It was soft, gentle. Kind. It warmed her heart without her knowing what it was. It made her feel happy. Wanted.

Then, a certain blonde woman popped back into her mind.

[Y/n] bolted upright.

A sound that she hadn't really registered happening came to a stop; Nyais had been humming softly, his arms wrapped around [Y/n]'s sleeping figure. He tilted his head, brushing a strand of her hair behind her ear.

"How do you feel?" he asked gently, holding her like she was some ancient artefact; a priceless, delicate body of ceramic. Or, perhaps more suitably, he held her like she was the most important thing in his life - held her like she was his entire world and reason for being.

"I don't know..." [Y/n] tailed off. "Better, but worse," she sighed, looking up at Nyais with a confused expression. Everything hurt. Her body felt like every muscle had turned to paper and ripped when she'd move. Simultaneously, all her wounds from Seishin and Kori had gone.

"That makes sense," Nyais sighed. "You were out for a day and a half. Don't worry, though. You haven't missed anything," he smiled gently. "Rayne came back to make sure all was well and apparently you'd reacted best out of everyone he'd tried it on." He placed his hand on her head, his expression gentle and relieved. "I knew you could do it."

"I... I don't know..." [Y/n] shook her head. "I don't know what to do. I'm... I'm not even human anymore, Nyais." Her expression seemed desperate. "I don't know... I just don't know. I'm... I'm scared..."

"[Y/n], calm down. Nothing has changed—"

"Everything has changed!" [Y/n] snapped, pulling away from the brunet and staring dead into his violet eyes.

They stayed like that for a while, [Y/n]'s gaze riddled with confusion, fury, fear and so much more. Nyais simply looked sad.

"I'm sorry, Nyais..." [Y/n] looked down, averting her eyes from his. He shook his head and pulled her close to him once more, his embrace still warm and welcoming.

"Don't apologise," he said quietly. "There's so much to blame me for, so much to hate me for... I don't know how you stay happy around me. Every second with you is a blessing. I want to make our time together worth it, no matter how endless it may seem to you. A-and please know that it won't always be like this. You won't be stuck in this apartment for eternity, I promise. There's just a lot I need to work on right now - lots of lengths I need to go to in order to ensure your protection. You understand, right?"

"I... I understand, but..." [Y/n] looked down. "I don't just not know anything about myself now... I know hardly anything about you. You've been around for how long, 80 something years? I know you had a wife but you refuse to tell me anything but her name. I know you hate Rayne but all I can trace that to is his strangeness, which I'm sure can be said for a lot of vampires. I know you're friends with the king but it makes no sense how that could come to be regarding the age gap, and why is someone who apparently lives in luxury like this running a program where humans look after kids? Surely that would be taken on by someone a lot fresher than you?"

Nyais seemed a little surprised by her outburst of questions. He sat and thought for a while.

"It makes sense for you to be curious, but I really don't think you knowing everything about me is a good idea," he shook his head.

"Why?" [Y/n] asked monotonously.

"I've told you this before. I wasn't a good person. I don't want you to have to know about the shit I've done in the past." Nyais' gaze hardened and he let go of [Y/n], standing up and walking over to the door, placing his hand on the door handle. "I can't talk to you about Leya because it's too recent," Nyais began quietly, "I can't talk to you about Rayne because it's too dangerous for me to," he turned around and stared at [Y/n] with a cold expression. "I can't talk to you about Olli because he's the one with your life on a string and I can't talk to you about my job because you'd hate me if I did." With that, he opened the door and took a step out.

"I'm going to the office. If you need me, call for me."

He shut the door and [Y/n] listened to his footsteps crossing the hall and pausing at the main door. The rattle of keys sounded, then a click, then he left.

* * *

Forwards, backwards, right, right, forwards—

"Oi, Draka," Mitzu's abrasive voice cut in to Draka's training session, causing the sweating, tired boy to step away from the punching bag and raise an eyebrow. "We got a letter."

"Eh? Who from?" Draka muttered, walking over to Mitzu. "W-wait, it's not from [Y/n], is it...?" he asked, a small smile growing on his face. Mitzu rolled his eyes.

"Of course it ain't from [Y/n], idiot," Mitzu huffed, opening the letter and shoving it in Draka's arms. "It's from Seishin. He wants us to meet up tonight - something about some stuff he knows that he thinks we should, too. Oh, and I asked Jay for permission. He's okay with it so long as we take the maps he gave us yesterday."

"Yeah, alright, shut up so I can read it," Draka retorted dully.

'Draka and Mitzu,

I'm sure you've been as impatient as the rest of us to get this training over with. Seeing as tomorrow we move back to our old place and have a day off before work, I figured tonight would be an appropriate time to share with you some things I've been brewing over. Meet the rest of us at the library at 9:30pm.

This isn't optional if you ever want to see [Y/n] again.

- Seishin.'

"Wow, his handwriting's shit," Draka laughed, "who knew the smart-ass would have such... terrible writing skills." Draka then cracked his neck, shaking his head. "It's 9pm now so we'd better get a move on," he said to Mitzu, "didn't it take like 20 minutes to get to the library yesterday?" he hummed, scratching the back of his neck. Mitzu nodded.

"Yeah," he said blankly. "This better be worth my time or I'm gonna punch the shit out of that blonde brat."

"I wouldn't be too hasty," Draka laughed, "you don't know how hard they've been training. If it's anything like ours, they might deck you in seconds," he grinned. Mitzu rolled his eyes and pulled on his leather coat - they'd both been given clothes and weapons usually exclusive to elites for surviving training. Though Mitzu couldn't exactly take his new katana or mallet with him, he did wear his new clothes with pride. Draka had slipped his weapon - a knuckleduster, as he was far more adept at straight-up fighting - into the pocket of his new hoodie. Not that he was planning to hurt anyone with it, but you never know.

They left their room and passed Jay in the kitchen. They simply acknowledged one another with nods - Jay wasn't one to ask about feelings or ambitions, he simply wanted them to be good soldiers.

Draka wondered to himself what jobs everyone else had. He and Mitzu had no idea that Jay was the army general so they felt pretty privileged when they got the chance to shadow him on his rounds of the Subteran (they finally found out the name of the place was) yesterday. Jay had offered them the job of being part of the Third Troupe this morning - the Third Troupe were centred around patrolling the Subteran, doing occasional house-checks when they thought things were dodgy and so on.

Initially, Jay had wanted the boys to join the Second Troupe - one higher in status from them and one lower from him. Their job was to fight when under attack and to act on the suspicions of the Third Troupe when they thought criminal offences may have been being committed by fellow vampires. As appealing as this sounded, the boys had to decline. Why? Because that meant always having to be available.

It might get in their way of getting [Y/n] back.

"I wonder what jobs the others got," Mitzu mused as if having read Draka's mind. The brunet shrugged in response.

"Who did Nyais say they were working for again?" Draka mumbled.

"Pretty sure Kori and Seishin were with Kaist and Laion and Aytsa were with Rayne." Draka winced. Whilst on their tour yesterday, they'd met both Kaist and Rayne - both were away from their houses. Rayne was returning from somewhere but he wouldn't say where. The boys, despite their confidence, had been brought on edge by the murderous aura that surrounded the man. They recalled him spitting something about a human being stupid - their first response was shock as they thought he'd been talking about [Y/n], but Jay had informed them that he often kidnapped humans to experiment on them so [Y/n] probably wasn't in the equation.

"I feel sorry for Laion and Aytsa. Jeez, that guy was... off," Draka hummed.

"I thought Kaist seemed pretty weird too," Mitzu hummed. Draka raised an eyebrow as if to say 'are you kidding me?'. When they'd met Kaist, he'd been really polite. Asked about training and stuff and talked about his memories of his own training sessions. Only when he left did Jay explain that Kaist was also an elite, the commander of the hunters and one of the most formidable vampires in the Subteran.

"You kidding? I thought Kaist was really nice," Draka shrugged. "Sure, he was a bit bizarre but not on the Rayne-scale of bizarre."

"Since when was that a thing?" Mitzu huffed.

"Since right—" Draka paused, stopping in his tracks, "now?" he continued uncertainly. He stared down the hallway and was met with the unimpressed gaze of a doctor in a white and brownish-red lab coat - the red was quite obviously splatters of blood. "Hi- uh, Rayne, is it?" Draka smiled awkwardly. The doctor stopped walking but didn't speak. "W-where are Aytsa and Laion, i-if you don't mind me asking?"

"On their way to the library," Rayne responded, deadpan. He took a few steps closer. "Look, just because you trained under an elite doesn't make you better than me," he said darkly, "so watch what you say or I'll gouge your eyes out of their sockets, put them on skewers, melt 'em slightly and make you eat them."

With that, he returned to walking down the hallway. Mitzu and Draka continued in silence from then on as they tried to pretend nothing had happened; walking down the quiet maze of corridors, they finally reached the library. They pushed open the doors and stepped inside. It was darker than the hallway so they had to wait for their eyes to adjust to the candlelight for a moment. Then, they made out the coffee table in the back of the room. Seishin, Aytsa, Kori and Laion sat around it, quietly waiting.

"Yo, it's been a while," Draka grinned, waving as he strode over in their direction.

"Yo?" Kori echoed with surprise. "What's Jay done to you?" he laughed.

"It's only been little under a week," Seishin sighed, responding to Draka's statement rather than his introduction.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Just feels like a few years y'know?" Draka chuckled, taking a seat next to Kori and watching as Mitzu quietly sat next to Laion. "So, like, what's up?"

"I was about to get to that," Seishin huffed dismissively. "I've been thinking quite a bit the past few days. Initially, I'd tried to come up with some solo strategies but I realised that - regarding the level of protection [Y/n] is under and the fact that Nyais is said to be likened in strength to our tutors - I'd need everyone's help."

"Nyais doesn't seem that strong," Aytsa laughed, "I mean, Rayne's only a worker but he's owned Nyais in fights before."

"Remember that Rayne's only a worker because his job is so... strange," Kori interjected. "People don't respect him as having an actual place in society. You still lived in the soldier / hunter quarters though, did you not?" The dark grey haired male tilted his head.

"Nah, we lived kinda on our own. He had his own little corridor between the elites and the soldiers," Aytsa said with a grin.

"Well that proves our point that he's only a worker by title," Kori sighed. "I, for one, wish that were not the case. When we met him he seemed absolutely delirious. I don't know how you put up with that sicko for more than ten minutes."

"Aytsa and Rayne really hit it off," Laion shrugged, "apparently he's got all the same interests and incentives as the 'sicko'," Laion hummed. Aytsa looked down at the floor at this, a slightly nervous smile on his face.

"Fucking hell, don't get swept into that raving lunatic's ideals," Kori shook his head. Aytsa nodded slightly but clearly paid no mind to his words. Draka rubbed the back of his neck, turning to look at Seishin again.

"Alright, so you realised you need our help. What with?" the brunet boy asked, raising one eyebrow. Seishin silently (save for a sigh as he finally got to do what he'd called the meeting for) proceeded to pull some pieces of paper out of his pocket and pass them around the room. As each boy read the slip of paper, they seemed increasingly surprised. This shock quickly faded however as they realised the magnitude of the words written on these pieces of paper.

The room filled with a determined silence.



so, uh, yeah- I'm quite excited because the next chapter is the one of the few chapters I've been excited to write since day one soooo— uh— enjoyyyyyy ^^;