A few hours had passed since the wedding reception ended. The heavy silence of the late night hung over the Mikaelson mansion. In her room, Hope had finally fallen asleep, exhausted by the physical and magical strain that the Hollow's corruption was inflicting upon her body.
In the adjacent room, Ethan stood on the balcony, resting his hands on the cast-iron railing as he stared out at the starry New Orleans sky.
The bedroom door opened noiselessly. Klaus Mikaelson stepped inside, walking with slow steps and a somber expression until he stopped on the balcony beside the boy. Without beating around the bush, Klaus relayed exactly what Davina and Rebekah had uncovered during the ritual: Ethan's blood had reacted to the Hollow, but it was incomplete.
Ethan took a deep breath, his eyes fixed on the stars, and released a slow exhale.
"What do I have to do?" Ethan asked, his voice low.
Klaus stared into the darkness of the night before answering.
"Listen to me, boy... I have an idea of what I can do. I want to draw the Hollow's magic into myself and... kill myself. If that happens, I need you to protect Hope."
Ethan whipped his head toward him instantly, caught off guard.
"What?! No, you can't do that, Klaus! Wasn't there Davina's solution?"
"Yes, boy. But it's uncertain," Klaus replied, his voice chillingly cold and direct. "And I demand certainty. Hope can't handle any more uncertainty. She's running out of time... she might not even last another day."
"WHAT?!" Ethan's voice echoed across the balcony.
In that exact instant, a wild, fluorescent-green glow ignited in Ethan's eyes. The fury and panic for Hope's life triggered his most primal instincts.
"HOPE COULD DIE TODAY?!"
Klaus maintained a stern, unyielding expression, staring back at the boy without blinking.
"Yes."
Rage and despair struck Ethan with the force of a physical blow. His hands gripped the iron railing so tightly that the thick metal gave way, crumpling under his fingers as if it were paper, without him even realizing his own display of brute strength.
"What can I do, Klaus?!" Ethan demanded, his voice trembling with anger. "I'll do anything to help her! Anything!"
Klaus stared intently at the boy. Then, he took a step forward and placed a firm hand on Ethan's shoulder.
"Be careful what you promise, boy. I've seen men swear 'anything' and run at the very first hour the promise demanded its price."
"I'm not those men," Ethan countered, refusing to break eye contact.
"No," Klaus murmured, almost to himself. "Perhaps you aren't. That's why I'm standing here, and not speaking to my brother or anyone else."
Klaus released his shoulder and rested his arms against the dented railing, looking down at the city below.
"There is a way, Ethan. But it isn't pretty, and there is no turning back once it's done."
"Tell me what I have to do," Ethan answered.
"You need to trigger your curse. Become a full werewolf."
Ethan froze for half a second, processing the weight of those words.
"I have to... kill someone?"
"You do." Klaus didn't soften the blow. "The curse only awakens with the taking of a human life by your own hands. I could lie and tell you there is another way. There isn't."
Ethan hesitated. The thought of taking a human life weighed heavily on his chest for a brief, torturous second. Yet, in that very same fraction of a second, as Hope's face flashed in his mind—pale, suffering, her life slipping away—any lingering doubt evaporated completely. If Hope died, nothing else mattered. He would die with her. There was no room for hesitation when it came to her life.
"I'll do it," Ethan declared, his predatory green gaze locked onto the Original Hybrid's.
Klaus gave a slow nod of approval at the young man's resolve.
"It won't be an innocent. I'll find someone for this to be done. Follow me."
The two left the mansion without making a sound.
The car cut through the empty streets of the French Quarter in total silence for several minutes. Ethan watched the streetlights pass by the window, one after another, without truly seeing them.
"You've killed a lot of people, haven't you?" he finally asked.
"More than I care to count," Klaus replied, his eyes never leaving the road. "And if you're waiting for me to tell you it gets easier, I'm going to disappoint you. It doesn't. You just learn to carry the weight."
"Then why did you keep doing it?"
"Because, most of the time, I believed I had no choice." Klaus paused. "Tonight, you do. I can still turn this car around, and no one will ever know you hesitated."
Ethan clenched his fists over his knees.
"If I turn around, Hope dies. So I don't have a choice at all, Klaus."
Klaus glanced at him sideways for a moment. There was something akin to pride in that look, mixed with something resembling sorrow.
"That is precisely what I thought about you."
Klaus drove until he pulled up a block away from a narrow cross street that led into a dim, shadowy alleyway. He turned off the engine and looked at Ethan.
"Walk into that alley and pretend you're lost. You'll find the right person in there."
"And if he isn't... what are you expecting?" Ethan asked.
"He will be. I made sure of it." Klaus tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "He's no innocent, Ethan. If it's any consolation, the world won't miss him."
"It's not," Ethan admitted. "But it helps a little."
"It helps more than it should." Klaus turned his face toward the dark street. "And remember: once you're in there, you cannot back down. If you hesitate halfway through, the curse won't trigger, and you'll have suffered for nothing."
Ethan closed his eyes for a second, searching for air. The image of Hope smiling during their dance just a few hours earlier filled his mind, giving him the dark strength he needed.
"If I don't come back the same..." he began.
"You won't come back the same," Klaus interrupted, his candor almost gentle. "But you will come back. I'll be right here."
Ethan opened his eyes, completely resolved, and opened the car door.
He walked with measured steps toward the alley. A flickering light from a broken streetlight cast long, jagged shadows against the exposed brick walls. He feigned hesitation, looking around as if disoriented and searching for his way back.
"Lost something, playboy?" a raspy, harsh voice called out from the shadows at the end of the alley.
A tall man wearing a worn leather jacket, with the heavy, hardened gaze of someone who had committed countless crimes, stepped forward. He drew a revolver from his waist and aimed it directly at Ethan's chest.
"Hand over your wallet, the watch, and that pretty shirt before I put a hole through you," the mugger snarled, taking another step closer.
Ethan didn't move. He stared at the criminal in silence, the heat swelling in his chest rising to alarming levels.
"Are you deaf, damn it?!" the man yelled, tense from the boy's total lack of reaction.
Before Ethan could even step forward to disarm him, the mugger, consumed by nerves and greed, pulled the trigger.
BANG!
The gunshot echoed deafeningly off the alley walls. The heavy-caliber bullet struck Ethan squarely in his left shoulder, tearing through the light linen shirt and piercing his flesh.
Ethan stumbled back from the impact, a sharp, burning agony searing through his body. He looked down at his bleeding shoulder, and in the very next second, the blood pouring out seemed to boil. Something deep inside him shattered. The pain, the immediate danger, and the suffocating memory of Hope dying caused Ethan to completely lose his mind.
His human control crumbled.
With a gut-wrenching roar that hardly sounded human, Ethan lunged at superhuman speed. Before the mugger could react or fire again, Ethan seized the man's armed wrist and snapped it effortlessly, sending the gun clattering to the ground.
The criminal let out a scream of agony, but the sound was cut short instantly. Overcome by a blind, uncontrollable rage, Ethan grabbed the man by the throat and slammed him against the brick wall with such violence that the structure cracked from the impact. With his eyes glowing a fierce, fluorescent green and the veins bulging across his face, Ethan crushed the man's windpipe, killing him.
The lifeless body slouched to the alley floor.
Silence reclaimed the alley once more, broken only by Ethan's ragged gasps for air.
The moment that man took his final breath, an invisible, devastating shockwave rippled through every single fiber of Ethan's body. The werewolf curse, which had lain dormant for so long, finally triggered.
Ethan dropped to his knees on the wet asphalt, clutching his head as a agonizing pain scorched through his veins. The blood of his lineage awakened completely—an ancient, wild power flooding his entire being. He didn't physically transform right then—it wasn't a full moon—but he was undeniably no longer the same person he was moments ago.
His blood was no longer incomplete. The key to saving Hope was, at last, ready.
Ethan's eyes, once a light blue, ignited into a solid, blazing green, shining in the alley's pitch-black dark like those of an ancient apex predator. His pupils dilated to the extreme as the raw power of the newly unleashed curse throbbed through every vein in his body. He remained on his knees for a few seconds, breathing heavily, feeling the wild aura settle and fuse directly into his soul.
Gradually, as his breathing returned to a steady rhythm, the intense luminescence in his irises faded until his eyes returned to their natural blue—though now carrying a far denser, darker depth.
Ethan pressed his hand over his left shoulder. Through a painful yet astonishingly fast process, the torn flesh began to knit itself back together. The skin regenerated in a matter of seconds, pushing the lead slug out until the bullet hit the ground with a metallic clink.
Without looking back, he rose and walked with firm, deliberate steps out of the alley, leaving the mugger's corpse behind in the darkness.
When Ethan opened the door and slid into the car, the silence inside was absolute. Klaus kept his hands on the steering wheel, slowly turning his head to look at the young man beside him. The Original Hybrid took in the torn clothing, the blood staining his shoulder, and above all, the subtle shift in the boy's demeanor—the aura of someone who had just crossed a line from which there was no return.
Klaus, who had spent a millennium watching men break or shrink back in the face of sacrifice, looked at Ethan with genuine, somber respect. This boy had just taken a human life and triggered the werewolf curse solely for Hope. There was no hesitation left in him.
"So, boy..." Klaus said, his voice low. "How do you feel?"
Ethan looked down at his hands, slowly opening and closing his fingers as if he didn't quite recognize them.
"Strange," he answered after a few seconds.
"That's what I thought," Klaus said softly. "You just killed someone. Even if that doesn't mean anything to me anymore—having killed more than I can count—I respect you for it."
Ethan looked at him, slightly taken aback. Hearing words of respect from the Original Hybrid was anything but ordinary.
"Let's go back," Klaus said, his voice deep and deliberate, starting the engine and accelerating through the dark streets toward the Mikaelson mansion.
Keeping his eyes fixed on the dark road ahead, Klaus picked up his phone from the dashboard and dialed Davina. The phone rang twice before the witch answered on the other end.
"Klaus? What happened?" Davina asked, her voice sharp and alert despite the late hour.
"The boy triggered the werewolf curse," Klaus said, direct and to the point. "His blood is that of a full wolf now. What do we do next?"
A heavy silence fell over the line. Davina went still for a moment, her mind racing as she wondered exactly what Ethan could have done to activate his curse so quickly in the middle of the night. But she realized immediately that now was not the time for questions.
"If his incomplete blood was already making the dark magic recede... now that his wolf side is fully awakened, his body acts as an opposing vessel to the Hollow," Davina explained, her voice laced with surprise and urgency. "Before it was uncertain, but now the dark magic will likely be destroyed or neutralized the moment it enters Ethan's body. But we need an extremely powerful siphon and transfer spell to pull the magic out of Hope and push it into him."
Klaus switched on the speakerphone and set the device back on the console.
"And how do we make that transfer?" Ethan asked.
The boy's voice came out noticeably deeper, heavier, and far more commanding than before. Both Klaus and Davina immediately caught the shift in his tone.
"I have a way," Klaus chimed in, turning the wheel to merge onto the main avenue. "At the Salvatore School, there are two girls who can perform that kind of siphon and fusion magic. Caroline's daughters. Siphoners."
Ethan glanced at him, his expression grave under the dim glow of the dashboard.
"Lizzie and Josie?" Ethan asked, recognizing the Saltzman twins' names.
Klaus gave a firm nod.
"Understood," Ethan replied.
The car pulled up in front of the Mikaelson mansion. The faint light from the porch illuminated the main entrance, where Elijah stood waiting, his posture as impeccable as ever, arms crossed over his chest. It seemed as though he hadn't moved an inch since they had left.
Klaus and Ethan stepped out of the vehicle. As they approached the staircase, Elijah took two steps forward, his icy gaze fixed on his brother.
"Where did you go, Niklaus?" Elijah asked, his voice low and stern.
"To fix all of this before it's too late, brother," Klaus answered, keeping his tone resolute and unflinching.
Elijah shifted his gaze to Ethan. The Original Vampire, with his sharp, thousand-year-old senses, caught the transformation instantly. The scent of fresh blood, the heavy, oppressive aura of a newly awakened curse, and the deeper intensity in the boy's blue eyes told the entire story.
"You made him kill a human being?" Elijah asked, turning to Klaus, his face a blend of shock and cold disapproval.
Klaus remained silent for a few seconds, holding his brother's gaze without blinking. Before the Hybrid could answer, Ethan himself took a step forward.
"It was my choice, Elijah," Ethan said. His voice echoed with a new weight—graver and far more settled than before. "For Hope, I'd do anything."
Elijah stayed silent for a long moment, taking in the gravity of those words. He stared at the young werewolf, recognizing the blind determination driving him—a sense of devotion and sacrifice that very few men in a millennium of existence had ever displayed.
"And what are you going to do now?" Elijah asked, finally breaking the silence.
"Davina said that as soon as the Hollow's magic enters Ethan's body, it will be completely destroyed," Klaus explained. "His full wolf side makes him the perfect opposing vessel."
Elijah furrowed his brow, remaining cautious. "That is still not a certainty, Niklaus."
Ethan looked straight into the eyes of both Original brothers, his expression entirely at peace with his own fate.
"Even if the magic kills me... so be it," Ethan stated, without a single shadow of hesitation. "At least she will be okay."
Klaus and Elijah stared at the boy in silence. In the minds of the two ancient vampires, the only thing remaining in that moment was a profound and genuine respect for Ethan. He was no longer just the boy Hope cared for; he had become a man ready to tear his own soul apart and lay down his life to save one's daughter and the other's niece.