Page 53 of Until Forever Comes
“Oh, you’re no fun,” Katie said. “Fine.” She twisted around so she faced the wall. “So did I hear your wolf right?” she said, sounding more serious, nervous even. “Did he say you’d taken him as your chosen?”
Miguel paused with his pants halfway up his thighs. “Yeah,” he said. “You heard right.”
“Your chosen?” I asked.
He sighed deeply and put his pants to rights before coming over and sitting next to me. “Chosen blood donor,” he said. “It’s what a vampire calls a human who he chooses to be his exclusive food source.”
“I’ve never heard of it happening with a shifter,” Katie said. “It’s rare even with humans, and from what I’ve heard, very, very dangerous. Are you… hey, can I turn around now? We’re having a life and death conversation here, and I’m talking to a wall.”
“Yeah, go ahead,” Miguel answered.
“Life and death?” I asked at the same time.
“Not for you, baby,” Miguel said to me as he pulled me onto his lap. “You’re safe.”
“That’s not a promise you can make him,” Katie said. “Based on my research, I know that it’s very common for a vampire who takes a chosen to drain them too often, make them too weak, and then the human ends up dying and ending the vampire’s life-thread right along with him.”
My stomach dropped. “Is that true?” I asked in horror.
Miguel sighed. “Yes, it’s true, but not for you.”
“How can you promise that?” Katie shouted.
“Because I’ve seen how chosens react after being drained!” Miguel yelled. “I’ve seen them get so weak they can’t leave the bed for days on end and then, eventually”—Miguel’s voice broke—“they don’t leave the bed at all.”
“That’s what I’m saying, Uncle Miguel.” Katie lowered her voice in reaction to Miguel’s show of emotion. “It’s rare for chosens to live long, and then the vampire perishes with them. If you keep feeding just from him, you’ll bond and then you’ll be limited to his blood, and when he gets weak—”
“You think I’d be doing this if I thought it would hurt Ethan?” Miguel asked in disgust. “He’s different; Ethan acts nothing like my mother!” Miguel shouted.
Well, all right, then. I had to admit that I hadn’t seen that one coming. And based on Katie’s gaping fish impression, I got the sense she hadn’t either.
“Your mother was a chosen?” she asked in shock.
Miguel petted my hair with one hand and stroked my neck with the other; the action seemed to calm him. “Yes,” he said quietly. “She was my father’s chosen.”
Katie lost all the color in her face. “But… how?”
“What do you mean how? They were married, had three kids, he was turned, and she wanted to be his chosen.”
We sat in silence while Katie processed what Miguel done told her. I was doing the same, thinking back to what little I knew about his family and then to what he’d just said.
“Miguel?” I asked quietly.
“Yeah, baby?”
“You told me your family died.” I swallowed nervously, fearful I’d upset my mate by prying, but needing to understand what Katie meant when she said I could end Miguel’s life-thread, that drinking only from me could make him perish. “What happened to them?”
He didn’t answer for a fair bit, just sat quietly and stroked my skin. I waited patiently, knowing he’d answer in time.
“My mother wasn’t like you,” he said eventually. “She had trouble keeping up with my father’s need for blood, so she was weak all the time, tired. Eventually, they realized he couldn’t keep taking from her without killing her, but by then it was too late for him to hunt outside the house. She’d been his chosen for years, and they’d bonded.” He paused. “So he started feeding from us.”
Katie’s hand flew over her mouth and she gasped.
“Turns out a bonded vampire can drink from a chosen’s family member.” Miguel chuckled darkly and landed his pain-filled gaze on Katie. “Did you know that? Is that something you learned through your research? Except it isn’t exactly the same, not quite as sustaining. So the vampire keeps drinking more and more. And because he already bonded with one chosen, he can’t bond his life-thread to another, which means they keep getting weaker, until—”
“He killed them,” Katie said in horror.
“One of them, yeah.” Miguel nodded. “He hadn’t fed from my younger sister, Maricela. She was too young. So he would alternate between my mother, my older sister, and me. Until my sister died. Then it was just my mother and me, and we both kept getting weaker until one day I passed out when he was feeding, and when I woke again, I’d been turned and they were dead. Maricela said he turned me, waited to make sure I was alive, and then walked into the sun. When he died, my mother passed too.”
