See ya'll I didn't die! Even though I'm willing to bet some of you would like to make that happen. I had a little bit of writer's block, I know ya'll really hate cliffhangers, but they do give me something to work off of for a new chapter. Additionally, school just started up again and I think I many have bitten off more than I can chew (19 upper division hours) but have to chew it if I want to graduate in May. So updates may slow down, but I try to keep them coming.

That was a long rant. . . anyway, I hope you enjoy the new chapter

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Kaien groaned as he heard a forceful pounding on his door. He felt like he had only just fallen asleep. He rolled over hoping that whoever was knocking would just go away. He was disappointed when he heard the knock repeated more loudly.

"One moment," he muttered forcing himself to get out of bed. He shuffled toward the door and opened it. Standing on the other side of the door was Yagari.

"Still in bed?" Yagari asked raising an eyebrow. "It's already 7:30."

"Only 7:30?" Kaien groaned. "Can this wait a few hours? I only got to bed less than an hour ago."

Yagari laughed and slapped him on the back, "Having a hard time keeping up with the sleep schedule of you hybrid family?"

"There's just been a lot going on the past couple of days," Kaien replied rubbing his eyes. "What do you need?"

"Did you forget that you are still running a school?" Yagari demanded. "Your school was just attacked, the students traumatized and their memory modified, and then you completely disappeared. What kind of a headmaster are you?"

Kaien sighed again. "As I said, I have had a lot of personal issues. I will make sure to make an appearance today. If that is all, I'm going back to bed."

Yagari stood there staring at him, then he put his wrist to the headmaster's forehead.

"What are you doing?" Kaien demanded.

"Checking for a fever," Yagari replied. "Giving me a serious reply without any of your usual theatrics, you must be sick."

Kaien batted away his hand. "I'm capable of being serious," he insisted." I've just seen that there is too much seriousness in this world that I don't need to add to. But today I'm too tired to keep it up."

"So you mean you only act like an idiot?" Yagari asked skepticism on his face.

Kaien felt his temper, which had been loosed from its bonds the night before, attempt to rise to the surface. "So you got me out of bed for the sole purpose of insulting me?" he snapped. "If that's the case, I'm going back to bed." He tried to shut the door but was stopped by Yagari's foot in the door.

"I didn't come to insult you," Yagari replied. "I came because they have called a meeting of the Hunter's Association at noon to discuss recent events and you and Zero are both summoned."

"Why didn't I get this summons in person?" Kaien asked. "As a senior member, I should have been given notice."

"They sent a messenger last night, but no one was here to take the message," Yagari replied.

"So, noon at the main office?" Kaien asked realizing where he had been when they had come. Yagari nodded. "OK, I'm going back to bed for a little while then. I take it you are going to go tell Zero?"

"I suppose so," Yagari said. Without even saying goodbye, he turned around and walked away.

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Seiren followed silently behind the silver-haired hunter and allowed him to lead her to a door a bit further down the hall. She also followed him inside the room and only felt a slight stirring of trepidation as he leaned around her to lock the door. She raised an eyebrow at him and he shrugged in response and said, "No interruptions," before he leaned down and tentatively brushed his lips against hers.

No interruptions, she thought nervously. What exactly does he have planned?

He noticed that she seemed stiff and looked down at her face prepared to apologize for kissing her. He saw the wariness in her eyes and tried to think what he could have done to cause it. Suddenly his eyes went wide as he realized what she thought he had meant when he locked the door. He felt his face fill with blood and knew that he was blushing brightly enough that she could have seen it in the dark even if she hadn't had vampire vision. "I—um—well —I didn't mean it that way," he stuttered nervously. "I didn't mean that you and I should—not that I wouldn't want to—not that I want to—what I mean is that every time you have tried to take blood someone has interrupted and I don't what to happen this time. I wasn't intending to do—"

She felt herself laughing at his nervous babbling and his blush. He was really kind of cute. But he was getting more flustered by the moment and she felt that it would be cruel to let him continue ramble like he was so she cut him off gently with a kiss. "I understand," she said with a smile as she pulled away. A millisecond later though she was closing her eyes and biting her lip in an effort to control the thirst that his elevated heart rate had caused to rise to the surface out of habit of not giving into the urge to feed on others.

Seeing her repeated hard swallowing and the look of concentration on her face, and knowing the cause from the sheer number of times he had done the same thing, he pulled her to him. "It's ok," he whispered in her ear. "Take what you want." She pulled back slightly to look at his face and make sure he was serious. The sight of her eyes looking through the fringe of her bangs so innocently made him question if he really had meant what he said that way but he tried to keep those emotions from his face as she scrutinized him.

She must have found whatever it was she was looking for, because after a few moments, she nodded and licked her lips in anticipation as she moved back towards his neck. She licked the side of his neck savoring the feeling of the blood pulsing under her tongue and heard his sharp intake of breath at her action. She paused wondering if he really wanted her to do this, but when he didn't tell her to stop, she opened her mouth and placed her fangs against the smooth skin of his neck.

When he felt her fangs touch his neck his muscles tensed convulsively and he had to fight the urge to push her away. He felt a shiver run down him at the conflicting signals his brain was sending to his muscles. Every instinct in his body told him to push her away, but his brain told him that this was right. He felt his chest tighten and his breathing speed simultaneously. She needs you he chided himself. She isn't trying to hurt you. She isn't Shizuka, she's Seiren, and she needs your blood. He managed to regain control of his breathing, but it was too late, he felt her pull away.

When Seiren felt his body tense she removed her fangs from his skin and pulled back to look at him again. He was standing completely ridged, his hands balled up into fists at his side and his eyes tightly shut. He seemed to be trembling. Is he afraid of me, she thought suddenly, a wave of sadness washing over her at the idea. "We don't have to do this," she said gently. "I can just run over to the moon dorms and get some blood tablets."

"No," he said through clenched teeth. "I want to do this for you. Besides, those are just a poor substitute." She smiled sadly, even though his words said one thing, his body clearly said that he did not want her to bite him. He was obviously doing this because he thought he owed her for giving him blood, she refused to take his charity.

"You do not have to do this because I gave you blood," she said harshly. "I didn't do it because I expected a return." At her abrupt tone, he opened his eyes and she saw such pain in the violet depths that her anger immediately melted away. She pulled him to her and fought the urge to weep, and urge she hadn't felt in many years, for this damaged creature in front of her. He had been hurt for so long by so many people. "We really don't have to do this now," she said softly, back to the gentle tone she had used before. "You don't have to prove anything to me, or force yourself to do something that causes you this much pain. I promise I will be fine with blood tablets."

"Will they work as well as my blood will?" he demanded, his voice harsh with an emotion that she couldn't name but wasn't anger.

She shrugged against his chest in response. "Probably not, but they will suffice," she finally said knowing that what she said was only a half-truth but not wanting to cause him pain by telling him that there was no way they would work as well since she had grown quite fond of him.

"Then take my blood," he replied, his tone full of determination. When she shook her head, he grabbed her face gently between his hands and stepped back so that he could look her in the face without forcing her neck into an awkward angle. She starred back into his eyes, her silvery eyes hard with determination. He starred back with equal determination. Finally she looked away.

"Why are you so determined to do this?" she asked weakly. "I can tell that you don't want me to bite you, but here you are insisting that I do it. Why?"

He sighed and looked away from her. For a moment she thought he wasn't going to answer, but then he spoke slowly, "I've only ever been bitten twice. Once by Shizuka, and once by Yuuki. Neither of those was exactly pleasant experiences."

Understanding dawned abruptly within her mind. He wanted to let her feed, but his mind kept flying back to the only instances he had to compare it with and neither of those was good so his body reacted instinctively by attempting to pull away. "So," she asked, "what do you want me to do?"

"Just do it," he replied. "Bite me. Ignore my reaction, just do it." She was skeptical. She didn't see how just taking him was going to clear up his fear of being bitten, but if that was what he wanted who was she to argue?

"Come here then," she said nodding her head in ascent to his request. He stepped towards her and she wrapped her arms around his neck to hold him in place. "I will try not to hurt you. I'm sorry if I do," she whispered before she sank her teeth into his neck. His body twitched as her fangs broke his skin, but the pain was short lived lost in the wave of feeling coming from his neck.

As she fed, she was massaging the skin around her bite with her tongue and her lips to increase the blood flow to the bite and it was doing very interesting things to Zero. His skin was reacting to her touch and the feeling of her breath moving across his neck by raising itself in goosebumps. His scalp soon followed as the hands that had been on the back of his neck restraining him moved, one running itself through his hair and the other moving down his back in a caress. He lost himself to the sensations she was causing, forgetting that she was feeding and just feeling.

She felt him relax against her and had to fight the urge to look at his face. She instead continued feeding and allowed herself to get lost in the flavorful bouquet that was his blood. They were both so lost in the feeding that neither of them noticed the quiet knock at the door. They didn't even notice when the knock became a forceful pounding.

Eventually, however Seiren felt full and removed her fangs from his neck and with a final lick to get the last of the blood and a kiss on the disappearing marks pulled back from him. The expression on his face was one of pure bliss and she got to admire it for a few seconds before his brain caught up with the fact that she had quit.

"That was amazing," he breathed, looking at her with admiration.

She smiled warmily and replied, "I was just about to say the same thing to you." She leaned up to kiss him when they were both shocked out of their happy world by another round of pounding on his door and a voice calling, "I know you're in there! If you don't open this door now I swear I will break it down."

"Who is that?" Seiren asked surprised that she hadn't heard it before, since from his tone it was apparent that he had been knocking for quite some time. Zero only sighed and reached around her to open the door again.

"What do you want?" he demanded, going for exasperation but failing miserably due to his blissful state.

Yagari looked at him, taking in his disheveled appearance and neutral, almost happy expression and then asked, "What on earth have you been up to? Never mind," he finished pushing past Zero into the room glancing at his unmade bed as he did so. "What took you so long to answer your door?" As he turned to look at Zero, he noticed Seiren for the first time.

"Oh," he said with a smirk looking from the messy bed to Zero and Seiren's mussed hair, "I see what took you." They both looked at him in confusion, then took in the room and their own appearances and began to blush as they realized what he had thought they were doing.

"We weren't—" Zero began at the same time as Seiren said "We didn't—"

"Look," Yagari cut them both off, "I don't care what you were, or were not doing. It's none of my business especially since we aren't officially on school property. I just came to tell you that the hunter's council has called a meeting at noon today and you are to be there." He started moving towards the door. "I'll let you get back to whatever it is you weren't doing," he finished with a wink as he shut the door behind him.

Seiren immediately buried her face in her hands. "This is so embarrassing," she mumbled. "I can't believe he thought that we were doing that."

"Why not?" Zero mumbled back. "We are a man and a woman alone in a locked room with an unmade bed and rumpled hair. I would have probably come to the same conclusion."

Seiren's blush deepened as she realized that what he said was true. My mother is going to kill me, she thought suddenly and then laughed as she realized that her mother would never find out. The hunter would not go to a noble vampire just to nark out a couple of teenagers. "So what do you think the association wants?" she asked trying to change the subject from what they could have been doing.

"I don't know," Zero replied, sobering instantly. "But they have not called a full meeting for as long as I have been a member, so it can't be anything good."

"Are you worried?' she asked sensing the change in his mood.

"Nah," he replied with a shrug. "It wouldn't do any good anyway. Worrying doesn't fix anything."

She didn't have the heart to argue with him. She could tell that he was worried, but it wasn't worth a fight. She also didn't mention the fact that for someone who believed that worrying is useless, he sure had done a lot of it that day. She knew that there were some things that were better left unsaid. She just smiled sadly at him and said, "Well, I'm going to go find somewhere to sleep."

"You don't have a room?" he asked shocked.

She shook her head, her expression wry. "I didn't need one last night so I didn't follow when the headmaster showed the others where they were. I'll probably just sleep in front of Yuuki-sama's room again."

"No you won't!" he replied angrily. "You can sleep here. You take the bed and I'll make a pallet in the floor."

"I can't take your bed! Besides, someone needs to watch out for them while they sleep," she said automatically.

"They can watch out for themselves today. When was the last time you got a good night's rest?" he demanded. She thought about it and realized that it had been a while.

"Probably about the last time you did," she finally said.

"Then it's been too damn long," he said with a snort. "Now don't be stupid, just take the bed."

"But that takes away from your quality of rest," she argued.

"Then what?" he demanded. "You can't sleep in the hall again. I only have one bed and I don't know which of the guest rooms are occupied."

"We could share it," she suggested shyly. "Or not," she backpedalled as he starred at her like she had grown a second head. "It just seemed like the easiest solution. Never mind, forget I said anything," she said turning to leave. He stopped her with a hand on her arm.

"If you are ok with that solution, so am I," he said suddenly. "I promise I won't try anything."

"You'll only do that if you want to lose an arm," she retorted playfully.

"Somehow, I actually believe you mean that," he mumbled. "So which side do you want?"

"Doesn't matter to me," she replied, her mouth going dry as she realized that she was actually going to sleep in the same bed as a man. The fact that she was doing something "bad" almost made it more fun, even if her stomach twisted a little at what the others would think if they found out. Damn the others, she suddenly though savagely. I'm happy and they can just deal with it. The whole world is about to change, I can do what I like. With this thought to steady her she walked resolutely toward the bed, crawled in fully clothed and took the spot against the wall.

He walked over a little more cautiously. "Are you sure you don't want me to sleep on the floor?" he asked one more time, knowing instinctively that after sharing blood with her, sharing a bed would change their relationship that much more.

"Just get in the bed," she said with a sigh. "I'm tired." He sat tentatively on the edge of the bed and laid down on his side so close to the edge that had she pushed him, he would have fallen in the floor. She felt a small smile pull up the edges of her mouth as she realized that he was much more nervous about this than she was. "Goodnight Zero," she said the ghost of a laugh in her voice.

"'Night," he replied wondering if this had really been such a good idea.

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So what did you think? Please leave me a review if you feel so inclined!

~Stickdonkeys