Damien Vladermer's Arc

Chapter 12 of 13

The last secret was dead. Skylar knew everything now. But Damien still had no answer to the thing that woke him each dusk. She wanted a family and a home. He was already dead. No vampire had ever kept a mortal happy. He did not know how to start. So he decided to stop guessing and show her something instead. He took her to a park the next evening. Smooth white paths curved under glowing arches. Green plants climbed the clean walls. Soft light glowed along every edge. Skylar walked ahead, touching the leaves, her blonde hair loose. Damien watched her the way he watched everything about her. "Why here?" she asked. "I wanted to ask you something. And I didn't want walls around us." She stopped and faced him. Her sky blue eyes read his face, the way she read every room. "I can't give you what the academy wanted," he said. "I can't age. I can't give you a normal life. I kept waiting to fix that. I can't." Skylar said nothing. Damien pushed on before his nerve broke. "But I can give you the rest. A real future. Years of them. This park. Your shop. Me. I don't know how to make a mortal happy. No one like me ever has. I only know you. You adapt. You build things from nothing." He stopped. "But you have to want it. Want me. I won't decide it for you." For a long moment she only looked at him. A child laughed somewhere across the smooth stone. The light hummed. "You think a family means what they told me at the academy," she said. "Two parents. A house. Papers that vouch for you." "That's what you wanted." "That's what I was told to want. Because nobody chose me." She stepped closer. "You chose me. In the park. You didn't feed on me while I slept. You asked." Damien held still. "I don't need papers," Skylar said. "I need someone who stays. You stay." "I'm dead, Skylar." "You held me every night this week." Her voice stayed plain and steady. "That's more alive than anyone who raised me." She took his cold hand and pressed it flat against her chest. He felt her heartbeat under his palm. "I want it," she said. "I want you. That's my answer." Something broke loose in him. Not hunger. Relief. For a hundred years he had believed he could offer nothing but a slow ruin. She had just told him he was wrong. "Then we build it," he said. "Together. Our own kind of family." "Our own kind," she agreed. He pulled her against his chest under the glowing arches. She fit there. The future he feared he could never give had a shape now. But a new question rose with the relief. A mortal woman and a vampire could choose each other. Time still ran only one way for her.