Love Bites (Book one)

Chapter nineteen

*Sven*

I had to find a way to get to know Yasmin, some way to get closer to her. If I knew her, then I may find that some of this power that she had over me faded, and even if not, then maybe I could at least understand why I felt this way. But how could I do that without drawing too much attention to what I was doing? The last thing that I wanted to do was to make things harder for her here.

I left my gym, having needed to work out some of my anger from the night before. I thought that in ending Nelson’s life, I would have been able to contain what remained, but that did not seem to be the case as the longer I was away from Yasmin the more tightly wound I found myself becoming. I found my feet leading me out of the castle, towards the training ring, and I had no idea why until I got there.

I found Charles at the top of the stairs, looking over into the arena below, his head snapping round as I approached. “Sire.” He bowed his head as I got closer, looking over the edge to see Yasmin below, battling with multiple copies of herself while Frankie defended herself from multiple directions.

“What is this?” I asked, not sure how I felt seeing my daughter being under attack from her own guard.

“I think that after last night, they need to feel more like they can defend themselves if they are attacked.” Charles sighed, looking down to them below. “Yasmin may have passed the guard tials, but she is not a trained fighter. Last night was the first fight that we have had within the castle walls in decades, and I think that this is something that all the guards should be volunteering to take part in to make sure that they are ready for if they do need to defend us. We have become too complacent.”

I nodded my head, making a low hum of approval. He was right, we had become complacent. The groups were trained almost every night, but once a vampire entered the guard, that was it for their training. Some of the guards had been in service for almost a hundred years, meaning that they could easily have let their reflexes slip and not actually be much help when it came to a fight. I remembered how my own guards had looked at me during the day, not sure how to react to Frankie needing support. Maybe we were just lucky that it was not a case that we were under attack, because I do not think that they would have been much help.

I looked at Yasmin again, admiring how her body moved, how she was fair with her instruction, encouraging the others, but not holding back herself. I smiled to myself internally, seeing exactly what I needed to do. “I agree with you Charles. This is something that is very important to me and I will oversee it myself.”

Charles let out a heavy sigh. “Martyn will not be happy that you are taking the guard off of him.”

“On the contrary, he will still be in charge of the day to day running of the guard, I will just be running the extra training as and when required.” I pointed out.

“What about your other duties?”

“Drex already takes care of most of the day to day things and I will still be available for making decisions. I have noticed that I need to make a few changes to the way that things are being run, what happened yesterday should never have been allowed to happen. The best place to start making changes is right here in the kingdom and I need to be the one to make it.” I explained, my eyes not moving from Yasmin as she started to train against one of the other women using Frankie’s shield ability this time. “It seems that Yasmin has been able to rally the women quite well, would you say that she is the leader of their small group?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

“I believe so.” Charles replied, eyeing me warily.

“Well, if we are going to try and integrate the men and women then it is best that they train together as well. If the women respond to Yasmin then she would be the ideal candidate to help me.”

“I don’t know how the men will feel having to take orders from a woman.” Charles grimaced.

“Well, they will have to get used to it. Things are changing, if they don’t like it then they can leave and I will replace them with guards of twice the quality.” I gritted out. I knew that Charles’ point was a valid one, but if I am by her side, I would make sure that it was not an issue. “Once they have finished training, send Yasmin to come and see me, I will be in the pools.” I stated, turning on my heels and leaving before he had a chance to argue.

First of all, I had to explain my plan to the rest of my children and so I summoned them to the hall. I arrived there first, pouring myself a large glass of scotch laced with blood before taking my seat, sure that I would need the liquid to make it through the meeting. Drex was the next to arrive, bowing slightly before taking a seat, followed by Martyn who did the same. I am sure that they thought this was linked to the new laws I had decreed and I guess in a way, it was. Phillippe and Frankie walked in together, Frankie covered in a thin film of sweat and dirty with Phillippe glowering at her. Once they had bowed and taken their seats I took a long sip of my drink before I began.

“The events of yesterday have been weighing heavily on me. As you know I have already implemented some changes, but I feel that making new laws is not enough to keep us safe within our own walls. The reaction of the other guards to Frankie’s call for help was delayed, and not even all her brothers came to assist.” I informed them.

“My assistance was not required to deal with one rogue guard.” Phillippe gritted out.

“And the guards did what they were trained to do. No one was invading the castle and the guards are not bodyguards at the club breaking up a lover’s spat.” Martyn added.

“A lover’s spat? Nelson was trying to rape her!” Frankie yelled.

“That was not against the law yesterday!” Phillippe pointed out.

“Well it should have been!” Drex growled, hitting his hand against the table.

“Quiet!” I ordered, waiting for them to end their incessant bickering before I continued. “When one of you calls for help, you all answer, regardless of if you think you are needed or not. The guards should break up any conflict within the kingdom, not just that aimed at our person. It has come to my attention that they are under trained and under prepared should the eventuality come that they are needed. Due to this, I will be running training exercises with the guard until further notice.”

Martyn shot to his feet. “The guards are my domain! I gave up my group to take them on.” He hissed.

“And you will be continuing with your current involvement with them, but like the groups, they need regular training and I believe that I should be the one to enforce it.” I stated firmly, leaving no room for arguments.

“It will be a lot of work, sire. You will need assistance with running the drills.” Phillippe offers, obviously hoping that it will be him that I ask.

“I am aware of that, which is why I will be asking Yasmin to assist me.”

“Yasmin?” Fankie gasped.

“The Sedvey!?” Martyn yelled.

“Yasmin has shown great leadership over the other women and as we need to make sure that they are integrated more into how the kingdom is run, she is the ideal candidate to aid with this.” I argued.

“But she is a woman.” Phillippe grumbled.

“That may be so, but I did not see any of you taking the initiative to run a training session of your own accord. She did, and I was impressed with what I saw there.” With those words, Frankie slid down in her seat slightly, obviously worried that she was in some type of trouble. “I want to build on what she has started. At a later stage, once things are running smoothly, I may ask for one of you to take over, but until then I need your support as always.”

I glared around the table, showing them that not backing my play was not an option. “Sire.” They all eventually chorused before Phillippe and Martyn stood up and stormed out of the room.

I stopped Frankie and Drex from leaving wanting to speak with them more. I first turned to Frankie, watching as she shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot. “I saw that you decided to train with the other women tonight in the training room.”

“Yes sire.” She almost whispered, shrinking away slightly.

“If you are truly serious about learning to protect yourself, then you can continue to attend, but you have to take this seriously. The moment I think that you are slacking I will not hesitate in stopping you from attending.”

Frankie’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Yes sire. Thank you sire.” She almost cheered as she placed another kiss on my cheek and skipped out of the room, still making excited noises.

Drex stepped closer, a smile on his face that I had not seen in a long time. “I will need you to step up in some places with the day to day runnings, but I will still make any major decisions that need to be made. I am trusting you with this Drex, over all my other children.”

It was a lot of trust I was putting in him, if he wanted to, he could manipulate things so that he was the Master vampire instead of me, but something told me that Drex would not do that. I had trusted him with a lot of responsibility for a long time and this was the natural next step for me to have time to start to put things right, and have a chance to get to know Yasmin.

“You can trust me sire.” Drex bowed, sending me another smile before he walked out of the room. I finished off my blood laced scotch, savouring the slight burn I felt from it before heading outside to the pools, needing the warm water to relax me after Martyn and Phillippe’s reaction to my plan. Had I expected anything less? No, but I hoped that they learned to hold their tongues in public, otherwise we were going to have some issues within our own family, nevermind the rest of the kingdom and vampire kind.