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I laugh against his chest. “She said you were awesome.”

“She called me a vampire sugar daddy, Blake.”

“Well,” I tease, lacing my fingers through his. “You do buy her a lot of candy.”

I can feel him roll his eyes. “Ha. Ha. So funny.”

A quiet beat, then his voice returns, rougher.

“I’m not going to lose you.”

I stiffen slightly, not from fear—but from how carefully he chooses the words. From something deeper than fear.

“You don’t have to say that,” I whisper.

“No—I do,” Malachi says. His eyes meet mine. “Becoming a vampire doesn’t make you immortal like humans think. It just makes us age extremely slowly. And not everyone can be turned.”

“What—” It’s all I can get out before he barrels over me.

“You’re not the right blood type to survive the transition. I can tell by the taste. You’d—” He swallows. “You just wouldn’t.”

I reach for him. “Oh.” It’s a lot. I don’t even know where to begin processing this new information.

“I’m not telling you now because I didn’t want you to reject taking my mark,” he says softly. “Once I knew you were it for me, I made the decision.”

I wait.

“I’m going to age with you, Blake. There’s a way. I don’t understand it fully, since it’s magic, but I’d already asked Cassandra. She can help me shed a little of my power each year. And I’ll do it. I want time the way you live it. Days that matter. Moments that pass. A real life.” His eyes shine as he runs a hand down my cheek. “I’ve lived centuries without you. I won’t do that again.”

The ache in my throat is too big to swallow. I kiss his palm instead, let my tears slip onto the skin of the man who gave me everything tonight—and gave me himself besides. There are no words I can say. I can only accept another gift this man has given me so selflessly.

Eventually, I drift into sleep beside him, wrapped not only in his arms but in gentler things—hope, bond, home. My body hums with the afterglow of what we just claimed, the mark between us still pulsing like a second heartbeat.

I don’t know how long I’ve slept before weight shifts the edge of the mattress and I feel movement behind me. A small body crawls between us without hesitation, like it’s done this every night of her life.

I blink, still half-asleep as instinct has me turning to curl my body around hers, protecting her from the rest of the world.

Behind me, Malachi shifts, just enough to drape an arm over both of us. Warm and heavy and perfect.

This house is different now. It’s not the rented townhome for a teen mother and the baby the world didn’t want.

It’s our home.

In this silence, shared with bodies pressed close and breaths slow and sure, I realize I’m no longer surviving. I’m living.

I can’t wait for our future.

EPILOGUE

Malachi

Two years later

Paris exhales softly beneath the falling snow.

The light comes gold through the mist, every lamplight blurring like memory as it spills against the cobblestones. It halos Blake’s hair where it escapes her green coat’s high collar. I watch as she tilts her head to Charlie’s chatter, half-laughing, half-listening—but wholly hers. And, impossibly, mine too.

They’re bundled in scarves that don’t match and boots that squeak. Their silhouettes warm every golden blur of streetlight we pass beneath. It’s been two years, and I still don’t quite trust it—that they’re mine. That this happened. That I get to spend my life with a woman forged in adversity, and a girl who once carried her own stitched-up pain like armor, only to grow beyond it with grace sharper than any weapon I ever wore.