A/N - So here you guys go. The final chapter of book two. It turned out even longer then I expected but I didn't want to cut any of it out so I hope you enjoy it. :) This has been so much fun to write (yes, I know I have said that too many times before, but it's true). I hope you are enjoying this story as much as I am.

Thank you for all your reviews and continued support. Another shout out to DreaminOfLove22 for another review.

I love you all! Enjoy.

It had been weeks without anything new. Ever since they gave the moonstone to Klaus, Elena had been sure he would make his move, but so far everything had been silent. As much as she wanted to think that that was a positive thing, she knew better. He was planning something, and it would only be a matter of time now until he enacted it.

Caroline had gotten Bonnie to make Stefan a daylight ring. For a new witch, Bonnie was getting an awful lot of practice in that department. Stefan was still living at the Salvatore Boarding house with his brother and Lexi, although now it had the added bonus of having a fully stocked blood bank in the basement for Lexi. Stefan decided he didn't want the human blood and opted for hunting for animal blood instead. For a new vampire, he was doing fairly well. However, Elena suspected that was much owed to the teaching talents of a one Caroline Forbes. Caroline had been helping Stefan with the whole transition, and Elena guess that it probably helped that they had known each other for all their lives.

Lexi had been caught up in research, determined to figure out what Klaus was doing. She had searched everywhere on the internet and had been spending entire days in the library, looking through old books.

Elena couldn't blame her. It had been bothering them all that it had been so silent for the past few weeks. They had expected something to happen now that Klaus had the moonstone, but the only remotely interesting thing on that front was the fact that Rebekah had joined the Mystic High Student Body. However, Elena suspected that this was against her older brother's better judgment. Elena had tried to question her the first day she was there, but it soon became clear that they weren't going to get any information from her.

So they had done their best to go about their daily routines as best they could. Elena, Stefan, Caroline and Bonnie headed to school each morning. After school, Caroline and Stefan would head to the woods to chase down a small animal or two, or they would head over to a party somewhere to practice compulsion by forcing unsuspecting victims to give up their alcohol. Lexi continued to spend her days in the library and Damon headed out to his job as a mechanic, before occasionally heading to the Grill after he got off for a drink.

On this particular afternoon, Elena head over to the Salvatore boarding house, hoping to say hi to Lexi before she made her daily trip to the library. She didn't even bother to knock anymore and headed into the living room.

"Elena?" It was Stefan. Elena couldn't help but smile at the sight of her ex-boyfriend. He looked different as a vampire. More careful and dangerous, but he still had an air of caring and worry about him that carried over from his human self. She hadn't seen him much over the past few weeks. He had asked for space from her during his transition especially since they were still technically broken up.

Elena turned to face him straight on. "Stefan. How are you doing?" It wasn't really fair of her to ask that question and she knew it. It was just the first thing that popped into her head. A simple question that people would ask when they were trying to make polite conversation. If she had really wanted a rundown on how he had been doing for the past few weeks, she should have asked how he was handling the transition or if he was getting any more used to his newfound abilities.

"Fine." he replied. An equally polite but totally pointless answer. It was what you said when you obviously weren't fine but didn't want to go into the details of why at that moment.

Elena bit her lip and nodded, not quite sure what to say. Then she remembered why she had come there in the first place. "Is Lexi here?" she asked.

"No, she just left." Elena nodded again and turned to leave but Stefan called her name. "Elena, we need to talk." She looked down at the carpet. She knew they needed to address whatever was between them, but she had been putting it off, waiting for Stefan to make the first move. And now he had, and she didn't feel ready, but she turned around anyway, and let out a sigh. "I know." She walked over to the couch and sat down across from him.

Stefan sat back down and took a deep breath. "Elena." He began. "I'm sorry. I know I have been avoiding you for a while now and I never really gave you an explanation for that." He paused again, before letting his words tumble out, one after the other. "When I first found out about you I was just shocked and needed some time and then you explained all about how it happened and what it meant, what types of things were legends and myths and what was actual fact.

"Then I got kidnapped and turned and when I escaped I didn't know you were out and safe so I ran to Caroline. You have to understand I have known Caroline my whole life. It's not that I didn't trust you it's just that I knew how good she was at things like this and how good she was at being a vampire, and I didn't know where else to go." He stopped for a moment and looked up at her, begging her to understand. "But I am in no way over you. I need you to know that." Elena sucked in a breath. "Every day I spent with Caroline recently I kept finding myself thinking of you more and more. I never really stopped loving you. When we broke up it was because I needed some space, and I did, but it's been almost a month now. You have given me more than enough time, and I've finally come to realise that you are the one I want." He reached across the coffee table and took her hand. "I can't keep my mind off of you. No matter how much I try to distract myself by chasing bunnies through the forest.

"I thought I was doing you a favor somehow, by not being with you. That I was keeping you from the pain and annoyance of having to help me with every little thing while learning to being a vampire, but I see now how that makes no sense. I need you, and now I'm going to fight for you." He finally reached the end of his speech and watched her expectantly, waiting to see how she would respond.

Elena slowly let out the breath she had been holding, trying to process what he had just said. She found herself smiling. "Stefan, you don't have to fight for me. I'm already yours. I have been yours since the day I laid eyes on you. I can't stop thinking about you either. But I knew you wanted your space so I obliged, but if you want to be together, then there is nothing keeping us apart." A smile grew on Stefan's face. "I have always loved you." she said. She leaned across the table pulling his hands toward hers and he leaned forward to meet her. Their lips locked, and suddenly all the tension and strange silences that had been between then fell away, a distant memory.

When they pulled away, they were both smiling widely and holding hands from across the table. "So is it official then?" Stefan said, a lighthearted laugh pulling at the corners of his mouth.

"Is what official?" Elena asked.

"That you're my girlfriend again."

She laughed and smiled wide, nodding. "Yes. It's official."

Lexi sat in the library, flipping through another book, trying to find a clue to Klaus's plan. She slammed it shut and set it down on the table with a sigh. Whoever wrote that book obviously had never even met a vampire in his life. He wasn't going to be much help.

She stood up and headed over to the shelves. She pulled another book down.

Myths and Legends of the Original Discoverers of America: The Vikings in the New World.

Lexi rolled her eyes. Whoever was writing this book obviously had way too much time on their hands. The title was long enough to be a book all by itself. Lexi flipped it open anyway. From what she had gathered, the Original family had been alive for about a thousand years which put them around 1014 BC. This book was the right time period. And although no one could confirm it, Lexi was pretty sure the Originals had come from America. Which meant this book was the right place. And the Viking thing, okay, well that was just Lexi's guess.

She scanned the pages and a named popped out at her. Niklaus. She stopped and turned to start at the beginning of the story.

Niklaus the Hybrid: The Origin of Werewolf and Vampire Stories

Lexi couldn't help but roll her eyes again. They really need more creative titles, but this one had caught her eye anyway.

The Native people to the land where a man named Michael had chosen to live had a dark secret. Every full moon they would transform into beasts and run wild. Michael and his family as well as the rest of the villagers lived in peace with the natives and every full moon they would take shelter in nearby caves.

However, it was rumored that Michael's wife had an affair with one of the natives. Another son was born by the name of Niklaus. He was raised by Michael and grew up with the rest of his children, but he was never really his son.

Years later, Niklaus and one of his younger brothers snuck out to watch the natives change into beasts on the full moon. The youngest son was killed.

In love for her other children, their mother, whom was a witch, created a spell to ensure that her children would not be killed by anything ever again. She gave them immortality, speed, strength and agility, but because nature demanded a balance, there were unexpected side effects. They needed to feed on human blood to live and could not walk around during the daytime.

When Niklaus first killed, it triggered the beast inside of him that had been passed down from his real father. The witch mother saw this as an abomination. She believed that no one being should be allowed to have that much power. So, she put a curse on her son to keep his inherited beastly gene dormant. She sealed this curse with a moonstone, the full moon, and the blood the girl that both Niklaus and his brother loved.

It is said that to this day he searches for a way to undo this curse and become the Hybrid he was meant to be.

Many historians cite this extremely old Viking's tale as the origin story for not one, but two different well known mythical creatures that we refer to in today's day as vampires and werewolves. Whether or not this story is truly the first of its' kind and the inspiration for how we view these creatures today, is to be debated, but it the first account we can find of either of them. Throughout history, vampire and werewolf stories have shared common ideas and themes such as the full moon transformation for werewolves and blood drinking and inability to walk in sunlight for vampires. Could this Viking story from the turn of the 9th century have truly been where all the other stories gotten their inspiration?

Lexi put the book down. Werewolves? She had only heard rumors about them. They weren't supposed to exist, but to be fair, neither were vampires. She suddenly remembered the night she had seen that wolf in the forest. It had seemed more . . . human than normal and there was something about it that had really creped her out. And, if she remembered correctly, that night had been a full moon.

But if werewolves were real, and the story was a little more than a story . . . All the pieces seemed to fall into place. This was why he hasn't done the spell yet. He was waiting for the next full moon. He was going to break the curse set on him by his mother. He was going to become a true hybrid.

Damon was sitting at the bar in the Mystic Grill minding his own business when someone pulled up a chair next to him.

"Hello teacher." He said as he usually did whenever Alaric dared to think it was okay for him to sit and drink with the Eldest Salvatore brother. The first time the teacher had pulled up a chair next to him, his first thought was that he was crazy. Damon had kept him locked up in his house for a full day, so why was he coming over to buy a drink with him? But Alaric didn't seem at all angry or frightened. Instead he was curious. He would buy Damon a drink in exchange for information about Vampires, the Council, and Elena and her gang of friends. Damon had obliged, not seeing the harm if Elena herself said she trusted him.

But the next day, Alaric was back. He had more questions and Damon did his best to supply the answers he knew. Soon Alaric ran out of questions, as he quickly got all caught up on exactly everything that had happened in the past few months. He then told Damon about how his wife had been killed by a vampire a few years back, and ever since then he had been hunting them, trying to find the one that had killed her. It became a regular occurrence. They would meet in the afternoon at the Grill for drinks and then tell everything about their days.

"Hello Damon." Alaric responded to Damon's greeting. He ordered two drinks and let his face fall into his hands.

"Rough day?" Damon asked.

Alaric groaned and nodded before picking his head back up. "Too many papers to grade and then one of my students decided to give me a hard time and now I just found out Jenna had to cancel on our date tonight because of some family thing she promised her sister she would go to."

Damon raised his eyebrows. "So you are dating now?" He asked, trying to clarify.

Alaric gave Damon a look that said, what do you think I just said? "Of course we are dating."

Damon put up his hands in surrender. "Okay okay, I was just trying to make sure. You know how some women are. If you don't explicitly state it, they can never be sure."

Alaric glared at Damon. "We're dating." He said with no amount of questioning in his voice.

Damon's cell buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out. The caller ID said, Lexi. Curious, he answered the phone.

"Damon, I just figured it out. I need you to meet me and the rest at your house in ten. And bring the teacher with you."

Damon rushed through the front door to his own house, closely followed by Alaric. "What do we know?" He asked, desperate for any new piece of news regarding Klaus the resident Original of Mystic Falls.

"Good, everybody's here." Lexi said, standing in a circle of Caroline, Stefan, and Elena, who quickly parted to make room for the two newest arrivals.

Elena stepped forward. "Lexi, what is this about? What did you find out?"

Lexi held up a book. "It's all in here. The story of the origin of vampires and who Klaus and his family really are . . . and how he is part werewolf."

Damon snorted. "Werewolf? Werewolves don't exist."

Lexi shrugged. "You would have said the same thing for vampires a few months ago."

"Wait." Caroline said. "Klaus is part werewolf?"

Lexi nodded. "I did as much research on werewolves that I could in the past hour, but from what I have read, their bite can be deadly to vampires. I'm not sure how exactly you become a werewolf, but based on the story of Klaus, it seems like it is more of a genetic thing. But when his mother turned both him and all his siblings into vampires, it made it him even more powerful than either vampires or werewolves separate. So she put a curse on him that kept his werewolf side dormant. This curse was bound by a full moon, the moonstone, and a sacrifice. He would need at least all those things in order to break it, probably more than one i the sacrifice department."

"Isn't it a full moon tonight?" Stefan asked.

"Yeah, it is." Alaric replied. They all turned to him. "What? I overheard one of the science teachers saying something about it in school today."

"Great." Elena said. "So now that he has the moonstone," She threw a pointed look over at Damon, "He has everything he needs. He is going to break it tonight."

"But a spell like that would need a considerable amount of power for perform." Lexi said. "Somewhere magical or significant to the supernatural world."

Elena took a deep breath. "I think I know where."

The gang of six snuck up the hill toward the spot where a hundred witches had been brutally murdered over one hundred years ago. The sun was already hovering near the horizon, about to disappear from the sky for another night and leave the world behind cold and dark.

They hid behind a few bushes, looking out into the clearing. Elena had been right. Klaus stood there making preparations for the spell and waiting for the moon to be full. There was another woman, a witch from the look of her, probably some poor person who Klaus had threatened into doing the spell for him. Then there were Klaus's siblings, each guarding a single captive.

Alaric adjusted the branches hanging in front of him in order to get a better look at the captives. Upon seeing the first, he took a sharp breath. He stared, captivated by a face he never thought he would see again. She looked that same as when he had last seen her, but instead of the soft, kind look on her face it was blank. It was impossible for her to even be alive. He had seen her die. And then it all came together in his head. She hadn't been killed, she had been turned. He shook his head, his eyes starting to tear up. "Isobel." He whispered to himself, longing for her to look his way so he could see her face again.

Damon noticed his drinking buddy's face and clapped him on the back. "Hey, you okay buddy?" He asked, nothing but genuine concern in his voice.

Alaric quickly blinked away tears, and nodded. There was no use in letting his emotions get in the way now.

Alaric got a good look at the second captive when Klaus walked over to him and forced him to stand. It was a familiar face. Alaric searched his memories before remembering where he had seen the man before. He had meet him at the Mystic Grill a few weeks before. The man had introduced himself as Mason Lockwood.

But the third captive was the one that he just couldn't wrap his mind around. She was identical to Elena, right down to the straight brunette hair and doe eyes. Alaric's first thought was Katherine, who he had learned was her identical twin sister, but when he glanced over at Elena, she was as shocked as he was. It wasn't Katherine.

The group crept closer, and soon Alaric was able to hear what was being said. The witch was already chanting, her spell book open with the moonstone set down in front of it. The sun was all the way down now, and the moon was quickly rising in the sky.

The witch motioned to Klaus. "It's time for the first sacrifice." She said.

Klaus smiled wickedly and strolled over to Mason, who was being held by Elijah. Klaus grinned and, without any more pretense, tore his heart from his chest. Mason crumbled to the ground. Klaus brought the heart over to where the witch was working the spell and placed it in front of her.

That was it. Alaric glanced over at Elena and she nodded, somehow knowing what he was thinking. Together, the gang of six, four vampires and two humans, ran out into the clearing. Each vampire heading for a different Original. Damon headed toward the witch, to try and stop her from the spell and Alaric ran straight toward his wife.

Fighting broke out all around him as he reached the woman who had been absent from his life for so long. "Isobel!" He yelled.

She turned toward his voice. "Alaric?" She said upon spotting him. He gave her a huge hug but slowly pulled back when she didn't even attempt to return it. "What are you doing here?" She asked.

"I'm here to stop Klaus." He said. "And apparently to rescue you."

Her expression didn't change. "Who said I wanted to be rescued?"

Alaric pulled back. "What do you mean? Of course you want to be rescued."

Alaric sensed a presence behind him and turned to find Klaus standing there. The vampire walked around the teacher and caressed Isobel's face with one hand while slipping a wooden stack to her with the other. He looked into her eyes. "Isobel, sweetly, I want you to take this stake, and drive it through your own heart." He smiled and turned back to Alaric, who stood there in horror.

Behind Klaus, Isobel turned the stake to face inward toward herself. She lifted it and in one swift motion plunged it into her chest. Klaus seemed to get a kick of Alaric's expression as he watched.

Alaric was in shock. It had all happened so fast and there was nothing he could have done to stop it. She shook his head, trying to clear it and looked around, finally noticing just how badly their attempt to thwart Klaus's plan had failed. Damon way laying halfway to the witch, hopefully just knocked out. Stefan and Lexi both looked like they had had their necks snapped by an Original. Elena was still trying to fight both Elijah and Kol at once. And somehow, Caroline had gotten Elena's doppelganger to the edge of the forest, but that didn't last for long. Klaus speed over as Rebekah stood in Caroline's, making it clear that if the new blond vampire tried anything she would end up with a snapped neck just like her friends.

The moon was at its' peak now and the witch's chanting had reached a new volume as she shouted at the sky. It was time. Klaus smiled, baring his fangs and then clamped down on the girl. She looked as if she wanted to scream but she barely able to make a sound. As Klaus drank, the color drained from her face and the moment he was finished, she fell to the ground like she had never had any life in her in the first place.

He gave an evil laugh out to the sky began to transform. The spell on him had been broken. Before he had even fully finished his transition, he was off into the woods. The rest of the Mikaelson family quickly followed after, forgetting the battle they had just been in the middle of with Elena's gang of ragtag vampires and humans. The witch's chanting stopped and she too collapsed to the ground.

Elena and Caroline walked over to Alaric and the three of them stood quietly in the middle of a clearing full of bodies, blood, and the spirits of a hundred dead witches.

End of Book Two