27. The Riddle.

When I focused on something, I focused on it. And before I paid attention, four days had passed. I'd eaten and then made lots of bouquets around the castle. I knew we had a wedding coming up and there would be professional florists to do the flowers, but it was so fucking fun I just did them. I went out for another meal and made myself a coffee while my meat stew warmed up.

I had taken Jarod's advice seriously and then my little thought of using my vampire side, which would feel everything so damn intensely had been the right call. So I had my trusty three-liter jug full of an extremely potent mix of demons, energy witches, and whatnot, so strong that it had given me a fantastic buzz at the start and now I had gotten a little more tolerance to it as my vampire side had woken up, I felt again. 

Well, as pack members drink from each other, they are pretty much as strong as the other one, meaning that keep the equilibrium of power so to speak steady, so no one gets any stronger, and no one gets much weaker than others, if you feel weak, you can sip from pack member and be in point where you were.

But not me. I wanted to be strong, so I pushed my boundaries and I was also pretty naughty as I had discovered pretty much this vampire stuff just by myself. I mean, Damon had not been there for me. Not at the start and it was so damn hard, and I felt lonely as I had to learn these things alone, but then again, it has been my life. To be alone.

So I did not share my little lessons over the years. First of all, Damons, all of them were arrogant bastards when it came to their vampire side and them being vampires, they thought they knew it all, so they tended to look down on me. I was strong and tasty, but not as mighty as them. But in reality, well. I had quite a collection of different abilities come up to me. I was not weak. Not at all. 

Damon had taught Mariella from the start by giving her his blood, making him her sire, and binding her tightly to him. He tried to do the same to me in the past, but I broke it. I am a free agent. Not turned but evolved into a vampire and thus I have my queen side inside my vampire.

A very ancient set of instincts and ways of working and unfortunately they come out when I am in silver madness, thus I want to make a hive. Be the queen. My wildcat, my vampire side, is very alluring, but she does not nowadays so much want sex but blood. She wants to use males as meals, and nothing else. And those fantasies or plans of hers are pretty brutal and raw and I know that if I give in to her and attack one of the damons, there would be pretty harsh consequences for me. So it is no go.

Keeping my vampire side awake had woken me up. I felt again, and I was curious too. I understood it was my pretender side wanting to try new stuff, so I let my mind wander to come up with what to do next.

I started thinking about just coffee and coffee drinking as my coffee changed quite rarely and it seemed like it was never the same as everyone else's, but I could do more than bouquets. The idea had developed in my head. I had a lot of different coffees in Moldova and I never knew which one would taste the best. I decided to have a coffee tasting for myself on top of the food.

This was my life again, being alone and doing everything by myself. The food was tasty though, and I prepared everything. Then I remembered, after unpacking my hamster storage boxes, that there had been a new coffeemaker. Several, actually. They would probably make fantastic coffee.

We all had our own coffee makers these days when most of us had to drink a lot of coffee and sometimes ordered it from the coffee farm. Then everyone would see which coffee was on, so you would have to smell your coffee. We had a bag of beans and our coffee maker ground them so the coffee was as fresh as possible.

Do you know how to make your pot of coffee? First, you load up your personal coffee maker full of water. Then you go to the coffee cupboard with a measuring cup and open one bag after another, and you smell each bag of coffee. You will know what coffee hits you, and then you take certain amounts of beans into your measuring cup from that sack and go put them in your coffee maker.

Another pack member could also smell your head behind your ears and they would get a whiff of what would be your coffee, so they would then recognize it as that coffee would smell like those pheromones. so making a cup of coffee as a hybrid is not so easy.

So sometimes when I would come to breakfast and if there were other salvatores present, they would pretty fast be sniffing me behind my ears and putting my coffee on, as according to them, I am not doing strong enough coffee for myself. It is not unusual that if I am trying to find out what my coffee is and take my dose of beans, that one salvatores comes, grabs a handful more beans, and puts them into my machine. I need caffeine and a lot of it, meaning my coffee is strong as hell. And then there are put generously sugar and cream on it. Calories are another thing that the body needs and a lot of them.

Then if you drank the wrong coffee, you could fall asleep. A handy way if you want to take a nap sometimes. it is almost that other coffee but that one which is your coffee, will make you more or less tired and some of them are quite damn sedating. 

Soon I'd go to Moldova and get dozens of coffees from there. And then I'd see which ones worked and which ones didn't. These coffees I had in Moldova were special blends, not pure like the pack coffees, and therefore these were not always ideal in terms of caffeine and so on, but you got such a fucking good coffee experience out of them.

Pack had ordered coffees from one type of each. As packets that you buy in shops, they are blends from different countries and there might be a few dozen different coffees in one blend, but the pack has gotten always just one sort of each type. not blends. 

This was again my curious pretender side doing its stuff, and this was also something that the pack would not maybe understand. They would find it tedious to taste different coffees. We had that experience a few times when we visited for coffee farm and they had made tasting coffees and Mariella and number one they got bored halfway and bought all types of coffee. 

I first went to the hamster store and teleported upstairs to the kitchen which was empty and pretty much unused, 10 different brewers and then a capsule maker, and lots of different coffee pods, they were handy and I had been using them for quite a while now as I was always off somewhere by myself.

I had learned to watch out for certain additives that there were in certain pods, so no loose shit from these, only nice-tasting coffees. 

I got all 10 different kinds of coffee makers ready and then went through the portal to Moldovan Castle. There I went to the kitchen and took one of the multi-purpose trolleys I had reserved here and put a kilo of each coffee in my trolley and I had 250 coffees.

I chuckled to myself that this might take a little while, but I have time. I had never had any of these coffees and I knew that these were always seasonal, so these would be unique. It's good to be unique yourself and then drink unique coffees. I had bought all the coffee blends all the time, and they had been 200kg bags, so here I was with coffee. Soon I would be ready to go back and start my tasting.

I numbered my samples, and I knew that this would take days for me to go over these coffees but, hey, I am immortal, time is something that I have and lot. 

Mariella was pleased with how she had managed to unload Damon. The other three were with Adam and Charles in the wolves after number one had put them there. Mimi had agreed to give up the fleas and Damon was certainly feeling bad about it, but Mariella had now got the point across.

It was to everyone's advantage, including the fleas, that they were run by someone who had the time and motivation all the time. But then one of the little clouded leopards, Di, told Mariella a little about Mimi's activities and Mariella took a bit of flack for it. A coffee tasting, really, with new coffee makers. Even though she knew it had been boring tasting those coffees on the farm, she wanted Damon to know, and somehow; she wanted to taste them, too. Who the hell Mimi was to think that those blends would not be suitable in terms of caffeine? It would be up to Damon to smell them. Not her. 

Mariella curled up on top of Damon. She rarely lay directly on top of him. She was usually under him or in his arms. She looked at her husband and said, "Damon, do you know what Mimi is going to do? I wonder what Mimi has been up to in Moldova? And what has she found in her hamster stash?"

Damon looked at his wife and asked, " Well, what? You're agitated and why, darlin?"

Damon had spoken softly. His voice was soft, almost gentle, but how he pronounced the word darling, told Mariella a lot of things. 

Mariella thought that now was just the right time to have Damon deal with Mimi. Very good.

Her voice was dreamy, not too irritated, she spoke as if she would be just thinking things around, "Mimi has coffees in Moldova, unique blends you can't find anywhere else and she had bought everything, 250 different, and the lady had 10 coffee makers and two or three capsule makers in her stock. The lady is now getting a kilo of each coffee and is going to have her coffee-tasting party, as she has tasted none of those coffees. She is certain that they are not suitable for everyday use as they are blends and she has bought 200 kilos of each. So think if she would have the perfect blend for the pack and she is not willing to share, as she believes those blends are hers."

Damon looked at his wife questioningly. He said, " Just such a naughty little Mimi we have. What do you want to do about it?"

Mariella said. "Mimi may have got hidden coffee in other houses. I want all the coffee everywhere to be available and it should be kept in the fridge. We need to make a storage system like that. Besides, we need to clear out the Moldovan castle's storerooms, since Miss seems to think it's her hiding place. That lady needs a lesson, don't you think? And there is more. She spoke on the phone with Jarod, got the idea of waking up her vampire side and she had again gotten bloods from her stash, making the darn potent mix, enough to give her buzz and she has been drinking it four days now. She has always one jug ready to be consumed. "

Damon stroked his wife and touched her neck with his fingernail. Mariella shivered. He felt his vampire side, wanting to play with this one.

Damon said lazily, " Oh, I can't wait for darlin, our wedding night. I don't even know if I'm going to spend a single night with anyone but you. You, you have my full attention now and I am not sure if I have the energy to deal with Mimi."

Mariella said, her voice trembling a bit, "Let us go shower and get dressed. The miss is still in Moldova and she has fixed her kitchen upstairs. I don't even know where it is, for herself."

Damon got up like a panther after Mariella and the shower lasted for half an hour, after which Mariella was powerless and fucked to pieces. At the same time, Damon had slit her jugular vein open and had not let it heal immediately after fucking her. It had been fucking wild and Mariella vowed that one day she would take that side and they would fuck for a week in one go. But then after that side would have to deal with Mimi first. Not before, because she wanted sex and less bashing around, and Mimi could do little bashing and less sex.

I started gathering treats from my fridge and freezer next, as I didn't want to just drink plain coffee. Of course, you have to have a coffee cake. I had a second fridge from Moldova Castle, as the first one was already so full and this one wasn't linked now. Here I had all my goodies. I started collecting the savory ones first. eclairs I found with reindeer stuffing, duck stuffing, wagyu stuffing, chicken, and bird stuffing. Then I picked up small Karelian pies and a big container of egg butter.

I had churned the butter myself. Once I had bought a cream truckload more or less from a farm, I had then made my own butter. It had duck eggs in it, so it was the egg butter, and then I had various smoked meats I had sliced with my slicer here in Moldova. I had here one of the biggest smokehouses around and I went in and fetched a few dozen smoked partridges, a front quarter or wagyu. They fitted into my cart. I would chop that wagyu up with my knives and tools, not big on sharing. 

Then my delicacies. Gravad salmon and prawns. Oh, that I would eat these just for fun and that was actually a bit of my intention. I also packed some sweet cream puffs, pastries with mirror glaze on top, and little berry pies and little curd pies. Butter eye buns, and big tins of cookies.

I also reserved several collection packs of luxury coffee capsules, with lots of different coffees ranging from the strongest espresso to some nice, almost pumpkin coffee. And then, of course, my bloods, a few types of angels, several demons, demon kings actually and I made a few jugs ready. They all have about the same strength but different tastes in them so it would be pretty perfect. 

My trolley was loaded. Oh. I probably wouldn't eat all the goodies with coffee, I'd leave them in my nest. I had just casually made myself a really super-sweet nest where I was going to watch TV and enjoy, treat myself at the same time, and do those nice things. Sip my blood mixture and get a buzz. My mix should give me a buzz as this was again a little stronger than the last one.

Maybe one day find something so wonderful to do by myself that I could make my soul sing. Why does it always need another one? That's what I don't understand. I had been so much alone in my life that I had learned to it and how Mariella hung on Damon; it was not me. 

Now I had everything I needed. I just didn't know how I was going to choose the coffee I was going to try, by the numbers, just randomly, or if I was going to try to sniff it out. I didn't know yet and that in itself is so fucking liberating, not having to have a plan all the time and knowing what you're going to do. You get to be spontaneous. It's fun. 

Mariella and Damon searched the kitchen, which was more or less hidden, and yet this was put on pretty damn perfectly. It was filled with the latest equipment and lots of pots and pans; it was big, spacious, and done in a very orderly way. Mariella could see that there was actually very little that Damon might change, but then again, the multitude of pans and pots all new and not tested made him frown slightly as he took them in his hands, testing them. 

Mariella went to look at the coffee makers and Damon asked, " Do you want the rest of the crew here right away?"

He was arranging some pots in high in cupboards, they were not up to his standards.

Mariella said, "Not yet. You know, the young lady is going to get treatment from you. You probably haven't decided what, but I doubt we'll be drinking a lot of coffee, at least not right away. Remember Damon, the unruly little bitch, the little alpha bitch who tries to be innocent and has filled the entire castle with her bouquets? I know we could make those bouquets and she ought to teach us, the same goes for her baking and food making, sharing, and those blood jugs, you can smell these empty ones that this mix has been so strong that I would be out cold if I would try to drink this. So she has gotten some oomph back. "

Damon looked at his wife and said, " What do you suggest, darling? "

Mariella said, " Let's see what she inspires you to do when she gets here. Be sure to examine her thoughts and plans carefully. She might pull a card of being alone and as she just gave up on fleas and tried to be a martyr, but she is not so innocent in her motives. At least I have a hunch."

Damon went to lean against the wall and watched as Mariella was already unloading the machines into the cupboard to wait. She looked at the capsule machine in wonder.

Damon said, "Capsule machines. They come in one of those capsules with coffee in it, made single-serve. Now problem is that there are additives in those capsules, in past miss used to get pretty nice diarrhea when she drank a few types of those in the hospital but as you know, she tends not to care, plus, those are packed in plastic, not sure how much that plastic ends up in coffee. "

Mariella saw Damon was in deep thought and she was now a little unsure if he was ready to confront Mimi or not. 

I went into the portal room, dragging a full heavy cart with me, humming as I went. Then I entered the castle and started dragging the cart towards the kitchens. This kitchen was gorgeous and suitably hidden, so it was peaceful. I had unloaded a lot of kitchenware in there, sometimes trying them on, not really done it in the past. Mariella had made it a point to always be in the downstairs kitchens, so it suited me better than fine.

I just figured I'd have to set up the machines first and then load them with coffee. And then to make it so that if a coffee is good on one machine, I make another pot of it with my current machine, so I can be sure that the coffee is fantastic.

I arrived in the kitchen and didn't even notice immediately when a silky voice said, " You got a cart full of stuff, baby. And I don't remember ever seeing a cart like that either."

I looked around, seeing Damon leaning against the wall, staring at me, and seeing my jugs filled with blood. 

Mariella looked at me too and said " You don't understand then, this is a pack. Tasting coffee is therefore a pack thing. But don't we have time to do it, but you now have a date with one of your husbands? How wonderful of you to bring some blood for him! As you know, he is the oldest vampire here, strongest too, so he should get the strongest blood."

Oh, that my alpha was in a refreshing mood and I said, "Well, it's good now to declare that you want a coffee tasting while I was planning it. But the truth is that sex is so fucking much more important to you, to both of you, than any pack activity. Sure, we can go out for coffee, but you two won't be able to do that for long. Two-hour rule and you're in bed. And as for a date with my hubby, I'll wait until the wedding night. I'm not interested now. That's the advantage of not being an energy creature, so you can actually do more than fuck. What it comes to my bloods.."

I took one of the jugs, poured a big crystal glass, and gulped it in one go, showing what I could do." ain't big on sharing," I wiped my little bloody mouth with the back of my hand. 

Mariella went pale and said " You are one fucking bitch, it's true. We fucked a lot, but that doesn't mean I don't ..."

I said coldly, " Yes, it's just that you and Damon will be back to fucking in no time and I can get back to my little tasting. Besides, these are from Moldova. You don't want anything to do with that place."

I drank another big glass, getting Damon looking at me quite angrily. Mariella tried to think of something to say.

I looked at Damon and said " As you can see, I'm not running away. I'm defending myself and that's not as wonderful as you thought it would be. "

Damon said, now quiet and velvety. " Coffees goes in the cupboard. You don't taste them alone, baby. I'll go through those goodies in a minute, and we'll see who they go to. Good Mimi for saying no, oh that gives such fucking excellent motivation, and as for your little extra fridges in Moldova, oh girl dear, when you don't realize what a treat they're going to be to unpack and share."

He walked up to my cart, took the jug, and drank straight from it, not really pausing, until he had downed the whole three liters of it. 

He looked at me from head to toe and said, "I don't think you're looking forward to the kind of wedding night I have in mind. But I haven't decided yet whether I will or not."

I said to him, in a cold tone, "Don't threaten me. I am not Mariella who gets soaking when you talk like that. When it comes to your and Mariellas wedding, it will be from a fairytale book. No need for me to be afraid. Mariella needs a perfect passionate wedding night and a real wedding, not a flank wedding. I can see it. Let's see. You have made cakes for her, ordered flowers, done her rings, letting her choose the dress. I know these doors aren't so voice-proofed. what else? I am not bitter, not at all, but I am tired of you coming at my face, trying to bully me to be like her!"

I decided at that point that fine, I'll get those two into bed quickly and then go with my salted salmon and prawns to my nest to watch the shows. I saw Damon taking another jug and drinking it in one go, too. Good for him. I had blood and lots of it. 

Fine, let's make a little plan to get those two together quickly. At least Salvatore will. It'll be so fucking easy to show them what I'm talking about. I stood still for a while and watched as Damon studied my food. He lifted most of them higher in the fridge and put some spells in there so I would not get them. I do have more in Moldova. He emptied my last jug. Though it was not full, someone was blood-hungry, all the better. Now his vampire side was pretty damn well fed and not on the surface. 

So I went and jumped right into Mariella's arms and started kissing her really wildly. When I got her to kiss me back, I teleported us to one of my sex rooms, as I call some of these rooms of mine. I let go and kept kissing, but jumped down and dumped Mariella on the bed and started undressing her, nipping at every spot I could get out and marking. I let my alpha side a little more out and oh boy; I was fast. 

Strong, distinctly strawberry-scented marks all over her body, breasts, neck, stomach, flanks everywhere. Then I smelled the passionfruit and knew Damon had arrived and saw what I was doing. He grabbed me and literally slammed me into the wall and then teleported away with a still very aroused Mariella. As I said, I know what I'm doing.