(AN/ Helios is around 13 years old at the moment, Anora is 12. It has only been 3 and a half or so years since their birth. From now on they will age slower. Just want to clear this up before the chapter, as some have asked these questions. Ask any age related questions under this paragraph please)

HELIOS' POV

I don't find those around me much trouble, if I'm being honest. Trouble doesn't find me like it does other people.

Except for when I decide to sneak out after dark. Most mortal children, my mama has told me, are afraid of the dark. I don't ever need to be afraid of it, I explained to her once, because if I weren't alone in the dark, I could just kill anyone who tried to hurt me. She didn't like when I said this and sent me to my room.

It's not too bad around the castle, but I feel the need to explore every area of Volterra, sometimes even outside of it. Trains can take you anywhere these days and my immortality makes me safe from any harm that could come to me during these excursions.

Anora promised that she would meet me by the ocean tonight. Outside of our holiday, we don't get much time to talk. My studies take up a lot of time, I foolishly decided that taking an advanced chemistry class would be fun. I won't be tricked by exploding volcanoes ever again.

So I trekked down from my window to the sands of the Southern Ocean, seeing if she had stuck to the plan. The many fish and wildlife in the distance were comforting, but eerie as I walked. There is so much to the world and yet I feel like I don't see enough of it.

My mate. She was just a hint of blonde hair in the distance once I stared to my right at a little cavern.

How she managed to sneak what appeared to be a lawn chair out confounds me. Wouldn't her dad notice that not one, but two  chairs were missing from their rooms? Whatever, it works in our favor. I hate sitting on the sand. gets into your trousers and itches.

Warm arms embraced me, the arms of my mate as she all but dragged me to the little den she'd created within the beach. Two chairs and a small cavern just for us.

"I can't believe we were able to get away with this," Anora whispered between giggles, "Our Dads will kill us if they find out we did this."

"Papa can't discipline me for anything he sees in his gift," I reminded her as I sat down on the chair in front of me. "That's the deal."

"A good deal, if you're asking me."

Things between Anora and I had always been natural. I was older than her physically by about a year and a half, so mama said that we could begin dating now that we're a bit older. We decided that we would wait until a bit older to think about our mating bond. School and now my parent's wedding would take up so much time- it's better to think about a relationship later.

It doesn't stop the longing, though.

Anora's face scrunched up as she got sand in her shoe. I began to laugh as she aggressively flung the shoe from her foot onto the stone in the cavern. "Freaking hate the sand."

"Then why did you say we could come to the ocean?" I snarked back.

"Ugh," she complained as she pouted at me in that angry way only someone who cares about you does, "You're not my mom. You don't have to lecture me about it."

I knew she wasn't serious. She rarely was. Anora liked to complain for the sake of venting out whatever negative feelings she'd amassed that day. Could be a failed test or a fight with her mom, who doesn't get her the way she probably should by now.

It's what I love about her, even when it does get heated, she's never too serious about things that don't matter.

I pulled my fingers through my thick black hair. "We have less of a chance being caught here. That's good. Great. My mama's busy planning the wedding with your mom and we can sit out here in the dead of night, finally getting a break from it all."

"We could stargaze," she suggested.

"We could. We could do whatever we want out here. The beauty of being immortal." Anora laughed and began reaching for something in a black satchel. "What did you bring to our new little place?"

"Only a few books that your dads said we weren't allowed to read until we reached full maturity," she snickered. "They don't check the books checked out anymore. Not since we were small and couldn't read yet. Afton promised he wouldn't tell, as long as I didn't tell my mom that he borrowed her violin and may have gotten it out of tune."

"Couldn't he have tuned it himself?" I asked, completely not questioning what she said before the violin part.

"Nope. He doesn't know how, and I assume he was too ashamed to ask for help. She told him that it goes out of tune and until he learned how to tune it, she wouldn't lend it to him to practice," Anora explained, grabbing at a book.

"I know my dads have banned books on Children of the Moon. Papa Aro is convinced I'll have nightmares. What other ones?"

"The Thousand Year War, Vampire History in the Middle Ages, A Tale of Three Kings, Bloods of the Child Vampire, The Ring of Compromise: Vampire Marriage and War Tactics... All of them your dads said we can't read. Don't know why. They sound like our textbooks on European History."

"Or history in general," I lamented as Anora passed me the copy (likely the only copy) of The Thousand Year War. "Let me guess, censored for gore and violence. Or, better yet, my dads did some shitty things they're hoping to explain to me when I'm older."

"Explain to us," she reminded. "We're both... I don't know. We're both hybrids."

"Yeah, but it's not your dads doing the things." I paused and flipped through the book. "Should we read some of it and say Hell to the consequences of tonight?"

Anora silently nodded as she flipped to an unknown page.

I did the same. The book was hard to read, written in Greek. I'd been taking Greek, obviously, but it didn't help that this was some old Greek, Greek from at least five centuries ago at the earliest. I'd learned enough to be able to translate, albeit slowly.

I started from the end, trying to spare myself from the details of war.

"From the beginning to the bitter end, neither side wanted to let go of their differences and live in peace. Vampires had made their way into the common legend, becoming folklore that could not be eradicated. Wallachian forces met the almost defeated Volterran Army at sundown in 766 AD..."

I skipped a few paragraphs, hoping to get something more than what I already knew.

"...The heartbroken Marcus broke free from his captivity, covered in the cremation of his wife, Lady Didyme, setting forth from the tower to meet his brothers in battle. While the King of the Wallachian Coven was not looking, engaged in a strong firefight with Alexandros and Caius Volturi, Marcus struck from behind, cutting of the head of Octavian, ending the battle once and for all. Without their one true king, the Wallachians were forced to surrender. Over fifty of their members were burned, only ten allowed to live on as outcasts within vampire society..."

My heart sunk at the words. My papa, the father I'd known my whole life, had been married before. And she had died. Died a gruesome death, as it so seemed.

I knew exactly why we weren't supposed to read this. These books held secrets about my family that they didn't want to share with me. That's fine, I guess, they have the right to have their secrets. But a wife? My mama is supposed to be their Queen, their mate. Yet they have this wife, Didyme, that they never talk about?

"What does yours talk about?" Anora asked as she turned a page of her own book. "This is mostly about ancient Greece and Alexandros."

The decision to not tell her was a split second one I prayed I wouldn't regret in the future.

Nothing much," I lied, "just a bunch of war propaganda. They really didn't like the Wallachian vampires."

"Romanian now. Mom and dad don't like talking about them at all. Mom said they were evil, though, which is why they're all dead now," my mate admitted as she closed her own book. "Do you want to walk the beach with me?"

The sun was nowhere near coming up, we had only been out for a few hours reading. So I nodded and waited for Anora to lift herself from her seat before doing the same. I followed her lead, like I usually did, watching her every move with care.

Anora was much calmer in the past year than she had been in our youth. Small tantrums mellowed out. I never had that issue, but mama says thats because I was an entirely different kind of issue: I was a runner. Anora never ran, never jogged, she almost skipped her way through life. Adorable, but slower than me. So I eventually let her take the lead in our little walks, finding a pace that worked for the two of us.

We watched the moon, which was just under halfway full, as it shimmered down onto the slow moving waves. We allowed ourselves quiet, listening to plenty of birds that came by.

It reminded me how much I care about her. I would be nothing if Anora wasn't here. I wouldn't feel complete at all.

I got way too lucky.

Our silence was broken with the breaking of a branch. Not under our feet, but off in the distance. No small animal could have done something like this. Anora's eyes squinted to see, and she gasped.

"What is it?" I whispered the question over to her.

"It's humans," Anora said, grabbing my hand as she moved a few steps back. "Their heartbeats are too fast. I think they're in danger."

"You haven't gotten your phone back, have you?" She'd been grounded a week ago for breaking curfew. She shook her head. "Damn. Mama tracks mine."

"Can't call the police to check on them." Anora shakes her head. "One is bleeding. I think they fell."

"Men or women?"

"Two women." My mate lets go of my hand and walks forward, getting a better look at the two of them. "There's a lot of blood. We need to go and help."

At this point I knew we were going to be caught by our parents. Hopefully once they saw us helping a bleeding person on the streets next to a beach they would realize that we don't truly deserve that bad of a punishment.

"Heelie, we need to go now! The other one is freaking out."

Anora grabbed my arm and shook me forward, forcing us to up the pace and make our way back into the trees that lined the streets next to the Southern Beach. The smell of blood hit me as soon as a small branch hit me in the face.

My mate let go of my arm once the smell of pavement hit. Two women were on the ground, one bleeding from the arm and the other visibly distressed. Both were in their twenties with dark hair and brown eyes. They could have been sisters, or cousins. Would explain them being together at night.

"Do either of you know a healer?" The one who was alright spoke in Greek. "She fell... on a branch."

It was a little weird to fall on a branch. Quite weird considering I didn't see any branches nearby, but perhaps this altercation was between people they were running from or this fiasco was embarrassing enough to lie to the two young teenagers trying to help? Maybe I'm overthinking things. Branches are menaces, after all. Fell on enough as a kid to know that.

Anora ripped off her white cardigan and wrapped it around the arm of the bleeding woman.

"We don't have our phones, but the local clinic isn't too far away," I explained as the woman I was talking to began to cry. "We can help you bring her. She needs to see a doctor right now. What is your name?"

"My name is Didyme," she said through her tears.