Page 53 of Hot Blooded

He started to respond, then hesitated. He glanced at Tessa and the ire faded from his expression. The stiffness eased from his spine. Looking back at Etta, he nodded. “You’re right. I know you’re right.”

“What’s for my benefit?” Tessa asked.

When Amos didn’t immediately respond, Etta explained, “The Council interviews potential bloodmates before approving a union as a way of ensuring that the human is a fully willing partner and hasn’t been coerced or enthralled.”

Tessa blinked. “Oh, well, I mean, we don’t have to do that if you don’t want to,” she told Amos. “I’m obviously here willingly.”

“No,” Amos said. “Etta’s right. We should go before the Council.”

Tessa forced a smile. “It sounds… intense.”

“Oh, no, honestly, it’s nothing,” Etta said. “Amos is just an anti-social recluse.”

Amos scowled at her. Etta made a ghoulish face back at him. Fran covered her mouth, smothering laughter.

“It’s not bad,” Fran said, a hint of laughter still in her voice. “But, fair warning, the older vampires get, the weirder they get.”

Neither Amos nor Etta refuted the claim.

Tessa glanced nervously between them. “Uh, is that something I should expect?”

“From me?” Amos asked.

Tessa nodded.

“I hope not. The older vampires are… eccentric… but not because they’re old. Well, not directly. It’s just, they spent the vast majority of their lives in very different social norms from today.”

Etta snorted. “That’s a polite way of putting it.”

“They’ll be condescending to you,” Fran warned. “For being a human bloodmate and not a turned vampire. The old vamps—like, really old—turned their mates into vampires rather than keeping them human. They think vampires are superior to humans.”

“But there aren’t many of those dinosaurs,” Etta said. “Anyone turned after, hmmm… what did Angelique say?”

“After the Black Death,” Amos supplied.

“That’s right. Most everybody turned after the Black Death aren’t so snobbish about humans.”

Tessa tried not to choke on her drink. “What year was the Black Death?” she asked faintly.

“Somewhere in the fourteenth century?” Etta guessed. She waved vaguely. “It doesn’t matter. Those throwbacks are easy to ignore. What’s important is that there’s a Council hearing two weeks from Friday.”

“Two weeks,” Amos repeated, sounding both annoyed and thoughtful. He was still holding Tessa’s hand, his thumb stroking meditatively over her knuckles.

“Is that… would you want me to do that?”

Amos hesitated. “Do you not want to?” he asked.

Fran and Etta were silent and still, trying their damnedest to fade into the background.

“No, it’s not that,” she answered quickly. Tessa had already made up her mind about Amos. She was just waiting for him to ask. The answer was going to be yes.

But he hadn’t asked.

He seemed to halfway understand her hesitance. “Getting approval from the Council doesn’t mean you have to accept my claim,” he said softly. “It just means they won’t read me the riot act when—” he cleared his throat “—if you do accept.”

“Alright,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

Amos squeezed her hand.

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