Rhia stared at Nolan, her jaw opening and closing like a fish out of water. After some amount of time, she blinked and shook her head. "I'm sorry," she managed a desperate laugh. "I thought you just said..." Her smile dropped when he didn't start laughing and correcting himself. "No... You can't be... Are you serious?"

"It's a rough estimate." He lifted his shoulders in a slow shrug. "Humans at the time didn't track time the way we do now, and the Ancients thought on different scales."

"Twenty thou..." she couldn't even say it. Her breathing was shallow and shaky. "Humans didn't... look like you back then."

"No..." he hesitated. "Most of them didn't. But there were a few islands where magic sort of... concentrated. Ireland, most of the Polynesian islands, Japan... Atlantis." He watched her reaction carefully at the mention of the famed lost city. "The humans there were heavily affected by magic and closer resembled what we consider modern man. It might be more accurate to say that we were an entirely different breed of humanity."

Rhia's knees felt week. She forced herself to walk forward before they gave out under her. Nolan watched her silently as she walked past him back to the house and into the kitchen where she started open cupboards. The third revealed what she was looking for. She opened the bottle of tequila and took a heavy swig straight from the bottle. The liquor scorched her throat and burned pleasantly all the way to her stomach. She slid into a bar stool with the bottle. Nolan opened his mouth, but she held up a finger to stop him. She took another big gulp. "How?" she asked when she could speak again.

Nolan stepped back up to the counter and started cutting vegetables, like it was a totally normal night, and they were having a totally normal conversation, and absolutely nothing mind-blowing was going on. "The magic that extends my life is old and powerful." He explained vaguely. "I can't explain it."

"Try."

He chuckled, shaking his head. "You misunderstand me. I can't explain it because it is forbidden. It's the kind of magic that goes wrong more often than it goes right."

"Yeah, I guess the Counsel wouldn't want a bunch of true immortals running around, would they?" she tried to smile, but it felt more like a grimace.

"It wasn't the Counsel that forbade it." He dumped a pile of chopped carrots into a pan full of frothing butter. "It was the dragons."

"Fuck me." The third swig from the bottle made her queasy so she replaced the cap. "And your dumbass didn't listen to a dragon?"

"You are boldly assuming I had all the information."

He wasn't smiling anymore, and her nausea intensified. The tense silence stretched between them for a few minutes. "Sorry." she muttered.

"Don't worry about it. One day... maybe... I'll tell you about it." He shrugged. "If you want to stick around, that is."

"Are your..." she hesitated. She didn't know it would be so hard to talk about this. "Descendants going be upset that your girlfriend is a mortal?"

Nolan looked up from his work, a hopeful light shining in his eyes. "My children will be happy knowing that I am happy."

"Then I can't think of any reason why I would leave."

"Even with what I just told you? What I still have to tell you?"

She shrugged. "In for a penny, in for a pound."

Nolan took two steps around the counter, wrapped his arms around her waist and crushed her into him. She squeaked as the air rushed out of her lungs and they burst out laughing. "You are way better than I deserve." He said with a relieved sigh.

"I still have a lot of questions." She laughed.

"And I will answer them to the best of my ability." He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "I know it's a lot to ask, but please understand that there are things I can't talk about."

"Like how you are older than human civilization?"

"Yeah. Like that."

He returned to the stove and added two steaks to a pan with a loud sizzle. She stared at the bottle of liquor and decided against another shot. "You're not... like... secretly the vampire king, are you?"

He chuckled. "No. But Constantine and I go much further back than I implied."

"Yeah, I assumed. How far back, exactly?"

"I met him in my twenties."

"He was... the first vampire... right? Was he...?"

"Yes, he was already a vampire." Nolan's voice was patient. She wondered how many women he had explained this to, but she shoved that thought to the back of her mind with the rest of the trash rolling around in there. "He was the only vampire back then. There wasn't a word for what he was. To the mortals he was just another Ancient."

"But I'm guessing he wasn't?"

Nolan let out a harsh laugh. "Not even close. The elves were shitting themselves over his appearance. Which is one of the few things that has never gotten old over the years."

"One vampire had the elves on edge?" she raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, gods no. They probably wouldn't have thought twice about him if he were just one vampire. But, as it always is in politics, it's who you know. And Constantine happened to have caught the eye of the dragon queen herself."

Rhia reached for the tequila again. It took another two shots before she was sufficiently tipsy for her brain to accept that last statement. Nolan plated up their food and guided her to the dining table while he waited for her to come to terms with the... she'd lost count of the mind-blowing revelations he'd revealed so far tonight. Three? Three sounded both correct and too few. "By... caught her eye... do you mean...?"

"They're sleeping together, yes."

"They were or they are?"

"Are. Currently. Or, at least, as of the last time I saw him ten years ago. I think I would have heard about it if she decided to end it."

"It's a... rocky relationship?"

"Relationship is not how I would describe it at all. Constantine is madly in love with her and would do absolutely anything for her. Luna... It's hard to explain with dragons and dragonkin. They're so damn old that it's impossible to hold them to our standards, or even the standards of the elves or fae. They are the Ancients to the Ancients. I have to imagine she feels something, otherwise she wouldn't have done all that she has for him."

Rhia leaned back in her chair and stared at he plate. She'd already eaten half the steak and hadn't even noticed if it tasted good. On the surface, this seemed perfectly normal. Two people on a first date having a nice dinner and talking about their friend's dating history. Her mind accepted that. Something started going wrong when she had to accept that the friend in this case was the goddamned vampire king and his lover was a mother-fucking dragon.

"The elves know better than anyone that a dragon's affections can be temperamental at best." Nolan continued as if it were the most normal thing in the world. "So, they kept an eye on him and, when they felt it would benefit them, they kissed his ass."

"How did you become friends?"

"I was a diplomat for my people. He'd been living on lands owned by my family. When it was discovered that he wasn't mortal, the human consulate was concerned that he might be a danger to everyone on the island. I vouched for him. He wanted to know the kind of person who would blindly stand up for a blood-sucking ancient, and I was curious about the blood-sucking ancient. Curiosity makes strange bedfellows." The last sentence was filled with so much bitterness, Rhia actually flinched. He either noticed or felt how uncomfortable she was suddenly and smiled softly. "I think that's enough history for tonight. You have enough to think about."

Rhia just nodded. She tilted her head back and stared up at the elaborate crystal chandelier above them. A lot to think about was an egregious understatement. But she had calmed down a little. Or maybe she was in shock. She was willing to bet on shock.

She stood up. "Give me a tour." She said, holding out her hand.

Nolan quirked an eyebrow upwards. "Excuse me?"

"A tour." She said slower. "Your living room and kitchen together are bigger than my brother's entire house. Show me around."

He stood up slowly, still giving her a questioning look, but took her hand and led her across the living room to a pair of doors. Bedroom. A large bedroom with a queen-sized bed and its own door to the main floor bathroom. There weren't any pictures on the walls or clothes in the closet. It had to be a spare room.

Back towards the front door and through a pair of glass French doors was a large combination office and library with heavy bookshelves lining the wall and filled with books and a desk was made of the same heavy wood. She stepped up to the books and ran her finger down the spine of a large medical text.

"Not one for fiction?"

"Not in my office." He shrugged. "This is where I work, not where I relax."

"You don't get enough of that at the hospital?"

"My department is over six-thousand cases behind. I don't usually take time off."

"I'm honoured that I'm deemed worthy of one of your rare nights off." She winked.

"I didn't have tonight off. I made time for you."

"You didn't have to do that." She followed him out of the office and started up the stairs to the second floor. "We were already going out the day after tomorrow."

"I wanted to spend the night with you. And after that fight with your dad, I suspected you needed a good distraction."

"Don't sell yourself short. You are an excellent distraction."

He rolled his eyes but was smiling. "What does he do for the government, anyway." He tried to keep his tone casual, but she could tell he was fishing for information.

"F.B.I.," she shrugged and reached for a door handle. "C.I.A., D.E.A., N.S.A.... you can throw the alphabet against the wall and probably come up with an acronym for who he works for."

The new door led to a smaller room pained a bright green and child's bed in the corner. "My grandson's room when he stays over." He explained. "His sister's is next door. So, you don't even know what he does?"

"Mom and Maddox said he used to travel a lot before me." She closed the boy's room and continued towards the third floor, skipping the granddaughter's room all together. "Lucky me got him every day of my childhood. If you get enough whiskey in him and Mark they'll start reminiscing about the 'old days'. It's mostly the same old racist jargon, but every once and a while they get out an actual story. Their favourite is some big secret, Mission-Impossible-style thing they did in the nineties. None of us were ever privy to the details but they love to bring it up."

The top of the stairs of the third floor opened directly onto a large bachelor-style suit. Long, dark rafters were exposed in the ceiling, giving the room a warm, rustic feel. An enormous four-poster bed was against the wall, perfectly made as if no one had ever slept in it. Of course. Nolan was too organized and particular to not make his bed every morning. She almost felt ashamed comparing this room, with everything in its perfect place, to her own room and her bed that was unmade and acted as a hamper most of the time. In the corner was a small, well-worn leather couch and a small liquor cabinet and another full bookshelf. This was where he relaxed. The whole room had a warmer, more personal feel than the rest of the house.

She turned to face him again and felt the butterflies return with full force. Affection danced in his eyes. He took a leisurely step towards her, reaching up to cup her chin. "I was going to tell you about my family." He said softly. "I didn't want to overwhelm you on our first date."

"Well that plan went to shit." She laughed. "But it wasn't the family that overwhelmed me."

"Yeah," he sighed. "I know."

"Were you... going to tell me all of that eventually too?"

He didn't answer immediately, which spoke louder than what he did say. "I hadn't decided yet. I wanted to see where this would go. If you ended up deciding you didn't want to be with me, I wasn't going to burden you with information you can never share with anyone."

A playful smile tugged at her lips. "I can't tell anyone?" she said in a teasing tone. "What will happen if I do?"

He caught onto her game immediately and his hand tightened ever so slightly on her chin. "Well, I would have to punish you. You wouldn't want to disappoint me, would you?"

Rhia's eyes fluttered and a tiny gasp escaped her lips. He chuckled and took several steps forward, forcing her back until the back of her knees hit the edge of the bed. "I haven't been able to get you out of my head since the day we met." Her voice was shaky with anticipation.

He pulled her chin up, tilting her head back so he could just barely brush his lips against hers. "What do you see when you think of me?" his hot breath washed over her face.

She struggled to get a hold of her thoughts as he peppered her skin with feather-soft kisses along her jaw. She couldn't tell him what she saw. She could never tell him how badly she wanted him to feed from her. "You..." she gasped. "Us..." her words were replaced by a moan as he kissed her neck.

"Use your words." He teased cruelly. "Tell me what you want, pet."

Oh, god the things she felt when he called her that. He had to know. "Anything." She gasped. "Everything."

He chuckled. "What did I say about making promises you can't keep?" he stepped back and she felt suddenly cold. "Get undressed. Slowly."

His eyes flared red as she tugged at the bottom of her shirt and pulled it over her head. When she wiggled her hips to take off her shorts, he made a sound like a growl of approval. He stopped her there, taking her wrist and tugging her back to him. Her body tingled where he touched her bare skin. His eyes were an ocean of fire and ice.

"Do you trust me?"

~