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I plop down in the chair, the wood creaking from old age and my weight.

“Do you hear yourself? You sound like a child.”

“I’m allowed a free pass. Remember, I’m dying?” I smirk.

He chuckles with a roll of his eyes. Soren’s smile doesn’t reach his lips. “I wish your gift worked on people and not plants; maybe then you’d be okay,” he says out of nowhere, reminding me what was given to me when I was turned.

“I don’t.” My gift is odd. I hardly use it, but I can bring dead plants back to life, conjure them if I need. “I am content not living another day over my time that’s been allotted to me. You know how I feel about that.”

“I’ll never understand you. You’ve never made the best of our life. You always hated what you are.”

I don’t say anything to that. There’s nothing to say or deny. He isn’t wrong. I shouldn’t be alive. I shouldn’t be here. I should have died on that cot.

“Soren, you need to remember, I’m nearly two-hundred and forty years old. I’m tired.” My two-hundred-year lifespan didn’t start until the day I was turned, and I was middle-aged, with no future ahead of me. I had already outlived so many people.

I’m so tired of outliving everyone.

“What happens if you meet your mate?”

I choke on the hot coffee currently slipping down my throat. I cover my mouth, trying to catch the liquid, but it sprays everywhere.

“Goddamn it, Soren.”

He hands me a few napkins, and when I reach for them, he yanks them away.

“Soren,” I say his name with all the annoyance I can muster. “I’m not in the mood for this shit.”

“You never are. I’m serious. What if you meet your mate?”

“I would have already met them.” I don’t mean to sound depressed, but I can’t stop myself. “It’s too late. I’m dying, Soren. There’s nothing that can stop that now. Fate would have already intervened.”

He drags out the chair next to me and hands me the napkins. I clean up my mess, thinking about all the fantasies I used to have about someone loving me the way I loved them.

With every ounce of me. With every breath of me. With every piece of magic that created me. It still wouldn’t be enough to measure how much I’d love the person who, somehow, manages to love me in return.

I’m not easy to love. Hell, I’m not even easy to like.

But I do wish I got to experience love at least once in this lifetime. Just once.

Life ain’t fair though, is it?

No matter if you’re human or paranormal. The world will always continue to spin with or without you in it.

“You don’t know that,” Soren says after a few minutes of silence. He takes the seat next to me, peering down the hall to see if Glenn is coming before he says another word.

Glenn hates talking about my impending death, so we always try not to talk about it around him.

“You don’t know if Fate will intervene yet. You’re just guessing. I think you don’t want a mate. You’ve already convinced yourself you want to die.”

“You’re right. I have. Because who the fuck am I going to meet, Soren? I’m in the middle of the woods in Alaska, how I like it, I might add, and it isn’t very often we get newcomers.”

“Well, maybe your mate will be on the plane bringing us supplies today?”

Ah, the good old skywagon coming to drop off our bi-monthly supplies.

“I’ve met Earl, Soren. He is the pilot every time. I think I would know if he were my mate.”

Soren clears his throat and hides his face by lowering his head, sipping on his coffee.