"Then how--?"
"I could turn you," Lissianna said quickly.
Greg's hand stilled in her hair. She could hear his heartbeat, the slow inhalation and exhalation of his breath, the tick of the digital clock next to the bed. Finally, his hand began to move again. "Turn me? Make me one of you?"
"If you were one of us, they would never fear your speaking out about us or revealing our presence. Our safety would be yours. They wouldn't need to try a council of three."
"You'd make me your life mate to keep me safe?"
The words were soft, querying. Lissianna couldn't tell if he was pleased at the idea or not, but she didn't want to put him in the position where he had to choose between living with his mind intact or being her life mate to survive. Licking her lips, she said, "Turning you doesn't automatically make you my life mate."
Greg stilled again, then asked, "It doesn't?"
"No. Of course not. While it's true that most of us do turn our life mates, it isn't always the case. Others have turned mortals for other reasons."
"But then if you did find someone to be your life mate later, you couldn't turn him," he pointed out.
Lissianna shrugged. Then stood and slid from the bed.
"Lissi?" Greg said uncertainly, as she walked na**d to the door.
Turning back, she found him sitting up in the bed, concern on his face. She smiled gently. "I'm leaving you alone to think about it." "I--"
Lissianna held up a hand to silence him. "Greg, I need you to forget about me in this equation. This isn't about me, it's about you and your choices. What I do or don't do doesn't matter. This decision is something you have to be happy with for yourself."
She took a deep breath, then said, "This isn't like getting your ear pierced or joining a club. This is for forever, or as close to forever as humans can get. You need to consider it seriously. Can you give up the freedom of being able to spend endless hours in sunlight and become mostly a creature of the night? Can you consume blood? If there was an emergency, could you feed on another to survive? And could you give up your family?"
He gave a start. "My family?"
"Yes," she said sadly. "You can't tell them what you've become. The council wouldn't allow that."
"No, of course not, but--"
"And when you don't age as they are doing, how could you explain it?" Lissianna answered the question herself, "You couldn't. And so, you'd have five, maybe ten years if you were lucky, and then you'd have to disappear from their lives. You'd have to fake your death and never see them again."
Seeing the shock on his face, Lissianna nodded sadly. "You hadn't thought of that, had you? You only thought of the forever young and forever this and forever that..." She sighed and shook her head. "There is a downside to everything, and you need to be sure that you can accept the downside here, because this is not reversible. Once you are turned, it quite possibly is forever."
Greg stared, his heart sinking at the complications he hadn't considered.
"I'll sleep on the couch," Lissianna said, turning away. "We'll talk again later, after we've both slept on it."
Greg watched her pull the door closed, then dropped back on the bed with a sigh. Give up his family. It had never occurred to him that he'd have to give up anything to be like them. He'd thought-- Well, as she'd said, he'd been thinking oniy of the plus side; living hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years, never aging, being stronger, faster, maybe even smarter... witnessing history firsthand over the centuries... And--he'd thought at first-- doing it all with Lissianna as his life mate, but she seemed to be saying it wasn't a given.
Was she saying that because she didn't want him for a life mate, or because she didn't want him to feel trapped into being her life mate? He wasn't sure.
Greg did know that he had never met anyone like her; someone he could admire and like as much as he did Lis-sianna. She was protective of those she loved, kind, intelligent, beautiful, but with a hint of the child still alive inside the woman. She was over two hundred years old and often seemed as mature as those years would suggest, but when Lissianna relaxed, when she forgot to be the good daughter, or the responsible older cousin for the twins, there was a childlike mischievousness about her, a glint she got in her eye. However, it was when she bit him that Greg was sure she was the perfect woman... at least in his eyes. The experience was more than just physical. When they were joined in that way, his mind flooded with her thoughts and it was almost like having a window into her soul. Lissianna had a beautiful soul, soft but strong, generous and nonjudgmental. When they were merged that way, he felt strong and loved. He felt whole.
Greg felt sure he could trade twenty or thirty years with his family who had loved and supported him all his life, for forever with Lissianna. But that didn't seem to be what she was offering. She'd said that her turning him wouldn't automatically make him her life mate. If he let her turn him, could he persuade her afterward to have him? Was her offer to save him brought on by nothing more than guilt? Greg didn't think so, he'd seen into her soul and nothing like that had been reflected there.
Sighing, Greg ran his hands through his hair with agitation. He had a lot to think about.
It was the cold that woke her up. Lissianna murmured a sleepy complaint at the chill in the air, tugged the afghan tighter up around her neck and rolled herself into a fetal position in an effort to get warm, but still the cold per-sisted. Sighing at the realization that she would have to get up and turn up the heat, or at least find another blanket before she would be able to drift back to sleep, Lissianna opened her eyes and rolled onto her back, then froze in shock as she spotted the dark shape looming over her.
For one moment, she froze, her body shooting adrenaline out for her to deal with the matter, but then she realized that it must be Greg come to talk to her, and she relaxed. Lissianna waited for him to speak, only realizing she'd made a mistake when the arm she hadn't noticed was raised, suddenly plunged downward, and she felt the stake pierce her chest.
Chapter 17
It was midnight and Greg was still awake, agonizing over the choice he had to make. He was lying flat on his back in bed, ankles crossed and hands resting under his head when the sound of breaking glass interrupted his torturous consideration of his future. Eyes popping open, he turned his head toward the bedroom door and listened for a minute, but no other noise followed.