They were now nearing the end of her final month on the island. It had been over a month since she had attempted to escape with Arthur, and she was due to leave in a week. Aaron claimed that he had used all of his resources to find Arthur, but he had no clue where he was. His assumption had been that the aliens would eventually drop Arthur off in some deserted area, as he had heard tends to happen in abduction cases, and Arthur would then head back to his parents' home. But so far as he knew, Arthur had not returned to his parents or to Temecula. Perhaps, he reasoned, Arthur had been dropped off, was unhappy with his parents, and decided to be a "run away" adult. Elizabeth, who knew Arthur had been unhappy with his parents, kept flashing back to Arthur's explanation for why there probably hadn't been any police investigations or search parties once he disappeared with Aaron: everyone would just assume that he had wanted to escape his parents. She hoped fervently that Arthur had been left in some deserted field and he willingly dropped off the map from there. He's strong now, she assured herself. He can take care of himself just fine. This was all she could do. She would hope Arthur was fine and try to move on with life as usual.
She was basically nocturnal now. The only person she interacted with was Aaron, so it seemed pointless, as well as boring, to try to be awake during the day. Typically, Aaron liked to go back to his cave before the sun got too high in the sky, so he would often leave the cabin around sunrise. Then she would stay awake for a few hours, bathe, snack on something, listen to some music, and then fall asleep. He ran her so ragged, she would sleep a full nine hours sometimes. And then she prepared a small dinner for them, which they would eat when he arrived, as scheduled, at 8 pm sharp. They would talk, leisurely eat, and then go for a hunt (in human form) and share their prey. Then they would take off their clothes and run into the ocean to hunt some more. Aaron, who didn't typically hunt very much because he subsisted mostly on the blood he was able to suck as a bat, thoroughly enjoyed the increase in his activity levels. Hunting had always been a chore for him, but hunting as part of a pair made it feel more like fun. And then they would spend the rest of the night in the bedroom. As promised, she never refused him. She did whatever he wanted without question.
Aaron knew that the hard part was over for him. He had broken her. Finally. It had taken him a whole month, as well as turning her into a half vampire, to accomplish it, but he had successfully tamed this woman. During the Paleolithic, his parents had been an anomaly. No woman in his tribe wanted to mate with his dad, because he was a Neanderthal. And none of the men wanted to mate with his mother, because she mated with a Neanderthal. He wondered if he had been part of the first nuclear family in human history. During the Stone Age, and even beyond in some cases, subduing the woman and conquering her would have signaled the end of the chase. He might have dragged another woman back to his tent, mated with her, produced or not produced some more children, and then grabbed another. Mating with many partners and producing children through several of them was the norm. But he found himself wanting to remain with Elizabeth. He was starting to dread the idea of giving her up. He dreaded it so much that he felt like punching something in anger. Never before had he ever been beholden by any kind of agreement with a woman to release her at a specified time. It had always been simple. He wanted a woman, he took the woman, and then he eventually tired of her. Only this woman did not tire him (or at least she didn't tire his interest). Every day, he found her to be more and more stimulating. Her life story, the reason she wanted to go camping, her desire to be "all grown up," and her incredible hunting skills fed his interests long after he had experienced all the novelty that her body had to offer him. Their encounters were only enhanced by the fact that she was now a willing participant in the relationship. There was no awkwardness to interfere with their interactions. She didn't flinch or hesitate when taking her clothes off in front of him, because she had promised to be obedient to him and there were no secrets between him and her body. He wished he could find a way to break his promise to her and keep her with him for eternity.
Elizabeth, on her end, was intentionally making herself more desirable to him than she had ever made herself for any man. She purposely changed clothes and freshened up when she knew he was about to arrive. She wore a dress, put on a pushup bra, brushed her teeth, and handled whatever other grooming she thought she needed. When he arrived, she did all that he asked with enthusiasm. She hoped this would be enough to convince him that she should stay.
Because Arthur was gone, she had taken to preparing their nightly meals. Besides receiving weekly groceries from Marnie and Lyle, Arthur had always liked to gather up edible plants to put in the salads. Wanting to add something special to her meals with Aaron, she had decided to continue this tradition. There was something about going out, gathering food, and bringing it back to prepare for them that she thought conveyed her unspoken love. She hoped he might get the hint. She imagined that he was charmed by her gathering because of his early life in a hunter-gatherer society. He had never mentioned it, but she noticed he savored the things she had handpicked. He sucked on them, picked them up with his hands, and spent more time chewing.