"I wanted to protect your life. I—still do, but I would not be able to not tell you after noticing the mate bond."

"I understand your reasons," she says, softly. "I'm not mad at you about it."

"But you're still upset," he says, softly.

"... Yeah. It. It hurt." Her voice breaks a little, there. "One minute I was just on a nice date, and the next I realize that my date is probably lying to me, and the next I learn he's a vampire and I might die for knowing and that he's in, in creepy mind control magic love at first sight with me and I have the power to smash his heart into tiny pieces by accident and, and. And I have no one else to cry on besides him about it, even though I realize it probably makes him incredibly guilty, because I can't tell anyone but my brother the circumstances, and my brother can't be here because he might accidentally kill me and. I feel like I have very understandable reasons to be upset, here."

He nods. God, she smells so good. Apart from smelling like food.

"If I'd realized earlier I would have told you."

"I know. I get the impression that if you'd known from the start you wouldn't have opened with lying?"

"I would not."

"Right. Because that's just sensible, since you're presumably stuck with me forever. Unless this thing can attach to multiple people at once and you can find magic mind control love again?"

"No, and it is not clear that you would find someone else if I died before you mated to me."

"What a charming system. Ugh." Grumpy burrito cuddles.

"I'm sorry," he repeats. "...we are otherwise genuinely compatible, though. This is not making me into someone I am not, nor would it have made me love you if you were not a person I would not otherwise love."

"... I mean, how reliable is that? Do a lot of vampires go through the trouble of romancing their human mates, or do they just go, 'Yep, this will be symmetrical if I turn them and it's illegal to tell them beforehand, so I'm just going to do that,' and then do it?"

"...most of them do the latter," he admits. "But people's personalities do not change upon turning—the opposite, really—and mate relationships really do work on a personal level beyond the fact that they love each other forever."

"Well, that's better than the alternative, I suppose." Snuggle. "I'd rather there not have been any mind control involved at all, though. I'd rather just. Let you fall in love with me or not based around me. Let it be a thing we build together instead of a thing that trips and falls into my lap with all of these, these things I have to worry about because I don't want to break your heart forever."

"You can still do that. We can go on another date, no lying involved, and I can show you who I really am and you can decide for yourself."

"I can do that. You can't. And I can't go back to not knowing, and wouldn't want to. I can't treat this as whatever casual thing I might have treated it as before, because you can't and I care about your well being."

"Yes, but I am personally not... negatively affected by the mind control part. Knowing how it works, I don't mind that this choice has been taken from me, and you do mind that it would, so you could instead choose to make the choice, and I could still have it have been made."

"The thing I wanted has already been stolen," she murmurs. "It's not nothing that I can reject you or not based on your own merits, but it's... I would have also liked to be able to go, 'Ah, yes, he loves me because he chose to and because we're good together and because we treat each other well.' And now I can't do that. It's just mind control. You will love me regardless of if I'm abusive or cruel or tell you to jump into a volcano."

"Yes... but you will not do that, because I would not love someone who did that."

"That... is an awful lot of trust in the mind control's ability to pick out partners for you, James, are you sure you want to trust it that far?"

"Yes," he says, nodding slightly. "Someone else would have noticed it failing before, if it did fail."

"And there aren't people that get stuck in ludicrously unhealthy romances for all eternity? Or where their failure mode ends in both parties dying to overenthusiastic retribution from the law? And you're sure of this?"

"I am not sure of this. I know only about the cases I heard about. And over the past hundred and fifty years I have heard about many cases."

"... Okay." Snuggle. "I hope you'll forgive me if I'd rather try to be the sort of person that you'd at least be proud to be in love with. Not be inclined to regret. Regardless of anything else."

He doesn't say "and that's why I love you," but he thinks it. He just snuggles up.