It was only a month later from the moment Canute claimed him that Haru had finally set foot in Monaco, at the Chateau Sanguine.

The plane ride was exhilarating…and terrifying. He’d never been so high up, and Haru had been scared that the only thing that kept them from plunging into a cold, briny death was this flying, steel machine.

Needless to say, he was happy when he finally touched ground once more. Even though it took nearly a day—or was it more than a day? The terror kept Haru on his toes—to get from Kyoto to Canute’s home.

His eyes lit up when he saw the sea. It was so different from the waters of Japan. The water here seemed bluer. There were so many boats in the bay, so many yachts, and so many people with creamy white skin and blonde hair. Canute didn’t look out of place here the way he did in Kyoto. Here, it was Haru who was out of sorts.

Still, people didn’t look at him the way that people gawked at Canute. Here, it seemed like he was just a person.

That was both a happy and sad thing to Haru, who wanted to fit in, and yet he felt as though he might not.

Monaco was bustling in a way that Kyoto was not. Even in the nearby wooded areas, the sounds of people, of city life, was so loud, so blatant. In Monaco, Haru could hear the ocean just as loudly as he could hear life all around him. The people were taller, seemed happier and less stressed, but he could also tell that many of them carried themselves with just the slightest tinge of arrogance. He was definitely not in Kyoto anymore, and he wasn’t even in Japan.

The people were just…not the same.

It was just so…different.

Even Momo, who now lay in Haru’s lap, seemed to feel different. The dog was usually boundlessly energetic, yet now he was quiet and calm as those canine eyes watched everything pass by.

Haru had been openly gawking at everything and everyone and he was sure he would have made someone uncomfortable had he actually been walking outside, not sitting here, in a heavily-tinted town car, with glass that helped protect vampires against damaging sunlight.

Not that Haru thought sunlight would damage him. In fact, it still didn’t leave his mind that he and his Kindred were as different as night and day.

But that didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was that they were one being, especially now that their bond was finally complete.

Haru smiled. In some way, he supposed, he should have been thankful for the circumstances that brought him and Canute together, and how they brought him here, to Monaco, on the other side of the world.

In fact, Haru wouldn’t have been able to come here if it hadn’t been for Lady Himiko. But giving up his life and living at the shrine to come here was a big, albeit necessary step that Haru knew he needed to take. Canute couldn’t live there with Momo and Kaguya. They wouldn’t have enough space, and Canute needed to cash a favor in with Lady Himiko anyway after all that he’d done for them.

A tangled web of lies, all leading to Haru and Canute’s chance encounter, and the first big obstacle—hopefully the only obstacle—that they needed to face together.

He wouldn’t have gone through any of it if he kept his old life at the shrine.

And Haru knew he had been replaced, anyway. Kaguya was happy with her new kami, and the woods surrounding their shrine looked better than ever. Life went on, as it always did.

Haru no longer had a place in his old life. He had only this one to look forward to, with Canute.

That was all that mattered now.

Ranmaru was gone. Lord Oda and Lady Himiko were brokering a treaty. Oda was paying restitution for his part in starting the war between his family and Himiko’s, and Canute told him that everything was quiet once more. The conclave of vampire patriarchs and matriarchs were at peace, although Canute told Haru that they were always just a hair’s breadth from a full-out fight, anyway.

Not that Haru—nor Canute, for that matter—needed to think about that now.

Haru grasped the vampire’s hand a little more firmly as they passed along the roads riddled with cars and people, and all alongside them, the sea. And yachts. It seemed like there were hundreds of yachts.

Canute was speaking into his phone in French, and Haru looked at him. He was supposed to not understand this, and yet every word from his lover’s mouth seemed to resonate with him. Phrases that were foreign became as intelligible as the sayings and the phrases Haru’s grandfather used to tell him every day.

“I’m coming, Cyrus,” Canute said into his phone. “And I have someone I’d like you to meet.”

Canute held his hand as well, smiling and pocketing his phone. Haru looked at his lover, so different from how he looked in Kyoto. Here, in a three-piece suit, he looked dapper as ever. Debonair, almost, and at ease. Canute was in his element. He didn’t look like a fish out of the water, in a land that was not his own.

The car finally dipped down into a basement parking level into the side of a building that looked like a tinted glass pillar pushing straight into the heavens.

“We’re here,” Canute said. “This is the Chateau Sanguine.”

Haru blinked. “This is your home?”

Canute shook his head. “No. This is our home. Welcome home, mon coeur.”

Haru blinked. He walked out of the doors, holding onto Canute’s hand. As they entered the elevator and found their way up the glass tube heading into the main lobby of the hotel, Haru could see the bustle of activity. Men in suits, women in pristine dresses, waiters and waitresses all moving along a sleek, modern building that looked very different from Himiko’s.

For all of Haru’s excitement, as he scanned the room, he felt a sense of peace. A sense of belonging. Like a warm embrace, or the safety of a cocoon that wrapped around him, or even the feeling of safety and happiness he always felt in his little shrine home back in Japan.

Everything had changed, irrevocably, and maybe for the better.

He wasn’t the old Haru anymore. He held Momo close to his chest.

And then, he smiled.

“I’m home.”

 

The End