A/N: This is very much an Eric & Sookie love story. It won't get there right away, but that is unequivocally the direction it is heading.

I have no rights to the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris or to any of the characters contained within (except any OCs). I am simply playing with them in my sandbox and no copyright/trademark infringement is intended and no money is being made.

Prologue:

Pam gingerly hung up the phone, contented by the conversation she had with her maker. Allowed just one phone call a year, Pam felt it was imperative they discuss...well, nothing that would appear to be important.

In fact, to the casual eavesdropper, it would sound like both were overly fascinated with the weather in each of their respective states. But the eavesdropper in attendance, who had bugged her husband's phone, knew better - and she found herself furious that even after a hundred years she had yet to crack the code.

As his wife, Freyda felt that her husband owed her not only his fealty, but also his secrets. It goes without saying that he did not feel the same. But he did say it - every single time she brought it up by reminding him not only of the contract but of how she owned him, for at least the next hundred years. A hundred years that he had now accepted twice.

While he had grown to appreciate his position as consort in her court and as her enforcer, even respecting her (something he had thought impossible prior to their arrangement), he would never share his essence with her, which included his secrets. He had only ever shared himself with four others – his vampiric children and... someone whose memory used to haunt him the way ghosts haunt the plantations of Louisiana, a state he wasn't sure he'd ever choose to see again.

Much was always said between the lines when Pam spoke with her maker. As he shared his essence with her, Pam was always quick to reciprocate, showing him the respect he deserved as her master.

Except she always held back from telling him one, quite important thing.

One thing that Pam never intended to share with him, that she wasn't even sure she could even hide from him - since the tie between them may as well serve as a built-in lie detector. Yet as years of weather - dominated discussions passed, Pam had begun to believe that she was a master of keeping secrets - and this was the mother of all secrets.