The Mikaelson mansion usually sat vacant during the day, the inhabitants out wreaking havoc wherever they felt the morale getting to high. But today Klaus Mikaelson sat staring at the fire, with a contemplative glazed over stare.
The solid oak door burst wide open and in barged Stefan. The oldest vampire in creation bounded to his feet as a shit eating grin busted out across his face. Damon walked in more cautiously.
"Stefan!" he hissed after his brother.
"Klaus!" his brother called into the foyer.
The man himself made an appearance at the top of the grand staircase.
"And what may I do for my least favorite vampires today?" His english accent lilted the words, but still laced with the threat that was the power of Klaus.
Stefan speeded at him, slamming him into a wall. "You bit her you giant dick!" Stefan hissed around his fangs. Klaus's jaw ticked and that was the only warning Stefan got before he was thrown into the opposite wall.
Klaus straightened out his wrinkled suit before huffing out a breath and turning his attention to a now dusty Stefan who was picking himself up off the ground.
"Now mate, how about we try this again? I am gonna come down that staircase and you are going to calmly address the situation, understand?" Stefan's fangs made an appearance as he hissed at the Original. "Nevermind, how about we get straight to the point then? Now, Stefan, would you like to elaborate on this person being bitten?"
Stefan is almost red at Klaus's questioning. "YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT! YOU BIT HER!"
Damon had never seen Klaus look more confused in his life. "Stefan unless I have been drugged, which is highly unlikely, I will tell you that I only bite to feed, not to turn.
"NOT YOUR VAMPIRE! YOUR WOLF! YOU BIT ELENA WHEN SHE WAS WALKING TODAY AND NOW SHE IS UNCONSCIOUS! YOU PLANNED THIS DIDN'T YOU?!" Stefan roared. Damon had never seen his brother this upset.
"Stefan, you need to calm down unless you want a snapped neck," Klaus warned lowly. Stefan growled in response and Damon laid a hand on his brother's shoulders and squeezed.
"Stefan he doesn't know anything. Elena is going wake up soon. We have to go."
Klaus's ears seemed to perk up. "So the lovely Elena is the issue of the matter. How ordinary. And what seems to be the matter with our lovely doppelganger?"
The question was practically useless because Klaus put the pieces together immediately. "You think I attacked Elena? You think I attacked the only thing that produces hybrids? Are you just plain stupid or are you putting on a special show for me today?" Klaus looked at the two brother with a look of incredulity on his face. Damon just made a face.
"Not that isn't a pleasure, because it isn't, we will be going so you can go back to doing whatever a creepy thousand year old hybrid does at eleven o'clock in the morning."
Klaus pressed his lips together in a thin line and nodded. The brother's closed the door behind them. Klaus sipped on his whiskey and thought about this new development. What kind of werewolf had the ability to walk around in the daytime? There was no way that an alpha had been born. Not when he was still alive, he knew for a fact that he was an alpha. Nature never makes a mistake. But there was no way that another alpha was alive.
Klaus huffed and walked down into the basement. He stretched and stripped off his suit jacket, unbuttoned the dress shirt, shimmied out of the dress shoes and slacks until he was completely naked. He flipped the latch on the basement door leaving it to swing open. With the cracking of all the bones in his body, he trotted out of the basement as a sandy blonde wolf with piercing blue eyes.
He tracked the stale smell of blood to the still drying pool on the forest floor. Klaus sniffed it and growled. What a waste. That could have turned so many hybrids. But Klaus's nose then caught an entirely new trail that leaded out towards the stream. It was a thick and musky scent with a tang of fear and pain, the clear scent of an omega, a lone wolf. This thing would have to be killed off immediately or join the Lockwood pack. Omegas were too dangerous to leave alone.
So he tracked this lone wolf through the forest and to the Lockwood cellar. To be honest, he was surprised he hadn't thought of it sooner. Wolves always seek out a pack, so logically they would go to a place where the pack smells the strongest.
Klaus slunk into the cellar, eyes wide and ears perked. He made a low growl to let anyone in this cellar know that he was here. There was a quiet scuffle in the corner which he quickly ascertained was rats and when no other wolves made themselves known in the cellar, Klaus gave a big huff of disappointment as he hauled his body out of the cellar and trotted out onto the spongy surface of pine needles.
He always liked the forest, even as a little boy. The forest was a place where everyone coexisted in harmony. The deer knew where they belonged and so did the squirrels and the cougars and anything that was in this god forsaken forest.
The peace he felt here was immeasurable. So when the thudding of paw steps reached his ears, he barely had time to brace himself before a solid black mass of fur barrelled into his side.
Wolf 101, never initiate a fight with an alpha. You will always lose.
So Klaus shook his head and went into alpha mode. He peeled his lips back, stood up as tall as possible while still maintaining balance. The large black wolf was obviously an omega with its tall but frail stature and the small and healthy amount of fear in its eyes. This seemed like it would be an unfair fight. Klaus launched at the smaller male and tackled him to the ground. They landed in whirlwind of snarling and fur tearing.
Klaus finally landed a killer blow on the shoulder of the wolf. His teeth sunk into the muscles and he pulled back. The flesh tore open with a sickening peeling sound. Blood poured onto the forest floor. The wolf howled and tried to roll away from Klaus but Klaus had him pinned.
Klaus had his two front legs braced over the omega's body. He was breathing hard and snarling at the other wolf. The wolf looked around for a minute then it snapped at Klaus, latching onto his neck. Klaus shook him off quickly but by then the wolf had hauled itself to its feet.
Klaus could still smell the fresh blood, but he could also smell new skin. The wolf had already healed! This was no omega. This.. This was a born alpha. A wolf born into an alpha line, destined to become a leader and once he became of age after his first turning he would stay a wolf until he found either a.) a mate or b.) the first member of his pack.
The strangest thing about natural born alphas was though, that they had the ability to turn humans with a simple nip. As long as it broke the skin the human who was bitten had a good chance of turning. But with the tainted lines of werewolves today, ruined with human and witch DNA, the probability of turning was so low that the turning powers of an alpha were considered extremely limited.
Klaus knew there was no defeating a born alpha and he wasn't gonna back down. So Klaus did what he did best. He struck a deal. He sat back on his haunches and let all aggression float out of his body.
He then began to lick at his torn fur. The born alpha was confused by this tactic. He continued to growl lowly and when nothing happened for a couple of minutes, he too sat down in his haunches and began to lick his own bloodied fur.
It was an unspoken agreement between the two. Although they were two top alphas, they would not fight it out until absolutely necessary.
This would work for Klaus. If Niklaus Mikaelson was anything, it was an improviser.
Stefan sat on the chair next to the bedside absolutely motionless. Only the tell tale habits like the steady rise and fall of his chest and the occasional flicker of a blink indicated that he was alive, which technically he wasn't.
He kept his eyes strictly trained on Elena's stilled form. His eyes watered every now and then, but he was strong, he was not gonna cry. Elena deserved someone who could carry her through rough times. If he shed a tear now, he could not be that man.
Damon sat on the couch downstairs, bourbon in hand, sitting in his favorite wingback chair. When he was alive, and when they were drunk, Ric would tease him that he looked like a romantic novel villain in that chair.
"Always so brooding and sour faced, like you are coming up with a plot to defile a young maiden or something."
Damon would then let out a chuckle and take a sip of his drink, because oh the irony. He was so much more badass then any romantic villain any writer could come up with.
Damon again listened for the tell tale thump thump, beat beat of a frail human heart. He was met with a weak thump and a shaky breath, a small promise, that maybe, just maybe, if Damon prayed to enough gods and dieties he might be able to keep her alive until tomorrow.
So Damon did what he thought had died with him a long time ago. He took Uncle Joseph's rosary out of a compartment in his side table. He then pressed the cold metal of the cross to his lips, muttering a muted prayer.
A small voice at the back of his head laughed and sneered at him, calling him a fool, saying that the prayer of a dark and sinful creature such as himself would never reach God, if there even was a God or gods.
He looked at the rosary traitorously, like it had betrayed him. Then when a stuttering heartbeat reached his ears, he pressed the cross to his lips again and began to mutter prayers about hope and love and that he was a horrible creature but to please, just save her.
Elena's eyes fluttered open gently. Her chest rose dramatically and she arched up into a sitting position, gasping for breath. She began to sob immediately and that woke Stefan out of his sleep and he rushed at vamp speed to gather her into his arms, but that seemed to freak her out even more as she scooted to the edge of the bed, pushing her back up against the wall to try and get a grip on reality.
Stefan then moved slowly towards her. "Elena, sweetheart, focus on me," he commanded, his voice clear above her sobbing. Slowly, her eyes stopped flicking across the room rapidly and settled on Stefan's face. The tears still ran and her breath still shuddered but slowly, ever so slowly she came back to reality.
She whined low in her throat and the tears formed again, forming a bit slower but still falling. Stefan slowly moved across the bed, gathering her into his arms slowly. Her head rested on his shoulder, and her nose in his neck. She tried to breathe in his calming scent, his usual smell of fresh parsley calming her and grounding her panic attacks.
Now he smelt of bleach fumes and it burnt her nose, feeling like it is peeling the skin, strip by strip, off the inside of her nose. She yelped in pain and pushed him off of her. Her eyes screamed confusion and pain. The quick breathing returned and Elena's eyes began to roll into the back of her head in panic. She fell to the floor, not getting enough air into her lungs.
"What's going on?" she sobbed.