Twenty
I cracked open the window as a precaution in case we had to sneak back in.
That was how I found it: an orange snapdragon flower on the ground beneath our window.
Several feet behind it was another, purple-pink.
A red one, then canary yellow. The flowers were small and spread enough to be inconspicuous to anyone who wasn’t looking, but from my vantage point, they formed a trail.
I rushed outside. The trail led into the forest. I picked the flowers up as I went, stuffing them into my hoodie pocket. They brought me to a puke-green tent nestled deep in the trees, glowing from a lamp inside. I could see Mason’s silhouette through the canvas.
He came out through the flap as I approached, holding a bouquet of red roses.
“This is so fucking gay,” I said.
Mason thrust the roses at me. “I’m wooing you.”
“Where did you get a tent?” I said dubiously.
“They have a bunch by the reception building.”
“You rented a tent?” I was met with silence. “Did you steal a tent?”
“They were closed! I’m going to put it back!”
“And what’s with this?” I took handfuls of colorful flowers out of my pocket. They spilled over onto the forest floor. “Where did these come from? You can’t just throw stuff around here, you’re supposed to leave no trace—”
“You probably should’ve left them in your pocket, then.”
“And these?” I snatched the bouquet. “Where the hell were you hiding snapdragons and roses, did you plan this—?”
“Stop talking. You’re ruining it.”
I bit my lip, smiling so hard I could barely hold it.
“I can’t take you on a date back home,” said Mason. He took his phone out of his back pocket. “But we’re not home now, so.”
He tapped his screen. “Careless Whisper” started playing.
“You are such a loser,” I said. “I can’t stand you.”
“Oh no.” Mason pressed a hand to his heart. “I am the one who cannot stand. For you, Kieran, bring me to my knees.”
“Do not—”
Mason got down on one knee.
He took the hand not holding the roses and hauled it to his lips, dropping a noisy kiss to each knuckle. “Kieran Callisto, my bright-eyed ray of sunshine, you’ve taken over every piece of me. You make my heart sing, you make my head spin, you make my dick rise.”
I choked.
“If I may, I ask that you make an oath with me here tonight. I want to form a bond with you. Although I don’t deserve it, look down on me—your humble servant, your gracious lover—and see that all I want to do is to be a mat at your feet—”
Finally bubbling over with laughter, I knelt and grabbed his face, holding firmly enough to pucker his lips. “Mason,” I said gravely. “I’ll be your boyfriend. Stop this immediately.”
“We must seal the oath with a kiss,” Mason said, muffled by his squished cheeks. I squeezed a little more and planted a kiss on his fish lips. It dissolved quickly into squealy laughs that, if anyone asked, came entirely from Mason.
Not that there was anybody around to ask. We were really alone.
Mason wound his arms around me and whirled on his knees.
In a whiplash second, I found myself flat on my back just inside the tent, blinking dazedly at the domed ceiling.
Mason came through the flap, kneeling above me, and I scrambled backward to give him room to crawl inside.
Snapdragons tumbled out of my pocket onto the sleeping bags.
Sleeping bag. Mason had zipped two together.
I threw myself at him as soon as he had the tent flap secured.
Mason gladly tugged me into his lap, hands splayed over my hips.
He was still smiling when our lips met; I licked away the traces of it.
The tent was a pocket dimension; it could have been hours.
It could have been all night and all of tomorrow.
The buses could leave any minute—I’d welcome it if it meant we could stay here like this, uninterrupted.
I was at his jaw, kissing and nosing at the soft, warm spot where it met his ear. There was something so sweet about his twitchy breathing. It belonged in a song. Mason unzipped his jacket to his collar, offering up more room, but I kissed back toward his mouth instead.
“You can kiss my neck, you know,” he said. I stilled. He had never called me out on it before. “I want you to. I’m not afraid of you.”
“Someone has to be,” I muttered. “Are you forgetting the time I nearly bit you? I did sort of bite you.”
Mason’s hand rubbed up and down my side. “You didn’t. But I wouldn’t mind if you did.”
I grabbed his wrist, stopping the movement of his hand. “Don’t joke about that.”
“I’m not joking,” Mason said. His face hid nothing. His other hand cradled my jaw, thumb tracing beneath my bottom lip. “Pale,” he noted. “Why do you keep letting yourself get hungry?”
“I didn’t mean to. I was getting a drink on my way out, but my brother held me up with—it doesn’t matter. I feel fine, and we’re only here for a couple of days. It isn’t as bad as Halloween.”
“What if it gets that bad?”
“You don’t need to worry.”
Mason’s hand gripped my side. “Of course I’m going to worry. I’d offer you a deer again, but I don’t want to get yelled at about LNT.”
That got me to smile.
“What’s it like?” Mason asked. “Getting bitten.”
I squirmed uneasily in his lap. “I wouldn’t know from experience. I’ve heard it’s . . . pleasurable? Euphoric, I guess.”
“I want to try it. Just once.”
“Yeah, so that’s not happening. No way in hell.”
Mason looked dead serious. “You’re thirsty. And I want to know every part of you. Why can’t it be that simple?”
“You know why,” I said. “I could hurt you, or worse. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.”
“Then I’ll stop you,” he decided.
“You won’t want to.”
Mason smiled. “I can take care of myself. But I know you’ll take care of me. You’ll control yourself.”
“That’s the thing!” Something tight inside of me burst open.
“Sometimes monsters lose control. That’s what makes us monsters.
” I remembered the sounds the lone wolf had made beneath the full moon.
I’d never heard anything else like it, not in the scariest movies.
“I don’t get how you’re so . . . okay with this!
With me. The blood-drinking and everything else.
Touching me feels like touching a corpse.
I’m crabby all day because I’m supposed to be sleeping.
I burn in the sun. Everything about me is constantly screaming that I’m not human. How does that not bother you?”
Mason protested, “Being supernatural doesn’t make you inhuman.”
“No, being supernatural doesn’t make you inhuman.
You eat human food. You pump your own blood.
You need to breathe. You feel cold. I feel the cold, and that’s it.
That ‘the’ in the middle, that’s the difference between you and me.
I’m wearing this sweater for show, Mason; don’t you see how awful that is?
” To make my point, I tugged off my hoodie.
My undershirt was thin and short-sleeved, but I didn’t shiver.
I felt the cold outside of myself, hovering over my skin.
“I live on blood from cows. Drinking it reminds me that I’m just pretending to be human. My whole body feels like a lie. I don’t like to do it.” I had never confessed that out loud before, and it left me trembling. “I was born dead. You should be . . .”
The whole forest seemed ghostly quiet.
“Can I say what I think?” Mason asked. His hands held my waist, gentle but bracing like he expected me to bolt. I was considering it.
“The sun hurts everyone,” he said. “Getting burned by it and choosing to stand beneath it anyway, that’s the most human thing ever. They—we spend our lives looking for the sunniest places to fall asleep, even though it can give us rashes and burns and wrinkles and cancer.”
I shook my head frantically, torn between pulling him close and baring my teeth like the creature I was, scaring him off before he realized for himself that he was sick of kissing a dead body.
“I can play at a normal life,” I said, “but it’s all just an act, and not even a convincing one. I stand out at school no matter how hard I try to fend off attention. It’s like they all already know.”
“Kieran,” Mason said with disbelief. “You stand out because you’re incredible, not because you’re a vampire.
” He nudged my chin with his nose, gently urging me to look at him.
“We’re different. There’s no changing that.
” I opened my mouth to argue that we weren’t the same kind of different—Mason was human plus, superhuman, and I was subhuman.
He continued before I could. “Will it help if I tell you I’m not as normal as you think? I’m not even close.”
Mason did look afraid, now, but not of me. The argument died on my tongue.
“What do you mean?”
“Your body might be different,” he said. “But the way you . . . feel is completely normal, and I can’t even say that much.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Have you ever heard—” Mason began, stopped, and started again.
“The thing about an alpha is there’s never really just one of them.
They need someone to lead with. The more compatible the partner, the stronger the alpha.
That part isn’t so different from humans, I guess, but .
. .” He struggled to hold eye contact and eventually gave up, gazing down at our shared lap.
“Because of that, most werewolves who become alphas are the ones that have mates.”
He didn’t go on. “Mates?” I asked.
“A perfect partner. A soul match.”
“I still don’t . . .”
“You could think of it kind of like a selection thing. But not really? Some of us are born with our soul matched to another. Wolves who have a mate and find that mate are more likely to become successful alphas. As for the children of the alpha . . . you can imagine it like passing down a gene, though it’s more of a blessing. Or, um, a curse.”
Fear iced me over. “Mason, are you saying you have a mate?” It struck me a second later, with a thawing feeling. “Oh. It’s me?”
He leaned his forehead against my chest. “Are you freaking out?”
“. . . A little.”
A lot.