Pimpnamedriley
Rebekah Mikaelson often found herself standing by the compound window, observing the chaotic beauty of the French Quarter below. A thousand years was a heavy clock to carry, and every tick was a fresh reminder of the promised life she had been denied. The scent of beignets and the distant sound of jazz felt like a cruel joke-a vibrant world of normalcy just beyond her reach, perpetually guarded by her brother's paranoia and their family's unbreakable, suffocating vow.
Her current misery was personified by the pregnant woman currently occupying Klaus's rooms. The Wolf Girl. Hayley Marshall was simply another complication, another variable in the Mikaelson equation. Rebekah had initially dismissed her with a wave of her hand, a sneer, and a deliberate failure to recall her name. She had seen countless women pass through her brothers' lives, usually ending in tragedy or boredom.
But this time, the formula felt wrong.
Hayley's fierce, desperate solitude, her utter lack of pretense, began to chip away at the Original vampire's carefully constructed walls. She was not fragile; she was simply lonely, trying to protect her child in a world that saw her only as a vessel. And perhaps, Rebekah thought, watching the subtle rise and fall of Hayley's breath while she slept, the wolf was also just looking for a family to keep. A family that might finally choose her, and let her choose them, without a dagger or a betrayal.