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I felt drunk, though, rather than weak.
“Fuck, Etta. When can we do that again?”
“Tomorrow night. I don’t have to ask if it was as magical for you as it was for me. I opened to you and you opened to me. We were one being, for a time. Drinker and drinkee. Slayer and vampire. Man and woman.”
“Kirsten has this saying, about trying to describe things that aren’t of this world with words that are, and I think that fits this. We were outside of this reality, somehow. Outside of duality, I think, in a place where opposites are the same.”
“Yes, that fits. Thank you. I’ll stop trying to force it to make sense in this three-dimensional reality. That helps.”
I smiled. “Marco needs you in the coterie house for now, so that’s where we’ll live. I find I don’t mind the communal living as much as I thought I would. You tried to explain it’s a big family, everyone of the same blood, oathed to the same father figure, with you as something of a mother figure, whether you want to be or not. I didn’t get it, but I picked up a lot more from you during…” I didn’t know what to call it, because it was so much more than sex. “I’m willing to give it a go at the coterie house, if Marco will give me leave to come and go.”
“It doesn’t always work out that way, a male and female at the top, but I think there’s better balance when it does. Sometimes, like with Augustus, Blade rules by his side and has more power than his Secundo, so it’s still a male and female at the top. I believe Kendric and Becca have that energy as well, and I expect it will happen with Cora and Marco, but since they don’t plan to live in the coterie house, I guess we’ll have to see how it works out.”
I nodded. I’d spent some time with Kendric and Becca and the rest of their coterie, and I understood what she was saying.
“It’ll be Marco and Cora, then you and me? I don’t think it’s likely to be two mother figures and two father figures, though.”
She shook her head, but then shrugged. “I have no idea. At first, Cora wanted to be hands-off with the vampires, and wanted Marco to be hands-off with her wolves, but I don’t think it’s working out that way. I believe that is to be determined as they figure out the balance in their relationship.” She shrugged. “I figure the magics are going to take over and decide, though, and that will likely mean they’re going to merge a whole helluva lot more than they plan to.”
* * * *
Etta
Five days later, when we boarded the plane to head back to Chattanooga shortly after the sun sank below the horizon, I had no more doubts about how a relationship between a slayer and a vampire could work.
It worked. That was all anyone needed to know.
No doubt, we’d have more things to figure out, especially as we embarked on Ryan’s quest to find whoever was skinning humans and stop them. It was bound to cause problems between Cora and Marco, as well as Ryan and me, because in my heart, I hoped someone figured it out.
Still, killing innocent humans and taking their skins couldn’t continue — but I was all for continuing the work with humans who deserved death.
Ryan and I would have to work that out, eventually, but I had no doubt we’d figure it out.
Because he was mine and I was his.
After a thousand years of life, I’d found love, and no way was I going to do anything to fuck it up.
“My home in New Hampshire has turned into more of a vacation spot, since I focused on Chattanooga,” Ryan told me when the mountains surrounding the city came into view, the Tennessee River snaking between them. “This has felt like home for a while, but now, returning here with you, knowing we’re headed to the coterie house on the golf course? I can feel the anchors, the earth, calling me, telling me I’m coming home.”
He kissed my nose. “That’s you, dearest Etta. Your roots have made this a home for real, and not merely more familiar to me than the one I claimed when I walked away from my parents two decades ago.”
“I haven’t felt at home anywhere for far longer than a thousand years — not until Marco gave me a safe place where I can figure out who I am when I’m not being molded to someone else’s specs. At first, I thought you were a problem, someone screwing with the energies, but I’m so glad you poked your nose in and wouldn’t go away. I love you, with everything I am.”
The plane touched down and our souls joined and sparked with this land, surrounded by mountains, and I breathed in the energy of the night in this city we’d made our home.
Our home.
Slayer and vampire, returning home.
Who’d have thought?
