"I wondered how long it would take you," Heidi says, giving Castor a radiant smile.

Castor sticks out his hand. "Castor Burwell," he introduces himself.

Heidi nods, taking his hand and shaking it softly. "I know." She looks Castor up and down, and he can't help but squirm under her gaze. This girl, who he has to pretend to respect. Finally, Heidi says, "So how was it?"

Castor raises an eyebrow. "How was what?"

"Changing," Heidi replies gently. "Did you handle it okay?"

Castor tries to wipe his own surprise away. Kindness will not provoke his respect. "Yes," he replies bluntly.

Heidi nods. "Good," she says. She waits for a moment, before adding, "You know, I thought you weren't going to show. We all did."

Castor spreads his arms. "Well, I'm here. Sorry to disappoint."

Heidi laughs, a high pitched noise that puts her in such a warm light that Castor is, straight away, struggling to dislike her. "You know who I am, no doubt?" She asks him, still smiling.

Castor crosses his arms, a mediocre act of defiance. He nods. "I do."

"So," Heidi begins, "This means that your will is bound to my own; what I would have you do is what you will do. Has that been explained to you?"

Castor thinks of Hellstrider; so persuasive, his every word like a whole passage from a religious, sacred text. "I might have heard it somewhere," he answers shortly.

Heidi looks at him skeptically, like she's trying to figure something out. She sighs. "You're a very difficult child, aren't you?"

He shrugs. "So I've been told."

"Well, that changes here, I'm afraid. As a member of this pack, you are to cooperate with your brothers and sisters, and you are to understand that I'm always acting in your best interests. Understood?" Heidi says.

And suddenly the quiet, kind girl who was just speaking to Castor is gone, and in her place is a strong authority figure- someone who gets the job done because that is what needs to be done. Someone who towers over Castor, and not even in a superior way; just in a way that shows she's watching over them and looking out for them.

Castor's old self would have respected her. His old self would have jumped at the chance to be apart of her pack properly. But his new self's brain is filled with words from L and Hellstrider, and the memory of feeling his lips brush against L's skin...

"Castor?" Heidi says, snapping him out of it.

Castor shakes himself out of his daze, his head shaking like a rattle being abused by a child. "I'm sorry," he says half-heartedly. "I'm really tired," he says, and it isn't a lie.

"You'll be able to sleep soon, Castor," Heidi promises him. "But, right now, there's one thing I need to check." She laces her fingers behind her back. "Could you kneel down for me?"

"Excuse me?" Castor snaps.

Heidi stares at him, an authoritative fire flashing in the bright bulbs that are her eyes. "Could you kneel down for me please?" She demands, mixing force and politeness in a way that shouldn't even work when it comes to persuasion.

I know what you're doing, Castor thinks. You're trying to use your Alpha mind tricks on me. And I do NOT want to obey you.

As soon as he thinks it, another thought pops into his head, but the voice of the thought is not his own, but the silky, seductive voice of a woman.

"Whatever it takes."

The order echoes through Castor's mind, resounding off his skull. He gulps. Whatever it takes.

Reluctantly, Castor kneels before Heidi Lucindel, and she smiles brightly. "Good!" She praises him. "Now rise."

Standing and averting his eyes from hers, Castor wills the voice to come back and calm him. He fights down a sob and gulps again. "Permission to leave, Al-Alpha Lucindel?" He asks, saying the A word that he thought was only reserved for one person, as it should be.

Heidi bows to him, an act of companionship. "Permission granted." Castor turns to leave, moving as quickly as he can. "Castor," Heidi says, and he rolls his eyes and turns back around, schooling his features into looking interested. Heidi hesitates, but then she smiles again and says the words Castor would rather her just not. "We have your back," she says. "You're one of us now."

Nodding, he turns back around again and leaves quick enough for her to not have the chance to say another thing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bree Hampshire opens her eyes to a weird light. Not the blinding kind, but more like the dimmed, humid kind. But the weird thing is that it's not daytime.

Not exactly.

She raises her head to the sky, squinting at the oddity she sees. The moon seems to be melting into the sun, and they both seem to be in the very centre of a red and blue sky.

The last thing she remembers feeling is the pain, and the last thing she remembers hearing is her own screams as Ignara tortured her into cooperating. He had wanted to shove some form of potion down her throat, and he had screamed in her face about his 'master plan' and 'gaining control'. She only laughed in his face and clamped her lips together, never opening them once to even taste the substance he wanted her to drink.

She knows she's no longer in his clutches, just from looking around herself now. The place he had kept her- Ropnen, she had heard someone call it- had been an absolute dump. What humans would call a town of slums.

But the world isn't full of just humans, is it?

Bree rubs her hands together, truly taking in the abstract weather. Day as well as night, humid as well as frosty. A moon and a sun. Something on her wrist catches her eye: two puncture marks.

As effectively as if the puncture marks were holes in something inflated, Bree sinks to her knees, all of the air in her escaping. Bite marks. Someone bit her.

She looks ahead to see, only now, that she is being held in some kind of cage. She places her hands on the bars and immediately hisses, jumping back from the harmful metal.

Someone laughs and she whips her head in every direction, raising her fists in a pathetic, futile attempt to defend herself.

A man steps out of the shadows, chuckling at her. "At ease, little prisoner."

Bree keeps her fists raised, but she stays well out of the way of the bars around her. "Where am I?" She snarls at the man.

He laughs again, walking towards the cage with his arms behind his back. He stops right in front of the bars, looking right through them at her. "You are in the Fair Woodlands; home of all fey or, Fair Folk, as we are also named." He smirks at her fear. "Do not be afraid, mortal girl," he taunts. He glances at her wrist, and Bree makes haste to cover it up. "Or should I even call you that?"

"Get me the hell out of this cage, elf," Bree orders.

The elf raises his delicate eyebrows. "I'm impressed. It's not often you get people like you with such good identifying skills."

"WHY AM I HERE?" Bree snaps.

"You are here, child, because you are the only way in which we can get one Wielder to come with the Blade. Ignara told us of one: Lewis Burwell. He has the Blade, and an envoy has already been sent to tell him that we have you held here and, unless he brings the Blade, we are going to kill you. Ignara assumed that having the boy think his best friend was with him would speed up Lewis' arrival. But he was wrong. "

Bree peers through the bars. "You're looking for a Blade? A powerful one, at that?"

The elf nods. "The most powerful one in existence."

"It's with Ignara," Bree says quickly, remembering the severity of the Blade Ignara had used to cut her skin, leaving mark after mark on her flesh.

Then he unleashed the vampires on her.

The elf shakes his head. "I don't think so."

Bree sighs and nods her head towards the bars. "What have you done to these bars? Why can't I touch them?"

"These bars are the only thing keeping you alive right now. Or, at least, the magic of the fey is. If you are a mortal- and it's unlikely that that is the case anymore from the looks of that pretty bracelet of bites on your wrist- then just being here would drain you completely, until you sunk into a sleep as deep as death. If you now have magic running in your veins which, in comparison to what I said before, is likely, then you would be able to withstand that kind of power. But nobody has seen you transform into a vampire yet, so we don't want to take that chance. The bars absorb that power so, if you touch them, they will harm you."

Bree curls her lip. "How sweet of you to keep me alive."

The elf laughs again. Bree would give anything to stamp on his funny bone and see how much he's laughing then. "Understand this, girl," the elf begins in a warning tone. "You are only being kept alive right now because you are bait for Lewis Burwell. Sources tell me that he will be in Ropnen soon enough, with a few others. I guarantee you that as soon as Burwell comes and we get the Blade, Ignara is going to slit that pretty little throat of yours for ever refusing to cooperate with him."

Bree growls, "He's lying to you all. I'm telling you, he has the Blade."

"And why should I believe you, little girl?" The elf snarls, leaning forward and putting his hands on the bars. 

Bree takes another step forward so she is a breath away from the bars. "Take my word for it." She spits in his face. "Scout's honour," she adds, feeling her common smirk insert itself onto her face as she raises a hand and puts the other on her heart.

The elf begins to curse in a language that Bree cannot understand, but she does hear one word that would earn her soap in her mouth for quarter of an hour if her mother ever heard her say it. Finally, he says, "What was the purpose of that act of defiance?"

Bree gives him a toothy smile. "In the mortal world, when making an honour like that, people tend to spit on their hands. I have bad aim."

The elf turns a royal shade of blue. "I swear, little fledgling," he whispers, "When Ignara is done with you, you are going to wish you had never been born." 

The elf stalks off but Bree just mutters, "Then I guess I'm just going to have to be reborn," as she glances at her wrist.