Chapter Text
The forest was quiet.
Too quiet.
Nick tightened his grip on the flashlight, his boots sinking into wet moss. Somewhere ahead, something moved, fast and low to the ground.
Not human.
Not safe.
The woods stretched dark and wet around them, each step a soft crunch of pine needles and wet soil. Nick shivered and zipped up his jacket, breath fogging in the chilled air.
"This place is creepy as hell," he muttered, sweeping his flashlight across the tree line. "Four missing hikers, all in the same ten-square-mile stretch. One of them called 911, screaming."
Behind him, Monroe exhaled through his nose, clearly unimpressed. "You know, when I agreed to help you today with Grimm work, I thought that meant answering more of your weird questions or giving you life advice. I wasn’t exactly expecting to venture into the wilderness during peak Blutbad conditions."
Nick glanced back. “You mean peak mating season?”
Monroe stiffened. “Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you read it off a biology chart.”
Nick arched a brow. “I mean, you're the one who brought it up.” he chuckled.
Monroe huffed and looked away, tugging his cardigan closer to his body. “Yeah, well, I’m also the one who said I shouldn’t be out here right now. My instincts are a little... twitchy.” Pushing past a low-hanging branch, he completed, “Look, just stay inside the hiker trail and don’t bleed on anything. God, I can’t believe there are people who would choose woods like these to hike in, I mean there are much better places in Portland.”
Nick held up both hands, suppressing a smirk. “All right, all right, sorry for interrupting your cello sessions. Just saying- you’re ticking a little louder than usual tonight.”
But beneath the surface humor, something was off. Monroe usually handled this kind of tension with patience for someone who was just entering the Wesen world and calm precision. Tonight, he was fidgety, snappish, distracted. Like his skin didn’t quite fit right.
“You sure you’re okay?” Nick asked, voice softer now.
Monroe didn’t stop walking. “I said I’m fine.”
A beat passed.
“I’m just saying, if something’s- ”
“I said I’m fine, Nick.”
The sharpness in his tone cut through the night like a blade. Nick halted, stunned, watching as Monroe finally turned to face him. His pupils were too wide. His jaw too tight.
And for just a flicker of a moment, Nick saw it, something primal pressing behind Monroe’s eyes. Something barely held back.
After a long silence, Monroe exhaled long and slow, and some of the tension bled out of his shoulders. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m... not myself.”
“No kidding,” Nick said, not unkindly.
Monroe nodded toward the woods. “Let’s just find whoever it is that scared the hikers away from the trail and get out. Before I do something stupid.”
—
The path narrowed between two gnarled trees, their bark clawed and splintered. Nick swept his flashlight ahead. “You smell anything?”
Monroe stopped dead in his tracks, nostrils flaring. “Yeah. Something... wrong. Rotten. Whoever did this is close.”
Nick reached for his gun just as a low, throaty growl echoed from the left. A blur of movement shot from the trees, a massive, misshapen Lebensauger, its face slick with blood and mud.
“Down!” Monroe roared, lunging forward.
Nick dove as the creature tackled, claws slashing through the air where his throat had been seconds earlier. He hit the ground hard, pain flaring through his arm as it caught a jagged root.
Monroe shifted mid-run, teeth bared in a full Blutbad woge. He slammed into the Lebensauger with a snarl that echoed like thunder in the trees.
The two collided in a mess of fur, limbs, and snarls. Nick pushed himself up, touching his neck, blood oozing down his sleeve, and staggered backward. “Monroe!”
But Monroe was in it, fully, terrifyingly in it. Teeth sunk into the Lebensauger’s neck. The thing shrieked, clawed wildly, but Monroe didn't let go until it went limp in the dirt.
Chest heaving, Monroe stood over it, blood staining his jaw. His eyes, still gold, locked onto Nick.
“Are y-?”
Nick swayed, knees buckling.
“Nick!”
He hit the ground. Cold leaves. Darkness pressing in. His vision blurred, pain throbbing with every heartbeat. Monroe was over him in seconds, hands pressed to his neck.
“Okay, okay, you’re okay,” Monroe muttered, more to himself than to Nick. “It’s shallow, it’s shallow, it’s-”
His words stopped. His eyes dropped to the blood coating his own hand. Then something ancient surged up behind his gaze, reflex, instinct, something not entirely human. Something that reminded him it was Blutbad mating season.
“No, damn it- don’t-” he whispered, but his body moved on its own.
Monroe leaned down, hands shaking as he hovered over Nick’s bloodied neck, pushing his jacket’s collar to the side. “Hold on,” he whispered, more to himself than to Nick. “Just hold on-”
Nick lay slumped on the ground, eyes fluttering, breath ragged. His shirt was soaked in crimson, the wound pulsing dark with every beat of his heart.
“Shit,” Monroe breathed. “No, no, no…”
He dropped to his knees, blood slick on his fingers as he pressed against the wound, uselessly. This wasn’t something stitches could fix. The Lebensauger venom would be in his bloodstream by now, corrupting, killing. Nothing human would survive it.
But Monroe wasn’t just human.
He could smell the iron, too much, and feel the rising panic twisting through his gut. But beneath it, older instincts clawed to the surface.
He looked at Nick, at his pale face, at the way his fingers twitched unconsciously toward his gun even now, and he made a decision.
A terrible one. A necessary one.
“I’m sorry,” Monroe whispered. “This is going to change everything.”
He bent low, lips brushing the wound on Nick’s neck. His fingers found the edge of the gash. His eyes slipped shut.
He began to speak.
The words came unbidden, low, coarse syllables wrapped in old German, not the kind taught in classrooms, but the kind whispered at winter fires, passed from wolf to wolf in the dark. They rolled off his tongue like smoke and soil, like blood spilled in snow. Words not meant to be spoken anymore.
Each syllable carried weight. Magic. Blood-oath.
He’d learned the binding ritual from his grandmother. A last resort. A soul tether, meant to preserve life by anchoring it to another. Dangerous. Permanent. Forbidden.
But it was the only way.
He pressed two fingers to the wound. Blood coated his hand, warm and sticky. He moved them slowly, reverently, to the center of Nick’s chest, right over his heart.
There was a moment of stillness.
Then the air shivered. A pulse of heat surged between them, thick and ancient, like the forest itself was waking. The magic snapped into place like a trap closing around them both.
Monroe’s hand burned where it touched Nick’s chest, but it wasn’t pain.
It was recognition.
Nick gasped awake, suddenly and violently, eyes flaring open as if pulled from the depths of a dream. His pupils dilated instantly, locking on Monroe’s.
For a second, he didn’t know where or what he was.
His body felt like it had been dragged through fire. But beneath the pain, something else throbbed inside him. A rhythm. A weight. A presence.
And then-
He felt it.
Felt him.
Monroe.
They didn’t speak. They couldn’t.
Because suddenly everything Monroe felt, terror, desperation, guilt, crashed into Nick like a wave. And Monroe, in turn, felt Nick’s confusion, his pain, and beneath it, the deep, tangled thread of trust that should not have been there, but somehow always had been.
A faint golden glow shimmered around Monroe’s hand, spreading across Nick’s sternum like veins of light before vanishing into his skin.
Monroe tore his hand back like he’d touched fire. “Oh no.”
“What…?” His voice was hoarse, broken. “What did you do to me?”
Monroe staggered back, hands covered in blood- Nick’s and his own. His voice trembled. “I saved you.”
Nick tried to sit up. His entire chest buzzed, alive with something electric. Something wrong- but not painful. Just… too much.
“You used something,” he rasped. “Magic. Wesen magic.”
He swallowed hard.
“That was a binding ritual.”
Nick stared, chest still warm, skin tingling. “A what?”
Monroe’s voice dropped, hoarse and disbelieving. “A soulbond.”
Nick sat up slowly, dizzy. “Monroe. What did you just do?”
The Blutbad backed away, horror creeping over his features. “The venom was spreading too fast. You wouldn’t have made it. That thing- it doesn’t just drain blood. It hollows out what’s left. You would’ve faded.”
Nick’s breath hitched. “So you bound me to you?”
Monroe couldn’t speak. Could only nod.
“I can feel you,” Nick whispered, wide-eyed. “In my head.”
“I know,” Monroe said quietly. “So can I.”
The silence that followed was unbearable.
Nick stared down at his hands, still faintly glowing at the fingertips, heart hammering with someone else’s rhythm now echoing inside it. There was no taking this back. No undoing it.
Nick’s chest felt strange. Warm, almost... tethered. Like a thread now stretched between them, humming low under his skin.
—
Nick stood by the coffee machine, rubbing the back of his neck where the wound had been as Hank shuffled some papers across the table. The case of the missing hikers was officially closed, but Nick still felt the weight of what had happened out there.
Hank plopped down across from him, eyebrows raised.
“So, how’d you crack the case on the missing hikers?” Hank asked, swirling his coffee.
Nick shrugged, forcing a casual smile. “Turns out it was a group of wild dogs scaring hikers out in the forest. They got spooked and ran off when we showed up. Apparently, one of the hikers panicked when they saw the dogs approaching and ran off the trail. The others stayed put and were found the next day.”
Hank chuckled. “Good. That’s what I wanted to hear. You always make it sound so neat. No wild monsters, no Bigfoot?”
Nick shook his head. “Nope, nothing weird, just nature being nature.”
Hank studied him for a moment. “Come on, Nick. You’ve been acting a little… off since you came back. Everything okay? Did the wolves scare you too?” he teased.
Nick glanced away, the weight behind the words harder to carry. “Ha, yeah. Just tired.” The brunette’s voice was steady, but his mind was anything but. He avoided Hank’s eyes, thinking of Monroe and the bond, and the secret he wasn’t ready to share or face.