A/N: It's Thanksgiving break here in the states, and I just finished with finals' week. It sucked. It sucked so much, you guys. Four AP classes is no piece of cake.

You guys. O.M.G. Your reviews last chapter ... I spazzed so. Many. Times. You made me so freaking happy. 118 reviews. 118! Holy moly guacamole. And not only that, but 199 favorites, and 268 follows! Omigawwwwwwrrrdddddd. The response to this story has been spectacular. Spectacular, I say! I'm so glad that you guys liked the last chapter! I was feeling insecure about it, but you guys washed my fears away.

Now, this story has had a few continuity errors/plot holes. In chapter 1, I made the mistake of forgetting that there was a full moon, and I made the even bigger mistake of forgetting that werewolves in the human form could not bite vampires. I'd like to issue a special thanks to time-twlight for PM'ing me and pointing that out. Seriously, what a bro. Also, if you're a female, I apologize, I live on the American West Coast where literally everyone is known as "dude" or "bro."

Anyway, I digress. I tweaked a couple things in chapter 1 (like playing up the shock that Grace bit Stefan, lol), but this actually allowed me to combine a few plot ideas I had, as I was struggling for inspiration. So this is a good thing! This chapter reveals said plot point about Grace not being a normal werewolf.

Also, the cool Mikaelson ball thing will happen, just not quite yet.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything but Grace, and I certainly don't own The Scarlet Letter.

Chapter 11: Liar, Liar, Hybrid on Fire

Green fields and old brown fence posts blurred past in a smear of earth as we sped along the road. The sun beat on us from above in its relentless rays, not a cloud in the sky, and sweat trickled down my back and slicked my brow. The engine roared like an angry lion, threatening to burst my ears open.

I clutched onto the man's waist, my arms wrapped as far around his middle as they would reach. His leather jacket smelled musky, with a faint tang of blood that must've never come out in the wash. That, or he was drinking still. I wondered if he was off the good stuff yet. Human blood.

Only the changing state signs gave me any notice to how far we'd traveled. We'd long-since left Mystic Falls, and had cut into the border of Kentucky by two in the afternoon, making record time. We were pulled over twice, but each time the man compelled the cops easily away, and we kept up our pace of thirty odd miles over the speed limit.

Worry had long since rooted itself deep into my belly, but I fought to stuff it down. This had to happen. There was no other way. I had to find out what was wrong with me once and for all. Klaus should've said something long ago, and he didn't. Nobody did. They were all liars.

It was up to me to discover the truth.

"You okay back there, kid?" the man said loudly, raising his voice over the ear-splitting engine of the motorcycle. He glanced back at me for a brief moment, his green eyes keen and perceptive.

Leaning my helmet-protected head against his back, I kept my gaze glued to the seemingly endless sea of pastures. It was beautiful, but somehow, I wasn't really seeing it. "Yeah, I'm okay." At least I would be, until Klaus found out where I was headed, and who I was with.

Then I was dead.


Five Hours Before

"Now, tell me, little one. Why is Hester Prynne made to stand in front of the townsfolk and wear the scarlet letter?"

I squinted my eyes at the old, yellowed page. "I dunno. She stole something?"

Elijah, to his credit, remained endlessly patient. "There is no evidence in the text to support that theory. Read more carefully."

Suppressing a woeful sigh, I reread the passages, fighting off an enormous yawn. Reading was one of my favorite hobbies, but I wasn't so sure about this book. Harry Potter was a whole lot more fun. Who in their right mind would name their kid Hester, anyhow? Nobody. Nobody.

Caroline had slipped out of the house early the next morning, and I was bone tired. Unfortunately, Elijah picked this morning to decide that Klaus's way of educating me was "unsuitable" and found a classic for me to read and use "critical thinking skills." It was hard enough to stay awake while reading it, but to think hard about it too? Ugh.

Whatever this Hester lady did, the crime seemed serious. "She killed someone?" I suggested hopefully, but Elijah shook his head again.

"No. She is holding an infant." An infant? What infant? I hurriedly scanned the page once more. Oh. That infant. I should've caught that the first time around, but it was just so boring. "Why is that significant?"

I drummed my fingers against the leather couch of the study that Finn and I had conspired in only the night before. It was a little distracting to remember, honestly. I promised him I wouldn't say anything, but Esther was acting awful - awfully, dammit Elijah - weird at breakfast. If Finn wasn't on her side, though, then she wouldn't do anything - or so Finn seemed to believe. I wasn't so sure, though. From what I'd heard of her, she was powerful. Maybe she didn't need Finn's help at all.

Still, I decided to give Finn the benefit of the doubt. The second Esther acted too suspicious for my liking, though, I was heading straight for Klaus - no ands, ifs, or buts. The only thing that was stopping me now was Finn, and a battle of conflicting morals warred inside of me. I promised Finn to keep it secret, but what if it was life or death? Then didn't that make the promise useless? But who was I to decide if it was life or death? Finn didn't think so, and he was a lot older and wiser than me. But then again, he'd been in a coffin for nine hundred years, so maybe his mind was all muddled. How was I supposed to know what was right or wrong?

Needless to say, I was stressed out beyond belief, and my eight-year-old shoulders felt weighed down by all the pressure. My back threatened to break into two. All I wanted to do was tell someone - Klaus, Bekah, Elijah - but I couldn't. I promised him. I promised.

"Grace." I jumped in my seat. Oh, right, I was supposed to be reading The Scarlet Letter. "Think."

I shrugged, not into it at all. I felt like screaming in his face that I had better things to be worrying over, but I had an inkling that wouldn't blow over well with him. "I dunno. She killed the baby's parents?"

Elijah pulled a strange face, as if he was struggling to understand how I came to that conclusion. ". . . No. The text is implying that she is without a husband. Why is that important?"

A light bulb shone bright over my head. "She murdered her husband and tried to steal their baby but they caught her. C'mon. That's gotta be it." Elijah's peculiar expression only deepened. Was he judging me? It looked a helluva lot like he was judging me. I didn't like it when people judged me. Not one damn bit.

He cleared his throat. "Your suggestions are unnecessarily morbid." Oh, so that's why he was looking at me all funny. He thought I was too dark for a kid my age. Well, he wouldn't be the first or the last person to think that. "Hester had a baby out of wedlock, and she is being put on trial in front of the town because of that. The A on her chest stands for adultery."

Huh. Whatever. I liked my explanation better. It would be more interesting to read, I thought. "So?" I asked, dubious about his analysis. "Who cares? Why's she on trial for that?"

"This took place in the early seventeenth century. It was a very different time, then. In this area, Puritans were in control and had extremely strict guidelines for civil conduct."

"That's dumb. She didn't do anything that bad. It's not like she murdered the baby's parents or whatever or hurt the baby. Unless she does kill the baby. That would be bad."

Elijah set the book aside, and I could hear the gears turning in his brain. He wanted to ask me something, and didn't know how to put it. "Grace, why do you jump to such violent conclusions before anything else? It's a little . . . disconcerting at such a young age."

I blinked at him. What was he trying to say? Was he insulting me? He better not have been insulting me. "What does discn - disconer - disconcer -" Frustrated, I wrung my fingers together. "What does that mean?"

"It means unsettling." Oh. That one I knew. "Little one . . ." I could tell he was speaking very, very carefully, and I braced myself for the worst. "How much violence have you been exposed to in your stay here?"

What the hell kind of question was that? They were all thousand-year old homicidal maniacs. Did he think I'd been living in the Sesame Street this entire time? How much violence had I been exposed to?

What had happened to me over the course of a month and a half? What had I seen, heard?

Klaus killed people in front of me left and right. All those botched hybrids. He killed my daddy for the first time on that pool table. Snapped his neck. Stefan tortured my daddy with wolfsbane darts, and killed him for the second and last time, carrying his dead body back into camp. Rebekah drained that poor, innocent man in the warehouse, and snapped Caroline's neck at the high school. When we left Mystic Falls after securing Elena's blood, Klaus spanked me and scared me. He killed some more werewolves to make more hybrids across the country. Back in Mystic Falls, Mikael stabbed me in the back, and I almost bled out. Klaus hit me across the face and made me bleed after I tried to stake him. Stefan murdered Mindy the hybrid. I still remembered the sound of her head thumping from upstairs as he lopped it off her shoulders. Tyler bit Caroline. I heard her scream. Elijah himself, who was the only one bothering to ask the question, removed Daniel's heart, and flipped me onto a table, choking me. Kol threw me into a wall, and choked me too. Kol drove his car into a tree, and I smashed my head into the window. I had to rinse the blood out of my hair like it was normal. Because it was normal to me.

Well, yeah, there was all that. "A little," I said shortly.

He obviously didn't believe me. Which was sort of good, because if he did, then he'd be a goddamn idiot and I didn't like spending my time with goddamn idiots. "How is it affecting you?" he asked, all concerned-like.

How was I supposed to know? I didn't even include all the stuff before I met Klaus, like when my uncle tried to hurt me, I killed him, and my own mama tried to murder me. That had to count for something.

His question shifted everything into a strange perspective for me. I had never really before considered how much I had genuinely seen and how much I had been exposed to compared to most other people. It was confronting. I didn't like it. It made me feel . . . wrong.

Why did I have to go through so much crap? Was I a bad person or something? Is that why my mama didn't love me? Was it me all along? It made my heart ache. Was I just unloveable?

I didn't know, but I sure hoped not. My only friends were vampires or hybrids, in Klaus's case, who had all murdered at least somebody at some point in time. They cared about me - Klaus, Rebekah, Caroline, Elijah, Finn, even Kol - but they were all creatures of death and destruction, even if they acted against their nature, like Caroline or Finn.

I wondered all along how this was my life, how I attracted people like that. How only murderers loved me. Maybe it wasn't them. Maybe it was me. Maybe the world wanted me to be violent and twisted and malevolent, like Klaus. He promised to turn me into a hybrid in ten years time, and I knew what that meant. I'd be immortal. Strong - stronger than a normal vampire. Bloodthirsty.

Maybe I was meant for it all along. And I hated myself for it.

"I dunno," I mumbled, which was the truth. I didn't know, but more importantly, I didn't want to know. "Can I go now?"

Elijah exhaled hard through his nose. "No. Answer me, please."

A strange, tight feeling swelled up in my chest. My heart felt contracted and squeezed from all sides. The walls seemed closer than before, and threatened to close in. My knees bounced up and down of their own accord. My skin itched. "I wanna leave."

His steady, dark-eyed gaze sharpened. He folded his hands together and placed them on the surface of the desk. Clearly, he was done with any and all nonsense, but then again, so was I. "You will stay here and answer the question."

My hands were trembling. It felt like ants were crawling beneath my skin. Something was brewing deep in my belly, coiling, waiting to explode. No, wanting to explode. It was begging Elijah to continue, begging him to set me off. Begging to unleash itself in all its wrath.

My fingernails dug into the bed of my palms, and I jumped to my feet, making a determined path towards the closed study door. Downstairs, I heard the low murmur of voices, and it sounded an awful lot like Klaus and Bekah were debating quietly whether or not to should join in the fray or to let Elijah "handle me." I growled inwardly. Whatever, if they weren't gonna take my side, then I didn't want them to butt in.

"Grace," Elijah said warningly, up from his chair in an instant. He was intimidating, to say the least. "Sit back down." Ignoring him, I reached for the door handle. Whatever patience he had left then disappeared into thin air, and he raised his voice. "Grace Sutton, open that door and you will regret it."

He was serious. Dead serious. What would he do if I opened the door? Would he hit me like Klaus did? He didn't seem like that kind of man, but then again, he didn't seem like a murderer either and he ripped out a heart in front of me.

Klaus and Rebekah were stirring downstairs again, and it sounded as if they were heading towards the staircase, but before they even reached the first step, I paused in my movements, chancing a peek behind me, and everything about Elijah - his tone, his posture, his expression - softened. "You can talk to me, little one. I am here to listen."

I didn't know what went through me, then. Honestly, I didn't. Maybe it was my forced self-reflection, or over a month's worth of stress and heartache and trauma, including - especially - my talk with Caroline and my horrible nightmare the night before along with Esther's betrayal with the secret that I now had to keep, that spilled over at Elijah's prompting. Maybe, just maybe, I'd been dangling over the edge the entire time, and all it took was a little push from Elijah to send me right over.

I snapped.

"What do you want me to say?" I shouted, every painful emotion rooted inside of me ripping itself out. It didn't matter to me that the house was chock full of Originals who could all overhear me, two of whom were now darting up the staircase. I was done.

Elijah's eyes widened at the strength of my reaction. Evidently, that wasn't what he'd been expecting. Unfazed, I raged on, "That I'm fine with all of the crap I've been through? 'Cause I'm not! I'm not, I'm not, I'm not! I'm eight years old and my daddy's dead and my mama left me and y'all keep killing people all the damn time! Your crazy-ass father almost killed me but nobody ever talks about that and everything's happening all at once and everyone kills everyone and I don't even like The Scarlet Letter -"

The study door burst open, and Klaus and Bekah stood in the doorway, both looking more than a little startled at my outburst. "Gracie -" Bekah began.

"Go away!" I screeched, but I deflated when I observed the hurt flicker across Bekah's face. "Leave me alone," I said, quieter this time. Hot, salty tears welled up in my eyes. "Just leave me alone."

Klaus moved forward and kneeled in front of me. I tried to jerk away, but he clamped his hands onto my shoulders, and locked me in place. "Hey," he said softly, refusing to budge as I continued to try and pull away from him. "Hey," he repeated, a little firmer the second time around. "Enough with this."

The tears that had been brewing in my eyes spilled over the brim, streaming down my cheeks. Klaus's face softened, and he murmured, "Hey," again, brushing some of the relentless moisture from my face. "What's wrong, sweetheart? One second you were fine, and then -" He flourished a hand up and down my shaking form.

"I'm not fine," I managed to ground out through gritted teeth and hitched breaths. "I was never fine."

"What are you talking about?" Bekah asked, crouching down next to Klaus, taking one of my hands in hers and caressing the back of it. Her bright blue eyes were filled with concern. "You were all smiles and laughter in the last number of days." Her expression and voice overshadowed with even more hurt. "Were you not? Were you pretending, for our sake?"

"No," I mumbled, and both she and Klaus loosened slightly in relief.

"You're Klaus's little girl," she said kindly, and I stiffened, but she didn't notice. "My new niece. You're family now. We all want you to be happy."

I stood there, in the middle of the room, tears still rolling down my cheeks, with Klaus grasping onto my shoulders and Bekah onto my hand and Elijah hovering not far behind me . . . and I felt more vulnerable and alone than ever. If I had known what would've happened once I spoke my true feelings, then I wouldn't have said anything at all. I would have continued to lie to Elijah's stupid questions and continued to read the stupid book and continued to pretend that I was normal and whole and not hurting.

I should've known that nobody really wanted to know what I was going through. Rebekah called me Klaus's little girl. As if my daddy had never existed. As if he'd never died by Stefan's hands and Klaus's experiment. As if Klaus had adopted me into his family with nothing but good graces, when he orphaned me in the first place.

As if I didn't miss my daddy to the moon and back. As if my heart hadn't been and still was in pieces after his death.

"You don't understand," I whispered, pulling away from the both of them, defeated. "None of you understand. Just leave me alone."

Before either of them could absorb the unintentional blow I'd just dealt them, Kol appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame with raised eyebrows. Finn stood behind him, sympathy etched into his stance. "Finally, she's stopped with all the screaming," Kol said lightly, his obvious amusement at my breakdown only serving to annoy me. "But still, she keeps up with the dramatics."

"Kol, leave the child alone," Finn warned, but Kol continued on as if he hadn't spoken.

"You're all dealing with this terribly wrong," he sighed, as if he were being personally inconvenienced, and more anger stirred its ugly head inside me. "She just threw a tantrum, shouted at all three of you, and now you're pandering to her will. It's child psychology 1-0-1. Honestly, you lot, grow a pair."

"Oh, shut it, brother," Bekah snapped, standing up with Klaus and crossing her arms. "You have no idea what you're talking about."

"Don't I?" A low growl rumbled in my chest. Humor twinkled in Kol's chocolate brown eyes; he wasn't taking me seriously at all. He would regret that. "See? She's being disrespectful to her elder right now, and you won't do anything about it. What you need to do is not to give her want she wants." A smile touched his lips; whatever he was planning on saying next, he clearly found it funny. "What she needs is a good, old-fashioned span-"

"Enough!" Klaus interrupted him right in time, and Bekah looked like she was about to slap him upside the head, while Finn glared at him. Elijah sighed, long and deep, and I couldn't help but wonder if he agreed with Kol. Traitor, I thought aggressively.

"Rebekah's right," Finn told him, stepping into the room, half-blocking him from my sight - or vice versa. "You haven't the faintest clue of what you speak of."

Kol's smirk never left his face, and a haze of red started to bleed across my field of vision. My lips curled back into a snarl, and heat rose behind my eyes, assuredly flickering gold. "Grace, enough," Klaus commanded, asserting his alpha dominance over me and cutting off my rebellion cold.

But then Kol misstepped. He didn't mean to. Not really. At least, I didn't think so. He didn't anticipate the domino effect that was bound to happen. He only said it to jab at me. Rile me up. He probably didn't even mean for it to resonate more than a couple seconds before I insulted him back. And maybe it wouldn't have been such a big deal if I wasn't already at my limit. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered so much if I wasn't hurting so bad to begin with.

But he said it, and the world - the truth I created for myself - came crashing down around me.

"What are you going to do, pipsqueak? Are you going to attempt to bite me again? You won't catch me so off guard this time. Yes, I was unprepared before because werewolves in their human forms can't bite vampires willy nilly, but you're a special little mutt, aren't you?"

There was silence then, as my mind went blank. That didn't make sense. Not at all. Werewolves could bite vampires. It was nature's advantage against a stronger, faster species. Daddy had said so. Paige's pack told me the same thing. Klaus hadn't told me otherwise and he witnessed me bite Stefan, Elijah, and Kol. There was nothing wrong with me. I was normal. All werewolves could do it . . . right?

Was there something wrong with me?

Klaus was the first one to break the silence as I stood there, struck dumb. "You blithering idiot!" His ire surprised even me as his eyes flashed amber. "You have no idea what you've just done!"

"You're a fool, brother," Finn condemned as Bekah called him a "moronic wanker," whatever that was.

It sounded as if I was underwater and they shouted at him above the surface; it was distorted and muted and surreal. As I grappled with denial and disbelief and dawning horror, I could almost hear the world burn around me.

"Leave, Kol," Elijah ordered, hard and unyielding as stone. "Before you make this worse than it already is."

Kol's smile disappeared, and an intense scowl replaced it. Clearly, he did not predict such a disastrous reaction to his throwaway remark. "You've chosen the stray over your own brother, have you? You've all known her for either a matter of weeks or days, and you choose her over me." His once glimmering brown eyes blazed wildfire. "Gee, when has that happened before?" He tapped a finger against his chin, as if pretending to mull it over.

"Mention his name and you'll find a dagger in your heart!" Klaus bellowed, frightening me to the core and causing me to duck away from him. Ragged breaths tore through him; he was a far cry from the calm and stable man who tried to comfort me not minutes before. That was fatherly, caring Klaus. This was normal Klaus.

The boy. It had to be that boy. The boy who Klaus adopted before me, around two hundred years ago. Elijah briefly mentioned him before. But why was Klaus so upset? Maybe he was dead, and Klaus wasn't over it yet. But if he died, then what was going to happen to me? Was I going to be killed one day too?

I shook my head of those thoughts. That didn't matter right now. What mattered was that they were all hiding something from me. Something big. And it had to do with werewolves.

"It's not my fault you all collectively chose to lie to her," Kol replied after a moment, but it was a weak response, with no real fervor behind it. Even he realized he crossed a line.

"We're trying to protect her from the truth," Bekah hissed as if I wasn't standing right there.

"Oh, please." Kol snorted, tossing his head back in contempt. "You don't even know what the truth is."

They all started yelling at each other then. Bekah screeched at her brother, cheeks coloring red, Klaus blurred forward and pinned him to a wall as he shouted in his face, Finn called them all barbarians, and Elijah tried his best to calm everyone down while also attempting to raise his voice above everyone else's to make himself heard, only contributing to the jumbled roar of arguing.

How could one morning have gone so wrong? But it wasn't just this morning, was it? No, it was everything that had built up into a mountain of trauma and fear and confusion. I had been a lone mine in a field waiting - wanting - to explode, and all Elijah did was step in the wrong place.

It was because of me. I started this, just because I didn't want to read that goddamn book. So, it was my job to end it.

A strangled shout erupted from my throat. "STOP IT!" All eyes were drawn to me as I jumped onto the couch cushions, teeth bared, nostrils flared, fists balled. "Just . . . stop it. Stop pretending I'm not even here," I continued angrily, glaring at each of them one by one. "What're you all lying to me about?"

"Grace -" Elijah began in his best patronizing adult voice.

"No, Elijah!" I interrupted, and he sighed again. "I want answers and I want them now. This is about me, so y'all better 'fess up."

They all exchanged secretive glances, even Kol. My fingers twitched; I was tempted to punch a hole in the wall or better, through one of their heads. "Grace, sit down," Klaus said, tugging me down by the hands to lower me down to a sitting position on the cushions. Shooting one last menacing glower over his shoulder at Kol, who rubbed his neck ruefully, Klaus kneeled in front of me and grasped me by the knees. "Sweetheart, do you remember that day at the Southern Comfort when you first told me you were a werewolf?"

I knew exactly what conversation he was talking about, and I decided to hold it against him. "Duh. That's the day you and Stefan killed my daddy. 'Course I remember."

Klaus drew in a deep breath. ". . . Right. Do you remember how surprised I was when you told me, and when you bit Stefan?"

I thought back to that fateful day, and remembered the shock that flitted across his handsome features as I told him I was an activated werewolf, and when I bit Stefan on the wrist. I brushed it off, since most other werewolves were surprised at my existence. I assumed it was because the transformations were so painful. "Yeah."

His next words hit me like a sledgehammer. "That's because child werewolves aren't simply rare, they're nonexistent."

My eyes flickered from him to the rest of them, everyone peering down at me with some mixture of sympathy - even Kol, who seemed to all but hate me not minutes before. "T-That doesn't make any sense."

And it didn't. Because Paige's pack and Klaus's hybrids were awfully taken aback to meet me, but they didn't say anything about kid werewolves being nonexistent. Somebody would've told me. Right?

Unless they all lied to me. Every single one of them. Even Daddy.

Bekah moved to sit beside me on the couch, taking one of my hands between both of hers. "Gracie, child werewolves don't survive past the first transitions. Sometimes they live through the first two, but they never make it past the third. Their bodies give out, and they die."

Something tickled at the back of my mind. A memory. A muddled, hidden memory that I hadn't realized was there until now. A flickering memory of being sick - really sick - after I first turned. A distant memory of sleeping in the back of Daddy's old Suburban with a blanket tucked to my chin as I shivered uncontrollably. A confused, weak memory of Daddy taking me to strangers with candles and weird-smelling plants, who spoke in a different language as they hovered over me.

It hurt. It burned. Whatever they did to me, I remembered screaming, begging for Daddy to make them stop, stop, stop . . . He stood near me, holding my hand, tears swimming in the ocean-blue eyes he passed down to me, telling me to be brave, to be strong . . .

Strong. Strong, strong, strong. I always thought I was strong, since the beginning. Strong enough to make it through the transitions and stay alive and healthy. That's what Daddy told me. But a nagging thought plucked at the far boundaries of my mind: maybe I wasn't.

My mind was playing tricks on me, combining and suppressing and picking at memories. Daddy told me I was strong, didn't he? He did, I remembered he did. I was in the car with him when he told me how strong I was for surviving the transitions - no, no, I was in our old living room. No, wait, I was in the Southern Comfort, across from him in a booth . . . Did he ever tell me I was strong? Or did he tell me to be strong? Was I forgetting something? Something important?

Maybe I was never strong enough to survive. Maybe I had . . . help.

"Then how am I alive?" I croaked, even as my mind - without my permission - began to stitch together an answer as it searched through my most-buried memories.

Klaus circled his fingers around my denim-clothed knees, which I recognized as a nervous tic. He was anxious. "We don't quite know, sweetheart. But we haven't quite wanted to look the gift horse in the mouth. The bliss of ignorance, if you will. That's not to say I haven't researched it, because I have - but I haven't found suitable answers, and you're alive and well, so . . ."

So he dropped it. He didn't want to unearth any information that could unsettle his perception of me. Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. It meant that he loved me, and he would rather dwell in denial than find a good explanation for why I was different.

But he lied to me the entire time he knew me. He promised not to lie to me anymore, but he had been the whole damn time.

"I started looking it into it after you bit Kol and me," Elijah spoke up, startling me - I almost forgot he was there. "You are something of a miracle, Grace. Not only do child werewolves die somewhere between the first and third transitions, but werewolves cannot bite vampires in their human forms."

My mind went blank again as his words echoed harshly in my ears. Werewolves cannot bite vampires in their human forms. Werewolves cannot bite vampires in their human forms. Werewolves cannot bite vampires in their human forms. "Yeah, they can," I protested, but my voice was meek and shaky. "Daddy bit Stefan!" I looked to Klaus for desperate confirmation.

His confirmation wasn't what I wanted. "After he turned into a hybrid."

No, no, but - "Paige and her pack told me werewolves could do that. Even in human form, they told me."

Kol piped up from his place still leaning against the doorway, "And have you ever seen them do so in person?"

No . . . No, I hadn't. But why would they lie to me? Another horrible, twisted thought scraped at the edges of my skull. Because Daddy told them to.

No, no, no! I began to frantically grasp at straws, and turned back to Klaus. "Daddy told me that werewolves could bite vampires at any time. He said it was our way of balancing nature. He told me that, he told me!"

Klaus's face slackened with pity. "Your father lied to you."

Your father lied to you. Your father lied to you. Your father lied to you. Your father lied to you. Your father lied to you.

Daddy lied. No, everybody lied to me. Everyone I ever trusted or loved lied to me about who - or what - I was. Ice swirled inside of my chest, and my heart froze over. I couldn't trust anybody. There was something wrong with me, and nobody told me.

Mama was right all along. I was a freak.

"You're a liar," I whispered, pulling my knees into my chest, out of Klaus's hold, and ripping my hand from Rebekah's clutches. "You all are."

There was a long, charged beat of silence that followed, until Klaus pierced it. "Gracie, sweetheart -" His eyes were soft and pleading and loving, but it meant nothing to me anymore. Nothing meant anything anymore. Everything was a lie. Nothing was real.

As my heart slowly wrenched itself into two, I gave myself up to the fury that had been brewing underneath my skin for so long. "You're a liar!" Klaus rolled back onto his haunches, lips parting, but I didn't give him a chance to speak. "You're nothing but a liar! All you do is lie, lie, LIE!"

"Gracie -" Rebekah reached for me, but I jerked away, and her hand lowered limply to her side. "Little love, he hasn't lied to you before this. Surely you can forgive him for this."

The same thought occurred to Klaus and me at the exact same time. Everything about him begged me to stay quiet, to keep the peace. But I was too far gone, too lost in my rage to even consider the consequences of outing him to his siblings.

And so I said it, and at first, I didn't regret it. "He's lied to me before," I said softly, reveling in the dismay that overtook Klaus as he realized where I was headed with this. "He lied to me when he said he wouldn't hit me again, but he did. The first time when we left Mystic Falls, and the second time only a couple days before you all woke up." I turned to Bekah, whose wide eyes were shining with horror and despair. "You were wondering why there was blood on my pillow. It was because of Klaus."

The silence that trailed my accusation made the earlier one pale pathetically in comparison. Klaus's head lowered in defeat as his siblings absorbed what I announced, each one of them taking on an expression of anger or disgust or anything in between.

And then, unable to help myself, I drove the final nail into the coffin. "You might've chosen me, Klaus, but that doesn't mean I chose you."

He bowed forward slightly, almost winded; he looked as if I stabbed him in the heart, and that was when I felt the first twinge of regret. Entirely overwhelmed, I jumped from the couch and used every bit of my werewolf speed to blur from the room.

My heart sank into my stomach as the inferno of an argument sparked in the study once again. "How dare you?" Bekah shrieked, and a slapping sound echoed into the hallway - she must've smacked him across the face. Hard. An onslaught of tears swirled in my eyes, and my hand flew to my mouth. "She's a little girl - your little girl - and you dare lay a hand on her?"

"You don't know the circumstances," he snarled back as I leaned against the wall, squeezing my eyes shut and pressing my palms against my ears, but to no avail.

"You're irredeemable, Niklaus," Finn told him viciously. Quiet sobs racked my body as I slid down the wall, burying my face into my folded arms. This was all my fault. Why did I say that? Why did I ruin everything? My fault, my fault, my fault.

"This is solving nothing, Grace is listening -" Elijah tried, but he was cut off.

Kol, once again, stepped over the line. No, he drove about a goddamn mile past it, and then flipped it the bird in his rearview mirror. "Mikael would be proud, brother. Daddy's little bastard living up to his fake father's memory." My heart shattered into pieces. No, Klaus wasn't Mikael. He wasn't. That was the worse thing Kol could've said to him.

I never should've said anything.

There was a cracking noise, where it sounded like Klaus struck Kol in the nose. Kol punched back, and a brawl ensued. All the blood drained from my face, and my legs carried me of my own accord down the hallway and into my bedroom. I sucked in bitter sobs through my clenched teeth as I threw myself onto my bed.

The bloodstain on my pillow was still there. It made me feel even worse, and furiously, I yanked the pillowcase from the pillow. The blood had soaked through to the pillow, though, and violently, I ripped into it. I tore through it like a dog digging for a bone, and feathers exploded from the wound, showering all around me in a haze of white fluff.

As the shouts and punches continued, a brisk knock rapped against my doorframe. Esther stood there, her lips flattened into a thin, stern line as she peered down her nose at me.

"You're tearing this family apart," was all she said, then stalked off in the direction of the fighting.

And that was the final straw. Her words might as well have been a bullet as they shredded through my flesh and bones and soul. It felt as though my insides were crumbling into dust, and all because of five simple words.

But she was right. I was ruining them. Destroying them from the inside out. They were a family, and I was the intruder. The invader. The enemy. I had to go. If I really loved Klaus - and I did - then I had to let him go. I was making him unhappy. Miserable, even. He would be better off without me.

And I needed to find the truth. The truth of why I was the way I was. A living child werewolf who could bite vampires "willy nilly." They lied to me. All of them. The Mikaelsons, Paige's pack, Daddy. I needed to find the truth for myself somehow.

But how?

My hands moving automatically, I began to stuff my possessions into the pillowcase, then hesitated. Klaus got me everything I owned. It would be like stealing from him. Still, in the end, I grabbed my Wolverine figurine and Bekah the bear, hugging them as tightly as I could before packing them away. They were my very most favorite objects in the whole wide world, and I couldn't imagine leaving them behind.

It wasn't hard to slip down the staircase, and out the front door. They didn't even notice, especially now that Esther had entered the fray. And they wouldn't notice I was gone for hours on end.

By then, it would be too late.


I ran as far and fast as my legs would take me through the woods. Silent, stinging tears gushed down my cheeks as my feet propelled me through dirt and over roots and around sludge, my pillowcase slung firmly over my left shoulder. My lungs screamed an exhausted, unheard cry, but I didn't once slow my pace.

I had no way to tell how far I'd traveled. Had it been minutes? Hours? Five miles? Ten? Twenty? Long and far enough for an unusual weary sensation to form deep inside my aching muscles.

I caught a glimpse of a road, and headed toward it determinedly. This was it. It was time to leave Mystic Falls once and for all.

Only, I never made it to the street. My shoe caught on a hidden tree root and I was flung forward into a particularly ill-placed puddle of mud while my pillowcase bounced forward to safety. Collapsing down into the thick, grimy liquid, it soaked into my clothes and stained the longer strands of my golden hair brown. Screwing up my face in disgust, I sputtered and spat it out, searching for a clean body of water anywhere - however small - that could help me out. There was none.

A low chuckle echoed from beyond the trees, and I shot upwards, on the alert. The lone figure stepped out behind a tree trunk with brows raised, green eyes twinkling with amusement.

A growl rumbled deep in my chest, and heat flared behind my eyes. "Stefan."

A/N: Sorry for the cliffhanger, lol. Also, if there's any confusion, the beginning of the chapter is Grace and Stefan. Everything then leads up to that point and will continue to lead up to that point in the next chapter, where the storyline will then continue in present time.

So, Grace is not a normal werewolf, and that reason will be made clear in the upcoming chapter (s?). Anyway, what'd you guys think about this one? Like it? Love it? Hate it? Let me know in the reviews!