Chapter 113

Tessa’s POV

“A new vampire?” I gasped, rushing to catch up with Carter. “How did Joseph know?”

“He has the ability to know when a new vampire wakes,” Carter reminded me, glancing at my worried face briefly before picking up the speed.

“Oh… right,” I breathed, feeling my face warm. “When will he be back?”

“I’m not sure. But I’m just going to assume not until late,” he answered, much to my dismay.

The thought of not seeing Joseph all day today left me feeling unsettled. But I was here as a guest, and I couldn’t interrupt his work. I knew his job was very important. All their jobs were important. I just had to stand in the background and not get in their way.

The Vamp House was already crowded with vampire villagers when we arrived. I still got some wandering eyes in my direction, but for the most part, they weren’t giving me nasty looks like they had yesterday. I wondered if it was because Joseph, or maybe Bernard, had said something to them.

I decided not to think too much about it and followed Carter to the buffet table. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I saw all the food. My stomach was growling, and my mouth started to water.

Like Joseph, the line of people stepped aside so Carter could grab his food. They also allowed me to grab my food. I smiled my thanks to them, hoping my nervousness wasn’t evident on my face.

I put some pancakes and bacon on my plate and helped myself to some fruit salad before going to the coffee station. I made a mocha cappuccino before while Carter made himself a coffee. He put cream and sugar in his coffee, unlike Joseph’s black coffee.

I followed Joseph through the dining hall until we reached the same table we sat at yesterday. I was surprised to see Bernard and Anna seated and eating casually. They were in the middle of a conversation with Nate, who sat in front of them. He seemed to be talking their ears off about something.

Bernard ate his food, hardly paying attention to what Nate was saying, but Anna seemed to be intently listening to him with an interested look on her face.

She appeared a lot better than she was last night and I was pleased to see that.

When Carter and I approached, her smile widened, and her eyes lit up.

“Oh, good. You made it to breakfast. Take a seat,” Anna breathed.

I set my food and coffee on the table and sat down beside Nate. Carter took the other seat beside me.

“How are you feeling, Anna?” I asked as I took a bite of my bacon.

“Much better,” she said with a fond smile. “I’m sorry you had to see that last night. That’s not the impression I wanted to leave you.”

“No need to apologize. It wasn’t your fault. I know you can’t control it. I’m the one who’s sorry that you had to go through something so awful.”

She gave me a kind smile, but this time it didn’t reach her eyes. I could see the sadness in her gaze, and it tugged at my heart.

“Are you going to be okay without Joseph for today?” Bernard asked, quickly changing the subject.

I raised my brows.

“You already knew he was going to be gone today?” I asked, amazed by his quick knowledge.

“I’m the Overseer. It’s my job to know everything that goes on in my village,” he answered. “I also know that you’ll be spending the day with Carter. Do you think you’ll be okay with that?”

I glanced at Carter, who was casually eating his food without a care in the world, and then I looked back at Bernard and nodded.

“Yes. I’ll be fine. I’m kind of excited to see him training,” I admitted. “I think it’ll be fun.”

“Just make sure you don’t get in their way,” Bernard said.

“If you need anything at all today, don’t hesitate to call,” Anna said sweetly. “Let me see your phone. I’ll put my number in there.”

I reached out my pocket and pulled out my phone, sliding it across the table and toward Anna, who took it without a second thought.

Once she was done inputting her number, she handed it back to me.

“Now you can call if anything happens or if you just need to talk,” she said as she began eating her food.

“If it’ll even go through,” I said, putting my phone back in my pocket. “There’s not much reception here.”

“When we are within our borders, we can reach each other with ease on our phones. It’s when you try to make calls to those who aren’t in our borders that the call will fail,” she explained. “You’ll be able to reach me just fine.”

“Hey, Carter. You’re still coming later, right? I need to go hunting,” Nate surprised me by speaking. He was quiet when we arrived.

“Yeah, I’ll be there. But Tessa might have to come too,” he answered, glancing at Nate with a shrug.

Nate glanced at me.

“Can you handle the sight of hunting?” He asked.

I thought about my time on my father’s farm. We mainly raised and nurtured the farm animals. But we also had to slaughter certain animals for food to sell to the local markets. Like elderly cows, horses, and chickens. It always made me sad to see them go, but after a certain age, they no longer serve a real purpose to the farm, other than the meat they provide.

I killed my share of chickens in the past and I’m no longer squeamish during the process. My father also did a lot of hunting. I never went with him, but I was never against it.

“I think I can handle it,” I answered as I continued to eat.

“Good, because it gets bloody,” Nate said grimly.

“I’m not squeamish,” I responded. “But can you handle the blood? I mean, you are a vampire after all.”

He cracked a smile at my little joke.

“It’s not animal blood I crave,” Nate said with a serious expression, sending a chill down my spine.

“Behave,” Anna chuckled, shaking her head at him.

He finished the last of his food before standing.

“I have to go. I have a couple of sessions this morning and then I need to tend to the garden,” he said as he stepped away from the table. “I’ll see you guys later.”

“Bye, Nathan,” Anna said with a wave.

Once he was gone, I looked at Anna with a frown.

“Nathan? Does he prefer Nathan over Nate?” I asked.

“He doesn’t care much,” Anna answered. “I like Nathan better, so I call him Nathan. Joseph often calls him Nathanial. But you can call him whatever makes you comfortable.”

Carter cleared his throat before standing.

“We should go too. The warriors are waiting for me at the battlegrounds.”

“Battlegrounds?”: I asked, raising my brows.

“It’s where we train,” he said. “Let’s go.”

….

The battleground was across the village just past the shopping district. The shopping district was flooded with a variety of vampires of all ages. I saw some children running around a small park area and a few were having a picnic. Everybody looked so natural and unvampire-like.

I admired that a lot.

“Is this where we are going to accompany those vampires who want to shop?” I asked, raising my brows. This district was well within the border, so accompanying people here seemed pointless.

“No,” he answered as he made his way up a large grassy hill that led up to the temple of Nyx. “The stores here have limited stuff that sells the things we can grow and hunt. We often sell these items to local markets as well because there’s no meat or produce fresher than ours. But with things we can’t get here, we go down to the human city just below the mountains.”

That made sense.

The temple was even bigger once we were standing right next to it. I gawked up at the beautiful rustic building in awe. I wondered what it looked like on the inside. But we weren’t going inside.

We were going beyond the hill, and going downhill I saw the giant battlegrounds. It almost looked like a football field of a sort, without goalposts.

On one side of the field was a long building where I noticed some warriors leaving with a bunch of weapons equipped with their armor. They were already partnered up and fighting amongst one another when we arrived.

They greeted Carter with the same fist-over-chest motion as I had seen before and then their eyes found mine.

Carter looked at me without saying anything to them.

“Go sit on the benches,” he motioned for the benches on the far side of the field. In the distance, I saw someone sitting there already, a female.

I nodded to him and went to join the girl. When I got closer, I realized I recognized her.

Fae, the human from Anna’s party.

She looked shocked to see me and when I sat down, I tried to give her a polite greeting, but she spoke first.

“I’ve been dying to know since I saw you yesterday,” she said, leaning toward me. “Are you Joseph’s blood slave?”