Monique is chasing dragonflies.

Seated on a picnic blanket with a bowl of blackberries in her lap, Bonnie watches the young wolf leap nimbly from rock to rock, camera in hand, crouching close to get the right angle.

She'd forgotten how beautiful the falls are in early summer, surrounded by blossoming trees, sunlight playing in the water. And with the spring showers having temporarily abated, everything looks crystalline, glistening, new.

Klaus sketches beside her, and though his hand moves carefully over the paper Bonnie doesn't miss the small glances he directs at Monique to gauge her location. It's been a week since her painful meeting with Abby, and she's divided her time between Rudy and the two wolves who were now a part of her life in ways she's still unravelling.

The morning is suffused with a soft, tranquil quality and all she wants is to sink into that lightness, but there's thoughts and worries teeming in her mind like fish.

"Wishing you'd brought pickles instead?" Klaus asks, nodding at the untouched berries.

She pretends to tap her chin thoughtfully. "Pickles and blackberries...now there's a combo we should try."

"Thank you, I'd rather eat upholstery," he says, popping a berry in his mouth. His hand brushes her cheek and she leans quietly into the touch.

"You're worried about something," he remarks, studying her face.

"Just thinking about what I'm gonna tell everyone later today."

"My suggestion remains."

Bonnie smiles in spite of herself. "I can't just tell them to 'bugger off', Klaus. I owe them an explanation."

"You owe them nothing."

The vehemence in his voice never fails to startle. She had asked Caroline to arrange a meeting between her, Elena, the Salvatores and Jeremy for this afternoon, so she could finally come clean about the past few months of her life. Klaus, naturally, had suggested she spare herself the trouble and send a note attached to a Molotov cocktail instead.

She covers his hand with hers, choosing her words carefully. "I owe it to myself too. And, I owe it to him," she says, pointing at her belly. "I don't want him to have any reason to feel ashamed of how he came to be...or who he is, you know? If I can't look them in the eye and tell them about my choices, about my child...then how am I going to be the kind of mother he needs?"

Something flickers across his face, and he regards her for a moment like she's something quite new, something unearthly. Like he's recalling something he'd forced himself to forget.

He brushes a stray tendril of hair behind her ear. "You, love, are already the mother he deserves."

Her heart flutters a little at the tone of his voice, his steady, burning gaze. "You don't have to come with me," she says, alluding to his words when she'd told him she was meeting her friends. "It'll be easier if you aren't there...,"

"For you, or for them?"

"Klaus-,"

"I will be no further than the driveway, with Monique no doubt accompanying me," he adds with an amused quirk and a quick glance at the preoccupied wolf.

"Klaus, trust me, it'll be fine-,"

"It's not you I don't trust, love."

She sighs, facing a stubbornness as unyielding as her own. "So...we kiss one time and suddenly I have my own security detail?" she asks, lightly.

His response is to kiss her again, firm and purposeful, a hand grasping the nape of her neck while his mouth covers hers, their noses crushed into each other. Bonnie takes deep inhales between each pass of their lips, craving that wild, smoky scent that she wants wrapped around her like a blanket. She feels languorous as a cat in a pool of warmth. When his hand travels down to rub circles over the soreness beginning to manifest in her lower back , she almost purrs. It's as though he could find and soothe every ache in her body if he wished. The thought, overwhelming, makes her draw back and rest her forehead against his.

They both turn at the conspicuous click of a camera. The very picture of innocence, Monique returns smoothly to her dragonflies


Hands folded under the swell of her belly Bonnie waits for someone - anyone - to say something instead of gaping at her like she's grown two heads. The air is thick enough to cut.

Caroline, bless her heart, is the first to speak. "You know friends usually congratulate their friends when they're expecting," she addresses the others.

Damon snorts, earning a disapproving look from Stefan who sits down across from Bonnie. "Who's the father?" he asks with a hint of concern.

"This guy I met one night, you don't know him," she says, quickly, having decided not to involve Jake at all. There's no real way to tell a college age human that they're going to have a witch baby, and she's not about to risk putting her son through what she endured with Rudy and Abby.

She finally steals a glance at Jeremy, who's slouched in a chair in the corner with a pained look on his face. Bonnie summons that sense of certainty with which she'd explained herself to Klaus, that clarity she'd felt sitting by the falls watching Monique. She thinks about them outside in the car, waiting for her, and feels a quiet relief like an umbrella's opening above her in the rain. "I wanted to tell you all not only because I'm keeping the baby - obviously - but umm...I sort of live with Klaus now. And when he goes back to Montana I'm going with him."

This causes the expected degree of consternation.

"Bon...what?"

"You're going to raise a baby around Klaus?"

"Wait...he lives in Montana?"

"Damon, please. Priorities."

And then, the question she's been dreading comes from Elena. "Are you and Klaus like a thing?" The brunette uses air quotes to make her point, but her forehead is etched with concern.

Whatever Bonnie doesn't say is surely written all over her face, because Elena's eyebrows nearly disappear into her hairline.

"Klaus and I have...an understanding," Bonnie says tentatively, flushing from head to toe. "He was there for me, and I was for him. I don't know how I know but - I know this is the best choice for me and the baby." She isn't sure where those last words came from, but her voice trembles with a new kind of conviction. At the same time, she finds herself reluctant to say more. There's something too ineffable, too intimate in what she'd shared with Klaus that won't translate into language. Something she wants to keep to herself.

Another silence descends, this time broken by Jeremy vacating his chair and the room. Bonnie watches him go with a small twinge. She hadn't exactly expected him to welcome her news with enthusiasm, even though it was his infidelity that had driven her to sleep with Jake that night. But the part of her that misses what friendship they once had can't help wonder if things could've been different. The relief she feels at telling her truth is clean but sharp, and she braces for the ache in her heart as she prepares to walk away from the people who, for better or worse, had been closer to her than any blood family.

It's Elena who surprises her with a hug, holding her tightly before pulling back with a small smile. "If you're happy and safe, that's all that matters to me. Even if..." she takes a deep breath, then adds, "...even if it's with Klaus."

Bonnie gapes a little.

"I mean, I don't think we're all gonna be best friends with him, or even like him," Elena continues, with a wry glance in the direction of the Salvatores. "But you see through people more than anyone else I know, Bon. And if you can see a reason why this is right then...I may not understand, but I trust you."

Bonnie feels the word 'trust' break over her like a wave. After months of self-doubt and worry and guilt, after her own mother rejecting both her and her baby, to have her longtime friend affirm her choices, to hear someone who's known her all her life regard her as though she isn't just a broken child, as though her decisions and needs aren't superfluous, is overwhelming. The tears brim and flow before she can speak, and soon they're coming so profusely she can hardly speak at all.

"It's all the stupid hormones," she laughs thickly as both Elena and Caroline put their arms around her.

"So...is someone gonna explain why Klaus lives in Montana?" Damon chimes in, surveying the room.

Caroline ignores him pointedly. "You, Bonnie Bennett, aren't going anywhere until we have a baby shower."

"Care-,"

"She's right," Elena pipes up. "And you know I wouldn't say that lightly."

Caroline rolls her eyes before whipping out a notepad from her nearby purse. "Sooo... on a scale of one to Elena's goth phase in fifth grade how tacky is it to combine a graduation party with a baby shower?"


"And exactly what part of this recipe is supposed to be French?"

"Ooohmygod no one cares, Hogwarts. It just tastes good-,"

Bonnie watches them squabble with a smile. They'd repaired back to the Mikaelson manor where Monique had convinced Klaus that making french toast for dinner would be an excellent use of their time. They'd sorted through at least half a dozen recipes before settling on one that satisfied both, only to disagree about the amount of sugar and butter. From her spot on the couch Bonnie tries to offer a mediating suggestion or two only to be ignored. Clearly, the matter of breakfast food is a serious one between wolf and wolf.

Monique moves to wheedling Klaus about adding bourbon to the batter when Bonnie's phone rings. Seeing Gloria's number, she steps outside to the small patio and closes the door behind her.

"How you feeling?" the older witch inquires.

"I'm much better. My appetite's coming back and I'm taking more naps."

"Glad to hear it," Gloria chuckles. "Sounds like your little wolf pack got there right on time."

Bonnie steals a glance through the screen door in time to see Klaus holding a bottle of bourbon out of Monique's reach. She wants to go back inside and be absorbed into the feelings of warmth bubbling up inside her that made the sting of Abby's rejection seem like a distant dream. She wants, almost viscerally, to be wrapped up in Klaus' arms again and glut herself on a safety and comfort she's hungered for and been denied all her life.

"Bonnie? You there? I actually called about some test results-"

" - yeah I'm here," she says, wrapping an arm over her stomach as Gloria's words sink in causing a small wave of panic."Test results?"

"Everything's alright," Gloria assures her. "I did the usual spells on your blood sample and everything came back fine. More than fine, actually."

Gloria pauses, then speaks in a softer tone. "Did you know your baby's part wolf?"

Bonnie feels her legs tremble as she lowers herself into a chair. Jake, her impulsive one night stand... a wolf. So much for him being an uninformed human.

"I take it you didn't," Gloria says, lightly. "Well, it's nothing to fret about. There's some special herbs you'll need to take for nutrition, and you'll start noticing some symptoms around the full moon-,"

Gloria continues her explanation while Bonnie let the waves of realization wash over her. One by one, events in the past few months connect like pearls on a string. The tumult of her emotions the night of the eclipse, how she can no longer get enough of certain scents and tastes. The pull she feels, different in nature but equally gut-wrenching, to both Monique and Klaus. She'd chalked it all down to normal pregnancy symptoms, but it was more. It's her baby, communing and unfurling deep inside her, nudging her in uncharted directions. For the first time since she learned she was pregnant Bonnie feels a calmness descend. She'd been so worried about her impending motherhood - about whether she could ever make this baby feel connected to a sense of family, to a mother who might make mistakes but who'd never stop loving him and most of all never abandon him - that she hadn't realized how much her decisions and desires were already ineffably linked to the little life taking shape within. It's all so clear. Like cleaning dust off a window and seeing a new landscape emerge. Hills and rivers, trees with their branches full of birds, a sky suddenly blue and full of promise. Everything makes tremulous, perfect sense. Everything-

"But that's not all," Gloria interrupts her thoughts. "You come from one of the strongest magical lines in the world, Bonnie. Any child of yours, no matter who the father, was also always going to be a witch."

The brief, luminous feeling fades, and a foreboding takes its place. "What are you saying?" Bonnie asks quietly, although she feels the answer hovering above, waiting for her to grasp it.

"That your recent choice of company is certainly interesting," Gloria says dryly before adding in a gentler tone. "Honey, your baby's gonna be a hybrid."


A/N: This fic is officially off it's unofficial hiatus! Thank you to everyone who reviewed, followed, and messaged me asking me to update. This story has a special place in my heart and it makes me beyond happy to know you guys feel the same. Next up: get ready for baby shower drama (and some baby daddy drama), some deets about Monique's past, Klaus learning the baby's a hybrid, and some extra soft Klonnie times (because I play to my strengths! lol). Thank you again for your patience and support, and I hope you enjoyed this!