I nodded, kissing her palm.
“I’d heard stories about vampires,” I said, “but until that moment, I’d never considered them real. Then Marcus smiled at me, his teeth glinting in the moonlight, and said, ‘Do you know what I am, brother?’ And I found myself nodding, even though my mind was railing against the very thought of it. I was holding out for a sane explanation, a punchline on a year-long joke my brother had most certainly played on us.”
I closed my eyes, not wanting to see the change in her eyes that would inevitably come from hearing these words. This confession.
“My brother offered to turn me,” I said plainly, recalling that moment as if it were yesterday. “When I refused, he overpowered me and did it anyway.”
Gray’s gasp sent a pang into my heart. “But… why? Why would your own brother do something like that?”
“I spent a lot of time thinking about that, looking for some deep, complex explanation that would allow me to understand and—ultimately—forgive him. Perhaps he was coerced, I’d thought. Or maybe he truly believed he was offering me a precious gift, that my life would be so much better once I’d made the change.” I swallowed through the tightness in my throat, shocked that even after so many centuries, I still couldn’t accept the fact that he’d actually done it. “But in the end, I kept coming back to the truth as he’d confessed it the very next day: Marcus simply couldn’t bear the thought of living an eternity alone.”
“Did you kill him?” she whispered. “Once you were strong enough?”
“Oh, I thought of it, certainly. But I knew that wouldn’t change my fate. Wouldn’t return my life to me, wouldn’t return my family. In those early days, the bloodlust was terrifying; I didn’t trust myself not to hurt Emmaline and the kids, so I implored my brother to help me fake my own death in an accident, knowing it would bring them more peace that way. An accident was a horrible thing, but a real one, not a fairytale. They would grieve, they would struggle, but they wouldn’t lose their minds. Ultimately, they might find peace again. Maybe even happiness.”
Gray was silent for so long, I wondered if she’d fallen asleep. But then she shifted onto her hip and took my face in her hands, waiting patiently until I finally met her gaze again.
Her eyes shone with emotion. Not with pity, but sympathy. Empathy. She, too, had lost someone she loved to a person she thought she could trust. She, too, had had her choices taken away, her life’s trajectory altered as a result.
She understood this pain. I didn’t know why I’d ever feared she wouldn’t.
It was a strange thing, connecting with someone so deeply over such betrayal, such loss. There was a certain comfort in knowing you weren’t alone, but that knowledge was a double-edged sword. It meant that someone you loved had also endured the kind of pain that had nearly destroyed you. The kind of pain you’d give your own life to spare them from.
I brushed a curl from her forehead, tucking it behind her ear, staring at her in wonderment. How had fate seen fit to bring this woman into my life? To crack open the heart I’d sealed off centuries ago?
“And Marcus?” she asked softly. “Where is he now?”
“Several weeks after turning me, he was traveling in Scotland, where he inadvertently crossed paths with a local vampire hunter. He was beheaded. Quite painlessly, from what I was told.”
“So he turned you just so he wouldn’t have to face immortality by himself, and then he got himself killed a few weeks later?”
“A cruel twist of irony,” I said. “Soon after, I relocated to America. I didn’t want to be reminded of my family. I knew eventually my wife would remarry, and my children would grow and have children of their own—that’s what I wanted for them. Eventually, they, too, would die, and so would their children, and all of the children who’d come after. Yet I would linger endlessly, forced to watch their lives begin and end from a distance, like a stranger trapped outside with his faced pressed to the glass.”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
“I don’t know what to say, Darius. I… I hate that you had to go through that. You lost your family. Your life. All because of someone who should’ve loved you enough to spare you that fate.”
“Love is funny that way, isn’t it? You think it comes with all these guarantees, all these failsafes—especially with family. With blood. But in reality, ‘should’ has nothing to do with it.”
Gray frowned, the faint line between her eyes deepening. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “For all of it.”
“It brought me to you, Gray. How could I possibly wish for another outcome?”
“You’re saying thatnow, but if you’d never met me—”
“If I’d never met you,” I said, cupping her face and stroking her cheeks with my thumbs, “the world would be a pale imitation, the monotony of which I’d wander through like a ghost.”
“But—”
I captured her mouth in a bruising kiss, swallowing her words before she could voice any more protests. She yielded easily, melting softly in my arms.
I rolled on top of her, cradling her head as she parted her legs and invited me inside her once again. It was an effort to hold back, to stay present, to not explode inside her the moment her soft, warm flesh enveloped me again. I had never felt anything so perfect, so exquisite as this woman. Her warmth called to me, and as I slid deeper inside, my eyes closed in ecstasy, in wonder, in gratitude, and I thought of home.
For so many years, it had been a place—a memory of a past that no longer existed, a collection of ghosts I’d clung to because I didn’t know how to set them free.
But now,homewas simply a feeling, big and immense and powerful, all of it wrapped up in this woman in my arms. I could no longer separate the two—I no longer wanted to.Shewas my home. My heart.
I kissed her fiercely, worshipping her flesh, her lips, her breasts. I slid out from between her thighs and kissed my way down her belly, tasting her soft heat again, savoring her moans as I coaxed them from her body one blissful, earth-shattering orgasm at a time.
