Standard disclaimer - I don't own the characters/setting/etc. of this story, some of the dialogue is also borrowed, that's all property of Maggie Hall and Penguin Publishing. Not attempting to profit, just having fun.

A/N - My plan is to tell the series from Stellan's POV instead of Avery's. There'll be some new scenes from times when Avery wasn't there, and scenes missing if Stellan wasn't present. For scenes that are in the books I'll be copying the dialogue, you'll just be getting Stellan's thoughts on the exchanges instead of Avery's.

FYI 1 - I have the books as audiobooks, not written - so if any of my spelling/grammar/etc isn't accurate for quoted bits or names I apologize and if you let me know I'll happily fix it.

FYI 2 - Stellan's POV might be a bit more mature in nature than Avery's was. So far nothing to warrant an "M" rating, but that may change down the line. If I get all the way to Ends of the World it definitely will.

FYI 3 - I speak exactly 0 foreign languages, so anything that should be in another language that Stellan understands will be underlined & italicized. The language will be in [] at the end of the statement

Chapter 1 - Recon (CoU 1-5)

I stared at the laptop screen, groaning inwardly at the number of files I needed to look through. Usually this sort of remedial security monitoring would fall to some random paper pusher or sidelined bodyguard, but no, Monsieur Dauphin had insisted that I handle it personally. Everyone was so paranoid at the moment, not that I blamed them. The violet eyed baby on the way would have been stress enough, but now with Malik Emir dead at the hands of the Order the only things anyone cared about were security and The Mandate.

Everyone trying to find proof that their family had The One just made it worse though. Every single family had been flying employees and family members everywhere Alexander the Great had ever been looking for evidence, and he had been pretty much everywhere.

My mind started to go numb as I sipped my espresso and scrolled through the documents. Flight plan after flight plan, passenger manifest after passenger manifest, it all started to run together. Except, wait... that was odd.

Why the hell would Jack Bishop be flying to Minnesota? Alexander the Great had definitely never been there, and the Saxons didn't have any connections in that region - no one had any connections in that region - it was Minnesota for fuck's sake. I did a quick CTRL+F of the logs, looking to see how long he'd stayed. It was probably nothing but it warranted putting in the report. But there was nothing, no return flight, no connecting flight, no other flights by the same plane from other locations.

Jack Bishop had been in Minnesota for almost a week. The Saxons had sent their Keeper to the middle of nowhere for a week, in the middle of all this Mandate shit!? That made absolutely no sense. I was going to have to tell Monsieur Dauphin - and knowing my luck they were going to send me to spy on his ass - just what I needed - a nine-hour flight to babysit my ex-best-friend in the middle of nowhere.

They didn't put me on a plane immediately, instead I had to figure out if there was any good reason for him to be there - and figure out where exactly he even was. It had taken some digging, mostly because I'd been looking for museums, or scholars, or descendants of collectors of Greek history, or literally anything other than Jack Bishop's name on a letter of transfer to a Lake Haven High School. Apparently that met the bar for suspicion, and within the hour I was on the plane to Minnesota.

When I finally pulled my rental car into a parking lot in Lake Haven I checked my phone, it was 2 PM - Jack would be in the middle of Ancient Civilizations class, like he needed that - so I took my time scoping out the town. Even taking my time I had scoped out the entire town in under an hour, and found absolutely nothing of interest. There had to be some reason Jack had been enrolled as a high school junior, he looked old enough that it wasn't necessary as a cover, so I figured I'd go by the school once it was out of session and take a look around.

I could've gone during classes, but I really didn't want to run into Jack if I didn't have to. Ideally, I'd be able to figure out the reason for this bizarre trip and return to Paris without ever having to say a word to the Saxon's Keeper. He'd know I was here, of course, someone in the Saxon's household would have called him the second they noticed my flight - and with Madame Dauphin's pregnancy all the families were watching the Dauphin's planes extra closely - hoping for any hint at who they'd appoint as The One when their baby girl was born. Besides, Jack being occupied with class meant that he wouldn't be wherever he'd been calling home for the past week.

There were a few hotels outside of town, but only one was a reasonable distance from the school, and given the Saxons hadn't made any suspicious real estate purchases recently I had to assume Jack was working from there. Luckily, that meant it wouldn't have the security that a normal family apartment would. A little bit of flirting with the receptionist was all it took to figure out Jack's room number, and breaking into an outdated hotel room was no problem.

I searched around the room. No laptop anywhere, he must've taken that with him to the school, so I was stuck looking at the stacks of paper on the hotel desk. Most of it was exactly what you'd expect to find on a high school junior's desk - homework, textbooks, extra school supplies. Whatever he was doing here, Jack was definitely trying to sell his cover in that regard.

Looking around I spotted a camera, a nice enough one with a long lens for zooming. Well, that must mean this was some sort of recon work? This little trip of Jack's was just getting stranger and stranger. I turned the camera on and started to click through the recent photos.

Every single photo was of the same girl. Sometimes alone, sometimes in a group, but every single photo had her in it. Well, now I knew what he was doing here - but I still had no idea why on Earth the Saxon family would be so focused on a seemingly random teenage girl in Minnesota, especially at a time like this. I eyed the pictures closely. The girl was pretty enough, wavy brown hair, dark eyes just a little bit too far apart, petite, very pale - but she wasn't doing anything interesting in any of the pictures. Mostly she was talking to friends, or just walking, nothing remotely suspicious.

I put the camera back and checked the room a little bit more, this time flipping through the notebooks on the desk. Tucked into one the notebooks was a print out of a high school schedule, just like the one I'd managed to find online of Jack's - except this one didn't say "Jack Bishop" across the top. Instead this was the schedule of "Avery West" so that must be the mystery girl from the camera. But the question still remained of why?

I spent the rest of the time until school let out in the central part of the town, sitting in some silly little frozen yogurt shop, trying to find anything I could about Avery West from my phone. I was able to find her driver's license, and found myself memorizing the information just in case, but other than that very little came up. The driver's license had been from out of state, which given she was only 16 probably meant she hadn't been here long, but either she didn't have an online presence, or she was one of the few that actually bothered with privacy settings.

Eventually I spotted a group of cheerleaders outside on the street, and realized that school must be finished for the day. So, I decided I should make my way there. I headed to cross the street, keeping a look out. If Jack was here I wanted to make sure I spotted him first, and I was also keeping an eye out for this Avery girl. If I could find her without Jack maybe I could figure out why she'd caught the Saxon's interest.

As I was crossing the street one of the cars lurched a bit, the light must've turned green, and I glanced over at the driver. When I saw her I stopped in my tracks. It was the girl from Jack's photos. There she was, right in front of me. I felt myself start to smile - this was just too easy. At first she'd seemed to be checking me out a bit, but as soon as I'd smiled she'd frozen, her face like a deer in headlights, while her hand reached out and clicked the lock button on her door. Good instincts, had to give her that.

I certainly didn't need the attention of trying to break into a moving vehicle at the moment - and if she was Jack's mission here then it was likely he wouldn't be far behind. So, I turned back to the crosswalk, and continued my walk to the high school. This was a small town, if she was that easy to find once, it's not like I'd have a hard time finding her again later.

I got to the school well after classes had ended, but before the building would get locked down. There were still cars in the parking lot, and students loitering on the grounds, a few kids even seemed to be running around a track to the side of the building. Two kids noticed me and whispered to each other, but no one approached me, so I just wandered up to a side door and let myself in.

I had never gone to a public high school, and I imagined they looked at least a little different in Paris anyway, but this place seemed to be straight out of some crappy American sitcom from the 90's. Definitely nothing special here.

I found the office records for lockers, and let myself into both Jack's and Avery's. Jack's locker had nothing more than a few textbooks, and Avery's locker looked pretty much the same as I'd expect from a teenage girl. There were a few pictures cut out from magazines, some notebooks, hair ties, textbooks, a little magnetized mirror on the inside of the door, absolutely nothing there that would explain why the Saxons were interested in her.

In fact, the only useful thing I'd found in the entire school were the posters everywhere for tonight's Junior Prom. Now that Jack knew I was in town I'd need to work fast - and given that both he and Avery were enrolled as Juniors, well, it looked like I was going to prom.

I'd texted the Dauphins to fill them in and headed to a hotel further from town than Jack's. The prom wasn't until later tonight, and I'd need to change into at least a suit to avoid sticking out too much. I'd still stick out, half a day just wandering this town had made that clear, but hopefully not enough to draw the attention of teachers or administrators or anyone who might make my job, whatever that ended up being, harder.

By the time I'd gotten to my room and pulled out a gray suit jacket from my bag I heard the ding of my phone. It would be around midnight Paris time, but the number I'd texted was always monitored, so I knew before opening it up that these would be my orders for the night.

Bring the girl back with you, we can find out who she is then. [French]

Not a surprising result, but I'd really hoped for something else. The Dauphins would want me back in Paris before the baby shower, and they had to assume anyone the Saxons were using a Keeper to spy on for a week straight was at least tangentially related to The Mandate, which meant the easiest thing to do was get her to Paris and let someone there interrogate it out of her. That I was fine with, the part I didn't like was the fact I was probably going to have to kidnap her.

Worse still, I had no idea what her skill set was, no idea if she could defend herself, or how quickly her absence would be noticed, nothing. I spent the next two hours scouring the internet for more information. I'd pulled up a dummy Facebook profile and started adding Lake Haven High students. One hour in and I was pretty sure half of the junior class had added "Cindy Johnson" to their friend's list.

Eventually I found Lara Sanchez's page, and saw that one of her more recent pictures was a selfie with her and Avery West. I clicked on the tagged profile, but about half of the page was blank still. There was no way of knowing if she had privacy settings limited, or just hadn't bothered filling out her information, but I sent a friend request just in case, not optimistic about hearing back before the prom.

From what I could see she had friends from high schools all across the country, but didn't seem to interact with any of them, at least online, much at all. She might be an army brat, or it was a fake account like the one I was on, or a million other possibilities. Unfortunately, it was pretty clear I wasn't going to find anything more to go off of tonight.

Checking my phone again I realized the dance would already have started, and I should probably leave now to arrive fashionably late. I slipped on my suit jacket and tie, tossed the rest of my bag in the trunk of the black sports car I'd rented, and headed towards the school.