“Am I like him?”
“No. You’re more like me. Are you ready to go?”
“Yeah.”
Rising, Mara linked her arm with his.
Moments later, they were standing in the small cemetery located behind Mara’s house in the mountains of Northern California.
It was an old cemetery, surrounded by a white wrought-iron fence with an arched gate. A wooden sign, carved with the words Rest Ye in Peace, hung from the top of the gate. A black marble headstone marked Kyle Bowden’s final resting place. The words Taken From Us Too Soon But Never Forgotten were engraved beneath his name along with the dates of his birth and passing.
Derek stood beside his father’s marker, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. Overhead, wispy clouds covered the moon, while a lazy breeze whispered through the leaves of the trees. In the distance, a deer grazed on a patch of moon-silvered grass.
He glanced at his mother. Standing beside him, clad in a long white hooded cloak, she looked like a fallen angel. Dropping to one knee, she placed a dozen long-stemmed pink roses on the grave.
Not red, Derek noted bitterly. Everyone knew red roses meant love.
“Did you ever love him?” he asked.
“I thought I did, but the truth is, there was never anyone for me but Logan, only I was too stubborn to admit it. Your father would still be alive if I hadn’t been such a fool. But I’ll always love Kyle because he gave me you, someone who means more to me than anything else in this world.”
“I wish I could have known him.” How could he ever know who he truly was without knowing the man who had sired him? He had known early on that Logan wasn’t his real father. As a child, it hadn’t seemed important. Why was it bothering him so much now?
“When I was kidnapped, were you sorry you had to give up your humanity to find me?”
“No. I had always planned to ask Logan to turn me when you were grown.”
“Why?”
“I was mortal only twenty years.” She gazed into the distance, and he had the feeling she was looking into the past. “I was a vampire for centuries.”
“So, you don’t miss anything about being human?”
“Only the taste of chocolate.”
Derek shook his head. What was it about women and chocolate?
“Anything else you’d like to know?” Mara asked.
“No. Let’s go home.”
Logan was waiting for them when they returned home. “Everything okay?” he asked, glancing from mother to son.
“Fine,” Derek said. “I need to hunt. How about coming along?”
Logan looked at Mara. With a careless wave of her hand, she said, “Take your time. I’m going up to bed.”
Grunting softly, Logan followed Derek outside. Not trusting his son to drive in his current state of mind, he said, “Let’s take my car.”
Moments later, they were headed down the hill. “Are we really going hunting?” Logan asked, “or is this just an excuse to get out of the house?”
“Both. Tell me about my mother.”
“She’s a remarkable woman.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“She’s spoiled. Stubborn. Powerful. But you know all that, too. What’s bothering you?”
Derek blew out a sigh that seemed to come from the very depths of his soul. “I’m feeling lost and I don’t know why. Something’s happening to me. . . .”
“You mean your craving for steak? Your mother told me.”
“I know it worries her.”
“Of course it does.” Logan pulled onto a deserted side street and shut off the engine. “She loves you.”
“Yeah. Why did she leave you all those years ago?”
“Because she loved me and it scared her. None of the men in her life ever treated her worth a damn. She didn’t trust any of us.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Not even me.”
“That must have hurt.”
“You have no idea. I’ve loved her my whole life. It wasn’t easy letting her go, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to beg her to stay.”
Taking a deep breath, Derek asked the question that troubled him most. “Do you think I could be reverting?”
“No. I’ll tell you what I told your mother. I think your human half is coming through. Who knows, you might be able to walk in the sun and eat human food one of these days. The best of both worlds, if you ask me.”
“Would my mother have stayed human if it wasn’t for me?”
“No. She talked about being turned when she was pregnant. The doctor told her that he didn’t think it was possible and that trying to be turned a second time might kill her. Even if you’d never been in danger, sooner or later, she would have found someone to bring her over. If not me, then someone else. She was that determined.”