“You don’t get along with them?”
“The opposite,” Thomas replies. “I needed to learn independence, and I couldn’t do that there. I miss my brothers…Kai more than Teagan right now. Kai’s a worrywart but makes me feel safe, kinda like you…” Pride swells in my chest. I knew I’d be fantastic at this whole soulmate thing. “Teagan would find this all very exciting. You’ll like him.”
I hum. “Maybe, but I like you more.”
I feel the back of his neck warm. “You have brothers, too?”
“Three. I’m the second oldest.”
“I thought you’d be the youngest, like me,” he replies, taking a big gulp of tea.
I smile, breathing in his warmth. “But I’m so mature.”
Thomas snorts. “I still can’t believe you’re a thousand years old.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Young,” I sigh. “But I have no moral code to speak of.”
“I’m not surprised,” he replies, shaking his head—amused. “You are very old after all.”
A corner of the blanket slips, revealing a sliver of his shoulder. “Which you seem to like, my little history buff,” I say, voice low as I brush my lips across his smooth skin. So dark and beautiful. So very tempting.
“I can’t deny that…”
Thomas watches the fire, while I watch the slim column of his neck; his blood still lingering on my tongue, still hot in my stomach. The taste… indescribable. I’ll sooner forget every story I’ve ever collected than his deep flavour.
“How did you become a vampire?” he asks, his voice quiet as the storm rages on around us.
“A memory I haven’t thought about in a long time…”
“In…a bad way?”
“No, treasure,” I assure him, squeezing him tight. “One day, my father crossed the sea. He never returned. It was…” I close my eyes as pictures of my father play. “He’s a strong man. So big that when I was a child, I thought he could block out the sun. He’d throw me up into the sky so high, I was sure I’d never come back down again.” I chuckle. “He taught us how to be strong, how to farm and fight, told us stories by the fire, and I only realised he was mortal when he didn’t return.”
The log pops, the fire heats the air around us, and Thomas presses his back into my chest to offer silent comfort.
“But years later, after my mother died and I’d become a man in my own right, he returned, and I learnt the truth. He became an immortal vampire and asked my brothers and me a question: would we like to join him?”
“I’m assuming you all agreed?” Thomas prods gently.
My smile digs into my cheeks. “I like stories, and what better story than one that never ends? But it was my father’s Maker who turned us.”
“Why?”
“To make another into a vampire, the vampire must have been turned longer than the human has been alive. The older the better, really.” I don’t tell Thomas it was agony turning into a vampire; it’d ruin the quiet mood we’ve created in this storm.
A subject for another time, when I ask him the same question I was offered all those years ago.
Thomas snuggles into my chest, his blanket slipping further down his wide shoulders. I press my face against his skin.
His breath hitches. “Tell me about your brothers…”
The fire crackles in the stove, there’s a soft slurp as Thomas sips at his tea, the steam curling from the metal mug.
“Sigurðr is always on the move; we’re similar in that way. But unlike me, he’s been trying to find a purpose. A little lost that one. A bit crazy too.”
