They left their respective rooms separately and he informed her that he was available to speak to her at ten o'clock. She made her way to the kitchen on her own and found Raven making a sandwich.

"Good morning Charissa. Want a sandwich too? Magneto should be in his study at this hour. He has a coffee machine in there and Emma would bring him breakfast."

"I see." She said pursing her lips tightly as she felt a stab of jealousy.

"I told you Emma is trying her best to be his right hand woman. Her sucking up to him is incredible. She knows that you stayed in his room last night too. She told Azazel."

"Does she tell everyone here everything that goes on?"

"No, she talks mostly to Azazel and I'm also relatively close to him so whatever she tells him, he tells me. I personally do not speak to anyone else about such gossip. Don't worry too much about her though. She is just upset that her plans to sleep with him have been thwarted by your presence. I can see that his heart belongs to you only."

"What has he said to the rest about me though? And about my role here?"

"Well, from the time he first found out about your abilities… I think he told Emma to snoop around… he told us that it would be useful to have someone like you around, as a sort of defensive strategy. And Emma kind of rubbed it in his face when he failed to convince you to return here. She was already jealous back then that he seemed more interested in you than in her. I was in the same room and he smashed up the mirrors in that room by hurling whatever that was metal around. I remember her saying, 'Did your dear friend tell you to fuck off too?' but she shut up instantly as soon as the metal started hovering in the air. I ducked under the table for cover….Do you want a sandwich? You haven't answered me on that question."

She nodded and Raven passed her her sandwich while she prepared another for herself.

"Coffee machine is on the shelf at that corner, go help yourself if you want a cup. The tea bags are in the plastic container next to it. I try to keep as few metallic items in each room as possible. You should know your boyfriend has a nasty temper and I am just trying to minimise the collateral damage. How did it all start anyway? I still find it hard to believe that I never once suspected you two."

She laughed at Raven's questions and comments, but obliged her sister anyway, "When I first met him and the rest, I was incredibly annoyed with Charles as you know, and I found Erik a rather grumpy fellow. You should remember the times when I used to complain about how sarcastic he was and how I couldn't help roll my eyes each time he was snarky. Anyway, he started chatting with me first, while we were on dish washing duty. He thought I had some hidden ability so he was curious and asked me what it was. I was rude to him but somehow he found my sarcasm interesting enough and I thought he wasn't so bad once he loosens up and laughs. It was only a couple of nights thereafter that we found that we had similar interests and could really get along. We started meeting up each night to talk, and after some time we realised we had developed feelings for each other."

"I never knew that he was capable of those type of feelings…he always appears so stern and cold. Anyway, that's not the main reason for my questions. Is he a good kisser?" Raven asked with a mischievous grin.

She blushed at that question and Raven took the opportunity to tease her sister further, "I take the silence as a yes. Anyway, you're both adults, so it's perfectly fine what you're doing with him. He's several years older than you so it's a good thing. Mature men tend to be more stable, unlike the silly boys who can't even articulate their feelings properly."

She knew that Raven was referring to her own brief fling with Hank in the past.

"You don't care for Hank anymore?" she queried.

Raven only shrugged at that question, and started talking about other various things about the team.

….

While narrating the past, she couldn't help but think back about the day when she had first met him. After she and Charles quarrelled about the fact that he was bringing home a whole bunch of strangers, she was tasked to get the mansion ready for these people. Charles said to prepare four bedrooms for four males, and so she picked the ones at the end of the opposite wing which had two bathrooms along the corridor as well. She figured that four people could easily share two bathrooms. She had hoped that there was at least one cute guy amongst the group so she would not be too sickened or irritated by them. The pantry had also just been stocked, so she busied herself trying to draw up kitchen and dining room duty rosters, the same as those she had been subject to at boarding school when she was younger. He had given her names of the males, but to her, those were merely words, so she let her imagination run slightly wild at what Erik, Hank, Sean and Alex could possible look like.

She thought that Sean was a nice name so perhaps the actual person would be the best looking of the lot. She imagined tall, blond and athletic so she was taken aback to see a gawky ginger haired and slightly pimply teenager starring back at her when the guests arrived and Charles had introduced her to them. She had tied her light brown hair back into a ponytail, and wore a light blue dress to bring out the colour of her eyes (as she remembered her nanny advising her to do when she was younger).

"This is my sister Charissa. She will be helping you all settle in and will show you to your rooms as well. We hope that you will all treat this as your own home and make yourself comfortable." She winced slightly at Charles' last sentence of his introductory speech. She wasn't hoping that they would be so comfortable such that they would overstay their welcome.

Charles then introduced the rest of the group to her. Alex and Hank appeared friendly enough and she actually thought Alex was good looking in a rough sort of way although slightly younger than she was, and she knew instantly that Hank was off-limits because of the way Raven kept glancing at him when she thought that nobody else was looking.

She shook hands with the younger boys before moving to the man who looked like he was either the same age or slightly older than Charles, standing at the corner looking at the huge mansion. He said sarcastically to Charles then, "Honestly Charles, I don't know how you survived. Living in such hardship."

Because of his comment, she decided that he was a real arsehole. She never liked people who criticised her or her family for being rich. It was not their fault was it? And it wasn't as if they flaunted it.

Raven made a joke out of that however saying that it was a hardship softened by her and Charissa. The rest had laughed at that, including that man whom she had figured was Erik Lehnsherr.

She kept her stony expression and shook his hand, which she noticed amused him somewhat. His intense blue eyes looked at hers and while she also thought that they looked mysterious and perhaps in other circumstances she may have been attracted, she still felt irked at the jibe regarding her family wealth. He smiled at her when she said the pleasantries about being pleased to meet him but she also felt awkward because of the way he was sizing her up with his eyes and how he had held onto her hand for an awfully longer time than the rest.

Thankfully Charles saved the day and broke the tension by telling them all to go inside for a proper tour of the mansion. She decided that Erik's behaviour must have been brought about because he was an angry person who was unhappy with his lot in life. She later asked Raven about whether her assessment was true and Raven laughed saying that she wasn't that far off. Raven added a little more about how they had met Erik and she then formed the view that perhaps she should be wary of this man. He truly sounded like a homicidal psychopath with a traumatic childhood.