"If that's how you want to put it," I say calmly even though I want to hit him. "But I never reneged on our arrangement. You did. You got all pissy and changed the terms. You treated me like I meant nothing to you, so yes, that is how I have been feeling these last months."
"I'm sorry, Liv."
"Stop with the Liv!" I yell at him.
He glares at me, "You mean everything to me, you always have. I am sorry I made you feel otherwise. But it doesn't change anything. I want more from you than you can give."
"Well, I fucking know how that feels," I say, still yelling at him.
"Calm yourself, Aefre," he snaps, but I break out into a huge smile.
He huffs at me and allows me a small smile in return. "I want all of you, but I was prepared to share you with your boys. In fact, at Sibiu, I thought we were doing quite well considering it is unheard of for Vampires to nest. But then everything changed. With one rash decision, that it took you all of a second to make, and it all came crashing down, and that is because of you, Aefre. You. Not me."
Aefre. Okay, I can handle anything he says as long as he continues to call me that.
"It wasn't rash. It was…crap. I wish I could explain it to you! The decision was made for me," I finish lamely.
"Made by whom?"
"Who do you think?"
"Tiamat," he says, resigned.
"Yes."
"Your mother is an infuriating creature!" he bellows at me in a rare show of temper. "She has caused me nothing but problems since day one."
"I know. Same here."
He starts at my admission, but then he laughs. "Oh, Aefre. I have missed our banter. I wanted so much to forgive you for what you did but I just couldn't. I think I get it now," he says quietly.
"Do you? Really?" I ask, unconvinced.
"I think so. It has been difficult for me to realize what you are now. Who you are now. Our whole dynamic has changed. I'm thrown with it; I don't know how to handle being a subordinate. Your subordinate," he says with a sigh.
"Oh, my love, that you aren't. You are my sire. The man who made me. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you."
"And your mother," he grouses. "Never thought I would have to deal with in-laws," he adds sullenly.
I chuckle at him. "At least you got to meet yours."
Frowning at me, he asks, "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Err, duh. I have asked you about your family a million times and you always change the subject. You won't even talk about them, yet you get to meet mine? Seems unfair, my dear," I say, using a nice patronizing endearment and it feels good. Also, at this point, I note we have used in-laws to describe our parents and it warms me. I wonder if he has noticed.
"Yes, I have noticed, my sweet," he says and heart thumps at his ability to read my mind as well as his own endearment. "It is so far in my past; I just don't like to think about it."
"But how do you feel about…what happened?" I ask the question I have been dying to ask for centuries. "Don't you ever wonder?"
"Wonder what? What happened to them after I was made? How they died? Where they were buried?"
"Yes! All of that.”
“Not really, do you wonder about yours?” he asks hesitantly. “I mean your human parents.”
“Once, briefly, the first time we went back to England, but I wasn’t fond of them. I was glad to be free of them and to be with you.”
"I know what happened to them if you want to know," he says slyly, nicely side-stepped as usual.