Page 9 of The Human’s Heart

I held in a sigh. Great. Lovely.

Zay’s lips twitched again, but he grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet, distracting me from my own nuttiness.

He gestured to his uncles. “I know you’ve all met before, but let me do introductions again since there’s always a million people at movie nights.” He shot me a wink that no one else could see. “This is Hugo, Jett, and Ward.” He gestured to the vampires. “This is my Uncle Jules, Uncle Em, and Uncle Toby.” His brow furrowed. “Uncle Thay didn’t come with you?”

Toby shook his head. “He’s babysitting right now, but he said he wants to come next time.”

Right. Because this was gonna be a regular occurrence so I could drink their blood, like, every day of the week. Blech.

Not that they were coming every day. I was pretty sure it would be weekly trips, but still… that was seriously inconvenient, and I hated that I was the cause of someone else’s disruption to their life.

Everyone said their hellos, and Ward added, “Thank you so much for doing this. You have no idea how much it means to me—to us.”

Emrys waved him away with a smile. “It’s our pleasure. We’re happy to help.”

Even though this was weird and a kind of strange thing to do, I could tell he meant every word. They really were happy to help us. So maybe I wasn’t being as much of a bother as I’d feared.

It kind of made me feel a little guilty since I’d been so reluctant to do this in the first place.

Julius held out a small cooler. “For you. There should be enough for both of them for a week. We’ll bring more next weekend. We’ll start adding in a little extra so you can build up a supply, just in case one of us can’t get to you on time.”

Zay took the cooler from him. “Thank you, Uncle Jules. Really.”

The way the oldest vampire of the three stood really did make me think of every single vampire movie I’d ever seen. Even the way he waved Zay off, all proper like, was super vampire-y. And apparently vampire-y was my word of the day.

Julius said, “It’s not a problem, Zaos. We want to help you out.”

Zay set the cooler on the coffee table and gave his uncle another hug. I almost grimaced because the vampire was so super serious that I didn’t think he’d appreciate a hug at all. But then he wrapped his nephew up and a small smile played on his face, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Julius truly cared about Zaos. And that he was a fan of hugs, apparently.

I glanced at the other vampires. In fact, all of them clearly loved my Zay. A lot.

I didn’t know why I was surprised. Every single Ellwood I’d met so far loved Zaos to death.

I would’ve thought that maybe it’d be a little different with him since he was adopted into their family, especially since he was older—twelve—when he’d joined them. But he was treated the same, loved the same, as everyone else in their humongous family.

I supposed many of them were adopted, anyway, so I guessed that made sense. Not to mention that Ailin, the one who’d started their coven in the first place, had adopted a billion people, so I figured that kind of wonderful, amazing, remarkable love sort of trickled down, but still. My own parents, who were blood-related to me, hadn’t cared even a sixteenth of the amount that Zay’s uncles did for him.

That just showed how sad my family had been growing up. Ugh.

Zay ended up giving the other two hugs as well before he stepped back and asked, “Um, sorry, if this is a weird question, but I’m just wondering. Is this a mix of all three of your blood?”

They shook their heads, and Julius spoke up. “It’s mine since I’m the oldest of the three of us. We think it’ll be better to at least start with an older vampire’s blood. We’re thinking about asking some of the vampires in Gauhala if they’d donate for us since they’re much older than me.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

Toby shrugged. “They always want to help, so I’m sure they’ll be happy to. And there’s definitely benefits to having an elder vampire’s blood.”

“Who are you talking about?” I asked before I could stop myself.

I had no idea what elder vampire he meant. I knew there were a few other vampires in their coven, but I’d thought Julius was the oldest.

Everyone looked at me, and I regretted opening my mouth so much at that moment. My face flamed with embarrassment.

But then Toby smiled at me and answered, “Anton, Phaeron, Beshiro, Katja, and Jedediah. They’re all thousands of years old, although Anton is the oldest by far. They have a few other younger vampires in their den now too, but we wouldn’t need their blood.”

Thousands of years old?

There truly were vampires that were thousands of years old? Just walking around the world like any other person?