On an otherwise normal day, Marcel realizes he's grown a bit too fond of the wolf pups he adopted.
He's not sure how to handle this revelation
Part of A Vampire's Pack
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Marcel was meant to be going over the notes Thierry brought him from his recent patrol with the newest nightwalkers. He had come into his office for that very purpose, as a matter of fact.
But he could hear the kids playing out in the courtyard and it was very distracting. There was a surprisingly complex storyline going on between two warring kingdoms that had to work together to defeat a terrible dragon and he found himself drawn back to it every few words.
After a few more attempts at reading the same sentence, he gave up, getting up from his desk and leaving the library to watch the show from the balcony.
He leaned on the railing, arms crossed with a soft smile on his face as he watched the tiny crew run around.
Jackson and Oliver made up one kingdom and Eve and Aiden were the other. Hayley was the dragon, running around the courtyard with cardboard wings on her back, growling and biting people at random. It would be annoying if she wasn’t so cute.
Marcel’s eyes slid back to the negotiations between the two kingdoms, which had come to a halt to decide on what, exactly, negotiations were supposed to look like.
He considered going down there to help, offer perspective, but figured if they wanted his input, they would ask. They usually preferred to figure out the more “adult” parts of their games on their own.
Looking away from the negotiations, Marcel once again sought out the ferocious dragon that was terrorizing the kingdoms. Only...he couldn’t see her anymore. She wasn’t climbing on the fountain or chasing any of the daywalkers downstairs. He frowned and peered at the darkest corners of the courtyard, but still saw nothing.
Where had she gone?
An echoing giggle caught his ears and he quickly turned, searching for the source. If there was one thing he’d learned about toddlers (or, at least, this one in particular), it was that unsupervised giggling was never a good thing.
“Hayley?” he called out softly. “Where are you? We’re not playing hide and seek….”
The giggling got louder and was accompanied by a metallic thunk. It was coming from the other side of the abattoir. On the second level. Right across from Marcel.
He whirled around to see her climbing to the top of the railing. She was clumsy, but her werewolf heritage made her nimble and she was standing on top of the metal railing before he could even move. “Hayley!” he cried. “Get down from there! It’s not safe!”
She didn’t heed his warning, just giggling and spreading her cardboard wings. “Imma dragon!” she cheered as she jumped.
He had heard the stories. Every parent in the world, throughout all time, had a story where their child got injured and time slowed down as they watched it happen.
Hayley’s fall did not slow down. Not while Marcel was watching her, at least. If anything, it seemed like she sped up, barreling toward the concrete tile of the courtyard.
By some miracle, Marcel was faster, and she landed in his arms instead.
That was the moment when time slowed down.
That was when he could hold her to his chest and breathe her in. That was when he could close his eyes and listen to her (still beating) heart. That was the moment he could hold onto and know that this little girl was safe.
One eternity later, Hayley started wriggling. “Lemme down! Imma dragon!” She bit at his arm and tried to kick out of his hold.
And then time started running at normal speed and his ears cleared up and he could open his eyes and say “Absolutely not!” without breaking down. He held her little body in his hands at arms’ length so she could see he was serious. “You are not a dragon and you will not be a dragon for at least a week. Thierry!”
He ordered his right hand man to get the other children to their rooms while he handled Hayley. He would have a talk with Eve and Jackson later about keeping an eye on their little sister, but this conversation needed to just be between the two of them.
He brought her up to his office, holding her wriggling body in a firm grip, and set her on the desk before folding his arms over his chest.
“Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? There’s a reason I tell you not to play up there alone! You could’ve gotten seriously hurt – and you would have if I hadn’t caught you.”
“But you did catch me.” She said, in the way only a child could, with the complete confidence that if nothing bad had happened before, nothing bad ever would happen in the future.
“And what if I hadn’t? What if I hadn’t been watching? What if no one had noticed you ran off and got somewhere you shouldn’t have been? You could’ve been hurt or-” A sickening image of Hayley on the floor of the courtyard, head smashed open and blood splattered around her, eyes looking back at him lifelessly. He coughed and got himself back under control. “Why did you jump off that railing? You know how dangerous that is.”
Hayley stared at him and was silent for a long moment, as if she were actually, seriously contemplating his question. Eventually, she answered: “I knew you would catch me.”
In one moment, Marcel simultaneously felt his heart shatter and swell up to about five times its usual size. A sensation that he felt he masked very well, only clearing his throat to shove down the swell of emotion that threatened to bubble out of him. “That is very sweet of you to say. But that does not get you out of trouble. That was very dangerous and I need to punish you for that. Do you understand?”
Hayley let out a very put upon sigh and nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice. “I was just playing.”
He couldn’t find it in his heart to be too mad at her when she pouted like that. But she was still grounded and the dragon costume was going up on the high shelf that not even Jackson could climb up to until she was un-grounded. Which wouldn’t be for another month at least. Maybe longer.
Marcel did not let himself examine the way that afternoon affected him until long after the abattoir had emptied. He sat alone in the very office he’d reprimanded Hayley in with a bottle of whiskey and a fire blazing in the fireplace.
When he’d brought the wolf pups into his home from the bayou, his intentions had been clear. He would raise them as his own, molding the next generation of pack leadership. If they also functioned as hostages to keep the current leadership from rebelling, that was a nice bonus. It had been an impulsive move, but a strategic one.
He had, for some reason, not anticipated coming to actually care for any of them.
Well. He had expected to grow fond of them. He just hadn’t expected to care for them this much. So much that the thought of harm coming to them felt like his heart was ripped from his chest. So much that he couldn’t spend more than two hours away from them without finding his way to whatever game they were playing. So much that he was truly beginning to fear the day that they might find out the truth.
And, one day, he was certain they would. One day, one of them would find out they were werewolves. One of them would feel the pull back to their back, to their true family. One of them would find out what he had done. And they would tell the others, and they would all hate him. And then he would lose them.
The thought of Hayley’s sincere and complete trust morphing into hatred filled him with a dread he did not know how to quell. The idea that Aiden, Jackson, or Oliver would turn away from him instead of toward him for affection made him want to cry. Even Eve, the most distant of them, the girl who had bitten him when he tried to hold her the first time they met, had wormed her way into his heart in a way that made him fear the day she pushed him away again.
Maybe he could prevent it. Maybe he could speak to the witches again, find some kind of suppression spell to keep their wolves restrained. Or perhaps there was a way to cut off their connection to their pack. Maybe there was even a way to keep them from turning at all.
Or maybe anything he could do would be an exercise in futility, merely prolonging the inevitable.
But wasn’t it worth trying? To keep the peace? To keep the family he had accidentally built?
He finished his glass and decided he would call a meeting with the witches in the morning. Whatever came of it, no one would say Marcel Gerard didn’t fight for his family.
"Consensual, but still weird" is underrated in toxic freaky shipping world. There are many ways you can make it weird while still having everyone agree to it
Camille O'Connell found a way to work around Klaus' compulsion and we do not praise her enough for it. Leaving herself messages and clues, having a tape recorder in her purse, bringing the cypher she and Sean created as kids directly into her sessions with Klaus. He picked it up, questioned her about it, and she lied straight to his face. He had no idea because underestimated her. Didn't check her purse, didn't double check her house for the post it notes, Whether Davina undid the compulsion magically or not, Cami already had an idea of what was going on because of her own determination. We've never seen another human in the tvdu do that and it should be discussed more.
These supernatural beings constantly underestimated Cami because they were more powerful physically yet she was able to lap them mentally or emotionally every time. And every single one of them ended up not only respecting her but verbalizing it.
"I don't get why everyone is so taken with this human-oh shit she tricked me, oh shit she wasn't intimidated, oh she's actually smart, okay I get it!"
In one moment, Marcel simultaneously felt his heart shatter and swell up to about five times its usual size. A sensation that he felt he masked very well, only clearing his throat to shove down the swell of emotion that threatened to bubble out of him. “That is very sweet of you to say. But that does not get you out of trouble. That was very dangerous and I need to punish you for that. Do you understand?”
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