a/n – wrote this chapter to Dress by Taylor Swift

– if you don’t know this is part 2/3 of the triple update, make sure to read chapter 7 first!

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Peter’s P.O.V

It’s slippery. I don’t know why I didn’t expect it to be, but it is, and the moment all four of my paws are on the ice, I go sliding down.

I yelp, but the sound is lost to the shrieking that chases the eighteen lines my claws leave behind. I dig in, trying to slow myself, but my efforts sputter out of me as the tunnel gapes around me, expanding from the size of a shaft to a gaping, monolithic passage that takes my literal breath away.

There’s ice— white and blue interwoven plains of it that are somehow thick, solid and translucent all at once. I can do nothing but stare as the tunnel dips and spits me out into the centre of a giant cavern that should not exist.

I knew that canyons and valleys lived beneath Antarctica, but that was beneath the ocean. This was an underground, ice cavern the size of a crater that somehow existed just beneath the surface.

I come to a stop, but don’t move for a moment.

Mouth agape, I stare up at the smooth walls arched ten feet above me, only disturbed by the natural stone that juts out, but even that is shaped to suit. Light bleeds in behind me, but it shines through the layer above, as if the snow mounted up there didn’t even exist.

Had I slipped through a portal? Goddess, had I?

I look around, too stunned for a moment to remember how I’d even ended up here, but the reminder comes sharply in the form of the family of scents that quickly batter into me.

They’re sharper down here, their traces practically stamped into the ice around me as if they were one. There’s no telling how many they belong to or what they belong to, but they’re here.

All of them, but there’s only one that I care about.

My heart seizes, and the wonder of this world of ice fades away as my mind zeroes in on my mate.

Pushing up from my hind legs, I dart forward again, eyes pinned to the only path ahead, but I scramble like a deer on ice. I was used to the snow above, not ice, and I feel the strain of it immediately.

I should’ve worn my boots.

Silently berating myself, I keep trying, even as my muscles tremble with exhaustion and don’t stop until I manage a trot of lifting from the ice before the pads of my paws have a chance to slip.

I make it through the opening that leads into a smaller tunnel, and don’t give myself the chance to slow.

By the time I come upon a split in the path, I’m practically running, and I don’t hesitate for a second to take the one on the left. All the scents rise from them both, but somehow, I know which will lead me to my mate.

There’s a thread between them and me, one that I feel already growing, and I don’t let the unease trying to grow in me stop me. Not this time.

I race on, taking lefts and rights, and every turn that pops up within this underground labyrinth without letting myself think about why there are so many tunnels down here, or what they’re leading me to.

I would face that after I found my mate, but not a second before.

The tunnels go from big to small, bright to dark, and I’d be terrified that I was lost if not for the way Joseph’s excitement grows, instincts promising that we’re close, closer than ever before, and it’s all I need to keep going.

Maybe that’s why I don’t notice that I’m not alone until it’s too late.

Plains of ice bridge overhead while I sprint across the open space beneath, a crisscross of paths that each lead into different paths that I am praying I won’t have to brace when a figure steps out of the opening ahead.

My paws flatten, my run coming to a dead stop. Panic slams in behind me.

I flail like my heart, limbs scrambling desperately to slow me, but the ice slides me _ towards the towering figure draped in white with red eyes and—

The world shutters. It draws its curtains in and leaves me in the dark as it takes the light away.

My blood runs cold, and a ringing starts in my ears.

It tunes my surroundings out until I forget all about my mate and everything else that exists outside of the long, pearly set of fangs that gleam before me.

Vampire.

Suddenly, my claws find purchase.

They dig in, and there’s no time to face the terror that explodes inside of me as I turn and run.

I bolt across the ice, and I don’t look back. I just run the other way, straight for the tunnel I’d come from, but then another steps out of it.

My heart drops, bottoming out and splattering on the cold floor beneath as alarms behind to blare. I skid to another stop while my already churning stomach twists into a violent knot.

I can’t breathe.

I physically can’t.

I hear my heart in my ears, my blood rushing through my veins, their tune a perfect match while I shake so badly my teeth begin to chatter.

My head snaps between the two while I skuttle back, searching for the moment they’ll make their move, and that’s when I notice all the others.

The empty paths above are suddenly lined by towering figures perched at their edges with gleaming red eyes that are all focused on me.

I stop moving entirely.

The only thing that moves is my heart, and it’s the only one here that beats.

As an omega, there was an endless list of things I was afraid of.

Most alphas. Loud, booming voices. Violence in every form. The list was endless, and it varied from people to things, but there’d always been one thing I’d feared above all else and that was vampires.

From the moment I first learned about the species that lived off of others’ blood to survive, I’d been deathly afraid of them. I couldn’t think about them without breaking out into hives, and when I saw their fangs in my nightmares, I still woke up crying.

I had avoided them my whole life, running whenever one was near before they had the chance to scent me or prey on me, and it had been fine, just fine until now.

Now… they’re right here… so many of them… surrounding me.

Joseph trembles inside of me, desperately trying to hide and run all at once, but there’s nowhere to go, and instincts to surrender immediately kick in. They urge me to sink lower than I am, so I do, crouching as I try to make myself as small as possible.

My body trembles, all fight gone, and that just triggers the swell of panic inside me to double as I cling to the ice below, and I wait for Nikola’s magic to take me home.

It has to. Any second now.

There are vampires everywhere. This is danger, danger, danger, and he promised I’d return home at the first sight of any, but no matter how much I will or pray for the spell to work, I remain where I am.

It doesn’t work.

A whimper breaks from my throat as I almost press my entire body to the ice below and keep my eyes firmly on my twitching paws.

I can’t look up, I don’t even dare.

I think I’ll pass out if I do. It’s a wonder I haven’t already.

But it doesn’t matter, because between one breath and the next, there are only my paws, and then there are my paws and a pair of thick, dark brown boots in front of me. The owner’s scent follows and its shrouded in enough anger to break me.

I press myself completely to the ice with a cry as tears spill from my eyes.

I am going to die. This is how I die, and no one will ever know.

The vampire speaks, and I barely hear it over the battering of my heart, but I don’t understand the words.

I do understand the chill of them, the hateful way they’re spoken and the threat within that has me fighting to keep my bladder in check.

I reach for the family bond, knowing that I’ve felt it from miles away in the past and hope to Goddess above that they somehow do now, because I need them. I need someone to feel something and come save me.

The vampire speaks again, using words that I don’t understand until I begin to recognise random ones inbetween. I hear French and then a little later, Spanish. Something else I can’t name but know, and then—

“Who are you?”

I stiffen, and they must notice it through my trembling fur because they take a step closer for the first time.

“Intruder,” the vampire snarls, and I curl in tighter, turning myself into a ball, but I can’t hide, especially not when they crouch low and grab a handful of my scruff to force my head up.

I whimper, sobbing the same way Joseph does as I’m forced to meet the hard red eyes of a thin woman with short, cropped hair, golden lashes and a pair of long, gleaming fangs.

“Who. Are. You?”

I can only cry, can only pray at Goddess’ heels that she will save me, but she remains as distant as Nikola’s magic. The family bond fills with only my cries, and no one comes to save me.

A tongue clicks behind the woman holding me and she immediately stills.

She looks away from me, but does not loosen her grip as she replies to whoever is behind her. The two of them speak in a language I don’t recognise, but it includes the clicks of their tongues.

The owner of the second voice slowly emerges behind her, a larger, burly woman bound in leathers. I can only see up her hip, but then she turns, exposing a thick sword in her left hand, and that is the last thing I see before my eyes drop to their feet again.

When she speaks, it’s for my ears. “Shift.”

One word. One command that is said with enough force that it almost makes me do it.

It’s not an alpha’s command, not even close, but it carries authority from a creature with far more strength than me, and my body wants to do everything it can to make this nightmare end.

But if I shift, I’ll lose the only real defence I have, small as it is, not to mention the cold. My clothes were nowhere close, and down here was far colder than the surface.

I wouldn’t last five minutes.

“That was not a request, wolf,” the woman bites out, her voice as heavy as the steps she takes to stop just above me. I feel the weight of her stare like a physical pressure on my head. “Shift.”

My body vibrates, soul shaking within as it tries to give in, but I resist with what little fight is left in me.

There is silence. Deafening, painful silence as they wait, and I disobey, and the longer it endures, the worse the trembling in my arms becomes as a steady stream of tears slip from me.

“Atieno.”

The moment the word is spoken, a third vampire appears, only my nose tells me this one is not a vampire.

I look up, almost too scared to hope, to believe the scent, but yes— a warlock.

My heart surges, the first inkling of hope sprouting into me until my eyes land on the man’s down turned lips and scathing, golden eyes.

I whimper and look down again as that hope sputters and falls apart as if it had never been there at all. The three speak in their tongue again and I try to keep myself small, but flinch each time their voices rise.

What are we going to do? — I risk asking Joseph as they begin to argue.

I don’t know, he replies, shakily, his terror just as real as mine. We can’t outrun a vampire or so many, and there’s a witch here too. Maybe that’s why Nikola’s magic isn’t working.

My heart sinks. I hadn’t even thought about that.

But they haven’t hurt us, he points very carefully. Maybe if we do as they say, and explain, they’ll let us go.

I’m not too sure of that, but I don’t deny it as the three standing before us suddenly fall quiet again.

There’s movement, slight but loud enough that I hear the warlock stooping beside me long before the first woman’s grip on my neck finally relents.

I breathe easier, but don’t dare move as she stands and retreats, leaving only the woman with the sword and the warlock.

A thick coat slides into my eyeline, along with two thick boots that he must’ve conjured during their argument.

“You will need to shift, or I will have to make you shift,” he says it very plainly. It’s neither something he wants to do or resents, it’s just a matter of fact to him. “I have made the argument that you have not already done so because of the weather.”

The implication hangs over my head like a noose.

If I didn’t shift now, he would make me, and I knew magic well enough to know that was well within the capability of a witch’s power. No matter how I fought it, it would happen and it would be painful that way.

But would Nikola’s magic stop him? Was Nikola’s magic still even with me?

I wanted to believe that it was, and that it would take me home at the first sign of real pain. A forced shift would be enough, but then, that would take me away from my mate, too.

The thought of them rears its head for the first time amongst all the panic, a beaming light of hope that I have to cling to, even as bleak as things are.

My mind works quickly, putting it all together.

There were vampires and warlocks living beneath the ice, and my mate was one of them. I could only pray that they were the latter and that they would help me once they found me. But they wouldn’t be able to if I disappeared before that, and then I might never find them.

The warlock straightens and waits, like the rest of them.

Joseph paces within, but doesn’t fight me as I send a prayer to Goddess and call on my shift.

It’s horrible.

Like razor blades now line each of my bones as they break, the shift stretches on. It’s nothing as fluid as they’ve been for the last few months. It’s jagged and painful instead, slowed by my fear, and I feel every inch of it until I’m naked and heaving on the ice.

My breaths fan out of me in raw puffs, and in my swaying vision, I stare at my trembling arms that barely keep me upright and the splatter of silent tears that join the ones I’ve already shed.

Joseph whines inside of me, having suffered the brunt of it, but he props himself against me and lends me what little strength he has left. I use it to reach a hand out and drag the coat to me. It won’t be enough, I know that, but I’m already feeling the cold, and it’s brutal, so I slide it on as quickly as I can, only to freeze as unnatural warmth suddenly shrouds me.

It’s as if I just stepped into a sauna, or some secret heating pad has been switched on, but a pad wouldn’t be enough to bring this kind of warmth. This is unreal.

I sink into it, breathing a little easier as I sit up enough to shrug it on properly and the warmth spreads. Sighing, I scramble forward for the boots and shove them, and thank Goddess, they’re just as warm and soft inside.

For a moment, I’m bundled in warm furs, and everything is just a little better, but then the edge of the sword shifts into my periphery.

“Now that you can speak,” the large woman says as the tip of her sword slides under my trembling chin and forces it up until I meet her sharp eyes, “who are you?”

She’s beautiful in a scary way. Her features are all sharp angles, from his high cheekbones to the length of her nose that only widens at her nostrils. A golden ring hangs from it, matching the cold that the warlock next to her sports through his ears.

When her sword presses in, I force my gaze back to her and answer.

“P-P-Pa-Pa-Pa-Peter.”

It takes longer than usual, longer than I think it ever has just to get my name out, but it’s a miracle I’ve even managed with the cold steel cupping my jaw.

The woman’s dark eyes narrow as she glares down at me, assessing. “Peter,” she says, scornfully, and I try to shrink, but her sword forces me to stay in place. “How have you found us, Peter?”

All the words rise in my head, eager to be freed, from details of the station and my team that have definitely noticed my absence by now, to my run and the scent I tracked down here, and it is all very successful up there, but none of that comes out.

Only one word does.

“Ma-Ma-Mate.”

Something in the woman’s eyes shifts. It’s slight, and maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I’m almost certain it’s shock, if only for the way her lips part slightly. She covers it a moment later, returning her cruel stare to its rightful place while she talks to the warlock again in their language.

They speak quickly, voices instant and increasingly bothered until the woman snaps something and they both fall silent.

She glares at me, her stare as distrustful as it is seeking, but after a baited minute, her sword lowers, and I take my first real breath since she introduced me to it.

“We recognise the sanctity of bonds crafted by the Gods,” she starts with measured patience, “but,” her gaze hardens, “your presence is peculiar, and you come heavily warded.”

Oh, thank Goddess — Joseph breathes where I can’t, but I feel his relief wholly.

Nikola’s magic was still here, with me, which meant that I was safe.

I take several deep breaths and wait until I have four words in my mind firm enough to try getting them out while I’m still knelt in front of my greatest fear.

“R-Rr-Research s-station,” I start, pinning my eyes to her collarbone as I fish the rest out. “R-Running. S-Sc-S-Scent.”

The vampire waits patiently, but the second it’s clear I have finished, she nods.

I whimper with relief. She understood.

I was part of a research team, I was running, and I caught the scent of my mate.

Again, she speaks with the warlock at her side, softer this time, and then she turns and disappears with another word. I didn’t even see her move. One moment, she was, and the next, she’s gone.

My heart sinks, and I’m not sure if it’s relief or fear now that she’s gone, but it leaves me alone with the warlock.

“Stand,” he instructs with the snap of his fingers, and I do, if only because he’s demanded it.

I rise shakily, hugging myself and the thick coat around myself without daring to look around. If I caught another glimpse of all the other vampires, I’d probably sink right back down, and it was bad enough that I hadn’t stopped crying since they surrounded me.

If they’re still there, then I have no way of knowing because they are as ghostly as their heartbeats. The only two that exist are the one of the warlock before me and the one battering in my chest.

A cold shiver slides down my neck, and it has nothing to do with the cold. I bite back a whimper and hug myself tighter as I bang against the family bond.

It remains stone still.

“You might be warded, but so are our walls,” the warlock suddenly says, making me jolt. When I glance at him, he is staring directly at me, but without any of the blatant distaste of earlier. In fact, he looks a little… nice.

I hear his words too late, but the moment they register, my knees threaten to give.

Were he blocking my connection to my family somehow? Hiding me and my call for them?

“Do not fret,” he says before my silent cries become audible. “As our isekela stated, we recognise the sanctity of bonds. Your case is being presented,” he explains with a quick glance around. “Pylen would decide what happens next.”

Pylen.

My mind settles all its thoughts around the name. He probably was their leader, and if my faith was in hands, then I could only hope that he was nicer than the first woman who found me.

At least they won’t hurt us— Joseph points out as optimistically as he can while pacing— or can’t…

Both maybe — I admit. The fact that they sensed Nikola’s wards meant either they were strong enough to stand out automatically or this warlock had tried something and discovered them then. I pray it’s the former. They care about the bond. That’s all that matters.

You’re right. I’ll find them and then… figure it out.

My mate existed, and they were here— close.

I just had to see them— lay eyes on the one person who could make this all better, and not just this situation, but everything else.

I’d lived so long without one that I’d truly started believing I didn’t have one.

It was not in my cards, and that wasn’t okay, but I was learning to live with it, but now I had their scent, could feel them close, and I needed to see them.

I settle around that, making it my only concern as I wait.

That’s when I feel it.

A sudden draw in my chest that tugs on my soul as it recognises its other half.

The world quiets again, but this time, it’s a hush that does not scare me in the slightest as I look up, seeking.

They’re coming, getting closer, and my foot drags me forward an inch. All the vampires around me mirror it with a step of their own, but they become an afterthought as I stare at the tunnel ahead of me.

They’re coming through there.

My hands shake, a pining growing in me now that they’re so close.

Breath held, I wait, not daring to blink as a figure emerges from the darkness. An outline at first and then—

Deep brown eyes meet mine, and all my fears wash away.

They disappear along with all the hurt I’ve pretended to live with for years, and leave nothing but peace behind.

It all just disappears the second my eyes meet the ones I’ve been searching for all my life.

Joseph melts, falling apart at the seams, the same way my mind begins to as I stare at him the same way he stares at me.

He’s tall, towering over the rest of them with long, thick, coiled hair that sits on his shoulders, and a stillness that keeps the world at bay.

He stands there, shoulders back, oozing confidence and power that usually makes me cower, but right now has me daring to step into the light.

He’s… the most perfect man I have ever seen, and he’s mine.

He’s my…

“Mate,” I breathe out loud, and even though it’s barely a whisper, he stiffens like everyone else.

Heads snap away from me for the first time, all attention pinging to him, and my body is quick to take advantage of the freedom of them.

I step forward again, my heart pounding as it searches for his, but then his thick brows tug in.

He blinks quickly, breaking our stare before red floods his eyes, and I freeze.

His eyes are red.

I blink, but it doesn’t change them. I shake my head, confused, until I spot a fang and suddenly everything else comes rushing back in with a vengeance.

He…

I listen, ears straining, but there’s nothing. His heart doesn’t beat.

He’s not a warlock. He’s… my mate is…

My body chills, and ringing starts in my ears.

My mate is a vampire.

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THEY METTTTTTTTTT

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, PETER HAS MET HIS MATE 

Thoughts???????

I WANNA HEAR ANY YOU CAN SHARE BEFORE THE NEXT CHAPTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!