Ana woke in the early evening. Carefully she sat up, trying to avoid waking Jiro. Her fingers traced over the bite mark on her neck. It hurt a little, but it wasn't as bad as she'd expected.

Jiro asked, and Ana was curious, so she agreed. He said that he wasn't hungry so there was no danger. Not that Jiro would ever allow himself to do that. What he needed was a little bit extra to top up what had been lost, and the steaks could not give him.

Slipping out from the bed, Ana picked up her camisole and shorts and put them on. Then she collected her laptop and moved to the lounge. She was curious about a tattoo on Jiro's back and wanted to search earlier but became distracted.

Ana said nothing directly to Jiro. It's why she started asking about his lack of memory. She knew that the tattoo meant something.

It looked like something from the military, the old one, not the militia. Looking at the internet, Ana searched for all of the insignias for the varied sections. What she found was not what she expected.

"Damn," she whispered.

With the revelation, her heart began hammering. It could not be possible, in her opinion. Yet, the facts were as clear as the vampire asleep in her bed. Was it possible?

Hearing a sharp inhale, Ana knew that Jiro had just woken. Opening a new tab, she searched for all of the members of the corp that was attached to that particular insignia. Her heart was racing because she knew that all the members of this corp had been wiped out when the coup happened.

Ana only checked to see if the members were noted as being dead. If Jiro was who she thought he was, it was probably better that the world continued to believe he was.

Ana thought that Jiro looked like one of the members that she was familiar with, but there were differences that she'd shrugged off. Ana wondered if she was trying to hide from the truth. The memories in her mind were fading, and she did not have any photos. Keeping hold of the past was something that Ana craved but was slowly losing.

Maybe her mind played tricks on her because she didn't want to believe that this was possible. It was a painful time in her life, and remembering any part of it was difficult. She knew that all of the members had died. He should not be alive.

It wasn't an extensive list, and worryingly, there was a lot of information about the group. Ana soon found the truth, and it was like a bomb had hit her. It was true. It was him.

Ana felt the years of sadness hit her. The mourning of his loss. The loneliness compounded the grief. Wiping the tears away, Ana took a deep breath. Trying to compose herself while forgetting the sorrow she'd suffered was not easy. Ana figured that one day, it would burst out everywhere. For now, she found her composure.

She read about the SC's. All were listed as dead. Which, as sad as it was, was a relief. Jiro was safe.

"Ana?"

Inhaling deeply, Ana lifted the laptop and moved to the bed. She sat at the end to face Jiro, who was now sitting up. Composed, not about to cry or yell out with joy. He survived the coup but lost his memory. It wasn't the greatest outcome, but it was far better than it could have been.

"So, before I get into the finer details of the past, I'll briefly go over facts."

Ana clicked on the tab for the insignia and turned the laptop to show Jiro.

"This is the tattoo on your back, yes?"

Jiro nodded quietly.

"It's a part of the army, and the tattoo artists are pretty strict with abiding by the rules. If you can't prove you're in the army and the division, you don't get the tattoo. So that means that for you to have it, you were in the army."

Leaning forward, he squinted at the header on the page.

"Sovereignty Corps. Your family?"

Ana nodded.

"In particular, my father. The SC's would cover all of us, but my father was the one that would go out to public engagements the most, so they were more for him than anyone else."

She changed the tab to the next one. Jiro's eyebrows lifted at the stern figure that stared at him. It was him, in a uniform, short hair, no beard and one gruff attitude. There were some similarities, but this rough version was enough to fool Ana. She felt like an uncaring idiot for not realising who he was.

"Keoni Adileko. That's me?"

Ana nodded, smiling with barely any restraint.

"You smile like you're going to tell me something terrible. Did we know each other?"

"Yeah, you could say that."

Taking the laptop, he began reading about a life that he could not remember.

"Highly decorated general, years of service in varied roles before being awarded a role in the Sovereignty Corps. It's awarded?"

Ana nodded.

"Handpicked by my father. It was the only way to get into the division. So, I guess I never realised as I was growing up, was how much I could remember the guards and how hard it is for them to die. I don't know about the rest of the group, but the militia made it pretty clear that they'd killed the king's personal guards. The website says that you were born over a hundred years ago. It also says that you were in service to my father in the days before your death."

"I've always been a vampire?"

Ana shrugged.

"Maybe that was one of my father's prerequisites. Vampires are pretty resilient, so maybe he used that to his advantage."

"Maybe. So, my name is Keoni?"

"Yeah, lucky that I've only known you a couple of days as Jiro, and I'm not going back to it. Otherwise, it might get a little weird. You know, I could see some similarities, but this whole different look really threw me. There is no way that the old you would have let your hair grow past the collar. Not a speck of scruffiness on you, and I gotta say, the smile totally changes your face. You used to frown at me a lot, but then I suppose I did give you a pretty hard time."

Suppose? Ana did give Keoni a hard time. In fact, she was a nightmare for all of the SC's.

"Where was I? Why didn't I protect your family?"

Keoni looked up. Ana gave him a shrug.

"You did. When the militia stormed the lower levels of the building, my father demanded that you take me, my mother and my siblings into the escape tunnels. My mother searched for my brothers while you opened up the route. I was the first one to appear, so you grabbed me and threw me into the tunnel, which ouch, by the way. You're such a brute."

A barely-there smile crossed his face. Ana was trying to be funny to kill the pain, and as amusing as it was, he knew it was not the right time to laugh.

"My landing was on the bags that I wasn't aware that my mother had packed. I think that they knew that something was wrong and had begun to prepare. I waited in the dark for a long time, but no one else came down the tunnel."

"Do you know what happened?"

"I suppose that you probably shut the tunnel entrance to protect me. I don't know exactly what happened. When I emerged, I looked up and saw smoke coming from the windows of the upper levels of the building where we lived. I stayed in the bottom of the tunnel for a few days hoping that someone would come down or take me somewhere. When no one did, I ventured out and learned the horrid truth. Alone, lost, too young to understand but old enough to pretend that I was just another person in this world. I thought that you had died too because the militia said that anyone that did not submit to the new way of life was killed, and there was no way that you would have accepted it."

"Devoted?"

"To the bitter end. They also said that all of the royal guards were killed because not one of them would submit. I don't know how you escaped considering it was a known fact that you were a part of the SC's."

Keoni kept reading about his past, the information that was far too revealing, even if he was appreciative of it at the moment. When he reached the part about his personal life, Keoni was stunned.

"Uh, what's this?"

Ana leaned in and looked at where he was pointing.

"Oh, that."

With a shrug, she got off the mattress and took the laptop from him. It was far too much for one sitting.

"That? You say it like it means nothing."

"Well, you were begrudging and probably only accepted because you didn't want to anger my father. I hated that I was being forced to marry someone. The fact that my father had decided that I had to marry after turning eighteen was the worst thing to happen to me. It was a political move for my father, not something born out of love. It didn't help that you thought that I was a pest. A spoiled princess that complained about how rough her life was. I didn't think it was rough, by the way. I just didn't like being forced to marry someone that I didn't know."

"But we did know each other, right?"

"Kind of. We'd seen each other here and there but you weren't my guard. Originally my father had a list of suitors from other kingdoms. He changed his mind about the list and added you, then picked you."

Ana hid a lot of the truth about the past because she always believed that Keoni didn't want to be with her. She was faced with a grim future. Her husband would join her in her bed to create children and nothing more. No love, no friendship. Just a duty to the royal family.

Keoni took in the information and still did not believe it.

"We were going to get married. As in you and me?"

"I know, right? Dad would be laughing if he knew what we've been up to. He'd say that all we really needed was to stop glaring at each other and acting like it was the end of the world, then we'd see how good it can be."

Ana could see that he was still struggling. Crossing the small gap, she knelt on the mattress and straddled Keoni's lap. Her hands settled on his shoulders as his hands made their way around her hips.

"Instead of overthinking this, how about we figure out how to get your memory back. Maybe hit you over the head with something heavy?"

Keoni rolled Ana onto the bed, pinning her down with his body. Her hands were over her head, their lips a breath's distance apart. Ana shrieked, then giggled.

"Did we really hate each other?"

"Most of the time. The other times when we got along was when you weren't in the room."

"You're a nuisance," he whispered, leaning in to kiss her softly.

Ana hummed a soft laugh. Maybe he could remember her after all. Keoni used to call her a nuisance before he lost his memory as well.