A/N: Disclaimer in Chapter 1.

I definitely have a feeling this will be slightly longer than my usual thirty chapters – not by many though.

Yd rox: Thank you, I'd be glad to help in any way I can.

Chapter 9: Right Choice

The corridors were busy as slayers pushed past the female vampires. It was always busy at night at the Slayers Guild, it was obvious why. The pace around the headquarters was casual, they weren't in a hurry although the female vampires weren't keen to be crushed in a stampede if an emergency did occur.

Erin found herself being jostled as she and Ingrid leaned against the grey concrete wall. It was amazing how the slayers took no notice of them, as if they didn't know they were vampires. Erin shook her head, marvelling at how everything had changed under Vlad's reign. She never imagined this would ever happen – vampires and slayers sharing the same room without wanting to kill each other.

Unfortunately that would soon change when Olga began her attacks; there was no denying that she was mustering support for this war. The thought terrified Erin; she'd never been involved in a war. Vampires were strong in one way but weak in another.

"You okay?" Erin called through the door of the men's towards her errant husband.

Vlad looked upwards, staring at the reflection of the cubicles in the mirror. He missed being able to see his own reflection, although staring at the reflection of the room had a way of calming him as it took his mind from everything else. "Yeah." He turned on the cold-water tap, soaking his hands before cupping them to hold the water and splashing it over his face.

He rubbed the water into his pores trying as if it would make him think of anything else to sort out the mess they were in. He faced the basin and shook his head, forcing the water from his face.

He watched the droplets make their way down the plughole trying to distract himself from the situation at hand.

Meanwhile Erin as growing worried, she pushed open the door – not caring for an instant that it was the men's bathroom and that other men might be in there.

"ERIN!" Vlad cried, spinning to see his wife standing with her arms folded over her chest. Her eyes narrowed as she saw he was fine, not that she was complaining but he had made her worry.

She gave him the smallest of shrugs, "I was worried." Vlad gave her an apologetic look he'd lost track of the time he'd been in the toilets.

Erin's eyes were transfixed on a droplet of water as it dripped from Vlad's hair and followed the curve of his cheek. She couldn't help herself; she reached out and swept it from his cheek. Vlad reached up and held her fingers to his cheek drawing a soft smile from her.

"I'm fine, I just got distracted." Their foreheads met tenderly and Erin closed her eyes. "I didn't think that anything would have happened to Jonno and Mina. We need their support in this war."

"We'll find a way Vlad, Mina's recovering the quickest. It won't be long before she wakes up, you only need one of them to agree to it."

"Until then we're on our own." That was the terrifying thought.

Erin kissed his jaw lightly, "We've been on our own before, we can do it again. We managed to defeat the most powerful vampire on our own…"

"We had help to defeat Sethius." He reminded her, correcting her automatically.

Erin shook her head, he could be clueless at times. "I meant you. We beat the evil inside or you, the side that showed no mercy."

"Except to you."

"You still tried to bite me, three times." She smiled. "To drain me." She'd never forgiven him because there hadn't been anything to forgive. He'd been responding instinctively. He'd kept his craving locked up tightly that when they were finally unleashed he couldn't do anything but succumb to them.

He looked down at his shoes; he had a confession to make. "I wasn't going to drain you." He remembered everything about that time with clarity. It was hard to forget when he'd been a prisoner inside his own mind.

Erin's eyes widened, Vlad had never mentioned this before. "What?"

"I was going to make you mine. Just because I was evil it didn't mean I didn't love you, I just tried to hide it. You couldn't be a breather if I wanted you, I didn't want anyone else. Becky was the snack, the same as Miss McCauley. All so I could bite you without draining you completely in hunger, I was going to take you as my mate. Then you walked in or stopped it and I couldn't help myself, I just had to make you mine each time. I didn't want to wait."

"Oh." She tried to keep her voice level but it came out slightly breathless and high pitched, bordering on excited. Erin tried to stop the smile that crossed her face at his admission, back then he wanted her as his mate. The thought made her tingle, he'd been thinking about mating with her before her parents were ever in the picture and that thought made her beam.

Vlad caught her smile, he rolled her eyes. He wished he hadn't told her now. "Stop smiling."

"I'm not." She tried but it only grew bigger, she hid it with her hand.

"You are." He retaliated, deliberately taking a large step into her personal space giving her no option but to step back. Her thighs hit the sinks and her back bent at a somewhat odd angle. "Be glad I didn't otherwise I definitely would've been ritually staked." Vlad leaned closer to her, his lips brushing her ear as his voice took on a husky tone.

She loved it when he was determined and used the tone that made her shiver. "See," She took them back, using his words as a distraction from how he was making her feel. "We managed to beat him, Olga will be easy to deal with."

"I hope so." He whispered, finding her lips distracting. He leaned in closer, only to be stopped with a firm hand on his chest.

"Vlad I really don't think this is the place." She spoke huskily, her lips ghosting across his before she pulled back away from him completely.

Vlad laughed looking down, she was right the men's toilets weren't the best place for this at all. Erin trailed her free hand down his arm and laced their fingers together. "Come on, before someone sees you in here."

YEKNODELTILYEKNODELTTIL

Catherine handed Vlad a memory stick. "This is all the data we have so far." Vlad was sure he wouldn't understand much of it but Renfield probably would. He could have laughed though at being handed a memory stick, if he still lived at the school it wouldn't be much use to him but they did have all the modern technology at the manor that his father had denied while he was growing up.

"Thanks." He forced a smile at her.

"Vlad just because we can't fight alongside you doesn't mean we can't help in other ways."

"Just unofficially, right?" He knew how these things worked, he might have only been in power for three years but he knew enough.

Catherine shook her head before fixing him with another apologetic look, "Sorry Vlad, I just…"

"Can't do anything until they wake up." He finished, he understood he really did. "I'll let you know what happens with the war."

Catherine felt guilty, Vlad was a valuable ally. They should be supporting him and she knew Jonno and Mina would but she just couldn't legally make the decision to stand by him in a war.

"I'll keep you updated on Jonno and Mina." Catherine promised him, Vlad gave her a more genuine smile. They might have been enemies once but Vlad had come to value Jonno as a close friend.

"Look after them." Erin smiled at Catherine before taking Vlad's hand, with a nod to Ingrid they flew off into the night.

They couldn't delay anymore, they needed to think of something to sort all this out.

YEKNODELTTILYEKNODELTTIL

Erin woke slowly, she stretched her arm out trying to find Vlad. She bolted upright when she realised that the coffin was empty. She concentrated and tried to seek him out with her mind even though she knew it'd be pointless. Her eyes snapped open in shock; she could feel the slight, tingling of his open mind. She bit her lip, Vlad rarely left his mind open.

She grabbed her dressing gown and tied it tightly around her, she didn't usually use one but they still had guests in their home so she needed to appear decent.

Erin followed the contact as fast as she could towards Vlad, she found him in his study. He had his head buried in his hands, sitting behind his desk pen and paper at the ready. On the edge of the table was his laptop, he'd obviously been trying to make heads and tails of the information the salyers had given them on the memory stick, she knew it wouldn't make much sense.

"Vlad?" Her soft voice startled him, he twitched – not a full jump but close enough.

He looked up at her, he immediately forced a smile onto his face. Erin wasn't fooled for a minute, she saw his black rimmed eyes and shook her head slightly. "You're supposed to be asleep."

"You weren't in the coffin last night and it as bad enough then." She admitted, their argument had forced him from it. "I can't sleep without you there," She moved closer, "And I'm pregnant so you have to do as I say." Usually a comment like that would have gotten a smile from him or a slight twitching of the corner of his mouth. Erin kissed his hair tenderly, standing behind him. "Come back to the coffin."

"I need to think of something."

"It can wait until tomorrow, you can't exhaust yourself before it's even begun."

Vlad shook his head, he didn't have the luxury of sleeping. "I'd been relying on Jonno and Mina, they know how to deal with vampires. My kind haven't fought a war in two centuries, most of them are set in their ways… without Bertrand as strategist I can't win… We can't hope to beat Olga. What have I done?" He asked her, his voice finally breaking.

Erin pulled him to her, his face was buried firmly in her stomach. Erin stroked his messy hair, twisting the thick strands between her fingertips. She felt him shaking and whispered soothing sounds to him, she kissed his hair lightly as she felt him wind his arms around her stomach.

"You did what you had to Vlad." She whispered, cooing softly in an attempt to calm him down. "You said it yourself Olga will destroy our kind, you're the only thing stopping her from doing that. You didn't have a choice."

In Vlad's mind Erin was forgetting something important. "The baby…"

"If you step aside our baby will be born into Olga's world, a world where nothing will survive. Breathers, slayers, vampires, werewolves, zombies – nothing will be left. You're the best hope we all have. You made the right choice Vlad."

How could she say that? He'd condemned some of his kind to dust. "I don't…"

"You can do this Vlad, you commanded a small army to beat Sethius. For years you managed to stop your family biting breathers and you managed to thwart slayers. Trust yourself, just like I trust you. You're the only person who can do this. At the end of her speech she heard Vlad snort, "What?"

Vlad slowly pulled back from her, exposing wet patches on her nightclothes from where his tears had fallen and been absorbed by the cotton. "After three years Bertrand and the others got their wish."

"You're not leading an army against slayers, you're leading an army against someone who wants to destroy your kind. War isn't noble Vlad but sometimes it's the only way to stop decisions being made for you. Olga decided on the war, not you." She wanted him to believe in himself, see that he had made the right decision.

Vlad's eyes looked haunted. Her eyes glanced across the table to the pen and paper there.

"What are you working on?" She asked him quietly. She might have been able to speak some Transylvanian but it didn't mean she could read it well.

"A speech." Erin's eyes widened, the fact he was working on one and the fact he hadn't been forced to work on it made her worry. She usually had to stand over him to get him to do it. "I have to announce the war somehow. Give people a reason to choose our side. Although I'm not sure if I would."

Erin grasped a chair and pulled it across to him, sitting down on it. "People will choose this side Vlad."

"How do you know?"

"Because they'd be stupid not to." She answered; any idiot could see what Vlad had done for their kind. He'd rebuilt them after the slayings and skirmishes with the wolves. He'd made them stronger, Olga was tearing that down. Vampires were prideful they wouldn't want to lose what they'd gained.

Erin squinted at the words, it wasn't her dyslexia stopping her from reading them – Vlad always wrote on yellow paper to ensure she found his notes easy to read – she just could decipher the language. It was a dialect she wasn't entirely familiar with.

"Go back to bed, you and the baby need to rest."

"So does his or her dad." She shoved the pen into his hand, she knew she'd never get him back to bed until this was done. "We'll write a *draft* together, just a draft, then we'll go through it tomorrow after we've had some rest." Vlad nodded, he considered protesting again but he was grateful for he help.

"Did you decide on what to do about what happened to Jonno and Mina?" Erin knew Vlad had to deal with Chloe somehow.

Vlad nodded; there was only one thing he could do. He needed to get Chloe and the Branaghs off his back, "I'm bringing Dad back."

TBC

A/N: Thanks for reading.