United

The sun rose over our glen and I smiled as I watched from my rooftop. It was a beautiful morning, one where you would never expect anything bad to happen. It was so cliché. I loved it.

When it had risen above the trees, I slid down from my thatch hut roof and changed into my work attire: dark green tights, a light green skirt cut jaggedly that reached mid-thigh, a long sleeved dark green skin tight undershirt, and a light green tunic. I whistled, slipping on my leather shoes, and pulled my black hair back in a ponytail.

I grabbed my bow and arrow and walked out into the grass, stretching, and waving to my fellow hunting elves. Normally we didn’t hunt during the day but the damn vampires had been making it practically impossible to get anything without worrying about crossing into their domain. Each time the elders of our races got together to try and negotiate something, the vampires kept claiming they had more land than they really did. This always resulted in fights and the map with the boundary marks was used so often our elder had to use magic to fortify the paper.

Now we were waiting for our elders to come back from the latest meeting.

“Lillian!” someone shouted and I cringed inside.

I forced a smile on my face as my hunting partner, Trevor, ran up beside me. I was hoping to get far enough in the forests that he would give up for once.

“Hi, Trevor,” I said wearily.

“I almost missed you,” he said, walking beside me as he shouldered his quiver. “How embarrassing would that be? For a hunting elf to lose his partner?”

“Pretty embarrassing,” I said.

“So, how did you sleep?” he asked when conversation grew thin.

I sighed and stopped walking. I popped out my hip and looked at him. He rubbed the back of his neck.

“The point of hunting, Trevor, is you have to be quiet.”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh come on, Lillian.”

I shook my head and tightened my grip on my bow. “How about you look on the ground? I’ll go into the trees.”

I didn’t give him the opportunity to answer and jumped into the nearest tree. I shook my head as I walked through the branches, my green eyes zeroed in on the ground below. Trevor was an awful hunter. I knew for a fact he pulled many strings to be my partner. He was trying to prove to everyone that he was my mate. I don’t know how he planned on doing that, though, when everyone knew that mates were chosen from birth.

I froze. To my left I sensed motion. Quick as a flash, I docked an arrow and aimed. Whatever it was, it had its back turned. I could tell it wasn’t an animal, though. As quietly as I could, I slid down the trunk. I landed silent as a leaf and crept toward them.

“You’re pretty good.” A laugh. “For an elf, that is.”

I stopped moving. “Turn around,” I ordered.

I could now see that it was a man. He was tall and wore a black suit and had the strangest shade of red hair I had ever seen. Slowly, he obeyed and smirked at me, his blue eyes glinting.

I curled my lip.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “This is our domain.”

“Actually,” the vampire said, walking forward slowly. He pointed at the ground. “There’s our boundary line.”

I looked down. It was true. It was hard to see, but there was a thin silver line separating us. We both walked so we were right next to it.

“Out hunting?” he asked.

I was about to answer when I heard Trevor shouting. I groaned.

“Trying to,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Get away from there, Lillian!” Trevor shouted. “He’s a vampire!”

I rolled my eyes. “Relax, Trevor,” I said. “He’s on his side, we’re on ours.”

The vampire was watching Trevor with an amused expression on his face.

“Don’t tell me you’re a hunter,” he sneered.

Trevor glared. “What are you doing out here, vampire?”

He shrugged. “Enjoying a walk in the woods we share, elf.”

“We don’t share anything,” Trevor snapped. “This forest belongs to us! I don’t know why your filthy-”

“Shut up,” I snapped at Trevor. He looked shocked. “Would you relax? Leave that up to the elders to decide. We have hunting to do.”

I glanced once more at the vampire. He winked at me but I shook my head and jumped back into the trees.

—Roan—

I watched the she-elf jump between the branches. I narrowed my eyes. I had forgotten about the elders meeting today. I frowned at my palace in the distance as I started walking back. The he-elf was still watching me so I flipped him off as I walked back. His angry spluttering made me laugh quietly.

The skin was starting to feel uncomfortable on my skin so I went as fast as I could. When I reached my palace, I let out a sigh of relief.

Other races believed vampires enjoyed the darkness for ambience but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I enjoyed the sun. Then sunrise was my favorite part of the day. Our eyes and our skin were sensitive to the sun, though, and became incredibly uncomfortable.

I stretched and walked into the dining room for breakfast. My father was seated already and he smiled at me.

“Mother still in bed?” I asked, sitting and accepting the plate of human food.

“Yes,” he said with a laugh. “You know how she is on days like these.”

I sat back and started to eat. The humans lived on the other side of the domain not inhabited by the elves. Unlike us vampires, though, humans could enter whatever domain they wanted. It was a little frustrating and I envied them slightly. Maybe we'd soon come to an agreement with those pointy-eared tree huggers to share the domain.

“What’s the deal with the elves?” I grumbled. “Are they afraid we’re going to go over there and suck them dry?”

My father snorted. “Probably. They don’t know that we can’t drink their blood. It’s been forbidden in the meetings.”

I shook my head. “That’s ridiculous. Even if we could, I’m sure their blood would taste disgusting. I ran into one this morning.”

He sighed. “Roan, you know the law.”

I rolled my eyes. “Calm down, Father. I didn’t cross the border. I was out there getting away from Ezebel.”

He smirked. “Is she still following you around?”

“Yes,” I said through clenched teeth. “I really need her to back off before I do something I regret.”

“Roan,” he snapped.

“Oh, please. I’m not really going to hurt her. She just needs to learn what boundaries are. And the meaning of the word ‘no’,” I added.

Somewhere outside, a loud bell began to ring and I looked up.

“They’re out,” my father breathed. “Here we go.”