A KNOCK ON HER DOOR MADE CHARLIE LOOK UP AS her brother entered. He offered a peaceful smile, knowing that he should tread carefully because she was still mad at him. Luckily, Klaus saved Caroline without making them pay some crazy price like going hunting with him for three months like Stefan had to. "Hey, Char."

"I'm not talking to you," she informed him, and she winced when she realized that telling him that was talking to him. She shook it off and remained her tough exterior, hoping that he took the hint.

"Hey, I'm sorry about Caroline. I didn't mean to bite her," he explained, but it made no sense. How do you accidentally bite someone? Unless it was a kinky thing. Then, she did not want to know about it. "It just happened, but I think I found a way to fix it."

That got her attention. She looked up at him in shock and raised eyebrows, praying that he was not joking. "What? How?"

"So, I talked to Bill Forbes since he can resist compulsion," he started, and she ignored that part about how he went to the man that tortured Caroline for help.

She was more focused on the other part of that sentence. How the hell could someone resist compulsion? Wasn't it, like, impossible? "He can?"

"Yeah, he can. Without vervain. It's crazy," Tyler continued, and it was clear that he was as impressed as she was. "Anyway, since he can learn how to resist that, I thought that maybe he could teach us to resist the sire bond. He said that he could figure out a way."

"Why is that actually kind of smart?" she questioned, surprised that her dumbass of a brother was able to come up with that all by himself.

He shrugged with a smug smile as he plopped onto her bed next to her. "I'm full of great ideas."

"Don't get ahead of yourself there," she told him before pushing his head so that he fell off of the bed. He glared at her as his head popped up. She looked at him in question. "When can we start?"

"Today. We just have to convince Caroline," he informed her as he climbed back to his feet and regained his composure, trying to act cool even though he just got pushed off the bed by a girl who was two years younger than him.

She chuckled, knowing that that would not be much of a problem. "That should be easy. She hates the sire bond more than we do."

They were sitting in the living room of the Forbes residence with Bill, waiting for Caroline to get home so that they could pitch their idea. They all jumped to their feet as the lock clicked, indicating that she had just arrived. Bill moved to the side, out of sight for the moment as she opened and closed the door behind her. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the boy, glancing to his sister in queston. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to apologize," he informed her.

"Apologize?" she exclaimed, taking a couple of steps toward him angrily. "You bit me. I could've died. I think we're way past apologies, Tyler."

"That's the problem. Klaus told me to do it and I said no. And then it just happened anyway. Like, it was completely out of my control. That's why I had your mom call him," the Lockwood boy explained, and he gestured to where Bill had just stepped into sight.

Caroline's eyes widened when she saw him, a mixture of shock, anger, sadness, and relief crossed her eyes. "Daddy?"

"Hi, Caroline," he greeted, and he seemed a little nervous, wondering how she ould react to seeing him after he had kidnapped and tortured her.

Charlie spoke for the first time since her friend had arrived as they all took in everything. She informed her about what their plan was. "We thought, since he can resist compulsion, maybe he could teach me to resist the sire bound."

"Can you help them?" the blonde girl asked her father after what seemed to be a moment of thinking. She really wanted them to get past the sire bond thing, for her sake and theirs.

Bill nodded slowly, letting her know that he would try his hardest not to let her down as long as they did their part. "I'm gonna try."

"Why?" she asked because he was so opposed to vampires. He absolutely despised them, so why would he help one, especially one that was dating his daughter. Wasn't he was supposed to want to murder his daughter's boyfriend like most dads?

"Because he made a mistake and now he wants to make good," he answered, turning to Tyler, and the Lockwood girl assumed that she was just there since she was Tyler's sister. "And I understand that."

☾❄☽

BILL HAD JUST FINISHED CHAINING THE SIBLINGS UP in the cellar. He had an interesting theory that if they turn, their sire bond would weaken. Neither of the siblings were particular excited about the plan. Caroline was standing beside them as he stepped back. "How do you know this is gonna work?"

"That's a process. It took decades to train myself to resist compulsion," he explained. "Brain's like a muscle. The more you use it, the more it can do. A sire bond, at its core, is about one thing — gratitude. If you believe you owe Klaus your life, ask yourself why."

"We were cursed. Every full moon we had to change into a wolf. It was torture. Klaus took that away," Charlie answered as Tyler thought for a moment. He nodded and pointed toward her, letting them know that she had the right answer. They felt grateful toward the Original because he took away the awful pain that was transforming into a werewolf.

Bill nodded, and his thought process was actually starting to make sense. At first, the Lockwood girl was starting to think taht he just wanted to see them in pain. "He freed you from your pain and now you feel indebted to him. To break the sire bound you gotta make yourself turn. Own your pain. Then you'll owe Klaus nothing and you will be free."

"But how can they turn? It's not a full moon," the Forbes girl pointed out, gesturing to the ceiling and the hole in it where it was complete daylight outside.

"They don't need one," he answered before turning to the two chained to the wall. "You're hybrids now, right? I mean, you can turn at will now, am I right?"

Tyler nodded, responding for them this time as they glanced at their chains, wondering how the hell they were supposed to do anything. "Yeah, but I don't know how to just start."

"You're making excuses," the man groaned out, and it was making both of them very mad since he could never understand the pain of turning.

"You don't understand!" the boy yelled while Charlie tried to focus on her anger and turning that into something else. She figured that that was what Bill was trying to do. "When we turn, we break every bone in our bodies."

The Forbes man crouched down to look Tyler in the face before glancing at the girl who seemed to be focused on something else. "You asked for my help. This is the only way. How badly do you want your freedom?"

Charlie heard them talking, but she drowned them out as the thought about other things. She thought about how mad she was that Bill was making them do this when he could never feel the pain they felt. She thought about how badly she wished that she could hate Klaus for everything that he had done to them. She thought about how mad she was at Elena for sending Jeremy away and not letting her say goodbye.

And she started to shift.

The pain was overwhelming, especially since she was praying that she would never have to feel it again. The only plus of being a hybrid was that she did not have to transition, and now she was forcing herself to do it. She screamed as her spine cracked, and she fell to the ground. She felt eyes on her, but if she allowed herself to look up at them, she was pretty sure that she would stop. She needed to focus on changing and changing only. After that, everything went black.

She woke up naked, and there was already a blanket around her. She looked up to see Tyler sitting against the wall of the cellar, and he already had clothes on and everything. She furrowed her eyebrows, wondering why his transition was shorter when she started earlier.

"I lost control," he informed her, and she looked up with wide eyes. "Caroline got out before, but I bit Bill. He's at the hospital right now. I was waiting until you woke up to go see him."

So, to the hospital, they went. When they walked him, he was awake and eating some Jello. Charlie had talked to Meredith, the doctor, who had casually informed them that she had used vampire blood to heal him. She hoped that the woman knew that they knew about the supernatural, or else they would have a problem. Tyler commented, "You're better."

"Yeah. I shouldn't be but I didn't have any say in the matter," he murmured angrily. Since he was so opposed to the supernatural, he hated the fact that vampire blood cured him.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," the boy told him, running a hand through his hair as his sister sat down in teh chair next to the hospital bed. He leaned on the back of her chair and looked at the man with an apologetic look. "I lost control. Again."

Bill just shrugged like it was no big deal that he almost died from a freaking werewolf bite. That did not happen every day. "I knew the risks when I decided to help you. So, was it worth it? How do you feel?"

"Different. A little more myself," the boy answered.

Charlie nodded in agreement because she felt like she was more free for soem reason. "Yeah, I feel a little more in control of my actions. Before I felt like everything I did was to make Klaus happy. Now, it's just most things."

"Then we'll continue tomorrow," the man informed them after a satisfied nod, happy that his method was working.

"What are you talking about?" Tyler asked as his sister furrowed her eyebrows in shock. She thought that she would only have to turn once and then they could move to the next part of the process or something. "We turned."

"Once," Bill scoffed, as if it were obvious that that was not all there was. "To break the sire bond, turning needs to be painless, and from what I saw today...we're still a long way off."

Charlie shook her head with a groan as the boy next to her insisted, "I can't put myself through that again."

"You will. Because until you're capable of acting on your own free will, I'm not gonna let either of you anywhere near my daughter," the Forbes man told them, and they could tell that he was serious.