Vulnerable § Klaus Mikaelson

65

"If she's dead because you've locked me here. I will hunt all of you to your end!" Jeremy took the stake from Kol, holding the door open until everyone was out of the house, but Klaus.

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Elena sat on the couch beside Bonnie, waiting at the Salvatore boarding house for the mark to grow.

"What if it doesn't work?"

"It will," Bonnie assured Jeremy calmly. "It took a bit of time for Finn's line to die off."

"But what if it doesn't?"

Damon walked out, no longer compelled by Kol. Now he had no worries about wanting to kill Jeremy. "Where that Gilbert optimism?"

Elena stood up, trying to smile for him, but the muscles wouldn't turn up. The guilt was eating her alive, and the longer she put off telling Damon the truth, the longer she put off the news that she basically killed Dakota with her own bare hands. Of course, Elena hated Dakota, they were polar opposites and strongly disliked each other, but she was Damon's best friend. His right hand, his ride or die, his partner in crime, Dakota King was Damon's person and she killed her. "Damon, I am sorry. I didn't even realize until Klaus told me."

"What do you mean?"

"When you kill an Original, their whole bloodline dies with them," The doppelgänger hesitantly started. "—Dakota was apart of Kol's bloodline."

Damon froze, every joint in his body stuck in place. His crystal blue eyes widening at the information given to him. He remained in that position when Stefan walked in with the headstone that would help lead them to the cure, a cure that Dakota was no longer able to get.

"What I miss?" Stefan asked when he took in his brothers expression.

"Klaus is trapped in my living room."

"Temporarily," Bonnie informs. "I drew on the full moon to secure the spell. We've got three days to find the cure. Four max."

Jeremy was standing behind, waiting for the mark to grow, and silently wishing it wouldn't. "If we don't then maybe we should take a page out of the Katherine Pierce handbook and disappear, because when Klaus gets out he's going to kill us all for killing Kol and Dakota."

Stefan was caught off guard by the final statement, and he had to put the headstone down so it wouldn't slip from his fingers. "Excuse me? Dakota's dead?"

"Might as well be. She's apart of Kol's bloodline." Damon monotonously replied.

   Stefan was quiet for a moment, pressing his lips right together and running a hand through his perfectly styled hair. "Then, I have to go."

Elena made a noise of disagreement from the back of her throat. "Why? Did you sleep with her too?"

Stefan spun around, facing the doppleganger with a newfound anger that lit ablaze in his green eyes. "No, Elena. She took me in when you and Damon screwed me over. No pun intended." Elena looked down at her feet, feeling eyes on her. "She took me into her home and gave me a place to stay so I didn't have to watch my brother be happy with my ex-girlfriend. She did all of that for me and I just helped kill her."

"Stef—"

"For so long, we hated Dakota because she embraces her vampirism and we completely overlooked the fact that she has done a lot for us. She promised when she first got here that if she was put into an inkling of danger she'd ditch, but she hasn't, not one time left us to fend for ourselves." The room was deadly silent, the only sound being the cracking of the fireplace. "Klaus is trapped for three days, and when he finally gets out, he'll never see the love of his life again because by time the spell wears off she'll be dead and we'll have the cure. Dakota doesn't deserve to die alone, because no matter how bad we've tried to make her out to be, when you look at it, all she's done is everything we have, she's just not ashamed of it."

Damon wanted to follow Stefan, his fingers twitched towards his black leather jacket he always wore no matter the weather, but all he could think about was what Bonnie said a few weeks ago when Dakota was mourning Klaus' death.

"She's strong," Bonnie admits from the passenger seat of Damon's car. "—and we all know it, but if she stays here around all of us, around you, she won't have the chance she needs to recover."

Damon snapped out of his daze when Stefan cleared his throat loudly. "Go Stefan, I'm going to stay here and hold the fort down. I'll see Dakota tomorrow."

"You better hope you get a chance to say goodbye to your best friend, because she might not even last until tomorrow."

A/N

Fuck it, I'm going to finish the book all in one go. I'm waiting for the comments of agony and horror.

Love, Cece