Blood Ties

11. Starting Over

11. Starting Over

“Really? He waited 400 years?” Quinn shook her head. Even a hundred years felt like an eternity at her 21 years of age. She honestly couldn’t imagine living many lifetimes without getting bored—not that the idea of eternal life was all that horrible, if she let that idea really sink in.

Too much was at stake here, she knew, and it wasn’t fair to make quick decisions without thinking things through. They’d hammered in enough knowledge for her to make her head spin, and she was going over everything with Adam alone after the movie while she made mental notes.

“Well, I think it was more 450, but I could be off by a decade or so.” Adam shook his head. He was having serious regrets about kidnapping his mate, but his instincts had been gnawing at him something fierce. Maybe it was his anxiety over Quinn possibly finding a boyfriend or sheer impatience on his part, but Adam somehow knew that he needed to be there for her, and only wished he could figure out why he felt that way. He needed to give this a serious shot or he’d be alone until he went mad. “I want to start over again, Quinn. I know it’s difficult to forgive something like this, but I would appreciate it if we could pretend we’re just meeting now and act like I didn’t kidnap you or fly you to southern California. It’s asking a lot, bu—”

“Okay.” Her quick reply surprised even herself, and she was startled that she agreed with this rash decision without even giving it a second thought. “I mean, I don’t know why you think you needed to do those things, but I guess with your father’s past, you might have felt a little ambivalent about how I would react. While I can understand that, I may need some additional time to make up my own decision. You say that things are the way they are, and I say that it’s going to take me a little while to assimilate to your way of thinking, got it?”

Adam wanted to use his charm and wit to change her mind quicker, but she deserved the time to process her new situation, and whether she wanted to be here or not. That she was giving him a chance at all was something of a miracle, and she would only be pushed further away if he wasn’t careful and pressed too hard.

He abstained and decided that, if necessary, he’d back off entirely to give her room to breathe. It was unbearable, that thought, but it would have to be done. He hadn’t lied. You didn’t get a second chance at love when you were the literal undead bloodsucker of nightmares.

“Love, I understand completely—more than you will ever know.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair restlessly. He looked both hopeful and exasperated, an odd mix of emotions that belied the worry in his eyes. Regret combined with longing was odd to behold on him. “That you give me a shot at all is…it’s immense. I will apologize again and again, if need be, because you are owed so much more than what I’ve done to you so far.”

She nodded, smiling slightly because she had no words. She had a ton of questions that kept piling up in her head, but nothing she could verbalize until she remembered that she would need to be changed in order to become his—Adam’s. She needed to ask about that as well.

“When—or rather if I become bonded to you, what would that entail? Is it…would the change be painful?”

He hesitated for a slight second as his head c****d. He wanted to study her face more, even if it was only to take in her deep green eyes and innocent expression. She knew hardly anything about what was to come except what the family had told her, and she seemed reticent to take a step forward without excruciating details.

“I won’t lie and say you won’t feel it. From what my mother has said—and my uncle and aunt as well—it stings a bit, but it’s quick, like an inoculation. A small pinch and it’s gone. All you can feel afterwards is the blending of our souls. Your heartbeat slows down and stops, but that only happens when you’re sleep. When you wake up, you are impenetrable but thirsty. Honestly, the worst part is the transformation is the thirst.” He paused and moved closer to her to cup her palm in his. “My mother and father said that the first year is the most precarious because you will see all humans as prey. It takes that long for you to become more mature as a vampire, though you can speed up the process. It’s been proven.”

“Proven?” Her proverbial ears perked up. “How?”

He grabbed her other hand, bringing them both to his mouth to kiss the backs of her knuckles sweetly. “When my mother was only a few months old as a vampire, she was taken by a dark sorcerer.” He saw she was about to speak, but stopped her. “Yes, sorcerers do exist, as do werewolves, fae, elves, and other supernatural creatures—most of which you will never run into. Sorcery comes in both white and black magic, and my mother was involved with a man before she met my father, a man she had to run from. He was abusive, and my grandmother was a drinker. She got away from both situations, drove to Southern California, got a job as a cocktail waitress at a strip joint, and met my dad there. She never knew her ex had sorcerer blood running through his veins.”

Quinn blinked after hearing Adam talk about strip joints. “Wait—what?”

He smiled, utterly unable to help himself. “You heard me right. My mom was desperate for work and living on the streets for a while, but she was able to meet her best friend, Delia, who you will probably meet soon since she lives in town. She got her the job at Promises and rented a studio apartment, met my dad, and the rest is history. Sort of.” He sighed, wishing he could pull her closer to him and just hold her in his arms. He felt it might be too much too soon, but it was almost torture not being able to.

“Sort of?”

Adam sighed, but wouldn’t lie to her. “Her ex—a man named Tanner—kidnapped her and took her into the mountains. He gave her potions and drugged her so she was weak and couldn’t feel the bond with my father.”

“The bond?” She was confused. She’d heard them talk about it, but it just didn’t translate well to humans.

“Yes, the bond like a deep, undeniable compulsion to be with someone. It’s more intense than love, like infatuation and love and lust and everything else that’s good in a relationship. Yes, it can lead to jealousy, and that jealousy can lead to some heartache, because there is no reason for the envy to be there. Once you are bonded with your vampire mate, there is no one else you need nor want. It’s stupid, that emotion. Before you are mated, it’s different, and you can’t help but feel that way, which is why I was furiously jealous when you told me you had a boyfriend and insisted you break up with him. Love, after a little while, you know you’re going to have to either speak with him or block his number completely. But we’ll get to that later. I was telling a story.

“My mother was made weak through the potions Tanner gave her, but she was already pregnant with my sister, Charlotte, and I. Tanner was insane, a dark sorcerer, but my father had a coven behind him and was able to figure out where my mom and Tanner were located. They obviously rescued her, but Mom got the last laugh. She was the one to kill Tanner with the knife he’d been trying to use to cut her babies out of her. He was…the man was sick in the head. He thought that she could make him a vampire and they could live happily ever after. He didn’t realize or was too mentally ill to know that that isn’t the way it works.”

He sighed, stood up and walked toward the dresser before picking up a photograph in a frame. It could have been placed there within the last week except for the image of a very pregnant Cassie in Eli’s arms. At least that wiped away one question she had. Vampires were photographable, if that was even a word.

“Anyway, the point of the story is that, like everything else in life, pain is fleeting. It’s not always something physical, but emotional as well. Vampires do not feel much pain, and only on dire occasions, but the emotional anguish can be enough to make us weak. Without his mate, my father did not get enough rest nor feed as often as he should. He could not get by without my mother near, and that was for a reason.

“One of the potions Tanner poisoned my mother with nullified the bond between my parents. It made it feel like they hadn’t mated, marked each other, or anything beyond that. For a normal vampire, that is painful, but for a pregnant female…” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine what she felt like, to be honest. Pain for a vampire is not like a human’s. We can withstand tenfold of a mortal’s and barely feel it. I can only imagine the timing of her rescue was fortuitous and the only thing that allowed me to be born. When she was rescued, she was weak, but not too weak. She’d been able to get some blood in her that wasn’t tainted with whatever Tanner was poisoning her with, and that helped. She was able to stab her captor, kick him off the front stoop where he was run through by dozens of arrows filled with liquid silver.” He paused dramatically. “If a vampire had been hit with even one of those, it would most likely have spelled his or her death.”

There was a silence as Quinn let all that sink in. When she was done, she turned her body to face him, watched as he set the picture frame back down and looked over at her. His expression was soft, completely at odds with how she saw him that first morning.

“Why are you telling me all this?”

He sauntered over to her slowly, his pace almost relaxed before hunkering down in front of her and taking her hands in his. “Because even if we are immortal and mostly invincible, there are still things out there that want us dead. They might not actively seek us out like Tanner did with my mother, but you need to know that there is much more to this world than there seems, and much of it is not good. We get along with most other species like shifters and good witches, for lack of a better term, but there are people and things out there that would like to see us eradicated, though it’s not common at all. Vampires may not be loved, but anything you fear can be seen as a threat and something to exterminate.”

She blew out a breath she wasn’t aware she was holding. Adam let it gust past his shoulder before moving closer and cupping her chin in one cool hand. Her eyes were wide, probably larger than they should be this late at night. He stroked her warm skin before slowly rolling to his feet, never breaking the connection between them, both physical and eye contact.

“You should probably head to bed, love. It’s late, and I’m sure my family will wake you with their usual noise early enough.” He let go of her hand, looking a bit sad at the loss of physical contact. “Good night, Quinn. I’ll see yo—”

“Wait.” Her voice was quiet, but said with enough power to stop him. He turned, looking directly at her.

She opened her mouth a few times before she was able to mutter a question.

“Adam, would you stay in here with me tonight? The story you told…it was kind of frightening, and I don’t think I’ll be able to get to sleep. I’d like to talk a little more if we could.”

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