1 Family (01)

Dimitri

Life is pretty perfect right now. I am currently sitting in the lounge with my family. The logs in the fireplace are still steadily burning providing me with some form of heat and light. Not that I needed the heat or light. What I mean is that my skin is always cold despite the surrounding temperature. I am after all a cold-blooded creature of the night. Not to mention that I have prefect night vision. So yes, the fire really had no purpose right now. But I am way too comfortable in my current position to move. Besides, I really could not move much from this position if I am being frank.

I threw a glance in the direction where my dad and mom were laying. They are currently cuddled up side-by-side on the couch adjacent to mine fast asleep. They look so peaceful right now that I decide to rather not wake them up yet. However, I cannot stop myself from staring at them in their current state as if trying to memorize their faces. After a minute of doing so, I realize that I am being stupid, I would come back soon. With this comforting thought, I then turned and looked to my right side where my baby sister, Ellie currently was. She had used my right shoulder as her pillow where her head rested probably uncomfortably right now. Because of how close her face was to my right ear, Ellie’s normally light snoring was rather loud right now. I should probably move her to a more comfortable sleeping position and in the process save my poor ears.

Normally, I hated the fact that my sister snored. But to be honest it did not really bother me that much today. Besides, they all looked so peaceful in their sleep. Dare I say that they even looked vulnerable or better yet human. But that is the thing about us vampires. We look like humans. We dress like humans and in the public eye, we act like humans. Honestly speaking from the naked eye, one wouldn't be able to tell us apart.

I couldn't fall asleep like they were right now. There was too much going on in my head. Call me an “overthinker” of sorts. But this time around, my overthinking is justified. After all, this is my last day before I have to leave the palace for FOUR TORTUROUS MONTHS! Let me explain from the start; I am the only son of my father, King Leonard and mother, Queen Katrina. Actually let me give you a quick summary of my family whom as you can tell already, I care about very much:

My parents weren't exactly soulmates in the vampire scheme of things. Yeah, like the werewolf's, we too have mates-the person we were destined to love or whatever. But my parents were not each other's God-given mates.

My dad had been mated to another Original Vampire named Selene and they had two perfect kids, Ellie and I. I tend to call Ellie my baby sister, but she is only 4 years younger than I am. Which makes her 96 years of age. Yes, I am about to reach my first century. This is a huge occasion for us Vampires. Think of it as how humans celebrate turning 21. Of course with me being a prince, this meant that I was going to finally be crowned king. My parents had it perfectly planned such that after the four months of being “human”, I would celebrate my 100th birthday and be crowned king on the very same day. And that day would be the first time my people saw me since I was a baby (well, 20 years old).

Anyways, so after having the two of us, my “surrogate/womb provider” finally revealed her true intentions and tried to kill my father. Apparently, she had been in love with someone else. A very powerful wizard, and they wanted to rule over all supernatural creatures together. This wizard of hers was a high ranking magician called Edward or something like that. Long story short, her plan failed when we got the werewolf's and another powerful witch on our side. After all, Selene had a pretty powerful force behind her, so we needed all the help that we could get. After that tiresome war, many lives were lost. That is where my current mom comes in. She had lost her mate who was abusive during that war so... not really all that bad a loss if you ask me. You can piece together the rest of the story of how we became a happy family once again.

I knew that I needed to rest but I couldn't. See, once the overthinking cycle began, it couldn’t be stopped. I had to let the cycle run its course. Kind of like a washing machine once you press start. Tomorrow, I am going to start my journey throughout the entire kingdom. My task being that I have to live in each of the villages of our kingdom for a month. There are four villages in total. Thus, I would be gone for a total of four month. I had to be disguised and make a living by working like normal humans do. Yes, we had many humans in our kingdom. And no, they do not know that I am a vampire. If I was to get caught or have someone recognize me as their prince, then I automatically had to retreat and restart the whole journey again from scratch. So, I had to make sure no one knew me. That was easy since no one has seen me since, I was 20 years old. I always hated publicity so, I always avoided it. I know it is pretty ironic how I am about to be king and I hate publicity. They always have something to say about me despite my hiding away. But like they say, “Lions don’t lose sleep over the opinions of sheep.”

I am leaving at 5 am today (yes, it is past midnight already) to start the journey to the first village, Kena. I am definitely going to miss home, but I seriously needed to get at least an hour of sleep. This is one of the perks of being a Vampire. I don’t need that much sleep. After all, I am a creature of the night.