TW- Sexual Assault

"Do you think I should get the forest green or the ocean blue?"

Caroline held up both dresses for Rebekah's inspection, "I like them both and both seem to suit me…"

Rebekah shrugs, "Then get them both and stick my brother with the bill"

She shakes her head guiltily, "I couldn't do that, he's already doing so much for me"

Caroline darts back into her stall and Rebekah feigned casualness as she leaned back on the couch outside the changing room.

Since she had arrived a week ago, Rebekah hadn't been able to learn a single concrete detail about Caroline Forbes but for the last hour she had been studying the werewolf her brother had brought home continuously, making notes about everything.

How she treated the service assistants with the utmost respect.

How she devoured her lunch but cleaned up everything on her tray and took it to the bins rather than leave it to the cleaners.

How she let Rebekah choose all the stores and patiently sat through half an hour of nail polish selection which honestly, Rebekah had just been dragging out to see if she could annoy the girl.

But she had been cheerful, polite and friendly the entire time.

"So how did you and my brother actually meet?" she asks as Caroline comes out of the change room in the summer dress that Rebekah had insisted she buy and change into the second they'd stepped into Macy's so she wouldn't be stuck walking around with a girl who looked like she'd walked out of a country music video.

And still, Caroline had blushed but accepted the dress and happily slipped into it.

"Oh" Caroline bit her lip and smiled as she gathered her things up, "Well…I was arranging the dinner party that he had to attend for the negotiations and he turned up early and when I answered the door I thought he was the florist"

"Liar"

Nik sneaks up behind Caroline and wraps his arms around her waist, "Admit it, there is no florist, you were just playing hard to get"

She giggles, "Seriously! His name is Jorge and he has some of the most beautiful roses in…"

The rest of her sentence was cut off when Nik kissed her and Rebekah rolled her eyes at the public display of affection.

"Are we done?" she asked, noting that they were starting to get looks from the crowd of teenage girls around them and Caroline hurriedly ended the kiss, slipping out of Nik's embrace,

"Yep" she answers brightly, "Ready when you are"

They spend another hour at the mall until Caroline receives a text message and checks her phone.

Rebekah sees her eyes light up and the way she quickly slips her phone back into her pocket.

A few minutes later she ducks to the bathroom and Niklaus turns to her,

"So…she's still alive, neck unsnapped, limbs unsevered, I take it this is a good sign?"

Rebekah shrugged, "She's a sweet little thing. I like her…but she's keeping something from you"

He sighs, "I know…just from today, I'll ask her tonight"

Now that surprises her.

Centuries she has seen Nik go wild with suspicion and jealousy every time something was kept from him. He would torture or beat secrets out of people and now with this girl.

He was going to ask.

Perhaps she was a good influence after all.

Caroline knew Nik had cottoned on to the fact that she was keeping something from him.

Or perhaps she was just paranoid.

Although after years of having her every piece of mail read by Lila, her phone routinely checked and her teachers interrogated about every person she interacted with, she figured she wasn't to blame for this worry.

Either way, she wasn't taking chances, not over something so innocent.

So that night, after dinner, Caroline took Klaus hand and led him to the living room before anyone else had the chance to join them.

"Guess what?" she teased, linking her arms around his neck and swaying slightly in a two-step dance,

"What love?" he asked, "Do you have a secret you're dying to tell me?"

She giggled, "Uh huh, so…when Rick filled me in on everything that had happened since…since that night, he told me that there were some survivors who he was going to try and locate and today, he found one of them!"

She kissed his lips and beamed, "His name is Tyler, I think I remember him…we may have been in the same playgroup, I'm not entirely sure but he's in North Caroline right now and I was wondering…"

He opened his mouth but she was nervous so she jumped in,

"Nik" she quickly kissed his collarbone, "Let me do this for you, for us. There are maybe fifteen Arctos left out there, not enough to cause trouble in such a large pack. If I bring something to the table when I join up then it'll be easier for us to gain acceptance. Usually when an Alpha picks his first female, she's a strategic alliance, but this…what's left of my people is all I can offer you"

He cups her cheek in his hand, "You've given me yourself as well sweetheart"

She nods, "Yeah but I don't really benefit the entire pack do I? Unless you plan on sharing because I think Annie is really starting to warm up to me and…"

She squealed as he swept her up into his arms and carried her to the couch, sitting down and raining kisses on her face,

"You are all mine" he tells her between kisses, "Mine and mine alone"

"Yours" she promised, "Only yours Nik"

They broke apart and snuggled down as Marcel entered with a dvd in hand.

It was a deceptively quiet morning at the Mikaelson household, Elena was curled up on the couch playing with origami. Elijah's arm on the couch behind her, watching with loving wonder on his face.

Marcel and Rebekah were down in New Orleans, seeing to the French Quarter and making sure that everything was running smoothly.

Or at least, that was their excuse, in reality they were more than determined to get some quiet time away from Kol who- since Bonnie had started dating the new guy in town- had ratcheted his antics to the point where Caroline and Klaus had emerged from their shower one morning with green hair.

Caroline had laughed, Klaus had broken Kol's neck and buried him in a shallow grave in the woods.

Unfortunately while Rebekah and Marcel could stay in the family home in Bourbon St, the rest of the family didn't have that luxury.

Elena's family would freak out if she left the state with Elijah so he was stuck in the town, Kol didn't want to leave Mystic Falls any more than his older brother right now and Klaus and Caroline…well; the delegation would be arriving in two days to meet with him and Caroline knew that her life would be forfeit the moment she stepped off Pack lands.

But still, she smiled as she entered the Grill that morning, waving to Cary who was playing pool with some of the other male wolves who apparently left that table only to change on the full moon, she received begrudging nods in response.

The Pack still had decidedly negative feelings about her joining but at this point they were a week away from the full moon and she had yet to receive any more challenges.

And she knew it wasn't because Klaus had forbidden his wolves to challenge her because she had begged him not to, it was because after the incident with the steak knife the wolves were embarrassed and Cary had quietly let slip that she had interceded on Annie's behalf so they held a reluctant respect for her.

However, it's water off her back as she orders her coffee and waits patiently for Alaric to arrive late as he had done every day this week,

"Morning sickness hasn't abated huh?" Caroline greets him sympathetically as he sinks into the booth with a look of utter exhaustion on his face,

"I feel like the world's biggest dick for knocking her up" he sighs raggedly, "I mean, I love my baby, I haven't even met him yet and I love him more than anything in the world but…I wish she didn't have to go through with this you know"

Caroline squeezes his hand and asks after Elena and Jeremy. She'd just seen Elena half an hour ago but she remembered that her father had always asked after the family members whenever he'd spoken to someone, it was an Alpha's responsibility to care for everyone in the Pack.

She knew Klaus could trace the lineage of every last wolf in his pack back to his father's day, although he usually didn't do it in public because before eighteen sixty the sheer amount of inbreeding became painfully apparent.

Although most packs had kept everything in house until the eighteenth or nineteenth century simply because lack of mobility and fear of the outside world had kept them close to one another.

And now of course, the savage jealousy with which alpha's were forced to guard their territory and breeding wolves after the Triple Alliance meant that marrying out of the pack was nearly impossible.

That was one of the reasons why Jacques and Lila's plan to marry Hayley to Klaus had been so controversial and hypocritical.

"Uh…Jeremy's good" Alaric murmured, "Um…he has a test today, I think, pretty sure I'm giving the kids a pop quiz today"

Caroline laughed and settled back, her knee bouncing up and down, waiting for him to remember why she was so excited about today,

"Oh fuck…" his head had been sinking down towards the table but it shot up now, "You're meeting Tyler today"

Caroline beamed, "Yes I am…Nik said I could bring him into the town centre if I liked but I figured it would be easier to meet him at Wickery Bridge, I also didn't want the pack to find out I'm bringing Arctos onto their lands just yet, keep everything civil until the full moon"

"Right" he yawns, "Um…you're meeting him at ten aren't you? I have second period free, I'll come by…say hi"

She nods, "It won't be anything fancy…I can't offer him food while we're on Nik' lands"

"I could bring some sandwiches if you like" he interrupts, "Claim I didn't know it was against the rules…which I don't because I don't know why you can't offer him food"

"You offer food you have to offer shelter" she explains briefly. "You offer shelter and he can ask to stay on a more permanent basis"

Alaric opens his mouth as if to point out that Caroline had asked him to locate the Arctos wolves specifically so that she could bring them into the North East Atlantic pack but closes it at the last second, werewolf traditions and etiquette are far too complicated to get into when he has to be at work in twenty minutes.

She goes with him to the school and walks him to the class room, running into Jeremy on the way and giving him an over-friendly kiss on the cheek for the benefit of his watching friends.

She walks back through town, enjoying the exercise and the freedom to go where she wished but also to kill time.

Because as much as she loved being in Mystic Falls with Nik…she was also starting to get bored.

Not with him of course, but with her day to day life. When she had been a captive slave for the Labonairs her day had been filled with so many activities and she had grown so used to rushing from one place to another and now…now she had hours upon hours of time to fill.

She wasn't meant to be so unproductive.

Especially when she knew her enemies were plotting against her.

She felt like she needed to be doing something and while locating and bringing her people to Virginia, to the land which had been their home counted as something, it was the quiet time when she had nothing to do but watch television or cook that drove her mad.

Perhaps she could go to university? She'd always wanted more than her high school education and with a degree she could get a decent job and be reliant on her own funds as opposed to now where Nik had to pay her bills.

But she was getting ahead of herself, so excited by the ability to plan her future when for the longest time she'd known she'd never have anything more than her attic bedroom and table scraps.

She had to make it to the full moon first.

And, checking her watch, she had to make it to Wickery Bridge by ten so she had to hurry.

"You'll have to hurry" Jackson spoke casually, "It'll be an hour and a half each way"

"Liar!"

Jackson nearly dropped the phone and fumbled it frantically before hanging up and spinning around to face the intruding eavesdropper.

"What the hell are you doing here?!" he hisses across the room at Hayley.

She pushes herself off the wall and glares at him with her arms folded to hide her fists,

"I'm the Labonair heir Jackson, if I want to walk into your goddamn living room and delete everything on your DVR so I can fill it up with Bold and the Beautiful reruns then it is my right as your future alpha. More importantly" she raises her voice as he sighs and goes to move past her,

"If I want to know why you're lying to my wolves then I will damn well ask you"

"I'm not lying" he spreads his arms, "I was making a call like your parents asked me and something you know nothing about"

"I know those men are going after Caroline" she protests, stomping after him,

"And I know that from North Carolina, across the border into Virginia and then to Mystic Falls is a two hour, twenty three minute trip" she pulls on Jackson's arm, "I looked it up, you're lying to your own pack and giving Caroline the chance to get away…why?"

"Because…because Caroline used to proof read my English homework" Jackson spat, "You know I've never been good with writing or words and she…she helped me and didn't expect anything in return, she's kind and sweet and I know she's our enemy and what have you but…nobody deserves what they want to do to her"

Hayley sighed, "Look I know that Caroline didn't run away because she was bored, I know her life here isn't the best but when they bring her back I'll talk to my parents about going easy on her, after all, they murdered her family and she was loyal until Klaus came along. If anything this is his fault"

The look Jackson gave her was so full of pity, "Hales, your mother didn't send those men to kidnap Caroline, she sent them to gang-rape her"

Caroline had told Tyler to meet her on Wickery Bridge but when he arrived she was standing at the riverbank, walking just far enough in that the water lapped at her bare feet.

Enjoying the gentle flow of the river and the scent of the rushing water and damp earth, with the pebbles under her feet and the breeze ruffling the skirt of her new rose pink mini dress.

For some reason, this stretch of forest was giving her the greatest sense of déjà vu.

"I kind of wish I had smaller feet right now"

Her head shoots up and she sees a tall young man standing next to the strappy kitten heels she'd bought only a few days ago,

"I reckon these'd go well with my colouring"

He's beaming and suddenly she is too, "Hi Tyler"

She hurries up the bank to the edge of the bridge where he's standing, he holds out a hand as she reaches him, scrambling on some loose asphalt. On a whim she pulls him in for a hug,

His scent hits her and she closes her eyes, pretending for a moment that she is home.

When he leans back he's smiling just as hard as she is, "I am so glad you got away"

She laughed, "And you survived…now let's see what we can achieve huh?"

He releases her and they step onto the bridge, "So…uh, this is nice, seeing you and all but I figure I'll be heading back tonight?"

She nods her head, "I've been speaking to Ni-Alpha Klaus and once the full moon comes and goes and I become the Alpha female I'll be able to bring our people here"

He leans back against the bridge, crossing his arms, "And Klaus…he's good to you?"

She bristles at that. In another life she would have been his Alpha and able to take as many male lovers as she so chose without him able to say a single thing.

But they're in the world that they are in, there is no way out, not for fighters, not for survivors like them.

"He's a good alpha," she explains, "I've been watching him since he brought me here to his lands. He's treats his people well, he listens to them and he knows them all by name. He's offered to bring our pack into his fold and save them from being omegas"

"Yeah and that's great and all" Tyler allows, "But is he a good man? Does he treat you well?"

She blushes and drops her head, her hair falling in her face, feeling weird about explaining this to someone she's just met but she reminds herself that she and Tyler are pack, probably related by some thin strain of blood

"He cares about me a lot and I…what we have…what I feel for him" she shakes her head, "I can't explain it but he didn't kidnap me, he didn't throw me over his shoulder and carry me back here…well he didn't carry me the whole way but, we have this connection you know?"

He shrugs, "Well…no but I'm a guy"

She laughs and they walk back to his car, sitting on the still warm bonnet,

"Alaric should be arriving soon with food" she tells him, "You might remember him, he used to work in the gun shop and he lead you out the night…that night"

Tyler scratches the back of his neck, "Honestly, I don't remember much from then, just flashes you know but he's been in contact with my mom over the years, I know because she always shouts at him whenever he calls her. She hates that I'm a werewolf and she never understood why I was obsessed with the Arctos pack"

"Because it's our heritage" Caroline argued, "We may have to fight for what our ancestors just had but it's worth it. More than that, our wolf craves a pack and wants to be with its family"

He grinned, "You should meet my mom" he looked up, "Hey is that Alaric?"

She followed his gaze to the large black truck appearing and tensed, "No…no that's not Rick's car"

Nor was the one behind it.

Two flatbed trucks, roaring up the small windy road, with a dozen men between them. Tyler grabbed her arm,

"Get in my car now" he ordered "We have to go"

She scrambled off the hood and jumped in the passenger side of his jeep only seconds before the bullets shattered the windscreen and took out the tires. She covered her head with a surprised shriek and saw Tyler fall down by the driver's side door.

Shouting his name she crawled over and pushed the door open to find him bleeding from the shoulder. She climbed out of the car and pushed him under it, hoping to protect him as she climbed to her feet.

Guns.

These werewolves were carrying guns.

The two trucks come to a stop in the middle of the bridge, blocking the path and her attacks jumped out onto the asphalt.

All men, all heavily armed, a few of them obviously drunk.

"I assumed Lila sent you" she called out as the apparent leader of the day sauntered forward, she recognised him, Tripp, a Crescent Pack enforcer who Lila had used to take down any voices of disapproval or opposition she might have faced within the pack. Once, a young she-wolf with more beauty than brains had seduced Jacques in a one-night stand that not many people knew about and Lila had sent Tripp to well…

Caroline could easily guess why he was here today.

"Fair warning" she calls loudly, raising her voice so that everyone can hear her, "This is the heart of Alpha Klaus' lands you are standing on without his permission and I am his intended mate" she lowers her voice and glares hatefully at the man in front of her,

"You do this, you're starting a war with the most powerful alpha that's ever existed"

He only leans forward and grins, "You've always been far too proud a bitch"

Her nails grow into claws and her eyes turn yellow, her teeth sharpen into fangs.

He's completely shocked by her ability to transform, it's a secret she'd held dear to her chest for years and she uses that now to sink her claws into his neck. Blood spurts out hot on her hands, building up pressure under her nail beds and when it gets painful she pulls her fingers free and he begins convulsing, falling to his knees and then onto his back as the blood loss kills him.

One dead and she has drawn first blood.

But she doesn't have a hope of taking on eleven other men with guns.

Not that she'll let that stop her.

Wolves fight differently from humans, had this been a human fight all the men would have attacked her at once or gunned her down in cold blood.

As it was, these men were so used to fighting one on one that they surged forward, hesitated when they realised there was no order and left their guns on their backs or on the ground.

A man grabbed her from behind and she brought her head back to break his jaw, momentarily dazed she lashed out with her claws and caught another man across the face. She was grabbed by the arm and she lashed out with her bare feet, kicking a stomach but losing her balance and falling to the ground.

Tyler appeared above her momentarily, he pulled two men back and bashed their heads together with enough force to crack their skulls, but he was wounded and soon on his knees with a gun pressed to his head.

Her chin was crushed in a man's grip, "Stop fighting you stupid bitch or we kill him"

She struggled but she was pinned down by so many hands and so much weight, "We will blow his fucking brains out"

She believed him, she believed that the Labonairs were cowardly enough to kill with weapons, after all, they'd done it before.

"Fight Caroline" Tyler shouts, "Forget about me and fight"

And she wants to, she really does because she knows that once she's been raped Klaus will be forced by tradition, law and the weight of his own wolves to abandon her. He can't bring someone who's been so destroyed and shamed into his pack as his mate, she'll have to leave his lands and will likely be chased out of the country or dead within the year.

But Tyler is her pack, he's her wolf and as the Arctos heir it's her duty to protect him.

So she forces herself not to cry as her clothes are torn from her body and opens her mouth to surrender when this strange feeling rushes through her.

This feeling of power, of invincibility, of absolute rage.

"You know," the voice calls from out of her sight, "This has to be the most red-neck, piece of trash scenario I have ever seen"

A horrific scream sounds to her left and the men are starting to release her, she scrambles to a sitting position and sees her alpha standing there with blood dripping from his mouth,

"Of course it's also the boldest thing I've ever seen" Nik comments as he holds up a bloody heart,

"A wolf pack with the gall to try and rape my mate on my territory. In honour of your stupidity, I will send your castrated penises back to your Alpha and maybe even the rest of your bodies if I feel too lazy to dig a shallow grave"

A gun is fired and hits him in the shoulder, he looks down at the wound with momentary surprise and then grins,

"My turn"