I'm so sorry about the delay. This chapter was originally a lot longer, but then I saw how long it had gotten and split the second half off for chapter twelve so that's the main reason. Also, I had a bit of writer's block and I have had a lot of work to do for school. Anyway…

This disclaimer makes the characters, setting, and origin of the story not mine. Why do we have to put these things at the beginning of every damn chapter anyway?

Shiver

He was back in the dark living room, the moonlight from the window giving the furniture an ominous look. He was older now, eighteen at least. He stood shakily and rubbed at his aching head—why had he come here again? Something to do with blueberries? He stumbled in the darkness, blowing his mind, trying to think…the more he pushed, the emptier his brain seemed to become, until only one thing was left.

And she was sitting against the side of the couch, panting as though out of breath and holding her swollen abdomen gently.

"Yuuki!" he called, but, just like the last time, no sound came out. Had he always been voiceless? He opened his mouth to try again when a familiar cold gripped his body and a cruel hand descended on his shoulder.

"Hello, Kiryuu-san," the evil voice said, slithering around his eardrums like cobras. Heart screaming in his ribcage, he whipped around; the intense blue of his opponent's eyes pierced painfully into his pupils.

"What do you want from me?" he demanded, and this time his voice rang out, loud and clear, before the blackness swallowed it.

"Nothing, Kiryuu. What I want is back there." Nagano grinned threateningly and pulled a gun from the darkness that should have been his chest, pointing it heartlessly over the boy called Kiryuu's shoulder.

"No," Kiryuu breathed, still staring at Nagano, paralyzed and unable to look back at her. "Please—"

Nagano grabbed his shoulder roughly and swiveled him to face the couch again. She was staring at the two of them now, absolute panic pulsing in her eyes.

"Yuu…ki…" His voice came out with the strength of a fragile whisper.

"You'd better run," Nagano prompted, and sent his opponent reeling across the room with an assertive gun-barrel jab in the back.

Kiryuu flew across the room, traveling on the momentum of the push; nevertheless, it was as though he ran through syrup, and the gun had gone off three times before he dove at the sofa and wrapped his body tightly around hers.

"It's okay," he heard himself whisper as the blasts continued in the background. "I've got you."

But she wouldn't stop gasping his name.

"Zero…Zero…Zero!"

Zero's eyes shot open. He was back in his bedroom and, once again, drenched in sweat, only this time, he wasn't on his side.

"Zero, I can't breathe!" Yuuki pushed against his chest, gasping slightly, and he released her. She took in two huge breaths and stared at him, alarmed.

"Why are you all wet? Were you having a nightmare?"

Long vines of cold wrapped around him and he pulled off his wet top, just like last time, and hurled it at the corner. He sighed and collapsed against his pillow, trying to catch his breath.

"Sorry, Yuuki. I didn't mean to crush you."

She gazed at him for a moment, then took a deep breath. "What happened in your dream?"

Long sigh. "Uh. Do you, um, do you remember Nagano Tatsuo, that hunter who burst in on us late at night?"

A shiver swept through her. "I…remember him."

"It's him. It's always him."

"Always? This is recurring?"

"Sort of. Twice, I guess. He's there, but his eyes aren't red, they're blue. Bright blue, and cold. The first time it was just him and me, but this time you were there, too, and he…and…" He shut his mouth, not wanting to scare her any further.

"He what? Tell me, Zero!"

Zero sighed and got up. "I'm going to get some water."

"Zero!"

"It was just a dream, Yuuki! Go back to sleep, okay? I'll be right back." He disappeared into the bathroom across the hall and she twitched a little. What had happened to her in Zero's dream? Had she been raped? Tortured? Killed? Still tense, she lay back down, rubbing her tummy gently.

--

Zero hadn't wanted Yuuki to find out about the double pureblood homicide the Senate had discovered the morning after their engagement, but the Chairman had other plans. He was beyond alarmed, as this time one of the victims had been a pregnant woman.

"No one else can know about you, Yuuki," he demanded as they sat at the table over dinner. "Yori knows and Kaname knows and we know, but does anyone else?"

Both he and Zero stared at her quizzically. It made her face hot. "No one who also knows I'm a vampire," she muttered, poking at her steak without interest. She tried to tell herself the annihilation of the purebloods was a good thing, but every time another died, her stomach closed in on itself a little more. How long would it be before they found her? And what would happen to her family? Zero, and the Chairman and Kaname—and her child?

"Yuuki-chan," Cross assuaged. "I'm not trying to frighten you. All I'm saying is, there is no way anyone can know you aren't carrying a pureblooded child just by looking at you. If the killer knows about you, the fact that you're carrying could put you in even more danger. Everyone knows you were supposed to marry Kaname, and not many know that plan's off."

Yuuki slumped a little more in her seat and rested her free hand over her baby. Her eyes fell, two sad, hopeless orbs.

"I want you to keep this a secret from now on," the Chairman told her. "I don't want you telling anyone else, not even people you think you can trust. And I don't want you going to town anymore, either."

At this, Yuuki's head shot up. "But…how can I possibly stay in this house for two months?"

"I can do the shopping. I'm not so busy that I can't help you out. In your state, I'm not sure going all the way down there to get groceries every week is the best idea anyway."

Yuuki shrugged.

"Plenty of women stay inside during their final two months. And you can still run around here, at least until classes start. This is for your own safety, Yuuki-chan. And the safety of your child."

Yuuki nodded somberly and stood. "I'm finished," she mumbled, turning away and leaving her dirty dishes on the table for the first time in ten years.

"Are you sure?" the Chairman called. "You hardly touched your food."

"Chairmain—" Zero interjected.

"I'm not hungry, Chairman," she said.

"Are you sure you don't—"

"I'm fine!" she snapped, and darted for the stairs.

"Yuuki!" Shoving his chair into the wall, the Chairman bolted to his feet, but didn't move from the table. He glanced desperately at Zero, who shrugged and pushed a slice of meat around on his plate.

"I'll go talk to her," he said, standing.

"You haven't finished your dinner, Zero-kun."

"It's fine, I wasn't going to eat much more anyway."

Zero carried their plates to the kitchen and followed her up. The door to their room was slightly ajar, casting a triangle of golden lamplight into the hallway; he reached out and pushed it open gently. She sat tensely on the side of the bed, her fists gripping the edge of the mattress.

"Yuuki?"

She glanced up, didn't speak. He came over and sat next to her, put a hand on her shoulder.

"Is staying inside really so much to ask, Yuuki?"

Yuuki shook her head curtly, her short brown locks slapping her face gently. A couple strands stuck to her cheek; Zero's hand left her shoulder and grazed it, coming away damp. As he rubbed the tears between his fingers, she buried her eyes in her palms. "I'm scared," she mumbled. "I'm so scared. And I don't—I don't even know why." She moved closer and buried herself in his side. Everything had wound itself into such a knotted mess. Nothing was as simple as just being able to love him the way she wanted to love him.

"It's not just the murders, is it?"

Silence hung in the room for a good minute or so. Finally, shaking slightly, she reached up and pulled him down to her. He shivered as her warm, wet lips closed on his throat, enticing conflicting fear and anticipation. She wrapped an arm around his neck lovingly, as though to atone for the sin she was about to commit.

"I love you, Zero…"

"Yuuki—" he protested, but the brief, sharp pain in his neck cut him off. He let his eyes fall closed, felt the hot blood trickle over his collarbone; she felt it gush over her lips and spill down her chin. She tried to be careful, but in her despair, the pain in his neck was consistent, and he closed his eyes and ground his teeth, waited impatiently for her to finish, for it to end.

Finally, she pulled back, gazed into his sad lavender eyes for a moment, and burst into violent, uncontrollable bawling.

It was all too much.

--

"I used to hate my life so much," Zero supplied as Yuuki yanked her clothing off her beautiful, smooth form and slipped into that giant T-shirt. "Waking up every day, knowing I didn't deserve to live because I had to rely on cannibalism to survive. You know you were the only thing that kept me going."

"It was a rough change," Yuuki admitted, offering a watery smile as she ran a brush through her hair. "Not as rough as yours, of course, but it took me a long time to accept the fact that I wasn't a human anymore—that I was never a human. On top of all that…uh..." She froze a moment and suddenly began searching madly through a pile of clothing on the floor of the closet, as though expecting to find buried treasure in a sock.

"What?"

"Huh? Oh, n-nothing."

"God, Yuuki, don't do that! What were you going to say?"

Yuuki sighed and tossed her shirt, which had been lying at her feet, into the wicker hamper next to the fascinating pile of clothes. "On top of all that…I thought…I thought you hated me. For being a vampire. A pureblood."

"Oh, Yuuki," he groaned. "I never hated you. I hated Kuran for turning you, even though I knew you'd always been a pureblood. I hated the monster I thought I'd lost you to. And I hated…myself, I guess, for not seeing it before, and not being able to stop it." He sighed heavily and pushed a sweaty hand through his bangs. "I promised you I'd never let you fall into this miserable life, and I was sure that when you became a vampire, the Yuuki I protected, the Yuuki I loved....was dead." Or he'd managed to convince himself she was. How on Earth could someone who had only ever been tortured by a group of people convince himself that the girl he loved was one of them?

Yuuki's cheeks turned slightly red—she was positive her little comment about her vampire side eating her human side hadn't exactly helped matters. Still, he'd pointed Bloody Rose at her…

"I really thought I'd lost you," she muttered, feeling tears well behind her eyelids.

"Christ." Zero grunted a heavy sigh loaded with shame and remorse. "When I threatened you with the gun, I didn't see myself threatening you—I saw myself threatening a monster, a demon who took my Yuuki away from me. I saw my own failure, and I saw your future filled with blood, and I didn't want you to live with that because you don't deserve that cruel fate. It wasn't until you said…what you said…that I knew you were still…well…you."

Yuuki ran a shaky hand through her matted brown hair. "I know. If I had thought for even a second that you were really trying to hurt me, I don't think I would have let myself live long enough to hate you for it."

Zero hung his head. "I really wish you wouldn't talk like that. It makes me nervous, thinking about you hurting yourself." And it makes me feel guilty, like I had already killed you.

Yuuki chuckled sadly. "I'm not going to hurt myself." She climbed into bed and snapped off her lamp. "Are you staying or leaving?"

He glanced at the clock—eight fifteen—and shrugged. "I'll leave so the light doesn't bother you."

"What time are you coming to bed?"

Zero cocked his head, considering. "Not too long."

"All right."

Zero stepped into the hall.

"Zero?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

Zero's mouth twisted in a half-smile and he closed the door gently, easing darkness into Yuuki's room.

--

The Chairman was stirring up chocolate when Zero entered the kitchen.

"Oh, Zero-kun! Is she okay?"

"Seems to be. She's asleep."

"Oh." The Chairman frowned at the two mugs on the counter. "Guess I'll have to drink her hot chocolate."

Zero sighed and started in on the dishes piled in the sink.

"Zero-kun?"

"Hm."

"I'm proud of you."

"Geez, what for?" He bent under the sink to find a steel brush for the pan.

"You've just been so strong and brave all these years, and you've been willing to give up anything, all for the girl you love. And you've stuck by her side like Superglue, even now that she's pregnant and you may have to give up school in Tokyo to help her with the child."

"Like I would ever run out on Yuuki."

"That's not the point, Zero-kun."

"Aren't you at all worried about how she's going to get her education? How she's going to keep up now that she has to care for that child? I mean—"

"We aren't too poor to support a child," the Chairman interrupted, "and I'm sure one of you can get a part-time job, since the most intensive part of your education is mostly over. (1) I can help take care of her until you finish school—I raised you two on my own, didn't I?"

"College will take us longer now, don't you get it?"

"Zero, I don't care. You've given me a grandchild. How could I possibly be anything but overjoyed about that?"

Zero leaned back against the counter and glared at the Chairman for a good ten seconds. Finally he said,

"Is there a reason this child means so much to you? That you're not even worried about Yuuki's well-being, and you're so eager to take care of it yourself?"

"Of course I'm concerned about her well-being. But that's just it…I know she'll be all right, because she's a strong girl."

Zero groaned and returned to the dishes.

"When I was twenty," the Chairman said quietly, "I married my college girlfriend."

Shock forced Zero to drop the knife he was washing and whip around. "Married? I thought you were gay." (2)

"I am, but I didn't realize that at the time. I knew I loved her. And I did. Just not in that way. I loved her as a friend, but at the time I didn't know any other kind of love. Does that make sense?"

"I guess." The shock had passed quickly—Zero was back to scrubbing pots.

"Sonja was a lovely woman. Native to Canada, but her parents moved to Tokyo for her father's job. Very compassionate girl, very witty. Long black hair, mocha skin, eyes like almonds. Anyway, she got pregnant only three months after our wedding. We were thrilled, to say the least. No, we weren't done with college, but we figured she'd put off her degree a while, at least until I finished mine. It was a girl, our baby, and we decided to call her Amaya, after her grandmother—my mother.

"Then one night, about Sonja's fifth month, I woke up to her screaming. I ran into the living room, and I saw this…this monster—torn clothes, dirty, ragged hair, skin as pale as a corpse's—and he was holding her like a child, his mouth leeched onto her neck like…like…" He took a shaky breath. "At first I thought he was trying to rape her, but then I saw the blood. Smeared across its face and running over her shoulders and down her shirt. And it sensed me, and looked up—I'll never forget it, seeing that terrible glowing red for the first time—and, as though it knew it had lost, it tore its razor-like nails through her chest and disappeared out the open window. Sonja was drowning in her own blood before she even hit the floor. I ran to her, but she was unconscious, and the hole right in the center of her chest, and the way the blood wasn't spurting the way it should have been since her aorta was destroyed…I knew…the bastard had torn her heart out. And, as saturated with blood as it was, he'd run off with it. With no blood moving through her head, she was dead before I could even get off the phone. And my little Amaya…" He shook his head and closed his eyes. "I never saw her. Not even dead."

"Jesus," Zero muttered.

"That's why your child is so important to me, I guess. She's the baby I never had." The Chairman approached the sink and began drying a knife Zero had washed and stuck in the rack. "A level E. Come for a beautiful young college girl. He'd probably been stalking her for days, weeks, even—just waiting for the right time, the perfect moment to strike. That's when I learned vampires exist, and that's when I became a hunter."

"Why would he just take her with you right there?" Zero asked, leaning against the counter with his arms and legs crossed.

"They were right in front of the window. He was probably going to take her outside, but in that state…" He shook his head sadly. "Once they get their victims in their arms, well…" His voice dropped away, but in his mind, Zero finished his sentence for him.

You know what happens.

"I'm closer to your situation than you think, Zero-kun. You have a real gem in Yuuki. Don't let what I let happen to Sonja happen to her."

The Chairman's sad voice drifted upstairs through the vent above their heads. In bed, Yuuki listened intently.

--

Footnotes

In Japan, most of the work comes BEFORE college—that is, all the cramming Americans usually do in college happens before high school entrance exams and again with college exams. Makes me really glad to be American, where we have Saturdays off, can take electives in high school, and don't have to spend our childhoods in a basement studying.

Pretty much everything else about Japan and the Japanese school system makes me jealous, though.

There is no disputing Chairman Kurosu's gender preference. It doesn't matter what your personal political stance is, doesn't matter what mine is. In one panel in the first book, there is a prominent sign pointing at the Chairman that reads "gay." Some may say that's just a joke because he's telling Zero he can drink his blood, but honestly, it's just so obvious, in all his mannerisms and everything. He's so effeminate. I think it's part of his charm.

So, I watched Juno for the first time in months this weekend, and noticed particularly the "Most Fruitful Yuki" manga bit. I thought it was downright hilarious, all things considered.