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Aerin tiptoed to the study so he wouldn’t hear her wandering the house. At her father’s desk, she copied the address and wrote a letter to his sister and his brother, inviting them to the cove, careful to wipe the tears from her face before they smudged the ink. He doesn’t belong here with me. I rescued him, and now it’s time to let him go. He lost his crew; he doesn’t deserve to lose his family, his clan. He’s a prince; he has a whole other life waiting for him.

After sealing the letter, she couldn’t bring herself to go back to bed; lying beside him and maintaining her resolve to send it to his family would be impossible.

After her morning swim, Aerin hesitated before dropping the cream envelope into the mailbox at the end of the pier, but this wasn’t about her. He needed answers, his family. The pain of losing her own family haunted her every moment, and she wasn’t going to take away his chance to get to know them. Their short time together was nothing compared to the hundreds of years spent with them. He needed to meet them if he was going to make a real decision that would affect the rest of their lives. It would take some time for the letter to reach his family, and for them to make their way to Indigo Cove, two weeks at most, if they came straight away. In the meantime, she would enjoy whatever time they had left together.

Chapter Twenty

Gideon

“I’ve finally finished stripping.” Aerin sighed, finding him in the kitchen, with the fishing nets and strands of dried seaweed over her shoulder.

“What I like to hear,” Gideon interrupted, filling a bucket with warm water in the kitchen sink to wipe away the bloody footprints and bioluminescent handprints from the algae on the walls and the bannisters. He didn’t want to overstep, but he ordered new steel from the hardware store to reinforce the wooden beams and walls, along with new bulbs for the chandelier, before they drove him insane.

“Very funny. I meant I’ve stripped down the fishing nets from the throne room, and the seaweeds from the porch. It’s nice to have my couch back in its rightful place. I hated having to watch TV in the study; I felt like I was cheating on my books. How is it that getting the house back to normal is taking longer than decorating?” Having the house restored to its former glory made completing the mundane tasks worth the labour. Aerin had been a little more irritable since the haunted house opened, but he suspected she felt better not having to welcome strangers into her house every night; besides, her mood was easily fixed once he got her alone. He left out that he’d actually enjoyed the comings and goings of the people from town. As the weeks passed, he was starting to feel at home in Indigo Cove, and that it wasn’t just somewhere he’d washed up.

“It would’ve taken us a lot less time if we didn’t keep getting distracted,” he said, lifting the seaweed gathered around her neck. They were meant to be fixing up the house, not tearing it down. Pressing his lips to hers before she went back to work.

“You’re the one doing the distracting,” she argued, only to shuffle back to him and steal a kiss while he wrung out his cleaning cloths; with his hands full, he couldn’t grab her.

“You’re not playing fair,” he grumbled as she ran out the door.

“Not in my nature.” She chuckled from the hallway. He sighed, not expecting her to have heard him.

“I don’t know how you put up with her,” he said to Royce, happily chewing on the seaweed she’d brought in by the back door.

On the porch, Gideon finished cleaning up the fake bloody footsteps when he smelled a familiar scent in the air. A vampire. He glanced around the house, but didn’t see anyone. Probably a lingering scent from one of the guests, he thought, rinsing out the cloth into the bucket and scrubbing at the next set of footprints.

“Gideon?” The sound of his brother’s voice caused him to drop the blood-soaked cloth. His head snapped up towards the end of the porch steps. The two men with the same fair hair and broad shoulders stared at each other, frozen in place.

“Josiah?” Gideon stammered, rising from his knees. The young man from his memory had turned into a man. Gideon didn’t get a chance to digest what was happening and how his brother was standing in front of him until he was enveloped in a hug.

“I can’t believe you’re alive. We never thought we were going to see you again.” Josiah grabbed his shoulders, staring at him like he was about to disappear. His younger brother crushed him.

“Josiah, you’re crushing me,” Gideon huffed, afraid his shoulders would dislocate.

“Sorry, forgive me. I thought it was too good to be true. All these years, I believed you were alive; I felt it in my bones, but I couldn’t prove it.” His younger brother let him go.

“You’ve grown into a man,” Gideon said, trying not to get too emotional, but he couldn’t stop the tears from stinging his eyes. “I can’t believe how much you’ve changed. When I left, you didn’t even need to shave yet.” He’d only been in his first century when he left home.

“That tends to happen when two centuries pass.” He chuckled, finally letting him go. “Come walk with me before I tackle you again.”

“How did you know where I was?” he asked, wondering if luck was finally on his side.

“We received a letter. We didn’t believe it at first; we thought it was another clan trying to sow discord. Then our aunt was at an auction and saw your signet ring in the online listing. The town in the listing matched the one in the letter we received, and I had to come and see for myself. I asked about a vampire in town, hoping to find you, and some twins in a coffee shop said I’d find you at the house on the hill,” he told him. Shelby and Sandy had sent him; Aerin’s sidekicks were far too invested in their love story for his liking.

“After searching for you all these years, decades, I’d hoped you would be the one to find us. Why didn’t you come home?” Josiah asked sadly. “Did you not wish to return to us?”

Gideon hated the sorrow in his brother’s eyes.

“It’s not that I didn’t wish to come back to you, to our family, but when I was rescued from the sea, I had no memory of you or where I came from,” Gideon started to explain when they were interrupted.

“Gideon, can you help me take down the Gargoyles?” Aerin asked, coming around the side of the house, carrying an anchor on one shoulder with ease. “I’m afraid that with the storm warning tonight, they are going to wreck what’s left of the roof.” She stilled, glancing between the two men. “I think breathing in the cleaning fumes is making me see double?” Aerin set the anchor down on the grass.

“Forgive me for arriving so abruptly,” Josiah said, bowing politely. Gideon knew Aerin would get a kick out of the gesture. “I was far too eager to see my brother, and I should have sent notice of my arrival.”

“With manners like those, I’m guessing this is Josiah,” Aerin said, walking toward them, and he noticed her smile falter for a split second. Something was troubling her; was she worried about another vampire in town?

“This is Aerin, my girlfriend,” Gideon introduced her, wrapping his arm around her waist. Aerin stared up at him. This was his first time calling her such, and he hid his relief when she didn’t correct him.