“This had always been the plan,” he said as he continued watching the fire.
“What’s that?” Samantha asked, pulling the blanket over her as she sat up on the small cot.
“I never planned on returning to Europe with my father once I reached my immortality,” he said as he leaned over and threw another log on the fire.
“Did he know that?” she asked as he slowly shook his head with a murmured, “No.”
“Why didn’t you want to go back?”
“It wasn’t safe,” he said with one last look at the fire before he joined her on the cot.
“Why wasn’t it safe?” she asked as Trace laid down next to her.
“We’d heard a lot of stories about what happened once Pytes reached their immortality,” he said, reaching up to run his fingers along her jaw.
“What stories?” she asked, unable to help but lean into his touch.
“They’re not worth repeating,” Trace murmured absently as he turned his hand so that he could run the back of his knuckles gently along her jaw.
“You’re not going to tell me?” Samantha asked as she reached over and cupped his face in her hand.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Trace said, turning his head so that he could press a kiss against her wrist.
“Why not?”
“I don’t want you to be afraid of me,” he said as she laid down next to him so that she could lay her head on his chest.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Samantha said because she knew that he would never hurt her.
“You should be,” Trace said, wrapping his arm around her as he pressed a kiss against the top of her head.
“Why weren’t you planning on returning with your father?” she asked, returning to her original question.
“Because I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t woken up changed in that tomb. I was terrified of hurting someone,” Trace explained as he absently ran his fingers through her hair.
“Do you think you would have?” she asked, tilting her head back so that she could look at him.
“Yes,” he said softly with a sad smile before he explained, “The hunger was like nothing I’d ever known before and if I’d woken up in this cottage…”
“You would have killed someone.”
“Most likely, my father,” he admitted quietly.
“And then you would have headed into town,” she said, knowing that she’d guessed correctly again when he shifted his attention to the wall.
“Is that why you’ve been hiding in here?” she asked, wishing that she’d known that he was hiding in here instead of staying in the house where he would have had a better chance to get acclimated to all the changes that he needed to figure out if he was going to have a chance to blend in.
“I wasn’t hiding, wife,” he said, turning his head so that he could glare at her.
“No, no, of course, you weren’t,” she murmured, not believing him.
“I wasn’t,” he bit out.
“So, then what were you doing?”
There was a brief pause and then…
“Hiding,” he admitted with a heavy sigh as he shifted his attention to the ceiling.