"You will. Eventually. But it will take a while, yeah. I should—hmm, maybe I should shift myself to have human blood, so you can smell it as it will be with a real live person."

"No."

"...No. Not until I'm better with non-person blood."

"Okay," she nods. "You can take as long as you want, we have a whole year off for this."

"Yeah. It's... Probably best if you're the first one I smell human blood in. Since I have the best motivation in the world not to hurt you, and don't have that for random hikers. But not for a little while."

"If anything can beat it it's the mate bond... but I'd give it even odds, anyway."

"Yeah. I almost wanted to hurt you for getting close to my blood. Despite the fact that you made it. I don't want to mix that with it being your blood until I have practice with it. Let's... Talk about memory architecture with the blood still there, maybe even add a little more. I'll get used to thinking through the scent that way. Though I still want to fill up first."

So he can fill up on bear before she makes some more human blood.

And he can continue breathing it in and steadfastly not tearing something's throat out.

This is helped by the fact that there are no throats to be torn out here.

Yeah, well, tell that to Terel's shiny new instincts.

He's visibly distracted while talking about computer design over the next few hours.

They can stop anytime.

Yeah this is getting old fast. "Could you get rid of the blood now? I'm... I can work more on comfort near the stuff later."

"Sure." She drops it into the ground and buries it—doesn't drink it, she's done human blood before and she knows the difference and much prefers her brain on animal blood.

And now he can kiss her without growling except in a good way!

Very good, that. Also extremely hot, that he can make these noises now.

Gosh being a mated vampire is distracting. Wonderfully distracting. To both of them.

Is there anything else he'd like to do now that he's a vankire?

Fly around with the wing pack! And chat with friends and family on the crystals a bit.

But beyond that, not really. Nothing that doesn't require being human-safe.

How about Empire Imports?

"Have you checked what our and their legal status even is now? I'm not particularly revenge leaning but I'm worrying they'll be shady in other ways now..."

"I have not, and I don't really have the faintest clue. I'm not sure they were shady, though? Since apparently the law that ducked us over was a very obscure one that had changed very recently..."

"Well, it was more the crown's meddling... I'm sure they just wanted their tax money. So you're right."

"I should probably call them and figure it out."

"I wouldn't mind if you did."

So she does.