It was a big room with a four poster bed at the centre. The plaster from the walls were falling off at some places, giving the house an ancient feel. The walls were decorated with old paintings of aristocrats from a long time ago, some of whom, he suspected to be the Mikaelson family themselves.
"I hope, this will be okay for the night?" Freya asked from the door.
He turned to look at her. "I would say, this is not what I expected from a family such as yours."
He let out a sigh and started to speak again. To be truthful he was super tired from all this and of all these.
"I was rather expecting all of you to throw me out at sight or even worse, kill me. This definitely exceeds my expectations." He said as he looked down at his feet, with no courage to look eye to eye with the ancient witch.
Freya leaned at the door and looked at him for a moment as she gathered all her thoughts.
"We would have, a few years back, but things have changed now. A lot of our family passed away and..." She trailed off, not being able to continue with her words. It was still too much of a pain to talk about her dead brothers and friends.
"Yeah, I figured that out." He said only once glancing to look at Freya's expression.
To be truthful, he was scared of this family. From all the stories that he had heard through the days, he quite understood that they were one of those people you won't want to mess with.
"But I warn you, try anything fishy here and I guarantee that you will definitely live to face the consequences of messing with the Mikaelsons. And trust me, you'll prefer death over that." She said, resuming her cold posture. Her eyes could now burn a hole through him.
"I'll keep that in mind, ma'am." He said with his voice almost shaking. He could even feel a cold sweat trickle down the side of his face from the look that Freya was giving him.
"I hope you do. Now rest, tomorrow Hope will take you to the bayou to meet the current alpha of the crescents." With that Frey walked out from the room and he nodded and left a sight of relief.
They both walked past the big trees to reach the lake and the settlement around it. The people spread out around the area smiled as they noticed Hope and she smiled back. They kept on walking until they reached an isolated hut, a little away from the rest of the settlement.
"The elder of the clan lives here. Remind you, she can be a bit unwelcoming." Hope said to him. It was the first thing she said to him from the very start of the day. Hope had driven him through the streets of New Orleans in her Bentley and they had kept silent through the entire time.
"You seem to be a big deal around here?" He asked in order to start a companionable conversation.
"That I am. I am their alpha by inheritance as my mother was, but I haven't taken up that post yet. Don't know if I ever will." She said with a shrug.
"And why not?" He looked down at her with his brows creased with confusion.
"I don't think that I'm worthy enough to take her position. I don't deserve that post, since I am the one solely responsible for her death." She looked down at her foot as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.
"Hey," Ryan turned around and held her by her shoulders, "listen, whoever makes you feel that way..." He couldn't complete his sentence as Hope interrupted.
"No one does. It's just that it's the truth and no matter how much anyone says that it's not my fault, everyone knows deep within that it is and so do I. So stop trying to console me and just focus on your own damn problems. It's for you that we are here today." She was so done with everyone saying that it wasn't her fault, but it truly was. She huffed and started to speed walk towards the cabin.
Ryan stood there a bit shocked and as much he hated to admit it, he was a bit hurt by her harsh words, he was just trying to be friendly, he just didn't understand where he had gone wrong.
"Are you coming or not?" She looked back once and shouted out. That took him out from his thoughts and he started to walk again towards where Hope was headed.
"So you tell me that, Ryan here is a tribrid alongside being a golem by birth?" Asked the older woman.
"By creating actually, but yeah. My blood in his system turned him into what he is now." Hope spoke up from her standing positing at the doorway to the wooden cabin.
The cabin was small and dark, but equally homely. It had minimal furnishing with a bed, a kitchenette, a couch and a table, along with a few storage areas on the walls.
Ryan was seated on a farthest corner of the couch and the middle aged women was leaning against the kitchen counter. She was at least in her sixties with long dirty blonde hair and a pale face. Her eyes were hazel, almost yellow, just like a cat.
"So the problem here is that his body is fighting within itself?" The woman looked at Ryan this time. "Like your wolf is being restricted by your natural state and whenever you do magic unknowingly, the golem in you is kind of injured?"
Ryan nodded timidly, not knowing what to say. These people obviously knew more about him than he knew himself.
"Well then there's nothing that can be done. You'll just die eventually. And if I am guessing right, it's going to be rather painful and lengthy process. The only thing that I see as a solution is a quick painless dead. Nothing that a little piece of wood can't do." She said in a rather crude manner. Her voice dripping with indifference.
"Maze, please. We came here for help." Hope stood straight as she spread her hands at her sides in a gesture of saying what the hell?
"Well Hope, you came here for a solution, I gave you one. Now I'm not responsible if it's not up to your liking." Maze said with the same amount of indifference in her voice.
"It's okay, Hope." This time it was Ryan. He got up from his seat and went and stood beside the only window in the room. He sighed as he took a look outside.
"I guess I knew that all along. Just that I had to accept it." He sighed again as he looked inside. "Well thank you, Maze." He looked at the woman and then headed outside by purposely bumping his shoulder with Hope.
"That went well." Maze said as she turned around from them as she took out a bottle of beer from the fridge.
"You're free from being the alpha. I'm appointing Noz as the new alpha active from now." Hope said as she started to walk out.
"Wait. You don't have to do that." Maze said in an almost shaky voice.
Hope turned around with an evil smile, "Now we're speaking." She paused for a bit and absorbed Maze's fearful face. "What is it that you were not telling me?"
"There is a potion that can help, but it won't be during the full moon. It has to be during the crescent. No one has used it, ever. The thing is that there was an old prophecy regarding the potion, but it's been lost centuries ago, and none of us knows what was in it. Neither do we know the components of the potion. It might just prove to be really dangerous. I don't know how it will affect him. And him being the first of his kind and also the first to not be a werewolf by birth, it's uncertain. I can give you the potion but..."
She was interrupted by Hope, "Well something is better than nothing is it? Anyway you said that he's dying. So the potion." Hope said with her arm stretched in front with her palm open.
Maze took out a small vial from a drawer, handing it over to Hope. "It's the crescent potion, he needs to take it just as full moon crosses its apex."
"Thanks." Hope spat and hurried out of the cabin. She was totally tired of these wolves being a bitch to her. At least now she had something, which was obviously better than nothing at all.
"Ryan, wait." Hope shouted as she ran out of the cabin with the vial of blue liquid in hand. The moment she exited the wooden room, she noticed Ryan walking away from the place with steady paces.
"Ryan, just listen to me once, I have a solution." She ran as fast as her legs would take her, as she caught up with him.
"A little bit of threatening got everything out of her," she panted as she tried to keep up with his fast paced. "Now, I could explain everything to you in detail, if you would just stop walking so fast."
He didn't answer back, but just stopped on his tracks. He didn't even bother to look at Hope, instead he kept on staring at the way that he was going.
"Okay so, basically, there is this elixir that can be used to control your transformations, but the catch is that the elixir will make you bound to the crescent form of the moon, not the full moon like the normal wolves." This made Ryan look at her, but he didn't say anything, his eyes were blank, devoid of any expression.
"And also that this elixir here," Hope held out the vial for him to see, "is an ancient potion. And no one knows how this works exactly, so it's a 50/50, better than nothing I guess?" Hope looked up at Ryan with confusion in her eyes.
He was slowly but surely bending over. "You okay?" She asked with her brows furrowed.
"What time is it?" He didn't bother to answer her back.
"Around 5, why?" She asked again, not understanding where this conversation was going.
"We need to return, now." Ryan demanded as he resumed his walk but at an even faster pace.
"Ryan, wait. What's happening?" Hope shouted as she ran after him.
As soon as he reached the car, he took a seat on the passenger side and got his backpack from the back seat. Hope got in the driver's seat and almost immediately resumed driving back towards the French quarter.
"You guys have and safe place where I can tie up myself?" Ryan asked as he shuffled through the contents of his bag.
Due to her curiosity, Hope took a peak and saw that it was filled up with heavy chains and binds.
"What are those for?" She asked as panic started to rise in her chest.
"Nothing to worry about, just a little precaution to not hurt anyone." He managed to give her a smile but that was immediately torn away with a whimper as his hands went out to hug himself around his stomach.
"You okay?" She asked again, "I though the transformation doesn't start till after the moon rises."
"I guess it does, but I always start to transform right before the moon shows up even a bit." He said as he bent down and hugged his legs in order to comfort himself.
"You won't have to tie yourself up, we have a few cells under the house. You'll be safe there." She said with a smile as she sped up the car towards the Mikaelson compound.