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I feel so vital, so alive.
“Do you think Chipper will mind if we stay to watch the sunrise?”
“With the number of treats and play the dog sitter gives him?” Tammy giggles. “Yeah right.”
So we lie down together and hold each other close.
After a while, I feel Tammy begin to breathe sleepily next to me, and I match her breathing with mine, in and out, savoring the simple pleasure of it.
But I’m too full of adrenalin to sleep.
I just lie there, holding the love of my life close, feeling all the tiny nuances in my human body.
I don’t regret it.
Not even for a second.
Because I know we’re right.
She’s pregnant.
After what feels like only a couple of hours, I stand up and walk to the window. Drawing aside the curtain, I can’t help but flinch a little, centuries of instinct stabbing into me.
But as I watch the sun crest the horizon, lighting up the sea a startling yellow, glistening brightly and warmly, I can’t help but let out a sound of utter astonishment.
I turn to find Tammy beside me, and I lift my arm and cradle her close, and together we watch the everyday miracle of the blazing autumn sun.
Epilogue
Two Weeks Later
Tammy
Chipper doesn’t know what to make of it when I emerge from the ensuite and start leaping around the bedroom, a giddiness filling my chest that has to work hard to outdo the general serenity that has gripped me these past two weeks. He tilts his head at me, tongue out, happy because I’m happy as he leaps onto the bed with me and starts lapping at my face.
Torsten is at work, something which stunned his company at first. In all the years he’s owned it, he’s never gone to work in the day. But now he’s starting his mortal life and he wants to leave behind an empire for our family.
These last two weeks have been heaven.
I want to scream every time I think about that morning at the cabin on the island, the stunned look on Torsten’s face as he waded into the water and collapsed onto his back, floating atop the waves.
“Isn’t it cold?” I called.
“Who cares?” he laughed. “I can feel it.”
“You’re a madman.”
“Well, yes. I am crazy about you.”
“Oh, so mortality has made you cheesy now, has it?”
He stood up in the water and grinned mischievously at me.
“You better believe it,” he chuckled.
Now I feel butterflies swirling around my belly when I think about it, that moment, the first brick in the road of our lives. I cradle Chipper close to me and together we roll around in the silken sheets, and then I can’t help it.
I leap up and start singing, letting my voice flow through the apartment.
I sing loud and high and with pride ringing in my voice.
“We’re pregnant, we’re pregnant, we’re preeeggnaaaaant—”
And then I bump straight into my fiancé’s chest, Torsten looking even more dashing in the light of the unusually bright autumn day.
“Oh,” I whisper, gawping at him for a moment.
“We’re …”
I feel tears spring to my eyes when the devoted happiness floods into his face, his blue eyes gleaming, smiling broadly with his human teeth.
Excitement flares in him but his skin doesn’t pulsate red. And yet he still burns, burns with the passion of our love, our future.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I just did three tests, so I’m pretty freaking confident. I wanted to do something special to tell you. But it turns out you’re still pretty quiet even when you’re not a vampire anymore.”
“I knew it,” he says, wrapping his arms around me – arms that are still powerful and thick and protective even if they’re human, no, because they’re human – and smashing our bodies together in a beautiful moment of intimacy. “It was that first time, the night I changed. I can’t wait to see what an incredible mother you’ll make, Tammy. I can’t wait to spend the rest of our lives together. I love you.”
“I love you,” I whisper, laying my head against his chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat, that wonderful hammering that lets me know how human and happy he is.
Extended Epilogue
One Year Later
Torsten
I sit in the couch area of the recording studio, bobbing Freya up and down on my knee and never once, not even for a goddamn second, getting tired of the way she coos and smiles sleepily. If I stop bobbing her up and down for even a moment, her eyes flitter open and she looks at me as if to ask if I’ve lost my mind.
I grin and cradle her to my chest, rocking her side to side, which she likes just as much as the bobbing.
It’s like she’s got a little piece of me in her, the part that savored the rocking of the ships as we sailed from far-flung land to far-flung land.
