Guys, I know I've been gone a really long time and I'm really very sorry about that. I had a crisis in the family about a month after my last update and sort of took the backseat for a long time. It's still a bit difficult to discuss, even in print, but I feel I owe you guys an explanation. My dad died about two months after my last post. He had been having issues with gallbladder for about four months prior. He was doing pretty well for a short time, eating better and feeling pretty good. Then one day after I got home from school and it was just us hanging out together he passed out in our kitchen and began vomiting. I called my aunt, who is a nurse, and she had me take him to the emergency room where he was quickly admitted. They told us it was his gallbladder and it needed to come out. He had the surgery a few days later and everything was fine until they tried bringing him out of anesthesia. He crashed on the table and went without oxygen for a few minutes. He remained in the ICU for 32 days, in an induced coma, while they monitored how much brain damage was sustained. The doctors decided he would never regain consciousness and suggested we move him to a hospice house. He was there for about a week and a half before he died very early on a Sunday morning. Very little aside from his loss took precedent in my mind, as you can imagine. I went through a very dark time and was incredibly depressed. I saw no reason to continue living with him gone, and much of the year following his death was spent either furious or, more often, numb. It's been a long and difficult road, and it obviously still hurts. But I'm looking to my faith for a sense of peace about the suddenness of the loss and I attend grief counseling every week. And for the most part I'm beginning to feel a little bit like myself again. I was looking through my 600+ missed e-mails the other day and saw some reviews for this as well as my Avengers fic and remembered that I had people waiting on me to continue this. As this fic deals with a father-daughter relationship I hope you'll all understand that it will be difficult for me to keep going. I can promise you, however, that I will try my best. Updates may be spotty but that'll be nothing new. If you're still keeping up with this thing after all this time you have my sincerest thanks. This is a very very very short chapter, I understand, but I really wanted to get something going. This all just sort of tumbled out this afternoon so it may not be all that great but I figure it's something to do with the actual story, at least. I really want some happiness for Lucian, which is why deciding to continue this was never really a question in my mind, so I'm hoping for a little inspiration to really get me moving and do the idea in my head (God, that seems like such a long time ago!) some justice. Chapter five is under way and should be done soon. I've read over my previous stuff before doing this chapter and began working toward 5 tonight (while I was supposed to be doing a research paper outline, but oh well). I've forgotten most of the conversation I had planned out between Blythe, Michael, and Adam after the cat gets out of the bag so if you have any specific questions you'd like answered, feel free to ask in reviews or shoot me a private message and I'll be sure to include them.

Something about him struck a chord in the back of my mind. He was an alpha. This meant, short and sweet, that the parts of me that belonged, in a very literal sense in this case, to the lycans called me to obey. 'Stand down. You couldn't beat him if you tried.' a traitorous part of my brain begged. But then, I had to try didn't I? Again, something told me no. I wasn't really sure about the whole idea of pack dynamics beyond one major rule. You did not, under any circumstances, disobey your alpha. To do so was to warrant your death. 'But,' the logical part of my mind was all too helpful and patient with the rest of my sluggish brain, 'you haven't yet been given any orders. He doesn't even know he can give you orders.' An answering voice in my psyche reared against the thought, as if my lycan subconscious was furious to be trapped within such a rebellious body. I latched on to the defiance and snarled at the stranger, the ripping of muscle and cracking of bone related to the transformation beginning, my vision flooding black before everything took on a grey tinge and hyperawareness brought every threat into sharp relief against the hazy background the world had become. Michael had slipped my grasp, my fingers forcibly unclenching the scruff-like section of his hoodie as the bones elongated and claws sprouted. The alpha noticed, it seemed, because he made a grab for the blonde. I lashed out at him, raking deep trails along his pale chest. He growled but didn't strike back, hand fisted in Michael's t-shirt. The noise was like a blow to the chest and I lost my grip again. The alpha had sunk his teeth into my friend as soon as I no longer had the ability to snatch him back. Then he was dropping his captive, backing into the wall beside the lift as he was struck by several bullets. He roared in fury as I pushed past him, Michael following woozily. The death dealer was back and she emptied the clip of her other gun into my chest and arm, but I was ready for her now. She paused when she saw me (most people did) and I used the opportunity to slam a fist into her abdomen and sweep her feet from under her. A sharp kick to the back head, more disorienting to her than anything else and we were out the door. I sprinted for my apartment, ignoring the stinging of the silver in my flesh. It was slow going with Michael's stumbling to keep up. His breathing was short and harsh and he'd need some medical attention soon. This wasn't good. The moon would be full in a couple days, he'd be a lycan. He'd need the others. He'd need his sire. I didn't know where the hideout was, and I honestly preferred it that was. If I, a non-participant of the war, could so easily figure out where the den was then so could any death dealer that put in even the slightest bit of effort. But I had the distinct feeling that my days on the sidelines were pretty much over. "Come on, Michael." I pleaded as I made to heft him up the stairs to the building. I'd stopped a little over a block away to ease back into my normal appearance. It intensified the pain, but I couldn't traipse into the building as an ash-grey, clawed girl dragging a grown man by the back of his bloody jacket. I needed the bullets out soon or permanent damage was likely to occur. Luckily, the usual night owls hanging around the stoop seemed to have found better things to do for the moment and we made it up the stairs relatively quietly. I flopped my precious cargo onto the couch and quickly unbuttoned the torn shirt I wore and snatched the rest of it off. I took a deep breath and focused on where the burning was strongest. The muscles were forced to constrict and the silver followed its previous path back out until, one by one, each hit the wood floor with a dull clink. I sighed in relief, moving to my room to put on another shirt. This one was loose and dark to keep any blood that might seep through from being noticed. I eased it over my head and ran fingers through my hair before I noticed Michael standing in my doorway. His eyes were wide and he was as pale as I'd ever seen him. "You can't go back to that apartment Michael," I turned to face him fully, intent on getting the point across before he panicked, "Now that they know for sure where you live you can't ever go back. Promise me you'll stay away from it." He simply stared, like he wasn't all that sure he was awake. I walked forward purposefully and raised a hand to check the bite. He jerked back and fell to the ground before my fingers could brush his skin. "Who. . . How did you- What are you?" I frowned and lowered into a crouch before him, far more cautious of his personal space. "I'm- I'm like a mix . . . between those two people at the flat. That woman, she's called a Death Dealer. She was a vampire, Michael. And the man, he was a Lycan, a werewolf I guess you'd call it. I'm the only child to ever be born from a union of the two. They've been at war for centuries, they still are. But I'm not a part of either group; I don't think any of them even know what I am." He stared some more. "If they weren't after you then how did they find us?"

"They have to be after you. I don't know why, but I swear to you, Michael, I won't let anything happen to you. Not ever." I looked anywhere but him. I couldn't handle the look I knew would be on his face. He wouldn't see me as me anymore. He wouldn't see me as a person. I'd become an animal, a monster, in his mind. "Blythe.", I flinched at his voice after the pause that had been strangling me. I took a breath and looked. He was confused, that was true, but I didn't see the disgust I'd been expecting. He was tired, weary, and in pain; but he looked at me as he always did. "I always knew you were too weird for your weirdness to be anything but a disguise." He grinned a little and I smiled a watery smile back as I let go of a relieved, if slightly manic sounding, laugh. "We'll talk more later on. Right now it's back to the hospital with you." I had never been so happy to fall back into the scolding, mother-hen role than I was in this moment. Michael nodded and went to stand back up, but was having an issue with his legs still shaking rather badly. I rose instead and reached a hand for him. He took it without hesitation and it felt like just one more small victory in a night of wildly rollercoastering luck.