I've been in sitting in my car thinking about walking into the cemetery for ten minutes. The time was now twelve twenty two and I had never felt more confused in my life.

What if it was a trap? What if he did this entire thing so he could kill me with a surprise attack? Which was worse: thinking that he was going to do it and then me knowingly putting myself in the position for him to do it: or not thinking that that he would it, trusting him, and then me unknowingly putting myself in the position for him to do it?

But the things I felt around him. The electricity we had when he touched me. The warm feelings I got when I thought of him. He wouldn't do anything to hurt me, right?

"If it is a trap. I guess I deserve to die for keeping this from my family anyways." I mutter to myself and step out, shutting the car door with an uncomfortable slam that echoed in the sky.

I walked up to the gate of the cemetery, pulling my jacket around me. It was winter now, but normally I was resilient to the cold, all Hunters were. Yet, for some unknown reason being here gave me the chills.

I pushed open the black, gothic styled gate into the cemetery, and when I walked in I could feel him. He was here, and I didn't need to see him to know that. It was the same feeling I got the moment I stepped into the classroom yesterday.

Did I even want to get rid of this? I knew I had to, but did I want to?

"You came. I was beginning to think you were gunna pull out of the parking lot and I would have to chase you down." A familiar, warm voice said.

I stopped in my tracks, looking around for Colin but I didn't see him.

All around me were trees and the sun hidden behind clouds.

"Show yourself." I said, biting my lip.

"Dear, you really shouldn't do that." He said, appearing in front of me, wearing a red hoodie that accentuated the red flecks in his eyes that you wouldn't notice unless you were looking for them. "Biting your lip is a terrible thing and gives you mouth sores." He shook his head lightly, smirking in the deadliest way possible.

I shrug him off, the beginning of a laugh forming in my throat. "Are you sure you're not just saying that because it's hot and you can't handle the heat?" I ask, smirking at him and tossing my hair over my shoulder.

He narrowed his brown eyes at me. "Keep doing it and you'll find out." He said tauntingly.

I rolled my eyes. "Did you find out how to get in contact with Leslie?" I ask, clearing my throat, looking anywhere but directly at his face.

He shrugs. "Didn't ask anything. Did you find anything out?"

I shake my head. "Nope. Too busy dealing with the fact that your father kidnapped my sister." I rushed at him and pinned him against the tree. "Where is she?"

"What are you talking about?" He contorts his pretty face into confusement. "I thought she was in the U.K or something." He sighs. "Here we go again." He mutters. "We've been here before, remember?"

"Don't play stupid. You know she was in Ireland. Your dad kidnapped her last night." I say, pressing my arm further into his throat, not letting him change the subject.

"That's odd, because last night he was real busy laying me a new one for not being home earlier. He was here. Last night. In Columbia Falls." He says, pushing me away from him. "So you can stop throwing accusations."

I sigh. "Sorry. Just— worried."

He nods slowly, looking at me with something close to pity but not quite. "I get it. I can feel it." He moves his hand to my cheek. "Why are you bruised up. This wasn't me, was it?"

I chuckle and shake my head. "No, it was Dallas."

His face turns multiple shades of red. "Why!?"

I don't understand why he's mad... "We were fighting over the last bit of bacon? I mean, in the end our little brother Zach got it because he's smart as hell but..." I trailed off, realizing that Colin wasn't really paying me much attention.

He runs a hand through his hair. "He hit you over a piece of bacon. Are you serious!?" He gives me a dumbfounded look.

I scrunch up my face and nod slowly. "Yes? Wha—"

"He attacked you... over a piece of bacon?" He asks, shaking his head. I could practically feel the anger radiating off of him. He was like a time bomb, about to blow up any second.

I took a step back and put my hands in front of me. "Hey... you at one point tried to kill me. Plus, I beat him so it doesn't matter."

Coin shook his head and licked his lips. "Why am I so mad?" He asked.

I shrugged, gulping down any insult I was going to say. "I don't know... why are you mad? Did someone piss in your Cheerios?" I wasn't going to insult him but it just, it just came out so easily. It was natural, normal.

He sucked in a deep breath. "I cried last night."

I smirked at him. "Really?"

He nodded, looking seriously at me. "Like actual tears. Because my father didn't care that I was alive. I came home and he said, "oh guess you're still alive" and continued to drink from some random human. Then he yelled at me for not being home earlier, apparently he needed me for something."

He sat on a grave and looked up at me. "I don't know whats wrong with me. Have you been acting weird?"

I shook my head slowly, watching him intently. I felt bad for him, on all levels. I moved slowly and then sat next to him, my hand finding his. "Hey. It's okay. We'll figure this out together."

His eyes dilated as he looked forward. "Someone's coming. Human. We should go."

I shook my head and held him back when he tried to stand. "No. Just, stay. We need to talk."

He sighed, but gave in to my request. "Okay."

"About Leslie... we—"

"I don't even want to find her." Colin muttered and then winced when he realized I heard him. "I'm sure you do, but I mean I don't."

I shrugged, wiping he dirt off the stone. "I don't want to but I know I have to."

He looked back at me with eyes of lust and passion. "Do you though? Do you really have to?"

I nodded. "Yes. Yes I do have to." I scoffed, pulling my jacket tighter around my body.

"Are you cold?" He asked, worried. He took off his hoodie and forcefully pulled it over my head, not even asking me.

I tried to stop him but he did it anyways.

I gave him a confused look and he stood up, running a hand through his hair again. "I'm acting like Steve from Stranger Things. I'm like a dang mother hen."

I raised one eyebrow. "Steve?" Did he loose his mind?

"Yeah? You've never seen Stranger Things? Oh boy." He widened his eyes. "Okay then. You have no wits when it comes to media but that's okay, I can deal with that."

Was this how he normally was? This annoying little specimen? I had the fight the urge to groan. "Colin, you're acting weird."

He nods. "I know isn't it weird?" He asked, blinking at me with an empty expression. "I'm not sure why but I am."

I tried to come up with something, an answer as to why he was acting weird, but I just came up empty handed.

"Do all vampires have mates? Is that what we are?" I asked, thinking that maybe I could get some details in a "hypothetical" way from one of Connie's werewolf friends.

He shook his head slowly. "No. Vampires don't have mates. I'm not even your mate. That rose just says that we're gunna fall in love." He purses his lips, narrowing his eyes.

I hummed, crossing off asking a werewolf for advice off my list.

"Look, I'll do a little research tonight, ask around about Leslie. I'll do something if you really want this gone." He said reluctantly, and it broke my heart. "I understand comple—"

I looked away from Colin to the trees, thinking over my options."No." I sighed out, making the best worst decision of my life. It's kind of like when you know something is a bad decision, and as you're making the bad decision you think to yourself, "this is a bad decision" but you continue to do the bad decision anyways. "Let's just... keep it. Oh well. If we're living forever might as well make it worth it."

I looked back to him but he wasn't looking at me. Around his eyes was black, wrinkled skin. His eyes were red and his pupils were large. Long teeth sprouted from his gums.

I turned to see what he was looking at and it was a human, standing with a shocked face and flowers at their feet.

"Run." Colin growled out in the least human way possible, and he started to get up to chase the human, but I tackled him down, my body still sore from the fight with my brother earlier.

I pressed him into the ground, using all my strength to hold him down. "Look at me!" I yelled, forcing him to look at me. "You don't need to eat a person!"

The wrinkled black skin started to wither away, and his eyes went back to normal but his pupils stayed large.

The human ran off and I let them go. Who's really going to believe them?

"I'm just so hungry." He grumbled, leaning back and closing his eyes. "God dang, sunlight is not good on the large pupils."

"We need to figure out what's wrong with you." I declared, laying next to him in the dirt.

He rolled over onto his stomach and forearms, looking at me. "Were you serious? We're not gunna talk to Leslie?"

I licked my lips, I still couldn't believe I said that. "I guess I am. But we need to fix whatev—"

"Oh am I broken?" He laughed, his harmonic voice filling the heavy air around us.

"Maybe! I mean you cried last night and you freaked out over a fight I had with my brother." I raised an eyebrow. "Even you know something is wrong with you."

He huffs out. "Okay okay, fair point. You know how when I said I had seen the Ash Rose before?"

I nod slowly, skeptic of what he was goin to say. "Yes..." I trail off, hoping he elaborates.

"Well, I can get that book and maybe it'll help us figure out why I'm PMSing even though I'm A) a guy and B) have already gone through puberty." He seemed seriously stressed out.

"Okay, see there's a step forward." He might not be PMSing, but I'm going to treat him like he is.

Baby him. Like I do my mom when she has mood swings. It involves lots of, "You're right, absolutely right" and "more chocolate?" It's a habit now.

"Will you go with me? The book is in my house, I jus—"

I stop him right there. "Are you INSANE!? No! One look at me and you're family will literally rip my head off."

He snarled at nothing in particular. "I think the fuck not. Plus my dad isn't home, he's at work. Nobody will know."

That sounds like the beginning of a very bad idea. "If I die, I'm coming back as a poltergeist and I'm killing you."

He stood up, and stuck his hand out for me to grab. I grabbed it and he held my hand even after I stood up.

"Please. If you die, I'll just pull a Romeo and Juliet." He winks at me. "We're to be together forever and I'm keeping myself to that standard."

Forever. That's a long time. Eventually someone will bust us. Why? Because our families have all eternity to figure it out. But I guess we'll reach that point in time when we get there.

"I don't think I should go in. Just grab the book and meet me back here." I offer.

He shakes his head, pulling me towards the exit of the cemetery. "Where's the fun in that?" He asked mischievously.

***

I don't know what I thought Colin's House was going to look like. I mean my guesses ranged everywhere from a castle to a trailer house.

What I wasn't expecting, was a beautifully large, deep purple, Victorian gothic house.

I was in awe at the large place in front of me, my eyes wandering throughout the empty yard.

We hadn't driven very far, only a couple miles or so before we pulled into the driveway. Who knew he lived so close.

"This house is... this place is amazing." I looked to Colin who was smiling smugly at me.

He grabbed my hand and walked me to the large porch. It wasn't until I got to the door with a lion-head knocker that I got scared.

"Colin. I change my mind. I— I don't want to go in." I tried to backpedal, only for Colin to wrap his arms around me.

"Ev, you'll be fine. Nobody is home." He whispered into my ear, calming my nerves in the slightest.

"I still don't want to." I shuddered against his chest. "What if we get caught? What if—"

He spun me around to face him, his eyes fixating on mine. "Nothing is going to happen to you. I promise."

I nodded slowly, not quite being able to shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen.

He took out a key and opened the large door silently.

What I noticed when we first stepped in was how cold it was. It wasn't very affecting considering I was... well pretty resilient to weather. But I did notice it.

"Here." Colin grabbed a blanket off the couch and threw it around me, rubbing his hands up and down my arms, trying to spark a little life into them. I guess he didn't know that weather didn't really affect Hunters.

"Why is it so cold?" I asked.

Colin looked down, ashamed? "We keep it cold because...well you see... it's a transition thing. C'mon my dad's study is this way."

I had no clue what a transition was, but I did know that going into his dad's study was the last thing I wanted to do.

We walked down a long hallway. Renaissance photos and old paintings lined the hallways. The floor was wooden, and it made a creaking noise almost every step of the way.

The house was barely lit, only a couple lights on, that did little to nothing to help illuminate place up.

There was a glass door and Colin opened it with ease, walking in and waiting for me to join him.

The inside of the office was really nice. Large windows lit the place up, long brown heavy drapes hung from the sides, tied back.

The walls were a deep orange-red Wood, and the ceiling held an old chandelier.

A red couch was in the middle of the room, a tall table behind it with two black lamps and a disturbing headless statue. At one point I'm guessing the statue did have a head, but it looked broken off.

Next to the red couch was a small circle table that held an old looking book. Colin walked to it and grabbed it, sitting on the couch.

I looked to a desk in the corner, wanting to search through to see if Clay knew anything about my sister and Felix.

Instead, I walked to Colin and sat next to him, clearing my throat. "Okay... where do we start?"

He opened the book to a picture of a rose like ours, elegantly drawn in black ink on the old paper.

Writing littered the page, much to my luck, about the rose.

I think back to my rose, it was still in the glovebox of my car, forever undying.

"Do you want to read it or do you want me to read it out loud?" Colin asked, offering the book to me.

"I guess we can just read it in our heads." I said, and he set the book in between us.

The Ash rose is the rarest phenomenon in supernatural history. Happening only once to a young couple just before the end of the War of the Species, not very much is known about the Ash rose.

However, what we can concur is that it is a dangerous item. Once resembling peace, the Ash rose has soon grown to mean a symbol of death. Shortly after the couple got the Ash rose, one died, leaving the other one to wander around lonely forever. Bringing together two opposite species is another catch of the Ash rose.

The Ash rose once stood for peace, but it now stands for pain and death. For the two who gets the Ash rose, it's almost certain that one will die.

I widened my eyes and spun to Colin who did the same at the same time.

"What's that—" I started to ask something but Colin interrupted me.

"Nothing. It means nothing. They only have one example to go off of, right? And that was a long time ago." He panicked, searching my face for something. He blinked and looked at the book, shaking his head. "If either of us die I'll make sure it's me." He mutters.

I smack his shoulder, glaring at him. "Umm, no. If either of us die—"

"Every you have a family. You have people who care about you. Me? I don't. I'm just some vampire." His face sank.

I leaned into his shoulder. "If either of us die, it'll be millions of years from now and because we finally drove each other to insanity." I finished, looking up at him. "You're right. Whoever wrote this is going off of one bad example."

He wrapped his arm around me and kissed my head, leaning his cheek on me. "I hope so."

"Now, figure out why you're PMSing." I said, breaking the moment up.

He flipped through the book to a page that more than confused me.

"Vampire mating." I screeched, standing up. "Hell no! I have already mistakenly crossed that path."

Colin smirked at me, running a hand through his hair and chuckling. "Please. You act like you weren't begging for more."

I stomped my foot. "I couldn't exactly talk!"

He nodded. "Oh trust me, I know." He snickered. "Look, I'm not saying we do it again, I'm not saying we don't do it again either because that was the best feeling of my life, BUT we just need to see if that's why I'm acting weird." He smiled at me. "I mean I cried. For the first time in like... sixteen years."

I reluctantly sat next to him and he kissed my shoulder. I scooted a little ways away. "No. I'm not going down that path again, and it always start with kissing."

He rolled his eyes and scoured the couple pages.

"Haha, get this, if Vampire finds a mate," he looked to me. "Apparently they do have them, it's just rare that they find them." He looked back down to the book. "Then they'll drive themselves insane thinking about their blood until they drink it. After drinking it, the vampire will experience mood swings, eating deficiency, and insomnia until the mate is marked and taken." He looked to me. "Marry me?" He asked, smiling, changing the subject abruptly.

I couldn't help smile back and roll my eyes. I kissed his cheek and scrunched up my face. "There. Now we're married. Now, back to business—"

"No no no, at weddings the groom gets a real kiss." He raises his eyebrows at me. "That wasn't a real kiss."

"You're going to get a real punch in the face if you don't—"

I was interrupted with a big fat kiss to the lips. And I'm not going to lie, I enjoyed every second of it.

Every heart pounding moment of it. We kissed on sync, with a rhythm that concert bands don't even see. With sparks fireworks could admire.

He pulled back, smiling against met face. "That was a real kiss." He breathed heavily and then looked back to the book like it never happened.

"Uh?" I nudged him with my elbow.

"Oh, did you want something?" He looked back to me, concealing a smile and raising his eyebrows.

I looked around the room. "That's it?"

"Oh!" He laughed. "Now more than kissing doesn't sound so bad. You see, Everly, dearest, you told me you were done with that. And I am a man of many honors, like respecting his lady's wishes. And you told me you wanted to get back to business." He looked back down to the book, leaving me to narrow his eyes at him.

Two could play at that game. "Fine. Here's the thing, Colin. I won't go slowly insane if I don't get my lover's blood. But since you're a man of many honors, and you listen to your lady's requests. I hereby request that you drink from no human, no other blood, but mine. On top of this I request that you only drink from me when I permit it, my Colin dearest."

I faced forward, studying my nails and when I looked back to him he was giving me a look of lust and false-anger. "Are you making me go blood celibate?"

I nod. "Only if you stay true to your word and honors."

He narrowed his eyes at me. "Back to the book because apparently I thought I was mean but it's quite obvious you're the cactus of the garden."

I rolled my eyes and looked to the book. "Haven't you already drank my blood, marked, and taken me?"

He looked back to me and snorted. "Uh, no. Marked, yes. Taken? No. Taken is when I mark you during—"

"Oh dang, okay never mind. Don't wanna hear it." I looked forward. "So you're just gunna go insane until we like... mate mate."

He nodded. "Baaasically. But—"

I pressed my hand over his mouth as I heard keys jiggling in the front door. "Someone's here." I mouthed.