Gael has always been an outcast and a weirdo - but when he moves to the small town of Imperium, he finds himself in the middle of a supernatural community, he didn't know he needed, or existed. It only becomes more interesting when the local hot vam...
"Now, sleep. I'll join you when I've made up the beds in the guest room and the sofa downstairs."
I nodded and grabbed my duvet, hugging it close.
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"Actually, how did the rest of the exhibition go?" I asked as I filled my mug with coffee.
"We got an award," Fred said and shrugged a shoulder as she bit into her toast. "Kind of pales in comparison to fighting off a dryad though, doesn't it?"
"I've never gotten an award."
"I've never gotten an award," Creek repeated, sounding more like the leading lady from an old film than himself.
"That's not how I said it at all," I laughed, and Creek shrugged and poured sugar into their coffee.
"It was totally how you said it. With stars in your eyes and all."
I rolled my apparently starry eyes and returned to spreading butter on my toast.
"What're we doing about the dryad?" Abel asked and handed me the jam, after me having failed to stretch my arm far enough over the table. My ribs were still killing me and moving around too much, which apparently going for jam was, did a number on my torso.
"I told my mum about it and she's gathering the elders. Since Abel's mum is here, my mum thinks it's going to be easier to get the vampires back in line. Not a lot of vampiric elders here, so they desperately needed some sort of leader," Creek explained.
"Yeah, so uh... My mum has called all of their mums and everyone's getting an earful," Abel said and moved a little closer to me. "We all know there's tension between the communities and there always has been. But this? It's medieval. My mum remembers when things were truly bad. Like when one kind would actively hunt the other. When it was socially acceptable to hang and show off a wolf's pelt in your living room. She doesn't like medieval. She likes the world moving on to something better. She has lived through all of the major civil rights movements. Hell, she has participated in most of them. For her, this isn't just some kids doing dumb shit, you know?" He took a deep breath. "So, she has called all the elders. Some are as serious about this as her, others aren't. But she's doing her hardest to get everyone back in line. Which also meant I had to un-banish Liam." He shrugged and took a sip of his coffee. "Can't build a community on banishing members from it. But he knows it's still an option. He's walking on a very thin line here. His mum is also coming to have a talk with him, so we'll probably not see much of him for the rest of the term."
"Who knew you're all such mama's boys," Cal said then after a long moment of silence.
Abel snorted, exposing his fangs. "Don't you say a thing about our mums. It's a matriarchal society I come from. Better show respect for the women who literally shaped our community for the last thousand years."
"Wait, hold up, thousand? Your mum is over a thousand years old?" I asked, my jaw just about hitting the floor.
"Probably older too. I don't know. But yeah, she's one of the oldest." He shrugged so nonchalantly. Like it wasn't a big deal his mum had probably been around for maybe the fall of the Roman empire.
