Disclaimer: I don't own the Bloodlines series.

Chapter Five

In the month which followed, I became a part of the group. All of them were fairly pleasant (except Zoe who still constantly looked as though she might run as far away from us as she could) and although I admit I regarded Eddie as a rival in life, I found that it was quite easy to get on with the rest of the group and even Eddie, when I tried to.

One night, we were heading to Clarence's home for one of the biweekly feedings which doubled as a family dinner of sorts. For the first time I could remember, Adrian was driving instead of Sydney.

As we were all getting into his bright yellow Mustang, Zoe stood outside, refusing to join us.

"There's no room," she said stubbornly, "Your car doesn't have enough seats."

"Not true," said Adrian in his usual unconcerned way. Jill, I had stopped calling her Jillian because it was pretty obvious that she didn't like it, moved towards Adrian to make room. "This seat's meant to hold three. The last owner even fitted it with an extra seat belt."

"Besides," he added cheerfully "We're all family, right?"

Zoe stood there for a moment, staring at the empty seat. Although she had been with us for a month, she was still acutely uncomfortable around moroi and dhampirs.

"You don't have to go if you're afraid," said Adrian. I could tell that he was trying to get her to come with us by suggesting that she was afraid, and even if she was, I knew without a doubt that it would work. Sure enough, Zoe got into the car and slammed the door shut, shifting so that she would be as close to the door as possible.

"I wish Sydney had left the SUV." I heard her mumble a few minutes later.

The drive to Clarence's home was pretty quiet. There was some conversation about Sydney but I didn't join in. I am not usually a very talkative person anyway and noone appeared to notice my silence.

When we reached Clarence's, there was a small discussion about who would order the food for our dinner since Sydney had a school assignment and couldn't do it for us. It was eventually decided that Eddie would make the call and order pizza. When he was finished and Jill had come back from her feeding, Angeline turned to me.

"Are you okay with what we ordered?" she asked me. "You didn't pipe up with any requests."

I shook my head solemnly before replying: "I can't waste time quibbling over trivial things like pepperoni and mushrooms. If you'd gone to my school in Devon you would understand. For one of our classes, they left us alone on the moors to fend for ourselves and learn survival skills. Spend three days eating twigs and heather and you'll learn not to argue about any food coming your way."

Angeline and Jill immediately got dreamy looks which I didn't really understand. What was so exciting about eating plants and surviving on the moors?

Suddenly, Zoe's phone rang and she looked at it in alarm.

"It's dad." she said in a worried voice and ran out of the room to answer it.

The group continued a conversation but when Zoe came back, the attention was all on her.

"What's going on?" asked Adrian in a anxious tone which I had barely ever heard him use, "Is Sydney OK?"

She shook her head in a daze. She looked very pale and I wondered what had happened to make her so stunned. "I don't know," she said to Adrian at last "It's my parents. They're getting divorced."

Author's Note: Thanks for reading. Please leave a review with any of your thoughts or feelings on this chapter. Thanks again, hunterofartemis126 (Nicolaclair).