Killean had assumed they would move to the prison after their first day in the asylum, but when Declan and Saxon dropped off a truck with a mattress, enough blood to keep them supplied for a month, and clothes later that first day, he and Simone never discussed leaving and settled into a rhythm in the old asylum.
While the workers were kept away, some of their tools and building materials remained. Unsure of what to do with himself during the day, Killean started repairing the room where they initially met with the others. What supplies he didn’t have, he ordered, and someone brought them to him as most stores closed by the time the sun set enough for him to go anywhere.
Simone helped him with the remodeling, but she spent a lot of time during the day bringing the gardens outside back to life. Often, he’d watch her from the windows as she pruned the overgrown plants into submission. The ones she couldn’t save, she dug out and threw into the woods.
He and Simone spent their second day exploring the asylum, and while some rooms could be the staging for horror movies, he saw the beauty in the old place and itched to bring it back to life. As time passed, he finished remodeling the first room and two others on the first floor of the sprawling place; all they needed was a coat of paint, and the rooms would be complete.
Their days fell into the natural flow of fixing the place up, teaching Simone how to defend herself, and taking breaks to make love. As she predicted, she was a fast learner, and her determination to perfect the moves he taught her never wavered. With time, she would be a lethal adversary.
At night they walked the grounds, or Simone practiced driving before they curled up together on the mattress still located in the first room.
Over the month he spent away from the battle against Savages and the threat of Joseph, Killean grew calmer with every passing day. He experienced a few more hallucinations, but feeding once or twice a day kept them at bay. It was more often than he fed before he became a killer, but he was acclimating every day. He’d grown accustomed to the bags though he far preferred Simone’s vein. He was impatient to put an end to Joseph, but he recognized this break was necessary to retain his sanity.
Dreams of blood and death haunted his nights, but when he woke to find Simone at his side, he was able to retract his fangs, and his bloodlust ebbed after a few minutes. He suspected the vivid images of tearing someone’s throat out was one more thing that kept some vampires Savage.
He told Ronan and the others about the dreams when they came to “visit” as Declan put it, but they all knew they were checking on him. He was fine with it, he understood their reasons, and even if he couldn’t hunt with them, he missed his friends, which was something he wouldn’t have believed possible before he left them.
He’d known that, as a Defender, he was part of something and they were his friends and family, but Killean didn’t think he’d formed any attachments he couldn’t handle losing. He’d been wrong.
Simone’s mother also came to visit them once a week. Awkward was a feeling he’d been completely unfamiliar with until the petite woman with graying auburn hair and piercing green eyes walked through the door.
It took her some time to warm up to him, but she’d been unfailingly polite. On her last visit, they discussed more than the weather by debating if a good pruning might save the pear tree in the garden. He figured it was progress.
He glanced over at Simone as she dipped her roller into the tray of paint before slapping it against the wall. Yellow paint speckled her nose, cheeks, and the bandana she’d tied around her hair. The baggy coveralls she wore hid most of her lush figure, but the sight of her warmed a heart he believed deadened before her.
He’d spent the years following the death of his family as nothing more than a walking zombie until she entered his life. Now, even with his constant battle against his more sinister urges, he’d never felt more alive or loved.
Setting his brush on the tray, he walked over and wrapped his arms around her waist before drawing her against his chest.
“You’re going to make a mess!” Simone laughed when he ran his finger over the roller in her hand before streaking paint down her delicate nose.
“That’s the point,” he told her as he turned her in his arms and started peeling the coveralls from her. He proceeded to use the paint to emphasize the beautiful dips and hollows of her body while she painted his.
It was almost nightfall before Simone dragged herself from Killean’s arms. When she stretched her arms over her head, the dry paint coating her skin cracked yet felt strangely pleasant. Killean propped his head on his hand as he watched her with love shining in his eyes.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“I’m filthy, thanks to you,” she replied.
“I didn’t hear you complaining.”
“And you won’t next time either.” She bent to kiss his forehead and danced back when he tried to grab her. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Minx!” he called after her.
“You’re incorrigible!” she shot back as she strolled from the room.
“You wouldn’t have me any other way!”
No, she wouldn’t. Leaving the wood floors Killean had laid down in what she’d come to consider their room, she entered the foyer. The marble was cold beneath her bare feet as she padded across to the hall on the other side. They’d been here for a month now, but she still experienced a chill every time she entered a shadowed corridor. Simone swore she felt the eyes of those long gone from this residence staring at her from the shadows as she walked, but when she spun to face them, she never saw anything.
“You're an idiot. There’s no such thing as ghosts,” she muttered. And though she believed this to be true and had yet to experience any sign of the paranormal within the old building, the hair on her neck rose.
She’d learned enough history to know when this place was functioning it hadn’t been one of joy for those residing here. The residents had suffered here, and not just from whatever ailment landed them here, but also at the hands of those seeking to cure them. Maybe those with the supposed cure meant well, but in some cases, they’d done more harm than good, and she felt that lingering suffering in these corridors.
Thankfully, the one remodeled bathroom was the second door off the hall, and she didn’t have to be in the shadows for long. Stepping into the bathroom Killean remodeled, she flicked on the switch to illuminate the crème walls, black marble counters around the sink, and the tan tiles of the shower stall. She stepped into the shower, slid the door closed, and scrubbed the paint from her skin before exiting.
Opening the cabinets beneath the sink, she removed two towels and wrapped one around her hair and the other around herself before emerging from the bathroom. A cloud of steam followed her out the door.
When she walked back into their temporary bedroom, she discovered Killean standing by the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows he recently installed. The original windows had been much smaller, but Killean had knocked out more wall space to make room for these. Now that it was dark out, he’d thrown open the heavy drapes to welcome the night.
In the glass, his reflection was almost serene. She stopped to savor his lean, well-muscled body splattered with paint and bathed in moonlight. She’d come to love this brazen, harsh, powerful, tender man more than she ever believed it was possible to love someone.
The scar on his face and the one on his chest had faded a little, something he attributed to their bond, but they would never disappear entirely. He received them too early in life for them to vanish entirely, but unlike his outer scars, Simone knew Killean’s emotional scars healed with every passing day.
Killean’s head turned toward her, and he smiled. Once so rare, those smiles were becoming a daily occurrence that brightened her life far more than the sun could.
Eventually, his old life with Ronan and the others would resume, but she hated the idea of anything intruding on the reprieve from the real world they’d been granted in this lonely place. And she wouldn’t let him return until he was ready. She didn’t want to risk him returning to the war too soon and losing all the progress he’d made in coming to terms with his past and the actions he’d taken to save her.
“It’s a good night for a walk,” he said as he stepped away from the window.
“It is,” she agreed.
She dressed while he went to shower, and when he returned, he pulled on some clothes, looped his arm through hers, and led her out the door. They wandered into the gardens that had become a labor of love for her. Before being taken, she was learning to grow food that could be harvested for her husband’s dinner. Now she worked in the garden because she enjoyed plunging her hands into the earth and getting them dirty.
When he discovered her growing love of plants and her interest in learning more about them, Killean ordered her books on plant ID and care. She was enjoying studying those books to learn more about the different species and the proper way to prune and care for them. She had a talent for bringing plants on the edge of death back to life, and she took pride in her developing skill. Under her hands, the garden was flourishing again.
Simone rested her head on Killean’s shoulder while they strolled the path she’d cleared this week. Orange daylilies and red roses lined it. Behind them, and staggered throughout the landscape, was a various assortment of plants, some of which were in bloom. The full moon illuminated the cracked and uneven bricks beneath their feet and the owl watching them from the branches of an oak tree.
“It looks amazing,” Killean said. “You’ve done wonders here.”
“I think I’ll be able to save the magnolia tree and those azaleas,” she replied as she pointed to the struggling bushes that had been buried beneath vines until today. “I’m not sure about that cluster of rhododendrons, the bittersweet was deeply entangled in them.”
“If anyone can bring them back to life, it’s you,” Killean murmured as he kissed her temple.
Pleased by his confidence in her, Simone squeezed his arm. “I know our time here is only temporary, but I don’t want it to end.”
“Neither do I,” Killean admitted, but the end would come.