Spike Thornley's Arc

Chapter 8 of 9

Two years passed after that night in the burrow. Spike and Scarlett married in the pasture, an officiant tying their wrists as the town watched. Now, a year into marriage, they wanted a child. Spike had not told Scarlett his fear. She was over two hundred years old. Vampires did not bear children. But she had asked to try, and he could not refuse her hope. They sat together on the blanket bed inside their leaf-mounded home. A lantern lit the dirt walls. Scarlett held his hand between her cool palms. "I want this," she said softly. "A little one. Ours." Her red eyes searched his face for doubt. "Then we try," Spike said. He kept his voice steady. He would not steal the wish from her. Months went by. Scarlett grew quiet. She stopped drinking from her cup at the tavern some nights. One dawn she came home pale and would not meet his eyes. "I saw the healer at the oasis," she whispered. "She said a body like mine cannot make a child. Not in two hundred years. Not now." Her voice cracked. "I knew it. I made you hope anyway." Spike pulled her close. His spine caught her curls and tugged. She did not free them this time. She only cried against his jacket. "I gave you a home with no children in it," she said. "You wanted a family. I heard you say it, back when you thought I was asleep." Spike held her tighter. The truth sat heavy in him. He had crossed three regions dreaming of a family. Now the woman he loved could not give him one. He felt the loss like a stone in his chest. But he looked at her shaking shoulders and knew his answer. "I chose you," he said. "Not a child. You." Scarlett lifted her wet face. "You mean that." "I built this place to stay with you. That hasn't changed." He wiped her cheek with his thumb. "There are other ways to have a family. Children without homes. Ones who need a burrow like this one." She went still. "You'd take in a child. One that isn't yours by blood." "Blood never made anything mine." He thought of his scattered people, the stone he'd chased, the home he'd never seen. "I made this home from dirt and leaves. We can make a family the same way." Scarlett laughed through her tears, small and surprised, the way she had that first night. She pressed her palm to his chest. "Then we look," she said. "For a little one who needs us." The next morning they left the burrow together. Scarlett wore her cloak against the sun. Spike carried a folded blanket for a child they had not yet found. The door to their home stood open behind them, waiting to be filled.