Klaus hadn't been able to stay focused for very long.

He'd been leaning back in his chair, watching her scribble, when he had a feeling wash over him that subconsciously made him straighten up, his eyes flashing golden just for an instant. He watched her for several moments without speaking, unable to shake the knowledge he seemed to have suddenly stumbled upon. He didn't know how it happened, but he just knew. "You're going to go into heat soon," he announced, as if he'd discovered the cure for cancer. "I can sense it. Maybe tomorrow or the day after that."

Esmeray became flustered, and looked up from her notes. "What an odd thing to say," she told him, trying to pretend that wasn't immediately bringing up memories that she wanted to keep buried in the meantime, so she wouldn't be tempted to climb back onto his lap. "I can't imagine how you can sense it. I never know exactly when it's going to happen."

Klaus was still looking at her intently. His wolf grew more and more attracted to her every day. Perhaps there was a connection forming even without intimacy— he felt as though he could almost see her aura if he squinted (or maybe he was only seeing her with a reddish-pink tint around her because he'd been facedown on his crimson blankets for the past hour). The desire to pounce on her was heightening, and he was trying to keep it down, because he didn't want to be disrespectful and scare her off.

"I never got to live with wolves," he said, not wanting to make her uncomfortable, but still being curious about her behavior and the connection he felt between them. "I don't quite understand it all. Female wolves seem to have a terrible time. They have different things to worry about each month. Turning, heat, menstruation. Male wolves... we can sense it all, but we don't really do much."

"Well, that's because the male wolves weren't very important in the early days. I know for a fact the Poldark Pack had a matrilineal monarchy. The others may not have, but females were highly respected and were believed to have superior spiritual and physical connections with the world. We were revered for what we went through each month. Males were really only necessary to procreate. Nowadays, almost all Alphas are males."

Klaus furrowed his brows. "Male and female wolves all try not to trigger their gene. Female wolves stay away from male wolves when they're not feeling well. Male wolves typically make themselves Alpha, or earn it, perchance. Most practices have been forgotten. No one speaks of such intimate things in wolves anymore."

"There used to be a sort of celebration, at least in our Pack, for the females. It was strange, but almost all the females tended to be on the same schedule, give or take a few days. There would be a two week period where men would make themselves scarce unless they had wives. Those who were unmarried were instructed with getting extra food to help with females's cravings. The married men were to do whatever their wife wanted— which was usually to help sate their desires. The Pack grew all the time because pregnancies were constantly taking place."

"Hold on. If everyone was on the same schedule, wouldn't children of a certain generation all be born very close to each other?"

"Yep. I'm the anomaly there— my mother wasn't a wolf and didn't go into heat, and with her magical practices came a very irregular cycle. I was born months apart from those my age. And for the most part, females of the same generation all tend to go into their first heat at around the same time, signifying they're mature enough to start looking for a partner. After the monarchy was abolished, the first heat stopped being so significant, because anyone and everyone could try to become Alpha at any point in time. I'm glad for that, because it meant I got teased less than I would've. I was a very late bloomer."

"I'm confused, love. I don't understand why that didn't happen to you before. Didn't you already—?"

"Yes, I had my period, that wasn't something I could avoid. I was on track for that. But I couldn't start going into heat until I triggered my gene. Menstruation and heat, in the old days, were very separate things. I honestly don't know if it goes hand in hand now that they don't go with traditional rituals anymore. I triggered my gene later than the other wolves in my age group, and even when I did trigger it, my witch nature suppressed it so much that with the combined overwhelmed feeling that I had lingering all the time from the teasing... I was never able to do it. It's hard to explain. My body just wasn't normal. Biologically, there's a lot wrong with me, by wolf standards. As the Alpha's daughter, I would have been the first pick of any eligible bachelors and bachelorettes, regardless of whether they wanted to be Alpha or not, but also mostly for those intending to rule if my father was defeated in a tournament. Had I been a normal wolf, I expect that as soon as I had my first heat, many of the wolves would have challenged my father to try and become Alpha, so that they would have permission to marry me."

"But you would have been competing to become Alpha too, wouldn't you, if you were simply a werewolf?"

"Yes, I would have, which I suppose does change what I was saying. If I had won, I'd have chosen whoever I wanted. But instead, well, I was seen as an explosion waiting to happen ever since I could walk... and no one would have wanted to marry me until all the other females and males eligible for marrying were taken. Well— let me rephrase— no one my age would have wanted to marry me until all the others were taken. I'm sure some of the older unmarried wolves would have tried to have me be their wife, whether they became Alphas or not. But I was seen as too much to handle. It's likely I would have lived and died without ever getting married."

"That's absurd," muttered Klaus. "You are royalty. A pure Poldark. They were just too cowardly to seek a wife who could overpower them. They relished in the fact that there was no longer a monarchy because it gave them all a shot at power too, and they wanted control." He ran his tongue slowly over his lips, leaning forward. "How did they know who was the right person to be with?"

"If you're asking about all that soulmate stuff, then I don't know much about it. Our Pack was so obsessed with not mixing with other bloodlines, that we were taught to just marry whoever we wanted, as long as they weren't from another Pack. Thus, as I've said before, humans and witches were the favored partners. I don't even know if there was ever an instance of two wolves being each other's mates. I know it was a thing in some of the other packs, but not really with us. The Crescents and North East Atlantics all operated with arranged marriages because they liked the idea of having wolf royalty— the Crescents especially. The Deep Water, Malraux, BasRoq, and Paxon were the ones who mostly had wolves marry whoever their mate was. The North East Atlantics did it a few times. I don't know how they ever figured it out, because I'm pretty sure a wolf can have multiple mates, if that's even a genuinely real thing. We can't possibly have only one soulmate. I think we have different variations. A platonic soulmate, a romantic soulmate, a sexual soulmate— maybe one for the other variations of love and relationships."

So she didn't believe that they would be soulmates, then. That was fine by him, he desired her all the same. His wolf was unhappy to hear this, however, and Klaus let out a low growl involuntarily, which made Esmeray frown in his direction, not sure what that was all about.

"You alright there?" she asked, quirking a brow.

"Perfectly fine," he said before getting to his feet. "Come on, love, you've worked long enough. You've been doing spellwork all day. You must be exhausted."

Esmeray looked down at her notebook before sighing. "Alright." She closed it and set it aside. "Goodnight then, Klaus." She waved at him before heading to her room, still wondering why he'd growled for apparently no reason.

_

The next day answered her query.

As he'd predicted, she went into heat. She awoke feeling frustrated and needy, and she curled up under the sheets, hoping Klaus wouldn't be able to sense it.

"Love," he called, standing outside her door within fifteen minutes. As soon as he'd woken up, he'd been able to sense it, and he'd showered and gotten dressed at top speed before going to see her. "Do you need anything?"

"Don't be ridiculous, you know exactly what I need, and the answer is no," she said, her voice muffled as she covered her face with one pillow, the other one between her legs, being rubbed frantically.

Klaus wanted to laugh, but he didn't really want to make her angry again, at least not at the moment. He could sense exactly what she was doing. "I'll occupy myself elsewhere, then, love." He had his own feelings that he wanted to suppress.

She was surprised to know that he left the house entirely. A simple note had been taped to her door— 'Went to get Elijah and Kol's blood myself. Will be back in the evening. If you can, locate Finn. My blood is in the living room.'

Esmeray shuffled awkwardly to the living room, where she found a bowl of his blood prepared for her to use, along with several maps. Knowing she couldn't really manage to concentrate on a spell at the moment, she chose to go eat, and returned to her room, grunting in annoyance and deciding she might as well use some magic to alleviate herself a bit.

It would have been utterly unbefitting to ever speak aloud to anyone what she did. She couldn't call up Damon, she refused to let herself fall into bed with Klaus this soon, and she certainly wasn't about to shag any of the servants no matter how she felt. So she improvised, relying on memories and using magic to bring them to life. She had put up a Silencing Spell first, because she would have lost her mind if Klaus arrived and heard her moaning his name. He wouldn't have been able to contain himself from making it all a reality for her, and she didn't want to boost his ego, either, by having him be aware of how she was thinking of him.

She still wasn't out of her heat when he came back. Now, her scent was all over the house where she'd tried to walk around to ease all the tension. With a smirk on his face, he set the two vials of his brothers' blood on the table beside his own, seeing she hadn't worked on any magic, before going back to her room.

"Looks like someone needs to be left feeling infuriated again," he said in a sing-song voice, coming to the door and placing his hand against it. "What else can I do, love? I assumed leaving might have helped you."

Esmeray didn't know what would be an appropriate request. She was in her bathtub right now, submerged in ice cold water, and still, she was sweating and feeling like she was on fire. What she would have liked is to let him in and have him treat her body like unexplored territory.

"I don't know, Klaus," she said desperately once she'd removed the silencing spell. "I don't exactly know how to abate this. Wolves back then didn't try to stop it from happening."

"I could help you," he purred, leaning against the door. His inner wolf wanted more than anything to go in there and pin her down anywhere he could. "We don't need to go all the way, love, I can simply work on pleasing you."

That sounded like an incredibly enticing offer. She leaned back in the bath, thinking of what she'd been doing earlier, and her hand drifted between her legs, making her bite her lip hard to not let out a single sound.

But he could sense exactly what she was doing, and he continued to speak. "You can be the one in charge of how far we go," he cooed, hearing her heartbeat picking up. "You can just lay there on your bed, legs parted, and let me do everything. One thousand years of expertise ought to be enough to dissipate that feeling even slightly. They say Klaus Mikaelson has a wicked tongue, but not only because of the things I say..."

This made her entire stomach do a flip, and she let out a soft gasp, covering her mouth immediately and squeezing her eyes shut. Klaus heard it, and without thinking, he started to let out a series of growls, pressing his body harder into the door. "Open the door," he said lowly.

That let Esmeray know exactly what was going on with him. Why he'd growled the night before. His wolf seemed to think hers was his mate, but since she didn't understand that concept, she hadn't sensed it. She knew they had a connection, but she felt it quite differently compared to a wolf whose Pack historically encouraged seeking out one's soulmate.

"So that's why you could sense I was going to go into heat," she said, trying hard not to laugh. "You're feeling like... the male version of it... because your wolf thinks that mine is its mate."

Klaus groaned, not having actually come up with an explanation yet. "That about encompasses it, love. Does that mean I get to come in?"

"Even less, sorry. Your inner wolf wants to knock mine up and I have a bad feeling about that."

"What?" that took him out of the loop. "But I'm a vampire. I couldn't, even if I wanted to."

"Yeah, and we're the only original two of our kind. Kind of bodes for a supernatural anomaly, doesn't it? I'm not taking that risk. If that's how it is, we shouldn't be getting anywhere near each other when we're like this."

Klaus's wolf felt frustrated. "We can take preventative measures."

"Preventative measures?" she giggled, the feeling now subsided since she was starting to brainstorm all the ways they could handle this for next time. "You have no idea how wolf sex works, do you?"

"Enlighten me. Or let me in so we can learn hands-on. Might be more fun. You did say it would be better once I was sober, did you not?"

"Klaus, I'm almost entirely certain our wolves are going to surface and not let us have control over our actions. You physically won't be able to stop yourself from... yeah. I think I might need to work on a spell so that I don't go into heat very often anymore. What you feel is entirely my fault, because your wolf attached itself emotionally to me. If I regulate it, we'll both have a lot less of this feeling..."

"Oh, bloody hell, I'll just anger you whenever you're like this," he said, because to him, the smell of her being in heat was like all his favorite things rolled up into one scented candle that filled the house with an air of perfection. She smelled like a fresh canvas and paint, like beignets, a well-cooked steak, the ocean, and other distinct smells he couldn't even pinpoint. It was heavenly. All he wanted was her, and nothing else. He didn't want her to suppress this natural thing just to keep them from getting too near each other on a whim. "Love... come on..."

"That's your wolf telling you it wants to make a baby with me. I can't communicate with mine... at all... so I'm saying no."

"You're a witch! You can use a spell, can't you?"

"This would be the one time my wolf side would overpower my witch side. No spell before or after could prevent a pregnancy. And I don't know if human abortion methods work on supernatural babies. Not to mention that any herbal mixtures would hurt me more than help me. We don't know a lot about what other weaknesses and strengths I have. What if I biologically can't miscarry or get rid of a baby, and am always guaranteed to get pregnant? It's a risk."

"What about just kissing?"

"Will you be able to keep your hands off of me?"

Klaus shut his mouth, pouting even though she couldn't see him. He reached for the doorknob, but stopped when he heard her moving inside the room. When she came out, fully dressed, her saw her eyes had a more distinct golden hue to them than they normally did. "I'm sorry," she told him quietly. "Just... no. It's not a good idea. Trust me when I say I have a bad feeling about it. It's not the time yet."

Klaus sighed. "The one who should be apologizing is me, love. I shouldn't be so insistent after you've already denied me several times." He hung his head in shame, shuffling to the side to let her pass by him.

Esmeray stopped in front of him, and the guilt made him turn away. "Klaus," she said gently. "I didn't mean to make you feel bad. I know you're not really in control of the desires. That's what being a wolf entails. It's so majestic and complex and that's why I think we need to be really careful. Don't think it means I don't want you. I just think that something bad could happen."

"Even if it is the wolf within me, that wolf is still me, love. I'm the one goading you, and it's wrong. My wolf ought to understand that 'no means no.'"

She patted his shoulder, grateful that he acknowledged his behavior as having been inappropriate. "I'll work on something to help both of us," she said, her cheeks growing hot at the thought of it. She cleared her throat. "So, um, I should work on the Locator Spell for Finn. After that... I need to check with Bonnie to see if her spell on Alaric worked."

They parted ways for awhile. Esmeray remained in the living room, writing in her notebook and finding all the materials she was going to need. Klaus was in his art room, painting out his frustration at himself. He felt she was secretly annoyed with him, even if she didn't speak about it. He was convinced she disliked him for having been so insistent. With every stroke of his paintbrush, he worked on creating a scenery, a vast forest with two figures off to the side— one brown blur and another black as night, representing each of their wolves. They were very small, and someone would have needed to squint to notice the two wolves amidst the masses of green and grey.

"I found him," said Esmeray, coming into the room once he was done, and had set the painting aside to dry. "He's a few towns over, I marked the location. I tried searching for your mother, too, but she's good at cloaking herself. They aren't in the same place, that's for certain."

"Thank you," he told her quietly, taking the paper she handed to him.

They had separated once more after that. He could hear her in her room, speaking on the phone with Bonnie, asking her about parts of the spell and advising her on what she needed to do next.

He'd been in his own room, staring at the ceiling as if he was having an existential crisis. He had never felt this drawn to anyone, not even Aurora. In those moments when he'd been a young man, still growing accustomed to the feeling of being a vampire all while knowing that he would not be able to tap into his wolf side for a long time, the redhead before him had been everything he'd wanted. She'd been gentle and understanding, and until the moment that they parted ways, he never would have expected that his love for her would fade.

It hadn't fully faded, but he was certainly forgetting Aurora now that he knew Esmeray. He wondered what would have happened if he and Esmeray had met earlier in life. She might not have been allowed to marry him even if he was a regular wolf, because her father wouldn't have wanted her to have children that were of two different Packs. He imagined that she would have liked him even more if she'd met him while he was still human.

Esmeray was everything that brought him tranquility. She always smelled like flowers. Her eyes shone in the light, and in them, he often thought he saw a rainbow. Her laughter made him smile. Her witty comments were music to his ears. He imagined several ways he could paint her, depicting her as the goddess he envisioned her to be. And on top of that, his wolf thought her to be the perfect partner for life. It was more natural than anything he'd ever experienced. She cared for him unconditionally without seeking anything in return. While Aurora had been obsessed with the idea of him turning her into a vampire, Esmeray did not demand that he give her anything other than his kindness. She thought fully for herself even when she had numerous forces trying to urge her away from him. She would have sacrificed herself for her friends, and she genuinely wanted to bring others happiness.

When night fell, and he heard her gentle breathing from her room, he found himself smiling like an idiot, one of his hands over his chest and resting onto his heart.

Elijah was right. He was in love with her.

A/N: Happy 300 pages! I know some of you are itching for Klausmeray (Klesmeray? idk) to just kiss already (so am I) so we'll see when that comes up. Could be soon or not. This whole chapter was entirely unplanned and it just felt like the right thing to write, so chances are, their first kiss scene will be something done on a whim.