Kissing her tastes like heaven and perfection. I lace my fingers through hers and gently squeeze.
“I love you so damn much, Eilidh.”
She smiles. “That the orgasm or the mating mark talking?”
“Both. And more. Sooo much more.”
We stare at each other for a long moment. “I want forever with you,” she whispers. “Master. Husband.”
It feels like the breath just got sucked out of me.
No one’s called me either of those since Robert.
I release her hands and sit up, pulling her with me, cupping her head in my hands as I kiss her again. “I love you, baby. I want forever with you, too. Never letting you go.” I rest my forehead against hers. “No more running.”
She smiles. “No more running. Looks like I’ll have a really long lifespan.” She wiggles against me. “Hope you’re ready to put up with me.”
I grin. “I am. And I’m looking forward to having inlaws.”
She giggles. “I think you won them over.”
Every breath I take brings her sweet scent and the aroma of our shared passion into my lungs, filling me, giving me life. “We should get up and eat before we go back.”
She pouts. “Do we have to? Go back, I mean. To our world.”
“You know we do, sweetheart. They said it’s dangerous.”
“We could send Garrett and Amber back and stay here.”
“No, sweetheart, we can’t, and you know why. But we’ll prepare for your father to move to live with us permanently, and we’ll visit with Zuzu as often as you like.”
Her tone tells me she’s not totally happy about that, but she understands it’s the way things have to be. “Okay.”
We end up snuggling until the call of nature strikes me. I kiss her, extract myself from her sweet embrace, and head to the bathroom without turning on the light in there.
It’s the flash of movement in the looking glass that startles me. I’m not too proud to admit I scream, which brings her running.
“What? What is it?” She flips on the light.
“I…” I’m staring into a pair of blue eyes and at a man—a naked man—who looks startlingly like Ianto from Torchwood.
A man whose movements mirror mine.
When I hold up my right hand, the man holds up his. When my jaw drops open in shock, so does his.
Eilidh lets out a cackling laugh as I struggle to process this. “That’s you, Fangster Hunkadoofalus!”
“Me?” The man’s got tousled light brown hair, looks kind of brooding.
Bet he looks good in a suit. Any suit.
Other than a birthday suit.
Although, I have to say, he’s rocking that, too. I turn, so I can get a better look at the guy’s ass. Definitely not bad. I’d fuck him. “That’s…me?”
She wraps her arms around me. “That’s you, Not-Ianto.”
I pull her into my arms as I stare at us in the mirror. I’ve spent my life never truly seeing myself. Never in a modern mirror. The last time was the day before I was turned, in the surface of a calm pond.
“Get your phone, baby,” I whisper.
She darts out of the bathroom. Now that I know the full truth, I see that those flashes of spookily fast movement are part of who she is.
Of what she is.
Vampire 2.0.
Or, maybe it’s more accurate to say I’m Vampire 2.0 and she’s half Vampire 1.0.
She returns with her phone and unlocks it for me, handing it over.
I call up the camera app and take a picture of the mirror.
“Oh, naked pics,” she snarks. “Thanks.”
I gasp as I stare at the image.
The two of us.
Both of us clearly rendered in the image.
I remember when the first cameras came out, my bitter disappointment to realize that the blur marring the image plates wasn’t just a glitch, but all I’d ever see of my own face for the rest of forever.
Forever.
I had a vague idea of what I looked like from IR and FLIR imaging experiments, but they don’t give an accurate representation. Ditto body doubles. They resembled me enough to pass with people who didn’t know me very well, but they weren’t…
Me.
Eilidh nuzzles her head against my shoulder and takes the phone from me. She deletes the picture before repositioning the phone to take a selfie of the two of us.
Necks up.
No boobies, unfortunately.
Hey, look at that—I have a decent smile.
Hers is gorgeously perfect, as always.
“That’s the guy I fell in love with,” she softly says. “That handsome, toothy fucker, Mr. Fangster Hunkadoofalus. The guy who turned my life upside down in good ways. All the good ways.”
I pull her into my arms and stare down into her eyes.
Violet eyes.
Perfect eyes.
“All the good ways?”
She drapes her arms around my neck. “Yeah. All of them.”
40
Dexter
We shower and dress, and I don’t fail to note the looks of shock on Garrett’s and Amber’s faces when we walk into the kitchen.
“Holy…dude!” He stands and slowly paces over to me, circling me. “You do realize it’s daytime, right?”
Amber giggles and throws herself at me for a hug, then Eilidh. “It worked!”
“Yeah, it did,” Eilidh says. “My dad and Zeuzehn were right. Where are they?”
“They’ll be back soon,” Amber says. “Your dad is down in his lab, and Zeuzehn ran to the market.”
Garrett’s still staring at me in shock and reaches out, poking my shoulder.
Normally, that might offend me, but not today.
Nothing can shake my good mood today.
I grin. “You think that’s cool? Check this out.” I walk over to the kitchen door, open the shutter covering the window, and, after testing it against my arm first, I stand in the sunlight spilling through, closing my eyes against the glare as I tip my head back and greet the warmth of the sun.
“Shhhiiiit!” he gasps.
“This has to stay a secret in our world,” Eilidh says.
I turn and step back inside, closing the shutter behind me. “Why?”
“Because if it doesn’t, I become a target of Data-X and others,” she says. “So would you, most likely. If you think they’d lock me in a lab to make me a breeder, they’d do the same to you, if they thought your sperm would father hybrid children, or that they can use your blood to cure or trigger vampirism. If they find that they can’t use you, they’d kill you.”
Garrett runs a hand through his hair. “She’s right.” He looks to Amber. “Thoughts?”
She closes her eyes for a moment, her arms crossed over her chest. When she finally opens her eyes, she grimly nods. “There are still secret programs out there. Our work’s not done closing down the labs. Not just Data-X, but others. I can see more now. A lot more. Stuff that didn’t make sense before, but does with this new context.”
Garrett throws his head back, hands on his hips. “Aw, shit,” he mutters. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
Parxon walks into the kitchen and pulls up short at the sight of me standing there. He slowly approaches, smiling as he looks me up and down. “It worked, I take it?”
“Yes!” Eilidh says, smiling up at me. “It did.”
He briskly nods. “Excellent. But you can’t let anyone know.”
I chuckle. “Already covered that.”
“They’re right,” Garrett says. “You especially can’t let Lucius and them know. None of the other vampires can ever know about this. About you and the sunlight. You absolutely cannot tell them. And if you ever turn her, and she retains the ability to handle sunlight, you have to hide that from them, too.”
“Yeah, I get it.” I turn to Garrett. “I need your permission to do something.”
“To do what?”
“I need to see if there�
�s something I can still do. I need to find out now, before we return, so I don’t screw up and do something that we can’t fix. And there’s only one human here.”
We both look at Amber.
She nods and says, “Okay,” as Garrett says, “Fuck no!” and moves to stand between us.
Amber puts her hand on his arm. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay! I’m not letting a leech put you under his powers!”
“Garrett!” she snaps. “You know he’s not like that!”
“No.” He shakes his head, glaring at me. “Absolutely not.”
“We need to find out,” Amber says. “We need to know. This is huge.”
“First, Selene is turned into a vampire,” Garret growls. “A shifter with even more powers than she had. Who knows what happens if she turns on us? And now Dexter is a day-walking vampire? This is not good, babe.”
“Then it’s good we’ve got three new secret weapons on our side now, huh?” She indicates me, Parxon, and Eilidh. “They’re pack. Everything I’ve seen about them makes total sense now. I’ve seen them as pack from the start. I understood that with her, but not with Dexter, and of course, I didn’t know who Parxon was until I met him. It didn’t make sense to me, which is why I didn’t tell anyone about that part of my visions. I just thought I was wrong.
“But I wasn’t wrong—I wasn’t listening clearly to the visions. Parxon, Dexter, and Eilidh are pack. Their first allegiance is to us, not Lucius and his nest. And literally the survival of all shifters and vampires depends on us treating them as pack. And Zeuzehn, obviously. Ditto Chaldis and Corbin. We can trust them. But he’s right—we have to know if he can still thrall a human.”
“Shit.” He paces in a circle, hands still on his hips. Then he turns and jabs a finger in my face. “You hurt her, and I’ll hurt her.” He points at Eilidh.
“I won’t hurt her. I swear. I won’t touch her memories at all. Just a harmless test.”
He curls back a lip and growls, but finally moves to the side.
Amber steps forward and offers me a nervous smile. “Go ahead.”
I’m still not looking her in the eyes. “I just want to see if I still have the ability.”
“I know. I trust you.”
Garrett growls a little louder, deeper. “Get it over with!” he roars.
I look into her eyes and feel the connection take hold. “Hi,” I whisper into her mind.
She smiles and lifts her hand in a wave. I immediately disengage and turn away while Amber blows out a breath and Garrett rushes in to check her.
“I’m okay,” she quickly says. “I’m okay, Garrett. He didn’t hurt me. All he did was say hi, and ask me to smile and wave.”
Eilidh touches my arm. “Well?”
I nod. “I can still do it. At least that much. It felt the same, like I still had the strength.” I stare at my hands, which are illuminated by a sliver of sunbeam flowing through a gap in the shutter over the kitchen window.
It’s still hard to believe I’m not dreaming. This is a day I never thought would ever come.
Not without it bringing my immediate death.
“Now what?” Garrett asks.
“Tonight, we take you to the stones and send you home,” Parxon says. “Before anyone discovers you’re here. I will meet you there at the quarters, dark, and full moons to move things to your world.”
“But what about you coming with us?” Eilidh asks. The pain in her voice rips at me.
If she stays, I stay. I will never be separated from her again.
I keep saying that, and this time, I fucking mean it, even if I have to handcuff her to me.
“I must prepare first,” Parxon tells her.
“How long will that take?” I hate how lost Eilidh sounds.
“Not long, Mazbushka.” He smiles. “No longer than a few months. The story must be perfect, to protect Zeuzehn. I cannot leave unless I am certain he is protected.”
Eilidh throws her arms around him. “Please do it fast, Daddy,” she says. “Don’t let your ring get damaged. I’d never see you again.”
Okay, so, yeah, Daddy play is going to be a hard no, for sure.
Parxon sadly sighs as he holds her. “Mazbushka, nothing will ever keep me from you again, now that I’ve found you. And you will have the other ring.”
“Why can’t we bring Zuzu, too?” Eilidh asks. “We can take care of him. Please help me talk him into it.”
“I doubt he would leave.” Parxon clasps his hands together. “Unlike me, he still has a chance of finding true love here in this world, because I never marked him.”
“He could probably find love in ours, too,” Garrett says. “It’s a big world. Lots of people. Dating apps.”
“Yes, but it’s doubtful he could birth a child of his own, and that is his heart’s desire and always has been. Ever since we were children. He needs an Alpha of our kind to do that. I have never marked him, so he can still find another Alpha. With me declared legally dead here, Zeuzehn will ascend to the ruling class and have the ability to find a suitable mate of his choosing. Or, at the very least, he can live comfortably and independently.
“My leaving must not cast shadows on his reputation and possibly have people thinking he killed me. Especially since Serxon supposedly died in an ‘accident.’ I will send Zeu traveling, and make sure he is away from the estate, with plenty of witnesses to attest that he is gone, and I am alive, and then I will stage a fiery accident.”
Parxon’s got a good heart, thank fates. I was honestly worried we’d find out he was a shitty asshole. Like his brother. And that I’d have to kill him to protect Eilidh.
“Should we destroy the stone circle once you’re in our world for good?” Garrett asks.
“No!” Eilidh yells, silencing us all with her vehemence. “How will I see Zuzu if we can’t get to him?”
Amber closes her eyes and we wait until she opens them. “No. Definitely can’t destroy it. We’ll need it again. For more than just visits.”
“Why?” Parxon asks.
“I can’t see exactly who yet, but we’ll need to send someone over here for their safety. Not one of us,” she adds. “It’s vitally important they be able to cross and get to Zeuzehn. And Eilidh needs to be able to visit with Zeuzehn.”
If we can’t convince Zuzu to move across with us, scratch my plan to send in bulldozers once I own all the land around here, and then say oopsies, and pay whatever considerable fine would be levied against me by some government antiquities agency. Or, at the very least, to shift the stones off their moorings enough to permanently deactivate the ring.
There’s a knock at the front door, silencing all of us. Garrett herds the rest of us upstairs, and he and I listen at the top of the stairwell while Parxon answers the door.
A moment later, Parxon appears at the base of the stairs. “It’s safe,” he calls up. “It’s only Zeuzehn back from the market.”
We all return to the kitchen. The omega smiles when he sees me. “It worked. How have you enjoyed your first view of sunlight since forever, my son?”
My heart does an uncomfortable summersault at his expression. “It was incredible, thank you. I will never take it for granted again.”
His smile turns bashful. In another life, another universe, before meeting my Eilidh, I would be sorely tempted to make him mine. He reminds me so much of my Robert, it takes my breath away.
You would think after such a life long-lived that I wouldn’t be able to remember individual faces, but you’d be wrong.
That face is imprinted on my soul forever, the way my children’s faces are imprinted there.
The love never dies.
Ever.
Parxon rests his hands on the omega’s shoulders. “We will send them back tonight, but this means it is finally time for us to put our plans in place.”
Zeuzehn sadly smiles. “I understand. I will miss you, dear friend.” He looks at Eilidh. “But at least my Mazbushka has returned. Promise
to come visit.”
“I will.”
Parxon gently squeezes the omega’s shoulders. “We can bring you with us. You can live with us. We’ll care for you for the rest of your life, and you will have no worries.”
“While I would love to see more of that world, you know my heart. Perhaps you can bring me to visit. I will leave notes for you, friend, the way we used to.” He covers Parxon’s hands with his. “You have a chance to go on and find new love in that world. You have much time to make up with Eilidh. You have been more than kind to me throughout the years, but we both know where my future happiness lays, and it must be here, if it is to be at all. Perhaps if I grow too lonely and have no success and miss all of you, I will change my mind. For now, I do wish to try.”
“I can’t believe I of all people am saying this,” Garrett grumbles, “but there’s more to life than having pups. Babies, I mean.”
Amber snickers and hugs him.
“I know this,” Zeuzehn says. “I have a full life, a well-rounded life that few can match. For some, it is plenty. Our objection to our sires’ plans for us were never the plans themselves. It was that we didn’t have the freedom to find true mates. I have always wished for more children besides Eilidh.”
He looks up at Parxon. “We knew at our first meeting as children, long before we were joined, that we didn’t feel a mate bond. We most likely wouldn’t have produced viable heirs, even had we consummated our mating. There is a reason the jotnun birth rate is dropping so dramatically, and it is because too many people are mating for money or convenience or family estates, instead of love and instinctive attraction.
“Instinctive attraction means the best chance of having children. We’ve settled into a…lazy way of pairing off. It is evident in our race’s decline, yet our rulers have decided to ignore all the evidence to the contrary and fall back on old and ineffective ways. By enforcing a class system, it’s reduced the ability to freely choose mates, since genetic diversity has also decreased.
“The elders who decided on isolating what became humans, vampires, and shifters from the rest of us didn’t anticipate what the loss of natural diversity would do to our kind eons later. They worried about the hybrids’ abilities to reproduce faster than us and were concerned that females were ‘weaker’ than males. They thought they were ‘purifying’ the jotnun race by isolating us, but instead, they merely doomed it to inevitable extinction. Mixing what we are would only have made us all stronger, eventually.
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