Clair de Lune - K.M.

c h a p t e r t w e n t y f o u r

I toss and turn pretty much the whole night after the decade dance, sleep determined to evade me. I lay next to Klaus as he sleeps peacefully, occasionally letting out irritated sighs and flipping onto my other side. Sometime around three a.m. my antics wake Klaus from his slumber and he turns over to reach for me blindly. 

"You need to sleep, pup," he murmurs softly against my skin as he pulls my back to his chest and wraps his arms around me, tucking his head into my neck. 

"I can't," I whisper. 

"Try." 

So I do. The soft pressure of Klaus' arms around me helps to calm my anxieties and even though I still feel incredible uneasy, I do manage to get a few hours of rest in his arms. It's a struggle, but I finally manage to fall asleep just when the morning sun begins to shine through Klaus' windows, it's soft beam of light creeping slowly across the floor. I accept the reprieve that sleep brings eagerly, but my peace is interrupted just hours later when the world comes crashing down around me again for what feels like the millionth time.

"Nik!" Rebekah says frantically, bursting her way into the room. "Nik, we have a problem."

"Rebekah get out," he groans sleepily, letting me go and flipping over onto his back as I roll away from him and pull a pillow over my head.

"Alaric Saltzman just tried to kill me!"

My eyes snap open wide at her words and I sit up instantly as Klaus jumps out of bed to approach his sister.

"Alaric Saltzman is supposed to be dead," Klaus says darkly.

"Well he's not! He's a vampire thanks to mothers spell with a white oak stake that can't kill him. He's strong, Nik, too strong."

"Where is he now?" Klaus asks her, beginning to pace across the room.

"He's stuck at the school without a daylight ring but as soon as night falls, he'll come after us. We need to leave. Now."

Klaus doesn't answer her, stopping his pacing to turn and  look at me instead. I'm sitting in his bed, the sheet spread haphazardly over my legs and my shaking hands resting on top of it as my brain frantically scrambles to make sense of what's happening.

"Pup."

Klaus moves to sit in front of me, placing his face in front of mine to get me to look at him and grabbing my hands to steady them. 

"Pup, we need to get ready to leave."

"The school," I say suddenly, something about this situation not making sense in my brain. I feel like I'm forgetting an important piece of information. I look past Klaus at Rebekah, who's doing her best to avoid eye contact with me. "Why were you at the school?"

"I-"

"Rebekah," I say, letting go of Klaus and sliding past him to approach the vampire. "Why were you at the school?"

"I was there to clean up the dance," she eventually says and I can feel my stomach drop to the floor. 

Clean up. The dance committee. Please, no.

My worst fears are confirmed when I see the look on her face.

"Who?" I ask in a quiet voice. "Who does he have?"

"Caroline."

Fuck.

I step back in shock, covering my mouth with my hand. Panic is beginning to coarse through me and I begin to frantically look around the room for my things.

"Look, it doesn't matter. We need to go," Rebekah says as she ignores me and steps forward to plead frantically with her brother. He brushes her off, too busy attempting to get me to calm down to listen. "Nik! Your girlfriend and her friend will be fine, it's us he's after!"