Solana Ruarc MacCraith

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Klaus crossed the floor to her side of the table, slow, assessing.

“You claim my blood,” he said. “You conjure ghosts and names older than this city. You stand here unafraid.”

A beat.

“Then prove it.”

⚜️✔️

Kol sighed. “Wonderful. Another long-lost relative with a flair for fire.”

Klaus rose, chair scraping. “She could be lying.”

“She’s not,” Freya said. “The flame recognized her. It recognized us.”

…resisting some instinct she didn’t trust. Even Klaus sat motionless, jaw tight, as if sound itself might break the spell.

Only then did Elijah set down his cup. “The vision was authentic.”

Freya nodded. “The resonance was ancestral. That wasn’t spellwork—it was memory.”

…it felt like something in me stopped running.”

The last word lingered, fragile and fierce all at once.

No one spoke. The candle still quivered from the vision’s heat, its thin flame reflecting in every glass, every eye. Hayley looked down; Freya’s hands twitched against the tabletop..

I just want to understand where I come from—and what it means to have a family.”

She looked around the table at her kin. “I’ve been searching for years. Always one step behind. Always alone. Every path led here, every name, every whisper. And when I finally found you…

…pain but recognition—ancestors answering through her veins. The Hunter falling in fire.
A clearing, a moonstone, and beneath it a single carved name: Klaus.

The candle went out. Smoke curled like breath leaving the past.

“I didn’t come to take anything,” Solana said quietly. “I don’t want pity.

Her parents, fighting and desperate.
And finally—Solana. Left at the orphanage, bound and alone.
The asylum, restraints, smoke, the howl that split the dark.
The fight with the Hunter. His precision against her ferocity.
Her mark—flaring crimson for the first time, burning against her skin not in…

The image shifted—Runar and Livna taking the child in secret, Yrsa swaddled and marked with a binding rune. Taken far from her sister. Her line hidden.

Then more:
Yrsa’s descendants.
Witch and wolf.
Power buried deep.
Each generation shielding the next. Yet many firstborns murdered by the Thorns.

First: Yrsa. Small, too small. Her skin tinted the color of dusk, lips dark and unmoving.
Then: Dahlia. Loud. Consuming. Her eyes too knowing for a newborn.

Torsten’s voice: “She’s been…feeding on her?”
Siv’s whisper: “If we leave them together, I fear she’ll drain Yrsa dry.”

Not a spell. Just a memory casting long shadows. The vision unfurled through fire:

A woman, red-haired and radiant with power. Siv.
A man beside her—stern, protective. Torsten.

She was in labor. Screaming. Twins.

“I was born of a hidden bloodline,” she said. “One as old as yours—erased before it ever had a name.”

The flame elongated, turned white-hot, until the air shimmered.

“Klaus,” Hayley warned.

He didn’t glance at her. “If she wants a place among wolves and witches, she can stand the bite.”

⸻

Solana exhaled once. Then reached toward the candle in the center of the table—
and breathed.

“It crept back,” she said. “Plants listened when I whispered. Lights flickered when I was angry. The bullying turned crueler. One night, during a storm, they cornered me. I fought back. A boy died. The shift came after.”

Klaus’s mouth curved. “Tragic symmetry. The beast born from loss. How quaint.”

Silence stretched. Even Freya’s expression eased.

“My mother bound my magic before they left me,” Solana continued. “To keep the Thorns from tracing me through blood. I didn’t feel it until I was thirteen.”

Klaus looked at her, eyes glinting. “And what happened when you did?”

Elijah’s tone softened. “And they were killed.”

Solana nodded. “The orphanage record says a man arrived after dark, left me with a false name, and disappeared.”

Rebekah raised a brow. “So he hid you there? In plain sight?”

“They both did,” Solana answered. “It was the only way I’d live.”

Freya’s gaze sharpened. “How did you survive?”

“They planned for it,” Solana said. “When the Thorns tracked them through Mongolia, my mother was wounded. My father carried me south to a coastal orphanage in China run by French sisters and Chinese staff. She stayed behind to hold them off.”

Her voice thinned but didn’t break. “She wanted me to understand what kind of war I was born into—what kind of blood I carry.”

The silence deepened. Even Klaus didn’t speak.

“They found my parents when I was a child,” she finished. “They ran. Fought. Lost.”

She hesitated, softer now. “But I also know what came before— what they were born from. My ancestor, your grandmother, Siv, showed me pieces of it in dreams. The first hunts. The firstborns destroyed. My parents’ last stand.”

Klaus leaned forward, voice edged with amusement that didn’t reach his eyes. “And you know this…how, exactly?”

Solana met him gaze. “Because I’ve seen them. I was held in their hands. I fought one of their Hunters and burned him down to bone.”

“An order older than any coven still standing. They believe power is balance, and my bloodline—Yrsa’s—tips the scale. So they hunt the firstborn of every generation. To cleanse. To devour.”

A silence rippled through the room.

Solana steadied herself. “My mother was a witch,” she said quietly. “My father, a werewolf. They tried to build a life in the open—until something found them.”

Elijah’s head tilted. “Something?”

“The Thorns of Virelay,” Solana said, tasting the name like ash.

Even Klaus stilled, gaze darting upward before sliding back to Solana, suspicion sharpening.

Then the pulse faded, the quiet returning—like a heartbeat deciding, for now, to keep its secret.

—replaced by the flutter of unseen power.

Solana’s wrist warmed—her mark pulsing faintly, answering something ancient and familiar.

Freya’s head lifted, eyes flicking to the ceiling. Hayley’s hand tightened around her teacup.

Elijah poured tea like he was conducting a ritual.

Klaus didn’t look up. “Begin,” he said. “And make it worth our time.”

For a heartbeat, the house breathed with her. The air thickened, humming low and electric. Somewhere above them, a child’s laughter cut short—

She would not shrink.

Elijah settled beside her on the right.
Klaus lounged at the head, danger disguised as ease.
Hayley sat to Solana’s left—wary, protective.
Across from them, Rebekah toyed with a mimosa while Freya sat rigid, arms crossed, the air around her faintly thrumming.
Kol looked bored.

The dining room was warmer than the rest of the house—oak panels, stained glass catching slanted sun, candlelight that refused to die out.

Everyone was already there. Solana took the chair Elijah offered near the far end of the table. She sat with her hands folded, spine straight.

“Miss MacCraith,” he said with a nod. “Breakfast is being served.”

She blinked. “Breakfast?”

He allowed the faintest smile. “A meal. And, an audience.”

Her stomach tightened.

“You’ve earned your seat,” Elijah said gently. “Now it’s time to tell us why you came.”

For now, that was enough.

⸻

The knock came precisely at seven.

Solana was already dressed—jeans, boots, her worn cotton t-shirt that felt more like armor than comfort.

When she opened the door, Elijah stood there, immaculate in slate grey, every line of him composed.

The room smelled of wood polish and faint jasmine—centuries of other lives steeped into the grain.

For a heartbeat she waited: for footsteps, for someone to take it all back. But the silence held.

She was still here. Still inside the Mikaelson compound. Not welcome not yet—but not cast out either.