"Are you almost ready?" Kai asked, poking his head inside the bathroom.
"Yes, I'm just finishing up," I replied, briefly glimpsing at his gaze through the mirror.
"Ok, we are leaving in about twenty minutes," Kai announced as his voice receded when he moved away from the bathroom door.
"I'll be done before then. I just have to brush my teeth and put on some lipstick," I hollered back, keeping my voice in a regular tone.
Today is Saturday, February 3rd, but it's late at night. Almost everyone in the mansion is in a frenzy about tonight's meeting with the Somerset Coven, which I'm getting ready for. Tonight, we must discuss the delicate matter between Isabel, her mate Grant, and her husband Troy. It's a critical discussion that mustn't fail. Otherwise, not only are my votes at stake, but alliances between the Collin's Coven and Isabel's Coven are at risk of breaking. Only a handful of Royals will be at the meeting, and it is mandatory for the wives to attend.
For the late-night meeting, my pregnant figure was dazzled in a loosely snugged, flowy long black gown that had a leg slit. About an hour ago, Darlene enhanced my face in smoky nude makeup. All I have left to do is brush my teeth and add some lipstick, and then I'll be ready to roll after I put on my heels.
As I turned on the sink's faucet of tepid water, my mind spaced out as the sound of running water echoed away when I blacked out.
"No, this isn't the right time for this to happen!" I uttered, hearing my voice echo into the distance when my time gap took me somewhere into the past.
Flutes played a beautiful melody to my ears as drums enchanted a thundering upbeat. Rays of light coruscate my eyes as the landscape merged before my vision. Directly in front of my view, a massive group of young vampires and vampiresses danced around a huge fire pit. Around the perimeter of the dancing crowd, small vamp children clapped their hands on the blankets with the grown-ups while others played the ancient instruments. Flames from the fire were just as festive as them as they celebrated.
My eyes wandered, and I saw innumerable amount of tents sewn from linen and animal skins. In the cavity of a remote location nestled between two opposite cliffs was where they had set up camp on a rocky, dried flat-surfaced land, sharing it with dozens of other Covens.
Somewhere from behind me, Kai's voice resounded. "You won the battle, so why aren't you celebrating with everybody else?"
With considerable effort, I fought against the painful gravitational force and turned in the direction towards the sound of Kai's voice. Not too far in from around the spaced tents, I spotted Chester and Kai with a horse blacker than night. Chester was cleaning the horse's hooves while the young teenager Kai was hovering around his big brother. They both wore blue leg-length garment kilts without shirts.
I inched closer but not too close to Kai. As a teenager, he didn't have any recognition of me as his mate, so I had to keep quiet and stay clear of his body from touching me. He'd be the only one who could hear me or feel my ghostly presence if his body walked through mine. None of this can happen because he didn't know we were mates until he was ten thousand years old. Regardless if I can't change the past, I still want to be careful.
"I have to care for my horse first," Chester replied as he busily chipped at the dirt on the horse's back right hoof.
"You should just eat him," Kai grumbled, walking to the front of the steed.
I recognized the steed as one of the horses from when Mr. Collin gifted Chester and Veronica the king's horses because the king and his army tried to detain their vamp babies. Twelve years back prior to this moment, when Kai was three years old, a human king and his army somehow kidnapped some of the Collin Coven's vamp babies along with Kai and his friends. At that time, my time gap showed me Mr. Collin and his clan, including the vampiresses, all slaughtering the humans for harming their little ones. Overall, it helped me to understand why Kai hates humans in his adulthood.
Chester chuckled at Kai's remark. "Why would I kill Shade when he was a gift from Dad?" he asked as he continued to work on the hoof.
"I know, but he's distracting you from having fun," Kai rebutted in a mutter, kicking a loose tiny pebble with his sandal from out of the dirt, but then, while Kai wasn't looking at the horse— Shade sneezed on him, and he jumped back, wiping his chest in disgust. "You gross animal!" Kai yelled, appalled at the horse.
Chester roared in laughter, dropping the hoof as he patted the horse's rear to keep Shade from being startled by their ruckus commotion.
"Now I like Shade a lot more," Chester teased, and Kai's cheeks flared as he glared at him.
"This is why I hate animals!" Kai clamored, storming over to the nearby wooden table against the tent. "They're filthy pests!" he grumbled, grabbing a rag to clean his chest from in a bowl of water.
As he washed his chest with a rag, Chester chuckled, "Oh, lighten up, Kai. A little horse sneeze never hurt anyone. Besides, it's what you deserve for telling me to eat my horse."
"Whatever!" Kai snorted, dipping the rag back into the basin of water. "I'll never own a horse when I get old enough to go to war!"
As he finished cleaning Shade's sneeze from his chest, I couldn't help but be tickled by their banter. It felt nostalgic to see Kai as a young teenager. The Collin brothers act no differently from the present time.
"Trust me, the war isn't what it's cracked up to be," Chester advised as he washed his hands and arms clean with another rag that he kept dapping into an ancient ceramic bowl of water from on the same table.
"But I can't wait to be a mighty warrior like you, Dad, Grandpa Vlad, and Grandpa Vincent," Kai exclaimed, expressing his enthusiasm gleaming through his eyes. Little did he have any idea that one day, he would indeed become a mighty warrior.