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“Then what are these?” I questioned.

“These are our children,” Pal said as he picked the other baby up.

“What! Pal, in all these years, you’ve never taken someone else’s child for your own. Why now?” I asked.

Inka sat down on a cushion next to Mera, who was cooing at the baby.

“I killed their father. The monster had just murdered their mother and left the babies alone as he ran away. While hunting, I sensed his thoughts, but as he died, his last images were of the babies. Panicked, I searched and found them easy enough.”

Pal shrugged. Yet there was more there must be. Pal could have left them with someone else.

“The babes were tired, hungry, and afraid. Pal brought the twins home as he wasn’t sure what to do with them,” Mera said as she kissed the child’s brow.

My eyebrows rose in disbelief, and Pal silently shook his head.

Offering the girls wine, Pal left the room, and I followed.

“Come on, what’s the full story, Pal? I know you. Gods, we’ve all been in this situation at least once, and we’ve never brought the children back. We have found them a good home and watched them from afar, but to actually bring them home!”

“Jaq, it’s Mera. How many years have passed since our change? Nine thousand years, and never once has Mera mentioned a child. Yet the longing grew. Mera wants to settle down, make a home base, and I’ll not refuse her.”

“But the children are human, Pal. And Mera desiring a home after all those thousands of years wandering the world? Why now?”

“Honestly, I fear for her. Mera’s last sleep lasted for three hundred years. Possibly a century or two to assimilate knowledge, but that long? Scared, I began to worry Merawouldn’t wake, and when she did, Mera was distant. Something had changed in Mera. She again longed for a child.”

“After all this time?”

“It threw me too. I thought Mera had accepted being childless, but maybe she never will. When I saw these children, I wondered if the twins might fill the hole inside of Mera that was growing bigger every day. Their lives to ours will be a drop in the ocean, but I couldn’t bear Mera’s sadness anymore. Although Mera has never said anything.”

Pal stared out over the hills that surrounded his home, and I felt for him.

Inka and I’d never wanted another child. We had never wished to adopt because we had Mihal. Oh, hang on, Inka had Mihal. I had lost my son the same day I changed him, and Mihal still wouldn’t seek me out.

But Mihal was alive somewhere, and, for all my selfishness, it warmed my heart a little.If Mihal reads this, I know damn well what he would say.

‘Father is tugging at the guilt, playing the audience’. Although I don’t recognise Mihal as a son anymore, he remains a Vam’pir.

The distance between us is too great to return to being father and son. And friendship between us, once hoped for, never materialised. My oh-so-wonderful son maintains contact with Inka, and really, that is all that matters.

“What happens when they grow up and notice that something is different about you?” I asked.

“Not a clue,” Pal said cheerfully as one of them crawled out.

Pal scooped and picked it up, and my empathy kicked in for Pal, too. He clearly already loved the bundle in his arms and who was I to try to ruin Pal’s happiness? Misgivings welled within me, but I kept silent. We returned to the room where the girls were, and I smiled as Inka tickled the baby under the chin.

“Surprise! What gender and names do they have? Does their favourite uncle not deserve to know?” I demanded.

“Jacques!” Mera exclaimed with a grin.

Pal was right.

Mera’s contentment was evident; she seemed happier than in recent memory.

“Who says you’re their favourite?” Pal teased.

“I do,” I replied, sticking out my chest and making everyone laugh.

“This is Rahmon, our son, and Kitiaria, our daughter. They are twins, and we think Rahmon is the older, although looking at Kit’s bossiness, it might be Kit,” Mera said as she laughed.