In every conceivable manner, the family is a link to our past, bridge to our future

Alex Haley

Sometimes Daphne wondered how it could be that her life had turned completely around in less than six months. She wondered how it was that she didn't need to worry about paying the electricity bill anymore...she wondered how it was that she didn't need to worry about keeping enough money stashed away that her mother could buy her whiskey of choice and whatever drugs she was on that week. Every day that she spent at school, coming home, doing homework, painting, was a small slice of wonder all on its own.

She couldn't help but look at it all, unable to believe that it was hers now. She had wanted this life, had yearned for it and now she finally had it.

She had a family that she adored, she had her own room that was decorated just how she liked it...and she had Luke .

He was the brightest part of her days and the more time she got to spend with him...the more Daphne realised that her feelings for him were anything but fleeting.

It startled her the first time when she allowed herself to think about what kind of future the two of them could build.

When she realised that she would happily mould her plans to his, just as he had carved out room for Daphne in his life.

They always tried to work it out with each other, and Daphne appreciated that more than she could say.

She came to Luke's football games and cheered, even when she still didn't understand the rules. She spent time with grace and Kiana and the rest of the wolf pack, learning the ins and outs of being a werewolf. There were hundreds of things that she didn't know about yet. Sometimes she would give everything to have a handbook for the newbie werewolf. Sadly that didn't exist yet.

She contemplated the idea of marriage, wondering if it would give them anything other than a ring and party, but realising that it was probably something that Luke would want.

She could go along with that if it made him happy. Daphne didn't have strong feelings about it either way.

She startled herself with her plans for the future, of the wishes she realised she had. She didn't tell Luke about all of them. There were some that she was still slowly dragging out from that locked boy in her heart where she had put everything she had always wanted during her childhood.

Sometimes it were ridiculous things. Like the one time she and Luke had gone to Augusta for an afternoon and he had indulged her wanting to eat candy floss for the first time in her life with a laugh and him ending up eating nearly all of it after Daphne had tasted it and declared it to be disgusting.

Sometimes it weren't ridiculous things. Sometimes it was her wanting to visit her mother's grave, just to put some flowers on it and nothing else. She knew that Luke couldn't understand why she wanted to do it. To be honest, Daphne herself couldn't understand it either.

Still, he drove her there, he walked her to the grave and held her hand when she laid down the flowers and then pressed a kiss to her forehead when she was done.

He didn't say a word about it and Daphne appreciated that more than she could possibly say.

She contemplated college plans, none of them really to her liking, but all near Dartmouth, which was Luke's plan.

She wasn't ready to have a long-distance relationship with him. Not when she could feel her skin crawling when they were only apart a few hours at a time.

And that day...she would need to be apart from him for a whole day.

Daphne's book was nearly finished, the story of Princess Plumella and her pet dragon, Buttercup now not just a figment of her imagination any more. It was a finished manuscript that had gone through rounds of revisions, and the pictures were painted as well.

And because Daphne had worked completely on paper, mostly with pastel chalk, sometimes with watercolours, the pictures somehow needed to get to New York. Caroline had decided that they would fly down there for a weekend, Daphne able to give the pictures over personally. There were also a few things that needed Caroline's signature so plans were made for that.

She hadn't felt anxious about it when the plans had first been made shortly after New Years, but now that the time had actually come...

Luke had kissed her goodbye that morning, but even that couldn't help the anxiety that was building in her stomach, every mile they got further away from Fairbury. She didn't want to leave, she realised suddenly.

Not at all.

She didn't want to go back to New York.

When she had first moved to Fairbury she had thought that she would miss New York incredibly. She had thought that she would always be a city girl, that she wouldn't enjoy her life in rural Maine.

Oh, how wrong she had been.

She understood now why Luke loved the forest so much, why he could spend hours there. She went running with him a lot these days, allowing her wolf to run free and hopefully not kill another deer.

She had been lucky til now, no more dead animals left in her wake, other than the time she had accidentally managed to catch a fish while she had been trying to drink.

Luke had laughed hysterical about her face later.

She played with the necklace resting against her collar bone while they boarded the flight, letting her fingertips run over the star and the moon that hung from it for a moment.

"It's very pretty," her aunt told her amusedly and Daphne couldn't help but smile.

"Luke got it for me for my birthday," Daphne admitted softly. "I love it. He said a wolf probably would have been overkill, but I like the moon and the stars."

"I still wonder where that whole full moon thing came from," Daphne said thoughtfully after a moment. "I mean..."

"Going running under a full moon is beautiful," Caroline admitted. "There should be one in a week or so. We should also be getting some more snow, so there may be a pack run."

"A pack run?" Daphne asked, curiosity colouring her voice.

"We try to get most of the young ones together for a run as often as we can. It encourages pack bonding. And really...it's just a lot of fun for them." Caroline answered. "And to answer the question...I have no idea where that Full Moon myth started. It's startling enough though that the whole silver thing is true."

"The silver thing?" Daphne asked because that was the first time she heard anything about that. She had heard the whole thing about werewolves being able to be killed with a silver bullet but she had chalked that up to some more weird myths that didn't really have anything in common with the actual truth. Now it was startling to hear that maybe...maybe.

"It's an allergy that actually could be fatal under the right circumstances," Caroline answered her absentmindedly, paging through the magazine she had bought at the airport.

Daphne's finger stopped sliding over the thin gold chain around her neck.

She remembered another necklace she had worn, the one with the pretty pink stones, that she had bought during her and Caroline's shopping trip when she had only been in Fairbury for a few days. She had worn it nearly every day, as it had been her only piece of jewellery that she owned.

She hadn't worn it since that incident with Kyle. Not for lack of trying.

"Daphne?" Caroline pulled her out of her thoughts and she shook her head, trying to get her thoughts in order.

"Just wondering...I bought that necklace when we first went shopping...I wore it a lot during my first few weeks here, but it gave me some kind of rash..." even before Luke had bitten her.

"Then it's probably silver. I didn't even think about warning you," Caroline said with a sigh. "I am sorry for that. We should probably buy you something that is actual gold."

Still, it was there in the back of her mind, the idea that maybe Luke hadn't actually changed her. It was there sometimes, teasing at the edges of her brain. Michelle had been a werewolf after all.

Maybe Daphne had inherited it from her. Still, that didn't explain why nobody had ever smelled the wolf on her before. Her scent had changed after she had shifted, according to Luke. The smell of sugar had a harder edge to it, something that had only made sense to her after he had made her smell the difference between a werewolf and a human in wolf form.

Humans smelled very different than werewolves did. Daphne still couldn't quite put a finger on it, but she could recognise it as a difference. An edge of anger that humans just didn't possess.

It made sense though, didn't it? Werewolves were a lot more dangerous than the average human.

Daphne still mulled that over, even when they landed in New York City, a black town car waiting for them to take them downtown, to the skyscraper that housed Randal Publishing.

That wasn't the New York that Daphne was used to. She was used to small, rundown apartments and even worse public schools. Fairbury High School, even with its Overhead projector that looked like they belonged into the 80s, wasn't as bad as her school in New York had been. And there were waaaaay fewer drugs sold. Daphne still wondered if that had something to do with the werewolf populations.

Randall Publishing was one of the tallest skyscrapers, at least in comparison to the others that were around it. It was a modern built, looking like it was made out of black glass but the inside screamed money in a way not even the Schuyler's mansion did.

(She was still going to call it a mansion. Mostly because Luke always rolled her eyes at her at that and then tugged at her ponytail playfully and she loved it when he got playful like that.)

She didn't belong in this world. Not really. Daphne still wondered how anybody had thought it to be a good idea to give her a book deal. She was still a child. At least she felt like one at that moment.

She looked down on the black dress she wore, a camel coat over it. Both of it borrowed from Caroline to at least make Daphne appear professional. She was longing for her hiking boots and the parka that waited at home. Or at least Jeans and a pretty blouse.

The people here knew Caroline, of course, they did. It would be weird if they didn't know the New York Time Bestselling Author that they had signed, right?

They were ushered into an elevator, (even that thing seemed posh. With marble flooring and a chrome looking finish and Daphne wondered if maybe she should start drawing with more metallics because the effect was quite pretty), that brought them up to the top of the building far too quickly.

"We are meeting with Leda in her office," Caroline told her with a smile. "Pretty impressive, right? Randall Publishing moved here a few years ago..."

That was one word to use it. The other one was scary as fuck.

She followed Caroline along like a lost puppy, her paintings clutched in her arms tightly in the folder she had carefully put them in.

Still, she couldn't help but stare out of the window, thankful that she actually was not afraid of heights, because they were what seemed to be at miles above street level.

And because Daphne really should have taken more notice of her surroundings, something that Ollie teased her incessantly, she managed to run smack dab into the chest of some guy that was just coming out of an office.

"I am sorry!" She blurted out, already wondering if that was going to end like it had done when she had accidentally run into Kyle.

And really, this guy seemed a whole lot scarier than Kyle had ever managed to be.

He was tall, broad, more reminding Daphne of a brown bear than anything else. Maybe in his forties, but her ability to guess people's age had always been bad.

For a moment he stared at her, something sparking in his eyes that Daphne couldn't place.

"No, I am sorry...I should have been more careful," he finally said, his voice deep and rumbling. Something in the back of her mind reacted to it, but Daphne couldn't quite put her finger on it. He looked...familiar.

From somewhere.

Daphne just had no idea from where.

"Cyril Randall," he introduced himself, offering her his hand.

Oh, that's why he looked familiar. He was Leda's brother after all. And the Alpha of New York.

Great Job, Daphne, she cursed herself out but at least had the presence of mind to take the offered hand.

"Daphne Emerson, it's nice to meet you," she brought out, hoping that at least her hand wouldn't shake.

That guy really had the ability to make anybody want to admit to his deepest and darkest secrets, didn't he?

"I see you already met my brother," Leda's voice came from inside her office, a smile on her face. She was just as beautiful as the last time Daphne had seen her, her facial features sharp and elegant, her eyes an indiscernible colour of a mixture of blue and lavender.

"You brought your pictures?" She asked Daphne and she handed over her folder.

"All safely inside there," Daphne promised with a nervous laugh.

"This works much better than posting them," Leda said approvingly. "You want to join us going through them?" She asked her brother who shook his head.

"No, no, I really should get going," he said regretfully. "It was nice meeting you again, Caroline. You look well," he told her aunt with a smile that didn't seem to reach her eyes. "Daphne."

"Goodbye!" Daphne called after him shakily.

Something was off about him.

She just didn't know what.

***

He hadn't expected it to be this difficult. Luke hadn't.

But the further Daphne was away from him the more it felt like a piece of him was missing and it was painful .

He didn't want her away from him. He wanted her with him.

He knew that that was the fledgeling mating bond talking more than anything else. They weren't bonded, there was nothing that told him that everything was alright with her, so he was being a bit...grumpy.

At least Grace told him that with a raised eyebrow and then ordered him to go running so that she didn't need to watch him pining .

Her words, not his.

He did how his sister asked, however, preferring to run around the house a few times, making sure that his scent really was everywhere, an unworried warning to any werewolf that came near his home that there already was a werewolf that had claimed the space as his .

He kept to himself for the remainder of the day, trying desperately not to think about his mate, not to think about how he wanted to run his fingers through her blonde hair, or kiss her. How much he wanted to run his hands up her back and feel the warm skin underneath his fingertips.

She tended to shiver from his touch and he enjoyed that far more than he probably should, knowing that he had just as much an impact on Daphne, as she had on him.

Still, when it was finally Sunday morning, Luke was just happy that he would be able to have her back in his arms before the day ended. He yearned for that more than anything He just wanted to hold her.

He caught a whiff of her scent, before he even saw her, caught the sound of Caroline's jeep making its way to the house.

He was there as quick as he could be, catching her when she threw herself at him like he always did.

Her weight was no difficulty for him to manoeuvre but as her lips slotted to his, for a moment he could feel himself go weak at the knees.

"Daphne," he breathed, burying his face in the crook of her neck, taking in the scent that could calm him and drive him crazy at the same time.

There she was. All blonde hair and bright eyes, smiling at him.

God, he loved her.

"I missed you," she whispered, her gingers sluicing through his hair and he made some sort of agreeing noise, still picking out the scent of sugar and pineapple from her skin.

There was something more there, something that didn't belong to her, that managed to spark the feeling of possessiveness in his chest as he recognised it easily.

"I missed you, too," he admitted, removing his face from her neck and letting her down so that she was actually standing on her own 2 feet.

"You met Cyril Randall?" He asked her, trying his best to seem nonchalant.

"Can you smell him on me?" Daphne asked surprised. "I managed to run right into him yesterday. He was nice about it though."

Filing that information away, he nodded.

"Yeah...like burnt sugar," he admitted. "It's a bit...disconcerting." That was one way to put it. The other way was that he wanted nothing more than to completely cover Daphne in his scent, to make sure that the only thing anybody would be able to smell on her would be sandalwood and the ocean. His smell.

He let her go when her he could feel his thoughts go down a road that he knew they couldn't go down at the moment.

"Let's go inside," Daphne said suddenly, "I only need to be back home for dinner." He let her lead the way, for a moment startled that she seemed to have realised exactly what was going on.

He knew why he had that sudden urge, why he wanted nothing more but to wrap himself around Daphne and not let her go again until his scent was imprinted all over her, but he doubted that she knew...

She pulled him inside and he pressed her against the front door, allowing himself to display at least some of his possessiveness as he kissed her far more roughly than usual, his wolf growling with approval.

With her shifted...he knew that she could take more of his strength than before and there would be no need to hold back as painfully carefully as he had done when she was still human.

Still, it was rare that he allowed himself to handle her with anything but the most gentle touches that he could manage, not willing to scare her with a display fo his strength.

That day, however, Daphne seemed to be absolutely and completely on board with it, her hands clenching in his hair, her mouth opening underneath his as he kissed her.

"I am there, Luke," she brought out when his mouth detached from hers and he went straight to her neck, kissing and tasting her skin there. "I am not going anywhere ."

He sucked at her skin, unable to resist to mark her in some way even when biting her was off the table and she jolted against him, a shocked moan coming from her when he worried the skin between his teeth. He didn't bite her, he didn't break the skin, but that didn't mean that his make wouldn't be there for everybody to see.

"I am sorry..." he apologised when he finally was able to lift his mouth from her, Daphne still leaning against the front door, a rather painful-looking hickey painting the right side of her head.

"No, don't apologise," she said with a grin. "You won't hear me complain about it. Is it the smell? Of another alpha all over me?" She asked him and he nodded.

"Yes," he admitted drily. "It's...ramping up my instincts far too much.

"Want me to take a shower?" She offered and he shook his head immediately. He didn't want her away from him at all.