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The compound was still quiet when Hayley stepped into the common room that morning, her hair damp from the shower and a faint of chill clinging to her skin despite the tea warming her hands. Sunlight hadn’t fully settled into the courtyard yet, leaving most of the room in a soft grey that made the map on the table look older than it was.
She leaned over it with a steady focus, tracing routes she’d already memorized but kept reviewing anyway, partly out of habit and partly because she needed something she could control. If she kept her mind busy, it wouldn’t drift to the things she wasn’t ready to unpack.
She didn’t hear him enter, but she felt the shift a moment before she saw him—that familiar, almost instinctive awareness that had nothing to do with sound and everything to do with him. When she looked up, mid-sip, the sight of him made her pause without meaning to. It was small, barely noticeable, but it stopped her all the same.
Klaus stood near the doorway, half lit by the muted morning light, and he was wearing colour. Not just any colour, but a deep, deliberate green she had never seen on him in all the time she’d known him. It wasn’t that bad, but it stood out against the familiar palette he always chose, the ones he claimed he didn’t think twice about.
“You’re… wearing colour,” she said, brow rising slightly as she gestured toward him.
He shrugged as if the choice had been effortless. “I’m capable of variety.”
“You hate green.”
“I don’t hate it.”
She gave him a look—not challenging, just quietly certain in a way that made dismissing her pointless. “Since when do you wear that shade?”
For a second, he looked like he wanted to smirk or throw out something defensive, but nothing quite landed. Instead, he gave a reply that sounded practiced but not entirely convincing. “It caught my eye.” Ridiculous. He’d chosen it and now he was regretting every second of this conversation.
Hayley almost smiled, the kind that didn’t quite reach the surface but warmed underneath. “A colour you’ve ignored for a thousand years suddenly caught your eye?”
“Klaus…” she began softly, her voice dropping without her intending it. She hesitated, heat creeping into her cheeks before she forced the sentence back on track. “That’s the colour of the jacket I wore the day we first—” met. She caught herself, letting the rest of the thought trail off. “You noticed that?”
He wished she hadn’t said it. And he wished even more that he wasn’t so easy to read in moment like this. “It’s a coincidence,” he said, though even he didn’t sound convinced. She was never supposed to see through him this easily.
Something gentled in her expression, quiet and warm but not intrusive. It wasn’t accusatory. It was simply understanding. “It looks good on you,” she said.
The words settled into the space between them with more weight than either expected.
“If you say so,” he murmured.
“I do.”
She returned her attention to the map, though a small smile lingered at the corner of her mouth. He stayed a moment longer than necessary, as if deciding whether to add something else, before turning to leave. When the sun finally reached the far side of the room, the warmth that brief exchange left behind hadn’t faded.
The courtyard was unusually loud for this early in the afternoon, though Hayley had grown used to the constant hum of the compound—vampires arguing on the balconies, footsteps thudding across the metal walkways, voices dropping into whispers the second she came into view. They weren’t hostile. They weren’t welcoming either. It was something in between—the uneasy politeness of people who didn’t know what to make of her and didn’t wat to get caught asking.
She tried not to take it personally. More often than not, she didn’t have the energy to.
A pair of vampires near the stairs paused mid-conversation as she approached. One of them cleared his throat a little too loudly. The other shot him a quick warning look, something like don’t stare, before giving Hayley a stiff nod that read more like I’m not being rude, don’t tell Klaus I looked too long. Another group higher up along the railing went quiet altogether, their whispers dying out as if they were afraid the wrong syllable might reach the wrong Original.
Hayley kept her eyes down and her stride steady.
She knew what they were thinking. A pregnant wolf—the pregnant wolf—carrying Klaus’s child. Every vampire here knew the lore. Knew the stories. Knew the decades of bloodshed and fear attached to his name. And now there she was, a walking contradiction, a living question mark no one had the courage to actually voice.
So the fake politeness wasn’t about her. It was about him.
She’d rather not to be part of that performance.
A faint tightness curled low in her abdomen as she crossed the courtyard—nothing sharp, just one of the lingering reminders that she wasn’t moving alone anymore. At almost six months, the changes weren’t subtle. Her balance had shifted, her back ached more often, the baby’s movements came stronger, more purposeful. Every day, her body reminded her that she was getting closer to something irreversible. Something real.
And feelings—uncertain, complicated feelings—didn’t exactly help.
Especially where Elijah was concerned.
His quiet warmth, his steady presence, the way he looked at her like he saw someone she wasn’t sure she could be… it had started to feel dangerous. Too comforting. Too easy to fall into. And with her stomach growing and reality approaching faster than she’d planned, she had no intention of complicating her life with two Mikaelsons.
One was already more than enough.
She lifted her gaze just once—and froze.
Klaus stood near the fountain, his voice low but sharp as he spoke to Diego. Nothing unusual there. But the shirt… the colour...
Dark green. Deep, deliberate, unexpected.
Not black. Not grey. Not one of his endless layers of leather.
Green… again?
Truth is, it suited him—annoyingly well. Brought out the gold in his eyes. Softened the harsh cut of his shoulders. Gave him a strange, almost human warmth she wasn’t prepared to notice.
Don’t look too long, she told herself. It’s just a shirt. You’re tired. Keep walking.
But her eyes lingered anyway, betraying her.
Diego said something under his breath, but Klaus didn’t immediately respond. His gaze shifted the moment Hayley stepped into his periphery, the conversation pausing half a beat—subtle, but noticeable. He didn’t smirk. Didn’t make a comment. Didn’t try to catch her staring.
He simply looked at her, eyes flicking down her form once, unreadable, before returning to whatever Diego was saying.
That was somehow worse.
Hayley pulled her attention away and kept moving, refusing to let the moment become something it wasn’t.
It was safer that way.
Right?
Hours later, safety felt far from reach.
A few unsettling whispers from the witches had drifted toward her—vague, scattered, but enough to twist something tight beneath her ribs. She didn’t have details. Didn’t have the whole picture. And that uncertainty gnawed at her.
She couldn’t keep relying on Rebekah for updates, not when Rebekah was preoccupied with the brewing tension among Marcel’s crew. And Elijah… was complicated in ways she wasn’t ready to unpack. Asking him for help now felt like opening a door she wasn’t prepared to walk through.
Which left only one person.
Even if admitting it annoyed her.
Hayley made her way up the stairs, the compound growing quieter with every step. The metal walkways gave way to older wood, creaking faintly under her feet. The air shifted—less crowded, less chaotic, more saturated with the subtle scent of old varnish and paint. Klaus’s corner of the compound always felt different, touched with fragments of a life he didn’t talk about much.
She reached his door and knocked once—more politeness than expectation. When no response came, she pushed it open.
He was at the canvas, brush abandoned on a nearby table, stains dried between his fingers. The room smelled of turpentine and oil, cool air drifting through the cracked window. Klaus turned at the sound of the door, his expression shifting from guarded to quietly curious.
“Bit late for a stroll,” he said, his tone light enough to be dismissive, but not sharp enough to send her away.
“I needed to talk to you.” She stepped further in, resisting the urge to rub her palms together. “It’s the witches. Something’s off. They’re moving around more than usual, whispering. I just… I need to know if you’ve heard anything.”
He set his glass down, studying her with an unreadable patience that always unsettled her. “You’ve been keeping your distance,” he said finally. Not judgmental. Not particularly gentle either. Just observant. “From everyone, it seems.”
“I’ve been dealing with a lot,” she muttered. “Keeping distance helps.”
“And is that why you’ve been avoiding my brother?” he asked as he walked past her toward a cluttered desk. His tone remained deceptively mild, but she felt the jab under it. “He’s been rather concerned.”
She stiffened. Don’t react too much. “I’m avoiding complications,” she said. “That’s all.”
For a moment, something almost like understanding flickered across his face—gone before she could decipher it. He turned toward his desk, shifting a few scattered papers aside.
That was when she saw it.
Another shirt.
Folded neatly on the dresser.
Dark green.
The same shade.
The déjà vu hit her harder than she expected. Her breath caught before she could hide it. Her mind scrambled to make sense of the repetition—third couldn’t be an accident. Not with him.
Klaus followed her gaze, eyes drifting from her face to the shirt and back. His expression barely moved, but something in it sharpened, aware.
“What?” he asked softly. No smirk. No teasing edge. Not defensive. Just waiting.
“I didn’t know you wore green,” she said quietly, her voice quieter than planned. “That’s all.”
“Variety has its uses,” he replied. Smooth. Too smooth. “Even I can tire of black.”
It was a practiced answer. A shield. She knew the difference by now.
She opened her mouth to say something else—what, she didn’t know—but a sudden pinch tightened low in her abdomen. Hayley winced, instinctively bracing herself against the desk. It wasn’t severe, but it stole her breath long enough to frustrate her.
Klaus was in front of her instantly.
His hand slid to the small of her back, steady and warm. His other hovered close to her elbow, ready to catch her if she faltered.
“You should sit,” he said, his voice lower, steadier, the concern woven through it unmistakable despite how tightly he tried to mask it.
“I’m fine,” she insisted, though she didn’t pull away just yet.
“For someone insistent on her independence,” he murmured, “you’ve an impressive talent for pretending discomfort isn’t there.”
She shot him an annoyed look—because he was right—and his hand lingered a second longer before pulling back with deliberate care, as if he knew abrupt distance would make things worse.
She took a breath and found her balance again. “The witches are planning something. I can feel it. I don’t know what, but it’s not nothing.”
Klaus nodded once, and the shift in his expression told her he took this seriously, even if he didn’t say so outright. “I’ll look into it,” he said. “You’ll know if there’s anything worth worrying about.”
She hesitated at the doorway, turning back to him. He’d already returned to the window, but his posture was different now—shoulders slightly lower, attention still half on her.
And that damned green shirt on the dresser stayed stubbornly in her periphery.
“Why green?” she asked before she could stop herself.
His answer came without hesitation, the corner of his eye flicked toward her. “It suits the morning, don’t you think?”
“It’s not morning,” she said, confused.
“No,” he replied, finally meeting her gaze. “But it suited the one when you first saw it.”
There was no arrogance in his tone. No smugness.
Just quiet truth.
It hit harder than anything else today.
Hayley stepped out before she said something she couldn’t take back. The hallway felt cooler, the air brushing against her skin in a way that made her more aware of her breathing. The compound’s usual hum continued in the distance, but she barely registered it.
Her heart was beating faster than it should. She tried blaming the stress. Or the cramp. Or the witches. Anything, really.
But she wasn’t an idiot.
Klaus didn’t wear things without intention. He didn’t change patterns unless he wanted to. He didn’t make himself easier to approach unless he meant for her to approach.
She exhaled slowly, steadying herself as she moved down the hall.
She didn’t know what to call the shift between them yet—didn’t want to name it—but it wasn’t nothing.
It wasn’t neutral.
And despite all her efforts to stay guarded, to stay distant, she couldn’t shake the quiet warmth spreading through her chest.
For the first time since she arrived in New Orleans, the compound didn’t feel quite so hostile.
And she didn’t feel quite as alone.