Small. A minor thing really. It was just a ring. For his mate.
He smiled as he drifted off to sleep.
“I know this is not just a ring.” Tenzin pinched his chin. “I’m letting you get away with it for now.”
Because you love me. He smiled but kept his eyes closed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Just a ring,” she muttered. “You think you’re so smart.”
“I know I am.” He cuddled her closer. “It’s okay, Tenzin. We’ve got forever to argue about it.”
“No, I am not agreeing to that.” Ben was irritated and trying to not let it grow into hurt. “I can’t believe you’d even suggest it.”
“And I can’t believe we’re still arguing about it when I offered a perfectly reasonable explanation—”
“You agreed—I heard you!—that we had forever.”
“That was a figure of speech.” Tenzin turned to him from across the kitchen. “I was trying to use more colloquial English, and now you’re using it to trap me.” She let loose with a tirade in her language, and Ben felt his temper spike.
“You are teaching me that language, or I’m filing a formal complaint with Zhang.”
Tenzin lifted her chin. “You need to learn Ge’ez.”
“I’ll multitask, dammit.”
Ben was standing in the doorway of Tenzin’s house in Tibet, a truly strange habitation perched on the edge of a mountain and consisting of three rooms, two caves, and the world’s narrowest garden. It was a house that only a wind vampire could love.
Because the only way to get there was by flying.
Ben watched her as she heated a bag of blood in boiling water on the wood-fired stove that heated the house. “I cannot believe after everything we’ve been through— Tenzin, we’re mated! Your amnis is literally inside my body. You think that it’s just going to disappear after a while?”
“I am not going to promise you forever.” She poked the bag and turned to him. “You have no concept of what eternity means. What forever is. We could turn into completely different people, and then promises made with the best intentions become prisons, Benjamin.”
“And I’m not agreeing to a hundred years!” He stood and braced himself in the doorway. “A hundred years is going to pass like the blink of an eye for you, and then what? We’re done? Just… done?”
She took the pot off the stove. “I never said we were done. I’m just saying that we agree to renegotiate—”
“Our relationship is not a sports contract, Tenzin.”
“We agree to honestly evaluate how we feel about each other, and then we can extend… You know.”
“Our contract?” God, she was so infuriating. If he didn’t know it came from a place of love and concern for his age, he’d want to strangle her.
Who was he kidding? He still wanted to strangle her sometimes.
“A thousand years,” he said. That was twice the length of his uncle’s entire immortal life, and it was a substantial chunk of Tenzin’s.
Five hundred was what he was going for, and Tenzin loved to bargain.
She narrowed her eyes and considered it. “Two hundred.”
Gotcha. “That’s ridiculous. I’ll consider eight hundred.”
“Three hundred.”
“Five, and that’s as low as I’m going, Tiny. You try to negotiate our relationship” —he leaned down and got in her face— “any shorter than that, and I’m walking away from this conversation.”
She stuck her hand out to shake. “Five hundred.”
“Fine. Five hundred years together, and then we can sit down and have a conversation and make sure it’s still working for both of us.”
Tenzin nodded. “That seems fair.”
“Good.” He shook his head. “You drive me up the wall sometimes. You really do.”
Her curving fangs flashed in the lamplight when she smiled. “Then I supposed it’s a good thing I taught you how to fly.”
She forgot the blood and grabbed his hand, leaping off the edge of the cliff and dragging him down toward the dense forest of birch trees that blanketed the river valley below her mountain.
Ben flew through the birch grove, darting among the trees before he flew to Tenzin, following the path of the river lit by the light of a full moon. He dipped his fingers down to trail in the water, splashing Tenzin as she soared above him.
She laughed and reached for him, drawing his body to hers as the wind led them over the forest and through the mountains, holding them as she pressed their bodies together and her mouth took his in a possessive kiss. Her lips were honey, and his blood sang when her fangs found his neck.
Ben held her as she drank him in, pressing Tenzin to his heart as his soul rose with the wind. He heard the music in his mind as his arms encircled his mate. The air held them in its gentle embrace.
And they danced.
* * *
THE END
(for now)
Continue reading for a first look at Martyr’s Promise, the next book in the Elemental Covenant series.
* * *
Brigid and Carwyn are two elemental vampires finding the lost and righting wrongs, searching for meaning in an endless stretch of immortality.
And trying not to blow things up, but that might be more aspirational.
First Look: Martyr’s Promise
Summer Mackenzie watched the waves slowly recede from the ash-grey pebbles tucked against the sweep of the foggy California coast. She turned to her right, keeping an eye on the trail where her boyfriend Dani had detoured to look for a campsite.
Low tide wouldn’t be for another six hours, which meant the current leg of their route was impassible until early morning. They’d need at least five hours to finish the stretch of trail that took them closest along the beach, and they needed daylight. Summer had learned long ago that you didn’t go into the forest at night.
She’d grown up in Appalachia, and even though she might have been away from those ancient rolling hills of North Carolina for three years, she knew better than to disrespect the woods.
Summer heard Dani before she saw him. Daniel Uriarte might have been an incredible athlete—with the soccer scholarship to prove it—but he wasn’t a woodsman.
Dani smiled when he saw her. “I found the perfect spot. Come, you should see this.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Definitely.” He held out his hand. “You are going to love this one.”
Summer was tempted to leave her pack near the beach, but if Dani had really found a prime camping spot, she didn’t want to backtrack and there was no way they were staying that close to the water; the waves along California’s Lost Coast had a mind of their own.
Summer hoisted her bag over her shoulder and followed Dani between two pines. “So what’s so special about this spot? There’s a clear camping area up on that last bluff that was all leveled off.”
He turned, his smile still vibrant. “Trust me. I know you think I don’t know anything about camping, but—”