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The altar first appeared to Elena on the night of the new moon. Like so many other nights before, she has been walking in her meadow - their meadow - an aimless night stroll, wrapped in nothing but a light sundress, trusting the pale light of the stars to guide her way. Because in this world, the nights were safe, so long as she kept away from the woods.
But there has been something bubbling within her chest lately, bothering her, keeping her up in lonely nights. Like the muddy waters of a creek. Like a hatchling, trapped in the confines of her ribcage and wanting out, urging her to crack her chest open so it can fly free, to wander a little closer to the edges of forest, where the soft grass of the meadow grew thin and the shadows grew long and fanged, where the pleasant smell of dew and flowers gave way to the heavy must of decay.
From a distance, she sees nothing but the reflection of moonlight first, a flash of white, like a visage in the desert, at the very boundary between the woods of elm and oak and the expanses of soft fields. Maybe the sun-bleached carcass of a deer. Exciting. Her heart beat faster and faster as she ran until her calves burned, and then she was in their midst. Not bones, but stones, ruins rather, of something old. No, something new, she thinks with delight. How wonderful is that? Nothing ever happens here.
She circles, observing the stones. A single column stands untouched - wide enough she can barely fit her in her open arms - and soon she realises that all the stones used to form columns, six, seven of them, in a circle fifteen, twenty feet wide. She can make out markings on the dry grass, she can see where the scattered columns used to stand. She kneels and studies them close. There are cracks on them, deep gauges, a darker shade of bone-white. Not random. It is an inscription, and Elena thinks she recognises some runish shapes, running all the way across. She touches her fingers to them, at first hesitantly and then running them over the script with wild joy, the stone - marble, it could be marble she thinks - cool against her feverish skin.
In her delight, she doesn’t notice the flower nor the thorn nesting amongst the ruins until it is too late. It scratches into her thumb, deep, and Elena startles, whatever spell was driving her now broken. She runs then, back through her meadow, back to the safety of home.
In the morning, her Wolf with the honey-blond curls feeds her honeyed figs on the soft grass, his fingers a sloppy mess against her smile. She wipes the sweetness from her lips, and his eyes narrow as he tastes her, noticing the fresh cut on her finger.
‘Who hurt you?’ he speaks, green-blue eyes flashing golden, nostrils wide in arrested anger.
‘No one can,’ Elena whispers, taking his face in her hands, pleading with syrupy sweetness. Please don’t notice my stones, please don’t take them away. ‘I was picking flowers, and cut myself on a thorn. I barely noticed’.
‘No flowers shall have thorns then,’ her beast growls, displeased. ‘Brother?’ he demands.
And the pair of dark eyes, watching them - her - through dark eyelashes, always watching, tighten in agreement. All thorns disappear that day, and Elena mourns them so. She turns to look towards her stones, worried about them. She takes a step, but she feels dark eyes piercing her. Eager to keep her secret safe, she turns away from her treasure and mumbles a shy ‘thank you’ instead.
The worry stays with her, and soon as her beasts are gone, she is running back to find her stones, blessedly still there, undisturbed. She only stays for a moment, feeling the memory of eyes in the back of her neck. The tingle of fear making her blush.
And maybe this little scratchy fear is what spurs Elena’s steps, urging her to return to her stones after every full moon, when her bed is cold and empty. She traces the stones time and again, and before long, she gets braver, lifting them, shifting them, figuring out the patterns of the runes. Like a so-very-heavy puzzle, the columns and floor and little nooks start forming. In her mind’s eye she can see the former glory of the altar - for Elena knows that for sure, it must be an altar.
As if caught in a trance, all her waking moments are tormented by the compulsion to restore the altar of her meadow. She smiles and says she’s well, just daydreaming, when asked. Night and again, she goes back, lifting and shifting stones with nothing but her two arms, the sweat of her brow bone. Until one night, the circle is complete.
Elena takes a step back, takes in the altar that she has now restored. A circle of seven columns of differing heights, two shorter, two that go up to her hip, two almost taller than her - the entrance, and opposite them, a wider one that reaches her breastbone. Small, smooth stones fit between the columns and complete the circle, thick wax drippings belying their former purpose.
That night Elena sleeps in the altar’s midst, on smooth, worn marble. Exhausted, yet exhilarated. She wakes up with the first light of dawn and rushes home, heart pounding in her chest. Alive. Her Wolf, who comes back without a shirt or shoes, takes the blush on her cheeks as a sign of good health, and feasts on her until she screams in delight, her secret scorching the tip of her tongue.
Elena finds the dress a day before the next full moon. She is naked, in the gentle morning light, busy picking a sundress from the endless supply overflowing her closet, floral patterns in every colour of the rainbow, when a glimpse of white catches her eye. Folded away at the very depths of the closet, as if tucked away in a hurry. She unfolds it, carefully, and it is something out of time, heavy linen and silk, long sleeves and a lower decolletage than she would ever wear, a single cord holding the front together. A deep wine-red stain. Right where the wearer’s heart would have been.
Her mind only dares dwell on the owner but for a second. Someone tall, and lithe. Someone who filled the generous cups many centuries ago. Someone who was daggered in it. She shivers and her cheeks catch fire. Carefully, she hides it once more, before the body in her bed stirs away from the tender embrace of sleep.
As the moon swells and wanes, she brings the dress with her, placing it gently in the centre of her altar, spacious as a wedding bed.
The dagger, Elena finds last. She’s in the library, buzzing with the special restlessness only found in the moments after finishing a most excellent book, having yet to decide on the next one. A wanderlust takes her over, and as she searches for the next book she strays far from the familiar, enticing pull of her Keeper, who’s resting easy on their leather couch, consuming an ancient-looking tome, top buttons of his shirt undone.
The library grows labyrinthine, new paths opening for her at every corner, dust motes dimming the golden sunlight. Her steps lead her towards the heart of the library, where under an ornate windowsill, she stumbles across a dusty desk she’s never quite noticed before. On top, amongst parchments and dusty glasses of red wine, there’s a shiny quill resting inside an ink pot - but no. Elena looks again, and shivers. For it is not an ink pot nor a quill. Instead, it is a glass jar full of ash, and inside it, a dagger. Thin and ornate. Weightless. She picks a large book, bound in scarlet, and begging her traitorous heart to still, she hides the dagger inside. A secret bookmark of silver.
Later, when the man with the dark eyes ravages her on the leather couch, Elena tilts her head back and stares at the scarlet-bound book, where she left it amongst her Jane Austen’s and The Book of Dust, until she can almost make out the glint of metal between its pages. And if she cums with a glint of metal trapped in her eyes, her Keeper never notices.
As the next full moon draws near, the anticipation thrums low in her stomach, vibrates through her core, spreads through her limbs like vines until she can no longer contain it and it spills like honey, like nerves before a ball. Her Beast and Keeper must notice, her jittery fingers, her renewed vigour, the way she stumbles over words, the way she teases them, steals their drinks and their books and their so many pieces of jewellery, having them chase her until she tires and falls on the grass shaking with laughter.
They don’t just notice; they relish in it. She catches their secret smiles, their secret glances, gold meeting obsidian, and for once, Elena does not feel envy. For now she has her own secret, and it burns behind her every word.
And the moon comes and goes, and with it so do her beasts. When the house falls quiet, Elena rises from her pretend slumber. Thin dagger hidden in the waist of her sundress, a joyful light blue, with pale gold hummingbirds adorning the feather-light fabric.
She doesn’t bother with shoes - there are no thorns to hurt her bare feet. They made sure. And she runs to her altar, wild and free and full of anticipation wrapped in an exquisite fear she hasn’t felt in what feels like a lifetime.
Elena slows down as the pale shine of the columns appear at the edge of her meadow, savouring the image of it. Somehow, somewhen, vines have grown, embracing the stones so tight they almost crack anew. Fresh mosh is covering the centre, and yet the dress is untouched, a bright white in the centre of the altar.
Candles, darker than the night sky, are now placed perfectly on the stones that were stained with wax. When she reaches the middle, she stops to breathe. The moonlight filters through the columns of old, through the branches that reach over from the woods and forms a silver canopy, and underneath it she feels held, embraced herself, in a cocoon of stolen light.
Her necklace of jasper makes the spark that lights the candles, and she feels that’s another sign she is meant to do this, to be here. She places the last candle in the circle, and if her hands tremble, it’s from anticipation. Their wicks are thick and burn bright, and the flickering light chases away the spiders of concern in the back of her mind.
Nothing bad ever happens in her meadow. Whatever she is calling, whoever she is calling, is meant to be here.
Lifting the thin dagger, remnants of rust and ash on the silvery blade, she splits her forefinger open on it. A drop soaks the white dress spread before her, and then another, but they don’t soak in. Instead they travel up, congregating where the wine-red stain pollutes the breast. And then the grass around her shivers . For a moment a feeling of foreboding takes over. As if she’s desecrated something unknowable, something as ancient as the land, as the altar, with her fickle blood. As if she’s angered the earth itself.
The candles flicker; once, twice, thrice, and then blow out, and with them so does the gentle light of the moon. A wind, a hollow wind pushes Elena down, on her back, bringing with it a heavy smell of too-ripe fruit, of rust. Of honey. She tries to resist it, and then the gusts get stronger still, snaking in the tendrils of her hair and pulling her down until the pain reaches a crescendo Elena goes down with it, her heart a fluttering bird within her breasts.
When she opens her eyes again - she does not remember shutting them - the silvery moon is back. And with it, a shadow.
A lithe blonde spectre is upon her.
Elena scrambles to her feet. She tells her heart that she is not afraid, she is not afraid, because she has faced worse. And because she has the dagger, and if the blonde is what she thinks she is, the dagger will keep her safe.
And then the spectre moves, fast as the wind, fast as her siblings Elena can’t help but think, and the illusion of safety is shattered. Desperate, with the ghost’s pale face and darkening, veiny eyes - and fangs - only inches from her own, with a column pressing hard against her back - trapped trapped, always trapped - Elena brandishes the dagger. The tip touches the space between the blonde’s breasts, a no-man’s-land the dress does not conceal, and Elena is the one to shudder. Still the spectre takes a step back, with something unreadable clouding her dark blue eyes.
The spectre that’s less ghost and more icy-cold woman made of flesh, circles her instead, dark eyes studying her intently.
Elena watches her back, too scared to blink - a prehistoric instinct, never look away from a predator. The blonde moves like a dream, like the mists of early morning. Her white dress caresses the marble of the altar with every languid step, clings on every curve of her body, tightens impossibly around her waist. Higher up, the fabric and the string strain to contain full breasts of titanium white. And higher still, alabaster clavicles, swan neck, a face the shape of a heart. And then Elena’s heart strains, her hand grows weak. The blonde hair is not of silver, it is not of gold, but the colour of honey, like her very own beast.
Moments of weakness rarely go unpunished, Elena knows. And she has no one to blame but herself, as a cold hand - so cold it burns - closes around hers, and she can almost hear the click, the snare of the trap. And then the blonde is standing next to her, touching, and the spectre is tall enough that Elena has to tilt her head to catch her eyes, blue so dark it reflects the moonlight. No, it does not reflect; it traps the moonlight.
‘You wouldn’t build me an altar, you wouldn’t give me your blood, only to use this wicked thing on me,’ the apparition states. ‘You wouldn’t have it hurt me, not again, not after all the years it laid ruin through my flesh?’
Elena finds her eyes lower, catches the dark wine stain on the white dress. With her hand that’s no longer holding the dagger, she touches the ruined dress.
‘No,’ she agrees. ‘As long as you don’t hurt me,’ Elena pleads, directly, reasonably.
The spectre’s laugh rings clear, bouncing on the marble, splitting into a thousand mocking cries.
‘Is not hurting me so funny to you?’ Elena says through clenched teeth, something between anger and fear clouding her thoughts.
‘Don’t you know what you are, little bird?’
‘I am not a bird. I am Elena’.
‘You are a Petrova’.
‘Amongst other things -’
The blonde stops her there, the burning cold hand now around her chin. ‘Whatever else you think you may be, you are a Petrova first. And do you know that means?’
Elena stays silent, glaring back, despite herself. The too-solid spectre sounds like she will explain no matter what she does, and Elena never took kindly to being ordered around, no matter how powerful the mouth that yielded the commands.
‘It means, little bird, you were born to be our effigy. To be hurt by us, to bleed for us,’ and her fingers trace the scar on her neck, splintering Elena open. She feels seen through, speared through, but refuses to cower.
‘That’s why you came? To hurt me?’ Elena asks, refusing to acknowledge the tremble in her voice.
‘I came to see for myself the appeal of the latest copy. Destined to bleed for us, for them. You know,’ the blonde suddenly whispers in her ear, her breath a freezing breeze, raising goosebumps down the back of her neck. ‘That’s why they want you. My brothers, they can’t resist a tragic destiny. A doll shaped for their teeth, no matter how many similar ones they broke before. Or maybe,’ she muses. ‘Maybe because of all the ones they broke’.
‘I am Elena,’ she says instead of screaming the denials that are bubbling up her chest.
‘That you are, I suppose’. The blonde’s eyes turn soft for a moment, as if she realised she has pushed Elena too far. ‘Tell me, sweetheart, do you know who I am?’ She smooths down the frown between her eyebrows with a cold finger, and tucks a stray dark strand behind her ear, in a way that’s so familiar it aches. Elena realises she moved closer to the spectre only when she notices a spark of something in her eyes. Her full lips stretch thin as the corners curl, and as the bedevilment reaches her eyes, slanting them, Elena burns with how much of her Wolf she sees in her.
‘Rebekah,’ she whispers. And then, something comes to her mouth, unbidden. ‘You look like Klaus’. And Elena has to bite her lips, because Rebekah’s face changes.
The spectre takes a step back, eyes darkening in a mercurial shift Elena is only too familiar with.
‘I suppose I do,’ she sighs. ‘I know him best, too, so hear me, and hear me well. No matter how much Niklaus claims to love you, to need you, no matter how his eyes widen when he moves inside of you, as if he came across a newfound miracle,’ Rebekah speaks deliberately, skinning Elena with every word, ‘no matter all that. He will leave you, once you lose your shine’.
‘He won’t,’ Elena stumbles over herself.
‘You are lying to yourself, little bird. It is understandable. He has that effect after all, my brother’.
‘And how would you know?’
‘He was my first,’ Rebekah smiles, and Elena’s world tilts softly to the side. A white dress flutters as the Original spectre catches her around the waist, and they go down together.
Rebekah holds her hand, and maybe Elena is numb or the cold of her skin is receding, because the woman’s white flesh is no longer burning her.
They are sitting on top of the marble at the centre of the altar, the fabric of their dresses spread around them. The candles are flickering gently, and something inside Elena is wondering how this all would look if someone was to come across them - but no one would. No one could. Elena made sure to choose the time, carefully, and now she is paying the price. Rebekah’s other hand has taken to tracing patterns on Elena’s exposed thigh, and she speaks to cover her shiver.
‘Why would you tell me this?’ Elena asks. She doesn’t doubt the spectre’s words, everything inside her screams it’s true, and that, by itself, should terrify her.
‘Because much as it pains me to admit it, you are family. Entangled with family, at least. And I would rather you found out the truth from me’.
‘You would have wanted someone to warn you, back then,’ Elena whispers.
‘Maybe so. I wouldn’t have listened,’ her full lips split in a smile, ‘but it would have been nice. The illusion of choice’.
‘You and your brother. Did he...’ Elena swallows around the thought. ‘Was it when you were still human?’
‘Goodness, no!’ The blonde shakes her head as if the idea of wanting her human brother was too incredulous, and the loose ringlets fall softly around them, tickling Elena’s shoulder. ‘We were long turned when I went to him, our humanity merely a memory’.
Elena knows her face must be a state, because she takes pity on her.
‘Worry not your fluttering heart, little bird. Nik did not force me, nor seduced me. I went to him, night after night, and for years, he would not indulge me. No, for years, he fought me off…’ Dark blue eyes grow sad. ‘I do not resent him for his then-conduct. I do not resent him giving in. I am beguiling, after all, he admitted that plenty’. And she half-laughs, at herself, at the tragedy of herself.
Elena lets the curiosity win.
‘Why did you want him?’
She shrugs. ‘Why would I not? He was the only constant in our absurd lives, without mother, father wanting our deaths. Kol grieving his magic, Finn his humanity. Nik was the only one there for me, back then, who held me when I cried. He was there, Elena’.
‘How did you,’ Elena starts, and the spectre shakes her head.
‘Oh, I begged and cried, and he would not have me. I threatened to leave, to take off my ring and burn, and he would only hold me, preventing me from reaching the window. I came to his bed at the rise of the moon, soaked in the blood of virgins and he would not still not taste it from my skin. I tore the flesh of my breasts, my thighs, and still - nothing, not until Elijah spoke to him’.
‘Elijah?’
‘You think he is the gentle one,’ the spectre muses, touching long pale fingers on her things. ‘He is not. He will place pins inside of you, bite off your fragile wings, little bird. He shall keep you, and worse than that, he shall have you dreaming of his cage’.
‘Did he take you?’ Elena asks.
‘Elijah prefers to watch,’ Rebekah smiles, all teeth, and it turns into a frozen little sneer. ‘You know that already’.
‘He never touched you?’
‘Of course he did,’ she says, voice scolding. ‘He would, eventually, for they share everything, don’t they? Those were the good days, between them. I don’t know if it was a life with meaning. But it was life . And how did it make the time pass! Their mouths and their games, hide and seek around the rest of our siblings’. Elena can almost taste it, so similar to her sunny days laying on grass, the push and pull of the two brothers. Sticky pleasure, careless laughter. A life.
But the blonde’s face is cloudy, unlike the happy memories she is encountering. Elena feels the ending coming out of her cold lips. ‘But I went and ruined it all, did I not?’
‘How?’
Rebekah’s fingers get rough on her thigh.
‘I fell for a man. With a sword. And five daggers’.
The half-remembered tale of the Hunters comes back to Elena, through the hazy pleasure that has unwittingly taken over her body. Her eyes flash to the dagger, this time secure around Rebekah’s waist, the dress itself. The dry blood on her bosom, around a slit so tight only the dagger could match.
‘I’m sorry,’ Elena whispers, tries to catch the eyes of the blonde. She won’t let her. She looks straight ahead, into memories unseen.
‘Don’t be, honey. It’s ancient history. After the curse was brought upon him, Niklaus got lost inside himself, inside the madness. He left me, he left us’. She wipes the skin under her eyes with the back of pale-white hand, but there is no moisture to be found. ‘Elijah took me then, and it was nothing but bitter consolation’.
‘But he came back to you, did he not?’
‘By then, it was never the same. By then, his eyes were never the same’.
Elena strokes the icy column of her neck, translucent so, the rays of moonlight pass through it, lighting up the bluish veins. Like stained glass, like a place of worship.
‘Poor heart,’ she leans closer still, her very soul yearning to sooth the spectre.
It is that small show of compassion that tips the scales, and the spectre’s lashing out on her, teeth bared.
‘Don’t you dare presume you can pity me,’ the blonde growls. ‘You think that this is why I am telling you, you think I need your sympathies?’
‘I do not - I don’t pity you. I can’t help but feel how it would hurt if they left me, now. I empathise, Rebekah’.
‘You take yourself for a fool then, you little beast. He - they, they shall offer you all the pleasures of the flesh, they shall ruin you and then leave you, and all your compassion will drain away from you. What will be left then, I wonder? Nothing but a human body, and a copy at that’.
Her pale countenance darkens, a myriad of veins crawling towards her eyes. Elena’s eyes gravitate lower, to where her fangs glisten, more solid than anything on her. And Elena cannot help being drawn to them. To their inevitability.
‘I was so much more than that, and they ruined me, little heart. With their teeth, and fingers, and their cocks, and their love , they ruined me for humans and undead unlike’. She pauses. ‘And it wasn’t enough to keep them’.
Elena can’t resist the pull of her sorrow. The promise of her violence. She cups the monstrous face with both hands, offers a single kiss on lips stretched around teeth before she is shoved away.
‘I know,’ Elena whispers.
‘And they will do the same to you’.
‘Maybe they will. Maybe they have. I stopped wondering,’ she admits.
‘And it doesn’t frighten you?’ Pale fingers flutter up her stomach, round her breasts, tracing her face, around the widening of her eyes. The older sister places her cold, oh so cold hands on her eyes and Elena pushes against the frost, a balm to her feverish skin.
Elena rises to her knees then. Shifting her weight forwards, tipping the centre of her gravity, she lets herself fall, head-first, into the soothing coolness of the blonde. Her gamble pays off; her fall is interrupted by strong hands, one around her shoulders, one cupping her face gently - devastatingly preventing their lips from joining, only a hair’s width apart. And Elena tries, and when she’s not allowed to move, she speaks instead.
‘I have a secret,’ she offers.
‘You seem to have many,’ Rebekah breathes, and it razes like salty sea mist on her dry lips.
‘I am always frightened,’ and Elena watches as blue eyes turn into bottomless pools of dark, an oceanic chasm. Dreadfully pale, dreadfully lush lips pucker and then tighten in a smile, revealing rows of teeth, shark-like, pearl-like. So much like her brother, and so different.
‘Little bird, with your littlest beak. Tugging at the heartstrings of my brothers’ long rotten hearts. Why do you love death so much?’
And Elena, since she is not allowed to touch the spectre, turns her hands on herself instead. She pulls down the front of her dress, the pale hummingbirds forgotten, lower and lower until her dusky nipples sprung free. She traces fingers across them, feels them harden against the chill of the night, of the ghost. ‘Because death’s always been there for me’.
Dark blue eyes are now nothing but black, pools of shadows that threaten to drown her, and she can’t look away. Won’t look away.
‘Little bird… Elena… Will you give your death to me, then?’
And her eyes say something different. Like - Will you stay with me? - and - Am I good enough? -
Elena nods, yes, yes to all, and their lips touch. Softly at first, and then the blonde deepens the kiss and Elena allows her lips to tear against fangs that are sharper, littler than she’s used to. No less devastating.
Rebekah tastes sweet, so sweet that would be cloying, but for the delicate bitterness of something like ash. Elena gets lost chasing the bitterness in the back of her mouth, until the cold mouth tears away from hers.
The spectre licks a line down her cheek, and the tongue is cold and soothing and maddening like the call of the waves, and she laughs, bright, ocean eyes alight. Elena sees in them the phantom glow of a lighthouse, hears the call of sirens in her laughter. ‘You are a gift,’ Rebekah delights, and it is as much of a threat as her Wolf’s compliments.
And with little effort, the spectre tears her sundress open, touching Elena where she needs her the most.
She barely notices when Rebekah flips them around, so she is lying in her arms, as long as she keeps circling her finger on her core. She barely notices when her slender fangs find the white mark on her neck. When they bite her. When she pulls on her. None of this matters, so long as the soft, cold, slender fingers find their way inside her.
Elena was, perhaps, a fool to have thought she had evaded both brothers for all these months. That she was able to keep her altar a secret, that she could summon their sister and they would remain in the dark.
Or, maybe, she was only following the steps of their unspoken game, the Originals’ centuries-old dance; lies hidden in smiles, death hidden in sex, love hidden in betrayal. Something like a family, indeed, and the old her would have blanched at how easily she’d fit in.
So when her Wolf appears in front of them - or maybe he had been present all along, his eyes the itch on the back of her neck, his galloping hidden behind the exquisite agony, behind her moans - Elena doesn’t startle.
In a moment of clarity she meets his golden eyes, and realises that there are teeth deep inside of her, fingers caressing her insides. The lithe spectre is sucking out her life, in short, glorious pulls, while bringing her closer and closer to the edge, and Elena is tittering.
Her Wolf smiles, but his eyes are burning.
He kneels down. His eyes are staring where crystalline fingers enter her - and is that her own hand wrapped around the spectre’s, urging her on? - and Elena feels flayed open. ‘You will drain her,’ he warns her sister, and Elena is trapped between their spheres of influence, and she is so very tired.
‘I will,’ the blonde ghost whispers in her neck, lips sticking to her flesh, united in blood.
‘You shall not dare,’ growls her Wolf, eyes yellow.
And Elena has to make her own lips move, loose and sloppy as the blood inside her thins. ‘You will let her. It’s her turn,’ she scolds the beast in human form.
‘She is killing you’.
‘So did you. She deserves it’.
‘Or maybe my little sister and her clever mouth has you convinced that you deserve it,’ he hisses, treading a well-familiar path of accusations - Elena and her bleeding heart, Elena the martyr.
Elena gathers her wits around her, slows her shallow breathing. ‘You will not tell me what to feel and what to want,’ she tells him, harshly, and her Wolf shrinks back.
‘Who deserves it, I wonder,’ he speaks, reluctantly conceding. His now blue-green eyes staring at the darker blue of his sister. ‘Her, or you’.
Their joined hands leave her core, and Elena shudders at the emptiness. She is vaguely aware of exchanged glances, of undercurrents flowing around her, but she wants nothing but release. She reaches with her tired arm to hold on to the sweet drag, to chase after the promised peak. Her hand clenches around thin air; her sluggish blood no match for the beasts surrounding her.
‘May I enter?’ the Wolf then asks, sheepishly.
Rebekah’s laughter rings once more, and it sounds like it’s coming underwater.
Whatever battle was happening around her, it’s settled. She turns her head just so, in question, and the spectre behind her nods. And so Elena speaks: ‘You may’.
Her Wolf approaches them, losing his clothes as he crosses the barrier of the altar. He places a hand on the column she so meticulously put together, and the runes come alive under his touch, their glow etching his striking features like brushstrokes. And she can feel the marvel in his eyes, in the way he takes in breath through flared nostrils, the way he tastes the air through his lush lips, the way his pupils dilate. More beast than man, more god than beast.
Her body must have shivered, must have throbbed under his gaze, for the spectre behind her takes pity on her. Whispering kisses on her neck, on her jaw, she pulls her thighs apart, so wide it is uncomfortable and she feels splayed. Her sex throbs under their gaze.
‘Come on then, brother’.
Rebekah bites down on her breast, a provocation, another trickle of blood to water the moss, and he is on them in a flash.
Elena watches the spectre’s pale hand wrap around her brother’s cock, she watches it guide him between her folds and Klaus, her Wolf - his face stony like it only gets when he feels too much, like it only gets in their most sacred hours - lets her.
He enters Elena in one single push, and she gasps against the bodies surrounding her, and it aches so sweet, for she’s unprepared and at the same time, too ready. He smells of wild woods and smoke, and if she could move, she would be tasting the dirt smudged on his skin.
His eyes trail from the face behind her to hers, and the water in his eyes is hard to bear. Her heart flutters in ways intimately familiar - but it was him behind her, his fangs inside her last time she was drained, last time her heart stopped - and the world constricts. She begs the dying muscle of her heart to keep beating, only for a few more moments.
And then her Wolf moves in her, merciless, growling, moving her whole body with him, and she stops trying to think. She feels nothing but the pull inside her, burning and sweet, and the mouth on her neck, chilling and sharp.
Time stops between thrusts, and Elena feels like she has entered eternity, pinned between two inescapable forces, her body the only price for the fireworks ravaging her soul.
And as a cold hand resumes the circular pressure on her sex, pushing more pleasure into her nearly-empty vessel, she can no longer contain the forces, and she flies apart.
She drifts away in a sugar sweet haze. Behind long eyelids she can half-see her Wolf fucking into her body, and she can feel the embers of another orgasm build - distant enough but close, like falling asleep by the fireplace. Like the moments before waking up with her Keeper’s cock inside of her, the way she most prefers to be roused.
The almost-there pressure builds, and she is floating, but tethered. She can feel her body, if she focuses, but she can also see her body from her new perspective, trapped between honey-blond siblings. The Wolf, a sun-kissed creature of fire in eternal motion, and the Spectre, an immovable pale statue of silver, her pliant body in their middle, and Elena can’t look away. Her body is a mess, hair wild, arms splayed, eyes half-open, unseeing. The only colours on her are the torn pieces of her sundress, and the thin rivulets of red on her exposed breasts, bouncing lewdly with every push.
Open, pliant, drained. A fitting offering in the altar of her Gods. Making her holy.
And as the rays of the moon catch on the glowing runes, Rebekah’s pale limbs start merging into her - her corpses. And her body, where it was nerveless, now starts responding to her Wolf’s tireless rhythm. The lifeless eyes blink and suddenly they are slanted in mischief, and the smirk that’s on her lips is no longer her own. And the Wolf gets wild, his hips pistoning inside Elena - no, Rebekah now - in a pace that’s punishing, that’s exquisite.
Elena feels like a voyeur in her own sacrifice - and the blossoming phantom pleasure in her loins makes it better, makes it worse - and still, she will not look away.
Klaus pulls away, his cock glistening with so much wet, and his lips mirror his sister’s smirk, and then they crash together in a kiss that’s at once too familiar, too tender, too angry. Too perfect in their union, and Elena’s eyes sting with unshed tears, and her heart that’s not beating aches with it.
‘Sister,’ he growls, threatening. And then Rebekah, wearing Elena’s skin, brings her arms around his shoulders, touches her - theirs, ours - forehead to his.
‘I’ve missed you,’ she says, and he melts into her, dives into her once more. ‘You’ve chosen well, Nik,’ she groans, into his neck, and her Wolf preens at her words.
And after that there are no more words, only the languid movements of their lovemaking and the secret sounds that spill, echo on the stone. Their hips are moving, slowly, unhurriedly, so that she almost misses the moment her second orgasm hits, the moment her Wolf spills with a small gasp.
Elena is drawn out of her restful haze when Rebekah speaks, with Elena’s mouth but her own voice.
‘Niklaus, you’ve kept her to yourself for too long’.
‘Did I?’ Her Wolf twists his fingers around those of Elena-Rebekah, kisses their intertwined hands. ‘Here I was, thinking I was all but sharing her’.
‘Not with me’.
‘That is what you wish? To share of her?’ and her Wolf’s voice carries a threat, always a threat, honeyed and low.
‘To share in her, perhaps. Or rather, know her’. Elena-Rebekah twists out of his arms, kneels over him. The moon is low, too low, almost consumed by the horizon, and in the soft light the blonde spectral form mixes and pulls apart from the body she possesses in a continuous cycle, dark brown hair curling into honey and back to brown again, cascading onto her Wolf’s well-muscled chest. Elena is drawn in, existing in two places at once, deep inside her body and floating above them, so close she feels their shared breath.
And then the last rays of the moon set, and Rebekah is pulled free, her white body rising above the abandoned form of Elena which crumbles, like a puppet with its strings cut, into the waiting arms of her Wolf. Safe.
Rebekah’s spectral form turns, and lord, she can see straight into her, even as Elena is floating nigh immaterial. The spectre spears her through and through with eyes blue and blown wide, and in that moment there is no fear, only the agonising intensity of being seen. And Elena welcomes it.
‘I always wanted myself a little sister,’ Rebekah smiles, and their fingers meet and hold but for a moment.
Next time Elena blinks, she is light-headed and solid, alone in her body, wrapped in the warm embrace of her Wolf. It only gets tighter as he can feel her stir awake. Alive.
‘Elena,’ he mouths into her neck, and it is a plea, it is a question, a promise.
She moves her head, throbbing and slow, to meet his eyes, needing him more than ever to see that nothing has shifted - even while everything has shifted. That there are still no walls between them. That every single confusing and contradictory and heart-wrenching feeling her beasts awaken in her - they used to call it love, but love is too simple, too short a word - is still there, intact. Inflamed.
He holds her face like something precious, and then harsher, like something cursed, and she leans into the touch. She can be both, she has been both.
‘I think,’ she speaks, and her throat is dry so she tries again, a little cough making his eyes widen so suddenly that now Elena is laughing, she is laughing and he joins her, and they are holding on to each other gasping for breath.
‘You think?’ he offers, and the spell of uncertainty has broken between them.
‘I think I will like having a big sister,’ she says, and her Wolf, so predictable, so ferocious, so beloved, he squeezes her so hard, kisses her so fervently, she has to throw her head back and laugh again.
They fall asleep there, on the blood stained moss of her altar, until her Keeper wakes them both with a soft kiss on the brow and an all-knowing look in his black eyes.