Protecting Them (Only His Series: Book 3) *NEW VERSION*

Chapter 35

Alex's P.O.V

Damon stood in front of our old house and I was standing next to him. Frozen - whether out of fear or shock - was really the only word to describe how I looked. "Wow," I said. "Never thought I would see this place again."

"Why would we want to?" Damon asked.

"Good point," I stated and my brother moved forward to walk in, but I stayed glued in my spot. He turned around to me and raised his eyebrows in question. "Is it reasonable for me to not want to go in there?"

Damon sighed at me and held out his hand. "Dad's dead, Alex. He can't hurt you here," He said.

"Given our luck he could," I muttered. Damon sighed before extending his hand out to me again, and I hesitated before taking it. He led me inside and I felt like a kid again, walking through those front doors. I walked around lightly grazing my hand over some of the furniture. "It feels weird being back here."

"Yeah," Damon whispered.

I spotted a painting that was flipped around on the floor beside the fireplace. Turning it around, I saw it was an oil painting of our family before Mom died. Glancing above the fireplace, where it should have been hanging, I could see where it used to be. It looks like Mom didn't want Father glaring at her. Can't blame her. I walked closer to the mantelpiece and saw our baby pictures sitting there. I grabbed the one of Damon and turned around to him as he lit up a lamp behind us.

"You were so adorable as a baby," I stated with a smirk. Damon looked at me confused before I turned the photo around for him to see. He walked up to me and grabbed another baby photo from the mantle.

"You were too," Damon said and showed me a photo of a four-year-old me sitting on Mom's lap. "Maybe I should take this back with us and send it to Klaus as an earlier wedding gift."

I looked at him shocked, "How'd you know about that?"

"While I might not like your baby daddy a majority of the time, he is a gentleman. He asked me for your hand before he went to the car," Damon explained.

"Well then if you do that, I'll take this back to Elena," I said, then turned and grabbed Stefan's too. "And maybe this for Caroline once you get her emotions back on."

"We're not here to socialize," Damon reminded me, breaking the nice moment we were having. He turned around, pocketing the photo of me, and started snooping through a desk. "We get the Ascendant and find our mother." Damon turned back to me. "You sure you can't stay till after she flips Stefan's switch? I would love some help to figure out what the hell we're going to do with her afterward."

"You do remember that Klaus's evil aunt, may or may not be coming to take my daughter away from me for the rest of time?"

"Ah! Right," Damon grumbled.

"Although, I think you should keep her at arms distance," I suggested. "But we still need to hear her out."

"Hear her out! Then what? Give her another chance to disarray a literal boatload of people?" He asked and I rolled my eyes. "But no. No. I decided to look at this like a son and not a sane person, which led me here. I thought we could help her since Stefan's a fucking Ripper and we never fucking give up on him."

"We both know our brother is only a full-blown Ripper with his humanity off. For all, we know Lily is one with her humanity on. Plus where was she from 1855 to 1903? She was blood-binging through Europe while we carried the loss. Not exactly maternal." I added on to my brother's rant. "How the fuck did we never hear of her before? I mean three thousand people dead in Europe? Stefan only killed a couple hundred and he was famous." Someone - other than the witches - must have heard about her? How did we miss this? Klaus didn't say anything to me and he must have known. I sighed, "We're so stupid. We let the temptation of getting our mother back in our lives blind us and forgot how idiotic this idea was in the first place."