A/N: A special thanks to suzymienen for beta reading this chapter.

Godric walked stealthily towards the river, like air over the terrain. He was holding the strap of his hiking pack on his back with one hand to steady it and carrying the small cooler with the other. The hiking backpack Eric provided was of good quality, and so large only the top of Godric's head and his waist down were visible from his progeny who followed behind. He turned, glancing over his shoulder at her with one stern eyebrow raised when the snapping of a twig cracked under her foot. The sharp noise caused a nearby owl to clumsily retreat from its perch in the trees. The brute cursed a raucous screech as it flew away.

"Forgive me," she apologized, slightly embarrassed. "I still feel a vestige of light headedness."

"You will feel better once you are clean and get a good day's slumber." Stopping, he crouched to the ground and waved her over. "You should be able to hear the river now. We are making good time and it is only a mile trek from here."

She knelt beside him and was silent for a moment. "Yes, I think I hear it," she said with melancholy. Other things had been on her mind. She had been deep in thought about what she saw in her dream cove.

Godric looked at her as they knelt together on the game trail they had been following. "Tell me your troubles, child."

She looked at him and somberly smiled. "It is nothing. As you said, I shall feel better when I am clean and refreshed from slumber."

He nodded and stood as he began walking again. He would not press her further if she did not wish to confide in him that moment. Her sullen mood was no doubt his doing. He had already made one terrible mistake since her awakening. He pursed his lips. He had forced himself on her, forced his lips to hers like a savage. His internal struggles mattered not. As the elder, as her maker, he had no business nor had no right to dishonor her as he had. And while he could feel her passion lush and thick through the bond as their lips crashed together, he knew that it was nothing more than the bloodlust of a newly risen progeny.

"I recently fed, and yet, my thirst is barely quenched," she complained.

The corner of his mouth quivered. "You only need one sip a night to sustain yourself."

"Then why do I feel as if I will collapse and die from thirst?"

"Your lust for blood will never diminish. Your ability to control that lust, however, will grow stronger with time. And some night, when you are an ancient, you will find that one small meal a night satisfies your cravings." He looked over at her and winked. "Unless of course you have a progeny who drains your veins. Then you will need to replenish yourself often."

He stopped to watch her leap over a small dwell that twined through the trees. He began to walk beside her.

"When Eric rose from his first day-rest the night after his transition," he said, his eyes full of fondness, "we hunted half the night, and he wasn't satisfied until he had gorged himself on five humans. I remember thinking it was just my fortune to have turned the largest progeny for a hundred leagues." His amusement waned when he saw her confused brow, and he realized that his loose tongue had let something slip that he should not have.

"Eric got to hunt humans the night after his rebirth? But maker, you told me since I was newly born that I should drink only from you for some time to come."

His face was blank as he looked ahead and stepped over a rock. "You are correct, Sierra. I did say that. For now you will only drink from me. Your turning was not like Eric's," he glanced over at her. "I nearly lost you."

She nodded, trusting her maker's decision.

He pushed a truth that he knew out of his mind. The truth he chose to dismiss would be plain to any maker that had ever turned a progeny. Only allowing their child to drink from them was not normal. It went beyond mere maker possessiveness and teetered on rabid fanaticism. Something was quite unique about this turning and it explained the root cause of his behavior. Godric was too confident in his experience and abilities to recognize it, and Sierra was too young and naive to vampire ways to know the difference.

Godric had knowledge of the unique call of the maker, called 'call of the heart' by some fanciful ancients who had heard of it. It was considered such a superstition and so taboo to even consider it truth, that it had only crossed his ears once, and it had all but been forgotten over the ages. He dismissed it as myth nearly a millennium ago when he learned of it. The call of the heart was nothing more than a fictional rumor, and Godric found the idea so ludicrous that it had not even crossed his mind concerning Sierra.

Instead, Godric rationalized his behavior, surmising that it was a combination of factors that left him so stirred. The reasons swept through his mind one after the other. He was overly protective when it came to his progenies and had always been. Sierra nearly died during her transition. Nearly a century of no sex had caused him to emerge from his curse in a river of desire. Never had he seen such a beautiful creature as she, inside and out. He was out of practice controlling his bloodlust since he had not experienced it during the dark period of his life. The rationalizations were never ending, and dozens more excuses came to mind. The feelings would pass when everything settled.

"Why do you think my transition took twice as long as the typical turning?"

"I do not have the answer, minn hjarta, but I suspect it may be because you are half fairy. Many progenies have been turned in much worse condition than you were, and yet, I have never heard of a rebirth taking more than three nights. We are venturing into the unknown, and as a precaution, I will ensure that you have every advantage I can give you. This includes the potency of my blood."

"I accept your gift with honor," she bowed her head, somehow understanding the magnitude of what he offered.

He smiled contently, one corner of his mouth rising. "We have arrived at our destination."

They walked onto the rocky shore of a lazy flowing river, a layer of thick mist hovering over it like an eerie lullaby. The moonlight bathed the misty waters in pale unearthy tones. Rising sheer into the inky sky, a cliff towered on the opposite bank, it's rampart stone layers glinted sandy-blue and soft ash under the half moon. Silhouettes of foliage decorated the giant palisade, and a curtain of stringy leaf-covered branches hung from crooked trees and dipped into the mist.

Surveying the area cautiously, Godric approached the waters and sat his pack on the ground. The moon passed behind the clouds and the darkness of the night deepened, momentarily silencing the singing katydids that hid in the shadows of the woodland thicket they just left behind.

They both looked upstream to the wrinkled mountains of the Rockies that soared into the sky, their snow-caps drizzling down through the veins of their stony crags. The grandeur of it all made Sierra feel small, nothing more than a spec on a vast and marvelous macrocosm.

"Nothing such as this exists where I come from," she softly voiced.

Contentment spread over Godric's face as he drank in his progeny. Her eyes were full of fascination for things he had always taken for granted. So seldom he indulged in the beauty of the Earth anymore, and he walked up behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders. There they stood together looking upon the wilderness and soaking in the immense creation that surrounded them from horizon to horizon.

Godric looked towards the thicket as the birds slowly began to voice their welcoming of the coming day. "We must prepare for your first day-slumber." He walked towards the pack on the ground and bent down over it. Looking up at her he gestured towards the river. "You begin, and I will join you in a moment."

She looked down at what was left of the only clothing she owned with concern. "It's ruined."

"Do not worry, minn hjarta. I have a change of clothes for you, and once we arrive in Shreveport you will have everything you need." He pointed over his shoulder. "Lay everything in a pile. We will burn our clothes tomorrow when we rise."

She walked behind him as he turned his back to her, and he began cataloging the supplies Eric had packed, something he really didn't need to do that moment. "I have worn this dress since I was twelve. I've altered it a few times because I could not fit my arms in it anymore and it was too tight. This dress has become a part of me."

He stopped what he was doing, his back still turned to her as he knelt over the bag. She had worn that dress for nearly five years, and it had become nothing more than a frayed cloth that covered her.

He pulled some more supplies from the bag and continued his cataloging. "You are born anew, Sierra." He pulled a bottle of water from the bag and stared at it. "Together, we will wash your mortal plights from you. We must cleanse your heart, cleanse your soul, and cleanse your body. And that dress, Sierra, we will burn it together and watch the ash drift away in the wind, and it will fill us with hope."

After a moment, she began speaking as she stood behind him. "Will you be bathing as well?"

"Get in the water. I will join you when I am finished here."

He heard her dress rustle and lightly fall to the ground. Seconds later, her padding footsteps could be heard walking away from him, towards the river. When he heard the splashing of the water, he stood up and stripped his shirt off.

Looking over his shoulder, he tossed his shirt in the pile with her dress and glanced in her direction. He felt a rush in his blood and trembling ache in his fangs and quickly turned back around, staring, eyes aflame, into the spruce wood. She was still standing at the edge of the river, only ankle deep as she splashed the water with her foot and tested the temperature.

This is what he feared and why he had lingered over the pack. Looking away from her made no difference. The enchanting image of her from behind standing bare and raw in the pale moonlight on the shore of that mist-covered river would be forever etched in his photographic memory. The thin red scars down the length of her entire back only added to the wild and tameless appearance of her character, as if she had battled a large feline or bear and the smudges of dirt on her skin and in her disheveled hair gave her a feral visage that rivaled his own.

She was his progeny, and he found he already loved her, but loving her was torture, because it was a foreign love that he had never allowed himself to know, a love he dared not ever savor. Eternity was a long time, with no length or depth, and a vampire's heart was fleeting.

He had no deficit of skill and passion when it came to the art of pleasure. He could go to her that very moment like an inferno. He could make the world fall away from her as he touched her, felt her, kissed her. A real kiss, full of fire and hungry sensuality, not like the forceful besieging of her mouth he had stolen against the tree. He could do things to her that would make her weep, and crumble, and beg him never to stop.

But how long would it last? A month, a year, ten years, or even a few hundred. Nothing but a flitting moment in time to an immortal. He wanted her forever by his side, someone he walked through the ages with, as he had with Eric, and to have her as an eternal companion meant he must be very careful how he proceeded. It was not such an uncommon thing for a maker and progeny to couple occasionally, but never as mates who devoted their everlasting hearts to only each other. And yet, frighteningly, the more time he spent with her, the more sure he became that this very thing was exactly what he desired from her. He wanted more than the mere companionship a progeny born of the maker call provided. If he began such a venture he knew he could never let go, and he refused to rob her of the adventure that was yet to come. Just as he refused to rob himself of her eternal companionship when she eventually had no choice but to ask for release to escape his hungry heart.

He clamped down his internal struggle with iron precision, and tucked it far away from the bond between them, but Godric teetered on the edge of a dangerous precipice. In his nearly three millennia, he had faced vicious enemies, slaughtered countless armies, strategized the demise of hundreds of adversaries, and even came within inches of his own true death at least a dozen times, but never had anything disturbed him more than the disconcerting feelings that Sierra awakened inside him.

Sierra waded into the deeper misty soup of the river, feeling the eddying of the water as it passed through her outstretched fingers. She watched the wake of the mist as her hands glided along the surface, revealing the glossy black depths below. She could feel the icy cold of the river envelop her, but oddly, it didn't make her shiver, it didn't make her uncomfortable at all. She half expected it to leech the warmth from her muscles with every step, but it felt more like a cool silk cocooning her.

Everything was so different now, and yet, the same. She couldn't quite form the sensations into words; it was as if there was an ambiguous depth to all of creation that had been hidden to her before. She found this amazing as she always had a special connection to nature. She had expected to lose some of that connection as a vampire, but she was pleasantly surprised to learn that her beloved relationship to the Earth had not diminished, but rather, it had expanded. It opened her eyes to new wonders.

And indeed her eyes were opened now, opened to the crispness and sharpness of the beauty all around her. Like the hawk, the only thing obscuring her vision was the curving of the Earth over the horizon. She could even discern the outlines of the black clouds above as they glided along the freckled black sky.

Red was the most vivid color to her now. It seemed to almost bewitch and lure her in, inviting her to touch it. The Buffaloberries they passed as they walked along the game trail, the King's Crown flower she could see growing atop the cliff, and the red fox that warily watched them from his den a distance down the river; their enchanting red hue's snared her senses with otherworldly temptation.

Godric said it was the yearning thirst, and he called it bloodlust. The bloodlust excited a vampires emotions, arousing them in every conceivable way, he had explained, and was especially dangerous for the young, who were unpredictable and lacked any semblance of discipline. That was why it was important for him, as her maker, to be aware of everything she was doing to ensure her safety. The chaotic rush of bloodlust wasn't all-consuming, but when she saw red, notably blood, or Godric came especially close, his scent filling her nostrils, her mind would momentarily be mesmerized and the rest of the world would peel away.

She felt the smooth slick rocks under her bare feet as she moved into deeper waters. When the river was nearly up to her collarbone, she dipped underneath the hazy depths and completely submerged herself. When she broke back above the surface, she realized Godric had been treading from the rocky shoals of the river behind her. He was drawing closer, and she turned around swiftly to face him, the water streaming down her face and in her eyes. She ran her hands over her hair and head to shed the water down her back. Blinking the drops from her eyes just in time, she saw his naval dip below the mist as he moved deeper.

"This soap will cleanse you," he said gliding closer and handing her the bar Eric had packed. "The humans make soap to aid in bathing."

She was momentarily speechless as she looked at his muscled chest and shoulders, the tribal tattoo's on his body completely exposed to her for the first time. When she lived in the village, she had seen many shirtless males, but it had never been like this. Never so close, never in the moonlight, and looking at them never made her blood flutter as it did when she looked at Godric.

She gently took the soap from his hand. "We had something similar in the village."

She looked up at him smiling, remembering the kiss they had shared earlier, but when she saw his blank face, her own fell. The bond was just as empty as his eyes, only hints of concern and anxiety as he glanced at the horizon where the sun would soon rise.

She turned her back to him and lathered the soap in her hands. Rubbing her soapy hands on her face she wondered if now was a good time to tell him about what she had seen in the memory pool of her dreamscape. She knew it was important. Garrett and the Prince of the Fire Fae, two very important men, wanted to wage war on vampires, and they wanted to use her death at the hands of Godric to unite the four kingdoms in their quest to take back Earth. They must be fools to think Godric would ever harm her. He had been polite and gentle to her since they had first spoken.

She didn't understand why her death would even matter to any Fairy. The council of her own village, led by Garrett, had all but forsaken her when they cast her to the wilds. If the other fairies were willing to allow her banishment without stopping it, then she could not imagine why they would be angered by her death. She was just one solitary halfling who had been rejected. She held no importance or status.

Sierra mentally pushed away her past or at least she tried her best. She would not tell him of the memory pool vision tonight. If she did, there would be other questions about her childhood. She planned to tell him when they rose tomorrow, after she had time to think on it, after she had time to construct her words so that other questions did not come up. It was too painful to think about her past and she wanted to avoid dredging up old memories if possible.

Her mood became deeply sad and somber as she thought about her father Gregor. She never knew that Garrett and the others held so much hate for her. So much so they had murdered her father. Her poor father. She had held a secret resentment for him all these years. She thought he had abandoned her, given up on her, left her at the hands of those who didn't care about her. She had fond memories of him before he was ordered by the Earth Council to leave the village and continue his business dealings on Earth. But it had all been a ruse, a trick to make him disappear, disappear into his grave. She had not seen him in ten years, since she was eight years old, and there were times when she was filled with so much anger towards her father she had cried herself to sleep. She bit back a shaky breath, trying to hold the tears at bay.

"Let me help you," Godric gently said. He was suddenly right next to her as he took the soap from her hand. She looked up at him and saw her grief reflected in his sad eyes as their gaze met. He put his hand on her face, rubbing her chin with his thumb and drew her closer. "I am here now, my child. Your heart overflows with despair. I am sorry I could not protect you from the pain you have suffered, but I am here now."

He wiped a tear tenderly as it began to fall from the corner of her eye, and he brought his finger to his lips. His eyes never left hers.

"Your pain is my pain, my child. I do not know all that you have endured, but bitterness and anguish was my only companion for many years. I understand suffering all too well, and I will do all that I can to help you find some meaning in what has happened to you."

He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around so that her back was to him. She heard him lathering the soap before his hands glided over her bare skin. He slowly scrubbed down her back below the icy waters, and she could feel the grime shed from her as his hands moved.

"Remember the vampire I told you of, my maker's brother, who found me and helped me when I was younger?"

She nodded.

"He was a very wise ancient. He told me that suffering, failure, pain, and loss are all part of the journey, but from these things emerge the strongest souls." His finger traced the scar down her back. "As vampires we do not always have the luxury or fortune of bearing the scars that remind us we survived and healed, remind us where we have been and affirm to us where we are going."

There was a pause before she quietly spoke. "I hate my scars."

Compassion blanketed her mind. Compassion that was not her own. His hand was on her shoulder turning her to face him. She slowly looked at him, held hostage by the softness there, and her knitted brow eased. Cupping her face in his hands their gaze melted together.

"Gods, child. You have no idea how beautiful you are, scars and all." He brushed her cheekbones with his thumbs. "Shed your shame, minn hjarta, and allow me to bare witness to your story. There is powerful healing in sharing one's darkest experiences."

Her lips trembled. "I'm afraid, Godric. I'm afraid to…" She quickly turned and tried to move away but his hands were on her arms again facing her towards him.

He didn't say a word. And there were those eyes again, those soulful blue-grey eyes, looking down at her full of compassion, the bond emanating with understanding.

Her eyebrows slanted and she wrenched her arm from his hand, causing the water to splash. It was so much easier to ignore the things that happened to her, the beatings, the ridicule, to shut it away and try to forget about it. Why did he want her to feel the pain, the sadness of her memories? He was just as bad as her memory pool.

She tried to teleport, but a sickening feeling hammered through her so quickly and violently that her knees buckled and she lost her balance. The river rushed over her head and shoulders as she fell deeper, her muscles paralyzed with nausea. Struggling, she managed to flail her arms, and the frigid waters whirled around her hair as she sank.

It all happened so fast, and before she had time to think, Godric was catching her and pulling her back to the surface. When she opened her eyes, his face was the first thing she saw looking down at her.

For a split second, she thought she felt gratification pulse across the bond, gratification that his maker command had prevented her teleportation. This only fueled her anger. Her heightened vampire emotions were consuming her.

"Every single week for four years I was dragged to the scaffold and lashed with leather until my back was splayed open! Is that what you want to hear?" She screamed. She beat his chest with her fists, kicking up water. "Or maybe you want to hear about how every elder on the Earth Fae council voted to banish me from the village. How I had to watch them bring in witnesses who testified how stupid I was, or how I was always dirty, or accuse me of stealing."

Her tears blinded her as she continued to beat his chest faster. He didn't move. Her voice became loud and shrill, and she watched her fists as she hit him. She couldn't bare to look him in the eyes.

"I was alone! I floated from den to den. Nobody cared what happened to me! Nobody wanted me!"

She screamed and screamed, horrid crime after horrid crime against her spilling from her lips in a histeric babble. This went on for long minutes as she revealed everything to him. What they had done to her. How they had hurt her. How it had made her feel. How worthless she was. How she had always lived in fear. How she longed for death alone in the wilds. How coming to Earth had given her hope but that was a lie too. How she didn't understand why he was making her tell him these things.

Her blows became more labored until finally they stopped, her hands falling to her sides below the water. She squeezed her eyes shut and hung her head, her tears splashing in the river.

"I was twelve years old. Out in the wilds alone. It was cold and all the plants started dying. I was so hungry all the time. I felt so abandoned and betrayed by my village, by my father. Eight years I had given my devotion to him, my trust. And he just left."

Her voice was so broken it was barely discernible. She leaned against his chest and his arms circled around her pulling her tightly against him.

"But now, now I know I failed him too. He's dead, Godric. Dead! Garrett murdered him. That's why he never came back for me. I've hated him and he didn't...he didn't deserve it. I let them do whatever they wanted to me without complaint just as I let them kill my father. They were right all along. I'm a...a stupid half-blood fairy, the village jo...joke. I deserve these scars because they prove what a coward I am."

She stood there, shoulder deep in water against him, hiccuping and growling, full of disgust and anger, reliving everything that had happened to her. All the pain of her life culminated into a few solitary moments and it hurt so badly. But Gods, it felt so good, the relief to tell someone what happened.

"And then… and then tonight, I discover from my memory pool during downtime that my entire life is a farce! Planned all along by Garrett and Condé." She rubbed her eyes hard and growled before burying her face back in his chest. "From the first beating, to my final death at your hands. I was just a...a tool, because Fae Realm is dying. An instrument to blame you for the death of a child fairy."

She moaned miserably, the diseased wound in her shattered heart exposed and opened as she told him all about her friends Pearl and Mickey, the only ones before Godric who had ever showed her kindness.

"Even Pearl, my only friend, was part of the deceit, spying on me, on us."

Her muscles went weak and she leaned against him limply. Her voice became feeble and sluggish.

"Garrett was so angry when he f...found out you turned me vampire. They said you were supposed to drain me and kill me. Had you not felt the call of the maker that would have come true too."

The bond was completely silent and dead. She didn't know what he was thinking. His face moved to the top of her head and her hair fluttered rapidly from the sharp breaths flaring from his nostrils. His hand slowly caressed down her spine to the small of her back, and the other tangled in her hair and massage her scalp.

"Never," he whispered with dark and guttural tones. His muscles were rigid like granite as he held her, squeezing her tightly, drawing her protectively into a blanket of a his body, his strength wrapping around her.

Sierra weakly closed her eyes in exhaustion, a numb ache trembling inside her. She leaned against him, her face still buried in his chest while he rubbed her back, his fingertips lingering on her scars. She knew they had to go, but she didn't think she could will her muscles to move.

His body shifted, his muscles flexing, and then she was being lifted out of the water into his arms, the liquid shedding from her and cascading back to the river. She somehow felt it was shedding a part of her sorrow from her too, the water taking some of her pain with it and leaving it at the bottom of that black eerie river.

With half open eyelids, she watched the stars bounce above her as he took each step. She felt like one of those black clouds floating under the night sky, and her head and limbs dangled from her body carelessly. She listened to the river gently eddy around his legs as he moved through shallower waters, until he reached the bank and the only sound she heard was the drops falling from their bodies and dripping on the rocky shore below his feet.

She twined her arms around his neck and shoulders and closed her eyes as he walked onto the shore.

He stopped by the hiking backpack and she heard him softly speaking in a strange language. Her head was swimming with the dull ache of her heart and the throbbing thirst of her fangs and the sickness of the coming dawn that Godric had told her of earlier in the night. Everything seemed so far away, but she thought she sensed someone else there, speaking quietly to Godric in the same strange language.

It was like a dream, but the other voice came so close, hovering above her head, his tones dark and angry, yet tender and cautious.

Before she could open her eyes to look, Godric turned and was moving again, upstream, alongside the edge of the water.

She wasn't sure how long he was walking along the river. She didn't worry about it. She didn't worry that she was naked in his arms. She didn't worry that the sun would rise any moment. She had never felt so safe, so secure, as she did snug in his arms. It had been a long time since she had relied on anyone to care for her.

The bond was still empty, other than faint undertones of love and protection pulsing to her. She cracked her eyelids to peer at his face. He was looking forward as he carried her. His eyes were glazed and she briefly saw a savage tempest deep within them.

He glanced down at her, piercing into her, the deepness of his gaze reaching her soul. His face was as blank as the nothingness he had spoken of earlier that night, and he filtered some of his stronger emotions out of the bond, but she realized his eyes sometimes revealed to her what lie in his heart. And at that moment, his eyes flashed with a terrible fury and a profound need to protect her. But even that quickly plummeted to the depths of his soul as he looked at her, replacing it with soft smiling eyes.

He looked back ahead as he carried her along the river bank. The sheer cliffs had rose on both sides of the river, creating a deep gorge. He stopped and surveyed the view ahead. Across the canyon, a ways upstream, there were several cliffside caverns.

A/N: This was probably the hardest chapter I've had to write for this story so far. A lot of emotional turmoil to bring to life. I really focused on adding some more layers to Sierra and developing her character. I hope you like her so far. I'd love to hear what you think or what your favorite part was, and maybe from anyone who can relate to her.