As Coraline's birthday party continued in the grand mansion, Chester excused himself from the indoor swimming pool where some of the Coven members and his family were swimming. Those who were not swimming were mingling in various rooms throughout the mansion. Groups of teenagers were even outside in the backyard, hanging out.
With one leap, Chester dashed into the main living room at the front entrance. The spacious and elegant room was quiet, allowing him to cease this chance to think. Not even the Butler was at the door.
He flopped down on the couch, contemplating in his agitated thoughts. Last night, Chester's eldest son confessed that he had impregnated Becky, a vampiress from his clan. Long ago, sometime after the Second War ended, Becky's family joined their Coven because her Coven had tumultuously fallen during the Second War. Having known their Coven before, Headmaster Vlad welcomed them to his Coven with hospitality as they became an integral part of their new home.
Becky's Coven was notably weaker because when their Headmaster underwent metamorphosis during the night from a buried human body, his transformation didn't align within the estimated timeframe years of the momentous event of the very first Brightest Blue Moon, which only occurs every thousand years since after it.
Headmasters, who emerged after the first-generation Headmasters, weren't bestowed the honorable title known as Superiors. Some non-superior Headmasters even referred to the Superior Headmasters as the Originals, acknowledging them as the originators to populate their Kind throughout every dimensional world, driven solely by their instincts without the guidance of wiser beings.
Instincts alone naturally guided the Superior Headmasters to form their Covens by selecting their granted humans and locating their human female destined mates before this population developed, honoring them as the first group to transform their chosen humans into vampires and vampiresses on that very first existing Brightest Blue Moon to ever simultaneously grace the skies across all these dimensional worlds.
Chester mulled over these historical thoughts. He could easily exile Becky and his unborn grandchild from the Coven with a snap of his finger, but he didn't have the heart to bring himself to do it. With another animus war looming, Becky and her unborn baby wouldn't stand a chance of surviving alone out there. The probability of another vampire kidnapping her would be substantially higher without the protection of a Coven.
However, his intense anger towards Troy almost convinced him to permanently banish him. Yet, his deep love for Zoey prevented him from taking that action.
As he struggled to make a decision about the situation, Chester was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell. He immediately recognized the familiar scent outside and hurried to open the door.
Standing before him were Isabel's beautiful scarlet-red eyes and a warm smile. "Hello," the vampiress greeted him softly as a shy smile was transparent on her cheeks. It's been a while since she saw him because she hadn't made any effort to see her in-laws lately, and she felt guilty about it.
"Isabel, it's so good to see you," Chester welcomed her, stepping aside to let his daughter-in-law enter. "Please, let me take your coat."
"Sure," she sighed, allowing him to remove her fluffy fur-white coat.
Just as she faced him, she saw Chester's eyes flare before his lips pursed at the noticeable five-month pregnancy she bore.
He closed his eyes upon sensing that the unborn vamp baby she carried wasn't his grandchild. Matters only worsened when Chester recognized the unborn baby's scent belonged to one of their well-known enemies called the Somerset Coven.
Fear raced through the unborn baby's heartbeat as it sensed Chester's unfamiliar scent, but Isabel's pacifying caress over her belly instantly soothed her offspring.
"I suppose I have some explaining to do." Isabel frowned, noticing that Chester looked pale as if he was about to faint.
"I'd say so!" Troy's voice boomed with pure jealousy as his appearance arrived in the living room. Catching the whiff of her scent, he eagerly dashed himself here as quickly as he could, excited to see her. But now, seeing her bearing the enemy's vamp baby drove him to madness.
"So this is why you refused to see me!" he growled, going to her. "You are rolling around in bed with our enemy! I thought you couldn't have offspring! But here you are, preg—"
Amid his yelling, Isabel impulsively slapped him across the face, burning a red handprint on his cheek.
"Don't you dare speak to me like that! You've cheated thousands of times while I stood back and let myself think you'd stop! I've borne the pain of loving you for so long. Once you slept with my best friend Becky, I realized you never loved me," she growled, hissing her fangs as burning tears welled in her eyes.
"I do love you," Troy proclaimed, softening his voice as the stinging on his cheek gradually subsided. He couldn't bear to see her cry.
"Cheating doesn't show that! But none of this matters because I no longer love you. I found my destined mate so that pain you caused is gone because my mate healed me," Isabel revealed, her voice partly cracky from the sobbing while Troy was dumbfounded at what he heard.
"You bear your mate's offspring?" Chester asked, and Isabel nodded her head, confirming it as his wife appeared out of the blue when she zipped here.
"Isabel, it's wonderful to see you!" Zoey happily greeted her with a warm hug as she looked past the fact that the unborn vamp baby wasn't related to her.
Once Troy's senses kicked in and functioned, additional rage chafed
through his blood, and pulsated his heart. "Mother, why on Earth are you welcoming her when she carries an enemy's offspring!" he aggressively snapped at his mother, earning himself a nastier growl from his father.
Upon hearing his son's contemptuous remark towards his mother, Chester's eyes flared in redness as he snarled a roar. "Don't you dare speak to your mother like that!"
Touching her husband's shoulder, Zoey gently soothed him. "It's fine. He's only upset." Her words came out like a delicate sea breeze, drifting from the coast. Yes, the baby was the offspring of their enemy, but she acknowledged that the unborn baby had done nothing wrong and was innocent.
"It's not fine!" Chester clamored aggressively. "Becky carries his offspring, and now he thinks he has the right to be upset with Isabel!"
"You got Becky pregnant!" Isabel
recoiled, processing what she heard.
Disbelief etched across her face, and her jaw dropped as she absorbed the staggering revelation that her best friend was carrying her husband's offspring.
A little late, but Chester rubbed his forehead once he realized what he had indecorously blurted at the wrong time.
"I was going to tell you, but you were avoiding me. Now I understand why," Troy calmly replied as he eyed her small baby bump on that last remark.
"I wasn't ready to tell you about my mate, but then discovering I got pregnant only made matters worse with how I felt," Isabel confessed with deep sorrow underlying the regret for her actions.
Again, Troy's anger flared from staring at her baby bump, so Chester interjected before the fighting escalated. "I believe we should go somewhere private to discuss this matter."
"I feel that might be best," Isabel agreed, having sadness shimmering in her eyes.