WAR OF HEARTS ↠ KOL MIKAELSON [1]

3:14 / EPILOGUE

| THE AFTERMATH:
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE FINALE |

The scent of blood and sweat clung to them like second skin.

The Mikaelsons burst through the entrance of Lucien's old apartment, the door slamming open with a force that cracked the plaster around the frame. Klaus, still holding Elijah's weight against his side, stumbled through first. Behind him, Kol and Rhea stumbled in tandem—less running now and more dragging each other across the threshold. Their combined injuries left a trail of blood that would've been alarming if not for the sheer urgency of their arrival.

Hayley leapt to her feet from the kitchen table, Hope cradled against her chest. Freya was already mid-incantation across the room, candles blazing with wild, unstable flames around her makeshift altar.

Klaus's voice rang out like a command.

"Freya!"

The name snapped through the apartment like a gunshot.

Freya turned at once, and the sight that met her eyes made her breath catch.

Elijah, his suit darkened by a spreading wound across his chest. Kol, ghostly pale and feverish, a werewolf bite festering on his shoulder. And Rhea—Rhea, who looked like death was riding shotgun beneath her skin. Her shirt clung to her, soaked with blood. The wound just beneath her ribs had stopped bleeding... not because it had healed, but because her body had begun to shut down.

Hayley's face drained of color the moment she saw Elijah. But then her eyes found Kol's shoulder—and finally, Rhea. Her entire expression shifted from fear to raw, maternal panic.

"Elijah..." Hayley breathed, stepping toward him, but he shook his head sharply, swallowing his pain.

"Don't. We'll deal with that later."

Kol collapsed onto the couch, his legs barely holding him upright. His skin was slick with sweat, his eyes glassy with fever.

Rhea didn't sit.

She sank to her knees in front of him, breath hitching, hands trembling as she grasped his hand tightly in her own. Blood smeared between their fingers. Her other hand pressed instinctively to her wound, but the pain was becoming secondary—Kol was the only thing that mattered.

Kol looked down at her—his bride, his anchor, his fire—and gave a ghost of a smirk.

"I'm going to die," he rasped.

His voice was barely more than a whisper, but it landed like a scream in the room.

From somewhere deeper in the apartment, Hope began to cry—a high, fragile wail, as if even she could feel the walls closing in.

"You're not going to die," Klaus snapped, his voice cutting through the moment like a blade.

But no one moved.