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“Mama…I can’t sleep…”
Selene’s eyes fluttered open at her daughter’s whisper. She turned her head on her pillow to see Eve standing by her bed. Despite having grown into a teenage body, Eve carried herself that moment like a much smaller child.
“Now, why is that?” Selene said
She sat up and gestured her daughter closer. Eve sat down on the bed and let her mother take her into her arms. According to the clock on the wall, it was nearly five in the afternoon. The whole castle would be waking soon once the sun started to set.
“I haven’t slept all night,” Eve said, resting her pale cheek on her mother’s shoulder. “I’ve been…seeing visions.”
“Visions?” Selene said. She pushed a long strand of black hair from her daughter’s face. “Not dreams?”
Eve shook her head.
“Visions,” she repeated. “When I’m between that place between asleep and awake.” She looked Selene in the eye. “I think it’s something with our thread.”
“Thread” was Eve’s word for the link she shared with Selene. The telepathic link that connected vampiric mother and daughter. The one that brought them back together after years separated. She likened it to a thread connecting to points. It may grow longer or shorter, but it always keeps them connected no matter the time or distance.
“Do you feel it weakening?” Selene asked.
Then thought frightened her. After losing Eve for years, Selene didn’t want to lose the one thing that tied them back together, her one way of finding her again. Then again, maybe it was just an adjustment. Perhaps since reuniting, the link no longer needed to be so pronounced, sensing how the two were together again.
Eve shook her head again.
“No,” she said. “It’s like…there’s something pulling on it.” She pinched her fingers together and pulled them back to demonstrate. “Like something took the middle of the thread and is pulling it. Making a triangle shape.”
Selene visualized what Eve was describing, and it sent a pool of dread into her stomach.
“There must be some third person intervening,” Selene said.
Selene remembered when Eve found her. The way the little girl, now a young woman, walked across the ice that surrounded the Nordic Coven’s castle. The way she appeared from the mist like a ghost, calm, like she knew her mother would be there waiting for her. Selene had felt the pull of thread strongest then. A strong tug, like your very heart and mind was trying to puppet your body in one direction.
But Selene wasn’t feeling such a thing now. If Eve was, it meant not only was this interference close, but it seemed to affect Eve more. It didn’t make any sense. The thread was biological, physiological, bound between parent and offspring. There was no one else alive who could access it.
At that moment, her daughter gasped and gripped her head. She dropped her face down like she was in pain. Selene pulled Eve closer and rubbed her hands over his inky black hair.
“The visions are back again,” Eve said. She squeezed her eyes shut, tight enough she may generate tears. “There’s something dark…something in the snow…”
Selene held Eve’s head close to her chest and rubbed her hair.
“There’s a figure running across the ice…” Eve said. “I can’t see his face…”
His. A man running through the snow and ice. Selene’s heart dropped and glanced towards the covered window. Ice and snow surrounded them. Whoever this male figure was, he was heading their way.
“Does it still hurt?” Selene asked.
Eve shook her head.
“It only hurts when I first feel it,” she said. “After that it just feels…weird. Almost numb.”
Selene nodded. She kissed her daughter on the head then slipped out from under her duvet.
“Stay in here,” she told Eve. She wrapped the furry blanket around her daughter’s shoulders. “Keep the door locked. If you need help, call David or one of the others. Okay?”
Eve looked a little frightened, but she nodded. This was the thing about her daughter that Selene always wondered at. Eve shivered and shook at danger, but Selene had also seen her rip out throats with her hybrid teeth. The elder vampiress could never imagine how a young girl could be both so frightened and fearsome at once.
“Okay, mama,” Eve said.
Selene kissed her daughter’s forehead one more time, then left her bedroom, locking the door behind her.
~
It had been overcast the past several days. One of the benefits of living with a coven in a colder climate was the lack of sunlight. Sometimes, they would only see grey clouds for weeks at a time, which meant they could step out of the castle even during the day. Now as the sun was surely setting behind the falling snow, the world was ashy white and dark grey.
Harsh snowflakes bit at Selene’s face and she made her way across the ice. She’d thrown a long white coat over her leather suit, but the fur trim did little to warm her from the elements. Her boots thread carefully over the thick ice, crunching loud against the eerie quiet of the early morning arctic.
Selene squinted against the icy wind that sliced at her face. The mist obscured the horizons, so all Selene could see was the frozen ground that disappeared into it. She searched for what Eve had described. A dark, man-shaped figure making its way towards their home.
She also searched her mind for what this figure could possibly be. The shared collective memories between vampires didn’t overlap with the link her and her daughter shared, so it couldn’t have been anyone else from the cove. Even if they could, none of them had left the fortress in weeks, why would anyone be seen approaching it from miles away?
It had to be something dangerous. Someone, perhaps, who wanted to find Eve. Why else would they tamper with their link? Selen tightened her grip on the pistol on her holster. A strain of aggression weaved its way through her. She had once lost Eve for years, she wasn’t about to let someone take her away.
Her jaw clenched tight, against the cold and her own protective anger. She felt like a lioness whose cubs had been threatened, and she was ready to fight tooth and claw for her young. Who on earth could it be? An old ally of Marius? Another Lycan seeking to take down the new reigning Elders? There was no one alive who could access her thread to her daughter. The only person who possibly could was—
Then she saw it. Just past the blurry mist of snow, Selene spotted an ashy dark shape moving towards her. It was exactly what Eve must have seen in her vision. Selene pulled her pistol from his holster and pointed it at the figure.
“Who are you?” she growled into the cold. “Why have you come here?
She stood hard as stone between the figure and the castle. Her finger itched on the trigger to pull, to take out this thing by the legs before it could get any closer to where her daughter was. But as the shape drew nearer, it began to take a shape. It walked on all fours, dark hair splitting from its body, teeth whiter than the snow.
A Lycan. Selene knew it in her bones. Some Lycan who was still deadset on finding the hybrid child and taking her blood. Not while she was here. Selene lifted her pistol towards the creature.
“Don’t come any closer” she growled over the whistle of the wind.
Aim ready, Selene stalked closer to the creature as it ran across the ice towards her. She was ready for a fight. She was ready to shoot and tear and rip with her teeth. The creature grew closer until Selen could hear its claws clacking against the ice. Its eyes became visible, glowing like sprites in the air.
But then, the creature seemed to slow down. As it drew closer to Selene, it seemed to halt its speed. Selene expected the thing to lunge at her. Instead, it stopped just in time for only the ice to slide it forward and stop right at her feet. The Lycan huffed its breaths, steamy air escaping its muzzle, staring at Selene with a look she wasn’t used to seeing on Lycan. There was no aggression, no anger, no bloodlust.
Selene stood there, pistol pointed to the beast’s face, but she couldn’t bring herself to shoot. Something about the way the Lycan looked at her dumbfounded her. The thing almost looked…frightened.
The vampiress mustered some steel into her voice.
“Who are you?” she asked. “Tell me now why you’ve come to our coven grounds.”
She held the Lycan’s gaze with a vice grip. She tried to read its thoughts across its eyes, but she couldn’t find anything. The look in its face almost resembled begging, someone desperately trying to tell you something but unable to verbalize it. The creature was quiet, and shivering despite its inky fur.
“Tell me why you’re here,” Selene growled again, moving her gun closer to the Lycan’s wet nose. “Or I will bury you in the ice.”
The Lycan was silent for a moment, then realized a high, dog-like wince in its throat. Then, the creature started to change. Its fur retracted into its flesh. Its bones crackled as its body shrunk in stature, from a towering monster to something Slene didn’t need to tip her head back to look at. Its beastly growls softened into an undeniably human whimper.
Selene watched the Lycan turn into its human form, and as it did her eyes widened and her heart twisted in her chest. The beast sprouted human features that sent a flurry of memories, sights and touches, into her mind. Shaggy blonde hair. Strong but delicate hands. Blue, blue, eyes.
His name fell from her lips.
“Michael,” she said.
Without his Lycan muscle and fur to shield him, Michael was completely naked in the arctic cold. He shivered and twitched and his pale flesh flushed red against the freezing wind. Selene stared for a moment that seemed to stretch on for eternity. Was this a dream? Was she seeing a ghost?
But then she heard Michael whimpering against the cold. He clutched and clenched his body as his teeth chattered. His body was sprinkled with wounds. Bruises, cuts, the beginnings of frostbite.
“Selene,” he said.
That was it. His name on her tongue yanked Selene from her thoughts back into reality. The man in front of her trembled with cold and exhaustion, his knees shaking like he may collapse. This was real. He was real.
Selene ripped her coat from her shoulders and threw it around Michael’s shoulder. She began ushering him quickly towards the castle. The Nordic Coven’s homeland was the kind of cold that could kill you if you were exposed to it directly for too long. Between the temperature, and who knew how long Michael must have been running through the mountains to find them, she knew he was close to death. Michael struggled to walk, leaving Selene to hold him up on his feet every struggling step to the castle.
The two of them burst through the front doors of the fortress. The rest of the castle was starting to stir awake. Lena and several others were in the entrance hall, still dressed in their sleeping robes. They all froze and starred as Selene dragged Michael inside.
“Selene,” Lena said. “Your daughter told us—”
“Bring him upstairs,” Selene barked at them. Michaelc collapsed on his knees at her side. His lips were turning blue. “A warm bed, medicine, bandages. Now!”
~
The whole castle became a flurry of activity. Under Selene’s steely orders, the vampires of the Nordic Coven carried Michael upstairs to one of the master bedrooms. Michael’s body sprouted and shed fur in minutes, his claws growing and retracting, his body fighting against the natural forces trying to kill him. The vampires placed him in a large bed of plush pillows and thick duvets, wrapping him in layers of clothes. A group of members with healing knowledge surrounded his bed, patching and covering every wound.
Selene stood over all of it, directing the activity with the fierce urgency of a sergeant. The whole time, she did not leave Michael’s side, and one dared asked her to. At some point in the chaos, David entered the bedroom.
“Selene,” he said. She did not look at him. “What’s going on?”
Selene didn’t look at him. Her eyes stayed firmly on Michael as a flurry of healers worked around him like honeybees around a blossom.
“I found him out on the ice approaching the castle,” she said.
“Who is he? Is he another Lycan threat?”
Selene watched as a healer tied bandages over Michael’s bicep, which bloomed with a blue and purple bruise.
“Lycan, yes,” she said. “A threat? No. Far from it.”
“I can’t see how he can be a Lycan and not a threat,” David said. He wrapped his fingers around the knife handle on his belt. “We should wake up. Get some answers from him—”
Selen turned and pressed a hand to David’s chest before he could take a single step closer to the bed. David froze, and stiffened under Selene’s bullet-sharp gaze.
“If you so much as graze a hair on his head, I will decapitate yours and put it on a pike by the gates,” she said.
David stood stiff as a board, then slowly unlatched his fingers from his knife. Selene glanced over her shoulder at the bed.
“His name is Michael,” she said. “He was…he is Eve’s father.”
David’s eyes widened.
“This is the Michael you told us about?” he said. “I thought Marius killed him.”
“I thought so too,” Selene said.
She moved her hand from David’s chest and turned to the bed. The healer finished wrapping Michael’s chest, snapping the last piece with her teeth then smoothing it down on his shoulders. Whatever Michael did to get here, it took him through Hell to the other side. His body was a tapestry of injury, but he was alive. Despite it all, his chest rose and fell with breath.
“I know Lycans have not been kind to us in recent years,” Selene said. “But Michael is good. He was good as a man, he is good as a hybrid.” She glanced over at David. “Anyone who even thinks of hurting him will be exiled under the ice. Understand?”
David clenched his jaw, then nodded.
“As you wish,” he said.
~
There comes a point in a struggle where one starts to move mechanically. You forget what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and you simply keep moving. Michael had already reached that point before he made it onto the ice. Months of searching, months of tracking, until he finally caught wind of a castle where a coven of Nordic vampires lived. Recently, these vampires had elected three new elders. One, a former death dealer named Selene.
Michael had been in a bleeding, frostbitten haze across the ice. It wasn’t until he reached the castle and found Selene there, as if she somehow knew he was coming, that he temporarily broke from his miserable, persistent stupor. Then, promptly passed out.
As he hovered in the dark behind his eyes, he expected to be dead. Not even immortality would be able to save his sorry life. He took comfort, at least, in knowing that he reached her first. He had a chance to see her face one more time before his body gave out.
But then, he opened his eyes.
He was warm all over. It stung a little, residential pain from the frostbite leaving his body. But he wasn’t on the ice anymore. His eyes fluttered open and the senses returned to his body. He was in a large bed, one of silk and furs, next to a crackling fireplace. For a moment, he wondered whether there was a heaven for dead Lycans. But then, he realized he wasn’t alone.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring into the fireplace. Her hands were threaded tight together and her foot tapped the floor as her leg twitched. Michael stared at the back of her short black hair.
He was alive. She was here.
“Selene,” he said in a weak voice.
He tried to sit up, then winced against an eruption of pain across his body. Selene whipped her head around, then hurried over closer to him.
“Lay still,” she said. “Your wounds are still healing. Not to mention you’re exhausted.”
If she had a heartbeat, it would have been knocking at her ribs. Selene’s body trembled, her mind racing, waiting as it had all day for this all to reveal itself as some dream. But it wasn’t. She pressed a hand gently over his bandaged chest, held his dark blues with hers. He was real. Living, breathing, real.
She took his face in her hands and pressed her mouth to his. Michael moaned deep in his throat and sunk into her kiss. Selene tried to be gentle, but she was hungry for him. Not sensually, but soulfully. This was the desperate hunger of getting back what you thought was gone forever. She curled her fingers in his hair to keep him close. She wanted to sink into his skin.
When their kiss broke, both were breathless. It took all of Selene’s willpower to not fall into the bed with him, pull him close and never leave the room again.
Instead, she started with her first question.
“I saw a vision that the Lycan Marius had killed you,” she said. “How did you survive?”
It took Michael a moment to answer. His body was stiff and his hand instinctively brushed over his throat, wrapped with a pale scar from a knife.
“He almost did,” he said. “I blacked out, and he tossed me into the snow to bleed out.” He swallowed. His body slightly shivered, as if the memory were enough to take him right back to that horrible day. “But despite their efforts, I managed to regain consciousness and escape. I licked my wounds—literally.”
He chuckled, then winced at a flare of pain at his side.
“I found somewhere to hide long enough until my throat healed. Even then, I was almost certain I was going to die.”
“But you healed yourself,” Selene said. A small smirk quirked at the side of her mouth. “You’re a doctor. Of course you could.”
Michael gave Selene a small smile, then squeezed her hand again.
“Once I could walk, I kept my head down for a while. Avoided Lycans where I could. Ate whatever animals I could find.” He pursed his lips. “Then…I heard somewhere that a coven of Nordic vampires had elected three new Elders.” His eyes glinted at her. “One of them was called Selene.”
Michael paused for a moment to look at her. Her black hair had wisps of silver. Her eyes seemed lighter and color yet deeper.
“That’s when the visions started,” he continued. “I thought they were hallucinations from the blood loss. Or maybe just dreams. I thought I was finally losing my mind. But they kept happening. I kept seeing you, in a castle, somewhere deep in the icy mountains.”
Selene leaned forward.
“It was a link,” she said. “Sometimes, when vampires are related, a telepathic link can form between them.”
Michael gave her a look.
“But you and I are not related,” he said. “Not by blood.”
Selene pursed her lips. She wanted to explain to him that the relation was not between him and her, but him and Eve. But she wasn’t ready to tell him that. Michael had just woken up. He needed time to adjust before she dropped such a revelation on him.
So, she just shrugged. Thankfully, Michael shook his head and continued.
“I kept the image of it in my mind,” he said. “I asked around anyone I could trust, until I managed to find directions to the Nordic Coven’s castle. I traveled for weeks, then months, taking so many detours and dead end trails.” He licked his lips. “Until I finally made it here.”
Selene’s heart squelched in her chest. She pulled Michael into her arms and held him tight. His arms circled around her, and the vampiress was hit with a flood of serenity that nearly brought her to tears.
“And now you’re here,” she said. “You’re safe here with me. And I will never let you separate from me as long as I live.”
She heard Michael chuckle.
“Eternity is a long time to stay together,” he said. He squeezed her. “And it’ll still feel shorter than the time we were apart.”
Selene closed her eyes and nuzzled her face into the crook of his shoulder. For several minutes, they lay in each other’s embrace, listening to the winter winds whistle outside. In the silence, Selene sunk into Michael, savoring the touch of him, like she might lose again any moment.
Immortals were not built for grief. For those they knew in their human lives, perhaps, but never for each other. Their relationships were designed to last eternity, only ending by a choice to separate. An immortal widow mourning an immortal lover was an abused thought. Yet after she learned the truth of Michael’s death, a veil had fallen over her she knew would last until forever.
Until now.
Selene sat up and took Michael’s hand between both of hers. She kissed each of his knuckles, the taste of his skin returning to her memories. She wanted to stay, but she needed to check on Eve. Selene had been in this room for hours, and she needed time to figure out how she was going to bring her daughter and her daughter’s father back together.
“I need to check on something,” Selene said. “Get some rest. I'll come back to see you again before sunrise.”
Michael squeezed her hand.
“Don’t leave me alone for too long.”
~
Michael was in and out of sleep in the following days. Even with the strength of a hybrid, his body needed the time to recover. He awoke every few hours it seemed, for healers to change his bandages and to feed him blood by the spoonful. Then, it was back into the abyss.
Until one night, he woke up to someone sitting on his bed. His eyes fluttered open and caught black hair and a pale face. His heart hitched, thinking it was Selene. But as his sleepy vision adjusted, he saw the face was smaller, like angular. It was a young girl, no older than fifteen or so. She wasn’t Selene, but she looked very much like her. Perhaps what Selene may have looked like in her youth all those centuries ago.
Michael lifted his head off the pillow.
“Hello,” he said.
The girl must have been a vampire. Why else would she be in a place like this? She didn’t seem like a prisoner. It was a sad thing to imagine, being made immortal at such a tender age. The girl stared at him, unresponsive.
“My name is Michael,” he said. “Has it been a bit unusual since I got here?”
Again, the girl did not respond. She just stared at him with an expression that Michael couldn’t read. Confusion? Fear? Curiosity?
“Can you tell me your name?” Michael asked.
The girl parted her lips to speak, but someone else answered.
“Eve, you’re not supposed to be in here.”
Selene was standing at the door with a stern look. The girl now called Eve quickly moved off the bed.
“You said I could meet him when he was better,” she said.
“He’s still bedridden, does that seem ‘better’ to you?”
The girl wilted under her mother’s gaze. Her fingers fiddled with a long strand of her inky hair.
“I’m sorry, mama,” she said. “I just wanted to look at him.”
Mama. Michael’s eyes widened and his gaze flicked between Selene and Eve. He thought he was only seeing things when he mistaken the girl for Selene. But no, aside from height and hair length, the two could have almost been sisters. The black hair, the pale skin, the blue eyes. Everything the girl had was undeniably Selene’s.
“And now you’ve woken him,” Selene said. She opened the door and pointed outside. “Go downstairs and help in the kitchen. He’ll need food soon.”
The girl nodded and did as her mother said, retreating out into the hallway, but not before throwing another curious glance towards Michael. The door shut behind her. Selen let out a long sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“You’re a mother,” Michael said.
Selene shook her head and pursed her lips.
“I hope once you were fully healed we could all sit together to talk about this,” she said. “But I guess timing is really on our side, is it?”
Selene sauntered over to the bed and sat down by Michael. She took his head, threading her cold fingers with his warm ones.
“When I was frozen in that lab all those years ago,” she said. “I was pregnant.”
Michael’s entire body froze where he lay. It escaped him sometimes just how long he and Selene were separated. The years between them stretched between them like horrible hands pushing them apart.
“Before then, you were the only man I had slept with,” she said. “Which means the girl’s father could only be…”
Selene pursed her lips, like she still couldn't quite believe it herself. Michael felt an emotional swelling in his chest. It crawled up past his heart to neck, then throat, and then to his face. He squeezed his eyes shut as tears started to well.
“I’m sorry this is how you had to find out,” Selene said. She reached a hand to Michael’s face to thumb away a tear. “It’s a lot to take in, I know.”
“No, it’s not that,” Michael said. He sniffled and rubbed his eyes. “Years ago, Samantha and I…we used to talk about it all the time. Becoming parents one day. After the accident…I didn’t know if I’d ever find someone again I could have that with. But now…with you…”
A sob escaped his throat and a tear escaped each eye. He cleared his throat to collect himself.
“I need to talk to her,” he said. “I need to know everything about her. You said her name was Eve?”
Selene nodded, a smile escaping onto her lips.
“Yes,” she said. “In mortal years, she’s a teenager. According to what we understand about vampiric children, she will grow until physical maturity and then stop all together.”
“So…there’s still some time for me to watch her grow up?” Michael said.
Selene nodded, her own eyes threatening to tear up.
“Yes,” she said. “Though not too much. It’s scary how fast she’s becoming a woman.”
Michael collapsed both his hands around Selene’s. She moved closer to rub her free hand along his back as he choked back sobs. They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, then he kissed her thumb knuckle.
“I want to speak to her tonight,” he said. “When the healers come to check on me, bring her to me. I want to talk to her.”
“Michael, you’re still healing—”
“I will crawl down the stairs if I have to,” he said. His tone was steely. But then he looked Selene in her eyes and he seemed softened. His words came closer to begging. “Please, Selene. I’ve wanted to be a father for so long. I never thought I’d get to be. Now I discover I’ve been one for years and I didn’t even get to be there for it. I can’t wait any longer.” He kissed her hand again. “I want to meet our daughter. Please.”
~
Later in the night, when sunrise was threatening the horizon, Selene went upstairs with her daughter in tow and followed by two healers with bowls of blood. Eve squeezed her mother’s hand, sensing a tension in the room that almost frightened her.
She’d ask her mother a hundred times who this man was, why his presence had created such a stir throughout the castle. Why he had created such a stir in her mother, who often seemed as strong and immovable as a stone statue.
Michael wasn’t asleep when they entered his room. For the past several days, they needed to wake him when it was time to feed. Now, he looked like he had been lying awake for all the hours after Selene left.
His eyes immediately landed on Eve. The girl wasn’t quite sure how to react to him. Last she saw him, she'd been watching him sleep. When he woke up, they both seemed mutually curious about each other. Now, he was looking at her like he was itching to run over to her.
The healers politely left the room and shut the door behind them. A thick silence hung between the three of them. Eve looked between Selene and the man on the bed.
“Who is he, mama?” she asked.
Selene swallowed and took her daughter by the hand. She led her over to the bed and sat her down atop the duvet, close to Michael.
“Eve,” Selene said. “Do you remember what I told you about your father?”
Eve nodded.
“You said he was killed,” she said. “By that Lycan Marius.”
“Yes. I saw it in a vision when I drank Marius’s blood.” Selene pursed her lips. “But my vision didn’t show me the whole story. It turns out, he had survived.”
Selene reached over and took Michael’s hand.
“Eve, this is Michael,” she said. “He’s your father.”
The girl’s sapphire eyes grew wide and she looked at him. Michael offered her a gentle smile.
“It’s wonderful to finally meet you, Eve,” he said. “Your mother has told me all about you.”
Eve was silent for a minute, a thousand thoughts racing through her head. Selene ran a hand down her daughter’s back.
“He managed to survive Marius’s capture,” she explained. “He’s been searching for us for months. He was the reason for those inferences in our link. In your visions.”
Selene spoke slowly, allowing the information to arrive in her daughter’s mind. It was so much for a girl to take in at once, but she needed to hear it. She’d been waiting days, years, to hear it.
“The link is formed between those related by blood,” Selene said. “That’s how he was able to access it and find us. You both share the same blood.”
Once again, Eve was silent. Then, she moved closer to him, gazing intently at his face. For so long, her father only existed in the many stories her mother told. In her mind, he almost didn’t seem real. A character in a fable. A spirit in a ghost, which he might as well have been. But now he was alive before her, flesh and blood.
Even leaned close to him.
“You’re a Lycan like me?” she asked.
“I’m not just a Lycan,” he said. “I’m a hybrid. Part Lycan. Just like you.”
Something burned in Eve’s chest. She’d lived among only pureblood vampires for so long. The only Lycans she’d known had tried to hurt her. There was part of her that always yearned for someone like her, someone with her unique condition.
She leaned a little closer and whispered, “Can I see your Lycan teeth?”
A grin crept onto Michael’s face. He sat up a little straighter in bed, then dropped his head down and pursed his lips. Before he even looked at her, Eve saw the dark hairs on his arms thicken. When Michael lifted his head, his human teeth had elongated into sharp canines. Teeth made for biting. Teeth made for tearing flesh.
Just like hers.
Tears suddenly welled in Eve's eyes. She hooked her arms around her father’s neck and pulled him into a hug. Michael immediately took the girl in his arms and held her close to his chest as she wept into his shoulder.
“I’m sorry I did not get to see you for so long,” he said. “I’m here now. And there’s nothing that could take me from you.”
The girl sniffled and sobbed, clinging to her father like he'd vanish if she let him go. Selene curled onto the bed next to them, holding close to her husband and daughter. As the sun began to rise behind the boarded windows, the new family snugged together in a warm bundle of tears.
~
At some point, the three of them had all fallen asleep in the big, overstuffed bed. Selene’s eyes fluttered open, sensing someone was watching her. She turned her head to see Michael, awake, blue eyes nearly glowing in the dark. Eve was asleep between, sighing softly in her precious little sleep.
“How long have you been awake?” Selene whispered.
“Only a few minutes,” Michael said. “You look so peaceful when you’re asleep.”
“And you drool when you do.”
The two of them chuckled. Michael turned his attention back to Eve. He traced his fingertips along her dark hair, brushing strands away to see her moon-like face. Eve was growing quickly, but in her sleep she may as well have been a small girl again.
“She looks just like you,” Michael said. “Your hair…your eyes…everything.”
“I can find plenty of you in her too.”
“Don’t need to.” Michael looked at Selene. “That’s how it should be. You’re the one who’s been looking after her all this time. She should look more like you.”
Eve made a soft noise in her sleep. Selene and Michael paused, waiting for her to wake up. Instead, the girl sighed and turned on her side, nuzzling into her father's chest. Michael hooked an arm around her and pulled her close. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“I know what you mean,” Selene said. “But she’s yours too. I can see plenty of her in you. I’ve been looking a lot.” She scratched her daughter back gently. “She has a bit of your nose, the shape of your eyes.” Selene smirked. “When she shows her canine teeth, they look exactly like yours.”
Michael grinned.
“Hopefully a bit smaller,” he said.
“For now. Wait until she’s physically matured. Then the daughter might surpass her father.”
Michael chuckled. “I hope so.”
Selene and Michael looked at each other. Then, Selene leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his mouth. Michael cupped the back of her head to hold her close. For the first in what was too long, he felt all the things life was supposed to make you feel. Peace, joy, hope for what was to come. The walls of the castle could echo with the love that beat in his heart for his daughter and her mother.
The words escaped him as soft as a breath.
“Marry me.”
Selene opened her eyes and broke the kiss. Surely, she misheard something.
“What?” he said.
Michael held her gaze with his.
“Marry me,” he said. “We’ve been separated for so long. We have a daughter together. I want this to be us for the rest of time.”
He took Selene’s cheek in his hand. Warm flesh against cold.
“I’ve been away for too long, missed too much,” he said. “I get to be Eve’s father. Now, I also want to be your husband.”
Selene felt a long twist in her heart. Suddenly, desires she had not touched since she were a human came stirring up from their centuries-long slumber. The desire for family, the desire for a home. She thought these wants had died along with her mortal life. But Michael’s warm fingertips sprung them back to life.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes…yes, you will marry me.”
She wanted to kiss him again, clutch the man who would be her bridegroom. But then Michael and Selene felt a stirring between them. Eve rolled back onto her back under the duvet.
“What’re you two talking about?” she mumbled. “I’m trying to sleep.”
Selene and Michael looked at each other. A silent agreement passed between them, and Selene petted her daughter's head.
“Nothing, darling,” she said. “We won’t wake you again. Go back to sleep. Tomorrow, we’re going to visit the seamstresses and get you fitted for a new dress.”
Eve made a sleepy groan sound then curled up on her side. The next morning, she would be awoken to a large, celebratory breakfast, and the news that she would be a maid of honor.
~
Weddings were a rare occasion for vampires and Lycans. They lived forever and rarely reproduced, meaning weddings could happen centuries apart. So when they did happen, they were a great cause for celebration. For the following days, every voice in the castle rang out that the Elder vampire Selene had taken a bridegroom.
Lena took over most of the preparations. This was not just a wedding between two immortals. It was a wedding between the descendant of Corvinus and an Elder vampire. It was an occasion that called for utmost festivities. They cleared a ballroom for the ceremony. Heaps of meat and blood pudding were made to fill a banquet. Seamstresses spent hours making dresses for Selene and Eve and a new suit for Michael. Crystals shaped like the moon and stars were suspended from the ceilings and everything else decorated in white roses.
Selene decided to fargo a white dress, so the seamstresses used up all their black silk and lace to make her a gown. Off the shoulder with a heart-shaped necklace, a billowing skirt, and long black velvet gloves. Eve was made a smaller dress from the same material as her mothers, decorated with white ribbons and roses. For Michael, the seamstresses decide to fashion him something reminiscent of what Corvinus would have worn in more medieval times. A white linen shirt, a tunic of black damask fabric, a leather belt and boots. It was a far cry from the simple black suit he wore to his and Samantha’s wedding, but then again, his new bride was a far cry from Samantha.
On the day of the ceremony, Selene stood outside the ballroom doors in her ebony finery. Despite her happiness, there was a twinge of sorrow in her chest. Whenever she had pictured her wedding day, she imagined her family there. Her parents. Her sister. Her nieces. They should have all been there, seated in the audience, dressed in their own Sunday best. It was enough to send a glint of tears into her eyes.
“Mama?”
Eve's voice brought Selene’s attention to her side. Her daughter’s face peered up at her from the other side of the back veil.
“Yes, darling?” Selene asked.
“Are you okay? You seem a bit distracted.”
Selene felt the start of a cry sitting in her throat, but she swallowed it. She did have her family here. Her daughter was at her side. Her husband was waiting on the side of the door. Why would she waste tears on a past family when her new one was right in front of her?
Selene pulled Eve closer and lifted her veil to kiss her daughter’s head.
“Nothing, darling,” she said. “I’m just in awe of what a woman you are becoming.”
A slightly embarrassed grin crossed Eve’s teenage face. At that moment, the sound of a piano rang out from the ballroom and the crowd hushed. Eve went first, carrying a small bouquet of white roses to match her mother’s. Then, the music shifted, and Selene stepped through the double wooden doors onto the aisle.
The crowd rose as Selene floated by. Moonlight flooded the hall through the tall arching windows, bathing the place in pale silver. Selene kept her fingers curled around the bouquet in her hands. The audience of vampires around her whispered at her beauty, but Selene kept her eyes on Michael. He was impossibly handsome in his black mask and crisp white shirt, his blonde hair slicked neatly back.
Michael, meanwhile, stood frozen without a breath in his lungs. Selene was always beautiful, but now she seemed to radiant like a moon beam. He smiled even as he felt a buckle in his legs. What was it about a woman like her that could render a grown man into a blushing schoolboy?
He took her arm when she made it to the front. David has been appointed as the minister for the ceremony. Vampire ceremonies did not resemble human ones. But this matrimony was not for the eyes of a god. It was for them, for the centuries long community and home that awaited them for the nights to come.
“Do you, Selene,” David said. “Take Michael Corvin as your husband, for now and for the rest of your immortal life.”
“I do,” Selene said.
“And do you, Michael Corvin, take Selene as your wife, until there is no more earth for you both to walk on.”
“I do,” Michael said.
A smile beamed on David’s face. He closed the book of vows in front of him.
“Then by the power invested me and this immortal coven,” he said. “I pronounce you both, wife and husband.”
The audience erupted into applause. Eve squealed and jumped up and down as she clapped her hands. The wife and groom turned to each other, and Michael leaned close so he could whisper in Selene’s lips.
“For eternity,” he whispered.
Selene smiled and took her new husband’s cheek in her hand.
“For eternity,” she said.
The two kissed, and the sounds of the castle could be heard for miles.