I peered at him, making myself meet his gaze. “You went to King Hall?”
He nodded once, settling further onto the burgundy chair and resituating Isa so she lay on his chest, the white silk of his shirt stretching across his muscled chest. “Yes. I also graduated from there.”
My lips pinched, but I nodded, turning to Antonio. “Can you wrangle up a TV, VHS player, and DVD player for us?” He smirked and flicked his wrist. And suddenly, we had all I had asked for directly across from us. I stood, lifting the first tape from the table. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
I put the tape in and got comfortable on the couch again, staring avidly at the screen, on which the video started up instantly. It was really hard to tell who was who with the hoods up on their ceremonial robes, except for me since I was so short — an obvious difference in height — but Antonio’s voice started a quiet commentary. The location was King Hall’s gymnasium, and apparently it was King Zeller — Ezra, as Antonio continued to call him — who was taking the lead in the first Awakening.
King Zeller muttered a curse, watching himself on the flat screen fumble through his first attempt, but every single person — except Antonio — jolted when I started to fall, my hood falling back to blatantly show it was me, my eyes closed, out cold. I stared wide-eyed at the screen as Ezra blurred, catching me before I hit the ground, his own hood falling back as he shouted my name and shook my face frantically with his free hand. And suddenly all hell broke loose inside the gymnasium as the two others — Jack and Pearl, Antonio had stated in his commentary — threw back their hoods as Ezra lifted me into his arms.
“Holy fuck,” Elder Merrick muttered, sounding awed as Pearl, the blonde, threw one of the Kings into the air inside a golden bubble, while Jack, the blue-haired Elemental, threw up a wall of water around two of the other Kings — one being my biological father. Ezra’s eyes started glowing fiercely as he floated backward, his Vampire taking over when King Kincaid jumped at him, trying to get me away from the King. Hand over my mouth, I shook my head, watching as King Kincaid shifted.
“You didn’t tell me this happened,” Elder Zeller practically shouted at Antonio, pointing at the screen. “Did my son get hurt?”
Isa stirred at his voice and all the noise on the screen, but King Zeller rubbed her back, his eyes evaluating everything on the screen, so I ignored Antonio ignoring Elder Zeller, and turned my attention back to the screen. And it appeared that just as King Kincaid was about to attack Ezra — and I honestly wasn’t sure who would have won, by the expression on Ezra’s fiercely beautiful face — I stirred in Ezra’s arms.
Everyone stared avidly at the screen as my onscreen self woke and lifted a hand to pull on the infuriated Vampire’s ear.
I blinked, hand still over my mouth, not really believing what I was seeing. I watched King Zeller’s onscreen self pull my head away from his chest, not ripping me to shreds like another Vampire might have done in that state of mind as he stared down at me, while I woke completely, apparently coming out of the dead faint I had been in. We all watched as Pearl and Jack stopped their offensive attack on the Kings, the blonde in a real tizzy as she marched over to me in tears, hugging me hard.
I pointed a finger, seeing true emotion, true love, on her face for me. “Who is Pearl?”
The Elders went mute again, and my eyes popped wide. “No, no.” I shook my head, eyes darting back and forth between the screen and them. “I’m not into girls. So there’s no way I did something sexual with her.” I jabbed my finger at the screen. “And the Elemental? Who are they, Jack and Pearl?”
Everyone went silent as the onscreen King Zeller started shouting at me, pissed off about me not eating or something like that. I blinked when he suddenly left the screen, leaving my onscreen self standing there with a huge wolf rubbing all over me, King Kincaid marking me. My eyes went back to the Elders, ordering them, “Tell me who they are!”
Again, not a word or expression was given, and I peered at King Zeller, bewildered. “Did we have a damn orgy or something?”