Page 27 of Until Forever Comes
“So, uh, how do you like it so far?” I asked.
“It’s fine. Too small for us like it is, but fine.”
I furrowed my brow in confusion, trying to work out what he meant.
“What do you mean?” I finally asked.
“We need to stay in more populated areas,” he explained, like it was the most obvious thing on earth. “Even with only seven of us here, the humans will notice us eventually. This town is small enough that they recognize newcomers. Plus, with seven vampires feeding in this limited pool, hangovers and flus will become too common to make sense. Humans see what they want to see, but they’re not dumb. We can’t stay hidden here for long. At least not right now.”
“They get the flu from you?” I asked.
He grinned and massaged my nape. “No, but when they lose blood, they feel a little weaker. It’s natural to try to think of a cause that makes sense in their reality. So they blame the flu or think they had too much to drink the night before.”
I thought about what he’d said. It didn’t match up to my own experience with Miguel feeding from me. “Do all humans feel sick after a vampire feeds from them?” I asked.
“Yes,” Miguel said and then paused. “But some of them like it, seek it out, even. And they recover quickly. Uh, unless we take too much.”
He sounded ashamed, or at least remorseful, about that last part, so I knew he was talking about himself. I stopped walking and squeezed his upper arm. “When you drank from me, it felt amazing,” I told him.
He gave me a weak smile. “That’s because we were having sex at the same time, wolf. Sex is meant to feel good.”
I refused to let myself think about whether Miguel had had sex with the humans he’d fed from over the years. Refused.
“It did feel good,” I said. “You felt good. But what I meant was that I felt stronger after you fed from me. You said the humans feel weaker after they lose blood. I didn’t.”
He kissed my forehead. “You’re a gift,” he murmured against my skin, and I knew I’d distracted him from the reminder of the dark times when he’d taken more than he should have from humans. Truth be told, I didn’t want to think about those times, either, because someone else had been doing for my mate what was only mine to do. “I don’t deserve you,” he whispered, and he nuzzled the soft skin behind my ear.
Once he pulled back, I shrugged and winked at him, trying to lighten the mood, to make him feel good. “You keep touching me the way you been and we’ll call it even.”
He squeezed me tightly.
“You can count on it, wolf.”
We kept walking then, a comfortable silence between us, until I played his words over in my mind. His explanation of why vampires couldn’t make a home in Kfarkattan made sense. So much so that it should have been obvious to me. Did that mean he’d be leaving town?
“Miguel?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“What you said about Kfarkattan not being populated enough and you not being able to stay here for long… what does that mean? Don’t you live here? I mean, are you—” I took in a deep breath. “Are we leaving town?”
“Live here?” He sounded genuinely surprised. “You thought I lived….” His words trailed off, and he stopped walking and looked at me. “I have a mattress on the floor of a tiny room in a dilapidated warehouse. When you said you were going to stay with me, I thought you understood.” He licked his lips nervously. “I thought you knew I was just passing through Kfarkattan. I’m here to buy land so I can come back after they’re all done building up the town. But it takes years, sometimes decades, before a growing city is populated enough for my kind to live in it.” He shook his head. “So, yeah, I was planning to leave.”
It was funny, the things you could figure out without the words being said. I knew, just as surely as I was standing there, that Miguel would stay in Kfarkattan if I asked him. We’d only just met and obviously he had a whole life somewhere else, so that sounded right crazy, I reckon. But seeing the way he looked at me… well, I just knew.
I’d only left the area a few times in my life, and always to visit other packs. Being off pack lands was hard, but at least in Kfarkattan I was in a somewhat familiar setting. Plus, I was walking distance from my family. But frightened though I was, I wouldn’t ask Miguel to stay there. I’d meant what I’d said to him—he was now my home. And I was going to buck up and stand by that statement, even if it meant leaving everything and everyone I’d ever known.
“Great,” I said, aiming for light and breezy, though my shaking voice and trembling torso probably gave me away as out of kilter and downright terrified. “Where’re we going?”
He took my chin in his hand and tipped my head up so our eyes met. “Are you sure?” he asked.
I didn’t need to ask what he meant. I knew. Was I sure about leaving the only home I’d ever known? That was what he was asking.
“You’re my home now,” I answered, repeating what I had already said. “So, uh, tell me where we live.”
He searched my eyes, looking for the truth in my words. Once he seemed satisfied, he took my hand in his and kept walking.
“I move around every couple of decades,” he said. “We all do. If we stay in the same place for too long, the humans begin to recognize us and then they notice that we don’t age. It’s easier to leave before that happens. And, if we want, we can come back once we’re forgotten.”
