"Daddy it hurts!" Hope whimpered as she crashed to the ground.
"I know sweetheart, I know. Don't fight the pain, if you do it will take hours. Let it in. Focus on the air in your lungs and the feeling of the ground beneath you and let the pain in."
The dirt of the bayou packed in under Hope's nails as she clawed at it, the pain excruciating as every bone in her body began to break.
"I couldn't let Henrik and Torin get hurt. Please - you have to know," she began before she let out another scream.
Nik knelt in front of his daughter as he brought her eyes up to meet his, hers glowing a brilliant yellow. "You protected them. And your mother and I couldn't be more proud of you. You go through this once and should you choose, never again. But I am here for you, my Princess, I am right here."
"It hurts! Daddy!" she whimpered as she let out another scream and Nik's heart ached, but he would sooner let hell freeze over before he let Hope go through this alone; before he let her go through what his father put him through on his first turning. But before he could offer her more words of comfort, his daughter vanished and was replaced with a white wolf.
The wolf's blue eyes met Nik's, completely calm as more wolves emerged from the tree line, his wolf clan.
After Dahlia had died, their curse broke, and the angered Alpha and his second met with the equally angry Original couple. After hashing things out, with words as they'd all forgone violence for this meeting, the couple learned that Dahlia had lied to them. The wolves never wanted Hope for her power, they had vowed to protect her and believed that what they did was the best thing for her, even if it meant going against Nik and Isa.
And since they'd already paid penance with the curse had cast on them, they were able to part on good terms.
And now all of them, in control of their shift, were joining Hope on her first turning.
Nik and Isa had never wanted their children to go through this, but Hope wasn't given a choice. There had been this witch that tried to take on the couple as part of his revenge plan. His wife had been killed in one of Kol's many massacres in Europe centuries ago, and when the with had confronted the couple, channelling the power of a dozen dead witches, Kol had been daggered, so the witch took it out on them instead.
He didn't get very far. He'd played dirty. He poisoned his blood, and when Isa had torn into him, she'd been poisoned. Though she was an Original and likely couldn't die from the poison, the witch had claimed she could, and Isa's life was something Nik could never risk. So, he'd killed the witch's two children and turned him into a vampire, compelling the truth out of him. Once Isa was healed, the former witch was compelled to walk the earth, alone forever.
But while he'd been compelled to leave the Mikaelson siblings alone, he hadn't been compelled to leave their children alone.
Hope had taken Henrik and Torin out for lunch in a new restaurant in the Quarter when they'd been attacked. The former witch had compelled a horde of humans to attack them all. And while Henrik was only a year younger than her, Torin, her youngest brother, was still a few months shy of his tenth birthday and was still learning how to control his magic. Hope fought with magic, while Henrik fought with vampire strength, having triggered his vampire side a couple of years ago when they'd been roughhousing with the wolves and ended up accidentally snapping his neck, only for him to come back to life half an hour later. But to save her littlest brother, who'd been cowering behind a bench as a man raised a knife over his head, Hope had been forced to snap the man's neck to save him.
And when her parents came and took care of them all in a flash, disembowelling the former witch before tearing his heart out, Hope had told them what she'd done, and they'd only hugged her.
Now she stood in front of her father, turned as Nik was flanked by the wolves before he himself shifted, clothes shredding as he was covered in the same white fur as his daughter.
And together, through the night, they ran, free, under the moon's light.