"Hey," he said, his voice barely a whisper.

"Jonas," I said, my voice just as quiet. "Can you hear me?"

"I'm not deaf, you know."

I smiled. "Listen to me."

"I am," he said.

"I need you to make me a promise."

"Anything," he told me, meaning it.

"Okay, a couple of promises."

"I said anything," he whispered, and his weary smile made my heart melt.

I sighed before saying, "First, tell me you love me."

"You know I do."

"I need to hear you say it."

His voice was rough as he said, "I love you."

I closed my eyes and took in his words, stuffed them deep into my heart and kept them there. This was the reason for what I needed to do. Had I not known how truly in love with me he was, I might have had second thoughts. Oh, who am I kidding? I would have done it for him even if he didn't love me, if only because I loved him.

"Secondly," I said after swallowing the lump in my throat. "Don't wake me."

"What?" he asked, but I was already at work.

Before he could move or ask again, my hands lay beneath his shirt, running against the grain of his scales. I could feel the fire eating him alive. Hermione was probably right; he probably would have died, his body temperature was so high. Too high in fact. Barring medical attention, he would have been lost.

Had I not been there.

My hands went to work instantly, and I drew the heat, fever, and illness from him. In doing so, I was able to make a diagnosis as to what was killing him. Then darkness surrounded me and I lost the information as I collapsed to the floor, completely unconscious.

Chapter Fourteen.

If I remembered what I'd discovered in Jonas's body, I would have gone ripping a head from a body. I didn't remember. Half of my forgetting I blame on hitting my head on the corner of his nightstand. I woke with a welt on my temple and an ache in my head. I woke feeling like s.h.i.t. I woke in up the bed.

I woke because Jonas was calling my name.

"Okay, stop it," I grumbled, sitting up slowly. I held my head in my hands and swallowed the bile creeping up my throat.

"Chris," he said, putting an arm around my shoulder. "I couldn't help it. You've been asleep for ten hours. I was worried."

"Are you okay?" I asked him, lifting my heavy head.

"Fine," he said. "I'm fine. Thanks to you."

I let out a groan as the world spun faster than it should.

"What did you do?"

I looked up at him through my fingers. "What I was made to do," I told him.

He reached out and took my chin in his hand. "Are you okay?"

"That's why I asked you not to wake me," I said, putting the weight of my head in his hand. My poor head felt like it was full of rocks, and not the nice, small, smooth pebbly kind. "I need you to make me another promise," I told him.

"Anything, love," he said.

I cherished the word, but had my say anyway. "You can't tell anyone about what I did to you."

"I won't," he said, not even thinking about questioning my reasons.

"Good," I said, closing my eyes.

"Lay down, hon," he said. He put pressure on my shoulder, forcing me to lie back down in the bed, which I did quite willingly. "You don't look so good."

"Wonder why," I muttered, glad to have my head sinking into a pillow.

He tucked my hair behind my ear, his fingertips barely brushing my earlobe in a way that made my body tingle. This wasn't a time to be thinking along those lines. I really wasn't feeling well. It had been more instantaneous than healing Christian. I wondered about this fact but put it aside, thinking it must have been the accident that wasn't. Then again, I didn't remember how I got from the hospital to the motel. I started to drift off to these thoughts, then his voice came to me once more.

"Chris?"

"Hhm?" I said without opening my eyes.

"I know you're one of us. I mean, we all knew you could read minds. How come you never told anyone about that?"

"Jonas, people hunted me all my life," I whispered. "If they find out I'm alive and here, they'll hunt me down again. And probably kill all of you in the process. I can't let that happen."

"I won't say a word," he told me. "I promise. Now I'll let you sleep."

I didn't speak again. I just tried to control the swirling of my stomach. It was hard to go to sleep, but once he lay down beside me and put his arm around me, it became a whole lot easier.

"I do love you," he whispered in my ear just before I fell asleep, as if he could detect the exact moment. Then he kissed my cheek and I was gone.

Chapter Fifteen.

Okay, so the saying goes something like this: "And on this day a saviour was born." Yada freakin' yada. Ya'll know the rest. My birthday will never be marked as a national holiday, mostly because I don't know when it is. Even if I did, it still wouldn't be a bank holiday. No one is really sure if Christ existed. I exist. The proof of what I can do lies in the beating of Jonas's heart.

After Jonas, there were more to come. He was the first after Christian. To me, he was the most important. Even more important than my father. It took me a few months from the moment I met him to discover how much I loved him. Jonas, ah Jonas. He loved me from the first moment he saw me. He loved me for me, not for what I could do. I loved him because of who he was.

I could never let him die.

It was the first mistake I would make. Curing Jonas revealed my whereabouts, not that I had a choice in the matter, and that I was still capable of healing, though I didn't know at the time anyone was watching, and it probably isn't who you're thinking.

When I woke again, this time on my own, Jonas slept beside me. I felt a little bit better, though not much. I was well enough to get up. I had no idea what time it was, but the darkness outside told me enough. It was well past midnight. I felt the urge to get up and go watch some TV. So I did.

I snuck out of Jonas's bedroom and went out into the living room. I turned on the television with the volume down very low. Everyone else either dreamed or lay awake in their bedrooms, including Starch, who I discovered, via mind read, sitting up, staring out his window at the stars. I'd leave my surprise for the morning though. I settled upon watching the telly.

I flipped through channels for a good hour, finding nothing good to settle upon then something caught my eye. I quickly turned back and sat up all the way to the edge of the sofa, the remote clenched tightly in my hand.

I was faced with a roving reporter covering the never ending war in the Middle East. Beside this man stood a soldier who could not go unrecognized by myself.

Before I knew it, I got up and knelt as close to the screen as I could. I never heard a word he said, but that didn't matter. They'd changed his name, but that didn't matter either. Who cared if he was now Mr. North instead of Mr. Fletcher? Who cared if they'd returned him to his roots in the Air Force, and he now fought an unwinnable war? It was him all the same. My eyes filled with tears, and my hand reached for the screen, as if I could pull him through to me.

My throat swelled, and my heart beat out a drum solo in my chest. The sickness in my stomach and head vanished into thin air. My mouth hung open, and my body trembled.

My father- Christian...

Was alive.

Chapter Sixteen.

"Hey you!"

I woke with a start and nearly fell off the couch. "Geez, Jonas," I muttered as I sat up, rubbing my eyes. My head ached only slightly, but I felt a hundred percent better.

Jonas came and sat on the coffee table, making his eyes level with mine. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," I said. "A slight headache, but I'm fine. You?"

"I'm good," he said. "I got a little worried when I woke up and you were gone."

"Sorry." I shook my head then said suddenly, "Christian!"

"Who?" he asked, having forgotten the name of my father.

"My father," I reminded him, grabbing the remote from off the floor where I dropped it sometime during the night. The TV was still on, and I flipped through channels. "I saw him."

"On what?" Jonas asked.

"The news," I told him. "He's in Iraq. He's alive."

Jonas, who knew more details (though not all the details) than anyone about what happened with Christian and I, or should I say, to Christian and I, understood what I was talking about. "You saw him?"

"Yes," I said. I realized what I was doing and turned off the TV. "I saw him." I looked back at Jonas's amber eyes. "Has anyone seen you?"

"No," he said to me. "It's still late. Or really early."

He was right. I glanced at the windows to see darkness outside.

"We have a few hours before dawn." He paused then said, "Hey, I forgot."

"What?" I asked.

"This," he said. He leaned forward, put his hand behind my neck, and kissed me. His lips were soft and full of purpose. He tasted of the earth, like a full bodied wine.

I could only close my eyes and give in to the dizziness that overcame me. And I kissed him back, of course.

When he pulled back from me, he said, "Glad you're feeling better."

"You, too," I whispered, lost somewhere in a daze.

"Thanks to you, love," he said back. "So now what? How do we explain this to everyone?"

I shrugged. "Miracle?" I said, hating the taste of the word on my tongue. The word had been a favorite of Christian's, and of Michael Daniels's. I let out a deep sigh I hadn't even felt building in me.

"What?" Jonas asked.

"Christian." I sighed.

As if reading my mind, Jonas said, "He's in Iraq. There's nothing you can do. It's not like you can fly over there and rescue him or something." He paused. "Besides, you don't even know what happened to him."

I gave another sigh and ran my hands through my hair. "You're right, you know."

"I know," he said with a grin. "Now let's get out of this house before we wake everyone and need to explain ourselves."

I quietly tiptoed to my room and got my jacket out of my closet. I slipped into the faux fur lined sweater and joined Jonas back in the living room. He had on a black leather jacket. I paused again only to put on the shoes I'd left by the front door then we went outside into the chilly night.

Chapter Seventeen.