Bite Me | Volturi Kings

Chapter 20

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"Caius!" Shoomah shrieked as she flew down the many flights of stairs in their castle, frantically running away from her soulmate. "This is most undignified!"

Behind her, Caius was in hot pursuit; his steps were but a few meters behind hers. "I would suggest not calling my art 'doodles' again then!" He grinned back at her, watching as she navigated his home, their home, with such ease.

"But I do love your doodles!" She managed to call out just before Caius tackled her to the ground at the bottom of the stairs. 

His hand came up behind her head before it smacked against the stone floors; even if she wouldn't have gotten hurt, it was a sweet gesture. 

Caius's body hovered over her as he smirked at her evilly; his arms kept her caged to the floor beneath him. Shoomah glowered at his triumphant look. "Say it." Caius whispered lowly to her. 

"I don't know what you mean." She feigned ignorance with a delighted smile, revelling in how he was so easily riled up by no more than a few words. 

"My drawings are not doodles, admit it." Caius ground out, though his eyes held that glint of mirth that showed he held no ill intent towards the woman he loved. 

"Your drawing are not Doodles Caius." His smirk was quick to grow but Shoomah could not allow his ego to grow any further and so she quickly followed up the statement with, "They're ramblings on a canvas." 

Caius groaned in defeat as he could clearly see the stubbornness within Shoomah, he had known it to be there for as long as he'd known her. He was not winning this one. So he sighed and settled for the next best option; he leaned down and pecked her lips. Cherishing their small, intimate moment and the happiness of them.

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"Must you go?" Aro asked. 

They were all standing by the dock as Shoomah's boat was preparing to set sail back to her home country. She had been away for far too long, barely managing to go back to Ashaf in between the five years she had spent with her soulmates. Her country had been neglected for far too long, it was time she spent more than just a month in her own country. 

"Yes, there are state affairs I have to manage; I've been far too lax in my duties lately." 

Aro smirked at that, pride blooming within him at being the cause of that distraction. Well, him and his brothers.

"How long is it to be this time?" Marcus asked her; the last had been three months ago and that was for barely over a fortnight. A far too long fortnight that had stretched on for what felt like an eternity. 

"A few months, probably three." 

Caius huffed dramatically, "But that is far too long!"

Shoomah walked over to him and wrapped her arms around him. She held him tight to her, resting her head in the crook of his neck as she felt his arms immediately engulf her just as much. She knew the extended period of time apart would not fair well with them. They were all truly in love and she was so loathe to be apart from them but her country needed her. 

Above almost all, Shoomah loved Ashaf.

"You could always visit me." She whispered to him, but her other soulmates heard it as well. Shoomah was pretty confident in her abilities to get work done while they were there; the only issue with doing so in Volterra is that running Ashaf would require her to be in Ashaf. Surely they could make the trip over to her country if they wanted to see her, to be with her. 

It was Aro who shook his head at this: "We are far too busy here in Volterra. We cannot spare a minute away, unfortunately. I'm sorry, dolcezza."

When the other kings nodded their heads in assent of what Aro had said, Shoomah sighed. So much for that idea. "I will see you in a few months then."

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Shoomah alighted off of yet another boat, onto the warm ground of Italy. She did not have a moment more to contemplate her surroundings before Marcus engulfed her in a hug. Small peels of laughter escaped Shoomah's mouth as he swung her about in his arms. 

His eyes sparkled as they looked at her face, a face he had not seen for three weeks. "Oh, how I've missed you, αγάπη."

"You could have come with me, you know." Shoomah teased when her feet finally touched solid ground once again. Marcus' arms did not leave her frame; however, one stayed firmly wrapped around her waist as they began to walk off the pier and towards Aro and Caius. 

"There was too much work to be done; I couldn-"

Shoomah interrupted him before he could finish the usual excuse. "I know, I know, I was only teasing."

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Aro lay in bed beside Shoomah, his head rested on her chest and her hand threaded through his hair. He struggled to keep his eyes from fluttering shut at the soothing feeling of her fingers running through his long hair. 

Yet again, he had tried one of her concoctions and yet again, it had ended up in the toilet soon after. This one had been a beetroot soup that she was so sure would not disagree with his constitution due to the high concentration of blood within it; however, Aro's fickle stomach had proved her wrong. 

"Maybe next time it should just be a bowl of blood." Shoomah said with a sigh. None of her cooking had been able to work as food; it was a futile endeavour. But she had so wanted to try food again. To be able to taste the same meals she had eaten as a little girl. 

She had wanted to not just watch others make dishes like Ashaf's traditional ɱiçaʈa (me-ha-tah) but to taste them as well. Over the past two to three thousand years, she had missed that food so much. Missed it a way she had no right to.

"No, no." Aro was quick to put an end to such a suggestion. She loved cooking, everybody in the castle knew it, there was no way he'd let his problem stop her from doing what she loved. "This was just one small blip, any day now you'll be dancing around that kitchen making... What was it called again?"

"Mehata."

"Mehata, that's it!"

She smiled down at him, kissing his forehead lightly in thanks for his sweet words. Each time he bore the brunt of her failures and yet he remained supportive. She loved him so much. 

"Tell me about Mehata." Aro said, trying to stray her mind away from the idea of giving up. 

And it worked because fond memories overtook the melancholic reminder of failure. "It's a dish that dates back to before I was born. Literally, it means "bad egg"."

"Why's that?"

"It's made of everything you have left in the pantry so to speak. Just before food, like an egg, goes off, you make Mehata. There are three core recipes to it because nobody ever has the same food in their house but they're all called Mehata and everybody in Ashaf knows these recipes off by heart." She smiled at the memories of it. Sometimes people had pushed it a little too far on what was still edible and able to be put in a Mehata, but usually knowledge of how to cook it came with skills on how to judge whether a certain food was safe to eat or not.

It was a family dish to be eaten around a large table and over talk of what had happened that day. Nowadays even restaurants served Mehata in Ashaf, although they were slightly fancier versions but it saved them money on their leftover ingredients and was always guaranteed to sell. 

"What did it taste like?"

"Like spice, I suppose. All types of flavours used to be thrown in; the more there were in there, the riskier the meal. An extra spicy dish was usually made to cover up the fact the dish was made with a far too literal bad egg."

He kept on asking her questions about Mehata and other dishes of her country; they stayed in serenity in the bed next to one another. Completely forgetting the horror of moments before and simply talking.

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