Damon sighed deeply as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders and at that moment Mariella realized that Damon was feeling Mimi's pain and anxiety to some extent and when Damon got Mimi pain-free and deep enough to sleep he too felt relieved.

Mariella couldn't understand what was wrong with Damon moving Mimi's hair away from her forehead, why such a wave of terror?

"Is that better?" Mariella asked. "I told you, you feel Mimi and how she feels, that's why you've had such a hard time this week, you're still in connection with each other"

Damon looked at Mariella for a while and said" I don't know if I want that kind of connection, I think I'd rather it was gone. That just makes things more awkward, I don't want that to come between us like it already did. And as you can see Mimi wants Charles but not yet, not until this infection is gone. Maybe then. If I could switch so that I'm your protector and Charles is Mimi's."

Mariella looked at Damon for a while and said "No you can't, because you are Mimi's Protector, just as Charles is mine so you are Mimi's and therefore you want to care and you feel her pain. You can't change that. It's decided up there and it affects so many things you won't believe."

Damon looked at Mariella, kissed her passionately, and said " Fine then let's get to work and get this young lady fixed up."

Mariella asked, " Why doesn't Mimi want you to touch her?" Damon told her everything or rather showed her all the time, all the creepy stuff Damien did.

Damon said " It wasn't always Damien ..." Mariella was sad for Damon. Damien had permanently ruined something beautiful and delicate between Mimi and Damon. But maybe they could create something new together.

First, they released Mimi from her restraints and started to undress her.

What was revealed beneath the clothes was another painfully thin, 6 bullets-wounded, emaciated Mimi's body. Damon sighed.

He showed Mariella how to draw blood and cannulated a wing needle into the crook of her elbow.

Damon said "I'm putting the operating room in order because I have to operate on Mimi. Those bullets and infection and stuff. It might be better if you didn't interfere, I don't want you to get sick."

Mariella smiled, Damon was so incredibly sweet, so perfect. "Honey, energy witch, energy shield,? " She pointed to the energy field around her that wouldn't let any bug anywhere near her.

"I'm operating too. Period."

Damon sighed and put his hands up. "fine come on then."

They operated on Mimi, removing all of her organs and flushing out the remains of the jelly, there wasn't much left, it had all been absorbed. Damon drained a strong antibiotic from his teeth and they filled Mimi's now empty stomach cavity with the bump where the antibiotic had been mixed in.

The stuffing would provide energy and the antibiotic would do its job. The fever medicine they gave Damon kept the fever at bay and the infection began to subside within a week. However, the drug and other anesthetics showed no signs of going away, and Mimi's body temperature began to drop. Damon and Mariella had no choice but to put Mimi in an incubator. Mimi wouldn't even need the drugs now because she was already in a deep coma.

Damon told Adam and Charles everything that had happened and they came to take care of Mimi.

Damon was silent as he watched Charles and Adam go to Mimi and talk to her and touch her. For some reason, he was still jealous. He felt almost the same pang in his heart that he had felt when he had seen Mimi sleeping in Charles' arms. And he knew it would happen again.

Mimi herself had asked to be in Charles' arms. It hurt, and Damon didn't understand why. It had nothing to do with Protector issues. In that place, Damon made himself a hidden stash where he put all his feelings for Mimi. He shut off all his feelings. It was instant relief.

Charles and Adam packed Mimi into the car and drove away. They didn't say where they were taking Mimi. Damon sighed and took Mariella in his arms and they again teleported to the now Pennsylvania mansion. They found a bedroom and each other and an overwhelming passion and love. Nothing mattered, they only had each other.

Damon simply told Mariella that whatever feelings he had for Mimi were now put away. Mariella said " You can't get rid of those feelings, it's just a temporary thing. Look Damon remember your wedding vows, you promised Mimi always and forever. You made a promise and now you're afraid you can't keep it, but remember forever is a long time. And it's only been a few months."

Damon sighed and said " You always know where the problem is. I don't think, darling, that you're always quite as confused as you let on." Mariella smiled and let her passion show.

A week later it was time to deal with Mirella. Damon already knew exactly how. They went to Alabama where Mirella was with Samuel and Bran. When they got to the house, Mariella became hysterical and didn't want to go anywhere near the house.

There were earth metals there. Damon knocked her out in the middle of the place and removed the terror from her head. Someone in that house knew how to make a horror tangle. That's interesting.

Together with Mariela, when she woke up, they created a glove to suck up the metals. And that's how they were able to suck most of it out every time. But Bran and Samuel were metal poisoned, and they were too deep in their heads. They were taken to the magic house to sleep, and I'd see if they could get those metals down to less sometimes.

Nick and Elias had suffered the same fate, they too were now sleeping in the magic house. Damon was tired. He and Mariella had now cleared the house of metal after metal. And now Mirella.

Damon went to Mirella and wrapped himself around her, kissed, soothed, and then opened the jugular and drained Mirella dry, and dug her heart out of her chest. All that was left of Mirella was a pile of ashes. Mariella was pleased. Now they would get to fuck for real again and not have to settle for a quick one somewhere in between. They had actually done some work now.

Because Bran was now out of the picture. Charles and Adam agreed to Mariella's suggestion that Damon be the new pack leader. Damon said " The only way to get out of the pack is for me to let go. I'm going to do this my way so that when Mimi wakes up one day we can look into it."

Then Damon said " Come on darling, I'll take you to our paradise now. " He grabbed Mariella and teleported them to the Azores. And he saw nothing wrong with that. But he'd never take her to the basement. Mariella marveled at their perfect paradise and showed Damon how it was now filled with energy stones.

It was a clear sign that this was now their place. Mariella went to lie naked on the large purple stone and let the lust energy soak into her and watched as Damon came to take her once again.

When I woke up, I thought that such was my luck. Just as we had gotten Damien off Damon, I felt wonderful that there would be no more shed sessions so no.

Satan's rat must have a body for himself and fill me with all the substances in the world to make me weak, sick, and a nuisance to the pack. I didn't believe his noble idea of saving the world, surely that was after money.

I didn't actually know why Damien would want me sick all the time, but I suspected he had seen me all these years as too strong, too tough and that didn't sit well with the gentleman's delicate ego. And then this little bombshell that the gentleman works for a pharmaceutical company and has such a fucking good relationship with Sark.

I remembered years ago when I was in the pharmacy, from where I escaped and went into hibernation, I guess it wasn't a hallucination after all. No wonder Damon was a bit weird at times, wondering about the time, and the medicine Damien used to close his teeth.

I woke up in Charles's arms. He told me that the drugs from the pharmaceutical company put me into a deep coma and Mariella and Damon couldn't help it either. Damon had then called him and Adam and they had brought me here.

Charles said that I probably wouldn't have woken up for a couple of months if he hadn't taken me into his embrace again. Charles guessed that some part of me knew that I was alone in the incubator and not around anyone.

He said that he and Adam now have a new regimen for whenever I get a drugged feeling. It goes away faster when you are in physical contact with another. It was safe to be here. It was lovely to be

. Charles would never abandon me for another. Even though he is Mariella's protector, we have the same connection as Damon and Mariele, Charles has in a way saved and taught me to believe in love and intimacy again. I didn't want to go anywhere from here. This was my safety. I told Charles that I had asked to be held earlier but after the infection.

I was shocked when they told me that Mirella had been naughty. I had trusted Mirella for decades. She had cured me several times after shed sessions. We had been lovers. Friends. And yet all the while she was the bad guy.

Then how many times did she let Damien attack me and do everything to me? Were all her healings always on point? Now I remembered my heat problem, the infection that acted as heat, the detergent that was teeming with germs, but had Mirella been Damien's or Bran's minion?

Because I also thought Bran was a really bad guy and I knew my life was better without Bran. I felt sorry for Samuel but for Bran the rapist. I'd let him hang out there for years. I had given Charles the key to the Magic House before I left for the gala and he told me all about them.

How they're all different and each house has its own. There's sex, lust, food, exercise, family, procreation, illness, and all linked together so that you can pass, even from Australia to Hawaii from house to house.

I was in a California mansion, our magnificent medbay, once made by the now-deceased Mirella. I had been asleep for 3 weeks. Samuel and Bran had been metalized with earth metals and there was no choice but to put them in a deep coma in the depths of the magic house to await a cure.

Charles said "It could take decades, even centuries. Unfortunately, it looks like Magnum and Dresden are in the same boat. They share the same fate, once they are caught."

But my heart sort of broke when he told me that Nicholas and Elias had also been victimized by Mirella's metalling. They were already asleep in the magic house. I was still recovering for a few more weeks. We were fucking wildly with Charles and Adam, and I loved to plop on either of their laps and suck their pheromones into me. I was theirs.

Charles told me that Damon was now the new pack leader. And I would have no choice but to accept, he said, because there was no way out of the pack unless Damon let me go. I showed the boys my new power and how I had learned a pretty cool trick. I changed shape.

Snow leopard for some reason. My kittens had grown up. I hadn't considered other shapes yet, I had been given a drug that made the shape change as painless as Charles'. I told them about my willpower and showed them how I could achieve telekinesis with it. We made each other possession marks and I noticed that all the marks Damon had ever bitten me had disappeared, but Adam and Charles' marks, were still there.

I didn't know if it was me that had lost the marks or if it was Damon because he didn't want me that way anymore. We spent time with the boys, and I could have stayed with them the whole time, but Adam and Charles had already left. They went back to energy networking which meant sex with Mariela. Yes, I can share. I had a good time again, enjoying myself. I was on my own for a few more weeks.

I strengthened myself and this strength, this determination that I had found within me, this will, my alpha power. I had always known I had it and now I felt it more clearly than ever.

My willpower was awesome. I could do physical things with it, even telekinesis if I concentrated hard enough. I let my protective shell stay tightly in place and I knew that at some point I would have to face a new pack life, have to watch Damon be with another, but I knew that's what he would have to watch when I was with Adam and Charles.

The three of us had a connection, quite different from anything Damon and I had ever had. We had, above all, trust, and love. And maybe it was meant to be that I had to end up with these two. Maybe Damon was just a phase in my life, but forever is a long time and I don't know what the future holds anymore, thankfully.

My life has been wild. There are those wonderful times. The good times. But another thing Charles told me crushed a piece of my heart away, the heart that had once belonged to Damon. He told me how Damon had taken Mariella to the Azores.

To a place that was supposed to be just the two of us. Our paradise. And how Mariella had bragged about how she and Damon now had a new paradise, where darling Damon had promised to always take her. I know it was just one place. A million things have happened between Damon and me and I know we're not there anymore.

At least I don't feel like there is. I don't want Damon. He's got another one now and that's good. I can be in a sham marriage, but I know I don't have to do anything about that marriage because it's only nominal. An accessory.

I was thinking about all these things and I had some rocks to help. I had found them somewhere in the past and one of the flea-witches told me that they were memorial stones. You can pour all the memories you don't want into them. Good or bad and I also had sentiment stones where you put the sentiment.

Both of those stones were very useful during that couple of weeks. I have been through so much in the fleas, so much I have had to do on my own. Every trip to Lake Lanier always crushed my resolve a bit, before a good gig always gave me a boost. Maybe this would be a similar balancing act, with Damon breaking and Adam or Charles fixing.