Five years after their marriage, their life had settled into something beautiful.
Elian had grown into a confident young vampire, now considering colleges (pretending to be human, of course) and exploring his interests. They'd turned two more dying young people—Sofia, a twenty-year-old car accident victim, and Kai, a nineteen-year-old with terminal illness. Their family had grown to five.
"It's chaos," Aiden told Sophia during one of their monthly visits. His mother had aged, gray streaking her hair, but her eyes were bright with joy as she watched her son with his adoptive vampire children.
"It's beautiful," Sophia corrected. "You've built something remarkable."
"We've built something that shouldn't exist—vampires living like a normal family."
"That's what makes it remarkable."
Aiden's gallery had become a success, showcasing supernatural and human artists side by side. His foundation had helped hundreds of supernatural youth find community and purpose.
Kieran had stepped back from business to focus on family and activism. He'd become a voice for supernatural-human coexistence, carefully, always behind scenes, but influentially.
Together, they'd changed the supernatural world—not through war or revolution, but through example. By living openly (within the supernatural community), by building family, by showing that vampires could be more than lonely predators.
"You've done what I couldn't in sixteen hundred years," Marcus told them during a family dinner. "You've made vampire existence about joy instead of just survival."
"We learned from the best," Kieran said, raising his glass of blood wine in salute.
That night, alone in their bedroom, Aiden curled against Kieran.
"Do you ever regret it? The thousand years of waiting?"
"Not anymore. It was worth it. Every moment of suffering was worth having this—having you, having our family, having a life filled with love."
"I remember all of it now. Every lifetime, every death. And I understand something I couldn't before."
"What's that?"
"We needed those thousand years. We needed to learn, to grow, to become worthy of this forever. If we'd gotten it easily, we wouldn't have appreciated it the same way."
Kieran pulled him impossibly closer. "Wise words from someone who's only twenty-five."
"I'm actually over a thousand years old, just in installments."
They laughed, and it felt like healing. Like all the pain and loss and waiting had finally transformed into something purely, perfectly good.
"I love you," Aiden whispered.
"I love you,"