Change is sweeping through the world, as humanity fights for autonomy, discord tears apart the foundations of the vampire order, and dhampirs return to the world after centuries of war between two powerful peoples. Dhampirs, creatures known to heral...
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Silvia's sleep schedule was on an odd rotation of late. One month she was up in the daytime, and then they pulled an all-nighter and thrived in the night for the next. It didn't matter much to her, but the nature of it had her sometimes forgetting to pay attention to other things. Since Neil was a vampire, she hadn't thought it particularly important to pay attention to whether or not womanly hell paid her a visit every month. The first time, she figured it was a fluke. Girls, on occasion, skipped a month naturally, but the second and third time, she was starting to get nervous.
It wasn't like she was showing or anything. Maybe her stomach was a little rounder, but she had been eating more lately. A pregnancy test was a wash for most mages. When they had a baby in their belly, their magic multiplied to accommodate two, and it didn't result in very reliable tests. That left her doing what she'd been putting off for about a week or two, but the gnawing in her mind was unbearable.
She found Damien with the blood slaves, though they called them blood givers now. It was a nicer word, and these ones had chosen to stay with the Arcs. In return, the Arcs supported their families and did their best to improve the quality of life for their human populations. That meant modernizing them, and that was no small feat when these people didn't know what electricity was, let alone a smart phone.
Neil's second in command, Damien, was extremely kind to the girls who chose to stay in the castle. A life ago, he'd been a mage who fought against vampire kind, and after his change, his sensitivities to his own hadn't diminished. Damien had been a powerful mage so corrupted by the dark magic flowing through him that he'd had no choice but to become a vampire. The remnants of that time remained in his pitch hair and eyes that had once been dishwater and blue respectively.
The times hadn't changed his mage fashion, and he still wore a strange combination of oriental styled clothing with high collars, visible loops for buttons, and decorative embroidery and trim. The colors never changed. Black trim on a grey base, and the thread designs rotated through color. Today it was a crimson swirled design of no real picture, and the color reminded her of her mate's eyes.
Neil would flip if she asked him.
"What can I do for you, Silvia?" Damien asked, bidding the blood givers goodbye as he headed out of their living quarters and into the hallway.
"It's something I'd prefer to discuss in a more private area," Silvia said, nervously playing with some of her short hair. Damien's pitch put the navy tint of her own to shame, but hers was styled in a smooth feminine curl. At least she thought it was feminine.
"The Arcs don't have secrets from each other," Damien said cautiously, and she sighed. "I know you are getting used to the way we operate, Silvia, but you are an Arc now. Secrets breed suspicion and doubt in their leaders, and you are the matriarch of the Arcs. They look to and trust you as much as Neil now."
Silvia rolled her eyes, knowing full well that this was still a private affair, but convincing Damien without telling him what it was about was impossible. This man may have been a mage at one time, but he was an Arc now and fiercely loyal to Neil and his people.
