Author's Note
Thank you so much for the 2.2k reads everyone! It means a lot to me! Lovely reminder that people enjoy this series even with the hiccups. XD

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"What is this about?" Dalca asked.

Taking a step forward, I looked at her and spoke, "We can't carry out the plan right away, it with take time to put together."

She looked at me with a puzzling look, crossing her arms in the process. "Is there any reason we can't do it immediately?"

"We can't because of how heavily populated this place is. Southern Maine is too crowded and our races will be discovered by the humans. We need to take this somewhere more rural," I spoke while pinching my chin with my forefinger and thumb, thinking deeply.

"Why not somewhere like Patten? The Baxter State Park is near there, and there never seems to be tourists in that park, let alone rangers," Taylor spoke. "It's an ideal place since no one will see us, and the fight will still be away from the public eye."

It was the ideal place. Taylor was right. What better place to do it?

I looked at him with my eyebrows still furrowed in thought. "I agree with with you, it's a smart choice." Taylor nodded back at me, glad I had liked his idea.

"But why so far away? Sure it will be secret and all if we do it there, but why travel so stinking far for a fight?"

"That's the whole point," I told her with a strict tone, "We need to be far away, it doesn't matter the travel distance."

She glared at me in irritation and crossed her arms. "You need to think of saving gas you know, it's important. Have you seen the prices lately and the pollution that burnt fuel causes?"

"Nic, gas prices are dropping," Taylor chimed back in, "I just got my tank filled for only about twenty bucks yesterday. That's a pretty good deal."

"There's still the pollution issue, we can't have our planet destroyed by stupid decisions."

"Nic, shut your mouth this instant." I was getting irritated at her, she was acting so childish that I felt like I was taking care of a little kid.

"You aren't my boss, so you can just shut the hell up." She spoke in a snotty tone. "I happen to care about our planet. We don't have to have a fight so far away from Sanford. It could just be out in the country area."

"And that country area is also very populated with people. You need to know that going west or south is a stupid choice!" I slammed my fist into the wall next to me, my eyes focusing intensely at her. Dalca seemed to not take effect to my actions at all. Does this mutt ever learn?

"I can make my own choice, and it's not a stupid idea! We'll be completely safe out there in the country! No one would discover us and they wouldn't see any corpses from the battle."

"Nic, we can't clean up blood and people will get curious if they hear growling and other 'monster' noises at night." At least Taylor was taking my side, he knew the consequences to being near where we all lived.

"I'm done talking to you guys. If you don't understand why I want it this way, then I'm not going to even bother with helping you stop those stupid vampires. I'm especially not going to work with this damn idiotic bloodsucker!" She jabbed a finger in my direction before stalking off, slightly rolling her ankle while turning due to the heels she wore.

I sighed before leaning up on the wall and putting my hood over my face to block the sun hitting me. I placed my hands in the jacket pockets and just stood there irritated. "I'm sorry to say, but she's is so difficult. I don't know how you deal with her. I'd hate to take care of a girl like that."

"I'm not taking care of her, I'm supposed to train her in developing her skills as a werewolf. It doesn't help I'm under pressure due to her being my responsibility for how the Dalca line ends up. If she's a screw up, there's a chance the Nobles will be wiped out and then the werewolves will truly disappear."

"You know I meant something else, right?" I asked him with my eyes closed. "You two seem pretty close, I was pretty sure I smelled both of your pheromones attracting to each other. But of course, I can still see the issue you have to deal with by training that mutt."

From the silence I heard the words I had said affected Taylor. I opened one eye and looked at him with a calm expression. "Is everything alright? I didn't scare you saying that did I?"

"No, Eric, you didn't. You just... helped me find out why I sometimes feel uncomfortable around her." Taylor looked at the floor while biting his thumbnail. "I guess my feelings for her are true then."

I laughed at him and stood erect again, rolling my neck and walking back into the science hallway out of the sun. "You guys do seem a bit strange, I can tell you that much."

"What do you mean?"

"You always seem hesitant to touch her while she seems to pick on you more, and she also seems to get more sensitive around you as well. I've never seen Dalca act so childish before."

"Can you please stop calling her that name?" he asked the question bitterly.

"Hm? What do you mean?" I turned to look at him in the face.

"Why must you call her Dalca? Her name is Nic."

"Because the sound of calling her Nic seems strange to me, plus I find Dalca to suit her better in my opinion. I'm not a fan of calling people by their first names."

"Then why do you call me Taylor?"

"Because I've never learned your last name. Stop thinking vampires are like those Cullen characters. We don't have personal gifts like seeing into the future or reading someone's mind."

"My dad told me enough about vampires for me to know that Meyer's 'vampires' weren't even real. You guys resemble bats in your true form, your skin turns a nasty grey and your ears seriously get huge like a bat's. I can tell you guys are just like the Romanian and Hungarian legends." He laughed.

I snickered in response to his statement. "Well, that is where we originated from. You have to remember that."

"True," Taylor started walking down in the opposite way Dalca had left, "I just find it interesting on how our races were made as well."

"Well, I don't even understand completely on why the Bluebloods put the curse on the Kirov and Dalca families anyway. Only myths tell us that they just happened to want to curse their best friends on day and kill them off over time. Think about the vampire hunts in Germany, France, and England and then the wolf hunts that were all over the place. Bluebloods are the worst witches you can come across."

"They truly are." Taylor turned one more time to me and spoke, "I'm heading back to journalism class. You should probably head back to whatever class you're supposed to be in."

I nodded and started going down the stairs to the main floor. Once down there, I walked towards room 125, peeping into the window of the classroom and seeing Erika in the back corner. She glanced over at the door and locked eyes with me, their once bored expression replaced with hatred and betrayal. Apparently she was acting just like my parents, disowning me as her kin and snubbing me in school now.

After watching her for another second, I walked on through the hallway and to the exit doors at the end of it. I opened one of the doors and exited into the chill morning. Snow had chosen to fall again even after winter had ended, the buds on the trees were barely visible, and the flowers were just starting to come out of hibernation. As I began to take a seat on one of the wooden benches, a ray emerged from behind a moving cloud and hit me spot on. I hissed in pain before darting towards a shady area.

As my vision returned from being sheet white, I found myself under a pine tree. A sigh of relief escaped me. Having close calls like that was never fun. First, I'd go blind, and second, my skin can react by getting major sunburn or by acting as if it had a serious case of polymorphic light eruption. I can never go during the fall, winter, or spring to the hospital or clinic since not even the human with the most sensitive skin can get a sunburn or eruption as bad a vampire's.

I pulled my hood over my face as much as possible, yanking on the strings and leaving my bangs out to shade my eyes. No one seemed to hear me yell, a good thing that they didn't. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, seeing a text from Erika.

"What in the word do you think you're doing here? You're going to be hunted down and taken out. You aren't a Royal anymore."

I responded with a quick message back to her.

"If you remember correctly, I'm the only Kirov that is still truly alive. You, mom, and dad are already part of the undead. How can the Kirov line continue if I'm gone?"

She responded only seconds afterwards.

"It can continue, there's our cousin Xander who is still 'alive.'"

I sighed and just locked my phone. She was a real pain and didn't care about the main line at all. Our father was the firstborn, that meat we had to continue the line, not our uncle's sons. Hell, Xander and Thackery are more messed up than my father.

Time passed as I stayed there under the tree on my side, enjoying the solitude while it lasted. I had about thirty more minutes until the current hour would be over and the last period of the day would start. I closed my eyes and started to relax, soon falling asleep on the cold, hard ground.

~~~

"Hey," a girl's voice called out to me, my shoulder being shaken as she continued to talk, "Erik, wake up."

I opened my eyes to find Dalca's witch friend looking at me. She had her head above me as she was shaking me, her hair hitting my face.

"Get off of me," I spit out a few strands of her hair that had fallen in my mouth while talking. I shrugged my shoulder violently to get her hand off before grabbing the same hand by the wrist to prevent her from touching me again. "What are you even doing here? Shouldn't you be in class?"

"I could ask you the same thing!" She pulled her hand away from me and sat back on her heels and with her head as high as it could go before hitting the pine branches. "I'm here with my Advanced Biology class. We're checking the school garden and taking some samples of plants. Now, why are you out here? I know you have a class going on right now that you're required to be in."

"I don't have to be in class, I'll skip if I want t- Ow!" I grabbed the back of my head and felt the pain erupt through the back of my skull. "Why did you hit me?" I turned to look at her, glaring in irritation.

"You shouldn't skip class, it's bad for your school performance!" She crossed her arms in front of her and tucked her hands into her armpits. Apparently she was cold.

"I really don't care about school. I'm just going to be killed by a sun or night creature just for being a Kirov." I set my head back on the ground and rolled onto my back. "You don't know how troublesome it is to be part of the Royal bloodline."

"I may not be part of the Royal bloodline, but I do have a small strand of a Bluebood ancestor in me," her eyes bore into me, a tingling sensation going through the side she looked at. "And you may not care about your education now, but what about later if you do survive? What will you have as a job? Flipping hamburgers at McDonalds? I don't think you want a job like that."

"I don't, but my grades are top notch. My GPA is a perfect 4.0. Stop worrying about others and focus on yourself. Hearing you cry earlier when talking to Dalca was so annoying." I groaned in irritation and rested the back of my right hand on my forehead.

"Fine then," she spoke bitterly while sniffling and wiping her cherry red nose.

I glanced over at her and sat upright, reaching in my pocket and pulling out a tissue. "Here, use this," I shoved it into her hand and looked at her lazily. "You're still vulnerable to sickness, get that bacteria out. Getting the flu at this time of the year isn't good, same with colds."

She looked at me carefully before using the tissue to blow her nose and then tossing it into the trash can near the bench. "Thanks. That was... nice of you." She glanced at the ground and then back up at me.

'What are you looking at?" I snapped, slightly irritated by her look.

"Sorry," she turned away, "I have that habit. Aster points it out constantly to me."

I chuckled, "I'm assuming that Aster is your twin brother, correct?"

"Yeah. He's the one who is usually tired and keeps training to get on the varsity basketball team."

"I see. Is there any reason he's trying to get on varsity?"

"I believe it's because of the pact that him, Austin, and Nic made when they were little kids. All of them are obsessed with basketball. It's like the sport is their religion." She laughed at her last comment before standing up and brushing the snow and dirt off of her skirt. She picked up a plastic bag off the ground, three small containers inside of it. "I have to go back with my class. See you around." She waved goodbye to me before running off to catch up with one of her classmates.

I stayed there under the tree, gazing up through the branches to the sky. I lied to her. I wanted to live, I'd destroy anyone and anything that tried to kill me. I'll be as barbaric as my dad to survive. I would become the next Royal king no matter what.