The next morning, Aiden woke to find Kieran sitting by the window, staring at the sunrise he couldn't touch.
"Have you been up all night?"
"Vampires don't need much sleep. And I've been thinking."
Aiden sat up, wincing slightly at the residual soreness in his shoulder. "About turning me?"
"About everything. Our relationship, the dangers, the future." Kieran turned to face him. "Aiden, there are things about our past lives that I haven't told you. Things I need you to know before you make any irreversible decisions."
"Like what?"
So Kieran told him. Everything. Not the edited, sanitized version he'd been sharing, but the brutal truth.
He told him about the monastery in 1024. About watching his first love—Adrian's first incarnation—die of illness, helpless to save him. About the curse that had followed—the nightly pain, the endless waiting, the lifetimes of loss.
He told him about each subsequent incarnation. The soldier who died in battle. The merchant murdered by bandits. The noble executed for treason. The artist who drowned. Life after life, death after death.
He told him about the last incarnation—Adrian Chen. About turning him, bonding with him, having three perfect weeks of immortal love. About the attack, the dark weapon, Adrian dying in his arms.
"And then I waited," Kieran said, his voice hollow. "Nine hundred and twenty years. I stopped caring about anything except finding you again. I became..." He gestured to himself. "This. A broken creature barely holding onto sanity."
Aiden listened to all of it, his expression shifting from shock to horror to profound sadness.
"You've been carrying this alone," Aiden finally said. "For almost a millennium."
"I had no choice."
"And now you're terrified that if you turn me, I'll die anyway. That the universe will find a way to take me from you even if I'm immortal."
"Yes."
"Kieran, look at me." Aiden crossed to him, knelt in front of him. "I can't promise I won't die. Even vampires can be killed—you've told me that. But I can promise that if you don't turn me, I definitely will die. In sixty years, maybe eighty if I'm lucky. And you'll be alone again, waiting for my next incarnation."
"I know."
"So which is scarier? The possibility that I might die as a vampire? Or the certainty that I will die as a human?"
Kieran pulled him close, burying his face in Aiden's hair. "Both terrify me equally."
"Then choose the option that gives us the most time together. Choose hope over fear."
"What if I turn you and you regret it? What if you miss being human? What if—"
"What if we stop living in fear of 'what ifs' and start living in the reality of 'what is'?" Aiden pulled back to look at him. "What is: I love you. What is: I want forever with you. What is: I'm choosing this, choosing you, with full knowledge of what it means."
"You'd give up sunlight? Aging? Your family?"
"Sunlight is overrated. Aging means eventually leaving you. And my family—I'll miss them, but I'll find a way to maintain a relationship, even if it becomes complicated." Aiden smiled. "Besides, Marcus is a vampire and he seems pretty happy. If he can make immortality work, so can I."
"Marcus is different. He chose this life for power, for knowledge. You'd be choosing it for love."
"Is that better or worse?"
"I don't know. I genuinely don't know."
They spent the day talking through every implication. What turning would mean practically—the bloodlust, the sensitivity to sunlight, the need to fake his death to his family eventually. How they'd manage it—where, when, who would be present.
"Marcus should be there," Kieran said. "He's experienced with turnings, and he can help if something goes wrong."
"Can things go wrong?"
"Sometimes. The turning process is delicate. If I don't drain you enough, you won't die properly and the transformation fails. If I give you too much blood too fast, your body can reject it. There's a narrow window where everything has to be perfectly balanced."
"Have you turned people before? Besides me in my last life?"
"Three times, across sixteen hundred years. Once in the 1200s—a young woman who begged me to save her from an arranged marriage. Once in the 1500s—a scholar who wanted immortality to continue his research. And once with you."
"What happened to the woman and the scholar?"
"The woman thrived for two centuries, then walked into sunlight one morning. She'd grown tired of existence. The scholar is still alive, living in Tokyo. We exchange letters occasionally."
"So it's possible to be happy as a vampire."
"It's possible. It's also possible to be miserable. Immortality amplifies everything—joy and sorrow both become more intense over time."
Aiden considered this. "I think I can handle it. As long as I have you."
"That's what Adrian said. In your last life."
"And he was right, wasn't he? You said those three weeks were perfect."
"They were. Until they weren't."
"Then let's have three weeks. Three years. Three centuries. However long we get, let's have it together."
Kieran looked at him for a long moment, searching his face for doubt, for hesitation. Finding none.
"Okay," he finally whispered. "Okay. I'll turn you. But not today. Give me a week to prepare properly, to make sure everything is perfect. Can you give me that?"
"One week. Then we do this."
They sealed it with a kiss that tasted like promises and hope and the slightest hint of fear.
Because both of them knew: this decision would change everything.
For better or worse, they'd find out together.