For Good | Hale- TO/TW [8]

16 | Mongrels

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The four Hales face Klaus as he explains the situation. Klaus had teamed up with Marcel to lure out the vampire trader. The kidnapper turned out to be a hundred-year-old vampire named Greta who believed in a deadman's doctrine.

"Why are you just telling us this now?" Cora asks. She throws her hands up in the air. "We should be kept in the know, Klaus."

She stands behind Laura, who sits on the couch. Teddy sits beside the oldest Hale as Derek pours Cora a drink. The woman gladly takes it.

"The man was a forgettable artist, a virulent fascist, and a murderous slob who slaughtered werewolves by the pack," Klaus snaps. He doesn't need the attitude. Just concentration. "Killed one of Lexi's."

"I thought only Argents ever got close enough," Derek says, handing Klaus his own drink.

"And August," Klaus replies bitterly. "She and Elijah had just settled. They were jumpy. Lexi established a pack in the heart of Germany for some protection. August slaughtered them whilst she and Elijah were tracking me down." Klaus drinks the bourbon.

"What did you do to him?" Laura asks.

"What makes you think I had a piece in this?"

"Oh, I don't know." Teddy crosses his arms. "Maybe a hundred years of history?"

Klaus shakes his head. "That hideous Greta woman with her reverence for a dilettante who made no mark upon the world." The glass in Klaus' hand groans under his group. "I will not entertain her hateful demands and bind my child."

"Shouldn't Hope get a say in this?" Teddy asks, standing up to fully face Klaus. The hybrid had not taken Teddy seriously before, maybe face to face, he will.

"This fate which she demands, the curse which I bore for a millennium," Klaus says, rage building in his voice. "I can't put my daughter through that. It's a pain worse than death." Klaus pauses to glance into Teddy's green eyes. Klaus wonders if Lexi had been here, would he have done something different. Would he have acted in retaliation? He never forgave her for the spell.

"No, I will see that woman roast upon a pyre before I give in to the demands of these cultists."

"Look, we get it and we've got your back," Derek says. Klaus sends him a look. "We do, ok?"

"But if they kill Hayley, and Hope isn't given a chance to save her, she will never forgive you," Laura points out. She did not want to be there. She wants to be outside, searching, or downstairs, torturing the bitch who took her best friend.

"And if I impose this shame upon my daughter, and then they kill her mother anyway?" Klaus shakes his head. "I won't forgive myself."

—|—|—|—

Derek and Laura go down to the dungeons together. Laura practically runs but controls her excitement when they reach the prisoner.

Greta sits on top of a boulder, blood running down her arms. Her face is pale and beaded with sweat. "Who are you?" She asks as the two Hales walk in.

Derek leans against the tunnel wall as Laura stands before Greta. Laura crosses her arms and glares. "Where is Hayley?"

Greta lets out a laugh. "This again? Tell Klaus that once Hope binds her werewolf side, we can talk about Hayley's return."

"No," Laura says. "You're never gonna give Hayley back. You're as bad as your August."

"Bad?" Greta scoffed, coughing. "He was an angel in a sea of abominations. He was the light in the darkness of—"