Fighting For Hope (The Hybrid and The Wolf - Book 3)

Chapter 7 - Chasing the Devil's Tail

Elijah still hadn't woken up and I was really starting to worry, Esther had done something to him while she held him captive. I was walking into his room to check on him when I saw Klaus standing at his bedside with his hands on his head and chest.

"Let me help end whatever torment she has forced upon you," he said before his nose started to bleed.

When I see this, I pull him away and he grabbed me by the shoulders, startling us both.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

Klaus wiped the blood from his nose. "I'm trying to enter Elijah's thoughts to wake him, Esther has locked me out."

I walked closer to Elijah and saw something on his neck, so I pulled down his T-shirt.

"Is this rash a side effect of the witchy acid trip he's on?"

Klaus took a closer look.

"I haven't seen this since I was a child. Mikael would return home from battle more blindly temperamental than usual and our mother would use the petals of a rare merlock orchid to put him to sleep. She would mend his mind with a spell and then wake him with the roots of the same plant," Klaus turned around to face me. "If she has access to it now, then maybe it also grows in the Bayou."

I opened my mouth to say something but he cut me off.

"You stay here with your wolves and mind the fort.

"I'd rather rip your mother's head off," I told him, annoyed.

"Stay clear of her," Klaus walked closer when I rolled my eyes. "I mean it, Nina. She already got to you once, what would happen if Elijah were to wake and find you a victim of her madness?"

"There you go again," I gave him a pointed look. "Talking about how Elijah would react but never yourself." 

Klaus sighed because we've had this conversation before. "What do you want me to say, Nina?"

"How about the truth?" I suggested, crossing my arms.

Klaus looked at me for a moment and opened his mouth to say something but instead, he did what he always does. He avoided the question.

"Promise me you won't go near my mother."

I searched his eyes and saw how serious he was about this.

"Fine, I promise I won't go after her."

When he was gone, I knelt next to Elijah and placed my hand on his sweaty forehead.

"I've learned a few things from your mother," I told him, not sure if he could actually hear me. "I won't go after her, I'll go after everything that she loves."

~*~*~

Although Klaus told me to stay at the compound, I left to go to the Bayou where Jackson and Hayley were giving Oliver a funeral. They gave him a Viking funeral - they laid his body on a boat, doused it in alcohol and pushed it onto the water before setting it ablaze.

I walked up behind my brother as he watched his dead friend float away and burn.

"I'm so sorry, Jack," I said, softly.

"This is bull, Nina," He told me as he angrily got to his feet. "Crescent tradition says you have a funeral at dawn and no one is here!"

I stayed silent, not knowing what to say.

"That loyalty . . . loyalty's gone," my brother said, then he started to walk away.

"We're standing around moping over Ollie's body when there's a war to be fought," I told Jackson, making him stop and look at me. "I understand that you have to grieve, Jack. You waited for me, so I'll do the same for you but our people need their Alpha."