Chapter 37

She had felt it bubble underneath her skin for a couple of weeks now, the itch she needed to scratch badly and no, it wasn’t sex. At twenty four weeks, Bella had ballooned and gained 30 pounds, if not more, and the size of her belly was huge – and she still had some growing to do! Sex was quite uncomfortable and enjoyable at the same time, but she knew that soon she’d have to switch to giving Kol a handjob or a blowjob because she was cramping up more often than not and the ‘quite uncomfortable’ could soon turn into ‘very uncomfortable’. Such a turn off.

No, she was talking about her Demi-Goddess self. Kol and Freya had done everything in their power, consulted every witch in the Quarter and some foreign witches as well, on the prophecy and the power it held over the Mikaelson family and had come up with nothing. While Freya kept insisting that it was true, Kol had given up and was ready to kill his siblings’ first sirelings on sight.

And Bella was too. She couldn’t believe why Rebekah, Klaus and Elijah would allow their first sirelings get underneath their skin so much. Klaus had changed his mind and was merely playing with Lucien, but she could tell that something still wasn’t right. She still felt like an outsider and slightly alienated. There were three camps in the Compound; the sirelings with Freya and sometimes Elijah on their side, the Mikaelsons and then there were Cami, Myriam and Bella.

It felt so strange. So alien, and Bella wanted to fix it. She had already received several phone calls from the Regent about the amassing vampires in the city and while Bella had explained the situation and what her stance was on it, she couldn’t help but to feel obligated to fix this – even knowing that her powers were unreliable. Surely her babies would understand that she’d need a little bit of juice to help the family?

Seeing the trio on an almost daily basis larking about in the center of the courtyard didn’t do her stress levels any good. Sure, she went swimming, or went to get a nice massage or went to her classes, but they were always there. There was no escaping them, always scheming, having fun and shutting their mouths when she passed by.

She nearly blew a fuse when Elijah announced that Tristan, Lucien and Aurora were going to join the family for Thanksgiving dinner. Kol assured her that it was only a ruse, and that they only liked Thanksgiving for the lies and deceit and ultimately a sibling fight and that, just as they had done with the Cullens, one last meal before their demise was merely fun. He took her to the annual Thanksgiving run celebrations to get her mind off of dinner while the servants and cooks slaved away at the compound.

Bella napped for a couple of hours after returning home until Kol woke her gently to get ready. He was all giddy, because it wasn’t merely going to be the last Thanksgiving of the retarded trio, no, someone else was going to die. It had been difficult not to let his siblings know, but he supposed it was easier to cover things up with Myriam on their side, and he and Bella had been working on things their way while going out for their classes. And while his siblings weren’t going to be happy about what he and Bella had found out, they were going to be on their side. Kol was sure of that. Because aside from their words, they had video evidence. Oh yes. This was going to be a Thanksgiving nobody was ever going to regret soon.

A story for the ages.

Yes.

And Kol was happy; Bella had dressed herself in one of the new dresses they had bought in the boutique in the Garden District that had grown to become her favourite – maternity wear that didn’t look outdated, and great wrap around dresses that she could wear for a very long time. Comfortable wear. And the people who worked there were very sweet too. “I could devour you right now, screw dinner.”

“But what about our plans?” Bella pouted as she looked at him. “Good riddance, right? Please? Make my last months of growing tiny humans in my belly stress free?”

He softly kissed her as he gently moved his hand over her belly. “We really should start talking about names for them.”

“Sure, but not tonight,” she smiled at him. “They’re asleep, please let them sleep,” Bella said playfully as she swatted his hand away. “There are no feet near my bladder or ribs right now, I’m happy.”

Kol snorted and took her hand before leaving their little apartment to join the family for dinner. “Sorry we’re a tad late,” Kol announced as they approached the table where his siblings and their guests were already seated. “We’re moving at a slower pace these days.”

“You could have started to get ready a bit earlier,” Freya retorted.

“Freya,” Elijah shushed his sister as he watched Kol and Bella take a seat. “It’s been a very long time since we’ve all been able to sit and enjoy each other’s company over dinner, let’s not waste this opportunity or soil it with our differences. It’s Thanksgiving, after all.”

“So, what did we miss?” Kol said amused as he brought the potatoes closer to him and Bella so they could start filling their plates. “Paranoia? Threats?”

“Oh, of course,” Rebekah sighed as she sipped her wine. “They want to take us out of the equation now, lock us away forever.”

“Well, in your case Beks, perhaps that’s not such a bad thing,” Kol grinned as he got the platter with roast on it. “You’re always causing trouble, tut tut.”

“At least someone’s worried about me!” Rebekah breezed as she slammed the table. “We’re not all blessed by having-”

“We’re immortal, darling,” he purred, cutting her off. For the months that they had to deal with the first sirelings they kept Bella’s status as a demi-Goddess a secret. If only they knew. “We don’t have anything to be afraid of, especially since this whole prophecy has been nothing but a tool to create paranoia, mayhem, cause confusion and drive us all apart, in the hopes of us killing each other, box each other or worse.”

“We don’t know that,” Freya sighed. “We’ve been working on it for months and-”

“Exactly!” Kol cheered as he took the gravy from his brother and helped himself, happy to see Bella was happily eating with a smile on her lips, allowing him to confront everyone. “We haven’t found anything to counter the prophecy nor any grounds for that prophecy to be in place, don’t you find that odd, Niklaus?” He asked his brother, drawing him into the conversation. “Usually when something as big as a prophecy happens, there’s proof. Documentation. Not merely spoken from the lips of a witch we’ve never seen before and was killed before we even had the chance to talk to her ourselves. You know as well as I do that this is merely a ruse. For more power. They want to become us.”

Aurora huffed angrily as she crossed her arms and spoke in her high pitched whiny voice. “We were you!”

“Not me,” Kol smiled at Aurora. “You were my siblings, not I. And, to hold a grudge this long, really? Are you mental? No wait, you lot were merely bored and decided to see if the Mikaelsons were gullible. Well, congratulations, it seems like most of my siblings are,” he said as he slow clapped before taking a bite out of his food. “Granted, your scheme was clever. Very intricate, much like the schemes my brothers would think of in the past. I nearly fell for it. Nearly.”

“Kol, the prophecy is real,” Freya spoke. “Just because we can’t find anything-”

“We didn’t find anything because you blocked every attempt in finding out, sister,” he replied venomously, his vampire face slowly bleeding out.

“Calm down,” Bella said calmly as she rubbed his arm. “Have something to eat first, let them digest your words and come up with a counter.”

“I want to end this now, darling.”

“So do I, but I don’t want my food to get all bloody, this is good stuff,” she smiled at him. “There are nuts in the mashed potatoes! I love it!”

Klaus smirked and beamed at Elijah. “See, Elijah? At least some of us appreciate my input on tonight’s dinner.”

“Honestly,” Elijah rolled his eyes before narrowing them on his youngest brother and his very pregnant girlfriend. “What do you mean by bloody? Niklaus and I have not discussed anything of the sort!”

“No, but Bella, Myriam and I have. We’ve had some help from Camille, of course, her psychological insights was what made us dig deeper,” Kol replied as he took a bite from his mash and scrunched up his nose. “Yuck, nuts. Would have been better with bacon in it.” Bella was right, but he really wanted to tear out some hearts. Now.

“Ohh, bacon,” Bella cooed as she made a mental note for herself for later. Bacon and vanilla ice cream. Oh yes. She made sure she finished her food quite quickly, realizing that Kol wanted to get this over with. It was sweet of him to at least attempt some patience because of the food and seeing as his siblings were all staring at him in confusion, Bella sighed. “Okay.”

“See, the prophecy isn’t real,” Kol explained. “As soon as I noticed that our oldest sister was stringing me along, I played along but informed Bella and Myriam about the facts. And the facts are, there aren’t any. Other than our sister conniving with Tristan, Lucien and Aurora to replace us with them.”

“I’d never!” Freya said, obviously hurt.

“Oh, here we go, the loon had a theory and ran with it,” Lucien rolled his eyes. “Seriously, Niklaus, do you believe him? I honestly don’t know why he’s still walking around and not boxed up.”

“Because I’m in his way,” Bella said as she narrowed her eyes on Lucian. “And so is Myriam.”

“An ordinary vampire and what? A witch?” Lucien huffed. “Please. Just say the word, Niklaus, I’ll have their heads on a platter in no time at all. After all, the prophecy does speak of a friend or a member of your family who’ll betray you.”

At least Freya hadn’t told the trio everything, but still, if him betraying the family meant the box, it surely meant death for Freya. And Lucien had to check himself, Kol happened to know that Bella was more than eager to get in on this and felt up to some mischief. “Myriam and I cashed in some favors from impartial witches, seers, voodoo priestesses, you name it, and hell, just to be thorough, Bella asked a member of her family to ask another member of her family who asked another… We know we don’t really have to convince Nik of the truth because he loves Myriam and is very fond of Bella. We don’t need to convince Rebekah, either, as she’ll side with Nik always, but no, we have to prove this to Elijah, who’s enamoured with our eldest sister. Who fell into our laps and has been manipulating this family ever since.”

“That’s a lie! I would never do anything to betray this family!”

Myriam let out a snort. “Neither would Kol, but on occasion he does and he usually has a reasonable explanation,” she pointed out. “To make a long story short, there’s no prophecy. There’s only preying on the paranoia of this family to make sure they destroy each other and I’m sorry folks, the show is over. It ends now.”

Kol leapt up from his chair and wanted to rip Lucien to shreds, but Elijah stopped him, slamming Kol into one of the pillars instead. “If you kill them, vampires lines die with them.”

“I don’t care, Elijah. You lot made more than enough yourselves, but they’re going to die,” Kol sneered as he struggled against his brother’s hold on him. “For the good of this family, they’re all going to die.”

“Niklaus,” Elijah sighed, a hint of boredom and annoyance in his tone as he held out his hand.

Kol grinned. “You forget, brother, Nik doesn’t have ownership of our daggers anymore.”

Bella watched as Freya prepared herself to cast a spell Kol’s way and gave her a huge headache instead, which she was fighting because she knew it was merely an illusion. She could tell that she wasn’t powerful to do things by merely thinking about it; she had been warned about this, her body was protecting the babies now.

Bella had to focus, and was just in time to make Freya believe that she was powerless. “Try again, Freya, I dare you. You’ll join your aunt in that cage!” she threatened and just like that, Freya turned into a tortoise. A freaking tortoise and Bella hadn’t done anything. “Ah hell.”

Using the confusion to his advantage, Kol pushed Elijah off of him and quickly ripped out the hearts of Lucien and Tristan, causing Aurora to scream in panic. “She’s all yours, darling,” he smirked at Myriam, who had been itching to kill the older vampire. It wasn’t going to be easy, but seeing how weak Aurora was compared to her brother, Myriam was going to have a blast taking her apart.

“Kol!” Rebekah scowled as she was pushed out of the way as Myriam moved forward. “You can’t just do this, what if Freya’s right?”

“You haven’t been listening, sister, so allow me to say it again; there is no prophecy. There never was. It was all cooked up by the terrible triplets and our eldest sister. Feel free to kill the tortoise, if you’d like. I never cared for Freya anyway.”

“But why!”

“To divide us. To get rid of us so they can be us, haven’t you been listening? Honestly.” Kol rolled his eyes as he wiped his hands on Lucien’s bleeding corpse and smirked as he looked at Niklaus. “I know what he meant to you, Nik, but admit it, you wanted to do this yourself.”

“Why do it when I’ve got you?” He retorted as he watched Myriam battle it out with Aurora. “Well done, Kol.”

“See, that’s why you wanted me to return, because I do the things you and even Elijah find hard to do!”

“Do not push it, brother,” Elijah scowled. “You’re fortunate that Niklaus made a pact with Bella not to put you in your coffin for this,” he breezed before turning to his other brother. “Either he leaves with his pregnant girl or I will.”

“Good luck, Elijah, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

“Bella, what the fuck did you do to me?!” Aurora shrieked as she held Myriam in a headlock. “Change us back right now!”

“I didn’t do anything,” she replied impishly, blinking at the sight before her. “Come on, Myr, fight, are you really going to have her best you like this?” Was that a dark aura around her? Magic? What?

“Bella!” Aurora cried out as Myriam’s grin grew wider and wider. “You’ve changed us around, now swap us back!”

It was magic, wasn’t it? “Prove it.”

“CeilingCat, come on,” Aurora whined. “My God, this voice is so whiny!” She snapped Myriam’s neck and stepped over her before looking at her. “Oh, I’m so pretty… and now I’m not…” she then turned to Bella and advanced on her before Kol stopped her. “Oh come on! She needs to switch us back!”

“Myr, that’s not one of my gifts,” Bella blinked as she looked at Aurora. Aurora didn’t know about CeilingCat and TrashPanda, did she? “I do illusions mostly, remember?” Freya was a tortoise, she couldn’t possibly have switched Myriam and Aurora.

“Yeah well, this is NOT an illusion!” she huffed as she beat Kol’s chest. “Let go of me, you oaf.”

Bella took a few steps forward to Aur-Myriam and touched her arm, but the dark aura didn’t lift. “Huh. Normally that’d work,” she replied as she scratched her head. “Then again, I was warned that I wasn’t able to function properly. In any case, I didn’t make you switch bodies, this is magic so I suggest you find the witch responsible.”

“Fine,” Myriam said determined. “You keep her here,” she said as she pointed at her own body. “I’m going to hunt down some witches and if I can’t find the solution to this, I’m going to kill some witches.”

Klaus seemed to be stupefied before the penny dropped. “I’ll join you, love, because I can’t stand to look at Aurora’s face for much longer.”

“Oh, but the power this body holds though,” Myriam sighed. “You can really tell that she’s older and stronger than me.”

“No, absolutely not, we’re going to find a way to change you back!”

Kol wrapped his arms around Bella as the servants started to dispose of the bodies of Lucien and Tristan and Klaus and not-Aurora-but-Myriam sped off to chase down some witches. “Darling, are you sure you didn’t do anything?” He asked playfully.

“Well, I wanted to change Freya into a rat so she could join your aunt in the cage but…” she casually waved to the tortoise. “But I’m sure I’m not responsible for what happened to Aurora and Myriam. First of all, I don’t have that kind of power and second of all, she had a dark aura around her, it’s magic. I don’t do magic and thirdly; why would I want to swap Myriam and Aurora? They hate each other! I hate Aurora! Everyone does!”

Kol let out a slight chuckle. “Elijah, I expect you to keep an eye on Aurora until Myriam and Nik come back.”

“I was told to leave,” he replied calmly. “And I shall, I will not tolerate this nonsense any longer. This family – honestly.” And with that, Elijah zoomed away.

“Oh, don’t look at me,” Rebekah threw her hands in the air.

“Oh, but I am, sister. Aurora’s yours, isn’t she? You look after her!” Kol grinned. “I’m sure that eventually, Elijah will stop this nonsense and will return.”

“Kol! Don’t make me do this!”

“Oh, but Beks, look at it this way, you get to snap Myriam’s neck over and over again! Compel her to be a monkey! Anything but to permanently damage that body!”

Rebekah smiled widely then, almost as if she had just received a Christmas present. “This is going to be so much fun!”

He gently coaxed Bella back to their little part of the Compound and as soon as the door closed, he dropped to his knees and gently rubbed her belly. “Oi, you lot, that wasn’t a nice thing you did to your Auntie Myriam, but I am so proud of you!”

3 Comments:

  1. Knew Freya was a bad egg. Tortoise is better than a rat at least lol.
    So the babies used magic to switch Myriam? Poor Myriam. Can’t believe Elijah just ran off and didn’t stick around for proof.

  2. Thank you!! So happy you liked it and are safe after Irma. <3

  3. This going to probably the shortest review I make since I have only my phone I was waiting for Bella to do something to freya if she got pushed so far a turtle is perfect lol and the body switch that is interesting because didn’t expect that to happen I have a feeeli g the babies did it lol anyway perfect chapter update again soon

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