Disclaimer: Underworld and it's characters are not mine, yes I understand, I am making not profit off writing this. Though I wouldn't mine owning Scott Speedman, well while I'm dreaming I'd like a new guitar...

In all seriousness thank you everyone for your reviews, lets me know someone besides me is supporting my insanity.

Chapter Two

ADJUSTING

As Selene slept Michael took the time to explore the mansion. He memorized the routes out of the house and to many bedrooms, common areas, kitchens, bathrooms and even the greenhouse. He even found a pair of clothes just a bit bigger than his size, a plain gray t-shirt and black sweats, showered and changed.

At the lower levels, he began to understand why Selene had chosen this place to hide out. There he found an enormous room full of enough guns to take out millions of enemies, a hand-to-hand combat arena, a wall lined with swords, daggers, bo staffs, and throwing stars.

Another room full of surveillance equipment, cameras to each of the rooms in the house, he could even see Selene sleeping peacefully upon the bed of a room on the third floor.

He found himself strangely edgy as though he had drunk twenty cups of coffee, his sharpened senses so sensitive. He felt so caged and longed to run outside…

Michael convinced himself it was boredom that made him creep into her room.

The windows of this room had been boarded and it was near pitch-black inside but with hybrid eyes he could easily make out Selene's body. She lay on her left side, her left arm serving at a pillow under her head; her right lay across her side. Her long legs tucked towards her upper body almost in a fetal position.

It shocked him, she looked so human. He had imagined she slept in well, a vampire's fashion, straight as a board on her back. Instead she looked a gentle, delicate woman, her raven straight strands of hair ruffled, her expression innocent in her deep sleep.

She was sleeping in her Death Dealer suit however it seemed she had found the time to remove her shoes beforehand. It further fascinated him that her tiny toes were perfectly manicured and the undersides of her feet possessed that long beautiful arch he loved on a woman.

Loved? Yes, love was the word for how he felt for Selene. He knew that now even in this short of time he knew it was true.

The scent of her caught his nose and seemed to call to him making him nearly drool for her.

Since becoming a lycan first then a vampire, Michael had noticed the scent humans and immortals radiated. He could easily tell now if a scent belonged to a lycan, vampire or human, male or female, from there, a signature scent of the individual. His favorite scent thus far had to be Selene's, the scent sweet, he could swear it was just like vanilla and honey.

He watched her for hours and at exactly seven o'clock in the evening, she began to stir. With muzzy green eyes, she noticed him.

Quick as lightning Selene whirled, with narrowed gaze, baring her lethal fangs and giving an angry feline-sounding hiss and growl.

A moment later, she recognized her hybrid.

She scowled; whether at him or her own actions Michael did not know. "Don't you have better things to do than startle sleeping vampires?" she grumbled.

"Sorry," Michael replied earnestly.

She stretched her limbs in a cat-like fashion before rising to a sitting position. He had always liked that about her, her feline grace.

He remembered the blonde vampire at Selene's home had reacted in the same way as Selene. Selene hadn't leapt to the ceiling the way the other had instead she had looked ready to fight to the death even if she had to claw his eyes out.

He couldn't help but ask: "You recognized me as a lycan first, it's why you reacted like that right?"

Selene ran her fingers through her hair. "I suppose so." She absently looked at him. Noticing his eyes, she stopped cold. His gaze had been roving over her, hungrily and for the briefest moment she could have sworn his eyes had flitted to a vampire's icy blue, a hybrid black then back to normal in milliseconds. "Are you feeling all right?"

Michael nodded surprised she even noticed or cared, recovering he shrugged, "headache I guess."

"Have you rested?"

Michael shook his head and Selene looked on at him, a flicker of something in her eyes like…fear. She stood coming next to him. "Why not?"

Michael looked at her with utter confusion at her demanding question. He shrugged his broad shoulders. "I wasn't tired."

She looked even more interested at this answer. "Edgy?"

He remembered tearing through the rooms of the house restlessly but wide-awake, so irritable. Pacing… "A little I guess," he admitted.

Selene took note of his skin visibly paler and she remembered. "Of course. How could I have been so stupid," she cursed under her breath. She took his hand pulling him along. "Come on, I have to get you down to the basement. Now."

Now Michael was completely confused. "What? Why?"

"There is a full moon tonight, we do not know yet of how you will react. I can't have you running around massacring deer and raccoons or myself."

They were descending the concrete steps and Michael recalled the last time he was a hybrid. The power, the rage, also an unstoppable need to protect Selene.

"I would never hurt you," he vowed.

Selene mentally slapped the piece of her that urged her to release him and not subject him to what was to come.

They reached a simple white room that smelled of death, death of lycans. Chains were upon the floor meant to restrain, a long silver whip upon the only table in the room meant for blinding pain. The human in him knew Selene would not be using it on him still the lycan in him was slightly fearful.

In chains he didn't know if he could protect Selene, he didn't even know if he could protect himself. He'd feel vulnerable, stripped of all defenses…

"The vampire in you may see me as a mate, however the lycan in you would sooner feast on my heart," she responded. "Sit."

Selene commanded him firmly the way a master does it's dog, what surprised Michael was how readily he did so. She crouched next to him chaining each wrist and it seemed she avoided his eyes when doing so.

"Selene…"

He was pleading with her and she found herself almost succumbing. As if by compromise, she stayed next to him.

He did not ask to be released again. "I didn't hurt you before what makes you think I will now?"

"Perhaps it was a stroke of luck, a fluke. Your body is still struggling to find the proper balance of vampire and lycan. Maybe it all ready has, I want to be sure. Being an immortal is an erratic process after the initial bite." She purposely made her voice unfeeling but then made the mistake of looking at him.

His blue eyes gave her a look of absolute defeat. Her mind told her to ignore him and stay steely however her heart was begging her to be kind to him.

Her heart won. She cupped his strong jaw in her hands and stroked it finding the nape of his neck to caress him. He leaned into her touch closing his eyes. "Two hours is as long as I'll ask you to bear it. If you are all right then…"

Michael nodded hazily in acceptance and his handsome face was not so mournful. Unable to stop herself Selene leaned forward meeting his mouth with her own. He seemed startled but almost immediately responded.

She mimicked his kiss of the previous night allowing him to know of her hidden love and devotion through mouth and tongue.

Her sharp hearing perceived the rattling of chains and she knew his hands reached to hold her. Her fingers curled round the hair at the nape of his neck and he allowed Selene to deepen the kiss, Michael purred low in his throat in response.

Then he tensed with a painful whimper and in alarm Selene pulled from him.

Michael himself recoiled away from her nearness. His body shook and she could hear a growl starting in his throat then the sound of hitched breathing. He fell to his side in incredible pain.

When she came next to him, he feebly attempted to push her from him.

It was as she expected. Michael was a hybrid but the lycan in him, before he became fully able to control it, would respond to the light of the moon.

"Don't Selene, stay back," he warned a hint of panic in his voice.

She didn't listen but stayed at his side to stroke his hair and face, to soothe him as much as she could against the pain. "Shhh…"

She still shuddered at the memory, the pain of becoming a vampire, as muscles and bones shifted all too quickly to become stronger and faster more deadly. She remembered one of the older vampires comparing the change to the pain of giving birth only ten times worse.

She could imagine lycans had it worse though as near everything changed at the rising of the full moon.

He quieted his protesting but not his pain-filled cries as he lay gasping for air. His eyes rolled around flickering from blue to black as he slipped in and out of consciousness. When he winced, she caught sight of his fangs, long and sharp like hers but thicker like a lycans.

Much as she hated to admit it to herself her neck seemed to ache for those fangs against it, ache for the feel of them sinking inside her.

She resisted the urge to sedate him, he would have to bear the pain in order to grow used to the change and strengthen until the pain was slight.

His skin was rippling and she could notice every muscle within him go rigid, sweat coating him. Involuntarily he whimpered like a young lycan pup.

Soon, he would change. At such a close proximity he could become capable of hurting her. But she could not leave him, not to suffer so terribly alone.

Selene left him for just a moment feeling the same panic for him seize her as the previous night when Kraven shot him.

Kraven. If she ever saw him again she would--

An agonizing howl cut off her thoughts followed by the sound of claws scraping stone. It chilled her insides the sound of Michael so human in thoughts and feelings, so innocent giving such an animalistic cry.

She swiped the scissors into her hands from a kitchen drawer and well as bowl of cold water and clean washcloth and ran back to Michael.

He lay on his back unnoticing of her, howling insanely, skin so deathly pale, too consumed in his suffering to notice anything. She cut away his shirt and ran a wet cold cloth against him.

The effect was almost instantaneous, his howls quieted to hybrid whimpers and human moans.

"Shh…" she soothed.

His skin took on a bluish tinge and his hands sprouted lethal claws. Michael growled low in his throat when his hybrid eyes caught sight of her. She started to edge away when she realized he was actually purring and relaxing at the sight of her.

Selene continued to massage his aching muscles till sleep took him.