Authors Note::

It has been over A YEAR since the last update, and sadly this chapter was written before this last update. I have excuses, but I doubt anyone wants to hear them. This story I feel isn't going to be finished, but I want to finish it. I promise I will do my best to finish this for you guys.

Track 17: Every Night She Cried Herself

Every single knockout dragout
Fight they ever had. Apologies and
Dignity denied he starts to
Laugh he starts to lie with
Suddenly psychotic eyes.
Every night she cried herself
to sleep she didn't recognize
Her own face in the mirror
Black & blue, so afraid
Intimidation like a child she
Hides away he would always
Try to justify what wasn't true
No Use For A Name - 'Justified Black Eye'

Half vampire, half wolf? Was there even any humanity in her what so ever? Christophe's arm fell from her shoulder slowly before he turned to look at her. "Part vampire huh," he murmured. Completely losing the usual proper accent his voice held when speaking. Mae's hand reached across the table to rest on top of her own.

"Tala, it's okay. Stefan and I suspected something like that, because you smelled a bit like a vampire. Not because they smell like cat piss, but in the fact that you had just fed, and when a vampire freshly feeds they smell like ocean water and blood," she consoled the smaller girl. In her other hand she picked up the phone, dialing a number before placing it at her ear. A sigh of frustration went through her lungs before she answered a short cut reply. "Raphe, it's Mae."

"Ahh, Maelee, what do I owe this pleasure?"

A male's husky voice came from the other line. It sent shivers down the older woman's spine. Tala could see her shake from across the counter.

"Cut the bullshit Raphael, we got a situation and you need to come over."

Silence.

"How soon," his voice suddenly sober.

Mae looked at the couple across from her for a second before sighing again, "Right now if you're in the country."

In the country? Where the hell did this man live?

"I'll be there in a little while."

The line went dead, and Mae sat the phone on the table. Seconds ticked by, all the more feeling like decades that didn't exist. Christophe was no longer touching her, but setting his chin in his propped up arms. Almost twenty minutes passed before the barking started, and the maddening growling that set her on edge. Every hair on her neck stood on end when she heard a yelp.

"That's what you get you extraneous bastard! And to think I came because I thought your children were in trouble," a familiar voice grumbled before the door opened. In came identical looking men, though one of them was clearly Stefan, the other was a mystery. He was handsome to say simply. His golden hair curled around his bright blue eyes, unlike Stefan's, who's was black as the night and dark brown eyes to match.

Though what caught everyone's attention was Stefan was honoring a black eye and what seemed to be a broken nose, while the other man had teeth marks on his neck, shirt torn by claws down the chest.

"What the fuck happened," Mae jumped up and hurried over to her mate.

"The kids are upstairs Mae," Stefan hushed before grabbing her hips while she reached for his face, "you're such a curser lately."

The stranger smirked before walking to the counter and plopping in Mae's seat. "I can see there is nothing wrong with the children, but why is there a rouge wolf and a…what the is she," he dropped his careless attitude before getting serious and starring deeply into Tala's eyes. Instinctively she curled away and into Christophe's side. Surprisingly his arm wrapped around her waist, giving his shoulder to hide in if she so wanted it.

"That's why Maelee called you," Stefan spat before opening the fridge and reaching for a steak. "And for your information you deserved that you 'extraneous bastard'! You deserve much worse for what you did."

Mae face palmed herself, turning to her husband before whispering hushed words of threats and kindness. Tala watched in awe and disgust when Stefan grabbed his nose, breaking it again so that it would heal properly for a second time. In seconds the bump was gone, and he placed the steak on the bruising for a moment. When he pulled it away, the bruising was gone, and he put the steak between his teeth and left it in there, chewing softly.

Would raw steak taste good? Shaking the question off her mind, Tala looked to Christophe for help.

"This is Raphael Mancini by the way," Mae gestured before tending to her mate again.

"Yes," Raphael stated, "now who are you?"

Christophe's adams apple bobbed, nose flaring. There was a distinct scent of cat urine in the room now that Raphael had arrived. This was her grandfather, the man that was just like her.

"I am Christophe Barnett, from Colorado, and this is my mate Tala Trail," he supplied easily.

"Yes I can smell the courtship, but please do explain what she is and why you both are here. And hell, throw in why I'm here."

Mae was at the counter, leaning against it in mediation.

"Raphe, is there something you should be telling Stefan and I, like going around and knocking up women?"

He smirked, showing off his odd fangs that were on his upper teeth only, and distinctly long and sharp. "Well my sexual escapades are none of your concern my dear Maelee, unless you want to leave my cousin and explore them with me," he murmured. Stefan growled, jumping towards Raphe only to be barely held back by Maelee.

"No," she struggled with her enraged mate, "I'm talking about having a child, who had this girl right here!"

Raphe turned and starred at Tala for the second time tonight in almost awe.

He swallowed before resting his arms on the counter in almost prayer. "Is it your mother or your father that is mine?"

She was about to grab the paper and pencil again, but Raphe jumped up in glee, ripping her from Christophe and coddling her with a new sense of happiness. A gasp went through her, a cringe getting ready for the wave of pain to come. Christophe was yelling at him, and still nothing was happening. After a few moments of argument, she shook her head, a soft smile gracing her lips.

"It doesn't hurt," he murmured. She shook her head again, putting a hand to her forehead in disbelief. What was happening to make it so nothing hurt? Whatever it was, it was working, and she wanted it to work all the time.

"This is fantastic," Raphe exclaimed before making his way over to his kin. "I know the secret now! How to produce female lupo mannaro!"

Stefan's eyes widened, looking at the other man in amazement.

How to produce female lupo mannaro, the thing that made her and confused her all at the same time.

"How," Mae murmured.

"It's a bit…disgusting for the woman but…it worked."

"Which is," Stefan asked.

"I'm assuming you all know about how Mae came to be, correct? Her great-grand-some-mother was experimented on by a rouge, and somehow produced a female child. Though that happened, the lupo mannaro gene became dormant—"

"Yes yes Raphe, we all know this," Mae muttered.

"Well what happened what I had intercourse with her mother's mother," he pointed at Tala without looking at her, "and then her mother," he pointed at Tala again, "mated with a lupo mannaro and produced a child. The dormant gene and the active one came together but there was another gene that was second dominant to the wolf gene. The Y chromosome."

"Yes we know, that being female became the second precedence after becoming wolf," Stefan muttered himself.

"When our mate is about to start another cycle, her pheromones intensify tenfold, correct," Raphe continued.

"Of course Raphe," Mae sighed, "but I assure you that a lot of lupo mannaro and their mates have sex before she goes on the rag," Mae spat, "and still no little girl wolfies."

"During the cycle, the pheromones are completely gone, making the woman unappealing."

Silence filled the room.

"You had sex with a woman when she was on her period Raphael Macro Mancini," Mae exploded. Her face turned instantly red, just like Tala's. The thought of that was disgusting.

Raphe smacked his face before muttering in Italian. Then a war of spoken Italian flew between the three wolves through the kitchen, while Christophe and Tala were watching confused. She was lost from the moment Raphe had picked her up before she answered and hugged her to near death.

"Shut the hell up woman," he bellowed before turning to the men in the room, and the wolves from the pack that had surrounded in the doorway. "I don't know all the scientific details or anything, but it worked okay? Her mother mated with a lupo mannaro and she was born. This is a glorious discovery, so all of you should quit complaining about how degrading it was and accept it for what it is."

Silence filled the room again.

"Tala, granddaughter, you cannot speak I see," he turned to her once more before sitting in his previous seat again, "and you have too many questions to be answered at once."

Taken aback, she raised an eyebrow.

"I was changed into a hybrid while during my mother's pregnancy. You were born this way. I am more vampire than I am wolf, and you are more wolf than you are vampire. I don't know what aspects are true and which are false, but that is what it seems you have become. Think one question at a time and I will answer them."

Think the question? What the—

"Even if I am a hybrid, I still possess the properties of a vampire, which means I have a gift. I have the ability to hear your inner most thoughts. Vampires have mental or physical gifts. The mental gifts are easier to use on each other, but the physical ones are nearly impossible to use on one another."

Can I do something like that? If he could, then would she be able to too? Was it something you learned or—is that what the touching was?

He sat for a moment, hard in concentration.

"From my understanding, there was an incident when you were younger with your mate," he glanced at Christophe, "he thinks it's why you can't speak, but you can't speak because your gift isn't developed to your control."

"What do you mean," Christophe laid his arms on the table, much like Raphe and was listening intently.

"Since you are not in control of your gift, you will be out of control of something else. In your case, you can't control your voice, but you are closer to controlling your gift than you think. At the moment, your gift is being controlled by touch. When you touch someone you see the future or the past in the case of you and that person, or that person in particular.

"Once you gain control of your gift, you will be able to do that on command and feel no pain. Not with just people, but with animals, objects, with the dead if you wish. Then your voice will come back to you slowly, but with vampires none of that applies, except for speaking of course. As you have seen I touched you with no problem. The mortals are a different story though."

Just the entirety of it all awed her. No pain, being able to talk again; it all sounded wonderful. Of course seeing the future and the past was pretty cool too, but the pain sucked a lot. But how to control the gift?

"When I was developing mine, I couldn't smell things at all," he grumbled, "so you wouldn't imagine what a frenzy I was in when I smelled blood for the first time. But, blood is the key. Since you are hybrid, you can live without blood, but it will severely weaken you. Your body doesn't produce blood as much as a normal person, and wolves produce blood almost as quick as they blink.

"Drink enough blood to maintain yourself at a healthy state long enough to see into the future or the past of a person a few times, then try objects. Once you have completed it, you should be able to speak and the pain will have left you, and your gift will have been developed."

So all those times of touching Christophe, and no pain, was because she drank his blood? Is that why touching him hurt less and less? All the new information was astounding. Under the counter, his hand found her clothed knee.

"Though I wouldn't advise taking his blood," Raphe continued, "vampire blood is poisonous to lupo mannaro, just like wolf blood is poisonous to vampires.

"We've already blood bonded, partially that is," Christophe spoke up. She smiled at him.

Raphael rolled his eyes, pretending to gag before getting up and pacing over to Stefan. Mae took his seat shortly, looking slightly worried.

"Now that that's out of the way," she whispered, "it's time to get to the hard stuff."

Raphe stifled a laugh from across the room, "The hard stuff, right." Mae sent him a glare before looking back to Tala and Christophe.

"When a male changes into a lupo mannaro, they have nothing holding them together and have nothing that will alter when they change, but it's different for woman. We have something that men don't that can rip when we change," she whispered. "And from the research I've gathered from the wolf and human bodies, if that something was ripped, it wouldn't just stop there, but continue through her entire pelvis area and cause internal bleeding. And with Tala being hybrid and not being able to produce much blood, it's more dangerous that it was for me to have internal bleeding."

Pelvis area? Something that could rip? Like my intestines or something? Men have intestines too.

"Are you saying she can't be a virgin when she changes," Christophe almost yelled.

Her knee twitched, causing his hand to flinch and fall from it almost wordlessly. Virgin. Something she wasn't anymore. Something he didn't know about yet. All the memories came back, and she trembled down to the bone.

"Shh, it's okay, I know you're scared, but there has to be another way," he muttered.

"There is no plausible other way. I don't see why it would be a problem," Mae said scrunching her brows.

"It's a problem because she is still a child!"

Her head turned to face him quickly, glaring at him. She was no child. She was anything but. He didn't know the definition of child.

"Christophe, she is not a child. She is a shy month away from her transformation, from being an adult lupo mannaro," Mae stressed on the word adult. Tala wanted to reach over and hug her.

Raphael approached the counter again, gripping her shoulder, a predatory gaze took his bright blues. "He is disgusted with himself because she is seven years younger than him is all," he said smoothly.

A pack member and his mate stepped into the kitchen, catching Tala's attention. They were wrapped in one another lovingly. "I am seven years older than my mate and it doesn't disgust me," the male stated softly.

Raphael frowned, giving a soft smile. "He helped raise her since he was seven when she was born, until she was seven and he was fourteen."

"Would you stop doing that," Christophe said irritated. He turned back to Mae, pleading with her. "Tala is not ready for that kind of thing, isn't there another way? She's too young."

The girl in question rolled her eyes, feeling rejected. He had explained it to her a lot of times, yes, but it didn't change the fact that if felt like he was rejecting the mating.

"I'm sorry, but the only other way would be for her to do it herself with proper tools or someone to do it for her, and that is dangerous due to the risk of infections. She isn't tapped into her lupo mannaro abilities yet, and she wouldn't be immune to infection. The safer option is to just lay with her," Mae sighed rubbing her temples.

He laughed harshly, muttering about blasphemy and how Mae didn't know anything. "I'm not going to sleep with her; it's out of the question."

"So you'd rather your mate die," a twin shorted from across the room.

Stefan yelled at his pack, telling them to return to their rooms. Even if Christophe didn't want her to die, he wasn't exactly taking the steps to secure her life. The thought sent Tala into tears.

"She's not going to die, we are going to find—" He stopped himself cut short when he saw her start to write on a piece of paper in such small script it was hard for him to read from his position. When she was finished, she pushed the paper towards Mae, holding her chin up while her lips trembled.

Mae's eyes budged, taking short cut glances over at the younger girl.

"What does it say," Christophe trying to put a hand on Tala's knee, but she shrugged it off.

Mae set the paper down, refusing to answer. Raphael spoke rapid Italian that Tala only assumed were curses. He knew, he heard her think it. Go ahead, tell him.

"It appears that the problem is already taken care of. No more necessary actions are needed," he spoke for her.

Christophe turned so fast, looking at her in a sense of disgust. "You slept with Jack. The pixie?!"

Tala cringed, getting up from her seat to only be tugged back down. Stormy hazel eyes that held tears met hers in anger. "Tell me Tala Trail, did you sleep with Jack?"

'Unwillingly,' her lips moved before she shrugged his arm off her jacket and stood making her way to the stairs in hope to find a room to hide in. Because now there was no looking at Christophe with hope in her eyes. No, now he would look at her as his broken and unfaithful mate that doesn't deserve him.