Page 57 of Wedlock (Vampire Bachelor Games #3)

“It’s a beautiful name, Yin. I couldn’t have chosen better myself.”

“I was worried you might think it impertinent. After all, she’s your daughter, not mine.”

“She’s just as much yours, Yin. When I needed a friend you were there in spades. You saved my life and the lives of these babies. And I’m honoured that you’d choose to give her a Japanese name.”

“It suits her, don’t you think?”

“Suzume,” I smile, “Sparrow. Yes, it suits her.”

“Swift and light,” Yin smiles, “but adaptable and smart. She’ll need to be all these things when she’s older.”

“Hopefully much older,” I shake my head, thinking about my children’s future, knowing they’ll have to live their whole lives under the radar and in the shadows.

They can never reveal what they are to humans, or be discovered by other vampires.

The only ones they can truly be themselves with are each other.

‘Thank god I managed to reunite them.’

I look around uneasily.

Even though we’re lounging by a pool under the stars, my daughter on Yin’s lap, my boy on mine, I still feel like any moment a vampire is going to burst through the clipped, thick hedges, and attack us.

“God, Yin. Everything sounds like it’s all going to Hell in a handbasket, doesn’t it?”

“No. Not for us. Maybe for the vampires, but they deserve it. The main thing is that you’re safe, your children are safe.

No one will ever find us here. You’re still all keyed up from the adrenaline of escaping and the long flight, but this environment will soon seep into your bones, and you’ll learn to mattari suru. ”

“Which is?”

“Relax.”

I nod and open my mouth to confess to her that I’d phoned Eleanor and Falcon while I was on the run, but change my mind. If that’s why I’m feeling insecure here, then perhaps that’s my penance. No need to also disrupt Yin’s zen.

“Where exactly are we?” I ask instead around a mouth full of fresh mango. I’d offer some fruit to Talon, but he’s still way too little to eat solids, although I’m starting to take with a grain of salt everything I know about babies now that I’m raising vampires.

“I own this island,” Yin smiles, stretching and looking down into the face of my wide-eyed daughter.

“It was a gift for my twenty-first birthday. An inheritance from my mother. She was independently wealthy when she married my father and retained many assets up until her untimely death. She left me this island in her will — maybe she knew that one day I’d need a place to hide…

up until three days ago I’d never been here. ”

“Yin,” I laugh. “If someone gave me an island, visiting it would be the first thing I’d do.”

“Father never let me,” she shrugs. “I think he wanted me to divorce myself from anything to do with my mother, just as he had.”

“She must have really loved you to leave you an entire island,” I smile at her. “It’s a wonder your father even let you know about it.”

She shrugs.

“He told me about it and instantly forbade me from coming here, so it was really just another way of keeping me in my place. He most likely eventually forgot about it. I was banking on that when I scoped it out as our possible hideaway.”

“We flew over a stack of small islands on the way here,” I nod, peeling more mango. “How would anyone ever find this little one anyway?”

“Exactly,” she laughs, “Ukrainians and Israelis own the majority of them. It’s a real haven for dealers and bankers.”

“Dealers in what?”

“You name it,” she shakes her head.

I let out a little gasp as Talon reaches up his tiny hand and forms a wide ‘O’ with his mouth as he stares at the mango.

“Did you see that?” I laugh. “It almost looks like he wants solids. But that can’t be right, he’s way too little.”

“Nothing surprises me with these babies,” she shakes her head. “I swear Suzume was levitating slightly above her cot last night, although I know I must have imagined it.”

“Levitating?” I laugh. “A lack of sleep can definitely cause hallucinations, Yin. Believe me, I know.

“Speaking of sleep,” she smiles, “let’s give the babies to the night-time nannies for a bottle and tummy-time while we get some sleep.”

I nod as she rings the bell for the nannies.

Bottles of donated human blood mixed with my expressed milk are meeting the infants’ needs at the moment, and mine.

My breasts are healing from the puncture marks left by tiny fangs, although they’ll likely remain scarred.

More importantly, I can finally sleep during the night again, although I don’t really want to.

“Come on, Angie,” she laughs, rising, “you won’t miss anything, I assure you.”

I sigh and reluctantly rise.

“You don’t know that. They’re growing so fast, and they’re so cute when they hold hands and gurgle to each other in the cot, and…”

“And you and I have all the time in the world, and then some, to appreciate them,” she shakes her head, “but we’re only human.”

“Yes,” I chew my lip as I watch them being taken towards the house. “We’re only human.”

And they’re not.

‘ How long before an island hideaway isn’t enough for my two little vampires? How much time do we really have? And what of Falcon? How much time does he have?’