CHAPTER 13: NEW ORLEANS CALLS
POV: Alen
Hope's phone shattered the evening quiet like breaking glass. She'd been reading beside him on the common room couch, textbook forgotten as exhaustion from keeping the Hollow contained finally caught up with her. The sudden ring jerked her upright, golden veins flaring briefly across her temples before subsiding into familiar ache.
Klaus. The caller ID carried her father's name like a death sentence.
"Dad?" Hope's voice held three years of careful distance, the practiced neutrality of someone who'd learned to expect catastrophe. Her free hand found Alen's instinctively, seeking the steady warmth that kept the Hollow quiet.
Klaus's voice came through the speaker tight with fear—an emotion that didn't belong in the Original Hybrid's repertoire. "Your mother is in danger. Come home. Now."
POV: Hope
The words hit Hope like physical blows. Her mother—fierce, independent Hayley Marshall who'd survived being hunted by Klaus, who'd led werewolf packs and faced down Original vampires with supernatural courage—was in danger serious enough to make Klaus sound genuinely frightened.
Mom. The woman who'd taught her to hunt in wolf form, who'd shown her how to braid flowers into her hair like pack markings, who'd held her through nightmares about the Hollow's whispers. The parent who actually understood what it meant to be caught between species, to carry violence in your blood while fighting for something better.
"What happened?" Hope's grip on Alen's hand tightened until she felt bones shift beneath skin. "Where is she? How bad—"
"Greta Sienna has her." Klaus's voice carried centuries of controlled fury barely held in check. "She's demanding I surrender you to complete the Hollow ritual. Apparently, proximity suppression wasn't enough to discourage her ambitions."
Hope's world tilted sideways. Greta Sienna—the anti-vampire cultist who'd orchestrated attacks on her family before, who viewed Hope's tribrid nature as an abomination requiring correction. If Greta had Hayley, if she was planning another attempt to weaponize the Hollow...
"This is my fault," Hope thought, the knowledge cutting through her like blessed silver. "My existence made Mom a target. My power made the Hollow something worth hunting. If I'd never been born—"
"I'm coming," she said, voice breaking despite her efforts at control. The Hollow stirred at her emotional distress, ancient whispers growing louder in response to fear and guilt.
"Absolutely not." Klaus's tone brooked no argument. "It's clearly a trap designed to separate you from your suppression anchor. The moment you leave Mystic Falls—"
"She's my mother!"
The words tore from Hope's throat with tribrid fury, carrying enough emotional weight to make windows rattle throughout the common room. Students looked up from homework and conversations, sensing supernatural distress without understanding its source.
POV: Alen
Alen watched Hope crumble in real time. The invincible tribrid—who faced down monsters with casual efficiency, who carried the weight of an ancient curse like it was nothing, who'd grown up assuming everyone she loved would eventually be torn away—reduced to a terrified daughter begging her father to let her save her mother.
"She'd do it anyway," he realized. "She'd run to New Orleans with or without permission because family is everything to the Mikaelsons. And without me there to suppress the Hollow, Greta would have exactly what she wants—an emotionally compromised tribrid carrying an ancient evil."
The decision crystallized instantly, cutting through weeks of careful planning and strategic patience.
"I'm going with her," Alen said, his voice carrying quiet certainty.
Klaus's response crackled through the phone with Original contempt. "The siphoner boy? Absolutely not. This is a family matter, not a school field trip."
"Hope needs me." Alen kept his tone respectful but unmovable. "The Hollow needs me nearby. You need every advantage you can get."
"And I need to meet the Mikaelsons," he added silently. "I need to understand the family dynamics, test my powers against legendary opponents, and position myself for when Greta's soul becomes available for harvest. This crisis is terrible timing, but it's also opportunity."
"The boy is seventeen years old," Klaus continued, his voice gaining the dangerous edge that suggested impending violence. "Whatever marginal assistance his abilities might provide—"
"Dad, he's right." Hope's desperation broke through protocol and caution. "The suppression only works when he's close. Without Alen, the Hollow could overwhelm me completely. You'd be trading one hostage for two."
Silence stretched across the connection while Klaus weighed paternal protectiveness against strategic necessity. When he spoke again, reluctant acceptance colored his tone.
"Fine. But he stays close to you at all times. If the boy becomes a liability—"
"He won't," Hope said with fierce certainty, her grip on Alen's hand tight enough to leave bruises. "He's stronger than you think."
POV: Alen
Alaric's office felt smaller than usual with Caroline's voice coming through the speakerphone, family council convened through digital necessity. Alen sat across from his false father, watching conflicting emotions war across familiar features—protection versus support, authority versus trust.
"Absolutely not," Alaric said when they'd finished explaining the situation. "You're seventeen, Alen. This is a conflict between Original vampires and an ancient cult. You'll be a target the moment you step foot in New Orleans."
"Rick." Caroline's voice carried maternal authority even through electronic distance. "If Alen can suppress the Hollow, Klaus needs him there. This is Hope's mother."
"He's a child, Caroline!" Alaric's composure cracked, revealing the fear beneath administrative competence. "Whatever enhanced abilities he's developed, this is beyond anything he's faced before."
Alen stared at his father with quiet intensity, letting silence carry the weight of unspoken truth. This wasn't a request. This wasn't negotiation. Hope was going to New Orleans with or without permission, and he would follow her regardless of consequences.
"I'm done watching people I care about suffer," he thought. "I'm done being helpless while cosmic forces move families around like chess pieces. If this is what it takes to prove I'm not the frightened boy Klaus threatened three years ago, then so be it."
"I'm strong enough," he said simply.
Alaric saw it then—the fundamental shift that had transformed his anxious son into someone capable of facing supernatural legends without flinching. This wasn't teenage rebellion. This was inevitability wearing human features.
"Fine." The word came out like defeat. "But Caroline and I are coming too. If you're walking into a war zone, you're not going alone."
"Already booking flights," Caroline said from the speaker, her voice mixing relief with determination. "Klaus owes me several favors. It's time to collect."
Hope exhaled shakily, some tension leaving her shoulders as family support crystallized around shared purpose. "Thank you. Both of you."
Alen nodded, mind already racing through tactical considerations. New Orleans meant meeting the Mikaelson family in their natural habitat. It meant testing his abilities against Original vampires and ancient magic. It meant potentially facing Greta Sienna in combat—and harvesting her soul if the opportunity presented itself.
"This is it," he thought. "This is where I stop being Alaric's mysterious son and start being Hope's partner. Where I prove that enhanced abilities and strategic thinking can stand alongside supernatural royalty."
But underneath the anticipation lay deeper currents of knowledge he couldn't share. He knew about Elijah's memory loss, about the complex family dynamics that would soon explode into violence. He knew Greta's ultimate plan involved more than just Hope's capture.
"I'm going to have to navigate this crisis blind to others while seeing the entire chessboard myself," he realized. "Manipulate events without being able to explain why certain choices are necessary. Save lives without revealing how I know who needs saving."
The curse would make everything infinitely more complicated. But it would also force him to become the strategist this family needed—someone who could anticipate threats and coordinate responses without depending on shared information.
POV: Hope
Hope's dorm room felt like a shrine to impending loss as she packed with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. Clothing folded mechanically while her mind spiraled through increasingly terrible possibilities. Her mother captured. Her father desperate enough to sound afraid. Greta Sienna planning rituals that could unleash the Hollow on an unsuspecting world.
"How did this happen?" she wondered, cramming magical supplies between mundane necessities. "Mom was supposed to be safe in the bayou. The pack was supposed to protect her. The whole point of staying at school was keeping dangerous threats away from family."
A soft knock interrupted her spiral. Alen stood in the doorway, carrying his own hastily packed bag and an expression of quiet determination.
"I won't let anything happen to her," he said without preamble.
"You can't promise that." The words came out harsher than intended, fear and frustration bleeding through careful control. "You don't know Greta. You don't understand what she's capable of."
Alen stepped closer, close enough that she could feel the steady warmth of his presence, the indefinable something that made the Hollow retreat into sullen whispers.
"I can promise I'll die trying."
Hope searched his face—this boy she'd ghosted, who'd ghosted her, who'd returned impossible and devoted and carrying powers that didn't make sense. Three years ago he'd been afraid to meet her eyes. Now he was volunteering to face down ancient enemies for her family's sake.
"Why do you care so much?" The question escaped before she could stop it. "My family, I mean. You barely know them."
Alen's expression softened, revealing something vulnerable beneath supernatural confidence. "Because you matter. Your family matters. I'm done watching people I care about suffer."
The simple honesty in his voice made Hope's chest tight with unfamiliar emotion. When was the last time someone had said she mattered? Not her power, not her potential, not her strategic value to supernatural politics—just her, Hope Mikaelson, daughter and student and girl who wanted desperately to save everyone she loved.
The Hollow stirred at her emotional response, ancient whispers growing louder as her control wavered. But Alen's presence pushed back against the intrusion, golden light flickering across his skin as he unconsciously reinforced the suppression.
Hope kissed him—sudden, fierce, desperate. A collision of lips and breath and barely contained supernatural energy. She poured three years of anger and longing and gratitude into the contact, claiming this moment of connection before everything went to hell.
When she pulled back, breathless, her forehead rested against his.
"Don't make me regret trusting you," she whispered.
POV: Alen
The flight to New Orleans passed in surreal tranquility. Hope slept against his shoulder, exhaustion finally overcoming anxiety as the Hollow's suppression allowed genuine rest. Alen watched Louisiana approach through the small window, wetlands and rivers painted gold by afternoon sunlight.
The resurrection coin felt heavier than usual in his pocket—not physically, but emotionally. Soon he'd be walking among living legends, testing enhanced abilities against supernatural royalty, navigating family dynamics that could reshape the magical world.
"Time to meet legends," he whispered to the sleeping girl beside him.
Below them, New Orleans sprawled across the delta like something from a fever dream—modern city built on ancient bones, jazz music and vampire politics and magic thick enough to taste from thirty thousand feet.
"Whatever happens next," Alen thought, "this is where everything changes."
The plane began its descent toward destiny.
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