It was past nightfall when I headed down to the guard room after chatting with the kings for a while. I made sure to change out of my pyjamas and into a dark purple long-sleeved off shoulder blouse with a pair of tight black jeans and black boots.
I really didn't know why, but suddenly wearing badass black boots everywhere I went had become my thing for some reason. Who would've guessed? Well, Alice probably, that might've been why she got me those boots for my birthday.
Deciding to make a dramatic, memorable entrance, I used as much strength as possible to throw the door open. Since I didn't factor in my newborn strength, the door slammed against the stone wall and a large crack formed across the length of the door. I winced at the sight of their now broken and splintered wood, making a mental note to get a new one fitted after this.
"Guess who's back!" I jump up in the air a little too high and narrowly missed hitting my head on the ceiling.
Chelsea threw her arms around me tightly, and this time I didn't even suffocate. "You have no idea how worried we were. When Master Caius emerged with you in his arms, and your blood smelt of their venom-"
"Let's not relive the tale. What's done is done, and now I suck blood," I bared my teeth at her for effect.
"You look really nice though, Mistress," she studied my new appearance.
"You can call me Eli," I assured her.
She sighed. "Fine, but whenever the Masters are around, the 'Mistress' title is making a return," she reasoned.
"Eh, I can work with that," I shrugged.
Heidi strutted over slowly. "All my effort with your hair simply gone to waste."
"That's not entirely true, look," I pointed to my hair, "I now have silver brunette hair thanks to you."
"True," she tousled my hair lightly, "it suits you though, I can't believe I never thought of it for myself. Maybe this will be your new signature hairstyle."
I laughed under my breath. "Maybe I'll get a trend going. Chelsea?"
"Uh-huh?" Chelsea spun on her heel from talking to Afton in order to face me, "-I mean, yes Mistress?"
I playfully narrowed my eyes at her. "You went to Bella's wedding, right?"
"Yes, just a few days ago. I think at the time you were still – you know – not here, but I only went for a few minutes just to hand her the gift. Bella was very sweet and polite, even when she noticed that I was with the Volturi, I can see why you get along so well with her, but she was also clearly very wary of me, for good reason to be honest, and also a little awkward. Oh, and her dress was incredible, you seriously missed out. Carlisle invited me to stay longer of course, being the good doctor, but I declined. I guess I just felt bad, you know, for gate crashing this wedding I wasn't even invited to. I think you would've liked the cake though, it was red velvet and I know that you…"
Wow, did that girl talk. I zoned out quite soon into her babble and noticed Jane facepalming in the corner at Chelsea's girly chatter. In a way, I was happy that at least she got to enjoy the wedding, even if I was stuck being groped, burned and stabbed by a bunch of perverted vampires.
"…so apparently that was Alice's inspiration for the venue. You really would've loved the wedding, Eli," she shot me a sympathetic smile once she'd finally finished rambling.
"Such as life," I shrugged and made my way through the room.
I knew exactly who I was coming for, and I think they knew too: the twins. Alec seemed to catch on first and his eyes widened as he took a few steps back, Jane following suit. It was as if they really didn't realise their obvious fear was only serving as encouragement for me.
"Jane-y-Pain-y!" I squealed and wrapped my arms around her shoulders before she had the chance to object.
She wriggled her way out of my grip after a second. "What about Alec? I'm sure he would love a hug too, Little Miss Newborn, wouldn't you Alec?"
Alec gave her 'that look' and their little mental argument between each other was quite hilarious to witness.
"Alec?" I held my arms open and waited to see his reaction.
He took a couple more steps back but I was able to quickly close in on him and pull him into my arms. One thing people usually forgot about the twins is that they were really just children, neglected young children. Even Alec, despite being taller than Jane, only came up to my chin, so it was difficult not to view him as a child who simply needed a little T.L.C.
Alec didn't squirm out of my grip quite as much as Jane did, due to his general politeness, but it didn't take a genius to realise he was clearly uncomfortable. Eventually I let him go and watched with a laugh as he edged closer to his twin and away from me.
"Mistress Eliana!" Afton yelled from across the room with a hand up for me to high-five.
"Right," I gritted my teeth together and stood up on one of the tables to make my announcement, "from now on, and this goes for all of you weirdos, call me Eli. This new 'Mistress' title Caius insisted on only really needs to be used around the trio of lunatics I'm mated to or in front of any guests. Capeesh?"
"Yes…" they chorused before all murmuring some kind of version of my name, a few saying 'my queen' while the others addressed me as 'Mistress', 'milady', 'El' and my many other aliases.
I sighed. "Speech over, thanks for coming to my TED talk," I hopped back down again and headed over to Afton.
"Nice speech, queen Eliana of the Volturi," he extended his arm back up again.
With a shrug, I high-fived his hand as hard as I could now that I knew I wouldn't get injured by the gesture. He groaned loudly in pain and placed his hand between his legs as he crouched down to the ground.
"The hell was that for?" he gasped out.
I drew my eyebrows together. "You wanted a high-five."
"Yeah, a high-five, not whatever the hell that was," he winced as he shook his hand off and stood up straight again since the pain had receded, "If anything, you should thank me for destroying Rafael."
"Rafael's dead?" I asked. How come this was news to me?
"Were you not told? I believe it was Marcus who removed his stupid head while I kicked it into the fire like a football-"
"Don't forget that we both took him apart limb for limb dude, don't just go and take all the credit. I lost an arm during that," Santiago appeared out of nowhere but at least it didn't give me the fright of my life this time.
"You lost an arm? Seriously?" I tilted my head to the side and studied both of his arms which seemed to be working fine.
"Yes, no big deal, Theo reattached it easy. Two of the scum leapt at me, one from either side, and while Chelsea ripped the head off one of them," I spotted Chelsea wave in our direction, "the other removed my arm before the twins destroyed him."
"Oh geez, so this was, like, a serious battle then?"
"Not really, I was the only injury we had and even then, I've had much worse. Throwback to when I was decapitated a few centuries ago," Santiago laughed to himself fondly, "good times, good times."
I raised an eyebrow. "You were decapitated?" I asked the question slowly just to make sure I hadn't misheard that story.
"Yes, we were dealing with a couple rogue newborns and one of them decided I would make a good target. It took me a day or so to heal though and my windpipe took two days to regain full function, and still I have a bite mark on my neck from where they decided it a good idea to use their teeth to remove my head."
"I didn't realise vampires could get bite marks," I mused.
"Really dude? You didn't see the bite mark on your neck? Or the one on your chest?" he pointed vaguely to my exposed skin from my top, "It'll probably annoy your mates to no end, so don't be surprised if they suddenly decide to bite over it just so you don't have a Romanian bite mark on you."
"But why would they bite over it?"
"Well, we immortals only gain scars from Children of the Moon and other immortals, but sometimes immortals will place a bite mark on another, such as their mate, to…I guess claim them, in a way. As much as the Masters never did it to their wives so it clearly isn't their thing, I doubt they'd be happy with a bite mark in a place like that from someone so disgusting," he explained, "I'm not saying they'll definitely bite you or anything, I'm just saying – watch out, and don't say I didn't warn you when they randomly bite your neck out of nowhere."
Afton, who had drifted away from our biting conversation, had suddenly butted in again. "Not out of nowhere, probably during intercourse-"
Completely losing my temper at his constant immature comments, I leapt up at him and forced him down to the ground underneath me with my right knee pressing down between his ribs. He tried to push me off but failed pretty hilariously.
"Do you ever shut up?" I groaned exasperatedly and pushed my knee down harder.
"No, not really," he wheezed underneath me.
Santiago rolled his eyes and pulled me back off Afton again. "How about we take this to a more appropriate venue rather than kicking Afton's ass here?"
Afton was stood opposite me as we both snarled and sized each other up in the darkened training room. Meanwhile, Santiago was standing on the side as referee to this slightly unbalanced sparring match.
"Consider this your first training-"
"What's that one doing here?" I pointed with my thumb to the corner where Alec was casually leaning back on the wall with his arms crossed over his chest.
"I'm here to laugh at every one of your rookie mistakes," Alec responded.
Santiago sighed and averted his attention back to me and Afton. "As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, consider this your first training session. Any questions?"
"Yes, actually-"
"Well tough, because in an actual battle, we wouldn't stop and sit together on the battlefield to establish rules and answer queries. Basically, fight."
With that, he took a few steps back to join Alec against the wall and observe as me and Afton circled in on each other.
"Oh, I'm going to destroy your ass so bad," I hissed.
Afton scoffed. "I'd like to see you try."
Not needing any further permission, I made a leap for him and placed one hand around his neck, the other on his shoulder. Using all the force I could muster, I moved my weight to the side of him so that I could swing his body around me, causing him to crash into the wall backwards. Santiago and Alec were acting as our little audience and that attack prompted an "ooh" to sound from their corner.
Too smug from that blow, I hadn't even noticed that Afton had backflipped off the wall and landed beside me so that he could grab me by my shoulders and slam me into the wall against my back. He quickly moved his left hand to my neck and held me up so that my feet were inches off the floor. It was at this point that Santiago chose to join in.
"Now this, dude, is a good learning point, because this flailing your arms and legs," Santiago gestured to me, "will get you nowhere. Now, which arm is Afton using to hold you up?"
"Left," I struggled out which Alec seemed to find quite amusing.
"So take your left hand and place it on his left arm. Then, you push that arm away from your neck, taking your right hand and grabbing his neck. Finally, you push off the wall with your feet so that he falls backwards into the floor with your right hand on his neck. Easy?"
I nodded and followed his instructions as best as I could. My foot almost slipped when I pushed off the wall but I managed nonetheless, and in less than a second I had Afton pinned down to the ground by his neck.
A few cracks formed under his chin where my hand was and at the back of his head which prompted me to let him go. Afton took a second or two to heal before he stood up again and we silently agreed this battle should probably be over.
Santiago emerged again from the shadows, slowly clapping his hands. "Not bad at all for a newborn, not bad at all. I reckon within a few months, you'll be as trained in combat as the guard. That is, assuming you want training."
"Do I want training?" I asked myself out loud.
"Put it by this way, the Masters are obviously the most experienced in combat out of us all and are highly trained in this kind of thing. However, the previous queens, or Mistresses, didn't take part in any combat, not because they were not permitted to, but because they didn't want to. Besides, I saw them fight only once and they were honestly terrible at it, not that we were allowed to say anything. You, however, seem to have a knack for this stuff. Maybe it's just your dance training coming in or your generally overwhelming energy and agility, but anyway, would you like me – well, us – to train you in combat?"
I scoffed. "As if you're really asking that question. Look, I never met the ex wives, and I don't care if I ever do, but there is no way I'm just going to sit around and wait for someone else to save my ass in battle. If you want something done, you've got to do it yourself. Besides," I laughed, "what kind of queen would I be if I couldn't take out my enemy?"
⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰
Author's note: Eli's a badass, yay! Basically, now that she's a vampire, I wanted everything she went through and her transformation to basically serve as a constant motivation for her, making her more badass, ruthless, deadly, and less of a pushover.
Also, I wanted to touch on the subject of her bite marks from her transformation as I knew the Kings definitely wouldn't be pleased with marks from the Romanians on her body. It's not so much like a 'mating bite' or anything like that so it doesn't mean that much in terms of the true mate bond, but it's more like a subtle claim over a vampire.
Just wanted to add that, just in case this wasn't clear already, Eli is technically still a virgin. I don't want to be too crude about it in here, but they've done almost everything but '…' if you know what I mean. (Not for much longer though hehe).
Finally, on a side note, next week there is a chance that I'll be updating less than I have recently as my sixth form is starting this new programme that I have to do. I'll still do my best to get updates out but I can't promise anything, sorry.
Anyway, thank you so much for reading this chapter, be sure to leave some feedback because I love to hear your thoughts, stay safe, and ily lots!