“We can’t, love,” she murmurs gently, without judgement.
“I know we can’t, damn it, but oh how I wish we wouldn’t bear the responsibility of an entire world.” My voice rises, and I immediately regret it. I press my forehead to hers, my breath ragged.
“Would you, uhm, would you consider becoming a vampire?” My voice is low, barely a whisper, but it clangs loudly in the tense quiescence of the chamber.
Aimee stills in my arms, her shoulders stiffening as she closes her eyes.
“I know what I said in the cave, Killian,” she answers slowly, dragging the words out one by one.
“But?” I sigh, bracing for her refusal.
“But I am not sure that’s a choice I’m prepared to make. I hate what my kind have done, the deceit, the massacres, but I am not like them. Fae can be good, and I wish to retain my nature to prove that.”
My heart sinks. She is good; she is the best thing that ever happened to me. In every incarnation.
“I cannot lose you,” I utter desolately. “I would bring to naught the very realm we’re trying to save if anything happened to you, Aimee. Your undoing would be myactualvillain origin story.To the pits of hell with it all.”
She laughs, a sound of pure denial and too much faith in me.
“No, you wouldn’t, Killian. There’s so much virtue in you, love, even if you refuse to acknowledge it. Despite what they’ve painted you to be. You’re honorable, even when you’re slaying your enemies. More so when you quietly accept this villainous role that was thrust upon you, just so your people stay safe.”
My chest rumbles at her compliment. She thinks too highly of me.
“But,” she says with a heavy exhale, “I’ll give you this compromise. If I’m ever close to death’s door, you can turn me then.”
“What if I’m not next to you in that dreadful moment? A full-on battle is unpredictable, umbra. I cannot leave such a thing to chance.”
“Then,” she says, baring her teeth and casting a wicked gaze at my throat, “let’s make sure I always have a drop of your blood in me.”
I slice my throat with my shadows in the next moment, blood dripping from the cut just above her crescent moon mark.
“Drink up, menace.”
She closes her lips on the wound, sucking mouthfuls with wild abandon, just as I sink my fangs into her pulse point. My cock hardens instantly at her throaty moans, loving how obsessed she is with my blood, just as I am about hers.
She might not want it, but she would make a brilliant vampire.
The first pale rays of sun at the crack of dawn are not what awaken me. It’s Aimee’s excited jolt from beside me, the way her naked body disentangles from mine in a rush, and the vanishing warmth of her skin leaving my limbs.
“Umbra,” I rasp, searching the bed for her in vain. She’s already on her feet, slipping on her white chemise and searching for her leather boots in the heap of clothes strewn haphazardly on the floor. “What in Aka—uhm, my name—are you doing at this ungodly hour? We barely slept an hour ago.”
“Who’s fault is that, you insatiable vampire?” she says with a laugh before throwing a crumpled black shirt in my face. “K’haram, he’s almost here. I can feel him. They’re arriving, Killian.”
“Of course it’s that toad’s fault,” I grumble, sitting up in bed and catching the rest of the clothes she throws my way.
“Killian!” she fake gasps, before bursting into laughter. “Don’t callmy dragonthat.”
Am I a little irrational, a pang of jealousy squeezing my heart at the ease with which she calls that beast hers? Probably.
Do I give a shit?
Not really, no.
“What is he going to do? Roast me and have me for dinner?”
“Tempting as that might sound, no. He says you’re too old and stringy for his delicate palate,” she answers in a singsong voice.
What the actual fuck?
