1. Mourning the Morning After

Pre-dawn, the light in his childhood bedroom was dim, casting a blue tinge upon everything that made his surroundings appear both surreal and dreamlike. Lights off, his eyes adjusted to the shadows and took from him some of the raw, chaotic pain that coursed through his mind and heart.

The mirror hanging on the wall inside the bathroom was taller and wider than Angel, as it had been for his entire life, and it was a bit odd to be staring into it again as a grown man. He hadn't added much height since he stood before it last, though he had more muscles and the sleekness of youth had given way to solid maturity. Wearing nothing but silk pajama pants, chest and feet bare, Angel was no longer that boy. Everything was different, himself included.

Except the grief on his face. That was the same.

Though, the rage was new.

Angel squared his shoulders and eyed his reflection in the mirror, wondering if he could ditch the upcoming family meeting. He looked far too angry. Too tense.

And he was. Tense and angry. Enraged, really. He was finding it hard to think, torn between a rage so intense it left him breathless, and a grief so deep he struggled not to fracture, to fall to his knees screaming.

Lines etched around his mouth, shadows under his eyes. Even the enhanced resiliency gifted by the vampiric mate bond was struggling to withstand a sleepless night and devastating emotional turmoil.

His grandfather's great-great-grandfather, Ignacio Salvatore, a dual affinity storm mage and a hero of the Blood Wars, was alive.

Ignacio Salvatore was alive.

Mated to a vampire.

Alive, and in the very mansion that Serano Salvatore, the founder of the Boston Salvatore Clan, built over two centuries earlier. A family estate that Angel inherited when his entire family except his little brother was brutally murdered when Angel was barely twenty.

The family histories painted Ignacio as a tall, broad-shouldered man with a combative nature and a rare dual affinity, making him a sorcerer of renown, even in a turbulent time of grand magic and epic duels, with infamous battle-mages and nefarious combatants on both sides of the conflict. The Blood Wars raged for centuries, carving up the city of Boston and the surrounding areas between the Salvatore and Macavoy clans. The Charles River acted as a natural border from which each clan drew territorial boundaries.

Ignacio was dubbed the Great Stormlord, a mage of inestimable power who led the Salvatore family for over thirty years until his purported death in his early fifties alongside his mother in a horrible clash with the now-extinct Melbournes, a practitioner clan allied with the Macavoys. The deaths of Ignacio and Astoria were a huge loss for the family at the time, even with Astoria and Ignacio destroying the Melbournes before they died. If the Macavoys hadn't also been left reeling in defeat from the same clash that killed the Melbournes, the Salvatore clan would have been a vulnerable target and the family losses could have been even more devastating.

All that Angel grew up learning through family legends was rooted in truth; Ignacio radiated power and strength, a confidence that electrified the air around him, the embodiment of a storm. He was tall, handsome too, in a rugged way that was effortless and purely incidental, as Angel doubted Ignacio gave a single fuck about appearances beyond the basics deemed necessary by polite society. Ignacio's return to Boston was an impossible chance to interact with the past, and a painful reminder of everything that Angel and Isaac lost over a decade earlier.

Every blink in the mirror left him haunted by flashes of the worst moment of his life.

A long-ago dawn broke over the estate grounds, corpses burning, ash sticking to sweat-damp skin and exposed viscera, blood dripping in a discordant shower of loss and horror. Silence was loud in his ears, screams faded into painful echoes and nothing, absolutely nothing, remained untouched by death. The images he rarely allowed himself to recall surged up from that barricaded place in his heart and soul, invading his waking mind and he closed his eyes, tears scalding his cheeks as they fell defiantly from his lashes.

Wiping the tears away, Angel sucked in a harsh breath, recognizing the signs of shock, and he shoved away from the counter in the bathroom and stumbled blindly into his childhood bedroom, stripped of everything but a bed and a new mattress covered in painfully familiar linens from his childhood.

Arms caught him, holding him safely against a hard chest and Angel clung to his mate, arms around Simeon's neck, shuddering. Simeon held him through an indeterminable stretch of comfort and grief. Gone was the confident, jaded necromancer who destroyed any and all threats to his family and loved ones, as he was reduced once more to the traumatized, emotionally devastated twenty-year-old man suddenly orphaned and the sole guardian of his thirteen-year-old baby brother.

Angel didn't cry in the days after the Salvatore Massacre. He was barely functional, and the only thing keeping him on his feet was Isaac. Days of dealing with the police, the coroners, government officials, family friends, remaining employees, acquaintances, and an unending stream of morbidly curious practitioners wondering how he killed so many vampires. The unspoken criticism and doubts were cloaked in shallow condolences, echoing his own guilt and shame—why didn't you stop them before your whole family died?

Breathing through his mouth he struggled to rein in his riotous emotions and traitorous tears.

"Let it out, mo ghra," Simeon gently ordered, and that gentleness broke the internal dam holding back his grief.

As he had not cried then—now, a decade and change older, in the loving arms of the immortal being bound to him for eternity, safe at last and ever more, a family of his own grown from the ashes—he cried now.

Brutal, harsh, a wrecking ball of pain.

Angel, his beloved mate, slept the remaining hours before dawn in Simeon's arms on his childhood bed. A decent size, but not really comfortable for two adult-sized people, despite Angel lying more on Simeon than the bed itself. He shifted Angel so his mate lay atop him completely, no longer in danger of falling off the edge of the bed. Angel slept through it, exhausted.

For most of his long life, Simeon was a stranger to family drama, his own immediate mortal family long dead before his transition to the sentient undead. Simeon further avoided family dynamics when he killed his vampiric sire the same night he rose from his mortal grave. Simeon had no vampire siblings, at least that he knew of, and he doubted there were any, considering that none had come forward in the centuries since his Turning. Simeon was lucky to have survived those first few hours after he rose from his mortal grave—Constantine Batiste was thankfully there to catch him before the blood began to dry after he killed his sire in revenge. Any other newborn vampire would have likely gone feral or died, either by sunlight or killed by a mob of humans in self-defense.

Batiste quickly became the center of his world: family, clan, and Master in one. Over time, their dynamic changed and evolved as Simeon grew in strength and power of his own. Now his Master was a friend and brother more than anything else. It was a relationship he was grateful for, in more ways than one—being a part of Batiste's bloodclan eventually brought him to Boston.

To Angel.

His true love.

Yet, family and the attendant dramas were unavoidable. Angel, Isaac, and young Daniel were beset by the traumas of their past, all flung into their faces by the unexpected arrival of a presumed-dead distant ancestor, his vampire mate, and their son.

Simeon did not personally know Ashwin Metcalfe, the vampire mate of Ignacio Salvatore, though his Master, Constantine Batiste, had a casual acquaintance with the Elizabethan-age vampire. For all that Simeon and Ashwin were contemporaries, both being turned within a half-century of each other in the same region of the world, they'd never crossed paths, though Simeon was familiar with the vampire's name and history. Vampires had long lives, and it was hard to maintain anonymity within a species that had excellent memories and a fondness for idealizing their origins. That created a society focused on the past much more than the future, and not learning about other vampires was as difficult as preventing them from learning about him.

Vampires were history nerds and insatiable gossips.

How Ashwin Metcalfe managed to conceal the fact that he was mated to a Salvatore sorcerer of some renown, and that his mate was alive and thriving, was a mystery, and one Simeon was certain his Master would be curious to unravel. Even Simeon was curious, as Metcalfe had not been in hiding the last century since the supposed death of Ignacio Salvatore. And how they hid the existence of the child, Leandro, from the world, was an even bigger mystery.

They did not do a perfect job of it, though—hiding their son. The High Council chased them to the very steps of the Mansion in an attempt to kidnap the boy, so at some point, they'd learned of the child's existence. Angel said the boy was a necromancer—and Angel would know.

Leandro was Ignacio's son and that made for even more complicated family dynamics. All the Salvatores in the Americas were dead but for Angel, Isaac, and now Daniel after his adoption into the clan. Three scions remained from a family that once boasted dozens by blood or marriage. There were a few distant cousins several times removed with the surname in Europe, but none of any power or influence, but that information was over a decade old and might be wrong. Simeon did research on the Salvatores of Boston before Batiste decided to move the Bloodclan north from Richmond, and Simeon had focused his efforts on the main branch of the Salvatores, or what was left of them.

Angel stirred in his arms, heart rate increasing from the slow cadence of slumber. His scent deepened, teasing Simeon's senses with the long-familiar aromas of cinnamon, smoke, and dragon scale. Simeon gently brushed his thumb along the soft skin of Angel's jawline, carding his fingers through soft, thick hair and then doing it again as Angel slowly woke.

"Mo ghra?" Simeon kept his voice low, gentle. "Are you awake?"

"Nooo," Angel breathed out before grumbling, "asleep."

Simeon chuckled, continuing his petting, holding Angel firmly in his arms with a gentle squeeze, making Angel tighten his arms in response, snuggling closer.

The curtains in the room were pulled shut, keeping out the midday sun. The Mansion was not bespelled yet to be safe for vampires. The Invitational magic that kept vampires out of a human's home was not yet strong enough for Angel's specialized spellwork to anchor within to make it safe for Invited vampires to stand in sunlight.

Daniel might have been able to do it, as he had moved into the Mansion and was calling it home, but the fledgling was no longer human. His body and nature were changed to be closer to that of his new mate and husband, Rory. The Invitational magic was a human one, a natural magic that occurred when a human came to call a place home and was reinforced by an emotional connection on a subconscious level. It could not be rushed, faked, or simulated, and there was not a human mortal in the Mansion that could cast the spells needed to prevent their vampiric family members from combusting when exposed to unfiltered sunlight through the many large windows in the Mansion. With Daniel's transformation, his Invitational magics ceased, as he was no longer human.

It made traveling through the large building…interesting, at times, during the day. Simeon moved fast enough that a stray beam of sunlight wouldn't do anything, and Master Batiste was strong enough to withstand several minutes of sunlight without harm. Perhaps even more, if Isaac's affinity spared him a burn from the light through their soulbond. He wondered idly if his master had tried it yet. Even with his speed, Simeon was resistant for a few moments to direct sunlight, a new development since his bonding with Angel. He did not want to test it beyond the few seconds he had already experienced. Sunlight burns were extraordinarily painful, and even the slightest burn hurt like hell until it healed.

Simeon heard the sounds of people moving about in the cavernous home, not far from Angel's childhood bedroom. Isaac and Constantine were not staying in the house—Isaac was uncomfortable at the prospect and so Constantine took his mate home to the Tower every night via The Way Between or a clan limo. Daniel and Rory were not far down the hall in Isaac's old childhood bedroom, but Simeon was not expecting them to be out of the room all that much, as it was the day after their wedding.

The unexpected arrival of the long-lost Salvatore scion and his small family threw a hiccup into their immediate plans, though Simeon doubted that Angel would let anything deprive his beloved Daniel of his honeymoon.

A soft chirp from the hall had Simeon smiling, despite the current emotional upheaval his mate and their family were experiencing. A scramble of claws on wood and then the door swung open, Eroch tumbling into the room with a series of thumps and loud chirps. Angel stirred at the ruckus his dragon made, and he sat up on Simeon's lap with a disgruntled expression and a low groan.

"Fuck," Angel breathed out, running a hand through his hair and pushing the strands back from his eyes. He squinted at Eroch, who was dramatically rolling across the floor trying to catch his tail, and then down at Simeon. "I should not have fallen back asleep. I'm gonna be all messed up today."

"I can help you sleep tonight if need be," Simeon offered with a slight smile. He shifted enough to lean back on the headboard, keeping Angel firmly on his lap, both hands on Angel's trim waist. "How are you feeling?"

"Eyes are sore, and my face hurts from crying," Angel answered honestly, and Simeon rubbed a hand up and down his mate's back a few times, trying to soothe the raw edge of emotion that threaded through Angel's voice. Angel leaned into him, head falling to Simeon's shoulder. "A bit less emotionally fragile. I needed that."

Simeon pressed a kiss to Angel's forehead, lingering, breathing in his scent. "Anything you need, mo ghra."

"Anyone else up yet?" Angel asked quietly, snuggling against his chest.

"I hear the newlyweds moving about, but I'm ignoring them as best I can," Simeon informed his mate, and Angel snorted in amusement. "Dame Fontaine is still abed, and the child is awake as well, though he's still in the suite with his fathers." Simeon focused a bit more in the direction of the guest suite the older soulbonded pair were given the night before. "Ashwin is with his son, as best I can tell. We're of an age, so he's powerful enough to hide from me if he feels the need."

Simeon heard a soft chuckle, impossible for humans to hear at this distance; then the soft whisper of a loving father to a nervous son. "We aren't waking up anyone, Elder Simeon and Cousin Angel are already awake." A pause, then more whispering. "Jet lag is why we're awake so early, our bodies got used to another time zone and think it's later in the day than it is locally." More anxious whispers. "Let Papá sleep some more, and we can get some breakfast." Simeon heard one last whisper from the boy, and then Ashwin answered his son, soft and kind and wonderfully patient. "No, I don't think Cousin Angel is going to be mad if we get you something to eat."

Simeon withdrew his senses and distantly heard Ashwin and his young son leave the suite and head toward the stairs. "Ashwin and his son are heading for the kitchen," Simeon shared. "The fledgling is hungry."

Angel sighed quietly, then stiffened in alarm, and he sat back up and looked down at Simeon, wide-eyed. "The staircase is in full sunlight by now."

Angel rolled off of Simeon and grabbed the robe hanging off the back of the door, throwing it on before yanking open the door and sprinting into the hall.