Eric’s hand slid down from her shoulder to drift along her collarbone, and he bent to kiss the side of her throat. He had extraordinary stamina for a human, and she could only imagine what he would be like as a vampire. She reached up and pulled him down closer, always closer, her mind made up. “We will leave together,” she told him softly. “I will make them understand that you are my family now, and we will go.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

KLAUS WAS RESTLESS. It had taken him only a night to discover that he was not made for life in the countryside. It was boring, and the sounds from the bayou were downright disturbing. The house, with its formidable new enchantment, was obviously the best place to be when every werewolf within fifty miles was probably out for their blood. But the confinement chafed, and so he paced and complained and made his brother miserable until dawn came and Elijah sent him outside to take care of the rotting old stump near the back of the property.

It would almost certainly have to be removed, but their explorations revealed that its roots framed one of the several underground caverns that dotted the property. They had strategic value, the brothers had agreed immediately, and it would be unfortunate to lose one of them if they could help it. Klaus examined the lacework of the roots, trying to see where they gave the most support. The dead and rotting wood would not hold up forever, but if they worked carefully they could probably replace it without caving in the chamber entirely.

A strange keening came from the direction of the house, and Klaus straightened. It sounded mechanical, but he couldn’t think of anything in the house that might have made such a noise.

“I thought I might find you here,” a familiar voice said, and Klaus froze. Of course...the protection spell. Someone had stepped onto their land, and the spell had tried to warn him. He had not understood quickly enough, and the price of his mistake stood before him, watching him with haunted black eyes. “I came to see if you were all right.”

Vivianne looked more fragile than he remembered her, as if something vital were slowly being drained from her body. She wore a deep, heavy cloak of ivory wool that should have been sweltering in the heat of the day, but she pulled it close around her as if she still could not get warm enough.

Klaus found himself unsympathetic.

“You’ve seen me now,” he pointed out sharply. He slammed the trapdoor closed and turned his back on her, marching toward the house.

She followed him through the ankle-high grass, but he refused to slow down. “I saw Armand, too,” she called after him. “He said you were the one who hurt him. Your brother was in the woods the other night, and he attacked us, too. Is this all happening because of us? Klaus, is it because of...me?”

He reached the shelter of the porch, and turned so that she could see the bitterness on his face when he laughed. “You!” he exclaimed. “What could you have to do with these squabbles, Viv? What might you have done that could possibly cause all this fighting?”

She bit her full red lip, looking even paler in the sunlight than she had in the shade of the trees. “Armand wouldn’t tell me anything,” she admitted, “except that it was you he fought. But the way he looked at me, I think he knows. What we—what I did.”

Klaus shrugged nonchalantly. “If he does, he didn’t learn it from me. I don’t go about bragging about being abandoned at sunrise by the woman I had loved all night.”

Vivianne looked as if she had been slapped. “I thought it would be the best way to say good-bye,” she whispered. “I thought I had to change, and I wanted to have one last night as myself. Can’t you see what that meant to me?”

“You ‘thought,’” Klaus repeated slowly. “You ‘thought’ you had to activate the werewolf within you.” Had she changed her mind already? What a cruel twist of fate that the full moon had brought if she was so inconstant in her conviction. Another few days and she might have forgotten the whole idea. Just as she had forgotten him.

Vivianne’s black eyes glowed hopefully. “You were right all along,” she breathed eagerly, hurrying to close the gap between them. “I should never have done it. You were the only person who has ever cared about what was best for me, and I was foolish not to trust you.”

Klaus watched, amused, for the moment when she would run into Ysabelle’s barrier. Vivianne was about to lift her right foot onto the porch when she rocked back, almost losing her balance. She gaped at him in confusion. “Your aunt was here,” he told her spitefully. “She helped us guard ourselves against unwanted visitors.”

Vivianne pushed curiously at the invisible barrier, moving sideways a few steps to see how far it extended. “You need to invite me in,” she guessed, looking stunned.

Klaus deliberately misunderstood her meaning. “I don’t, in fact,” he reminded her harshly. “You’re welcome to sit out there until your new pack comes along and drags you home. I assume that if you knew where to find us, they do, too.”

Guilt was written all over her face. Elijah had gotten their house in order in the nick of time, because the Navarros had figured out where they were. Then the guilt changed to anger, and Vivianne tossed back the hood of her cloak. “I shouldn’t have bothered to worry,” she snapped. “You’re obviously exactly as you always were.”

Klaus smirked. “If you thought an encounter with one werewolf could somehow change that, love, you underestimated me.”

She stared at him, and as furious as she was there was something calculating in her look. Klaus could see her gathering her emotions back under control, and in spite of his resentment he respected her for it. She might be a fool, but she was an impressive one.

“I must have,” she agreed coldly. “When you told me you loved me, I believed it. When you said you wanted nothing more than to be with me, I believed it. When you insisted that there was no part of me”—she held her hand up to forestall his interruption—“no part of me you did not want to know, I believed it. Obviously, I underestimated your capacity for empty words.”

If he were not so furious, he would have laughed. “You chose,” he nearly shouted. “You crept out of my bed and chose to become a vicious thing that is my mortal enemy. You can’t twist that to make it seem that I never wanted you enough, when—”

“Then you do!” she exclaimed, moving as close to him as the magical barrier would allow. “You’re angry; of course you’re angry. But you meant all those things you said, and you still want me, even now.”

Klaus Mikaelson was rarely at a loss, but Vivianne’s outburst left him wordless. It was bold—he could not imagine being so brave in her position. But most of all, it was true. He had tried to drink, fuck, and fight her away, but the sight of her standing before him had brought everything back.

He still loved her, and he wanted, desperately, for her to say whatever would set him free to say so again. “Why have you really come here?” he asked, knowing that he could not answer her accusation until he had answers of his own. “I don’t believe for a second that you were worried about my health. We know each other too well for that sort of charade.”

She nodded and bit her lip again. He remembered the taste of it perfectly, and he wished more than anything that it were between his teeth.

“I made a terrible mistake the other night,” she said, her voice low with emotion. “I knew it as soon as it was done. I didn’t think I could live with half of myself locked away, but now I would give anything to seal that doorway closed. I can’t, but I will do whatever it takes to make things right with you, and that’s why I have come.” Her luscious mouth twisted up into a wry smile. “I knew perfectly well that one werewolf would hardly leave a scratch on you.”