#vargulf

THE WARDEN'S WHISPER: The séance is circled like a fresh corpse across a battlefield—warm, dangerous, impossible to ignore. Peter stands between flight or fight, between saving himself or becoming what The Veil demands. The Darkhavens fracture as old tempers and older magic rise, the codex begins to shift, no longer contained by prayers, rituals or bloodlines alone. Protection turns feral, and the question sharpens to a whisper soaked in love: what is a guardian, when guarding means spilling blood first?

hand and hex: 9,747.

A SHADOW'S CAUTION: angst, magical burnout, grief, blood mention, darkhavens losing their temper (yes, most of them), children in distress, graphic death threats.

back through the fog.

━━━━━ ☾☽ ━━━━━

HEMLOCK GROVE, PENNSYLVANIA.

Dr. Clementine Chasseur arrived in Hemlock Grove on a deceptively sunny afternoon, her sunglasses shielding more than just her eyes—perhaps she hoped they might reveal something hidden to ordinary men. 

Something wicked.

She carried a badge from Fish & Wildlife Services, bore the scars of a Marine, and swore allegiance to the ancient and secretive Order of the Dragon. A devout Christian by day, a closeted lesbian by night. A paradox wrapped in doctrine and discipline.

Ironic, wasn’t it?

No one knew—no one dared to know—except the Darkhavens. 

Dr. Chasseur had barely spent forty-eight hours in that cursed town when she cornered Peter Rumancek, eyes sharp, voice low, asking if he’d ever heard of something called clinical lycanthropy. As if she hadn’t already drawn her own bloody conclusions about the poor boy. 

Later, she paid a visit to Christina Wendell at Hemlock Acres, investigating the mutilated body of Lisa Willoughby. It was there she met Dr. Norman Godfrey—and it was there, in the echoing quiet of the psychiatric wing, that she saw Y/N Darkhaven emerging from his office, a shadow trailing behind her like a second skin.

Before she arrived, Clementine had received only one warning from her superior:

Do not—under any circumstance—engage with a Darkhaven. And for the love of God, do not hurt one.

But she caught up to the youngest of the twins just past the hallway’s last security light—where the fluorescent hum faded and the walls began to breathe.

“Miss Darkhaven.” Clementine called, calm but cold. Measured.

At the mention of her surname, the girl turned slowly, her face unreadable, the air around her seemingly heavier than before. Her eyes, now dark and sharp flicked to the badge on Clementine’s jacket, then to the St. Jude necklace around her neck. A half-smirk ghosted across her lips.

Dr. Chasseur stepped forward. “I wanted to ask you a few things about the girls. The ones who died.” Her voice held steel, but there was something underneath it—a tinge of uncertainty, or perhaps caution.

“You mean the ones torn apart like deer in mating season?” Her tone was soft, but something feral lived just beneath it. “You’ll have to be more specific, Doctor. Girls seem to die a lot around here now.”

Clementine’s jaw tightened, her temper starting to run out. “I don’t like games.” She hissed. “You found Brooke Bluebell the night she died.” 

“That's correct, and I don’t play them, Doctor.” The young witch replied, stepping in just close enough for the space to feel wrong. “Especially not with women who hide behind God and guns.” The air between them stilled, bending to its mistress. “I know you’re with the Order.” Y/N whispered. “I know that you’re really here to hunt. But you’re not the first dragon-slayer to knock on our door. And you won’t be the last.”

Chasseur felt the weight of those words settle in her spine. She could feel it now—the hum of old power beneath her skin, the way the shadows leaned into her like loyal beasts, how the air knock on the windows as if it was trying to protect her. 

“Did you know Lisa Willoughby?” she asked, changing course, almost instinctively.

“I know she screamed.” Darkhaven answered lowly, like she could feel Lisa's presence behind her. “But not nearly loud enough.” She paused for a minute, studying her like an old magic book she had on her shelf. “It’s not him.” Clementine knew to whom she was referring; of course she knew but she ignored it.

Clementine’s jaw flexed, but she didn’t look away. “Then who is it?” she asked, tilting her head. “You seem awfully certain for someone who claims she doesn’t play games.”

Her expression didn’t change, but the air shifted again, heavy with that strange, magnetic pressure that made Clementine’s stomach twist. “You’re asking the wrong question.” she murmured. “You should be asking why you want it to be him.”

Clementine frowned. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” The girl's tone was silk over thorns. “You’ve been watching Peter since you arrived. He fascinates you.” Her voice softened, almost curious. “Not because he’s guilty. Because he’s alive in a way you’re not.”

“That’s not—” Clementine began, but stopped. Y/N was smiling now, faintly, cruelly.

“Come on, be honest.” The witch pressed. “It’s not about justice for the girls. It’s about the thrill. The chase. You want to see what he becomes under moonlight, don’t you?”

Clementine’s pulse kicked, hot and quick. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, but I do.” Darkhaven stepped closer, her eyes glinting like smoke under the flicker of the lights. “You call it duty, penance, whatever you need to sleep at night. But it’s desire. You hunt what you envy. Peter is wild, free, untamed by your God. You want to leash that—feel it fight you back.”

The words hit too close. Clementine laughed once, brittle, the sound scraping against her teeth. “You really think I’d waste a bullet on some delinquent for fun?”

“I think…” She replied, her voice low and steady, “you already decided you would. Just for kicks. Just to see if the wolf runs.”

Clementine opened her mouth—closed it. The witch had moved so close she could smell her—something ancient and metallic, like rain on a grave.

“Careful now, Doctor…” Darkhaven murmured. “When you start hunting for pleasure instead of purpose, you stop being a dragon-slayer.” Her eyes flashed, black and endless. “You become the dragon.”

But the witch stepped closer, her silhouette swallowed by the flickering light at the end of the hall and looked at Clementine like she could see right through her—bones, secrets, and all.

“You carry your faith like armor.” She murmured softly, tilting her head. “But it’s brittle. Brittle because you hate who you are at night. Because you pray after the taste of her lips hasn’t left your mouth yet.”

Clementine blinked. Frozen. No one had ever said it out loud. Not like that. Not with surgical cruelty wrapped in softness.

“You think God forgives you.” Darkhaven continued, stepping closer now, her eyes never blinking, never flinching. “But you don’t. That’s the real rot. Not the monsters out there—not the wolves. You.”

A silence hung, choking and thick. The hallway seemed colder.

“You’re not here to save anyone.” She finished, her voice nearly a whisper now, almost gentle. “You’re here to bleed for a sin you still love.”

Dr. Clementine Chasseur didn’t move for a long time. She just stood there, listening to the silence—and wondering if she’d just spoken to a witness or something much, much worse.

The lights above them hummed, then flickered once.

And in that half-darkness, Clementine thought she saw something behind her eyes—something old and watching, amused by her struggle.

When the lights steadied, she was already walking away.

“You’ll figure out which one of you’s the monster soon enough,” she said without turning back. “But by then, it won’t matter who screamed first.”

      ━━━━━━━※━━━━━━━

The bell above the door had always sounded like a prayer to me—soft, circular, a tone that stitched the air back together. I’d grown up believing the apothecary breathed through that sound. Its lungs were the glass jars lining the walls, its pulse the scent of lavender, pine resin, and clove.

That afternoon, it was alive.

Gaia and Gael had burst in like sunlight breaking a spell, their laughter scattering over the floorboards. They didn’t knock, didn’t soften—just arrived in the world the way they always had: loud enough to remind it they existed.

Chaos in sunlight. Hands that couldn’t stay still. Voices that ignored silence on principle.

I stood behind the counter, sleeves rolled to my elbows, sorting tinctures into their drawers. A ritual older than my memory, taught by hands steadier than mine. The glass chimed faintly, whispering against itself—like the jars recognized us, like they remembered whose blood had built this place and wasn’t done paying its due.

“Careful with the door…” I murmured without looking up. “Last time you slammed it, the north shelf sang for half an hour.”

Gaia huffed. “It wasn’t me! it was the wind.”

“It’s always the wind…” Gael added, dropping her satchel onto the counter. Something inside clattered… star anise, if the sweetness in the air was any indication.

“You mean the one you were supposed to find two days ago?”

Gael winced. Gaia glared. “We got distracted. The fox was back.”

That caught my attention. The fox.

“Stealing the sage or judging you?” I asked, but my voice had already gone softer—more aware than amused.

Because the truth was: I had never seen it. Neither had Y/N. Not once. Not a flicker of russet fur, not a shadow slipping between the herbs, not a single pawprint in the soil outside. Nothing. And I’d looked. I always look. Strategy is instinct; danger is a language I learned before I learned words. 

If something walks in our woods, I notice it.

But the twins… They spoke of the fox the way children describe dreams that aren’t quite dreams—eyes widening, voices dropping, certainty in the place where logic should’ve been. Not frightened. Not confused. Just… sure.

A creature that appears only to them. An entity that leaves no marks. A presence that bends around my sight as if I’m not meant to meet it.

I’d tried to rationalize it, once. Maybe a regular red fox, drawn to our herbs. Maybe the twins exaggerating, embellishing a real animal into something mythic. But Gaia insisted its eyes weren’t “fox eyes.” And Gael swore it didn’t move like one—said its steps were too quiet, its gaze “too knowing,” as if it recognized them. As if it was waiting for them.

A familiar? Possible. But familiars choose their witch, and neither twin had shown the marks yet.

Guardian spirit? Maybe. The forest had its own loyalties; old ones, older than even Nana liked to admit. Or something else. Something the Veil only let the youngest glimpse. 

What bothered me wasn’t the mystery. It was that I could feel when they talked about it—some shift in the wind, the way the apothecary seemed to listen harder, the wards prickling faintly across my skin. 

Like the fox was real enough to the magic even if it wasn’t real to me.

There was a part of me—buried deep but still beating—that hated not knowing. Hated that the twins had access to a world I couldn’t quite see. But there was another part, quieter and sharper, that wondered if maybe the fox didn’t show itself to me because it didn’t need to. Because I wasn’t the one it was watching. Because it was watching them.

Anything that watched my sisters that closely—whether guardian or threat—had my full, undivided attention.

They didn’t answer. I smirked and motioned for them to come closer. “We’re brewing dream balm. Nana’s recipe.”

Gaia brightened. “The one that smells like rain and vanilla?”

“That’s the one.”

Gael made a face. “Mugwort again?”

“Old socks,” I corrected, “that keep nightmares away.”

Their laughter softened something in my chest I didn’t have a name for. The stained-glass window fractured the light across us: amber, green, gold. Gaia once told me the apothecary listened when I spoke. Maybe it did. No, not maybe. I was sure it did. Nana says that a place only lives as long as the family’s voice fills it.

The bell chimed again.

This time the air folded—recognizing a different kind of presence, one carved from gravity instead of sugar. Our father stepped inside with the weary precision of someone carrying the world under his coat and refusing to drop it.

“Girls.” he sighed, ushering Gaia and Gael fully in, “stay where your brother can see you. I have a meeting in ten minutes and a headache in two.”

Gaia saluted him dramatically. Gael hugged him around the waist before slipping back to the counter.

Dad leaned on the edge of the table, rolling the stiffness out of his shoulders. “Town hall’s a mess. Bodies turning up again. Murders piling like they’re rehearsing for a festival. And the audits…” He exhaled sharply. “Your mother and I are practically living at the firm.”

I brushed dried petals from my palms. “Busy saving the town again, huh?”

“If people and the Vargulf could stop killing each other for five minutes, it’d be nice.”

I raised a brow. “You love the chaos. Mom does too. Admit it.”

He gave me a look—half stern, half something like a restrained smile. “Law doesn’t run on chaos, son.”

“But you two do,” I teased, leaning back against the workbench. “Going to court together again? The dynamic duo?”

“Bael—”

“You know the judges have bets on who wins when you and Mom take opposite sides.”

“That is absolutely not—”

“It’s definitely true. Nana told me.”

My father pressed a hand to his forehead. “Your mother and I don’t come as a ‘package.’ We’re just very efficient together.”

“Which is exactly what a package would say.”

Gael giggled into her sleeve. Gaia hid her smile behind a jar of crushed jasmine.

He eventually gave up and redirected with the subtlety of a man fleeing the battlefield. “Speaking of packages—where’s your sister? I thought she was supervising today.”

“She stepped out,” I answered. “something about checking on a ward she recalibrated last night.”

“Then you’re in charge.” His eyes sharpened. Dark, steady, carrying that familiar weight that managed to make me feel twelve again and seven feet tall, somehow both at once. “You’re still their older brother. When your sister can’t be here, it’s your duty to take care of them.”

I lifted my chin, not in defiance, but in acknowledgment. The responsibility felt natural on my shoulders—heavy, yes, but shaped like me.

“I know, Dad. I’ve got them.”

My father didn’t respond right away. He just… looked at me with that rare, aching kind of silence he only ever used with me and my sisters, like he was memorizing us every time he walked out a door. Like he feared that one day—even with all his power, all his law, all his strategy—he might not get to see us again.

He crossed the apothecary floor slowly, steps soft on the old planks, as if he didn’t want to disturb the space, as if he didn’t want to disturb our ancestors. As if we were more sacred than the wards stitched into the walls.

Gael was closest. He reached her first. She turned instinctively, that bright smile already forming—and he cupped the back of her head, pressing a kiss to her forehead. A gentle thing, barely a breath, but it made her shoulders melt. Gael always pretended to be the tougher twin, but nothing disarmed her faster than Dad’s affection.

Gaia stood taller, trying to seem unbothered, older than she was but he bent anyway, brushing her curls aside and kissing her temple. Her eyes softened, golden at the edges, and for a moment she didn’t look like a witchling who saw fox-spirits in the woods. She looked like a little girl who adored her father.

He turned to me, but he didn’t reach for me the same way. He knew better. I wasn’t a forehead-kiss kind of son, and he respected that. But he stepped close, close enough that I felt his presence settle around me like a second coat.

“You’ve grown into something solid.” he murmured. Not praise. Not quite. More like… recognition. A truth he was finally willing to say out loud. “I'm proud of you.” 

His hand rose a fraction, like he intended to fix my collar the way he used to when I was small. He stopped himself, fingers curling once before he let them drop.

“You take care of them while I’m gone.” he said softly. “You take care of this family.”

“I do.” I replied and I meant it in a way that made my chest tight. 

Dad inhaled. A quiet, steadying breath. The kind a man takes when he loves his children too much for the world he’s about to step into. Then he straightened his coat, smoothed his tie, and forced himself toward the door.

At the threshold he paused, turning back one last time—eyes sweeping over the three of us, like he was sealing the image into memory, into marrow.

“We'll be home before dinner. Try not to burn the place down.”

Gaia laughed. Gael rolled her eyes. I felt the smallest smile tug at the corner of my mouth. The bell chimed softly as he stepped out—a sound that felt, for once, less like a prayer and more like a promise.

For a little while, it was peace again.

Honey poured slow into the brass cauldron, petals crushed to paste under small palms, their hands moving in rhythm with mine.

But peace didn’t last long. The bell above the door chimed. At first, harmless. Then the air folded in on itself, sharp as a bitten tongue. The smell of clove turned metallic. That caught my attention. 

I looked up.

Dr. Clementine Chasseur stepped through the threshold like a sermon walking on two legs—coat buttoned, badge glinting beneath the low light. Fish & Wildlife Services, a st. Jude necklace but the symbol didn’t fool me. I could smell the steel of the Order on her; it had that faint, holy mold—like incense that’s burned too long.

“Girls, go to the back.” Gaia froze, Gael stared at the stranger, small hands sticky with honey and resin. “Now.”

They obeyed. The door to the greenhouse creaked open and shut, leaving behind the fading scent of rosemary and sugar.

Only then did I meet Clementine’s eyes.

“You’re a long way from your sanctum.” I said, voice level. “Dr. Chasseur, isn’t it?”

She removed her sunglasses, folding them into her collar. “You know my name.”

“I know your kind.” I leaned against the counter. “Order of the Dragon. Scripture and silver bullets. You hide behind the cross because you’re afraid of what stares back.”

Her lips thinned into something close to amusement. “You’ve done your research.”

“You don’t need to study dragon slayers when you’ve watched them try to burn your ancestors and fail.”

The air between us stretched—quiet, tense. The shelves hummed, warning her, though she couldn’t hear it.

“I just have questions, didn’t come here to do no harm.” she said at last.

“You already asked my sister, and yet you wear a gun on your thigh.” I replied. “You tried to frighten her, didn’t you?” My tone didn’t rise, but the temperature in the room fell, my shadow stretching out to the ground. “So what do you want here? A confession? A relic? A witch’s heartbeat in a jar? Last one's a bit expensive so I'm not sure if you can afford it.” 

She scoffed, trying to brush my words off. “I’m investigating two murders. Brooke Bluebell and Lisa Willoughby. I was told you saw the bodies.”

“I didn’t see them.” I let the silence work for me. “I felt what was left.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’ll get.”

Her boots whispered against the floor as she stepped closer. Gun oil ghosted the air—acrid, metallic, the kind of smell that never quite left a room even after the weapon did. I watched her hand hover near the holster strapped to her thigh. Not a threat. Not yet. But my blood knew the language of danger before my mind ever had to translate it.

The twins’ absence pressed against the walls like a second heartbeat. I could still hear their laugh echoing behind my ribs—fragile, bright, something worth bleeding for.

“You and your sister seem awfully calm.” Clementine said. “This town’s full of monsters.”

“We don’t fear monsters, Doctor.” My voice stayed low, steady, threaded with the kind of stillness my grandmother once told me was a weapon on its own, and I believed her. “We study them. Sometimes we marry them. Sometimes we become them.”

“You sound proud of that.”

“Not at all.” I met her eyes. Unblinking. “I just sound awake.”

Something crossed her expression—hard to read, because she hid behind a badge and a gun the way humans hide behind anything that makes them feel safe, even if it’s for a little while. A flick of hope, maybe. Or disdain.

“You’re protective.” She said finally. “I can respect that. But I’m not scared of you.”

I let a slow, deliberate smile unfurl. The kind that wasn’t meant to intimidate—just to inform. “You should be.” Her hand instinctively brushed her holster again, like she needed to remind herself she had an advantage when truly she didn’t. 

“My sisters are in the greenhouse and I don’t like guns,” I added, voice soft, nonchalant in a way that made her brows rise.

“No surprise there,” she said, mocking laced in her tone. “Bit squeamish? Or do you witches just not handle recoil well?”

I huffed a laugh—quiet, but sharp enough to cut. “Guns are loud, messy. Soulless things. Tools for men who can’t fight without metal between them and the truth.” She opened her mouth—probably to scoff—but I didn’t give her the chance. “My ancestors won wars without a single bullet.” I continued. “They held ground with nothing but their shadows and their will. They gathered storms in their hands and turned armies to ash. They carved peace out of the throats of tyrants without ever touching a trigger.” Clementine’s grip on her hip tightened. Just a little. Enough. “We don’t need guns. We never have.”

She exhaled, slow, controlled—like she couldn’t decide if I was delusional or dangerous. “You think that impresses me?” she asked.

“It wasn’t meant to impress you.”

“Then what was it meant to do?”

I tilted my head, letting the air between us settle heavy and electric. “To make something very, very clear…” I murmured. “You’re standing in a place my family built. A place protected by names older than your badge, older than guns, older than anything you’ve studied and older than your order.” I took one small step closer—not threatening, just present. “If you ever point that weapon at one of my sisters…” I whispered, “all your training, all your steel, all your science, not even your god—won’t save you from what wakes in me.”

The apothecary held its breath. She did too. The light trembled. My shadow stretched along the counter, detached from me—watching her, breathing where I didn’t. The air rippled.

“I’m not my sister….” I said quietly. “Unlike her, I don’t think about saving a life that threatens my blood. If I see you near them again, I'll pull the skin from your bones and tear you limb, by limb. And I won’t call it violence. I’ll call it balance.”

She didn’t back away, but her pulse betrayed her—fast, staccato, echoing against the hum of the jars. “You sound like the creatures I hunt.”

“Then maybe the only difference between us,” I said, “is that my monsters answer when I call them.”

Her gaze flicked toward the shelves—every jar trembling with light. She understood then, the line between faith and magic thinning at her feet. I could have ended it there. Could have let the threat hang like incense. But something in me—something too much like my mother’s temper—leaned closer, wanting her to understand.

“You don’t get to walk into my house,” I whispered, “and make my sisters afraid. Not for your evidence. Not for your God. You leave now, or the walls themselves will decide how to bury you.”

For a long breath, she didn’t move. Then, jaw set, she turned—but the door opened before she could touch it.

The bell chimed once, sharp as a blade being unsheathed. My father stepped inside. I froze. This was not good. 

He didn’t even look at me first. His eyes went straight to Clementine—assessing, reading, calculating danger at a speed that made the air itself feel thinner.

“Doctor.” he said, voice quiet, too quiet. “Why are you speaking to my son without me present?”

Something in her stiffened. “I came to ask—”

“No.” The word cracked like oak splitting under an axe.

My father took one step forward, then another. His movements were slow, precise, controlled—but his temper rolled in behind him like a dark tide slamming to the stones on the shore. The pressure of it made the jars hum in their shelves, the wards behind the walls shift like a creature waking.

He was trying to pretend that he was calm, but his magic was speaking louder than his body and voice. 

“You don’t question my children alone.” He murmured, each syllable a sharpened edge. “You do not corner them in our family’s place of work. And you do not—” His eyes flicked toward the back room, where the twins had been. “frighten them.”

Clementine’s hand twitched near her holster. A mistake. He noticed. But dad didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t lift a finger. He didn’t need to. He never did. 

His calmness was worse than his rage. 

“Reach for that and you will lose far more than your badge.”

The apothecary tightened around us—light contracting, shelves vibrating, resin and clove thickening like the breath of something old and unseen rising behind the walls.

Clementine swallowed hard. “I didn’t come to cause trouble.”

“Then leave. Now. Before this house finishes what my son started.”

She hesitated just long enough for me to respect her stubbornness. She pushed past him, and stepped into the cold breeze. The bell above the door chimed once more, a final warning disguised as a farewell.

When the door shut behind her, the apothecary exhaled—the light settling back into its jars, the scent of clove and pine uncoiling.

My father didn’t move for several seconds. His jaw worked once. Twice. A silent attempt to force a rage not meant for mortals back into the cage he kept it in. The kind of fury men like him inherited, something ancient, cold, and loyal.

He turned to me. Not sharply. Not with suspicion or authority, but slowly—like he needed to look at me with his own eyes before deciding what the world deserved next.

He stepped closer. “Are you hurt?” His voice had softened, dropping into that scarcely used register, the one he saved only for his children. It broke slightly at the edges, like the question itself bruised him.

“I’m fine, Dad.” I started. “The twins—”

But he didn’t let me finish. He raised a hand, tentative at first, then firm with decision, and cupped the side of my face. His thumb brushed under my eye, checking for tension, for heat, for signs of fear I might’ve swallowed before he walked in. His hand was warm. Solid. Familiar.

“Ael.” he whispered, not scolding, not doubting—just… needing to say the nickname he gave me. 

He searched my face the way a man searches for proof of life after disaster. Then, when that wasn’t enough, his irises flickered—gray lightning sparking across the surface, a storm I’d inherited but hadn’t mastered.

His sight slipped over me like a tide—gentle, not invasive. A father’s check. A father’s fear.

I felt the magic skim my skin, cool as rain. Felt it slow when it reached my throat, when it found the edge of adrenaline still stuck there.

His jaw clenched. Not anger—relief sharp enough to hurt him. “You’re shaking, my boy.” he said softly. “I can feel it.”

“I’m not scared.” I confessed. 

“I know.” His thumb traced the corner of my jaw. “But you’re still my son.”

The apothecary hummed around us, wards responding to him the way living things react to a steady heartbeat.

“Dad,” I tried again, “the twins—”

“Go to them,” he murmured. “They need you.”

His hand lingered another moment, as if letting go would make the danger return. Then he dropped it and straightened, though the softness in his eyes didn’t fade.

“I’ll handle everything else. As your father. Not as a lawyer. Not as a Darkhaven. As your father.”

I hesitated—not because I doubted him, never that, but because my sister and me hated leaving him alone in the ruins of his own anger. The room still remembered the threat he’d become; the walls still vibrated with it.

He saw my hesitation and shook his head. “Go, Baelor.” He murmured gently. “I’m right behind you.”

“Okay…” 

I went. When I reached the greenhouse the twins were pressed together among the rosemary stalks. Gael’s eyes were red; Gaia’s small hand clenched around the wooden spoon she’d refused to drop. When they saw me, they ran—wordless, trembling—and I caught them both, one arm wrapped around each.

They buried their faces against my chest, breathing the scent of smoke and honey that clung to me.

“Are we in trouble?” Gaia whispered.

“No, not at all.” I murmured into their hair. “She was.”

Gael hiccupped a laugh that turned halfway into a sob. I brushed her curls back, careful not to let them see how my hands still shook.

“Promise me…” I told them quietly, “you’ll never let anyone make you feel small just because it makes their job easier.”

They nodded, solemn. 

“Are you scary, Baelor?” Gael asked, peering up through wet lashes.

“Only when I need to be.” I murmured and meant every word. They returned to the cauldron, shoulders touching, stirring in slow, patient circles. The scent of honey rose again, warm and steady, and something in my chest finally loosened.

Maybe this was what protection meant—not the fight, but the warmth that followed it. The insistence that the world would not take what was ours.

 ──── ◦ • ≪ °❈° ≫• ◦ ────

The scream didn’t come at once.

It bled into the trees. A sharp, wounded sound—cracked, like it had torn its way out from somewhere deeper than lungs.

I stood still, half-hidden behind a moss-covered stone at the treeline, the wind crawling cold across my bare arms. The scent hit me first. Blood, iron-rich and hot—mingling with damp pine and decay.

I didn’t need to see to know what had happened. I felt it. In my teeth. In my ribs. In the ring of protection spells trembling faintly at my spine. But I saw it anyway.

Christina Wendell, running. Tripping. Crying.

She crashed into the clearing like a girl lost in a nightmare, and fell to her knees before what remained of Lisa Willoughby.

Her body was… wrong.

Stretched. Torn. Sliced open in too many places. Clothes ripped. Hands curled inward as if they’d tried to hold something in—organs, breath, God.

Lisa’s upper body was gone. Ripped open like a fruit. Still, Christina didn’t scream again. She sobbed, yes. Her voice cracked. But then she leaned down, gently, as though tucking a child in for sleep and kissed Lisa full on the mouth.

Soft. Lingering. Almost… ritualistic. My fingers clenched around the edge of my coat. I didn’t move. Couldn't reveal my presence. Something was not right. 

But I watched. Like a hawk watching a vulture circle the wrong kind of corpse. Christina pulled back. Her mouth was red. Not just from tears. Something passed over her face in the shadows—something hungry. Something empty. Something old.

Her sobs returned seconds later, loud and broken and theatrical. She clutched Lisa’s limp form, rocking back and forth. But it was a performance. 

I could tell. I've seen true grief. This wasn’t it. This was mimicry. A poor imitation of sorrow. I felt my breath moved slow in my lungs. Magic stirred lightly under my tongue and, for a moment, just a flicker, I’ve could’ve sworn Christina looked up. Straight toward the trees.

Straight to me. 

Her eyes scanned the trees, narrowed. Then passed over my hiding place and moved on. She didn’t see me, but I saw everything.

The way Christina’s hands were too still. The way her pupils shifted too wide, too fast. The way her body didn’t recoil from the blood, but seemed to curl into it.

She stepped away only when she felt the cold in Lisa’s lips, her lower body full of worms. Tore open her throat with a second scream—perfectly timed—and ran.

I came back to myself like surf breaking on stone, breath cold in my chest, even though the room was warm.

The memory didn’t drift. It stuck.

I stood in Baelor’s private drawing room—his sanctum of charcoal ghosts. Overlooking the woods. Somewhere beyond the treetops, beyond the silver line of the creek, Lisa’s body had been zipped into a black bag.

And somewhere, Christina Wendell was caged between the walls of Hemlock Acres. Crying. Clutching her journal to her chest. Acting like she hadn’t kissed the dead girl. 

I narrowed my eyes. I didn't approach her when I visited Norman Godfrey this morning. Hadn’t spoken a word. Just watched. Patient. Silent.

I didn’t like Christina. She gave me chills. Not because of what she did or didn’t say—but because I could feel how twisted her soul was. 

Something wrong. Not entirely human. Not entirely honest. I didn’t need proof nor blood under my fingernails or a curse in the wind.

I just knew.

There was something inside Christina Wendell. And one day, it would come to the surface. Something primal and envious. 

When it does, I'll be waiting for her. 

My eyes drifted to my brother's space, not knowing how I even got here in the first place. Maybe I was meant to see how his mind was running these days. The air still smelled faintly of graphite and turpentine, that sharp scent of obsession that clung to everything he touched. The curtains were drawn back, letting the vanilla twilight spill across walls crowded with sketches.

Everywhere I turned, there were visions—his visions. He draws what he sees and what he sees… terrifies me.

There were no portraits of the living here, not anymore. No faces laughing under the sun, no blooming things. Only violence made flesh in black ink and blurred pencil—bodies half-devoured by shadow, angels with their wings torn, wolves swallowing light. The kind of things that live behind one’s eyelids and never sleep.

He hasn’t been here in years, at least not to draw. I can see his body moving across the room leaving the visions and returning to his bedroom. Still, this place breathes like he still lives here. As if his nightmares were still pacing behind the paper, whispering to one another when the wind moves.

I reached out to one of the drawings—a woman split in two, one half rotting, the other burning—and felt my hand tremble. Lisa Willoughby. 

I used to think his gift was sacred—I still do. Seeing beyond the veil meant understanding it. But now, standing here, surrounded by his torment, I can’t tell if it’s vision or curse.

He used to draw us—Gaia chasing fireflies holding Gael's hand, Nana in her garden, even me once, laughing with a mouth full of apple slices.

Now, every stroke looks like a scream of help. 

I wonder if that’s what happens when you stare too long into the dark—when you stop trying to protect the world from it, and start letting it speak through you.

I took a step back, pulse rising, eyes catching the reflection of my own face in the glass. The forest outside looked distant, unreal, like another painting he could’ve made—branches twisting, the light too sharp to be gentle.

For a moment, I didn’t recognize the girl staring back at me. Her pupils were wide, her lips pale, a ghost framed in gold and morning fog. There was something other in her eyes—something ancient, heavy with memory and duty. The kind of thing you inherit before you can speak, before you even know what it means to bear it.

The reflection blinked when I did, but slower, as if the girl in the mirror was reluctant to follow.

Protector. Witch. Darkhaven.

Witch. Darkhaven. Protector.

Darkhaven. Protector. Witch. 

Titles whispered through me like cold air slipping through a keyhole. They should have felt like honor, but they burned like chains. I was born into a legacy built on oaths older than language, bound to the Veil, to the balance between life and whatever waits beyond it. I should have felt proud. Instead, I felt haunted.

The glass trembled faintly under my fingertips, as if the power beneath my skin wanted out. The same current that ran through my mother, through my grandmother, through my father, through all of us who carried the weight of the unseen. It was supposed to protect us—to protect them. But in moments like this, surrounded by Baelor’s nightmares, I wondered if our gift was protection or punishment.

Maybe that’s why he stopped coming here. Maybe he couldn’t stand to look at what the magic showed him anymore.

I envied him, in a quiet, aching way. Because even in his silence, in his distance, he was still himself. I wasn’t. I could never be. My path had already been written in the ink of my ancestors, my hair, my blood.

And yet, beneath the fear, there was something else—something alive, thrumming just under my ribs. The name I never say aloud when I feel this kind of weight.

Roman.

It came like a wound reopening, familiar and cruel. His presence lingered in everything, even here—in the way the light hit the windowpane, the way the forest breathed beyond it. We were the same in that way: cursed to see too much, to feel too deeply. But where his darkness called to me, it also threatened to consume me.

Maybe that’s why I couldn’t let go. Because even when he tore through my calm like a storm through the trees, I saw the same fear behind his eyes that I carried behind mine—the terror of being what we were made to be.

My reflection wavered again. For a heartbeat, I saw not myself, but her—the girl I might have been if I hadn’t been born under the old moon. A version untouched by magic, by Roman, by the weight of my bloodline. She looked… happy. Light. Ordinary.

Then she was gone.

Only me remained. The Protector in waiting. The witch who sees too much. The sister standing in her brother’s ghosts.

“Tell me it’s not all for nothing.”

I pressed my palm flat to the glass, breath fogging the surface, and whispered—not to the mirror, but to the Veil itself. The room swallowed the words whole. It always did.

“I wish I could tell you that.” Baelor's voice echoed through the study, soft and slightly warm at the edges, but somehow, worn out. He was tired. And I noticed, these past days—silence was doing most of his speaking. I startled—not visibly, but enough that the mirror caught the slight widen of my eyes. I turned.

My brother stood in the doorway, shoulders tense beneath his dark sweater, hair still damp from the the shower. He held one of his sketchbooks at his side, the edges of the paper smudged with charcoal. Charcoal that still stained the crooks of his fingers like soot.

He looked older than he should’ve. Haunted. But steady—as if he’d walked through nightmares and decided that walking out was optional.

“You didn’t answer…” I said quietly, lowering my hand from the glass. “Not really.”

He stepped inside, closing the door with his shoulder. No hesitation. This was his room, his sanctuary, and yet he moved around it like he feared waking something dormant.

His eyes passed over the drawings on the walls—his drawings—and a flicker of pain darted through his expression. Not shame. Recognition. Like seeing your own reflection rotting.

“It’s never for nothing, at least that’s what I like to think.” he murmured, though he didn’t sound convinced. “But the price… we never get to choose that.”

He approached the nearest table, the one beneath the window, and set the sketchbook down. A loose page slipped from inside—face down—skittering across the wood like it wanted to escape.

“Baelor.” I called, nodding toward it. “What did you see this time?” He didn’t answer. Instead, he turned the page over with two fingers and my stomach tightened.

Lisa. Or what was left of her.

He had drawn her torn apart—limbs arranged in angles a body couldn’t make, head tilted as if listening to something only she could hear. Shadows writhed around her like living things, tendrils slipping between ribs, licking at the places where flesh met bone. Not wolves. Not beasts. Not anything with a name.

It was the way he drew the eyes that gutted me: not dead, but aware.

I swallowed hard. “You saw her like this?”

His jaw clenched. “I see everything like this.”

A confession. A wound spoken aloud.

There was a tremor in his right hand, almost imperceptible, but I knew Baelor too well not to see it. He wasn’t afraid of what he drew—he was afraid that this was all he could draw now, as if the brighter visions had been bled out of him.

“How long?” I asked, voice tight. “These visions... this darkness. How long has it been getting worse?”

He looked away, eyes glassy. “Since I crossed Kilderry Park and found Roman and Peter there. Since the woods demanded your sight and everything shifted.” A breath. “Since I realized seeing doesn’t mean I can stop it.”

The quiet that followed wasn’t silence. It was thick with the unsaid, with the weight of what our bloodline takes from us in exchange for sight.

I moved closer, fingers brushing the edge of the table where the drawing lay. “Baelor… this isn’t your fault.”

He laughed under his breath—harsh, unbelieving. “I drew it before they even found her. I drew the creek. The bag. The shadows.” He tapped two fingers to his temple. “It’s all right here, all the time. And I don’t know if it’s warning me… or if it’s trying to break me.”

My chest tightened even more. My brave, quiet brother, carrying storms alone…

“What did you come here to tell me?” I asked gently.

He finally met my eyes, and for a heartbeat, I saw past the visions—past the torment—to the boy he used to be. The one who drew fireflies and gardens and sisters laughing with bitten apples.

In the split of a second, all I could think of was him. Not the seer, not the vessel of nightmares—but Baelor. My Baelor. My twin. 

The boy who cut down the entire branch of the old ash tree because I fell from it once—just once—and scraped my knee. He marched into the backyard with a kitchen knife, face set in righteous fury, and hacked at the bark until Nana found him and shrieked like he was murdering the tree itself.

“The tree betrayed her,” he’d said. “It won’t do it again.”

He was five.

The boy who, when we were ten and our parents decided we were “old enough” to sleep in separate rooms, waited until the house went quiet—then padded barefoot into my room and climbed into my bed without a word. Just curled against me, small and warm, because he knew I hated the silence.

When I asked him the next morning why he came, he shrugged. “You have nightmares,” he’d whispered.

“But I didn’t last night,” I said.

“I know,” he replied. “It’s because I was there.”

The boy who always stood between me and any harm—not because he wasn’t afraid, but because he felt it more deeply than any of us. He was the sensitive one, the one who cried when Gaia threw away a bird feather, the one who kept fallen birds in his room after rainstorms and healed their wings so “they wouldn’t drown in the mud.”

And now here he was—still that same boy, but older, splintered in places no one could see. Bearing visions that carved at him from the inside out. Holding horrors with the same hands that once brushed dirt off my scraped palms.

How unfair that he, of all people, should see the worst of the world. How cruel that the Veil chose him.

I always want to reach for him, to pull him into a hug like when we were children and our biggest worry was who got the larger slice of Nana’s blueberry cake. But Baelor had grown into his silence, into a kind of stoic stillness that felt like touching a frozen lake under moonlight—beautiful, fragile, and dangerous if mishandled.

Still, looking at him now, I felt something swell inside me. A vow, maybe. A promise. A memory curled into resolve. He thinks he carries storms alone. But he never has. I’ll be damned before I let him start now.

“Bael.” I murmured, voice softer than breath. “I know who you are.”

His brow furrowed gently. “What?”

“I know who you are beneath all of this.” I gestured faintly to the drawings, the shadows, the weight in his eyes. “You’re the bravest person I know. You always have been.”

He looked away at that, jaw tightening as if praise were salt in a wound but I saw the flicker in his expression, the boy he used to be resurfacing just long enough

“You’re not alone. None of us are. And whatever’s coming… we face it together.”

“I know.” His voice wavered, just once. “Y/N?”

“Yes?”

He nodded toward the mirror behind me. “It’s not all for nothing. The Veil doesn’t choose wrong.”

The page on the table fluttered as if stirred by a breath not our own. The shadows in the drawing twined into each other like smoke trying to form a face.

Together we stood in the room of his ghosts. A room changed by time and bleeding with silence, but filled with love.

Baelor shifted beside me, clearing his throat with that awkward gentleness he uses when he’s trying to pull us back to something normal. Something mundane. Something safe.

“I actually came to tell you dinner’s ready,” he said, tone flatter than usual. “Dad brought Chinese food.”

I blinked. “That’s what you came to tell me? You walk in looking like death’s personal messenger and it’s to say lo mein is served?”

He frowned. “It’s good lo mein. From that place close to the sheriff's station.” 

“You scared me.”

“I literally opened a door. Of my private studio.”

“You materialized in the doorway like a Victorian ghost.”

“That’s just how I stand, dimwit.”

“No, it’s how you haunt.”

He rolled his eyes—finally, a sliver of brotherly normalcy cracking through the storm. “You’re so stupid, I swear.”

“And you’re dramatic.”

“Says the person brooding at a window like a heartbroken governess.”

I shoved his shoulder. “Take that back.”

“Oh, hell nah!” He smirked, the first real one I’d seen on him in days. “I’m savoring this win.”

“Baelor, I swear—”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding!” I shot him a glare, a smile tugging on my lips. “So…” he added. I furrowed my eyebrows. 

“So…?”

“Dr. Chasseur went to the apothecary.”

My eyebrows shot up. “For what? Lavender?Moonwort? Tonic for being insufferable?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “It wasn’t… that kind of visit.”

My stomach dropped. “What could she possibly want there?”

He hesitated—only for a moment—but it was enough. “She showed up asking questions about the murders.” he said quietly. “Accusing. Pressuring. Trying to see if any of us would slip.”

A cold spike shot down my spine. “She cornered you.” Not asked. Stated. He didn’t deny it.

He swallowed hard. “Gaia and Gael were there. They heard everything. Dad walked in halfway through and almost—” He stopped himself. “It got… bad.”

I felt heat rising under my skin—anger, fear, fury twisting into each other. “I’ll talk to her.”

“No, you won’t.” His voice snapped sharper than expected. “You have enough on your plate. And Clementine’s just doing her job—badly, but still, she’s like a puppy who’s going out for a walk but has a leash on.”

“She threatened you.” I pointed out. 

“She questioned me.” He corrected, then added under his breath, “Loudly.”

I stared him down. He stared back. We both knew what I was going to do. He both hated and relied on it.

“You’re not my guard dog.” he muttered.

“And you’re not my martyr.” I shot back.

“That’s debatable.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“No, you.”

“This is why you’re single.”

I gasped. “Now, that’s a low blow.”

“I know.”

I flicked his forehead. He yelped. Balance restored.

I sighed in defeat and dropped into the chair by the window. “Whatever. Is dinner getting cold?”

“Yes.”

“And you waited until now to come get me?”

He shrugged again—that maddening, infuriating, very-Darkhaven shrug. “You were talking to the mirror like it owed you money. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

I opened my mouth, ready with a retort—but then it happened. A pulse. A slow, bone-deep thrum that rolled through the manor’s walls.

The light overhead flickered—just once. A crackle of energy swept beneath the floorboards like a low rumble of distant thunder. 

Baelor and I went still at the same time.

“Oh, no…” 

“Nana.” My brother whispered, swallowing hard. 

I nodded, breath catching. “She’s angry.”

We didn’t have to guess the reason. We didn’t have to say the words Order of the Dragon aloud for the pressure in the air to tighten like a fist.

The Veil inside the manor stirred, responding to our grandmother’s fury—a quiet, simmering wrath that always tasted like iron and stormwater.

Another pulse. The air warmed. The shadows shivered.

“Dinner’s going to be interesting,” Baelor murmured.

“It always is,” I answered.

We exchanged one last look—part resigned, part defiant, part tethered by blood and magic older than either of us.

“Come on, I can hear the fried rice calling my name.” 

━━━━━ ☾☽ ━━━━━

The moonlight spilled through the stained-glass windows in fractured colors, quieting the manor in hues of violet and silver. For once, the silence inside is not ominous—just the hush of a home at rest.

Neven walked down the hallway barefoot, hair still damp from a late shower, wearing soft charcoal sweats and a loose cream sweater. A rare sight: the heir of the Darkhaven coven looking… comfortable. Human, even. In his hand was a pair of chopsticks still in their paper sleeve.

“Mother?” he called lightly. “Dinner’s ready. Chinese—from the place you and Elle like.”

He continued down the corridor, scanning the rooms. The table had already been set, Gabrielle pouring juice for the twins while Gaia stole dumplings, Gael complaining the noodles were too hot. Baelor and Y/N coming downstairs bickering about which Tim Burton movie was the best if Beetlejuice or Alice In Wonderland. For a moment, it had all felt normal. Warm. Like a memory they didn’t know how to keep.

But his mother was missing. He turned toward the eastern wing just as a sharp knock cuts through the quiet.

One. Two. Three. Four. Measured. Too precise for visitors, too late for couriers.

At the far end of the corridor, Irene stands with a cup of tea in hand, her hair pinned loosely at the nape of her neck. She stops mid-step, eyes narrowing. Another knock follows—five this time. Final. Inevitable.

Setting her cup on a side table, she moves to the door with that controlled grace only a Protector carries. When she opened it, Joshua stood there—the man who had delivered letters to the manor for years. Brown coat. No insignia. Utterly forgettable.

“Good evening, Madame Darkhaven,” he says, extending a parcel wrapped in thick, faded parchment.

“There’s no return seal.” she remarks.

“Was told you’d recognize it.”

He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t shift. And when Irene accepts the parcel—feeling the wrongness in the softness of the paper, the weight of letters she already knows she won’t like—Joshua is simply… gone. The air sighs where he stood, the night reclaiming him without a sound.

Irene closes the door quietly and walks toward her private study. Her magic hums beneath her skin is restless and ancient, as if recognizing what she carries. By the time she reaches the study, the door closes behind her on its own. She sits at her desk. The parcel rests in the center like something venomous pretending to sleep.

She breaks the blood-red wax. The parchment unfurls silently, like a creature stretching awake. The study exhales with it—the air sharpened, charged, aware. Tomes tremble on their shelves as if bowing to an old, unwelcome presence.

Words carve themselves across the page in black, living ink.

“The Vargulf has crossed into the southern quarter. Local fatalities confirmed. Redemption deemed improbable. As per Article IV, Section 9: Eliminate the threat immediately. Compliance is non-negotiable.”

“Non-negotiable…” 

She repeats, a dry, humorless laugh scraping out of her, but her expression shifts. Not fear. Not shock.Offense. Vicious, simmering, dignified offense.

Her jaw tightens, and something deep in the room seems to recoil.

“They…” she whispers, the word coiling like smoke, “dared.” The parchment begins to vibrate, reacting to the spike in her magic. “They dared,” she says again, louder now, “to issue me a command.”

Her power ripples through the floorboards, a tidal pulse of ancient energy. The glass in the lanterns trembles. Inkpots rattle. Books rustle like frightened birds. She lifts the letter between two fingers, as though holding something foul.

“A decree,” she scoffs. “As if I were a novice hedge-witch waiting for orders. As if I have not been a Protector since before their grandfathers crawled out of their cradles.”

The flames in the hearth whip sideways, dragged by an unseen storm.

“As if I haven’t buried more monsters, and more generals, than their entire Order ever dared face.” Her eyes glint, unearthly green. “As if anyone in that council has the authority to dictate to me what balance demands.” Her voice drops into a low, dangerous murmur. “That they believe they can command me… that is what offends me.”

The letter begins to smoke in her hand, thin tendrils rising from the edges as the enchantments struggle against her fury.

“I am not theirs to summon,” she breathes, the room humming with her. “I am not theirs to wield.”

The parchment darkens at the corners, curling under the heat of her power—not fire, but wrath. Behind her, the flames surge upward, wild and erratic, as if blown from within.

She closes her eyes, exhales once, and the air vibrates. 

“How dare they forget who I am.” The room seems to hold its breath,  then the letter bursts into a line of smoke across her palm—quiet, but absolute. “I’m not your executioner.”

The room explodes in response. The desk slams into the wall. Candles gutter out. Books snap open, pages flapping like frantic wings. A pressure builds—her magic pulsing like a storm given a heartbeat.

Outside, Neven stops mid-step. He feels it. A ripple of power that vibrates through the floorboards and up the walls. The same energy that once sent him running as a boy, now drawing him in.

“Mother?” he calls, softer now, stepping past the threshold of her study.

She stands in the center of the chaos, hair unbound, eyes glowing green. The air warps around her. “They think I’m a dog on a leash…” she spits. A shelf behind her detonates; books slam against the wall like thrown stones. She doesn’t even flinch. “A hunter they can command. As if I haven’t spent centuries preserving balance. As if their crest is carved into my bones.”

Neven steps closer, careful but not afraid.

“I’m a Protector, Neven. Not a weapon you draw when things get ugly. I must prioritize lives—before taking them.”

Slowly, he moves around the debris toward her, the burning sigil on the parchment still fading on the desk. “The Order of the Dragon sent it?” he asks.

“They demand I kill the Vargulf. No containment. No mercy. They’ve already decided the human inside is dead.”

“You don’t answer to them,” Neven says firmly. “You never have. They’re scared. They always have been—of what they can’t control… of what you won’t let them control.”

Her breath shudders. The storm in her body softens, the violent energy slowly receding.“I’ve seen Vargulfs return,” she whispers. “broken minds stitched back together. Souls dragged out of madness. There’s still someone inside.”

“Then we find the Vargulf.” Neven says, voice steady, the chopsticks still forgotten in his hand. “Together.”

Irene looks at her son—the only man brave enough to stand this close when her power rages, when the air itself bends and buckles around her.

For a heartbeat, she sees him as the world does. The Darkhaven heir, a powerful lawyer, a fierce father, tall and solemn, shoulders squared despite the tremor in the walls, despite the sigils burning faintly in the air like war scars.

It hits her.

He's not a child anymore. Not the little boy who used to cling to her ribs while she measured herbs at the apothecary, not the youth who once hid behind her when his magic flared too deep. 

A man. Her son has become a man. A warlock forged not in peace, but in the shadow of her and Novah's fire. In their expectations. In their legacy. In the weight of a name that has never been gentle.

A man who walks into her storm without flinching. Who steps through the shards of her power, barefoot, steady, and mostly, unafraid. Who holds her gaze instead of bowing under it and something inside her buckles.

The fury, the righteous, ancient fury, shatters under a wave of something far older. Far softer. Far more agonizing. Grief. Not for him. Not for herself.

But for the lifetime of burdens he never asked for, and still carries. For the way he mirrors her strength… and her sacrifices. For the price of being her son, a price she never wanted him to pay.

Her chest tightens. Her breath trembles. The rage is gone—extinguished as instantly as a candle drowned in water. What fills its place is ache. Raw and quiet. Heavy as stones. He stands there. Calm and unwavering and she thinks.

Gods, when did you become the only one strong enough to stand in my chaos? When did I let the world make you this? When did I let myself?

The storm around her falters. Books settle. The air loosens its grip. And Irene’s eyes—still glowing faintly—soften with a sorrow she rarely allows anyone to see.

Neven notices. He always does.

“Together.”

━━━━━ ☾☽ ━━━━━

💌: under the old moon: @kikibit @vadersangel @melancuntly @lunaskye999 @a-differentbrandof-beans @ch404 @voidofsunlight @mephistoraven @fathelzzz @kill3ill 🕯️🤎

≫ ──── ≪•◦ 📜 ◦•≫ ──── ≪

📜✍🏻: I'M ALIVE! it's been brutal out here, between work, classes and trying to take the rhythm back to saudade. happy holidays to everyone who celebrated, i wish you all nothing but love, kindness, clarity and comfort. thank you for reaching this far away with my small piece. roman and y/n ARE COMING and stronger than ever—i'm just a loser for yearning in silence.

Finally bringing you part ten of Rebirth. Wen I started this story two years ago I had an idea of where it was going. Silly me didn’t write that down so now, it’ll probably take a whole new direction. Which isn’t a bad thing. I’m a different person, my writing is different, how I feel is different. It’s exciting to see my stories evolve. Thank you to everyone who has supported my return and my writing. My inbox is always open for ideas for one shots and stories! <3

TW: swearing

Word count: 1009

“So, you did a bit of voodoo magic and you made the wolf disappear from him?” Roman said, almost not believing the story.

“The wolf didn’t disappear from Peter …” Ana began, her tone sad. “… The wolf is gone from inside me. I sacrificed my wolf side to Mars in order for him to bring Peter back from a Vargulf state and put the pieces of his broken mind back together. Hence how we have Peter back here, sitting with us ..”

“You … you gave up a piece of yourself to save your dumbass cousin? Is this whole family insane?” Roman said, rolling his eyes.

“Shall we get down to the reason you brought this son of a bitch back?” Peter said, trying his best to ignore what Roman had just said.

“Sure…” Ana said with a roll of her eyes. “Roman, Hemlock Grove is in danger. When Olivia … when she…” Ana couldn’t finish her sentence, so Peter did for her.

“That bitch didn’t die, or not properly anyway. I mean, she’s a bit less attractive now,” he said with a shrug. Ana gave Peter a glare before turning back to Roman.

“After all the shit that went down, the night everyone and their dog died, someone rescued Olivia. It can’t have been Pryce, he was murdered, and it can’t have been Anne because she set herself on fire …”

A noise escaped from Romans lips as he was told of his sister, and former lovers, fate. Ana looked at him, raising an eyebrow.

“Something wrong Roman?” she asked. Peter cut her off once again.

“Anne was another one of Roman’s conquests,” he said bluntly.

“Actually, she was my sister,”

“Jesus Roman,” Ana said, getting to her feet and pushing her hand through her hair. “Your sister? Again? Two sisters?” Ana looked to Peter as if for an explanation, but he merely shrugged. “Okay, putting aside how fucked up your past is, we need to concentrate on the problem at hand here. Someone rescued your dying mother, brought her back to full health and now, she’s bringing a Upir shit storm to Hemlock Grove. I didn’t even think there were that many of your kind left.”

Roman didn’t even flinch as Ana referred to ‘his kind’, he simply pondered over what he was being told. He slowly got to his feet, walking over to the counter behind where Ana was sat, curling his fists up and bringing them down on the counter top with a bang. Ana did not flinch, she merely kept an eye on Roman over her shoulder.

“So …” Roman began, removing his fists from the counter top, turning to face the two Rumancek’s and crossing his arms over his chest. “You brought me back to kill my mother?” he asked simply. Ana shook her head, getting to her feet and turning.

“No. We brought you back to exterminate your kind, for good.”

“There’s no reason to pussy-foot around the situation. That’s why you’re back. Peter told me how much you hate the fact you’re like you mother, then my mother had a vision of a tall, dark and pale boy turning into a dragon in a big flash of flame. Peter then had the same dream the following night. We don’t take that to be a coincidence Roman,” she said with a shake of her head.

Roman looked over at Peter, arching his eyebrow before nodding.

“Okay, I’ll help, I fucking hate that bitch,” he snarled. Olivia had done him dirty on multiple occasions. Ana couldn’t decide what had been worse for Roman; finding out his mother had entranced him and forced him to rape his half-sister or turning him into a Upir. She was sure there was probably a lot more fucked up shit that Roman just hadn’t told them yet.

The trio sat for about another hour, going over what they all knew about Upir folklore, what was bullshit and what was accurate. As the clock struck midnight, Peter allowed a yawn to escape from between his lips.

“Well, this catch ups been fun and everything but I need to hit the road. You gonna be okay An?” he asked, referring back to when Roman had attacked Ana during sex, sinking his teeth into her neck and almost ripping out her throat.

“I’ll be fine, I’m a big girl,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. Peter looked over at Roman, giving him a look that said if he hurt Ana again, he’d go back into the ground he came from.

“Alright, I’ll be back round in the morning and I’d better see you alive and with no more bite marks, okay?”

“I get the message Peter,” Roman said idly, clearly bored of Peters threats. Ana closed the door as Peter left and locked it behind him. She turned to face Roman, her hand still attached to the door handle.

“Okay, three house rules. Rule number one, you sleep on the sofa. There’s plenty of cushions and blankets to keep yourself warm,” she took one step forward, slowly making her way back over to where Roman stood. “Rule number two, no feeding. No picking up strange women, no running out at night and finding someone’s pet dog and most definitely, no chomping down on my jugular, understood?”

Ana had not noticed that Roman had been slowly moving closer to her as she spoke and was practically face to face with her now. “Oh I understand,” he said, moving around her so he was stood with his chest against her back. He slid his hands around her waist and leaned forwards, his lips grazing her ear, “What’s rule number three?” he whispered, taking her lobe in between his teeth and giving it a gentle nibble.

Peter Rumancek

Age: Unknown

Race/Ability: Vargulf (Werewolf)

Height: 5ft10

Allies: Roman Godfrey. (In an AU it would be no one other than your OC)

I am introducing Peter Rumancek to my multi-blog due to already having Roman Godfrey in there, I thought I’d spice it up and add Peter from Hemlock Grove too. It’s a pleasure to RP as them both and include them in joint RP’s as well as separate ones that I am currently doing as Roman. Plus, a wonderful friend of mine is going to have another Roman (I know O_O) And then I can easily play out Peter with other Roman’s too. So it’s good news all round.

Peter Rumancek is a Romani werewolf that moves to Hemlock Grove,  He is shown to have the same dreams as Roman Godfrey, and can act very sassy at times as he can shy. He is brave and strong and will be honest in some cases, other than Roman. 

This muse can either be separated from Roman Godfrey and can have a AU hemlock grove RP or it can be related to a Hemlock Grove RP where Roman exists, it is up to how you choose but it is mainly required for people to enjoy this blog with any characters. Plus who would want roman and peter to be seperate? So you can add your OC and anyone and start to have fun with him however you choose. 

Enjoy!

Again as for Roman and all my other muses. No god- modding and no one under the age of 18 to RP with them as these are Mature Content muses. 

GIRL FLESH - a mix for Christina Wendall from Hemlock Grove ("and my reality could never live up to the fantasy") [+playmoss]

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