Infinite Bliss || Volturi Kings

|22| NEWBORNS

After the events of that morning, once Caius had eventually managed to persuade Eliana to allow him to get back to work, she continued with her day as normally as she could. She used her own bathroom to shower and brush her teeth, and since all three of the kings were busy that morning, Afton accompanied her to her breakfast.

In theory, that worked okay. But what she'd neglected to remember was that Afton accompanied her to breakfast.

"So what happened?"

Eliana blinked up from her bowl of cereal at the vampire in front of her and continued to eat. "Nothing — what?"

"Nothing?" Afton raised an eyebrow as he pulled out a chair to sit beside her. "Nothing happened? Is that the story you're settling with?"

She nodded. "Can I eat my cereal now?"

"And the hickey on your neck?" he questioned.

Her eyes widened in alarm. She instantly dropped her spoon to cover both sides of her neck with her hands, attempting to appear as casual as possible. "H-Hickeys? What are you talking about? You must be, um, blind."

"I was testing you," he chuckled. "So something happened within the last 24 hours that could have possibly left you with hickeys, right?"

"No, nothing happened," Eliana answered dismissively. Suddenly, swallowing each spoonful of cereal was becoming all the more difficult to do. "Just, you know . . . nothing."

"Did Caius finally dick you down?"

To her bewilderment, the question hadn't even come from Afton. Santiago strolled into the room at a pretty leisurely pace, a rubix cube in his hand which he was attempting to solve at a rate she couldn't even see. He took a seat to the other side of her from Afton, half of his attention on the conversation.

Her eyebrows furrowed together. "Did he what?!"

"Dick you down," Santiago repeated himself as he placed his feet up on the table, just a few feet away from her food. "You know — I don't know what you young folks say nowadays, anyway — rail the fucking brains out of you?"

"There was no railing, no dicking down, nothing!" she snapped. "End of discussion."

"Nope, beginning of discussion," he countered. "No actual fucking, alright, but that doesn't rule out a lot of other things — hey, where are you going, dude?"

With a roll of her eyes, Eliana and her bowl of cereal migrated across the room to another table. She sighed heavily and swirled the contents of her bowl around with her spoon. And just like that, her plans of a peaceful breakfast had flown straight out of the window and into the horizon, never to be seen or heard from again.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘ ༓ ∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

By the time she even saw any of her three mates, it was that afternoon, as the day inched ever closer to nighttime. A day full of Afton's and Santiago's company was needless-to-say awful, what with their constant immature and teasing remarks, so Caius eventually showing up and leading her towards Aro's office was more than welcome.

As she entered after Caius, she remembered just how long it had been since she'd seen the inside of Aro's office. And after seeing Marcus and Aro themselves, she recalled the last time they'd even heard from her . . .

Her voice came out as more of a timid squeak than she'd expected. "Hey."

Aro didn't hold back his laugh, only making her more desperate to bury herself in a hole, if only she had a shovel on hand. "Come now, cara mia. There's no need to be so shy around us."