Coveted [New/Revised Version]

BITTERSWEET SIXTEEN

     "You'd think they'd at least have the courtesy to not make it so obvious." Anna grumbled. "Does shame not exist nowadays?"

"Relax a little, babe." Valentine told her with a sweet smile.

Like Anna, he was very much aware of the student population gawking at them as they made their way through the cafeteria. It was like they grew second heads or something. It didn't bother him to be in the spotlight or so to speak. His concern was, as always, exposure. Perhaps it was the town's history with vampires or his own experience with the consequences of exposure, but either way he was paranoid.

However, he masked his fears well enough.

"It's what the men in this family are good at." His father's words came back to him. "We must produce a calm and stable façade despite what we feel. It'll come in handy to you one day, my boy."

He missed his father. He and Elliot had the kind of connection where they spoke freely about anything. It was the foundation of their relationship. No matter how ugly or uncomfortable the topic, he could go to his father for aid or counsel. Elliot was wise and understanding, which made it easy to open up.

God, how he missed his father's ability to slap Sky back down to earth. Sure, their mother would chastise him about his monumental ego. Their father, on the other hand, would put him in check. A humble Sky was much easier to deal with than the narcissistic lone wolf entity that completely took over him since the execution. Valentine grinned at a distant memory of one such occurrence.

"Is this funny to you?" Anna's glaring brought him to the present again.

"Hilarious!"

She rolled her eyes and kept walking. Students in various cliques occupied most of the tables they passed. It didn't matter to Valentine where they sat so long as they were a ways off from too much attention. He'd had enough of that lately, especially over the past seventy-two hours. After the Iris incident, the rest of his day was brutal.

Sky amped up his minion detail and watched him like a hawk, monitoring his every breath. There was very little trust between them. More like in Valentine actually. He couldn't blame Sky though. He had acted irresponsibly.

He went back on his unspoken promise to himself. He almost killed Iris. She didn't deserve that. It wasn't her fault that she was a drug to him. She probably didn't even know what effect she was having on him. If it wasn't for Sky, he would've gone through with it.

In a way, he should be grateful.

Valentine knew himself well enough to know if he murdered her, he would've been destroyed. Without any doubt, there was an unadulterated animalistic predator in him. He was also a civilized, rueful young man. That part of him would never be all right with killing someone like that.

"Sit down, would you?" Anna sounded annoyed.

Valentine hadn't been paying attention to the outer world, but now he was fully alert. He became conscious she chose a table and he was standing motionless in space. Unaffected by the brief moment of embarrassment, he sat next to her. For a while, he watched Annabelle eat. He scanned the room after that grew tiresome.

His eyes fell on the troublemaker herself and her small group of friends.

He recognized the too energetic blonde clawing at the air with blood red nails as Mae and the inquisitive beauty sticking her tongue out at Mae as Lisa. They were speaking vivaciously to each other though he noted Iris didn't seem as immersed in the conversation. The expression on her face was unreadable. Valentine frowned.