Page 81 of The Human’s Heart

That shut me up, and I snuggled deeper into the couch, pulling him tightly against me.

When Uncle Del showed up, I was nearly asleep on the couch. Snuggling with my viramore made me so content that I was sleepy, apparently.

“Come in!” I yelled at the knock on the door.

I wasn’t even surprised when both of Uncle Del’s viramores showed up with him. Uncle Nik and Uncle Gray gave us each hugs, but Uncle Del gave me the biggest one. Which was kinda funny since he was so tiny. I had no idea how he could give such good dad hugs when he was like the skinniest person ever and super short to boot. But he did it… somehow. Must be all the practice with his own kids.

“Here you go. That’s enough for the next week. I’ll bring you some more this weekend so you can start stocking up.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind doing this? I feel bad that you’re having to make all of this for me.”

He waved me off with a shrug and small smile. “I make a ton of it every week already, so it’s really not a big deal.”

“Thank you.”

He patted my shoulder. “You’re welcome. Now let me show you how much to take and all that, alright?”

I nodded and followed him into the kitchen.

Chapter 25

Zaos

Since I’d successfully taken my new vampy-blood-sucking potion, we went to the big house to meet Hugo’s sire so we could try going back home by ourselves.

I was nervous, but I was doing my best not to let my nerves flow into Hugo.

Our bond was relatively new, and while we were both used to it, we were still figuring out how to block things—like my nerves—from each other. Not that I normally cared if he heard my thoughts or felt my emotions, but sometimes it was hard to concentrate on your surroundings when you had another’s thoughts and feelings running amok inside you.

We were figuring it out.

Right now, Hugo seemed a tiny bit nervous, but I was pretty sure those were his own feelings, and I was blocking him from mine. I hoped.

We stood in the shed with the portal, and after Hugo hugged his sire, he turned to me and said, “I’m ready.”

With a nod, I took his hand and tugged him through.

Uncle Del had outdone himself with these portals. It truly felt like you were just stepping through some thick air, and then bam, you were in another place. There was no disorientation or anything. It was amazing.

“How do you feel?” I asked the second we were through.

Hugo let out a small laugh. “It’s been two seconds.”

I shrugged. “And? How do you feel?”

He rolled his shoulders and blew out a breath. “Honestly, a little weird, but not bad. I don’t feel like I need to run back to him… yet.”

I nodded. “Do you want to go inside? Do you want to walk around and check out the addition, or just sit around, or what?”

He grinned at me. “You’re cute.” He tugged me along without answering.

Looking at our now humungous house, I still couldn’t believe it was the same place I’d lived in for the last few years. It looked completely different with its two-story addition that was probably four times as big as my original house. Not to mention how much bigger the living space now was in the original house.

Where our deck used to be was now… house. A bigger living room, dining room, and kitchen. And underneath was our vampire-safe dark room. They’d even made us a new deck with our same table, chairs, and grill sitting on it, plus a bunch of flowers. The flowers were probably Granddad’s doing.

“Let’s go downstairs. We haven’t seen it since your uncles decorated or whatever.”

All of my vampire uncles had decided to buy us furniture for the dark room, and I was pretty sure they installed one of those special blue lights or whatever it was they used in the dark room.