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Marie turned away from Bobby but waited until his steps had almost faded before searching out the obviously hiding Wolverine. Marie was livid. 'How dare he spy on me?'

Marie heard him growl a threat and the skittering of tennis shoes running out of the library.

"Logan?" Wolverine put away his claws as he turned and looked at her. "What are you doin' here?"

"Nothing, just curious." he said not looking at her.

"Logan, were you eavesdroppin?" She yelled at him.

"No. Just curious where you were," he said looking anywhere but at her angry heart-shaped face.

"You heard everything, didn't you?" she accused.

If she hadn't been so embarrassed that he'd heard the humiliating conversation between Bobby and herself, Marie would have laughed at the expression on his face, he looked like a scolded little boy. Seeing him like that brought out her natural good humor and she lectured him instead, "you hear that old sayin' about curiosity and a cat? And since when have you been curious about me?"

Logan would have shrugged off her question and grunted something about her being a kid but Logan wasn't in control, the Wolverine was and he wasn't going to waste this chance to take what was rightfully his, "you weren't in the house. I don't like when you're not around."

Marie couldn't quite pin it but there was something off about Logan tonight and now she was the curious one. "I came out to get a book and a walk. If I known you'd have been worried I would have asked you to come along."

Wolverine sniffed the air experimentally; glad that her scent was hers alone.

"Logan, you ok?" Marie approached him and he stared back at her. He stepped closer to her, one lone claw unsheathing. He lifted the dog tags he had given her so many years ago and which he'd refused to take back when Stryker had attacked them, and pulled her closer to his.

Marie's eyes widened in confusion as he leaned closer, filling her vision with nothing but his whiskered face. She could almost feel his breath on her lips and she involuntarily gasped. He stopped suddenly and his eyes went blank but not before a pitiful whine came from him.

Wolverine could feel himself being dragged back. Logan was waking and forcibly shoving the Wolverine back in his cage. 'Shouldn't have these feeling for little Marie,' Logan said to his feral side.

'She's not so little bub. She's ours, we claimed her first.' The Wolverine shouted back. 'Our mate, she knows us, remember her life passing through us.'

"Suga'?"

Wolverine shoved back and Logan stumbled into wakefulness. "You're scaring me, Logan." Marie said rushing to him as he sank to the floor. Marie cushioned his fall but his adamantium coated body still collided painfully with the ground.

"Hon, if this is a joke, it's not funny."

Logan opened his eyes only to be met with the sight of a tear-stained face uncomfortably close to his own. For a moment he felt the old panic from that first night in the mansion. 'Had he hurt her, again?' He scanned her body for any claw shaped marks and she squirmed in his too tight grip.

She looked away from him and he let her go. He sat up gingerly and she leaned over him. Her dark hair caressed his bare shoulders and Logan could feel delicate gloved hands examining his head and body for injuries. Finding none, Marie rose and offered her hand.

He got up looking her over once more. She smiled and he reasoned that she must be ok; otherwise he would have for sure felt the pull of her powers, he would have made sure of it himself, and there's be no way she'd be smiling through that process.

Unsure why he was out of his bed and in Marie's arms, Logan looked around while placing some much needed space between them. Somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind, the Wolverine whined at the injustice of it all and Logan struggled to remember how he'd come to be alone in the library with only Marie for company.

"We better get back," she said softly placing a gloved hand on his bicep.

"Sure but where are we kid?"

Marie visibly flinched at the nickname. "The library, Logan, where did you think you were?" her tone was definitely wounded and she walked ahead of him.

"Hey, Kid wait up! Did I do something?" he grabbed her arm, forcing her to stop and look him in the eyes.

"That's the problem, Logan you neve' do anything," she said. "The saddest thing is that Bobby was righ' about you and me, you'll never get it and I am done hopin'. Goodnight Logan." She left him in the shadow of the University building, completely confused as to what he'd done to hurt her now.

'What did I do?'

He growled, sliced open the nearest tree and watched with grim satisfaction as it hit the ground with a thud. He made his way back to his room with a few beers he'd nicked from the kitchen, wishing it was Marie he was going back to and not the nightmares of Jean's death or Alkali Lake.

The Wolverine was finally beginning to get through.