Emmett's POV:

It started with Esme coming to me and asking me to teach her little monsters. Cabar and Ramsey were old enough to start kindergarten and there was no one else around qualified to teach a couple of pint-sized vampires, so I agreed to do it. How bad could it be? I have done it before. And while I was at it, we might as well round up a few more and make a class. My own children, Lilac and Mett, were still too young, but there were other children in the area. If we could get about ten of them together, that would work well.

Kindergarten Classes

Starting this fall in Manitoba

Open to every child of appropriate age

Contact Esme for details

That was the flyer Esme sent out. That is also the flyer that got too many responses, so many replies that we had meetings to discuss what to do about all of them. There was a suggestion that we could break the children into groups and teach the groups separately. Two classes on the same day would be too much for me, especially because I have Mett and Li. Neither of my babies was old enough to be in this class, so that would mean too much time away from them. But we could have a year-round school of sorts, with four classes that each attend for three months.

Would four classes be enough? We had gotten a lot of responses and separating them into only four classes would result in some pretty big classes. I like to keep Kindergarten classes small, so there is plenty one on one attention. That was not going to happen if we broke one hundred thirty seven children into just four classes.

We could break them up into classes by age instead. Not all of those children had been implanted in the first few years after the war ended. If we limited the first group to just the very oldest of the children this year and next year take the next oldest group and then the next, until all of those children had had one year of schooling and then repeat the cycle…Then the children would have very long gaps between lessons in which their skills were allowed to deteriorate. Not to mention that the whole system would fall apart the moment Lilac and Mett's year becomes old enough for school and more children are added to the system.

No, there was really only one thing that could be done about getting way too many responses: we had to cancel the class.

Canceled due to popular demand:

Kindergarten Classes

Now starting this fall in Manitoba:

School Teacher Classes

Come learn how to teach Kindergarten

Not open to children

Contact Esme for details

This was the cancelation flyer that went out; the flyer that also announced that I would be teaching a class on how to teach. Not to children, but grown vampires, possibly with children. Not just members of my family, but vampires throughout the world. If they were willing to make the journey to Manitoba and show up in my classroom, then I was going to have to teach them. All of them. Esme would not let me discriminate, so everyone who showed up for the first day was in. And she had insisted on spreading that flyer all around the globe, because we would need teachers all around the world, so I was dreading who might turn up in my class.

There was one familiar face sitting front and center that I was happy to see: Maggie of the Irish coven was here. She was one of the first to arrive at our compound, showing up two weeks ago with her mate Sean and four children. They have three boys, Viceo, Imperium, and Teneo, and one girl, Varia, and all four of them are four hundred years old and ready for Kindergarten. Two were their own and two were adopted from David and Caroline, Sean's fallen brother and his late wife. And if that were not enough children for the Irish, they had left behind Siobhan and her two eggs, who were also four hundred. There will definitely be enough kids for a class when she goes back home, especially if a few nomad couples or another coven joins them.

Maggie was a good choice for a Kindergarten teacher too. She was kind, smart, and loved children. She did not use to have much patience, but after having four children all at the same time for four hundred years now, she has really grown. Okay, sometimes I worry that she might go ballistic on one of the tikes, because she was the disciplinarian in the family. Sean was the big teddy-bear there for hugs and emotional support and Siobhan was the grieving widow who was just trying to make it to the next day, so Maggie had to be firm. Plus, it was in her nature and it was something desperately needed in a coven with six little monsters. If my own experience as a teacher was anything to go by, discipline was a trait that would come into great use for Maggie when she starts up her own class.

While Maggie was here, Sean was back at my house watching his four kids, along with my darling two, because their apartment was a bit cramped with six; I really hope my house survives. Esme had built a number of apartment style housing units in this compound, designed for guests associated with our government. There were also several cottages, like the one Savanna and her family were staying in, made for vampires who were staying for longer periods of time to help with the running of the compound.

Savanna was sitting next to Maggie, waiting for class to begin.

Savanna and her mate Dylan were one of the first pairs of nomads to implant eggs. They had been leery of our family at first, but Esme and Carlisle had convinced them to move to Cullen Island and help out with the blood plant for a time. And then they had gone to Australia to help set up a new blood plant in Penrith, just outside of Sydney. The nomads of Penrith had the plant under control now, so Savanna and Dylan had gone back to roaming about Canada and the northern United States. Dylan had just gotten into nomad politics after remaining steadfastly agnostic for the last four hundred years, so the family had been staying in one of our cottages here in Manitoba for a few months now.

Savanna seemed like a sweet woman and a good mother to her two daughters. She had some experience with babysitting groups of nomadic children, so hopefully she would not get run over too badly by the monsters. It was always good to have a nomadic representative in everything. Savanna, it seemed, was it for my class. And besides Maggie, she was probably the next least creepy.

"Have you seen Vladimir today?" Ioana asked me when she arrived. She may seem sweet and pretty, but she definitely had creepy down. How else could I explain Vladimir's stalker?

That is precisely what Ioana was: Vladimir's stalker. She was following him around, asking about him to anyone who knew him, and scarring the blood out of him too. He said he was afraid to turn around half the time, because he was worried that she might be there watching him. She had already followed him around the world a few times. He had tried to make it clear to her that he was not interested, but she was persistent.

Jasper said it was love. But if it was, it was only one sided love, because Vladimir is and will always be in love with his dead mate Lucinda; he only mentions his beloved in every third sentence, even though she has been dead for five millennia. He did not have time or room or even the ability to love someone new, but that did not stop Ioana from loving him. Vladimir said it was hero worship and similar to a typical school girl with a famous crush. That is of course if you agree with Vladimir that being the oldest vampire in existence makes him famous. I guess it kind of does, especially in his home country of Romania, where Ioana is from.

So Ioana was in love and Vladimir was not. In practice, the situation resulted in her following him around the globe and stalking him.

"Yes Ioana, he was here this morning," I admitted. She knew well and good that he was here; I could still smell his scent in my classroom.

"Will he be back soon?" Ioana asked hopefully, like a lost puppy looking for her master; a rabid lost puppy with plans of licking her master to death.

"No, he's on a secret mission for the next couple weeks. It's best if you didn't try to follow him," I replied, trying to give my friend a break. Vladimir was a pretty good guy and if he did not want her tagging along with him, then it was his call. He was doing work for us and it would be easier for him to do it if he were not always watching his back and looking over his shoulder. Well he did that anyway, but still, Ioana was a pain and everyone knew it.

"Oh…"

"Um, I'm about to start up my class here," I said, hoping to get her to move along. She could probably help out in the blood plant or something today.

"Oh yeah, I'm here to learn," she announced, plopping herself down into one of the open seats in the back, rounding out my class.

She is a stalker. She is Vladimir's stalker. She runs around trying to sniff his shoes. She has no kids. She has no experience with children or teaching or anything else remotely useful to this job. And she is creepy. She was probably just using this as an excuse to hang around the compound without working in the blood plant or being involved in politics. My Rosie had told her just yesterday that the apartments were for guests and people helping to sustain our way of life. Sniffing Vladimir's shoes did not count, so she had two days to pack up and move on. But if she was taking my class, then Rosie would have to let her stay.

I did not particularly want to teach Ioana and potentially subject young children to Vladimir's stalker, but Esme had said that I could not discriminate. I had to teach anyone and everyone who showed up and it was not like Ioana was that much worse than the others. In fact she was downright middle of the pack when it came to this bunch. Nombeko, of the Antarctic coven was less creepy, but Nur and Luca were worse.

Nombeko reminded me of Esme. She was nice, sweet, and kind and had a lot of maternal instinct; it was just misplaced for a while. Very misplaced. Her coven was the one giving Carlisle such a hard time right after the downfall of the Volturi. They had moved to secluded Antarctica and violated one of our laws by creating immortal children, because big brother was no longer watching or stopping them. But really it was because Nombeko and the other female in their coven, Dikeledi, both desperately wanted children and that was the only way they knew of to get them.

By the time Carlisle got around to organizing a group of warriors to go down to Antarctica and straighten the situation out, Nombeko and Dikeledi were both incredibly attached to their monsters and would not have given them up without a fight. And Carlisle, being the bleeding heart he is, decided that they could keep the immortal children, as long as they did not make any more and promised to keep them away from humans, which they did, for a time. Eventually they both had eggs and decided to give up the immortal children on their own, restoring the natural order of things.

Nombeko was definitely a better choice for a teacher than Ioana. She may have made a mistake with the immortal children, but she was a law abiding citizen now. Her coven was just another typical coven. Well they were except for the fact that they had eight children and only four adults and none of them were adopted. They were the first coven to have a second set of monsters. All four of them decided to have a second set with only a two hundred year gap in between, but that was just because of how maternal Nombeko and Dikeledi naturally were.

That maternal instinct would come in handy with a school class, not to mention that with eight children, they almost had enough kids for a class within their own coven. I say almost because the second set would not be ready for school for another two hundred years, but that was why Dikeledi and her mate had stayed behind in Antarctica: they were watching the four younger children, while Nombeko and her mate, Lefu, were here with the oldest four. Lefu was pretty good with kids himself, because he had also volunteered to watch Nur's two children while she was here.

Nur and her mate Kayden were here with their two children. Kayden was over at our blood plant, explaining why their kids needed to be watched. Kayden worked at the blood plant we had built in Singapore a few hundred years back. Their coven had been one of the first to volunteer to look after a blood plant, if we built it, and with the blood shortage we were facing at the time, we took them up on that offer, despite how weird their coven was.

Nur, Kayden, and the rest of them had been controlling the tiny island nation for about three thousand years now, which was a fair amount of time, even for us. It was longer than I have been in existence. They came to power back in the time of piracy and the exploration of the seas, both of which vampires are inherently good at. And when those things came to an end, they still managed to keep control of the shipping businesses that were stationed in their country and they did it all with pirate flair. She had an eye patch covering her missing right eye and seriously, she just looked dirty.

Rosie and Alice had both tried to wash her and show her what soap was, along with the rest of the representatives from their coven. Vampires hardly even get dirty, but no one had told the Singaporese that; they were steadfastly being filthy and vampires at the same time, because they had a pirate heritage to represent and all. At least the kids came clean and Rosie and Alice got the smell out of Nur, so I did not have to smell her. I will just have to try not to stare at her missing eye.

Dude, even the humans can make prosthetic eyes now! Just because it was a battle scar and proved Nur had survived a real fight did not mean she had to go around making the rest of us look at it! I mean come on, an eye patch, in the thirty-eighth century? Yeah, like that blends in real well. She should just paint a skull and cross bones on her hat and carry around gold coins in a leather pouch. This one, at least, had Ioana beat for creepy and weird.

There was only one vampire in this room who was creepier than Nur and that was Luca. He was the only guy in here, besides me, although I do know full and well that men could be good teachers. But the dude is old! Now that Amun, the Volturi, and a few other older vampires are all gone, Luca is the third oldest vampire left alive. There is Vladimir, then Stefan, and then wham! Luca! Dude is like four thousand years old and all white and flakey. Okay, Stefan and Vladimir are white and flakey too, but I am used to them. Luca, on the other hand, has only come to our island once before.

Luca did not come to pay his respects to any of our fallen brethren or acknowledge our rule. He was not terribly upset that the Volturi were gone, although he was mad that Renata, one of his creations who Aro used as his personal shield, was destroyed. He did not care about the rest of them. He did not come to see our blood plant or any of the technological advances we had made. He did not even come to see our children and hear about our eggs. He came to gather Makenna's ashes and collect her eggs. Makenna, who had fought and died with us, he was upset about; she was also his creation.

We pointed him to the area of the battlefield where Makenna and her mate Charles had burned and Creepy Old Guy went out there with a broom and a dustpan and swept them up (rumor is he was seen doing the same thing with a broom, a dustpan, and Renata's ashes, in the crater left over from the bomb blast). He put the ashes in a fancy antique Maltan urn, took the appropriate two flow-cells filled with eggs, and went back to Malta and his human family. Dude still lives with his human descendants, even now, with all those hatchlings. Hatchlings, because he definitely did implant those two eggs and more, despite his short stay on our island; we think he stayed just long enough to figure out how to implant eggs before he took off. He is creepy I tell you.

No one even knows how Luca does it. How does he keep the vampire children from eating his human relatives? Or is that his secret? Is he letting the children eat his own relatives? The entire country, both islands, is pretty much infested with his relatives now. And how many hatchlings does he have? We know he has Makenna and Charles' two, but there are six vampires in his coven now, all relatives of his of course, and any number of them could have produced eggs. It is rumored that one of them is his mate, despite being his great niece, a thousand years removed. He probably has eggs of his own.

There have been no rumors of Luca breaking any laws, so our coven has had no excuse to go there. Carlisle said that if we are not invited and nothing is wrong, we should keep our noses out of other vampire's business. An invasive government is a bad government, Jasper likes to say. Not even Alice or Edward can think of any reason why we should butt in and force Luca to tell us about what all he has going on in his territory.

Whatever is going on over there in Malta, Luca has not told and he does not appear to be talking. All of the other vampires came in the room and made small talk and told each other about their wonderful kids, but not Luca. He came in and sat down and nodded when greeted. He has been utterly silent on almost every subject since arriving on our compound, except when he explained to Carlisle that he was here to take my class.

"Luca, my dear man, how are you? Where are Charles and Makenna's little ones? I was so hoping to see them," Carlisle had greeted him.

But he got nothing more than a, "Fine," and a curt nod until he asked, "May I ask what you're doing here?"

"I want to teach," Luca is rumored to have answered. Those, at least, are the words he repeated to me when I asked him why he was here.

I did not get any additional information out of the aging vampire and so I can only assume he left all those hatchlings, however many there are, with his coven back in Malta. Maybe I can work some information out of him, like confirmation that he did in fact germinate both of the eggs we gave him. But whatever the case, Silent Old Guy was getting my vote for most creepy vampire in the room, although he at least probably does have a whole class full of children to teach back home, unlike Ioana.

Well at least if Ioana learns a skill, she will have something to do, and then we can send her off on some missionary work somewhere or another and get rid of her. I am sure there are vampire children in South America that she could teach as long as we leave out the fact that she is a nut-job. She cannot keep showing up here if she has a class of Kindergarteners to teach in Chili, now can she?

'Alright class, let's get to work," I announced. "In this class we are going to learn how to handle a class full of young children and how to make appropriate lesson plans for them. If you do not like my lesson plans, you may change them in any way once you get back to your own class. This class is being offered by the government here free of charge, but we are by no means trying to impose anything about anything on anyone's children. You shouldn't either when you get back home, meaning sending children to your school classes in voluntary and optional.

"We think it is important for our children to learn basic skills like writing, reading, and arithmetic, but other vampires might have other values. Right now it is most important that all children learn the basic skills and facts can be driven home later. The most important thing, of course, is teaching the children to keep the secret, but that is something they should learn within the first year of life. By the time you get them, you should not have to do more than re-enforce this core value and eventually, when they're older, explain the rationale and logic behind it. "If there is something in my lesson plans, other than keeping the secret, that you take issue with exposing your own children to, let me know and we can probably do something to work around it, or just plain do something else instead. And despite what the flyer said, you will be exposing your own children to this class, because you will be using them to practice on. If you don't have any children of your own with you, you can borrow Cabar and Ramsey, because Esme said we could use them. Now, are there any questions?" I asked.

Ioana's eyes gleamed with the mention of Cabar and Ramsey, making me regret my previous statement. No one had any questions, so I continued on with my class.

Author's Note: This is the last chapter. It's leading up to a relationship between Ioana and Vladimir and shows how vampire society is growing and adapting to having children. Eventually every big city will have a large building with a blood plant, a school, and a place for nomads to stay with their kids. I would like to thank everyone who's still reading and made it to the end! Especially those of you who have reviewed.