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My gaze darted down to his lap, and my cheeks flamed as I quickly looked away and gulped down more beer.

“How’re you finding—”

“How do you actually—” I started speaking just as he did, and we both stopped abruptly before I cleared my throat. “Go ahead.”

He chuckled. “Nah, you go.”

“I was just going to—” I picked at the wet label on my bottle. “I was just wondering how dullahans are even… born.”

Ewen grinned at me. “Oh yeah?”

“I mean…” I made a face. “Do you just come out headless already? Like, is your head born… separately?”

He laughed and shrugged his wide shoulders. Wasn’t he cold? It wasn’t exactly balmy out here. Before I could stop myself, I was darting a look at his nipples, and my belly jolted when I noticed they were hard from the cool air.

“I like to think I was formed by some huge warrior god who got his head cut off in battle or something.”

My brows twitched into a frown. “So you don’t know?”

He shrugged again and took a sip of beer before answering. “I was adopted at birth. Ain’t never met another dullahan, so haven’t had an opportunity to ask.”

“Oh,” I said awkwardly, not sure how to respond to that. “Uh… sorry.”

“No need.” He grinned at me. “My parents are the best. They’re a banshee and a fae, so they couldn’t have bio kids.”

“Right. Yeah.”

Banshees fell under the same umbrella as ghouls and dullahans, straddling that line between dead and alive, whereas fae were definitely very much alive. The embodiment of life and nature and all that stuff. So much like, say, a werewolf and a ghoul wouldn’t be able to, those two species couldn’t procreate together. And mixed species births were super rare as it was. There weren’t many faewolves or ghoulshees running around, but they did exist.

“But, I mean…” Dan cocked his head. “I remember my head falling off as early as four or five. Just never thought to ask my parents if it’d been that way since I was a baby.” He grinned at me. “I’ll ask my momma next time I call her and let you know.”

I gave him a brief, awkward smile, then cleared my throat. “Uh… what were you going to say?”

He shrugged, sipping his beer. “Was just gonna ask how you’re finding Goliaths.”

“Oh. Um, yeah, fine. Almost ready to launch the pay-per-view and start streaming the shows online.”

He shot me an impressed look, which made my cheeks burn. Hopefully it was too dark for him to see.

“Nice, man. That was fast. You’re good, huh? And the new website’s already up too.”

“I guess. I dunno,” I muttered into my beer bottle, then had another gulp to try and hide the way my belly was squirming with… something.

We lapsed into silence, both of us sipping our beers and staring into the darkness. This was weird. We’d never done this before. We’d been neighbours for three years, and this was by far the longest conversation we’d ever had.

I’d just made myself come jealousy-masturbating to the fact that he could suck his own dick.

“You’ve been quiet,” I found myself blurting, then flushed wildly because I knew exactly why he’d been quiet tonight, and I had no idea why I’d brought it up. “Uh… recently, I mean. Not many parties or nightly guests.”

Ewen chuckled and sipped his beer. “Just taking it easy, I guess.”

I grunted, still flushed and now feeling flustered, so I hid it behind my usual wall of sullen irritability and muttered, “Think I’ve had more unbroken sleep in the last month than I’ve managed to get since you moved in next door.”

He looked over, a tiny smile dancing on his lips. “I’m not that bad, am I?”

I gave him a flat stare. “Yeah, you are. Your buddy broke my fence six fucking months ago, Ewen, and you still haven’t fixed it.”

To my surprise, he actually looked a little sheepish. “Sorry.”