure you. I warned Bryon that she might feel this way if he kept ignoring-,"
"So, he was intentionally avoiding his daughter?" Marcus could not help the snarl that rose from his chest. "I thought since he gave up his humanity to find her that he would wish to keep contact with her. To be honest Eleazar I don't give a fuck if he has a problem with me, or the fact this his daughter is romantically involved with someone, or-,"
"It's not that either!" Eleazar said quickly holding his hands up in a placating way, but Marcus could feel the rage burning in him. He had been so enraged recently that his aggression was much worse than usual. He didn't have his sweet girl to calm him down, she was still sick and resting and her current state of being unwell only made all this pent up feeling that much worse.
She was so vulnerable. She needed to be protected, and Marcus would be damned if he wouldn't protect every single part of her he could – and that included her feelings.
"Is it because I punched him in the face when he implied I'd get Castiel killed just like Didyme?" Marcus raised an eyebrow, and Eleazar winced at the words. "Does he think she will confront him about that? She doesn't know. We all know she wouldn't react well if she found of what he said or what I did in retaliation."
"It… It's not any of that." Eleazar looked uncomfortable and sad, "Believe me it's so upsetting to hear she's been hurting over this. I tried to warn him – we all tried to tell him that he needed to just be honest with her and tell her but-,"
"Tell her what?" Marcus snapped
"I…" Eleazar paused, "It isn't my place to say Master Marcus. If you insist, I'll tell you, but it's Bryon's privacy I am trying to respect. He is part of my family now. I do not want to intrude on something that he wishes to tell his daughter himself."
Marcus' face was stony and impassive as he considered Eleazar's words and all the hidden meanings within them.
Bryon Rodgers was an outstanding mental shield. He was invisible to all mental gifts including his own… but Marcus was fairly certain he had a good idea as to what was going on.
"Have you communicated your thoughts with Aro at your return here?" Marcus asked lowly, and Eleazar shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. He could feel the anger radiating off of the usually gentle king.
"No sir."
"You are to do that immediately." Marcus ordered, "You don't need to break your respectful silence and tell anyone whatever it is you are keeping in on Bryon's behalf, but you must inform Aro of all that you know. He won't betray any secrets and I won't pry it out of him either."
Relief was obvious on the guard's face, but Marcus held up a hand as if to say, 'Don't think that's all I'm going to insist on just yet'.
"Give Bryon Rodgers my contact number. Tell him if he wants any information about his daughter, he has to go through me. You will no longer be updated on her condition until whatever it is that is going on with your newborn family member is resolved. Understood?"
The silence in the hallway rang, and Eleazar could see on Marcus' face that his decisions were not to be challenged.
"Yes sir." Eleazar agreed, bowing slightly. "Is that all?"
Marcus let out a gruff breath of air. "I know your heart is in the right place Eleazar. I know you care. But I must protect my girl."
Eleazar's expression softened. "Of course, sir."
The two were about to part ways when another vampire entered the hall from the direction Marcus had originally came.
Ajmer only raised his eyebrows at the two of them as he entered the T section of the hall where it branched off to the left and right. He was only mere feet from Marcus when he made a sound that was undoubtedly a scoff as he made to take the path to the left.
Marcus saw red. The nomad had been staying here ever since the day he bought Castiel's father to the castle and had been roaming the halls looking to accost his girl at any chance he could. Ajmer hadn't been prowling as much recently since Castiel had been injured, but Marcus had heard rumors of the young man talking – how was it that Castiel would put it? Oh right – talking shit about him to a few other guests around the rooms he was staying in.
Marcus was still monumentally irritated that Ajmer was one of the few guests given permission to walk the main castle. He was allowed the privilege because he was Castiel's friend, but Marcus had argued with Aro that Castiel hardly considered him a friend anymore.
Marcus felt as Eleazar reached forward as if he was debating on stopping him, but his warning snarl told the Spanish vampire that he should keep his hands to himself if he wanted them to stay attached to his wrists.
Ajmer didn't expect to be grabbed, and he didn't know what hit him when Marcus grabbed him and slammed him against the wall behind them with an unnecessary amount of force.
Ajmer had all the wind knocked out of him and felt as cracks spiderwebbed out from where his body had impacted the wall.
He was face to face with an extremely angry vampire, and he understood in those seconds as he gazed into Marcus' hostile expression why the man still held the title of God of War.
"If you have something you'd like to say to me, I can assure you I'm all ears." Marcus said dangerously. He was pinning the other vampire to the wall by the neck, but he wasn't applying enough pressure that it would restrict him from speaking. He could feel Eleazar's concerned eyes on them.
"I… you…" Was all Ajmer gasped. He was still trying to regain the breath he lost and apparently Marcus' grip was a little too tight on his neck.
"I what?" Marcus snarled.
"You're going to get Castiel killed," Ajmer choked, both of his hands clutching Marcus' wrist, scratching at it uselessly to try and get him to release his neck. "This place is too violent for her. You are too violent for her."
And the look Ajmer gave him in that second; the defiant, angry, envious look he gave Marcus told the ancient all he needed to know.
Marcus switched to his bond sight and looked for the connection the nomad had to his imprint, and upon finding it, he read with much more scrutiny the feelings on the bond from Ajmer's end.
Marcus was not surprised to see that it was not at all unlike the bond he had observed between Edward Cullen and Isabella Swan. A bond of infatuation – a bond that vampires occasionally confused with mate bonds when they hadn't found their true partner for some time.
The only difference between this bond and the initial bond between Isabella and Edward was the fact that it was completely unreciprocated on Castiel's end.
Marcus let out a humorless bark of a laugh and turned to literally throw the vampire on his back on the ground ten feet away – back the direction he had come.
"You?" Marcus' laughed again; that same humorless laugh that had Eleazar again debating if he should intervene as he stood out of the way of the two. "You think that you are right for her?"
Eleazar's eyes widened like saucers as he realized what Marcus was saying, and thought it was best if Ajmer stayed where he was on the ground as Marcus stepped toward him. Right now was not the time to challenge him.
Because if Ajmer dared to challenge Marcus' possession of his imprint, Marcus would obliterate him.
"She is my mate." Marcus growled, stalking toward Ajmer who tried to scramble back on the ground, not daring to stand.
Ajmer only stopped abruptly when Marcus flashed so he was over him, his foot pressing right into his groin.
Eleazar winced when Ajmer gasped in pain as Marcus quite literally stepped on the nomad's crotch. If he moved Marcus would only have to step down to put him in a world of pain.
"I've already castrated two other vampires today." Marcus said darkly. "Don't think I won't do the same to you."
Ajmer swallowed.
"Castiel is my mate. I've marked her. I will change her. And it's my name she calls out in bed." Marcus spoke so low that only Ajmer and Eleazar would be able to hear him, and he was pleased to see the sour look on the nomad's face at his words. "She will never be yours. If you ever thought that future was a possibility before you bought her to our attention, just know that it vanished the day she was bought to Volterra."
"Or perhaps you only thought of this when you entertained the idea of creating a coven of your own?" Marcus mused, pressing a little more firmly down on Ajmer's groin and hearing him gasp in discomfort. "Your intentions weren't so innocent as they seemed where they? Did you tell Castiel's father that you planned to have his daughter for yourself once you changed him and retrieved her from Volterra?"
The silence in the hall was deafening, but it still spoke volumes.
"And before I let you go so you can meditate on what I've said." Marcus said condescendingly.
"Just let me inform you that if you ever-," He snarled, "lay your hands on my mate as you did that night that Alec stopped you… If you ever put a single finger on her for any fucking reason – I will kill you. Do you understand me?"
Ajmer nodded, and Marcus removed his foot once he saw that the nomad looked good and intimidated.
He went back the way he came in a flash, and Marcus breathed deeply for a few moments before turning back to Eleazar, who was still standing against the wall out of the way.
"I'm sorry you had to see that." Marcus said dispassionately, his expression devoid of all emotion.
Eleazar shook his head, "I had no idea… I did not know that he was infatuated with your imprint, nor did I know he laid his hands on her… I would have done the same if I were you."
Marcus looked down to check his watch and realized it was nearly time to go wake Castiel again. "Regardless. That wasn't the end of this I'm afraid. Ajmer is much too attached to Castiel to let it go that simply."
He sighed.
"Go speak with Aro. I need to go check on Castiel."
When Castiel woke this time, it wasn't to Marcus gently shaking her awake and then almost immediately telling her she could go back to sleep. No, this time she woke up to Kemar prodding her yet again so he could get her temperature while Marcus sat in a chair beside her and read a book.
"I don't feel good." Castiel mumbled as she sat up, squinting at the glare from the monitor showing her brain waves.
"Hot?" Kemar asked as he placed the thermometer under her tongue, to which she could only nod.
"It usually fluctuates like this." Kemar shrugged as he pulled the thermometer away when it beeped. He didn't read her temperature aloud and grabbed her clipboard to record what it read. "How is the burning?"
"Not as bad as when I fell asleep." Castiel answered groggily, "When I don't move too much it just feels like I have a really nasty sunburn. But I-,"
Castiel stopped talking suddenly, and both Kemar and Marcus looked at her face to see that her eyes suddenly went wide.
"Castiel?" Marcus set his book aside and stood, gently grasping her chin to turn her head toward him. "What's wrong."
"N-Nothing I-," Castiel paused, and both vampires noticed her tense, her muscles hardening as if she were bracing for something.
"What-," Kemar began and was surprised when she cut him off with a "Kemar can you leave please?"
He raised his eyebrows at her, trying to understand her expression as Marcus looked between them before he sniffed noticeably. Whatever he was scenting caused him to look down at his mate.
Kemar smelled it then too and realized what had caused her sudden strangeness.
He sighed dramatically. "If your head wasn't covered in wires, I would be slapping you around the head with this clipboard." Kemar held up the clipboard as a mock threat. "Do not scare us like that. Arkos."
Kemar turned to look at the camera/speaker stand when Arkos' voice responded with a simple "Yes?"
"Castiel is menstruating. I think it would be easiest if we removed the catheter now so she can wear a pad."
Castiel could feel her ears getting hot, which was impressive because her face was always flushed now. She felt Marcus' hand gently rubbing her good shoulder and she looked up at him. "Why is this so mortifying? Can someone please just get me some tissues or something? I can't exactly hold it." She said the last of it through gritted teeth, cringing as she felt the blood staining the sheets beneath her.
The next fifteen minutes consisted of Kemar drawing some more blood from her, Arkos arriving, her getting the awful catheter removed, being given proper underwear and what she needed so she didn't bleed everywhere, and Marcus holding her up off the bed with one arm and removing the stained sheets with the other while Arkos replaced them with clean ones beneath her. Kemar had left with her new blood samples to test them and she was left alone with the good doctor and her mate.
"So Castiel," Arkos said, rummaging through some of the drawers in the cart near her bedside and organizing things, "What would you rate your pain right now on a scale of one to ten? One being virtually no pain and ten being the worst pain imaginable?"
"I dunno," Castiel shrugged, scowling at the stiffness of her left shoulder as she did so. "I guess a six. I'm not really good at rating pain."
Arkos moved so he was facing her, his hands automatically coming to the straps of her sling as he begun undoing it. Castiel was surprised he was freeing her arm without prompting and when she looked around at Marcus, she saw that he didn't look surprised either. Honestly, he looked… expectant?
"Wow, ugh." Castiel didn't really know how to articulate her thoughts as Arkos removed the sling and the absence of the straps holding her arm to her torso let her feel what it was like to have gravity acting on her limb as her shoulder relaxed.
Castiel also noticed for the first time now that the sling was removed that her arm – from her elbow up to the middle of her palm – was wrapped in a thick white bandage.
The doctor stepped back from her and faster than her eyes could process, he and Marcus switched places and now her mate's cool hands found her shoulder. One of his hands trailed down her arm to grasp her elbow, and she made a face as Marcus very carefully straightened her arm out in front of her.
"I'm guessing you guys do this a lot?" Castiel asked, wincing a little as Marcus moved her arm in a practiced motion, gently stretching her arm and shoulder and holding it in certain positions for a few seconds at a time.
"Of course," Arkos agreed, "There's a lot of physical therapy that goes with repairing shoulder injuries. At first, we had to make your sling rather restraining so you wouldn't hurt yourself accidentally when you were having, er, nightmares. But after the first week you were unconscious, we devised a PT schedule to make sure your shoulder didn't stiffen up. If we didn't gradually make sure the area was stretched and moved you would have been stuck with a very limited range of motion for the rest of your human life... Marcus has been very good about taking care of you."
Castiel's expression softened at this, but her face quickly became pinched again when Marcus released her arm so her hand was now resting lightly in her lap and began rubbing her shoulder. This wasn't a relaxing massage – not when the area was so tender. Nope, this rubbing hurt quite a bit.
"Ow." Castiel groaned, gritting her teeth. She could feel heat prickling her skin again. She had been so distracted by Marcus and Arkos that she hadn't been thinking about that fact that her physical movement was making the fiery feeling in her blood move obvious to her.
"I'm sorry. Just a few more minutes sweetheart." Marcus said soothingly, continuing what he was doing as she turned to face the doctor again.
"How long am I going to be in the sling?"
Arkos gave her a small smile, knowing she wouldn't like his answer. "Six weeks. You've already gotten through three, so you're halfway there."
"Six weeks!?" Castiel exclaimed, "But… but…"
"I want to reiterate that you had a surgery Castiel." Arkos inclined his head to her, "It's rather a lot like when you broke your ribs. You need to rest. You'll be allowed to take the sling off for physical therapy and when you are relaxing on the couch and in bed within the next few days."
"Once we no longer have you on bed rest we can do some more extensive therapy for your shoulder. Water aerobics in the pool would actually be very beneficial for you."
Castiel's mouth dropped open and she wasn't sure if it was her horrified look or whatever expression Marcus was making at the doctor over her head that had Arkos looking suddenly very confused.
"What?"
"Castiel is not fond of the water." Marcus explained, and Castiel was relieved when she felt as he began to maneuver her arm back into her sling. At least this meant he wouldn't keep rubbing her shoulder. "We only got through one day of swimming lessons so far."
"I see," Arkos could tell there was more to the story than that – after all he never implied that Castiel would actually have to swim. She could honestly sit on a chair in the water and just practice some shoulder movements – but Marcus' expression clearly told him to drop it.
"When am I allowed too not be bedridden?" Castiel obviously decided to latch onto the piece of information that sounded most promising to her. "After you take this stuff off my head?" She motioned to all the wires and electrodes connected to her scalp. Her eyes flashed to the computer screen near the foot of her bed to take a quick glance at the squiggles that were her brain waves.
"Not so fast." Arkos chuckled, "You'll be on bedrest until we are done giving you IV fluids."
"And when do I not have to get fluids anymore?"
It was Marcus' soft voice that responded to this question, "Once you aren't ill anymore."
Castiel stilled and the silence in the room became so thick it could be cut with a knife. For a few glorious minutes Castiel's only concern had been her shoulder injury… she had nearly forgotten about her fever and the implications of it.
"If you don't mind me asking," Arkos broke the silence, his tone showing that he was obviously trying to change the subject. "Do you remember any of the dreams you were having tonight? We had two varying patterns in your brain waves that we were curious about."
His question did pique her interest, and Marcus watched as Castiel's brows pulled together as she thought, obviously trying to recall what she had been dreaming about.
"There were a couple," Castiel said slowly, glancing almost guiltily up at Marcus, "I don't know. I'm pretty sure one was a vision."
"What happened?" Marcus' tone was gentle, he would have run his fingers through her hair if it weren't for the wires. He had to settle for gently rubbing her back.
"It was quick," Castiel shook her head, "It was in the throne room. You and Caius were interrogating a couple of vampires. A man and a woman. This time you were actually speaking what sounded like normal Italian and not some other weird language I couldn't even name like all the other times."
She went on to explain the vision in more detail, describing the two vampires a little more fully until Marcus remembered the exact moment she was talking about.
"It seems you are beginning to see more recent pasts my dear." Marcus said with a small smile. "That was an interrogation of a couple of nomads who were trying to run a business in Vermont. That was only eleven years ago."
"A business?" Castiel said surprised, "Like… a soap store? Or like Bal and his drug smuggling?"
Arkos snorted, he couldn't help it as he tried not to laugh.
Marcus felt his grin widen – Arkos' snort made it hard to keep a straight face. "No drug smuggling. And no soap either. It was just a bookstore – that alone isn't a crime, but the problem was the fact that each mortal they hired found out about their immortality. They didn't really try to hide it and figured the easiest way to keep employees was to just let them in on the secret."
"Oh," Castiel's eye were wide. She knew that that was certainly not allowed. "What did you guys do to them?"
Marcus sighed, "Caius was all for the death penalty. Aro found the idea of two nomads wanting to run a bookshop both endearing and hilarious. I couldn't care less what we did with them. In the end we allowed them to keep their shop, but they had to move it to a different city and either kill the humans they told or change them."
"What did they do?"
"They closed the bookstore. Went off the grid for a few years because they decided to change all three of their employees and had a lot on their hands dealing with three newborns." Marcus shrugged, "We sent a few guards out to where they were staying for an extended mission for six months to assist them in controlling their new coven. They now run a bookstore again that they move to a different state in the US every few years. I believe their current store is in Texas. It's called Midnight Reading and is only open after dark and before sunrise. I heard it's rather popular with university students."
"That's so wholesome." Castiel said looking genuinely pleased with how the story ended. "Finally, one vision of the past that's not just super depressing at the end."
Arkos laughed aloud this time, "What was the other vision about?"
"Oh," Castiel looked embarrassed, "I said that I only thought one was a vision – the other was definitely a dream."
"How can you be sure?"
"Because I had a dream Felix was chasing me through my old high school – at a human pace mind you – in a Christmas onesie and I was trying to hide from him because I knew if he caught me, he was going to put me in a bathtub full of chili… pretty sure that never happened and isn't going to happen." Castiel snorted and just as expected Marcus and Arkos both laughed so hard that she flumped back onto her pillows and waited for them to calm down again.
"Alright so it seems that since regaining consciousness there's already been an improvement in the example of you beginning to have... uh... normal dreams again." Arkos chuckled, he didn't get a chance to say anything more before Kemar's voice sounded in the room from the little speaker located on the pole with the camera.
"And that isn't the only improvement." Kemar's tone was confusing to Castiel for a second before she realized that he sounded… hopeful. "Arkos you'll want to come take a look at Castiel's blood test results. If you could get a few new vials before you head down here that would be ideal."
Castiel looked over at Marcus and found that he was looking back at her with the same surprised expression. Arkos started moving immediately, Castiel heard Marcus and the doctor talk quietly to one another as her mate stood aside so Arkos could get to her right elbow and prep for a new blood draw.
Five minutes later she was alone with Marcus again. Arkos had told her to get some rest after he had collected her new samples and quickly took her temperature once more. He told Marcus he didn't have to wake her up anymore tonight and just let her sleep through for a few more hours. Castiel could feel the hopeful energy Arkos radiated, Kemar's statement over the speaker seemed to just fill the air with a positivity that hadn't been there before.
"So… do you think something good happened with my blood test?" Castiel asked after a minute where she and Marcus just watched each other, both seemingly at a loss for words.
Marcus sat on the edge of the bed by her waist, "I'm sure of it. The theory was that the closer we got to the full moon the better you would get. Things might start looking up this week."
"You'd think it would be the opposite though wouldn't you?" Castiel mused, "That I would be more at risk for turning into a werewolf as the full moon approached?"
Marcus shook his head, "Usually yes, but that's only after the virus has been multiplying and infecting the human body over the course of multiple weeks. My venom had been counteracting the usual effects of the virus while also actively killing new cells. I agree with Kemar that there won't be enough of it to initiate your change and once the incubation period ends the virus will just die off."
"Are you sure about that?"
Marcus raised an eyebrow at her, "Yes, the virus naturally dies after about thirty days but usually by the time it dies all the cells in the human's body had been mutated to make them a werewolf. That hasn't happened to you, your blood is very healthy… it really is like you just have any other human illness that we're trying to fight off. The venom and saline, us not giving you any medicines but Tylenol, the blood tests… it really is all us just being overly cautious. The fact that you're running a fever shows your body is fighting. When humans are infected, they don't show any signs of illness at all. They'll feel completely normal and fine – even though they will smell like a werewolf within days of getting infected – all the way up until their first change."
"Really?" The relief in Castiel's voice was intense. "No one explained it to me like this – I thought everyone saying I'd be fine was wishful thinking… I've been terrified Marcus."
"No one wants you to be scared." Marcus said quietly, "But we also don't want to be complacent and let our guard down. We need to keep treating you as if you're at as high of a risk as the night we rescued you."
Castiel nodded, looking down at her lap. It was quiet for a few minutes before Marcus hand gently grasped her chin and he turned her face up to his.
"If it wasn't extremely dangerous to do so, I would have changed you the very night you were hurt. If the next few weeks go by and you recover as expected I will let you remain human as long as you are safe. I know we discussed in the past that you would like to be older before I change you, and I know you asked for five to seven years, but I want to tell you now that after all of this I have half a mind to change you the second this virus dies off."
Castiel felt her like her stomach did a backflip, and Marcus' extremely serious expression showed her he wasn't kidding around.
"But I won't do that if you are healthy, and if you remain in the castle where you aren't in danger. I know that I tentatively agreed to your five-year proposal, but I'm going to renege on that and give you 18 months from now." Castiel could feel anxiety creeping in her chest. 18 months? That would allow her for two more birthdays true, but it would still leave her years short of Marcus' approximate 30 years.
Marcus thumb moved from its place on her chin to gently run across her lower lip. "I know the idea of the change scares you. I'm not saying any of this to frighten you. I just want you to know where I stand on this matter." His tone was such that Castiel knew that his stance was firm and that he wouldn't change his mind. "And if you ever get injured again Castiel – I don't care if it's just a broken arm. I'm changing you immediately. Are we clear?"
Castiel was speechless, but she still found herself nodding in agreement. Just don't get hurt and she had 18 months, that shouldn't be so hard… right?
Marcus leaned down to kiss her, and the feeling of his mouth on hers helped melt away her anxiety at his intense proclamation. When he pulled back she pouted at him, seeing by the way he was distancing himself that he planned to sit back in the chair at her bedside.
"Can't you stay?" Castiel whispered, gripping his sleeve with her right hand before he could get up.
"Stay? I'm not going to leave dearest." He said gently, to which she only shook her head.
"Can't you lay down with me? I want to be held." She wanted to be embarrassed about how needy she sounded, but she could tell by Marcus' face that her words had turned him into theoretical jelly, and he might have actually attempted to lay beside her without jostling the wires on her head and her IV if it weren't for Kemar's voice coming from the speaker again.
"If you fuck up those wires Castiel I swear to god-,"
She didn't hear the rest of his threat because she had started laughing so hard, and Marcus raised her hand to his mouth to kiss her palm as he said, "Maybe next time."
When Castiel woke up the next morning it was with a pressing need to pee and an uncomfortable amount of cramping in her abdomen. She sat up with a small groan, Marcus standing from the chair beside her to lend her support.
"Gross. I'm all sweaty." Castiel grumbled, pushing the blankets that had come to rest around her waist away and using her legs to push them toward the foot of her small bed.
"Sorry," Marcus said quietly, using the remote that was attached to the bed to start to raise the head of it so Castiel could recline in a mostly sitting position – he obviously wanted her to rest and felt that her sitting up wasn't doing that. "You've had periods of chills and heat flashes for the last few hours. You started shivering really hard around four AM and I got you anther blanket. You weren't giving me any indications you were too warm after that."
Castiel didn't get a chance to respond before hearing the door to the bedroom open, Kemar making more noise than necessary so he wouldn't startle her by randomly appearing.
He had a new saline bag with him, and Castiel glanced apprehensively at her IV stand to see the bag was running very low.
"Relax," Kemar sighed, noting her expression as he set down the saline on the rolling cart. "First we're going to get all those wires off your head, and then I'll disconnect you from your IV for thirty minutes so you can bathe, and Marcus can help you get the paste out of your hair."
"I can have the IV out?" Castiel surprise and glee was obvious. "Does that mean my blood test last night was fine?"
"Not fine no," Kemar contradicted, already starting to shut down the machine monitoring her head. He was at her side seconds later, undoing the gauze around her head and removing all the wires from the little snap buttons on the pads connected to her scalp, "But I'd be lying if I didn't say it was better. Arkos and I agreed you'd probably be fine without an IV for thirty minutes."
Kemar vanished from her side then, leaving her pretty confused and wondering if he was done and she could get up as she turned to Marcus to ask his opinion. But Marcus wasn't looking at her, he was staring over at the bathroom door which Castiel could tell was open since the light was on.
Kemar returned to her side a moment later, and he was holding a damp hand towel.
Castiel opened her mouth to ask what it was for, but he just leaned over her and gently began wiping the paste from the areas between the braids he had given her.
It was… bizarre to say the least, to have Kemar doing this for her and not have him automatically give the towel to her mate to have him do this. But then it occurred to Castiel that this certainly wasn't the first time he had ever had to do something like this. He was a doctor just like Arkos, and he had worked in a hospital – well probably many hospitals – over the course of his life before he came to work for the Volturi as her guard.
She really didn't know all that much about Kemar. She didn't know him personally at all. He had always been very serious about maintain a professional boundary with her at all times.
"I've got the bulk of the paste out, but that's the best I can do with this towel." Kemar said to Marcus, indicating the soiled towel, "You're going to want to leave the braids in as you try to wash as much of it out as you can, undo the braids when you've felt you got enough off so you can work out the paste in her hair after. I've already set up a chair by the sink for you."
"Thank you Kemar," Marcus said as her guard took her hand and disconnected her IV from the drip, capping it and pinching it off after flushing it out slowly with a small tube of plain saline.
Marcus picked her up from the bed immediately, and when he took her into the bathroom Castiel noticed how a chair was set up by one of the sinks with her shampoo on the counter – obviously she was meant to sit as if she was getting her hair washed at a salon.
"I thought I was allowed to shower," Castiel sighed, allowing Marcus to sit her in the chair and leaning back as he turned on the sink. Once the water was warm he had her rest her head back with a towel between her neck and the edge of the sink. Marcus started working right away to get the crap out of her hair.
"You are. We just don't want you to overexert yourself. Once I finish washing your hair I'll help you shower."
"Can I put on regular clothes after? Or do I have to wear this dumb dress?" Castiel lifted the edge of the hospital gown by her leg as an example.
Marcus said nothing for a moment, but since Castiel was looking up at him – only shutting her eyes for a few brief seconds here and there as he rinsed her scalp – she noticed this was because he was obviously listening to something in the main room.
"Kemar said you can wear whatever is comfortable. He just requests you were a loose-fitting shirt."
"Can I borrow one of your undershirts?" Castiel asked, grinning at him.
Marcus smiled down at her for a second and answered as he got more shampoo in his hands to try wiping away some of the goo behind her ear, "Of course."
Ten minutes of her allotted thirty minutes was taken up by Marcus washing her hair. Castiel groaned in relief when he gently undid all the braids and was able to rub some feeling back into her scalp. Marcus seemed to have done a good job too, because when she reached up with her good arm to touch her wet hair she didn't feel any greasy goo or anything of the sort.
Marcus got the shower running and helped her undo her sling and undress. Castiel was extremely embarrassed and made him bring her the garbage can and turn around so she could remove her underwear and dispose of the pad without him looking. She knew Marcus thought she was being ridiculous – he could hear and smell everything anyway and her normal body functions really didn't bother him in the slightest – but there was just something about the idea of him watching her dispose of soiled period products that was just a hard no for her.
When she told him it was okay to turn around Marcus pulled her toward him and the shower, but he stopped before he opened the door, looking pointedly at her left arm – which was free of the sling but she was still holding it was if it were in an invisible sling as Marcus had instructed her to.
"We should remove the bandage." He said gently, and Castiel realized it wasn't her shoulder that he was concerned about.
"Oh…" Castiel carefully moved her shoulder so she could stretch her arm out in front of her slightly, rotating her hand so her palm was facing up. "Do I have stitches or something?"
Marcus shook his head. "No. The wounds have healed. We've only kept your arm wrapped so you wouldn't see the scars without being prepared and get upset."
His tone was grave, and Castiel looked up into his concerned face and saw that this – this reveal of her injury was something that was genuinely upsetting for him. He was worried how she could react… and she didn't even know how she would react either. The last time she had seen her arm it was pale and blood was trickling from the deep gashed left by the werewolf.
"What does it look like?" she whispered, and Marcus gently reached out to hold her arm, tracing over the bandage with his fingers to indicate the three horizontal lines that were marks from the werewolf's claws. He also traced a crescent pattern centered in her forearm, before he flipped her palm over so he could trace a mirror of the same crescent pattern on the top of her arm as well.
Right. Bal.
Marcus had said nothing, but Castiel let out a deep breath. She understood what to expect now.
"You can take the bandage off now." She said to him, and he silently unwrapped her arm.
It was… not as bad as she thought it would be. The marks were and angry pink color and exactly where Marcus had traced. The three scars from the werewolf were thinner than she had expected them to be – but there were fading red dots running up and down the sides of each line, showing that she had certainly been given stitches and they had already been removed.
The scars from the werewolf's claws were mostly straight, but they all had a slight curve at the bottom; not surprising considering the position of her arm when she had raised it to protect her face.
By far, the most shocking thing was the crescent scar so similar to the one that marked her neck. White and cold to the touch, the scar matching the same smooth hardness of all vampire skin, it stood out in stark contrast on her skin. It was so obviously an anomaly when compared to the three pink scars near it.
She flipped her arm over and saw the marks matching counterpart on the top of her arm, and she sighed.
"Well, this will have to be covered if I ever go out in public again."
Marcus' finger found her chin, and he guided her face up to look at him, drawing her attention away from her arm. "All of your scars will disappear when you are changed, including Bal's. None of these marks are permanent."
"Yours will disappear too," Castiel said, her lips turning up slightly in a teasing smile as she motioned to her neck with her good arm.
Marcus smirked back at her quip. "And I assure you, I'll make sure to replace it at first chance when that happens."
Castiel rolled her eyes, trying to ignore how everything south of her bellybutton seemed to tighten at that promise. "Yeah, yeah, now how about I get my shower now rather than waste all the time I have to just stand naked with you and have a conversation."
Marcus laughed, and turning back to the shower he began undressing. Obviously he planned to just get in the shower with her in case she needed help, which she definitely would do to her sore shoulder, and not noticing her gaze as she looked down at her scars again and said "Well at least this was worth it. At least I was able to distract the fucking thing so it didn't kill-,"
Castiel stopped talking so suddenly that Marcus turned to her – the only article of clothing he still had on was his boxers and he saw that he face was suddenly very pale.
"Castiel?"
"I forgot!" Castiel whispered urgently, still staring at her arm. "I forgot about him. I forgot all about him I-,"
Marcus moved so he was in front of her, both of his hands gently grasping her upper arms, "Dearest-,"
"The little boy!" Castiel's voice was suddenly very loud and urgent. "The little boy from my dream that one night – from my vision! He died but I didn't let him die, I saved him and the werewolf attacked me and-,"
"Castiel-,"
"I told Caius about him! Wait, did I? Did I dream that? I thought… he was hiding under the van and… and they didn't know he was there when they took me and-," Marcus could feel stirs of a phantom panic in his chest – an echo of what Castiel was feeling right now.
"Dearest-,"
"Where is he? Where is he? What happened?" Castiel was looking around in panic and it was only when she made a move as if she planned to pull away from him – a move that cause her to pull unnecessarily on her injured shoulder and caused her to wince – that prompted Marcus to speak, reacting on instinct to seeing her inadvertently hurting herself.
"Look at me." The double inflection in his tone was impossible for his sweet little mate to ignore, and she immediately looked up at him, her whole body going still automatically.
Castiel felt like her neck was physically locked in the position she was in now, and she took a deep breath in when Marcus instructed her too, letting out the breath at the same time he did.
After she copied him and took three full, deep breaths he simply said "Relax," and the stillness of her body vanished all at once and she knew she was able to move freely again.
"The little boy is perfectly fine Castiel." Marcus said calmly, his gaze holding hers as he gently ran his hands up and down her arms. "You did tell Caius that he was at the warehouse after my bother got you from Bahadur. He was hiding under the van you were abducted in just as you said he would be. A couple of our guards were able to coax him out, and we bought him back to Volterra first where Arkos checked on him. He was completely unhurt."
"Where is he now?" He relief at hearing the little boy had been picked up by the Volturi and hadn't just been left under that van all alone was obvious in her face and her voice.
"With his family." Marcus' tone was very, very quiet as he said this his expression was… apprehensive and gentle. As if he weren't sure how she'd take this news.
"What?"
"He was hardly three years old Castiel, and he wasn't very articulate if I'm completely honest. The stories of small children are no threat to us. The boy didn't understand what we were – he only believed the werewolf to be a terrible monster and that bad men had taken him from his parents. We had a guard drive him back to the town his family lived in and leave him in a grocery store parking lot-,"
"You left him in a parking lot!?" Castiel was startled and indignant. "Marcus he was a baby!"
"And the guard we sent him with kept an eye on him the entire time until a young mother with her children spotted him and called police." Marcus' eyebrows were raised at her, "Of course we didn't leave a baby unattended in a parking lot."
"And… and he's with his family now?" Castiel was so relieved, and also a little unsure, "Everything is just… fine now?"
Marcus nodded. "He's with his family yes. The official police report said the little boy was not giving any reliable information as to what happened and that the police were only asking that anyone with information as to what might have happened to him should please come forward. The case closed last week because the parents were just happy to have their child back, and said they weren't interested in pursuing what happened to their son any further. The boy was taken to a hospital and that report also showed that he was completely unhurt… It was honestly a very clean-cut case. A mystery that will never be solve that doesn't necessarily have to be either."
"Humans are predictable," Marcus said quietly, more to himself than to her, "We knew that they wouldn't take any of the limited words the boy would say very seriously, and we knew the parents would just be satisfied with getting their child back and would let the mystery of what happened to him drop."
Marcus leaned forward and pressed his forehead against hers, "You saved a family a whole lot of grief, and because of you, something was returned to them that could never be replaced. I doubt anyone in this castle will bring the boy up again – even I forgot about him if I am honest – but I want you to know that you did an incredible thing… and I am so proud of you."
Castiel felt her eyes fill with tears and Marcus arms wrapped around her in response when he smelled the salt.
"You have been so, so brave my beautiful girl. I love you so much."
The rest of the week passed by in a surreal blur. Castiel remained in bed most of the time, her temperature continued to fluctuate between being a low-grade fever and being a very high fever, and she still wasn't having normal visions. Every time she attempted to see something – anything – she would trigger a vision of a past event. According to Aro her glimpses into the past were all situations that were gradually being coming more and more recent, he was theorizing that eventually she would reach the present day and by then hopefully her visions would go back to normal.
Nothing was for sure of course; everything was just speculation and only time would tell.
Everyone was convinced that as long as they got past the full moon everything would be fine, and while Castiel was feeling a little pessimistic, even she couldn't argue with some of the points her family and doctors were making.
She was improving, slowly but surely. She didn't feel so ungodly sick like she did the day she woke up, and her blood tests were becoming more and more normal with each day.
The previous morning, they had even gotten a temperature reading of 99.8 from her right when she woke up. It was so unexpected that Kemar took her temperature twice more – and once with a little handheld thermometer that could just be bought at a pharmacy and not the medical grade one they had here – just to be sure the reading wasn't a fluke. Castiel believed it was because Marcus had wedged his large frame onto her little hospital bed with her so she could lay against him when she complained about being too warm, and she had affectively been lying against an icepack all night because of this.
She hadn't been bored at all that week either. She had plenty of company from her family, Trent, Felix, Demetri, Renata, Sam, and really any guards she had developed tentative friendships with.
To her absolute shock, Castiel found out that Bella was still in Volterra – all of the Cullen's were. They had apparently come to pick Bella up but she had refused to leave after Castiel got hurt. She had asked why Bella hadn't come to see her, assuming it had something to do with Edward, but Marcus had told her Bella wasn't allowed near her because the other girl had picked up a cold that was currently going around some of the human staff in the castle. Of course no one who was sick was allowed to be anywhere near Castiel while her immune system was compromised.
Today was the most stressful of all the days so far, because tonight was the night of the full moon. Castiel still felt a little feverish, and her blood wasn't 100% normal yet, and whenever anyone came to visit her they all looked tense and apprehensive.
Marcus and Kemar, seeing how her visitors were beginning to just make her feel more stressed out and worried, banned all visitors from seeing her today. Only Kemar, Arkos, and Marcus were allowed to be near her at all for the next twenty-four hours.
Castiel appreciated it, she really appreciated the lengths they were going to to make sure she felt comfortable and cared for. They were both being protective and didn't like how everyone was only making her more and more frightened that she might suddenly sprout fangs and paws and a tail tonight. But she knew the castle was on high alert because of the moon. She knew that once the moon rose in the dark sky and lit up Marcus' rooms with its pearly glow everyone would be waiting to hear if screams and roars echoed from his chambers. She knew there would be a very high number of guards in the halls immediately outside their rooms and on the balcony and grounds close to them.
They were only being cautious and preparing for the worse case scenario. But she couldn't pretend it didn't really stomp on her mental health.
And just as it always did when something she was dreading was coming, time seemed to speed by, and before Castiel knew it the sun was going down and darkness was beginning to creep through Marcus' rooms.
Marcus stood to shut the curtains, and Kemar sat on one of the couches in the room so that Castiel wouldn't feel like they were hovering.
When Marcus returned, Castiel asked him if she could have another blanket. She was beginning to feel very cold all of the sudden – which was strange because over the past few hours her temperature had been steadily rising, not falling.
Once Marcus had come back to her side and tucked the thick quilt he retrieved around her – carefully moving her IV line out of the way so it didn't catch on anything – Kemar stood and drifted closer to her as well, his sharp eyes seeming to glow in the dim lights of the room as he watched her obviously suppressing the urge to shiver.
It was 78 degrees Fahrenheit in the room currently, and she had four blankets now – there was no reason she should be feeling cold.
"Are you alright Castiel?" Kemar asked, watching as she fidget with one of the straps on her sling as Marcus stood beside her, one of his hands resting on her back.
"I-I'm fine, just a little c-cold." She wasn't able to suppress the tremor that ran through her and she shivered hard.
"Chills again." Marcus stated, he and Kemar sharing a look over her head.
"I…," Castiel swallowed and she looked left and right at each of them. They could hear her heartrate increasing, "I don't feel very good."
"What do you mean?" Kemar kept his voice gentle, making sure to keep any sense of urgency at bay. He and Marcus had both agreed very early that morning that the best thing they could do for her right now would be to not worry her. At the moment the best thing for her was to let her believe everything was fine.
"I think I'm going to throw up." Castiel sounded faint, "And my ears are ringing."
Kemar stooped down to retrieve one of the plastic vomit bin they kept in a stack under the bed for this reason and he set it on her lap when he stood back up. Marcus was pulling her hair back from her face, using a tie around his wrist to secure it in a ponytail. They both could not deny that she had gone incredibly pale.
She breathed deeply for a couple of minutes, her face aiming down toward her lap as she shut her eyes against the nausea. The burning in her skin meant nothing to her right now. She felt like she was about to be violently ill, and if she moved her head to look around the whole room spun.
"I'm not sick." She whispered, obviously to herself, "I'm fine. This is all in my head. I'm just scared. I'm not sick. I'm fi-,"
She was not fine. She heaved and Marcus' hands steadied her as she leaned forward and vomited into the bucket that Kemar had thankfully grabbed and held closer to her face.
It was an awful few minutes that followed. She tried desperately not to heave again, but both of the vampires with her just kept assuring her that she was alright, and that she just needed to let it happen. When the retching did stop, and Kemar moved away for only a short minutes to dispose of the bucket, Castiel looked up at Marcus and was alarmed to notice that darkness was creeping in on the edges of her vision.
"Dearest?" He sounded so far away.
"N-No." Castiel stuttered, frightened as the darkness became more prominent. Her body started to shake as if she was cold, and she couldn't stop it.
"What?" Marcus took her face in his hands, "Castiel what is it."
"I-I'm going to faint." Castiel gasped closing her eyes, hoping when she opened them again that the darkness in her sight would have vanished.
It did not.
"You… you sound so far away." Castiel barely acknowledged that Kemar was back at her other side. "The ringing is worse."
Her vision rapidly began to recede, darkness taking over everything that wasn't directly in front of her.
She squeezed her eyes shut again. "I don't want to faint. I don't want to. I don't know what will happen if I do."
"Nothing will happen," Marcus said, sounding as if he was far away, which she knew he wasn't because his hands were still holding her face. "If you faint, you faint, and you'll wake up in a little while."
"I'm scared." This time when Castiel opened her eyes, she knew for sure there was no hope in the world that would stop her from fainting. Her body felt weak and she wanted nothing more than to lie down even though her rational brain told her to stay sitting up. She felt something press into her ear and barely heard the beep through the ringing as Kemar took her temperature with the ear thermometer he so frequently complained about because it was usually half a degree low and therefore off on accuracy.
"Fuck." Kemar said it so lowly he was sure Castiel couldn't hear him. Marcus' eyes met his over her head.
"104.2," Kemar continued in the same tone. Her temperature had spiked. They needed to do something to bring it down again.
"Ma-Marcus." Castiel's voice was so quiet. And Marcus released her face and caught her as she sagged, cursing under his breath as he gently laid her unconscious form back on her bed.
"Get Arkos." Marcus ordered, not taking his gaze from Castiel as he removed her hair tie and fanned her hair out on the pillow he had set her on. "Tell someone to find Carlisle too. Go."
Kemar did as he was instructed immediately, only sparing the briefest glance back at the ancient king as he bent over his unconscious mate. His worry and concern obvious on his face as he leaned down to press his lips to her forehead.
She felt so heavy, and the room was quiet. The only sound Castiel could hear was the sound of her own breathing into the blankets that she had pulled up to her face. The bed was so soft and she felt so comfortable and warm, the last thing she wanted to do was open her eyes, she hoped she would fall back asleep.
Castiel rolled onto her stomach in one smooth motion, and multiple things became clear to her at once that immediately had her trying to pull herself from the fog of her sleep.
The first thing she noticed was that she was sore. It honestly felt like every muscle in her body had been worked to its absolute limit after a day of a grueling full body workout.
The second thing she noticed was that she had rolled over without thinking and she hadn't ended up on the floor – something that should have been impossible in her hospital bed. Not to mention the bed she was in now was without a doubt Marcus'. It was the only bed she ever laid in that was this comfortable
The third and fourth things she noticed – the most significant things by far – was the fact that her left arm was not in a sling, and she didn't feel any type of pulling to indicate that she still had an IV in.
Castiel pushed herself up off her stomach as she opened her eyes – her left shoulder protesting at the movement – and she realized that she was, in fact, in Marcus' bed. All of the machines were gone, and the hospital bed with rails that she had been used to had been taken away and Marcus' bed was put back.
She was not connected to anything either. No IV, no heart monitor, nothing. Someone – most likely her mate – had dressed her in grey sweatpants and a soft light blue tshirt. Her left forearm was wrapped in a clean white bandage to hide her scars – something that wasn't necessary, but she had had Marcus continue wrapping it anyway because she didn't really like looking at them at the moment. She was too scared to look at them and think of the fact that she might turn into a werewolf.
Castiel looked out at the room while bringing her left arm closer to her chest to relieve some of the pain in her shoulder. Where was her sling?
Sunlight lit the main room through the open curtains, and Castiel realized she had made it past the night of the full moon.
But just how far past?
She remembered getting sick. She remembered telling Marcus she was scared and feeling his arms catch her as she lost consciousness. But she didn't remember anything else.
Without thinking Castiel scrambled out of bed and she gave herself a head rush from standing up so fast. She had to grab onto the footboard of the bed to keep from falling down.
After a long moment where she just stood still and tried to regain her bearings, Castiel let go of the footboard and padded barefoot across the room to the door that would lead out into the hall. She was obviously alone here, and she was sure someone would be guarding the door outside.
It was actually pretty tiring for her to make it to the door, she felt weirdly out of breath but she figured that was just because she had been laying in bed for such a long time.
When her hand finally found the knob and she pulled open the door to the room – a struggle really because the door was stupidly heavy and she felt so stupidly weak right now – she found herself hardly a foot away from Kemar's back.
Kemar turned immediately and looked down at her. He must have been genuinely surprised she was up and about, because they stared at each other for a long second before he said, "Good to see you up little bird."
It really was a testament to how confused and exhausted she was that she had no idea what to say to that. She didn't even really know what she had been planning to do or why she had started looking for another person in the first place.
Well, that was a lie. She knew deep down it was just because she woke up alone, and she was subconsciously searching out her mate.
Castiel swayed just a little – not seeming aware of it herself – and Kemar reached out a hand to grasp her shoulder, carefully nudging her so she would step back and he could enter the room and shut the door behind him.
"You need to sit down," Kemar said, guiding her to the closest place she could sit which was one of the couches, "And we need to put your sling back on. We left it off while you were asleep because you weren't moving around too much, but you really do need to keep it still."
"I am keeping it still!" Castiel's tired voice was indignant, and she motioned with her good hand to indicate how she was holding her left arm against her chest as if it were in an invisible sling anyway.
Kemar smirked at her and disappeared for a brief moment. She looked around confused – completely unsure as to where the hell he had gone – before he was suddenly in front of her, her sling in his hands.
He sat next to her and Castiel had to try really hard not to curse at him when he maneuvered her arm into the sling and her shoulder twinged with pain.
"How long have I been asleep?" she asked as he secured the straps and tightened them as necessary. The sling may be annoying, but her shoulder definitely felt some relief once it was on.
"No long," Kemar shrugged and adjusted how he was sitting so there was a little more space between them, "Not even two days."
Castiel just stared at him when he said this, trying to process everything and he sighed.
"I'm just going to say it to you because I've already said it to everyone else – but I told you so." Kemar said smugly, grinning as he leaned back leisurely onto the couch cushions and put his arms behind his head. "I really, really love being right. Arkos is beyond ecstatic with how well his venom idea worked to prevent your change into a werewolf long enough for the virus to die out, Carlisle Cullen is already elbow deep in studies to try to cure werewolves of their affliction using all your tests as a guide, and I've officially soared through the ranks I am one of the head guards in this coven."
"It really is so satisfying," Kemar was smirking at her in such a way that he showed most of his teeth, and she instinctively groaned.
"I'm really glad this whole situation has stroked your ego," She said sarcastically, "We all know how badly you needed it."
He laughed.
"Only Masters Marcus and Aro truly believed me when I said that you weren't going to change at the full moon. Everyone else was hopeful but still wasn't sure it was preventable because it's never been done before." Kemar scoffed, rolling his eyes, his good humor gone. "But none of them acknowledged that you had two doctors at your disposal who were truly invaluable in helping you. And I told them all this whole time that your tests clearly showed that while you definitely did have the virus, you were not completely infected and that there definitely wasn't enough present to trigger anything."
"But that should have been obvious to everyone without seeing your results. As I said, you never smelled like a werewolf and that's one of the true indicators as to if we were too late."
Castiel realized that while Kemar was commenting on everyone else's obvious stupidity for not believing him, he was still carefully keeping his comments phrased in such a way so none of his words were aimed at her.
"I didn't believe you either." She whispered, looking away from him when she felt his eyes on her face and staring at the unlit fireplace.
"Well of course you didn't." Kemar snorted, "You were the one that was sick. I'm sure you felt like dog shit that whole time. I'm not going to rub it in your face that you didn't believe me when you had every right to be scared."
The silence that followed his words was a little awkward… this was not their usual dynamic. Kemar was not usually so soft with her.
"Anyway," Kemar said, obviously trying to break the silence. "As you can see, you're no longer hooked up to any machines and are free to try to return to normal. You had a fever higher than any thus far when you fainted the night of the full moon. We worked to bring it down, you started having fits in your sleep again, shouting and yelling stuff that didn't make any sense to really any of us. Carlisle Cullen assisted us that night, we disconnected you from the IV and just gave you a needle with four drops of venom and saline. It was much more concentrated than anything we had done so far, but Arkos and I both firmly believed the virus was trying to initiate your change and it wasn't succeeding. We knew that then was the time to just go balls to the wall and try to kill it."
"And did it?" She looked over at Kemar, just in time to see a genuine smile break across his face. Not a smug smirk, or a self-righteous grin, just a normal, pleased smile.
"Bet your ass it did." He rubbed his face with both of his hands, as if willing his smile to go away, "Your blood tests had been getting better and better each day leading up to the moon, but by the time the sun rose that morning your blood test was completely normal. The only thing that was different about it from any of the other blood tests you've gotten here before your attack was the fact that it showed you were pretty dehydrated. Not that that was a surprise because you did start sweating like crazy that night."
"We put you in an ice bath again at first, but you're fever gradually started to drop as sunrise approached. When your blood test was normal, your fever was about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but by noon your temperature had dropped to 98.8. By that night you were back at your usual 97.6" Kemar sighed, "Your fever breaking was probably the biggest relief of them all. It showed us that we had truly managed it and that you were fine."
"Thank you." Castiel said quietly after a short pause when he didn't continue speaking, "I don't know if I'll ever be able to really express how thankful I am for you and Arkos… If I had become one of those things…"
The mental image of the werewolf rising to its hind legs in front of her came to the forefront of her mind, and she shook her head to dispel it.
"You're welcome," Kemar said stoically, and when she looked over at him she noticed there was something funny about his expression.
"What is it?"
"Nothing," Her guard answered automatically – his usually response when he didn't feel like sharing what he was thinking – but as he studied her face he seemed to be realizing something, and he looked thoughtful. "If only others could be satisfied with a simple thank you, the world would be a much better place."
Castiel blinked at him, "Care to be a little less cryptic?"
Kemar motioned with his hand for her to look around the room, "You realized your mate isn't here do you not? We had a surprise visitor an hour ago who wanted to negotiate how the Volturi will pay their debts to him for saving your life."
Castiel went rigid. She knew who he was talking about.
And all at once she was so angry.
She had almost died. She had been sicker than many humans had ever been in their life. For the first time after her attack a month ago she stood up this morning feeling like a human being again and not a walking infection. And this… this fuck was going to walk into her home, drag her mate away to leave her to wake up alone, and demand to be paid a debt he had no right to?
He did not save her life out of goodness. He didn't save her life at all. His men happened across her and it was just a lucky chance they saw her crest before they shot her in the head. He had very nearly inadvertently caused her death – his fate wouldn't have been something anyone would envy.
But here he was, walking into her home and demanding payment.
Her arm where the double crescent mark of his bite was seemed to throb. It was true that he had prevented her from becoming a werewolf. It wasn't a lie that he had certainly played a key roll in that. But he wasn't going to walk in here and demand outrageous favors from her family for saving her life as he was without a doubt doing at this very second.
If he had something to say, he could say it to her.
Castiel stood and Kemar copied her. He did not seem surprised at her stony expression and the obvious hate in her eyes, in fact it seemed to be exactly what he was expecting.
"He's not going to take advantage of my family." Castiel said darkly, and Kemar watched as her pupils dilated briefly. She was still for twenty seconds before her eyes returned to normal and found his face again. "You're going to take me to him?"
Kemar smiled, "Glad to see you're back to normal little bird. And yes… I think I will. I don't appreciate anyone who thinks they're important enough to pull someone away from the bedside of a very sick partner, and I'd love to see you tell him to shove it up his ass."
Well everyone here it is! My longest chapter every at 72 pages. There's a bunch I still wanted to include but it just got so long that I couldn't fit it into chapter 25. I know we lacked the fluff I wanted to put in, but my chapters don't always go exactly as planned.
Next chapter will be Castiel's meeting with Bal, Edward getting told to fuck right on off, we'll find out just what the deal is with Castiel's dad, and a few more surprises will be sprinkled in of course.
I also promise the next chapter will have all the fluff I've been so desperate to put in lol.
Again, please don't pick on me for any of the medical explanations in here. The scene with the EEG was just a description of some of the tests I experienced when I was in the hospital and being monitored for seizures, and of course the biology of a werewolf virus and how vampire venom could contradict it isn't a real thing. Remember this is just a made-up fanfiction and at least I'm not here saying vampire venom can be used as a substitute for sperm and impregnate a human lmao.
As always leave a review and/or send me a message and let me know what you think. I know I've gotten some guest reviews these last couple months that begged me for a response but please remember that I cannot reply to guest reviews at all. If you need to you can alwasy send me a message at "volturimagines" on Tumblr.
Happy Holidays and a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all those who celebrate it!
-FA
(72 Pages, 31,222 Words)
(25 December 2020)
