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CHAPTER ONE | GATHER UP THE KILLERS
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
IT HAD BEEN FIVE YEARS SINCE RILEY SAID GOODBYE TO THE MIKAELSON FAMILY. Five years since she and Hayley fled New Orleans with Hope in order to, not only keep her safe, but to save her family. For Riley, those five years had not passed without consequence. She had to kill innocents just to keep Marcel's vampires from working out what they were doing, because if he did, he would surely kill Klaus.
Riley had somewhat of a daily ritual. She would head upstairs to the attic of the house that she and Hayley had rented and she would sit beside Elijah's coffin. The girl had updated him about everything, almost as if he could hear her, though she knew he probably couldn't.
"Every single day is just one step closer to us." Riley spoke as she chuckled to herself, delicately tucking her hair behind her ear. "I mean, that's what I keep having to tell myself." Her hands fiddled with the necklace that hung loosely around her neck. "She keeps asking to meet you. I think Hope has told her pretty much all about you guys."
"Riles." Hayley's voice carried into the attack which caused Riley's attention to move to the staircase. "Mary's here."
"See you soon." Riley whispered finally to the man she loved before she took herself back down the stairs. She and Hayley strolled out onto the front porch just as Mary's truck pulled up onto the estate.
"Well, now aren't the two of you a sight." Mary mused at the two women once she jumped out of her truck.
"You're sure nobody followed you, right?" Riley raised an eyebrow toward the woman. As much as she respected Mary was capable of taking care of herself, she knew Marcel's vampires were crafty.
"I've been avoiding trouble since well before you were born. Now, where are those little girls?" Mary turned her attention toward the house in the distance.
"Did you find it?" Hayley asked abruptly. Mary's face immediately fell. "Mary, please. After all this time, we are this close to getting them back. We found a cure for Freya's poison. Riley found a witch to siphon Rebekah's hex—"
"So, you're really gonna do it? Cure 'em and then wake 'em up?" Mary's gaze flickered between the two women. "Do you ever stop to think Hope might be better off without them?" Mary then looked at Riley. "And, what about Avery? The devastation that she has endured, do you really think she needs more death and destruction surrounding her?"
Riley sighed heavily and shook her head. "I made a promise."
"To who? Elijah?"
"Mary, Hope's a Mikaelson, too." Hayley interrupted the moment she noticed Riley and Mary's back and forth become a little more heated. "She deserves her family."
"You told me to wake the Mikaelsons you needed to find all seven werewolf packs. I found six. The last one, the Malraux— I thought they were killed off." She pulled a folded up piece of paper from her pocket and handed it to Hayley. "According to this, there might be one left. But, the two of you looked for five years, you found nothing. Suddenly, I get word of a lead. What if someone else found it, too? What if it's a trap?"
