A/N: Sorry it took so long! Editing and whatnot.

Morana

I perched on the edge of the massive red tinted wood table, "Are you sure you have to go?"

Nick leaned over me which put his arms on either side, caging me in. He smiled and kissed my forehead, "God do I love you."

I smiled and wrapped my arms around his neck, reeling him closer, "If you loved me, you would stay with me and not leave to go out."

He shook his head, "That only worked the first ten times, now I'm a real man who," Nicholas gave me a look, "wants to stay, but can't." He wrapped his arms firmly around my waist and anchored me closer to him. His lips touched mine and it was fire and fire. My fingers dug into the fabric on his shirt and my legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him closer. He made a breathy sound and kissed my throat, my collar bone, the skin around my lips. Nicholas slid my hair from its ponytail holder and pressed closer against me, leaning me back on the table.

I laughed, "I thought you were leaving." He pulled back a bit and I stared at him from the table. He looked at the door then back at me very torn. I laughed again, "Oh, go on and go to your meeting with Thorn. I know she misses you when you're not there to balance out her overly excited side."

Nicholas drew back and straightened his black duster. He cleared his throat and was picking up his things to go when he paused and smacked the table next to me, hard. I jumped and he instantly looked apologetic. "I just forgot something," he kissed my nose, "I'll be right back."

He ducked into his office and was back with a brown cardboard box that had holes cut into the top. Nicholas handed it to me with a grin, "It's a present to be with you when I'm not, which will be very little, but all the same."

I slid my fingers under the tape, a habit left over form irritating Echo when opening birthday presents. Carefully I opened the sides to see two yellow eyes staring back at me. For a second I stopped breathing then I scooped up the little thing. It was black with a crooked ear and a knot in its tail.

"Meow," it said very loudly like it wanted to make our ear drums pop.

"Nicholas! You got me a kitten?"

He took it from me and held it up in the light, "Not just any kitten, it has six toes on each foot. Look," I touched its little paw and saw that the cat did have a lot of toes, but somehow it made it even cuter. "And it's a girl, couldn't have another man around my girl."

I rolled my eyes, but took the kitten back, "I'm going to name her Mino after the fish because she is so tiny."

I set her on the table and she curled up into a little ball looking very content next to me. Nicolas tucked a stray curl behind my ear and cupped my cheek, "I'm just glad you're happy," he pressed his lips to mine once. "Take care of my heart, I leave it with you."

And he was gone into the rain. I thought about calling Echo and talking about what happened earlier, but refrained and decided to save myself the embarrassment. I bustled around the huge house making myself busy with housework. Nicolas had tacked up a few pictures we had taken, in the living room above the black couch. It doubled as a library with books stacked everywhere from the hidden coffee table to next to the windows. I fingered the photo that we took yesterday by the beach. He had tried to take the picture himself and all you saw was the ocean and our noses, a couple of my astray curls caught the lens.

I made a trip up the stairs to don my jeans and t-shirt with Mino trailing behind me. The upstairs was really just our room, a huge bathroom, and a closet. I decked back downstairs through Nicholas's office, the living room, and into the kitchen. Echo had abandoned a picture of us outside a motel on the counter. Her arm was slung around my shoulders and I was sticking one leg out into the wind. I took one of the plastic letter magnets and pinned it to the fridge. There, I thought, now Echo lives here too.

In a split decision I picked up the house phone and dialed Echo's cell phone. She didnt pick up and I went to the answering machine. "You've reached Echo," her voice was flat, "and probably don't want to talk to you. Just leave a message if you must."

I smiled, "It's Morana, I just wanted to make sure that we were alright. Alright, I love you lots Echo. Talk to you soon." I clicked off and brushed Mino's fur with my free hand.

She purred and shifted so that I could scratch her head, "You're so good aren't you? I love you-" I froze. Cold ice set into my veins. I knew something was wrong with Nicholas, I couldn't feel him. The light that balanced out my own was gone - vanished like a snuffed out candle. In a panic I shoved my bare feet into his over-sized hunting boots and pulled on his courdey fur-lined jacket. Mino followed and I hastily placed her in the bathroom with a litter-box, water, and food so that he wouldn't be uncomfortable while I was gone.

I shut the door and snapped open the screen door, I darted along the side of the road. He said that he would be right back, he said that everything would be fine. My hair flew off my shoulders like a flashlight's beam behind me. The crushing fear that everything was going to fall around me, hit me again. The ground was slick with rain and the skies were already filled with dark clouds.

"Nicholas?" I yelled as loud as I could. My voice bounced back at me full force. Not good, my inner self fretted. He wouldn't just leave me without saying something. I would be able to contact him even then though. I ran then into the woods and let the branches snap in my face and pull out my hair. I tripped a couple times, but I powered on until I saw a faint light ahead in the distance. I could've ran yards, feet, miles - everything was a blur of what was Nicholas and what wasn't.

Then it happened, the air thickened then thinned again. Sometimes I wondered if this happened to people who weren't shifters when crossing the border. The dim light blared out of headlights ahead of me, but the car was facing the wrong way, the metal was twisted. Except I knew that dingy blue color. It was Theo's car that he always drove around in. Oh God, oh God. My stomach rolled as I edged closer, my feet crunched on shards of broken glass that was everywhere. I saw movement in the car's driver seat and a vaguely familiar mop of chestnut brown curls.

I screamed, "Theo?" Someone grunted which I took as a yes and practically attacked the car door. He was slumped over the steering wheel and I realized in horror that his chest was soaked with blood. His blood, I gasped and tried to sit him up only to be stopped by a six foot long pole that went from the windshield through him and the car seat.

"Oh my God, Theo!" I cried smoothing his hair away from his battered face.

He moaned, "No intimate touching or else Nick will have my head," he heaved, "on a platter like that saint I can't remember the name of." I touched the outside of his wound and tried to force a laugh for his sake, but it wasn't working.

He yelped and I sighed. "I have to pull it out alright? You have to heal." I pushed tears out of my mind and focused on climbing up onto the hood of the car. Glass was in my fingers, but I couldn't feel a thing - I only thought about Theo and how I had to save him.

Theo nodded with effort, "He... He took her." I grabbed onto the edge of the metal rod and swayed. "They took Echo."

I couldn't think properly, I just yanked it out with strength I didn't know I possessed. It slid out of him with a sickly sound. He screamed and I screamed, we screamed together as I threw the pole to the side. It smacked the ground as I fell off the hood and onto the glass sprinkled ground.

I swore and took off to Theo who was throwing up blood onto his front, he didn't even have the strength to turn his head. With a belief that he had to heal I managed to strip off his shirt and use it to stop up the massive hole that ran through his middle. He spat blood to the side and leaned back as I shifted through the backseat for a first aid kit. It turned out that he kept the important stuff underneath the fast food wrappers. Of course.

At the bottom I found gauze that I wrapped around his stomach to replace the soaked shirt. Two pills at the bottom stopped vomiting so those got shoved in his mouth along with a bottle of stale water he chocked down. In a daze I supported him till he got into the backseat that wasn't destroyed. And got him on-top of a thick and warm wool blanket. His eyes flittered once before he was dead asleep.

I didn't have a car and I couldn't leave him to find one so I got the glass out and the blood that was smeared everywhere in the cab of the truck. The passenger door was gone, the metal ripped off by something deadly. Echo was there. Someone took her, I thought quickly and we had to find her.

With the newly cleaned car I climbed into the passenger seat and decided that we would have to spend the night here if the car didn't work, but seeing as that it looked crushed the chances of it working was low. I climbed over the divider and into the driver's seat. I jammed down onto the gas once only to hear the car sputter and die. I heard a dry chuckle from the backseat.

"Car is definitely dead Mora," Theo said thickly.

I turned, sat on the divider, and examined his bandages. "Does it hurt more? How's your head? I don't have a phone. Do you have one? Where's Echo? Is she alright?"

He sighed and took my hand, "Too many questions. Slowly."

"Was Echo with you, when you crashed?" I asked. His face was pale and swallow like he had seen a ghost.

He nodded then coughed to the side, to my relief it was a normal cough with no blood. "Yeah, we were coming back from your house and we were going to Billy's. We were talking about her nightmares when the windshield just exploded and I had a pole through me. Echo went crazy and she has this look in her eyes...I-I-I can't explain it," he didn't have to, I knew exactly what he meant. It meant that she was unstable. Deadly.

I moped his head with a piece of gaze soaked in water, "Go on Theo, she was looking at you and what happened?"

"And she was going to pull out the pole when this vampire yanked her out of the car. He said some stuff I couldn't hear then two more appeared out of nowhere and one had this power of pain and the other wielded this black toxic smoke-"

I stared at him, "Vampires?"

He gave me an annoyed look, "Yes and the blonde girl and boy vanished leaving Echo with the blonde male who dangled her next to the car. I tried to hear what he said, but I was so weak and then they were in the car and she looked so sick. The male pushed the pole deeper in me and then he was gone."

I gasped, "Echo! He took Echo? He took my sister?" I was on the verge of breaking down, "You heard him say nothing? Nothing?"

Theo's eyes looked dilated, the pupils huge. "He said something like, 'I've never liked your kind'." His head rolled and looked at me, "Does that help?"

Did it? No. I had no idea what it meant and how we would find her. That was when the tears came rolling down my face. This only meant one thing; they took Nicolas away too.

I sniffled and wiped my nose with the edge of my shirt, "Sure Theo," I curled up next to him for warmth, "it helps a lot." And that was when a heard a shout.