A Prelude
November 11, 2023 - 3:40 am
There was something beyond the bass of the feeding club thumping through his chest and Shinseok chalked the elation up to feeling like himself since Halloween. Soa had finally acknowledged his existence; Priya had cleared his schedule for the next few days, mostly to save herself the headache of wrangling him (he really owed her a present.) There was only one dangling thread to bother him and progress on that front had slowed to a crawl, forced to keep pace with the human under surveillance. Shinseok knew his name but refused to use it, granting the level of respect the cretin deserved. Apparently something had shifted in his face as Genevieve poked at his chin. Golden eyes peeked down at her in his lap and she clicked her tongue at him.
“You’ve become terribly boring,” her accent, which had sounded far more natural in his tinted memory, pricked at his ears.
“I wasn’t aware of my demotion to jester,” he replied in French, then lifted his hand to brush her hair off her shoulder and expose the side of her neck. She easily slipped into the familiar dance, tilting her head back to invite him in. She gave quite the performance, reacting to the bite with so much pomp that Shinseok couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the display. His hand caught hers before she could disturb his hair, moving her to clutch with unwarranted desperation at his shoulder instead.
He pulled away as the burning under his skin approached a precipice, his gums aching as he passed his tongue over his teeth, to slice so he could close the marks on her neck. It took him far too long to extract himself from Genevieve’s grasp, gently but unceremoniously dumping her onto the adjacent seat where she pouted up at him. He poked her chin.
From his pocket, his phone vibrated and so he began plotting his exit. A fledgling across the private room quickly averted her gaze but Shinseok still let out an amused huff, “it appears that someone else wants to try and be better company.”
As he rose, his hands preemptively lifted to hush the scrambling entourage intent on following his lead, “No need to stop the party on my account. Enjoy yourselves.” While the younger vampires were all too eager to return to the task at hand, a small collection of guards hesitated as if warily expecting a trick. Shinseok couldn’t help but grin, recognizing that the etiquette lessons had perhaps been too thorough.
“That’s an order,” he teased, reaching out to give the most stubborn of the strike team a passing pat on the shoulder. Before greeting the valet, he took a moment to fuss with his hair in order to mask that he was checking for signs of the transformation. His forehead remained unblemished. The texture of his face was most certainly skin. A successful trial.
What a wonderful night.
