Wrote this to Dawn after Darkness by Cicada — it’s already in the Control playlist on my Spotify.

—–

Nikola’s POV

“So, have you thought about it?”

“About what?”

“Nikola.”

“Hagen.”

“Answer the question! What do you want to be when you grow up?”

…

…

…

“You first. What do you want to be?”

“Right now? Probably a chef! I could make all the meals I want to eat, whenever I want to eat them and Dad won’t be able to tell me I have to stop!”

…

“Don’t look at me like that! You asked and I answered, so now it’s your turn. What do you want to be when you grow up?”

…

…

…

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I want to be.”

“Come on, Nik. You must know.”

“I don’t. I don’t… I don’t care what I’ll be, I just…..”

“You just?”

…

…

“I just want to be with you.”

Losing him had never been an option.

It could not be, because if it happened, if I lost him… then I’d be lost too.

In ways, I was.

I tried to keep my mind focused, but it often slipped, and I tried to maintain my former routines, but…..

I always thought that if I lost him, then I wouldn’t be able to breathe.

It was the only reasoning that made sense when, in the instances where I made him mad or hateful, being subjected to his ire syphoned the air straight from my lungs. In those instances, I could barely breathe, so I’d assumed that if he were taken from my life completely, then that would be it.

My life would cease to be, and maybe with it, everything else as well if the control I had over my magic slipped in those final moments.

In reality, I was not dead. I could breathe.

It wasn’t easy. Every intake was forcing oneself to swallow shards of glass that tore open already lacerated flesh on its descent.

It was gruelling. It was a task- each time, every breath- and it was not a pain to endure once a day or on the cusp of every effort. Breathing was now a task that required effort every second of every day because it wasnoteasy.

It had become the hardest thing I had to do- the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but Icouldbreathe.

I’d lost him, the unthinkable had happened, and somehow… life carried on.

—–

There were a number of oddities to be found amongst an underground castle, the most pressing of which wasn’t even the aforementioned castle.

Firstly, there was all the greenery surrounding it.

It should not be possible for there to be woodlands full of prospering trees within the enormous cavern it was all tucked within, but there was. Trees, a meticulously tended garden, and life, all underground.

Secondly, the sunlight.

How it breached the thick earth above to shine down on the castle was something I failed to uncover, especially when its presence was notoriously the life force of the species that lived within the castle’s great walls.

There was a reason. Malcolm said there was one.

I stare at the black stoned walls that climbed high, but not nearly as high as the towers behind it. Sounds come from inside, though they’re faint, they are there.

Lives being lived within the odd castle…

Right. The odd castle with its abnormalities.

Malcolm said there was a witch who lived here before he’d gifted my Appa with this castle, and it was her magic that made it all possible for these abnormalities to persist. But a witch’s spells unravelled when they died, so unless she was still alive or had simply been so great that her magic was still slowly seeping away, it did not make sense.

These anomalies are things I noticed before but can’t help but ponder now, because it seems it is all I do nowadays.

I think. I think about everything. I don’t think abouthim, or I try not to.

It’s all too great- the pain wedged into me, the pain he’d stippled into me for years – and besides, all I’d ever done was think about him, it had not gotten me anywhere nice. So, I don’t think about him.

I think about everything else though.

I think about what I could’ve been. I think about my degrees. I think about my friends. I think about my family. I think about my life.

I think about us.

I think about all our ups and downs. The good times, the very best times, and the ones beyond that, when I was so happy that I’d thought life would end right there and I’d be glad for it.

I think about all the bad times as well.

The times I’d tried to deny because they couldn’t possibly exist within a mate bond. Except they did, and they were deformed, rotten and particularly hard to think about, but I think about them too.

I think about it all. All the time I’d wasted putting my heart in the hands of someone who-

No. I was not thinking about him.

That, I couldnotthink about. No.

That made my tattered lungs tear a little further.

That made my already inflamed eyes burn at their cores.

That made my battered heart squeeze and sputter painfully.

That was too much. That, I could not do. That, I could not think about.

Everything else. Everything else but him.

——–

“Nikki.”

I glance up belatedly and find my parents standing just a few paces away from me. I should’ve heard them coming. I should’ve felt it too.

I try to make a mental note about paying attention to my surroundings again, but the reminder fades in my mind before it can even be written out.

They look worried, and scared, and angry, three of the most pressing emotions they’d been feeling since they’d found me mere hours after I’d left him. Dad said later that they’d both known in an instant that something was very wrong, and they were sorry it took so long for them to find me.

I was surprised they’d done it so quickly.

The very last thing I’d expected when my world, with all its fantasies, had come crashing down was company, and, even less than that, support.

I vaguely remember staring at them, blinking with the thought that I’d somehow fallen asleep to escape the agony, but there was my mother’s magic and my father’s sorrowful voice calling my name, and it was no dream.

I’d always thought myself strong, and more mature than others my age for almost every stage of my life, mostly because of my ability to stand on my own two feet, but that day, there was nothing mature or strong about the way I’d fallen into their arms and cried.

I hated crying. It was an uncontrolled, taxing bodily performance, and I had learned to avoid doing it to the best of my abilities. But the moment I’d met their gazes, grey, brown and equally scared, I’d simply succumbed to it.

Tears fell like torrential showers, and with them, sounds like thunder breaking through clouds.

For hours, I’d clung to them, grasping desperately at them to hold me, to protect me, but even with how tight and unrelenting they’d been in providing me comfort, it had all still felt like agony.

A lifetime spent within it, and yet, it still hurt all the same.

We did not go home. By Ma’s decree, we would not return home for a long time.

According to her, our pack was not where I needed to be when he was such a big part of it. She meant his family, but I thought about our memories and was glad to be away from them.

Dad had been in full support, even though we were pack creatures.

’We have another pack, Nik′ had been what he’d said, and I’d known in an instant where we’d go.

Witches and vampires did not mix. The history between the two was too great and too dark for a bridge to be found, but there was one. One small hidden and private bridge between my family and one very important vampire.

As the story went, when my mother had only been a child, before her coven had realised just how powerful she was, her mother had made a deal with a God. Not a literal God, though he might feel like one. My Appa was only a man turned immortal, the first of his kind- the first vampire to ever walk this earth.

Their paths had only crossed because he had needed a favour, and my grandmother had granted it at a cost, or rather a promise. He would have to save my mother should the time ever come when my grandmother wasn’t there to do it herself- or try to, at the very least.

Years had passed before the time had come, but the vampire had kept his word, and then gone beyond it. When he’d saved my Ma from her coven, he’d let her stay in his castle, which had been empty at the time because this was long before the war, long before he’d become the ruler of his kind.

They didn’t enjoy each other’s company at all, because he hated witches and Ma hated everyone, but for that time, they’d been all the other had.

Ma said it hadn’t lasted for more than three months, and in that time, he’d taught her the basics of how to protect herself, and then she’d left to kill her coven for what they’d done to her and her mother.

That was to be that- relationship done, deal finished.

Instead, it’d carried on and then grown, which Ma said was mostly because of me. Apparently, we’d ‘clicked’ from the moment he’d met me as a babe- we’d shared some invisible and inexplicable connection- which I believed because all my life, that vampire- Lincoln- was no God or overlord to me. He was my Appa.

I did not see him often, but when I did, I enjoyed every moment of the visit. I wasn’t used to being here, in the very centre of the vampire species, in our home away from home, and feeling anything other than happy.

Nor was I used to the way my parents looked at me now, like they were waiting for me to shatter so they could be there to catch the pieces.

“Nik.”

I blink, finding them even closer now as they both crouch down at my side. I’d chosen the library to pass my time today, and although I’d only managed to read two pages of the memoir in front of me, it was one more than the last time I’d come here.

I close it now as Knots reluctantly eases his unyielding hold on me to allow Ma to hug my left side, pulling me into her. I fall into it, watching it happen just as I follow Dad envelope one of my hands with both of his. Knots claims my legs instead, wrapping around my right and then my left before he deposits his head in my lap.

I’m surrounded by family, but I’m still freezing on the inside.

“Sorry,” I whisper to my parents when I realise they must’ve been saying my name for quite some time. “I was thinking.”

“No apologies from you,” Dad chides quickly, his grey eyes flaring with displeasure. “You… You don’t apologise for a thing, Nikola.”

The anger sputters out and morphs into disappointment, which I’d realised at some point after the first week here, was not for me and my failings, but for himself.

My parents were very angry, and that anger they fixed on themselves and the reason we weren’t returning home.

I did not blame them for the things they blamed themselves for, like being angry with me when I messed up withhim.I did not blame them at all, but they seemed to blame themselves now, for that and more.

In the month that had passed since I’d last seen him, they’d apologised for a grand number of things.

They apologised for how they’d let him treat me, how they let the pack treat me, how they’d treated me.

They apologised for not taking me away, and for listening to his parents because apparently, at some point when we were younger, they’d separated us, and I’d not liked it, but I’d been coping, whereas he’d been suffering.

They said now they wished they’d thought of me, and only me because if they’d kept us apart, I would’ve had a life outside of him.

They were angry, and sad, and they regretted many things that they didn’t have to.

I didn’t blame my parents for the life I’d lived chasing after him, not even a little.

There was no use thinking of lives that could’ve been lived, because they weren’t real. They did not exist, and so, in this life, I still believed that they’d done a splendid job with me, and my love for them knew no bounds. That did not change, simply because this was where I’d ended up.

Still, apologies swam in their eyes whenever they looked at me.

“Nik,”

“Hmm?” I blink, straining hard to focus.

“I asked how you’re feeling today?” Ma asks while she pets my head. She does it slowly, focusing her fingers in soothing lines tipped with magic that unwinds my muscles.

It was always hard to answer that. How was I feeling?

I was not good. Nothing about this felt good.

I was not okay. I was not in acceptable health.

I was not fine. I wanted this agony to end, this pain that had chased me from the day he’d chased me from his life to this very moment.

So, what was I feeling?

“What are you reading?” Dad asks when the silence lingers long enough without an answer.

I glance down at the cover of the forgotten memoir, needing the reminder. “The Shifting Beneath the Surface. It’s… it’s an early study on plate tectonics before they knew what they were.”

“That’s random,” Ma quips with a squeeze to my shoulder that sends a brief bout of warmth sputtering through my body.

“I just picked it,” I admit as I force my eyes up from the cover. If I didn’t, they’d stick there for the rest of the day. “Is it time to eat, or did I miss it?”

It was happening more frequently now, though I tried not to. It was just that time had taken on a new form recently, like nothing I’d ever experienced before.

It just slipped by. Time was always moving, but now, it was evasive to me.

I could wake and blink, and find that it was night, and not have moved an inch. Or, I could be walking and then accidentally think about him, and then I’d just…

“No,” Dad replies.

Sometimes, the abandoned bond would flare and the agony that followed was so sharp and so searing that it would feel like my entire life, filled with all those cherished memories of us, was not real at all.

“It’s still early. We were surprised to find you out of bed.”

I wished they weren’t.

Sometimes, I wished I never met him.

“Nikola.”

I look at my parents, catching the worry there and I think desperately of the last thing that was said.

“Sorry,” I say once again. “I did not mean to scare you.”

“No, don’t apologise,” Ma says quickly. “This is good, Nikola.”

Yes. Logically, it was good that I was still living some sort of life, or trying to, but that hadn’t been what I’d meant.

I’d been apologising to them for worrying them about where my destination was, but I didn’t bother clarifying that because then that would address a subject they were trying very desperately to pretend was not real.

My parents seemed to worry a lot about me, but the matter that worried them the most was that I’d go to him. It had become their greatest fear.

They wanted me nowhere near him, and him, nowhere near me.

Few knew about our relationship with my Appa, and I knew he certainly didn’t, so there was barely a chance of him ever finding me. Thus, their greatest concern was that I’d go to him.

They didn’t understand that that was something I would never do, which was understandable when I hadn’t been able to explain what had happened between us.

I tried, several times, but when I did, breathing was not just hard but something that evaded my cognizance, and it was like it was all happening again.

Like I was standing there with him, finally seeing the trail of blood between his hands and the bleeding wounds I’d been carrying my entire life.

After two shutdowns, they’d told me to stop trying.

Unfortunately, that meant they didn’t understand that I wanted nothing to do with him. Neo whines but I ignore it. He could have his mate, but that didn’t mean I had to want mine.

I didn’t want him.

So, the magic Ma had around the castle to keep me here and the ever-watchful eye Dad kept on me now were wastes of resources.

“Nikola,” Ma’s voice is a little tighter this time as she speaks, and when I meet her gaze I’m surprised at how much fear I spot in it. “We’ve been gone for a while now, and it’s the longest I’ve ever gone without checking on the state of the pack barriers.

I’m worried about the state of them, so I was thinking I could go quickly today to check on them and maybe grab some of our things. I’d be super quick. In and out. But if you want me here-”

Ma stops her uncharacteristic ramblings when she spots the small smile that tries to tug at my lips.

My mother was a wonderful woman who’d gone through a great deal in her life. It made her abrasive, somewhat mean, and resistant to affection. She’d always been different with me, softer and more open with her love, and for others, her love took on other forms.

I’d never seen it put so openly and plainly into words.

Our pack was her pack too, her home- her first real home- and even now, she worried about it because she would not and could not ever abandon her home.

“Go,” I tell her as I force myself to part from her hold. Knots is quick to claim the space, unshakeably dedicated in his self-assigned role to be wrapped around some part of me every second of every day. “It is fine. I don’t mind at all.”

Guilt seems to force her expression to fall even more. “Are you sure? I can try from here, but-”

“Ma,” I cut in. “Go.”

She gnaws on her lip, seemingly at war with herself to follow my easy acceptance, but eventually, she sighs and nods. “I’ll be quick, and I’ll grab some of your books as well. Maybe your zoology textbooks, you love rereading those.”

I nod, my smile growing a little more, “I’d like that.”

————

I end up in the garden when Ma leaves and Dad slips away as well when it’s time to eat.

Despite this being a castle of vampires, there were many who could cook, but Dad had committed himself to cooking all of my meals, and he would let no one take that role away.

Ma said it was a wolf thing, an instinct to care for me by feeding me when I was like… this. She hadn’t said ‘this’, she hadn’t been able to finish the sentence, but that was the only word that seemed fitting.

How else did one describe what he’d done to me?

I end up in the garden. While my father cooks, I end up in Kalem’s garden, though it’s not Kalem who’s already there kneeling in front of a family of black orchids with a watering can.

“Nikola,” my Appa greets with the smile he’s offered me for as long as I could remember.

I did not remember the details of the first time we’d met, after all, I’d only been two, but I did remember it being a good one, like all the others that had followed through the years.

There was no blood between us, no link and no bond, but this man was my family. My Appa.

Given the fact that he was the leader of his entire species, he did not have a great deal of time for personal matters, and while he should be spending all that personal time with his life-mate, Kalem, he always cut out some of that time for me.

Four times a year, sometimes five, I came to visit him for a number of days, often an entire week. We spent as much time as we could together, reading, catching up and then in mutually enjoyed silence, because while we shared no bond or blood, we’d always shared something.

It was that ‘something’ that let me look at him, and him at me, and without a word, we knew precisely what the other was thinking.

It is that ‘something’ that now makes his smile waver and then fall into pure contempt that turns his already dark eyes a poisoned shade of red.

My Appa is not nearly as subtle in his anger as my parents are. Where they were angry withhimfor what lengths he’d pushed me to, my Appaabhorredhim for it.

Hate wasn’t a strong enough word to describe it, which was strange when I’d only ever wanted him to lovehimas I did. Instead, he hated him, almost as much as I did.

I’d always imagined how wonderful it’d be to introduce the two of them to each other when we were eventually mated, and our problems solved, and it had always been a wonderful encounter in my mind.

It was clearly never going to happen now, which was a good thing because if it did, my Appa would likely try to kill him.

At his invisible beckoning, I join him at his side, and as Knots stretches across to say hi, he smooths his fingers briefly over his scales. When Knots returns to cuddling me, Appa lifts his watering can again to tend to the only plants in this garden he likes.

“What is it?” He asks with his usual barren and deep infliction.

My Appa was not a very large man; he was tall and more lean than muscular. His hair was short and as black as his eyes, and though he was rather pale, it seemed well-suited with his pointed features. On his own, he was not scary, even though he looked vastly different from everyone else with how much this realm’s civilisations had evolved since his creation, but he was simply imposing by nature.

I was told others found it hard to breathe in his presence when they first met him, and to an extent, I could understand why if they had to interact with him without the pleasantries he shared with me. I imagined if his black eyes were empty or red and that entirely foreign face was empty and stoned, I’d feel some manner of fear in his presence.

“I’m breathing,” I tell him when I remember his question, my eyes as focused on the orchids as his. “I… I thought I would not be, without him. But I am.”

“Does it make you think, that perhaps you don’t need him nearly as much as you have always believed?” He asks, parting his gaze for a brief moment to catch my nod. “I believe that may be true, and I hope to the Gods that it is, but,” he pauses to gaze at me again, “I also believe you’re still in a state of shock.”

That makes me frown. “It’s been a month.”

“Exactly, a month. One and what is a month within a lifetime barely lived? What is a month after eighteen years of longing?” As he speaks, the can’s handle bends within his grasp, becoming a strained, stiff thing like his words. “I am waiting for the true weight of what you have lost to become clear to you.”

I stare at him, unblinkingly, and he, stares at me, much the same but with fire and fear running rampant in those familiar eyes.

A simple fear careens through me, triggered by his words.

It’s the type of fear that doesn’t only make your blood run cold but your soul quiver as it tries to escape your body so that, at the very least, some piece of you survives.

I can’t speak, because that fear renders me mute. It takes my words from me and claims them as I force myself through another excruciating breath.

The true weight…if this was not the full depth of it, then what was?

What could be after this? I can’t imagine because itscaresme to even dare to. It is truly petrifying to think I might have to endure more than this, more than I was already barely surviving as it was.

Goddess, I could not handle more. There couldn’tbeany more.

I couldn’t. I couldn’t because then… maybe then, the shards in my next intake would finally clip something vital.

“Your mother would hang me if she knew I was sharing this, but you claimed my loyalties the day she introduced us, so she will have to blame herself for having you,” Appa says as he sets down his deformed watering can and faces me properly. “She’s working on a spell, a strong one. It would ensure that you would live a fine life- a good life- if you chose to break the bond. You would not feel the loss of him.”

Neo whines desperately, trying to rouse himself enough to protest, but he can barely manage it.

“That’s impossible.” Not the spell, but that anything could stop me from feeling the loss of him.

He was my life. To remove him would be to remove the blood cells from my body.

Appa nods as if he agrees with me, “Have you thought about it?”

“Yes,” I reply, making his blackened eyes widen a little. “I do not think I can, but I have been thinking about it.”

I never did before; there was no room for it with all the love I held for him, but now, that love had soured in places, and there was space to think of other things.

Things like what life would be like without him in it. Good? Bad? Terrible?

If terrible, it could not be any worse than the type of terrible I faced with him.

“It… it would be best,” I admit as I look up at the cavern’s jagged walls that arch metres high overhead. “What is between us is done, so it only makes sense.”

“Only feelings donotmake sense,” he replies simply as if he understood completely that while I was done with him, while parts of me loathed everything about him, I still could never break the bond or link that joined us.

Hate. Love. It didn’t matter. I could not cut him out of me.

“Your Goddess…” Appa breathes through clenched teeth, “I should kill her and this wolf she’s mated you to.”

Neo rises just long enough to force a muffled growl out at the threat to his mate, though I don’t know if it has to do with him or Zyair. I soothe him as best as I can.

I would never take him from Zyair. Despite whatever my mother might be working on and my own shortcomings in separating us, I could never end a bond that was still very much wanted, if not by me.

“Apologies,” Appa mumbles, sensing Neo’s distress. “I would not. I’m only angry.”

With that, our conversation meets its natural end. Neither of us feels the need to keep it going, nor do we want to, so we don’t. We rise together, and walk in silence around the rich, blooming gardens that Kalem tended to like a mother to a pup.

It was a wonder that they didn’t have any of their own. Not pups, but some vampire newborn. Kalem had the instinct for it- the all-too-happy vampire that he was- and while my Appa was cold, I’d seen first-hand how that was only a frosty surface that when thawed, revealed an endless warmth beneath.

Kalem said Ma was my Appa’s newborn, even if he’d never admit it, and that by extension, so was I, which was a thought I’d always enjoyed.

I’d always imagined what that would make them to my own pups, when I had them. I did not like children, at any stage of their life, but I wanted them.

There would be one, perhaps two. They’d be girls if I could have a say about it.

I imagined I’d be good to girls. I liked the way Damon was with his girls. I wanted that.

One or two, wolf, witch or both, I’d love them endlessly.

I would spend all my time with them, all of it.

I would teach them everything, everything my parents taught me.

I would go to war with them if someone made them sad and I would end the world if they were ever forced to tears.

And I would be completely in my right to do so as their father. It wouldn’t be a case of me being dramatic, even if that’s what Hagen-

The fantasy is set aflame just like the brief respite those fantasies had provided at the thought of him. His name in my mind, in my body and soul, triggers the avalanche I’d been running from, and it is unforgiving in its descent.

Pain isn’t linear and it doesn’t always take the same form.

Pain hurts, and right now, everythinghurts.

Agony invades my body and spreads like a virus, heading with a needle’s precision for the tattered remains of my heart that lurches and seizes at the assault.

It’s no longer hard to breathe, I simply can not do it when in my panicking mind, I see him, and hear him- all through the years.

Except now, the fond memories are hard to find in all the wreckage. All I see is him, with all his hate, his loathing, his lying, his selfishness, and his fear at the end, the one that had unleashed the worst of it.

And with that, I see myself and feel all the pain I’d set aside in hopes of finding something better with him. All my hopes of finding the boy I’d loved before I even knew how much love could hurt.

It is all there again, at the surface, and it reminds me that every breath I took outside of it was a dream and that this- this was my reality.

I hear Appa’s voice distinctly, calling my name, and I feel his hands on my arms too, as he tries to keep me upright.

“I’m-” I wasn’t fine, not that- I might never be that again, but I realise belatedly what I am, though Ma isn’t here to hear it.

“Tired. I’m so tired.”

——-

Someone put me out of my misery… God, I love angst.

Thoughts??????

Thoughts on the first POV from Nik since the incident???

Thoughts on the Lincoln appearance????? So many of you guessed it haha

Thoughts on Nik and how he’s doing??????

You guys honestly have the girlies on Patreon to thank for such a quick update, they voted to have this before the first extra for the month! And I’m glad they did cause this came bussing out right when it should’ve!!!!!!!

I personally, love how detached Nikola is almost. Like he’s still very much hurt, but like he said, life has surprising carried on which must be such a crazy realisation with how much he adores Hagen.

He also hatessss him now. Like omg, this guy doesn’t like Hagen. The shit he was saying In was OOP! I can’t wait to see what he says when Hagen comes running in for him. That’s if he even makes it to him.

LINCOLN HATES HAGEN AND I LOVE IT!!!!!!! I genuinely love someone being a 100% ride or die for Nik, like no reason to feel for Hagen cause he has no link to him, he’s just like fuck that Goddess and fuck that wolf too loooool

Alsoooooo, I was going to make them separated for 2 months, but the girls on Patreon were like TWO MONTHS?!?! and thank fuck for that, cause I almost messed up the timeline again

Jokes aside, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, even if it might not be what you were expecting! Either way, I’d love to hear your thoughts so please comment and vote if you enjoyed!!!!!!!!!!!

We’ll be taking a break from the heartbreak on Patreon with the upcoming Nikola scents Hagen extra which is in the future and a smutty good ride! And my website it almost done, I’ve just got Rogue, Delicate and Control to upload!

That’s all for now!

Until next time,

Byeeeeeeeeeeeee Humanssssssssss