Yelena has been investigating Valentina for a while. After observing her for a week, she manages to infiltrate Valentina’s social circle under a fake name, admiring the various gadgets the wealthy ancient vampire is keen to display. Most of them are artifacts, arts, and secret weapons, which she had purchased, stolen, and plundered during her immortal life. Valentina is a show-off who doesn’t hesitate to display her vast collection to anyone who constantly compliments her, so Yelena quickly identifies all of Valentina’s Red Room goods. The only problem is that she can’t bypass that amount of werewolf bodyguards. Valentina’s manor is heavily guarded by her wolves, and there are wolves patrol outside 24/7. Uninvited vampires can be sniffed out from a mile away.
She doesn’t know why a vampire can have so many loyal werewolf minions, so she continues her observation until she follows her to the werewolf bar. She hides in the shadows and sees all Valentina’s supply activities. That’s when she senses an obnoxiously delicious smell of a familiar werewolf. Kate Bishop.
She never knows werewolves could be so annoying. With the exception of these blood-addicted wolves in front of her, almost all werewolves never interact with vampires. Although Yelena is not biased, there is a reason why vampires don’t like werewolves in general. Werewolves smell more like dogs than humans. Yelena doesn’t mind though. She likes dogs. Although vampires can’t really have dogs (because she doesn’t really get a chance to walk them every day with her schedule and she clearly can’t invite dog walkers into her home), she always rescues lost puppies. She would take them home and play with them for a while before she has to send them to a shelter. Natasha teases her a lot about it, so she revengefully names every puppy she rescues Fanny.
But Kate Bishop is a special kind of puppy. For one, she doesn’t smell like any other werewolf. She smells more like a human, with a freshness that Yelena could only describe as the smell of a forest. Second… She’s literally a puppy that has a strong sense of justice. She understands, that in another life, she might also have a sense of justice when she sees a vampire treating a human like a glorified blood bag. She admired the werewolf’s unflinching interaction with a vampire, so despite Kate’s obnoxious interruption to her feeding, she didn’t harm Kate at all. If it were anyone else, she would have broken their neck instead. But she also knew that the pursuit of justice was a rare thing. Valar Morghulis, immortals also will die, or worse, with so much power but feel so weak.
When she was three, her mother told her she could be anything she wanted to be. She had her loving parents, and a strong, brave sister. There’s nothing she couldn’t do. She thought she was the most capable person in the world. By the time she was six, her dreams were over. Her family was fake, and her life was a mission. She was violently dragged away from Natasha and was sold to the Red Room. Since that, there’s only endless training and forced V-abusing left. The year of her graduation, she was honorably killed and reborn as a vampire. She was the best child assassin. Then the best widow vampire.
Years later, she heard that Natasha had escaped. But she didn’t stop Dreykov. Not really. Dreykov was forced to go off-grid, while he used dark magic to control all the widows to make sure it never happened again. Eight years later, she was freed from the magical red dust, but at the cost of watching herself killed her savior.
She didn’t know what to do. The vulnerable feeling of being pulled away from her sister came back. So all she could do was send the old photos and the antidote to the nearest safe house of Natasha she could find.
Eventually, Natasha came back for her. The whole mission was filled with pain, relief and doubt, and even now she sometimes still would doubt that Natasha will leave her again.
Natasha made a terrible vampire joke, saying that she would never let Yelena go again until the day she met her true death. For Lilith’s sake, Natasha is so good at making Yelena roll her eyes.
As unbelievable as reconnecting with Natasha is the amount of Red Room assets. In addition to widows all over the world, there are countless secret black magic weapons and so many Red Room contacts.
Their mission is to free the widows and remove all of Dreykov’s legacy. Someone has to. After all this happened to her, Yelena wouldn’t trust anything like this to stay in the world.
After they destroyed the Red Room for good, Yelena and Natasha got separated. While She locates and liberates other widows, Natasha travels across the world, building safe houses and investigating Red Room contacts. Natasha is the perfect investigator, she is so good at getting information from unwilling people with or without vampire powers (a little too good at it, Yelena admits, and sometimes it’s very annoying). They meet, catch up, annoy each other, and sometimes work together to destroy bad guys in between missions. She does not feel any sense of justice. Not like Kate Bishop does. Just things have to be done. She’s still killing people. Plus, she’s a vampire. She feeds on humans.
But Kate Bishop is different. Yelena knows her from her few encounters with her. She can see that Kate is an innocent wolfie, believing in justice. She has this passion to save humanity. She literally put her own mother behind bars. While Yelena’s notorious mother is studying pigs on a farm in the middle of nowhere, her father spent more than 20 years in prison before breaking out of it with Yelena and Natasha’s help. And despite all the weapons options, Kate Bishop chooses a bow and arrows. Very impractical. They are two people from different worlds (literally and metaphorically) . Nevertheless, Yelena finds herself couldn’t help but be stupidly attracted to this Kate Bishop.
Kate’s stupid naivety and the sense of justice made part of her want to cry. The other part of her wants to wipe the arrogance and optimism off her face every time Kate interrupts her.
That’s why she’s always deliberately taking humans to the bar where Kate works. Sometimes she’s not even that hungry. She really enjoys getting under Kate’s skin. To be honest, playing with food was not her cup of tea. It’s more like Natasha’s thing, but she just can’t help with it. She just loves to see Kate blush at the innuendo flirtations and retort wittily without hesitation. She enjoys flirting back and forth, and feeding got more fun. In the past, Yelena paid a human, and the human offered their blood, it’s a strict business relationship, very formulaic. However, after meeting Kate, she would take humans out, and yes, the emotional connection with a human does make a human taste better. And she really enjoys the righteous look that Kate shoots at her every time. She wants Kate to know that humans don’t need her to rescue them. Besides, Kate is gorgeous. Elena doesn’t mind being stared at by a good-looking werewolf like her.
But then Kate kept irritating her. She began to meddle in Yelena’s missions, and not only to save humans in distress. Yelena didn’t know what werewolves do to spend their time, but can’t Kate Bishop chase a squirrel or something? So she did what she does best: investigate Kate Bishop. She discovered that Kate’s mother had a business relationship with Kingpin, which was why Kate Bishop turned Eleanor Bishop over to the police. Kate Bishop’s investigation into the coven could be because of Kingpin. This was a direction that Yelena had not thought of. She still had not found out who had provided that bunch of clown witches with such advanced witchcraft, but it might be a good breakthrough point. She looked at the long list of evidence of Kingpin’s crimes, thinking that sooner or later, Kate Bishop would get herself killed.
Kate Bishop will get herself killed sooner or later. Yelena watches the crazy behavior of other werewolves in the bar, thinking. Even she feels the wild energy in the air.
Yelena sighs and drags Kate out of the bar.
“I told you to stay out of this, Kate Bishop,” Yelena says, holding Kate up to the brick wall. She’s not sure how much it affected Kate, and she won’t take any risk. “I see you’re in my way, again.”
Kate begins to fight her crazily. She’s never seen Kate this out of control. Their quarrels were always semi-friendly, even when they first met, Kate didn’t really show this much aggression. Kate’s eyes now are golden, pupils dilating. She struggled fiercely, baring her teeth in a low, threatening voice.
Yelena tries using pheromones. In general, she doesn’t like to use pheromones. Pheromones are only effective when she’s feeding on someone or when someone is attracted to her, and she doesn’t like to take advantage of people. Not anymore. Old Yelena who was under control would do whatever it takes to achieve the goal, nowadays, Yelena does not want to do it, not at all.
Kate calms down under Yelena’s pheromones. Of course it worked… Yelena sighs in her mind. She certainly noticed Kate’s attraction to her, but she never intended to use pheromones in such a situation.
Kate’s eyes have returned to their original bright blue. She never planned to hurt Kate, so she put a calmer Kate down. She should have known Kate would connect the dots. Kate was naive, but not stupid. She didn’t want to encourage Kate’s investigation, so she just lets Kate go completely and leave.
Then Kate asks her out for a drink in the middle of a fight. Looking up into Kate’s expecting eyes, she wonders if she does this every time. Does she ask her opponent out for a drink during every fight? What is she thinking in that pretty little head?
Although she does not want to encourage Kate’s dangerous behavior furthermore, she cannot resist flirting with Kate before leaving. She just couldn’t help it. And she blames Natasha for this. Natasha is such a bad influence on her!
After getting rid of Kate, Yelena decides to see Natasha. Valentina’s werewolves army is very disturbing, and she needs to let Natasha know.
Turns out Natasha is in a safe house in another state. Yelena blows their secret whistle at the door. Natasha responds with her whistle before opening the door.
Natasha pulls Yelena into a hug. She raises an eyebrow at her scent after pulling away.
“Have you found any stray dogs lately?” Natasha teases gently.
Yelena rolls her eyes. She swears Natasha is the most annoying sister ever. “Just a clingy golden retriever.”
Yelena rolls her eyes again at the thought of the relentless Kate Bishop.
Natasha raises her eyebrow again. Her little sister looks extra grumpy today.
“What do you know about werewolves?” Yelena asks.
Yelena is busy releasing widows. Social with other species is not her priority. Also, werewolves are a relatively isolated group, she does not know very much about wolves beside the basics.
“Here,” Natasha said, taking a blood bag from the fridge and throwing it at her, “take this, grumpy face. Well, most werewolves are nothing like Alexei.”
At the mention of their name sake father, Yelena rolls her eyes again. Alexei is a werewolf but genetically modified. He’s nowhere as pretty as Kate Bishop in his wolf form, more like professor Lupin in the Harry Potter movie (Natasha forced her to watch the entire series, and Yelena kept criticizing inaccurate depictions of magic and supernatural creatures while watching), but stronger and bigger, and he doesn’t lose his mind. Alexei is noisy, his powers come mainly from his big words, and he doesn’t have a pack. But as far as she knows, Kate Bishop doesn’t belong to any pack as well.
“They are loyal to the pack and would never betray the pack. Traditionally, the alpha wolf is a female. But recently I’ve heard some packs popping up that are almost exclusively white males, and you know, most of these guys are lone wolves that have been kicked out of the pack for misbehaving, which are pretty nasty.”
That would explain what happened at the werewolf bar. Yelena surely noticed more than 90% of those werewolves in that bar are white men.
Yelena frowns. “I think I’ve met one and, worse, they’re addicted to vampire blood and Valentina is supplying them.”
“Oh dear Lilith.” Natasha takes a sip of her drink. “That’s dangerous, Yelena. You know how strong mortals can get when they’re on V, not to mention a whole pack of them.”
She knows. A healthy werewolf may not be as fast as a vampire, but it’s enough to kill an inexperienced vampire (not enough to handle a widow though). Werewolves on V are extremely threatening, not to mention that they follow an equally crazy alpha wolf.
“I’ll be careful. Your information is correct. Valentina has several black magic books from the Red Room. She may or may not have mentioned a giant mob boss in New York. I need to gather more information and destroy them. Someone like Valentina cannot have those.”
“Okay, but I think you need some help, you can take Sonia or Ana with you,” Natasha pauses, then adds carefully, “I can help.”
“No,” her reply comes sharper than she has expected, looking at Natasha’s raised eyebrow she adds with a sigh, “Sonia and Anna have their own lives now, and Ana has such a lovely family. It’s not their mission, not by choice.”
Natasha sighs. “You know that asking for help isn’t a weakness, right? You can always ask me for help.”
“You are helping,” Yelena retorts, “I want you to stay here and put more pressure on that contact of yours. If she can get me access to Valentina’s close circle, she must know a lot about Valentina’s connections. More than she tells. I need more information. I’m going to destroy all of Valentina’s criminal connections.”
Yelena takes a sip of her drink. Ugh, it doesn’t taste very well. She’s got picky, there is nothing better than feeding directly on the living. She wonders what Kate Bishop, who smells fantastic, would taste like. “Besides, if you come with me, Lilith knows how long will it takes, what about your red hair witch? You’re gonna leave her like that?”
It’s Natasha’s turn to roll her eyes. “We’ve only been on a few dates… you’re such a little shit,” Wanda, the witch they met when they destroyed a black magic book from the Red Room last time. Turns out she’s not a villain, she’s just tempted by dark magic.
Yelena chuckles. Ever since she found out that her big sister is dating the scarlet witch, she was destined to tease Natasha with it forever. Otherwise, what’s the fun of having a sister?
“But seriously tho,” Natasha says. “You can always count on me for your backup. Those werewolves are very tricky.”
“You don’t say,” Yelena murmurs, thinking of a particular black wolf.
“Call me, or whatever help you need, before things get worse, okay? It’s not a bad thing to ask for help,” Natasha says, placing her hand on her shoulder.
“Of course. You always are my hero,” Yelena says calmly, without a trace of irony in her voice. Not anymore.
“Oh, and I need some new antidotes. I’m almost out. Then we can watch whatever shitty movie you want to watch!” Yelena puts down her drink and shouts excitedly.
“In the safe,” Natasha replies, yelling as Yelena walks toward the safe. “You could always have asked mom for the antidotes, you know!”
Yelena yells back as she comes back, “Why bother her when I can annoy you to death?”
“You’re the shittest sister ever,” Natasha says, laughing as she bites into her straw. Her little sister is a brat but she loves her so much that her heart aches anyway.
R. H. Felidae Athena 