"I want to leave! Like right now!" Silver yelled over the loud music. Nick leaned down to Silver's ear to speak to him.
"We just got here," he answered loudly.
They had arrived at the party. It was in a large, expensive-looking beach house that consisted mainly of walls made out of windows and far too many eighteen-year-olds. Nick's clever "disguise" was a black baseball cap tilted lowly to cover his face. He had changed once again and was now wearing a crimson button-down, with the sleeves folded to the elbow, tucked into a different pair of ripped black skinny jeans. He topped the look off with shiny black doc matters.
Silver wore an orange and black lined long-sleeve with regular black jeans and some white converse. Without any word or indication that he was moving, he headed towards the nearest opening he could find.
After a minute of searching for a room that wasn't filled with dancing bodies, he eventually found the kitchen. This room was still very full, but it only had a couple of kids playing beer pong and a few people making out.
"Where is Klara? I don't like this at all," he turned to the prince next to him. No seemed to recognize him yet, which was great.
He rolled his eyes, "We've been here for about 10 minutes and you already wanna leave? Is this what you do at every party you go to? Complain and latch on to your werewolf cousin?"
"I've never been to a party before," Silver said dully, "And now I see why, this all makes me uncomfortable,"
Nick's eyes all but leaped out of his head, "You've never been to a party before?"
"Of course not. Why would I?" Silver pulled out his phone and texted Klara.
Luckily for him, he got an immediate response telling him that she and her friends were upstairs. He turned to the prince, "She's upstairs"
"Where upstairs?" Nick asked, grabbing a random plastic cup filled with something blue. He necked it in one go and winced.
"In... the third door on the left." He answered, reading the text message.
Nick grabbed two other cups and offered one to Silver. Silver shook his head, so the prince shrugged and downed them both in about five seconds flat. His eyes rolled back for a split second as he grimaced at the flavor.
"Okay," he said gruffly, "Let's go" he grabbed Silver's hand with his left and another cup with his right and headed up the stairs.
Once they exited the kitchen, Silver could hear the music a little better. He pleasantly surprised to find out that he actually knew this song.
By the time they got to the room, Nick kicked open the door since he had no empty hands. There they found seven people in the room. Even though there were about two black people in the group and an Asian boy, Klara seemed to be the one with the most color and life in her face. Silver took a breath, the lifelessness of the room was uncanny.
Vampires.
There was no furniture in the room except for the carpeted floors that they all sat on, littered with red cups. Klara sat next to a girl with brown skin and puffy hair. The girl talked animatedly, not even noticing the fact that Nick had just broken down the door. Klara would nod and empty her cup and the other girl, who was holding a half-empty bottle of some brown liquid, would refill it from time to time.
Then there were two people in the corner making out to the point where it didn't even look PG anymore. Finally, there were three people, two white guys and the Asian boy all sat in a circle listening to something that the tallest guy was saying. He had long blonde dreadlocks and a gaunt face.
At the sound of the door slamming open, Klara looked up as well as a tall boy with the dreadlocks in the corner. She blinked at them for a moment before giving a tipsy laugh.
"His royal highness and my cousin finally shows up. The party started three hours ago," Klara drawled. Everyone stopped what they were doing and sat up at that point.
Nick grinned, lifting up his hat and downing his drink. Silver didn't even notice they were still holding hands, "So much for my cunning disguise," The prince grumbled half-heartedly.
The girl that was talking to Klara screamed, "Oh my god, no freaking way!" She jumped up and, for a second, it seemed as if she were coming to speak to the prince, but she actually tackled Silver into a hug.
"Klara has told me so much about you!" she squealed.
"This is my roommate, Angie," Klara said before taking a big gulp of her drink. She stood up slowly and walked over to them, "So, how have you been taking care of my little cousin?"
"Perfectly well, Ms. Bruno," Nick beamed "I've only been poisoned once and it doesn't even hurt that much anymore."
"I can't believe you actually hang out with a prince," Angie gushed and turned to Nick, "That's so cool. Prince Nicholas, oh wow! You're so perfect!"
"Why thank you," he winked.
Something flared up inside of Silver, "We don't actually hang out or anything."
"We literally hung out today," The prince raised an eyebrow, "That's how I got poisoned."
"You actually got poisoned?" A guy threw his arm over Klara's shoulder, making everyone in the circle cringe. He was the tall one with the dreadlocks, "That's terrible, your Highness. My name is Darius. This is my party." He held a hand out.
Nick shook his hand, as Klara shook his arm off of her shoulder with the roll of her eyes, "Nice to meet you all. Thanks for inviting me," the prince said politely.
"Like I could just reject the prince of this great nation? No way," He smiled, his eyes falling to Silver's, "And you're Klara's cousin."
"Yeah," Silver said, not liking the man's gaze at all.
"A human, huh? I hardly ever see real humans, to be honest," Darius confessed
"Really? That's a bit strange. There's a lot of humans in Virlaq," Nick jumped in, tightening his grip around Silver's hand.
"Yeah, well... I haven't seen a lot living humans is what I mean. Most of them don't stay human for very long around my neighborhood. My parents are very 'pro-vamp', you know?" He tried to explain, "They don't really like... others, you know?"
"Our family is the same. Especially Klara's dad. He doesn't really like others," Silver blurted out, sounding a bit more venomous than he meant to.
"So we do have something in common," Darius beamed down at Klara.
"Joy," Klara drawled. Angie giggled.
"Come sit with us, you guys," the perky vampire said, "Darius, join us too. I was just telling Klara the craziest story ever."
"It was pretty crazy," Klara added.
They all sat down and formed their own little circle. Angie told them a dozen stories, filling everyone's cups except for Silver (because he didn't have one) until she had to get a new bottle from downstairs.
Angie was in the middle of telling them how she escaped the office of her homophobic principle when Nick's head softly fell onto Silver's shoulders, eyes shut in a deep sleep. She squealed in the middle of her sentence.
"I knew it! I knew it! You guys seemed so lovey-dovey!" She cooed.
Klara winced and turned to Silver for clarification. Silver shook his head, "We're not- no- it's not... Er.. we- he just won't let me leave his house."
"The royal palace, you mean?" Darius asked, eyeing the prince, "Is he okay?"
"He was poisoned today, like he said. He slept for a few hours but I think that took a lot out of him," Silver sighed, rolling his eyes and trying to shake Nick off of him with waking him up.
"I guess being a prince is dangerous," Darius said, eyes trained on the prince as if he were lost in a trance, "Being poisoned and whatnot"
"Ah, actually someone was trying to poison me. He took the poison for me," Silver said with a nervous laugh, "But his vampire-ness protected him so it was all good... after a while."
"That's so romantic," Angie gushed.
"That's... unfortunate," Darius said.
Silver looked at him with a raised eyebrow, "Excuse me?"
"Unfortunate that anyone was poisoned, not the fact that it was him instead of you, of course," Darius laughed with his hands raised in surrender.
"So you guys really aren't dating?" Angie asked, "Or lovers, or... whatever royal people are?"
"I'm not royalty, first of all. Second of all, we're not anything but acquaintances," Silver explained "At most, friends maybe."
She pouted "So you guys don't like... do anything romantic like go on dates? Or even, like, kiss or any-"
"Kiss?" The prince's head shot up, silencing everyone in the circle. His eyes were droopy and he smelled like a bar, "Kiss?"
Nick's hands shakily cupped Silver's face and face pulled his close. Silver would never admit this out loud but, very unnoticeably, he leaned it slightly.
And then they were kissing.
Silver was kissing a prince.
Everything happened in a blur. At one moment, Silver was caught up in his first-ever kiss-- and with tongue too. Angie was cheering drunkenly and Darius held a wild look in his eye.
Then the next moment, Prince Nick was torn off of Silver by a very aggravated werewolf. Klara hadn't transformed or anything, but her eyes were a dangerous yellow and held a murderous glint in them. They stood up, glaring at each other, both irritated beyond belief and both obviously very drunk.
Silver still sat, now with his knees up to his chin, touching his lips, which still tingled, gingerly just to remind himself that that had just happened. His face was felt very hot now even though he hadn't even drunk anything. He could still taste the twinge of alcohol mixed some sort of berry drink in his tongue. Silver just tried to push down the smile that was fighting its way onto his lips, as well as the feeling of euphoria that had seemingly come out of nowhere while his cousin and the prince argued about whether Klara allowed Nick to kiss Silver.
Then, exactly two seconds later, Klara's shouting turned into dry heaving. And then she was vomiting all over Prince Nick.
Silver, at the end of his half-hour, first-ever party experience, couldn't figure out whether he liked parties now or not.
***
Prince Nick paced his room, shirtless, at nearly 4 am.
How dare she throw up on him. That hillbilly werewolf. That backcountry, no good, bigoted, little girl yelled at him and then emptied her dirty stomach on him. After he had saved her cousin from being poisoned that same day.
"Who does she think sh-"
Brrrrrrring brrrrring.
His phone rang and he plucked it out of his back pocket with a groan. The caller ID read a number he didn't recognize but he stored it in his memory.
"Who is this?"
It would be nearly impossible to find the Prince of Virlaq's number, there was no way this was a normal person.
A female voice answered, "This is... uh... Prince Nicholas of Virlaq Kingdom, hm?"
"Who. is. This." he said, firmer this time.
"My name is not to be revealed, but everyone calls me Stella Rose," she sounded like she was chewing gum. She continued nasally, "Uh... it seems here you... 'thwarted the assassination of Mr. Silver Chase Bruno', hm?" it sounded as if she were reading off a script.
"W-" The prince's face scrunched up, "Who the hell are you?"
"I just told you!" the lady cried, just as loud as the prince did, "My name is classified, but they call me St-"
"Yeah yeah yeah, Stella Rose, I know your fake name. I mean you people," The prince face-palmed, "Who do you work for?'
"Ooooh," The woman popped and smacked her gum, "I work with the Dragons"
"Excuse me?"
"I'm a secretary and receptionist. And it says here... hold on, I lost the document I was reading. Just a sec," There was a sound of shuffling papers, "I literally just had it, where did it- oh! Here we are. You have 'thwarted the assassination of Mr. Silver Chase Bruno', hm?"
"Secretary of what? Who are the Dragons?" The prince was getting fed up.
"Dragon co. We make everything. Shoes, hats, clothes-- we probably made the clothes you're wearing right now. We do a lot," She explained as if he was dumb.
The prince raised his eyebrows. This famous company was admitting to attempted murder? In front of the prince?
"You attempted to murder a human," The prince was flabbergasted.
"Among other things," she said as if they were talking about the weather, "Anyway, please answer the question, Prince Nicholas. Did you or did you not thwart the assassination of Mr. Silver Chase Bruno?"
"I did obviously, he's my..." Nick hesitated.
"He's your..?"
"Nothing, um... what reason do you have to attempt an assassination of Silver Chase?" Nick pinched the bridge of his nose, frustrated, "Why are you people doing this?"
"I am not able to disclose that information. Regardless of what relationship you have Mr. Chase, are you implying that you will continue to protect him?
He scoffed, "One hundred percent. I won't let you lay a finger on him"
She paused for a second, her gum-smacking stopped. "I see. And you realize we will not stop attempted to kill him, hm? We will eventually get him, you know that, right?"
"You'll have to kill me first," he seethed.
"Hm? Interesting choice in words," She smacked her gum for a second longer, then continued talking, "We'll be in touch. You can always call this number if you need anything. I'll be here."
"You know I could easily track you down right? You've made yourself an enemy of a prince," He said with a cocky smile.
She let out a laugh that sounded like a wheeze, "I think you underestimate us. You can try all you want. We're just as powerful as you, Your Highness, if not more. Our power stretches even further than Virlaq," she snorted, "We'll be in touch."
And then the line was cut.
Nick sat there, mind reeling and confused as all hell.
He ran a hand through his hair, "The Dragons,"