Mateo’s Chapter 6

A few nights after our “two to a coffin” adventure, my phone rang.

I almost didn’t answer. Hardly anyone called me anymore — not on that phone, not from that world. But when I saw the name on the screen, something in my chest tightened.

I stepped into the office before picking up. “Hey, Mom.”

“Mateo… I wanted you to hear it from me. Diego and I divorced.”

Her voice was steady, but I could hear the exhaustion underneath — the kind that comes from holding yourself together for too long.

I sank into the chair. “Mom, I’m… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she said quickly. “And don’t you dare think this has anything to do with you being gone. It doesn’t. Not even a little.”

I closed my eyes. She knew me too well.

“It just wasn’t working anymore,” she continued. “We tried. For a long time. But sometimes trying isn’t enough.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I wasn’t sure there was anything to say. Divorce wasn’t new in our family — but it still hit hard every time.

She took a breath. “And… Sydney moved out.”

Sydney had stayed with Melody after their divorce — clinging to the familiar, to the house, to the life she’d built. Hearing she’d finally left felt like the end of something much bigger than a marriage.

“Where is she now?” I asked.

“With friends for now,” she said. “She’ll figure it out. She always does.”

There was a pause — not awkward, just heavy.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She let out a soft, tired laugh. “I will be. It’s just… a lot of endings all at once.”

I understood that more than she knew.

“I’m glad you told me,” I said quietly.

“I’ll always tell you,” she replied. “Even if you’re far away. Even if things are… different now.”

Different.
Yeah. That was one word for it.

We talked a little longer — surface‑level things, safe things — and when we finally hung up, I sat there for a while, staring at the dark computer screen.

Ginger and Diego. Mom and Dad.
Melody and Sydney. My grandmothers.
Two marriages gone in the span of a year.

And me…
living in a world none of them could ever understand.

Lilith found me a few minutes later, leaning against the doorway, her hand resting on her growing belly.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

I nodded, even though the answer was complicated. “Just family stuff.”

She crossed the room and sat down across from me. “You can tell me when you’re ready.”

The world had been quiet for a long time — too quiet, Lilith said. Forgotten Hollow was stable, the family was steady, and the changes we’d made were finally taking root.

Which meant it was only a matter of time before someone noticed.

And they did.

Not one vampire.
Two.
Both Grand Masters.

They didn’t settle in Forgotten Hollow — that would’ve been too obvious — but somewhere out in the world, close enough that Lilith felt the shift like a pressure drop in the air.

“Two Grand Masters don’t just appear,” she said one night, pacing the office while I sat with the Encyclopedia Vampirica open in front of me. “They move with purpose. They choose their ground.”

“And you want to know which way they lean,” I said.

She stopped pacing. “Exactly.”

So she invited them — one at a time, just in case.

The first was Alina Doherty, a sharp‑eyed woman with a calm, unreadable aura. She arrived at the sanctuary with the kind of confidence only centuries could buy, but she bowed her head to Lilith in a gesture that felt… respectful. Not submissive. Not challenging. Just acknowledgment.

The second, Janessa Bloom, was warmer, more curious, but no less powerful. She studied the house like she was cataloging every detail, every shadow, every heartbeat.

Lilith watched them both with the same expression she used when reading ancient texts — focused, analytical, quietly dangerous.

After meeting them separately, she made her decision.

“They’re not a threat,” she told me. “Not to us. Not to the Hollow. And we need them.”

“For what?” I asked, even though I already knew.

“For what’s coming.”

She meant the fledglings — the new vampires who were starting to surface, drawn by the stability we’d built and the promise of something better than the chaos Vlad had ruled with for centuries.

Lilith invited Alina and Janessa to move into the fledglings’ house — not as guards, not as leaders, but as house moms, guiding any new vampires who needed structure, safety, or someone to keep them from burning down the kitchen.

She sat beside me in the living room, scrolling through her phone, her expression thoughtful.

“We need to start building our vampire family,” she said.

I nodded. I’d known this was coming — the responsibility, the legacy, the work. Turning vampires wasn’t just about power. It was about guidance. Protection. Teaching them how to survive without becoming monsters.

“How many do we need?” I asked.

“Five for you,” she said. “Four for me.”

I blinked. “Four? I thought—”

“You’re my first,” she said softly. “My first offspring. I’ve never turned anyone else.”

Something warm and heavy settled in my chest at that — something like pride, something like belonging.

“And you still need five,” she added. “To build your house. Your line.”

My line.
The words felt too big, too heavy, too soon.

Pregnancy is strange for anyone, I guess.
For a vampire? Apparently it’s a whole different category of strange.

Lilith’s newest complaint was clothes.

“They’re suffocating,” she said one night, tugging at her shirt like it was trying to strangle her. “Everything rubs. Everything pinches. Everything is wrong.”

So she stopped wearing them whenever she could get away with it.

Which is how we ended up with a new nightly routine: Lilith stretched out in the front yard, soaking up moonlight like it was the only thing keeping her alive, and me standing guard beside her, practicing my powers.

I stood a few feet away, focusing on my alluring visage, letting the aura roll off me in waves while I tried to keep it controlled. It was harder than it looked — the power wanted to spill outward, wanted to pull attention, wanted to be noticed.

Good thing only vampires lived in the neighborhood now.
Any human walking by would’ve felt something they couldn’t explain.

Lilith cracked an eye open. “You’re getting better at that.”

“Trying,” I said. “I don’t want to accidentally charm the mail carrier.”

She snorted. “You already did that once.”

“That was before I knew what I was doing.”

She stretched, belly rounding under the moonlight, and let out a content sigh. “This is the only time I feel comfortable.”

“I know,” I said. And I did. I’d seen her try to get dressed earlier — the frustration, the discomfort, the way nothing fit right anymore. If moonbathing helped, I wasn’t going to argue.

But the real challenge came when she insisted on staying that way while feeding.

“Lilith,” I said the first time she tried it, “maybe you should… put something on?”

“No,” she said simply, already heading toward the gate. “Too uncomfortable.”

And then she was gone, moving with that effortless vampire grace, leaving me standing there trying to decide whether to laugh, panic, or sprint after her.

I chose sprinting.

Nothing tests your self‑control like watching your very pregnant partner stalk down the sidewalk, completely unbothered, looking for a late‑night snack.

I kept my jealousy in check — mostly.
It wasn’t the feeding. I’d gotten used to that.
It was the idea of anyone seeing her like this, even for a second.

But she always came back to me.
Always.

And every time, she’d give me that look — amused, knowing, a little smug — like she could feel the jealousy simmering under my skin and found it endearing.

Pregnancy was changing her.
It was changing me too.

Simmers!

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