He resembles every photo Bonnie had ever shown him and every story she had gushed over.

The boy approaches the three of them, his furrowed brow and demeanor revealing a solemnity far beyond his eight years. Narrowing his intense green eyes at Damon, he straightens his scrawny shoulders in his fitted navy blue pea coat and ironed jeans, holding a tattered Mr. Cuddles firmly under the pit of his arm.

And Damon smiles to himself thinking of the care and consideration he had taken in following Bonnie's orders in painting and decorating a room in their villa with plastic superheroes and ceiling painted constellations in preparation for his eventual stay and how ridiculous this young man would look in that room now.

The other blonde prattles off an introduction, Damon hears her say the name Freya and that Elijah and Kol were waiting back at the hotel. She offers Damon a tense smile and then places a hand on the boy's back, a loving gesture that Damon notices doesn't relax the spine of the boy, but only seems to make him stand taller.

She then runs a loving hand through his coarse sandy blonde curls and says, "Damon, this is Gabriel."

DBDBDBDBDB

"How do you feel about the name Taylor?

"Nope, absolutely not." He said caressing Bonnie's head in his lap, her brassy curls splayed over his legs, "No Taylor or Tristan or Blake. I hate guy names on girls."

"Excuse Damon, but what exactly makes a name a guy's name?"

He rolled his eyes and playfully placed his hand over his wife's open mouth all revved up to give him another lecture on misogyny when they were interrupted from enjoying the Tuscan sunset on his birthday by the unexpected footfall of a visitor at the front door.

He told Bonnie to stay behind while he responded to the knock only he could hear from their picnic out in the orchard behind the villa.

It was the vampire from the lodge. Marcel. He was dressed in a grey summer suit and smiling with a paper-wrapped box in his hands.

"I picked this up in town, I didn't want to come empty handed since learning a Congratulations was in order," He said, clamping his hand around Damon's forearm.

It was a cloying insincere gesture especially since he didn't know for which the vampire was congratulating, their nuptials or the pregnancy, and particularly because either were not knowledge to anyone but the priest and their housekeeper and two vampires residing in Mystic Falls.

'Damon?" Bonnie called out to him as she entered the living area from the sliding doors of the back patio, "Who is it."

"A friend of yours."

DBDBDBDBDB

Damon paced the length of the living area; uncharacteristically quiet as he looked on at his wife, perched stately on the sofa, still wearing the flower crown, the white petals still fresh and refusing to wilt in her hair. She rubbed her protruding belly in circles as she listened to Marcel explain his reason for a visit.

"When were you going to tell him?"

The present, wrapped in robins egg blue paper sat squarely in the middle of the coffee table between the vampire and the witch, and Damon poured himself a tumbler of bourbon letting his mind wonder to what could it be.

An engraved picture frame?

A silver rattle?

"You came all this way to ask me that, Marcel," She said genuinely smiling at the henchman, " We both know he wouldn't have been very agreeable if I would have dropped this news in a text or a letter, I had plans on telling him when I see him in two a half weeks. I'm supposed to meet them in Lisbon to bring Gabriel back here for the next three months. But you already know all of that, so why are you here, Marcel?"

The vampire cleared his throat and then there was a pause. Damon heard it and Bonnie responded to it, he could see her lean a bit more forward from the couch.

"He doesn't feel comfortable with Gabriel being away from him and he-"

Bonnie interrupted him by hurling one of the throw pillows at his head, "You've got to be fucking kidding me, Marcel. He can't keep me away from my son!"

Marcel held up his hands in defense of more throw pillows, and yelled out, "Let me finish, Bonnie! He's not trying to keep you away from Gabriel. But the dire reality is you keeping secrets are the reason the cloaking spell failed in Venice. Three of the coven witches killed our decoy, they thought it was him standing on the balcony and it collapsed into the water and then they set the building on fire with the false intel that there was a young boy alone in the house.

Damon eyes his wife, expecting her to gaze into his, expecting her to reach for him in this moment when she heard that her failure of keeping up the a spell allowed the Coven an opportunity to kill her son, but she doesn't even blink in his direction.

But he observes the emerald of her eyes turn as dark as moss.

"As you can see, I'm pregnant. The baby must be taking up more of my magic than I had anticipated." She frowned. " And there is no way in hell he's going to just give him to me now."

"You know him as well as I do."

"Do I?" She posed, "Well look, the exertion of cloaking spells is too much for me to keep up with in multiple locations around the world even if I weren't pregnant, but I am, and I need Gabriel here with me, with me he will be completely protected because I can focus all of my energy on him, and you can tell your boss he can keep up the façade that we are on the run by traipsing around the world with his decoys to throw the coven off. "

"This is not just about Gabriel, Bonnie. After what transpired in Venice, he is deeply concerned about your wellbeing and is troubled that you are in this town without his protection."

She snorted and began to pull the flower buds from her hair, "Be sure to remind him that it was me that protected him and his wretched family before he decided to engage himself and then kill a Garden Coven witch, so I don't need protection, but if I did I have someone," She said waving her wedding ring on her hand, "Damon is with me."

Marcel looked over Damon and Damon held up his glass and drunkenly wagged his brows.

"I think you should consider seeing your son when you are no longer in a compromising condition, " Marcel said to Bonnie, "Showing up in Lisbon like this will only upset the harmony and give the coven leverage.

"No, "Bonnie said shaking her head, " I haven't seen my baby since February, before this, I had never even slept a night away from him and I'm not gonna go more than the two weeks of not seeing him."

"He's not going to like this."

"I don't care what Klaus likes."

Marcel nodded and stood abruptly. He placed a firm hand on the present and pushed it to the edge of the table in Bonnie's direction, "Your cloaking spell doesn't work here either," He stated as a matter of fact buttoning his suit jacket, "I found her conjuring in a hotel near the town square."

After Marcel had left and Bonnie retired to take a long bath Damon had finally opened the beautifully wrapped gift and saw the leathery severed tongue of a Garden Coven witch.

Author's Note

Thank you for sticking with me on this story.