Over the next few months Claire found herself with quite the moral dilemma in regards to how to deal with Nicolas’ addition to their household. Already struggling with her own guilt over the fates of others who she had taken into her service and home in the past, she did not wish to ever place a target on Nicolas like the one her blood and Sean’s had placed on Finn and Emilia. Though it was true that there had been no sign of any further werewolf presence there in Sean’s territory for over half a year, she couldn’t help that underlying paranoia at the possibility of it happening again at some future date.

She had other even stronger reservations about binding Nicolas’ will to her own as well. She pondered the mental bond but easily remembered that Sean’s mental bond to Haven back when they were still mortal is what had truly cost Sean his life; which was why Haven had such guilt that he brought Sean back from death and therefore led to the existence she and Sean now had. Aside from that fact, there was the mental bond that Baron had forced on Awsha that led to all of that hell and possibly even Haven’s eventual death. And the final nail in the coffin of the idea of that mental bond was when Sean himself warned Claire that Nicolas would need to have the physical strength of the blood bond if and when Baron or any similar threat were to darken their lives again.

Despite all these factors, Claire still felt immense worry, guilt and hesitancy over establishing that blood bond with Nicolas. She honestly had no wish to force that addiction and that love on him; especially after he ever so slowly did begin sharing small snippets of the story of his life and very cautiously opening up to Claire about all the other things that had already been forced on him.

Claire came to learn that he and Madeleine had actually been struggling to survive on their own for over four years since their time at the hospital where their father had worked. The hospital itself was called the Charenton Asylum in Val-de-Marne, France. Their father was indeed a doctor there who had pretty much left the nurses to look after his two children after his wife, another nurse, died giving birth to Nicolas and Madeleine. Then their father passed away when they were just barely fourteen and it had to be decided whether or not to put them out on the streets or put them to work at the asylum earning their keep, so to speak. One of the women who had helped take care of the twins in lieu of their father’s attention assumed that letting them stay and do what tasks they could do would be the more humane option; only that option is what led to the horror that their lives then became for the next four long years.

From the time he and his sister were fourteen until they were eighteen, they did menial tasks around the asylum. That was also when Madeleine caught the eye of one of the patients there. As Charenton was known for its humane treatment of patients, which was indeed a rarity for any asylum in that day, they allowed this patient quite a bit of freedom, which easily provided him with access to the two teens. The patient was a learned man and even a published author who convinced the staff that he could tutor them in reading and writing and make them even more useful to the staff had they been allowed an education, even if a rather nontraditional one.

However, Nicolas soon discovered that the man’s interest in his already quite pretty fourteen year old twin sister was much more sinister than the story the staff was led to believe. When other members of the staff were near, the man did go through the motions of teaching the teens. But as soon as he was left alone with them, the lessons became very different indeed. Aged though he was at that point, he still could easily cow two sheltered and submissive teens. He then continuously began sending Nicolas on some errand or another as an excuse to do what he wanted to Madeleine.

As the twins were already close considering their strange upbringing, it didn’t take more than a few weeks for Nicolas to determine that very bad and painful things had been happening to his sister at the hands of this ever so eloquent patient. That was when Nicolas questioned Madeleine about the things that had been happening to her. Broken as she already was, she tearfully confessed to her twin about not only the sexual nature of the things the man had done to her, but the other forms of torture that he had gleefully visited upon her when he grew bored with only the standard ways of receiving pleasure.

That was the point at which Nicolas confronted the man and begged to do whatever he could to make the man stop hurting Madeleine. That was when the patient appeared to agree to such a compromise, as Nicolas was near as pretty as his sister at only fourteen years of age as well; and the man seemed not to really differentiate between either gender when it came to the activities that carnally delighted him.

And for a few weeks, Madeleine was free; and Nicolas was the one that had to endure that pain and humiliation in her stead. Then inevitably the patient grew bored again, and began satiating his desires and filling his need to inflict pain on both twins once more. And he continued to do so until his death four long years later. And the name of the patient who had been their victimizer was one that Nicolas would never forget: Donatien Alphonse François de Sade.

Upon de Sade’s death in 1814, the twins who were then eighteen fled the asylum and continued to flee for over four years. They tried to hide among France’s poor but inevitably were chased away for their begging and eventually found their way to the harbor. There they spent their next few years hiding in the cargo holds of various ships and trying to pilfer what they could to survive on from the cargo or anything else left behind by the crew. Then in 1818 they found their way onto a ship bound for the new world, and that’s when Madeleine’s will to live and lack of any real nourishment or medicine forced her frail body to give in to death only weeks before that ship eventually pulled into the harbor near Sean’s and Claire’s home.

Though it took months to get the entirety of Nicolas’ story out of him, his words haunted Claire nearly every night. She truly did not wish to force any kind of further enslavement on this irreparably damaged young man; Nor did she want to toss him out of their home to fend for himself alone once more. However, being what she and Sean were, one bond or another was the only choice if she truly wanted to keep Nicolas in their lives. So she grudgingly forged a mental bond that simply compelled him to not directly endanger her or Sean. In tandem with this slight mental programming, she did give him her blood, but sparingly, as she was in no hurry to cement that full bond to her, considering his already fragile mental state and former life as a victim and slave to another.

On this summer night in 1819, the pull of the partial blood bond Nicolas now had to Claire did give him the strength to admit the most painful parts of his story to her at last. It was just past midnight when Claire had heard him in the adjoining room loudly begging and pleading for mercy through yet another nightmare that plagued him nearly every night, still. She went to wake him from that nightmare to assure him that he was safe after all. That’s when he broke down in more tears, allowing her to hold him close, which was also most likely a side effect from the two sips of her blood he had tasted since coming to their home months earlier; before she had given him any of her blood, he had been very wary of any physical contact, even with a woman.

Though now he curled into her arms atop the bed where she had woken him from those terrible memories that continually invaded his dreams. He sobbed against her for several moments before he finally attempted to tell her what it was that had caused his screams that night. “Madeleine was bleeding. She had lost another baby” he began, his English having at least improved in those months, if nothing else.

“Another?” Claire choked on that part of the story that she had not heard before.

“She had lost twelve” he sniffled as he continued to press his tear drenched cheek against Claire’s chest as she held him in her arms.

“All from the time she was fourteen, ‘til she was eighteen?” she whispered, forcing back her own tears at the thought.

“I thought for sure she would die from losing them, and I never even knew…” he seemed to choke on the rest of whatever that confession had been meant to be.

“Never knew…?” Claire replied is a gentle whisper.

“Him hurting her made her lose all of those babies” he swallowed hard, “and I never even knew whose babies they were” he choked again as another sob shook him.

“Whose?” Claire seemed to choke on her own words then.

“When he got bored; when he just wanted to watch… he made Madeleine do things with… others” he whispered.

Claire bit back more emotion as she forced herself to ask a question she wasn’t sure even she could take the answer to, “what others?” she asked as her voice broke and she had to move a hand to wipe away her own tear.

“Other patients; men, women….and the worst was when he would want to watch… us together” Nicolas finished in another sob as Claire felt her own sob shaking her body then as well. All she could do then was hold him closer as they both wept at the extent of the horror he and his sister had truly endured and for so very long.

When Nicolas’ mental exhaustion finally forced him back into a fitful slumber, Claire returned to her own chambers feeling just as emotionally exhausted and sure she would be physically ill as well if it were even possible. She sat sniffling on the bed alone for however long had passed before Sean returned to their chambers just after three. Seeing her obvious state, Sean couldn’t help the worried look as he closed the door and moved quietly to the bed.

“More nightmares?” he asked as he gestured toward the privy that separated their room from the one Nicolas had moved into months earlier.

“It’s even worse, Sean” she whispered

“The nightmares?” he asked with concern as he moved to take a seat upon the bed next to her.

“I mean what actually happened to him. It’s even worse than I had originally thought” she added with another sniffle.

“Worse than he and his sister being raped and beaten by that asshole for four years?” Sean returned with disbelief.

“Yes, worse” Claire sniffled again.

“Do I even want to know?” Sean whispered as he wrapped an arm around her.

“Probably not” she admitted with a heavy sigh. Sean swallowed hard at that statement, but did not press for further details. Instead, he just wrapped his other arm around her and pulled her closer with another soft kiss to the top of her head. After another long moment of just trying to disappear into Sean’s arms, Claire had to speak again, “are we terrible people, Sean?”

“What?” Sean responded, more than a little caught by such a question.

“I don’t just mean me giving him my blood, or causing the deaths of... others” Claire decided on, “I mean the things we’ve done.”

“I think you’ll have to be a lot more specific here, Claire” Sean replied, though kept his voice gentle.

“The things we did at the club. The things we called entertainment. The things we did after you almost killed Awsha. The things I made you do to me after I killed Avan. All of that pain that we willingly inflicted on each other. Does that make us just as twisted as the monster that did those things to Nicolas and his sister?” she pleaded for an answer as she turned her eyes up to his.

Sean took a long moment as he tried to find any words to reassure her, “I think the key word is ‘willingly.’ The pain we inflicted on each other was to make us remember what it was to feel pain; to be human. To remind us that we weren’t monsters. It wasn’t about us ever wanting to hurt any others at all; let alone two helpless children.”

Claire sighed heavily before continuing, “and what we did at the club? Inflicting pain for the pleasure of the masses?”

Sean then reflected her sigh with his own before attempting an answer, “I suppose that is a little more questionable; but we also have to remember that you willingly agreed to that. We both did. And we never touched anyone else. We never hurt anyone else. Everything that happened on that stage was two consenting adults who knew that the pain would easily heal. The pain inflicted on him and his sister was never something they consented to… or anything they’d be likely to ever heal from. And that’s what makes all the difference, isn’t it?”

Claire then braced herself to share her own fears at that moment, “I just can’t help wondering what Nicolas would think if he were to go back in time and step into that club and see us up there on that stage. Would he think we were so different from the monster that hurt them?”