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When Allison Argent was first told of the Argent family curse, she didn’t speak to her father or mother for days.
The whole legend, as her father recounted it, made her blood boil. All of it was clearly a justification. A prejudiced load of crap, meant to keep her from Scott. Marie-Jeanne’s hunt and eventual slaying of her blood-bound brother owed only to the fact that Sébastien had to have been a total psycho, both before and after he was Turned. The idea that the pattern had to repeat for all Marie-Jeanne’s descendants was simply a horrendous cocktail of superstition and confirmation bias. Her father’s distant, pained gaze as he recounted the tale of the bullet he placed in his freshly Turned best friend’s head changed nothing. Her dad had made a galling lack of effort, had blindly refused to see things another way. His friend would have been alive, if he’d just dropped his stupid bigotry and had the courage to save him. He had no right to ban Allison from seeing Scott, from even speaking to Scott, on these grounds.
But her father’s fresh threat to Scott still rang in her ears, hanging over both their heads, so all Allison could do was swallow down the tide of fury rushing through her veins and boil everything down to one, venomous statement:
“If you think you ever loved your best friend, you’re lying to yourself.”
With this, her dad finally, finally left her alone in her room. She slammed her door behind him.
In truth, though, the part about a kindred spirit, a fated twin to her soul—that part felt far more believable. Being with Scott made her spirit feel as though it was aflame with tenderness. And there was this recognition in her, as though she would be pulled straight to him even if he were a stone, a tree, a bug—anything and anyone. Allison looked into his caring, soulful visage, and she saw her future.
Her ancestors never enraged her so much as when she was with him, nestled by his side, enveloped in the safety and joy of his presence. The answer was so simple, it made her want to scream in their faces: no Argent or their werewolf soulmate would ever have to kill each other if the Argents would just stop deciding that werewolves were inherently evil creatures that had to die, for the sake of their prejudice.
She only, truly began to fear the curse once Derek took her mother’s life.
Colliding with Scott in the hall of the sheriff’s station, his stupid, big brown puppy eyes standing in the way of her and her warpath, she was suddenly struck, for the first time, with the terrible picture of how it could end. Her bow, pointed at Scott’s chest; him pleading, through wicked fangs, for his life. She could see how it could end, and for a moment, she felt so unmoored, so shaken from her foundations, that she could barely breathe from the fear of it. But then the mission, her revenge, a drive so much easier to hold on to, returned to her, and she hung on to that lifeline rather than be swept away by the terror of it all.
She only realized her mistake once the damage had been done.
Space was clearly better for her and Scott both, in the aftermath. Space where he could heal from the hurt she’d done him and his friends. Space where she could grieve her mother, sort out her rights and wrongs.
Space, because in the dark, early-morning hours in which she believed in the curse the most, she knew hers and Scott’s separation was the best bet for sparing Scott’s life.
Because she knew, if the curse took its hold and it came down to the worst, he would never be the one to kill her.
No. Allison was the only one corruptible enough. She would be the one to kill him .
***
The problem for the Argent family really started from the fact that Marie-Jeanne was, at her heart, a true skeptic.
Marie-Jeanne was a realist. She was practical. She believed only what she saw with her own eyes. It kept her head level on the hunt, kept her alive. She would only take anything on faith if it came from her husband; and though he was the clear exception to her general rule, this behavior still was in the bounds of clear, logical reasoning. Marie-Jeanne had an absolute belief in Henri. She trusted him, his word, and most of all, his own first-hand experience.
This was why, on her long hunt for Sébastien, despite the fact that she had seen her brother transform into a terrifying beast out of a whirlwind of black smoke, she still scoffed when she met the woman purporting to be a witch. She ignored the woman's warnings that the forests of France were haunted by an ancient druidic curse, one that punished kinslayers. She rejected, on principle, the woman’s reading that fate had soulbound her to her brother. But the curse was real, indeed, and so was the bond. It was a bond built on a shared darkness, of being a creature of the hunt, a predator of relentless precision—which was exactly why Marie-Jeanne could never consciously acknowledge it, instead forcing it down to the shadowed recesses of her spirit. Yet it was still a bond that could not be broken without a price.
And no amount of Marie-Jeanne’s willful ignorance could ever prevent the witch's prediction, of how the bond and the druidic curse on the land would combine, in 1767, in the forest of Geveaudan. The day when Marie-Jeanne finally drove her pike through Sébastien’s heart, spilling his blood, their blood, in the snow. Blood that seeped down to the roots of the druid-nourished trees. Blood that became forever marked as Marie-Jeanne passed it on to her children, and her children’s children.
It was thus that, in the very day that the Argent family ascended to become the true bane of the werewolf, a bane above wolfsbane itself, that the Argents were also cursed with their own doom.
From now on, the twin to every Argent’s soul would only manifest in the body of the creatures they hunted. Neither could live with the other, nor could they live without the other. And one would always be the other’s death.
***
Chris Argent had chosen to tell his daughter his own tragic story, to break the news. As terrible as it had been for him, to lose a brother in all but blood, the tale had ended in his survival. To tell it would teach the right lessons. Allison had to be prepared to do the right thing.
Kate’s story, like the woman herself, was... less convenient.
Kate had always been more of a proactive gal. A go-getter. So, when her dear old dad informed her of the curse—and no matter how far-fetched it sounded, Gerard must have been speaking the truth, because no mere superstition could spook Gerard— her plan was always to get ahead of it. When she first discovered Derek Hale, an adorable, gullible lost puppy of a thing with big, irresistible eyes, she figured she should treat her attraction as a sign. Use him and lose him.
The “use” him part worked out great. It was a coup de grace. Eleven werewolves dead, one fell swoop. All her handiwork.
The “lose” him part didn’t go quite as well. She searched for Derek in the aftermath of the fire, but the Hales must’ve trained their young pups well; he regrettably evaded her, and Kate didn’t get another chance to kill him for years. When she did, well… let’s just say she wasn’t above playing with her food a little. Perhaps that was why, intoxicated with her impending victory, she didn’t realize her mistake until Peter Hale’s claws were buried, down to the hilt, into her voice box.
Kate’s match was never Derek at all. No, he was too soft.
Surely, Kate’s match could only be someone as conniving, as cold, and as wretched as Peter Hale. After all, Kate was nothing if not her father’s daughter.
***
When Allison and her friends first learned what kind of knowledge Deaton truly possessed, she approached him to make quiet inquiries into the nature of the Argent curse, and how she might go about breaking it. Who better than a druid to fix a druidic curse?
Deaton’s initial research into the matter proved unfruitful, however. Allison made sure to maintain her distance from Scott in the meantime. She needed that distance, anyway, for her, not just to spare Scott from some sinister family curse. But by the time the curse problem had receded to the back of Allison’s mind, while she was in the middle of kindling a fresh connection with Isaac—Deaton surprised her by digging up a lead.
“There’s a ritual,” he told her. “It could spiritually unbind you from the blood of Sébastien Valet. However, this would be a drastic step to take. It could have terrible consequences. There’s no telling what damage you could do to yourself, to your soul, and to your fate, if you were to sever a connection so entwined within your very being.”
“But if I do nothing… I’m going to end up killing Scott.”
“You could. Or he would kill you,” Deaton only agreed. And Allison couldn’t let that happen. Not for Scott, who she could never stop loving. And not for herself, who would surely lose herself in the act. A soul twisted, shattered far beyond what any ritual could do to it.
Allison only asked him, “Would Scott be safe? Regardless of whatever it does to me. Would he be spared?”
And Deaton said, “Yes.”
So Allison performed the ritual.
***
Allison wasn’t, in truth, the first Argent, nor the last, to attempt to break the curse. Or to spin it, twist it into something it was never meant to be.
After Kate’s near-death experience and Turning, a change of strategy was inevitable for her. Clearly, she was already an abomination, a dead Argent walking. What was one more heresy?
Thus, instead of going for the outright kill, she made a mutually beneficial alliance with Peter Hale.
She still didn’t trust the slimy douche as far as she could throw him. Neither did he, her. It worked fascinatingly well, and Kate reveled in the rush of power the defiance gave her. Oh, if only Gerard could see her now. She was a more effective, more instinctive killer than she’d ever been now that she had claws. And the longer the relationship with Peter went on, the more she became convinced that her Turning had freed her from the curse. She was now the master of her fate. The master of her beastly twin soul. Even once Chris and Scott McCall’s pack forced her on the run and captured Peter, Kate felt certain she’d pull through. She’d gamed the system.
But then again, Kate was always weak to her own hubris.
Allison hadn’t freed her ancestors from the curse, before her death. Just herself.
The truth only hit Kate just as her brother was walking away, leaving her alone, defeated, and weak, in the armory with Gerard Argent.
Gerard. Gerard fucking Argent. Her father.
He’d never, not once, told her or Chris who his soulmate had been. For a long time, she’d joked—and perhaps almost believed—that the man couldn’t have had a twin soul, because he lacked a soul himself.
She laughed bitterly, a little hysterically, as she surveyed her old man. The man who’d just shot her was the only true companion to her soul. Darkly, Kate realized this must have meant he loved her, as much as the man could love anyone. She certainly had loved him, too, and what a terrible thing that was—it had only allowed his presence to hang over her like a dark cloud her entire life. What a tyrant he’d always been. A frigid, misanthropic bastard. He’d raised her to be just like him, hadn’t he. A vicious predator, a cold-hearted bitch. A real Argent.
There was just one problem. This whole time, Kate had never been the Argent in this equation. No, her father was.
Kate? Kate had always been his beast.
And this time, the beast would win.
His face contorted in fear, finally recognizing the threat a second too late.
Kate reached out and slashed Gerard’s throat to the bone.
***
The price of breaking the family curse, Chris Argent surmised in his mourning, seemed to be this: the end of the family line itself.
Scott hadn’t killed Allison, nor had she killed Scott. The oni had killed her instead. She’d died in his arms.
Chris never shared with anyone else what Deaton told him about Allison’s secret ritual, after the death of his daughter. For one, he feared what the knowledge might do to Scott. Scott would undoubtedly consider it his fault. He lacked the training of an Argent, to compartmentalize his grief. To package up his pain with walls of steel, to lock it and bury it six feet under. Not like Chris.
It didn’t matter that, in Chris’s weakest moments, in that dark space between jobs, between spates of activity, of usefulness, when the locks on those boxed-up feelings started to rattle— he was tempted to blame Scott himself.
It’s perfect, he later learned she’d said. I’m in the arms of my first love. The person I’ll always love.
Scott would never learn what she truly meant by those words.
No, Chris decided, Allison’s legacy would be preserved and her love protected in her death. Silently, Chris bound himself to Scott, to guard the twin soul Allison had sacrificed her life to save. He fought for her cause, to protect the defenseless, and to end the cycle of violence.
And he even snuck in his own rebellion, to the now-dead family curse. His very own fuck you, twenty years after he’d lacked the resolve and the courage to save his own best friend. Chris Argent began training Isaac Lahey, a bitten werewolf, to become part of a new generation of hunters. Hunter and beast, now one.
And, over a decade down the line, when Allison Argent rose again, the curse did not rise again with her.