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Yichen’s mouth bobbed open, but in the end, he snapped it shut with a click of his teeth, not saying a word. Chen had always been a bit bloodthirsty—even before becoming a vampire. It was just that he hid it better than Xiang or himself as they went into battle.
With his eyes squeezed shut, Yichen repeated, “You’re telling me, after killing vampires to protect Moon, they had sex on the front lawn. Next to the dead bodies. That’s when he knew he loved Moon and that the witch was his mate.”
“Yep, that’s what he told me.” Yichen opened his eyes to see a very matter-of-fact expression on Meimei’s face as she worked. She lifted her eyes a bit to meet his gaze.
“I was gone too long,” Yichen muttered under his breath.
“Yes, you were, but that has nothing to do with this. You know Er-ge has always been super repressed. Moon helps him break out of his little repressed cocoon. It’s good for him.”
Okay, he couldn’t argue with any of that. Er-ge was stiff, reserved, and repressed. Moon couldn’t be more of an opposite to Chen, and yet they worked together so perfectly. Two strangely formed puzzle pieces that fit together, their seams disappearing.
“But what about you and Rei? When did you know?”
“Well, it wasn’t when we had sex for the first time,” he grumbled, turning his attention to the arrows resting in his quiver.
“Duh. It had to be earlier.”
That was…unexpected. His head snapped up and his hand stilled. “Why do you say that?”
Meimei’s own attention was on her bow, nocking an arrow and drawing back the string. “Probably because you returned snarling and threatening everyone about Rei, like you expected people to attack him because he was an elf. It was obvious to the entire clan that Rei was more than some guy you escaped the fae realm with.”
“Oh. Sorry—”
“No sorries!” Meimei shouted as she released the arrow. It didn’t hit the center, but it at least hit the basket, unlike his last shot. She shook her bow at him. Yichen stumbled a couple of steps to keep from being hit on the head with the oak bow. “We’re family. That means there’s no sorries between us. We know. Or…well, we don’t actually know, but we understand as best we can. No one took offense.”
Silence settled between them as they returned to their target practice. The only sounds were the soft rustle of the leaves in the light breeze, the distant burble of the stream, and the thwang of the bow string with each release.
“It was about a month before the door between realms opened. We were finalizing our plans for our escape. We’d talked about it for years, but we’d gotten the plan worked out so that it looked flawless. Rei had said something about how I’d never have to see another elf again after I reached my clan, and…it was like all the air had been sucked out of the room.” Muscles tightened in his chest at the memory, squeezing his lungs. “Cold sweat covered me, and my every instinct was to grab him, to pull him into my arms and never let him go. At first, I told myself that Rei had become a crutch. Someone to watch my back. I wouldn’t need him after I returned home to my clan.”
“Except…” Meimei prodded when his words dried up.
“Except when I thought of Rei, it was never about how he protected me. I only thought about his laugh, or the stupid stories he’d tell. Or that I’d never wake up to discover he’d braided my hair in some weird way during the day. I wouldn’t ever hear him brag about his skill with the bow. Without that, the world seemed so empty.” He sighed. “I’d spent years telling him stories about the members of my clan. I guess some part of my brain imagined him meeting all of you when I was free, as if it were a natural conclusion to what had happened.”
“Maybe your heart had already decided that Rei needed to be here with us too,” Meimei whispered.
“Probably.”
“When did you tell him?”
“Pretty much when I kissed him in the middle of the road.”
Meimei huffed and rolled her eyes. “You and Chen do things so weirdly. You waited that long and then kissed in the road.”
Yichen shrugged. “I didn’t think he returned my feelings. Besides, the plan was always for us to part after we escaped the fae realm. I would return to the clan, and he would go off to raise an army to defeat his father. The only reason we stuck together this long was because of the blood bond.”
His shimei1 leveled a look at him that stated that she thought he was an idiot. “Yeah,” she drawled. “Totally the only reason he stuck around. Definitely not because he was making wide lovey-dovey eyes at you the entire time.”
“Whatever,” Yichen mumbled. “The point is, Rei and I were together a long time purely as allies, but it later developed into friendship. It wasn’t until much later when I thought I was going to lose him that I realized he was more than a friend.”
“So…it’s not weird for feelings to change for someone over a long period of time?” Meimei asked, her voice low as if she were trying to be nonchalant, but it was too late. Red flags were popping up everywhere. The voices of self-preservation were screaming in his head to back away.
But he couldn’t.
Even if they weren’t related by blood, Gao Mei Lian was his shimei. His meimei. He couldn’t abandon her even if he wanted to shout for Ming Yu and chuck this query right into her lap. They’d been together for two thousand years. If she’d chosen him for this question, it meant she was comfortable with him.
The only question left was, who had her feelings changed for?
Yichen cleared his throat and nocked another arrow, as if target practice was going to save him from this predicament. “Um…yeah. Sometimes feelings can change for a person after a long time. Gods know I wasn’t expecting to fall for an elf while being held captive.”
