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"Just like that?" Dmitri didn't quite believe what he was hearing. He and Trevor had just returned from another day of exploring San Francisco to find Rommel waiting for them with some interesting news.

"Just like that." Rommel nodded. He was sitting on a lounge chair in shorts and a t-shirt with a straw hat on. It made it hard for either of the lovers to imagine him as once being the most respected and brilliant generals of World War 2. "They came to me asking if I had seen either of you." He tipped his beer, which was on old German brew that he had found in a small privately owned shop in some back corner of a run down block.

"So what, you decided that it was good to just go ahead and talk them up and then sell us to the Inquisition?" Dmitri felt the hair on his neck stand on end, a canine trait that meant he had to calm down now or he would start to get a bit more hairy right where a lot of people could see him. "When do we deal with them?"

Rommel frowned. "I didn't sell us to them." He watched as a young couple that had been enjoying their evening walk around the condos and watching the sun set quickly move away from the angry Russian. "I told them I would think about it."

"What is there to think about?" Dmitri asked. He had been fighting the Inquisition his entire life, there was never a time that he could remember where they weren't a threat and now, so close to winning the war against them, he was being told that Rommel had talked to agreed to listen to them. There were never to be trusted. He knew that he was allied to a bunch of ex-Inquisition people, he didn't trust them either. "They're evil."

"That is a matter of perspective, my angry friend." Rommel remained calm. He had dealt with Dmitri on many occasions and knew that while he did yell and make his opinions very clear, he rarely ever got physical. He would just have to deal with the spittle. "I once served Hitler quite loyally."

"But you weren't part of the Nazi party." Trevor added. He didn't' have much to add to the conversation since he was still relatively new to the whole situation. "If I remember right, you often went against his orders."

"I know my own history. But, yes. I did often go against his orders." Rommel swung his legs over the lounging chair and sat upright and let some blood flow into his legs. He was feeling old even if physically he hadn't aged much in a very long time. "Then again, I was an early admirer of his." He got up. "Let's take this conversation inside."

Rommel took the group to his room since he was well aware of what had happened between Trevor and Dmitri. Anyone nearby would have heard them and being just the floor below them, he did while was finishing his book. Their room would have reeked of sex and while the two lovers would most likely have found it romantic to be surrounded by the smell of their mating, Rommel preferred the freshness of his condo.

Inside and away from others who may take an interest in their conversation, accidental or not, Rommel continued to explain.

"This offer is a way to end the war." Rommel said and held a cup of water between his hands. He sat at the kitchen counter while Dmitri and Trevor had taken the only sofa in the condo where they could sit together. "I don't know as much as I like about Director Caughey as I would have liked, but I know that he supplies nearly forty percent of the Inquisition's funds. If he pulls out, the Inquisition is left crippled."

"How many dead is this man responsible?" Dmitri kept his voice lower than he normally would. He wanted to yell, scream, to drill some sense into this old man's head that working with the enemy was a stupid idea. "How many of us as he been responsible for killing?"

"And how many of his men are you responsible for killing?" Rommel said. He understood where Dmitri was coming from. He really did. He often looked at the war from both sides and how each side thought that they were doing the right thing. It was interesting to see how history shaped itself.

Dmitri said nothing. He had no answer. He had killed several at the airport in Seattle and he had been fighting the Inquisition long enough to know that he had been responsible for many more deaths of Inquisition members.

"I'm not saying we forget." Rommel continued, satisfied that he had silenced Dmitri long enough for him to get his thoughts out and onto the table. "I'm saying that he simply do what's best. He wants this Coordinator dead as much as we do and if he says he'll stop hostilities against us in return..."

"If I may?" Trevor raised his hand.

"Of course." Rommel bowed his head.

"What's to stop him from going back on his word?" Trevor asked.

"Glad you asked. He's offered his son as collateral."

"You mean that we're going to be bringing someone with us just so they can spy on us?" Dmitri crossed his arms and huffed.

"Perhaps." Rommel shrugged. "But it doesn't matter what we decide here, this is not a decision we can make ourselves." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone. It wasn't a smart phone, Rommel came from an age where phone were only used to call people. He saw no use in needing to look at the internet, phones were for calling people. "It's time for a check-in, I'll raise this matter up with the Alpha and Director Brennan and we'll all decide when we get back to Berlin."

He dialed the number into the phone and held it up to his ear and watched as Trevor tried to comfort his much larger mate.

In Dmitri's eyes, the Inquisition was the enemy and always would be. Brennan was Inquisition and while she had proven reliable, he was always afraid that they would turn on them like how they had done so hundreds of years ago. Dmitri wasn't there when the First Betrayal occurred, but he had grown up hearing about it.

Werewolves and humanity weren't always enemies. It was during the Crusades that the pope had approached the packs and offered them a deal, fight in the name of God and they would be integrated into society and given protection by the Church. A deal was made and werewolves helped establish the Knight Templar which they worked under to spread Christianity and protect pilgrims. All went well until the tide turned against the Crusades and the holy land was lost. When that happened, people looked for a scapegoat.

Knowledge of werewolves wasn't public, they were still just rumors, but those that did know, knew that most worked under the banner of the Knights Templar and blamed them for losing the holy land. It wasn't long before the Inquisition was born and set upon the werewolves and the few humans that supported them. The rest could be looked up online.

It was these tales that Dmitri grew up with and the constant threat of the Inquisition that he lived with cemented the idea that the Inquisition was not to be trusted. It would take a lot of effort to convince otherwise and Rommel knew this which was why he wasn't putting a lot of effort into the argument. All he needed to do was convince the alpha and Director Brennan to back him up.

"I don't like this." Dmitri leaned into the touch of Trevor's hand on his shoulder, nearly pushing the smaller man off the couch. "Not one bit."

Trevor didn't really know what to say. He felt out of place in the large scale of things so he stayed where he felt comfortable, with Dmitri where he could provide whatever comfort he could. "Can't always get what you want." Trevor petted Dmitri's arm, even in his human form, his arm hair wasn't quite like hair, it had the feeling of somewhere between fur and hair. "But, you have me, at least." He brushed his finger's through the hair, feeling its softness on his fingers and Dmitri was enjoying the attention as well.

"I do." He smiled, but remained trouble which made Trevor feel troubled as well. "I guess that I'm..." He was afraid, but he never admitted that to anyone. He was the son of the Alpha, he was tough, brave and the future leader of the packs of Russia. He was afraid that if this Director Caughey or anyone that said they were trustworthy betrayed them, there would be no packs left, no future.

Trevor was about to ask what when Rommel snapped his phone shut hard enough that the screen cracked.

"I'm moving the flight to tomorrow." He said, a frown with deep creases running down his aged face forming as he quickly opened his phone up again to call the airline company to see if it was even possible to move their flight up or if he would have to buy new tickets. There wasn't a need to be stealthy as well, Caughey had known they were there and he wasn't going to attack them, not after just making an offer.

"What's going on?" Dmitri stood up, sensing the fiery heat coming off of the man that was known for being cool and collective in his thoughts. Rommel was a thinker, a planner who took quick action in both triumph and defeat, he didn't let emotion get to him, but he was mad now and it disturbed Dmitri to see him get mad so fast.

"The Coordinator hit Berlin. We're going home now."

---

The officers were dressed in their civilian clothes, the same clothes they had put on in the morning with expectations of driving to the station and then changing into their uniforms for a day of patrols and peace and quiet. Now they, three of them, were walking with weapons concealed under their coats and a warrant to arrest someone. They had asked why they were about to go into the market and discreetly arrest a woman, but were given no details. The orders had come from way up, so far up that the commander wouldn't say anything about it. The warrant, signed by a judge came in shortly after along with detail on where to find their target.

Erika knew that she was being tailed, the officer's were clumsy. They stuck in a tight group, only looked at what the vendor had available whenever she looked behind he. Their haircuts were too militaristic, all of them, to be coincidence, plus they had been behind her for the past hour.

She had expected to be discovered when the truck that she had been scouting out had stopped on a busy street where they were cameras. She still planted the bomb as ordered though, that was what good soldiers did, follow orders, to complete their mission even when it put them at risk. She did everything that had been asked of her, she went to the hospital and got the job as a nurse. She made sure she was assigned to the man who had come in with amputated limbs and she had made him fall in love with her. All orders.

She stopped at a fruit stand where an elderly lady was selling apples. There were small, but smelled very sweet. She picked one up and rotated it in her fingers, feeling the skin and testing it, feeling for soft spots that would tell her how ripe it was. It was perfectly ripe. She bought four.

The undercover officers waited for her to finish the transaction and move on before they got up from the bench they were sitting on and continued to follow her. She seemed normal. Erika was what she preferred to be called was married, worked at the local hospital, she was normal, but the officers knew that normal meant unsuspecting and someone up above suspected her enough of something to have them go out and arrest them.

They didn't want to make a scene if she resisted. The market was crowded, but she was heading out where the crowd would thin and they would be able to approach her.

Erika knew exactly when the were going to come up to her. She knew where and when, right when the crowd thinned enough and when she turned a corner so that she was out of sight. She could have escaped. Berlin was old with many nooks and crannies to slip through and disappear. She actually was supposed to be gone already, but plans didn't always go through.

She had been promised evacuation once her mission was done and that promise was fulfilled. The day after the bomb, she called in to her masters, the Coordinator and he arranged a plane to whisk her out of the country. She could have taken it all those days ago, but when she had began to pack silently in the night, she didn't count of one thing to happen. Love

She had lived with this man, Sergei for two years. She shouldn't have fallen in love with this man who was missing a leg and an arm who had trouble getting around the house. She had fallen in love with his spirit and his desire to continue to live on even though it would be so much harder. She fell in love with the way he looked at her with total trust and how she would cook him breakfast in the morning, he would try to help sometimes, but after he had ruined nearly a dozen eggs, that was her job solely now. She could have left that room in the middle of the night when he was sleeping, clutching the pillow in his sleep that he thought was her, but she couldn't. She changed back into her nightgown and went back to bed and woke up to cook for her husband.

"Erika Schmidt?" A strong masculine voice called out to her from behind and she stopped. Her hand instinctively reached for where there would normally be a small hold out pistol, hidden on the inside of her coat. It wasn't there this time. She had gotten rid of it the day she decided to stay and she told herself that she wouldn't need it anymore.

"Yes." She said in an innocent voice and turned around to face the three men who had been tailing her.

The lead man, a dark skinned man with a balding issue and a thick northern accent pulled a badge out of her pocket. "Police. We have a warrant for your arrest." He put the badge back. "Do not resist."

"I won't resist."

"She didn't fight back." Arden said, watching from the roof and frowned. "I was hoping for a show."

Vasili stood next to him. "She's smart, that bitch." As soon as Vasili had heard what had happened, he had returned from Egypt immediately. He left the operation with one of Brennan's men. He was pretty sure that Shaab had fled the country already and that the mission to kill him was a failure anyways. He knew the people that had died in the blast and had made it his personal vendetta to get revenge. "She doesn't want to make a scene."

"They're going to take her to the station." Arden watched as Erika was escorted away. She wasn't in cuffs since that would draw attention.

Arden was small, very small for a werewolf, but then again, he looked fifteen even if he was almost eighty. He had a full head of light brown hair and freckles that added to the illusion of his child like look. He was one of Vasili's closest friends and wherever the bigger wolf went, it was assured Arden would be there was well.

"Then she'll be turned over to us." Vasili would have liked for her to resist. He would have been able to get down there and act as a law abiding citizen helping to subdue a dangerous criminal who would have sadly died in the struggle. No matter, she was going to die and he was going to make sure of it.

"How long before Sergei notices that she hasn't come home for supper?" Arden leaned on wall and watched until the officers and Erika were out of sight. "He's always been one to worry."

Vasili snorted and spat. "Don't care what the cripple thinks. He let that bitch trick him and he needs to learn the hard way."

"He's going to come looking and guess where he's going to go first."

"He won't get in the way. That wolf has only one arm and leg, plus he's barely even part of the pack." Vasili turned around and headed for the stairwell to take them down. "If he does try to get in the way, I'll take his other arm from him, maybe then he'll understand that she needs to die."