The scene was awkward.
Upon first glance, however, one would not have found the sight worth even a second look. It seemed, after all, natural enough: a couple under the shade of a broad oak to shield themselves from the Frontier's harsh summer sun—presumably lovers—the woman with her legs folded under her as she read a well-worn hardcover, the man casually laid out on the grass with the brim of a large traveller's hat pulled low over his eyes. A picture of simplistic romanticism.
Frontier folk, though, were far more observant than that.
Closer inspection would have revealed large anomalies in the picturesque scene. The woman was named Doris Lang, and was a former victim of the Nobility. Dangerous enough in these times, and one would have thought that she would have been scarred by such an event, yet there she was reading aloud from a thick tome on the history of the Nobility quite animatedly. The youth next to her should have been bothered by such enthusiasm on the topic, but he seemed unmoved, lying in silence except for the rare interjection here and there to point out the narrative's historical inaccuracies, his sentences clipped and to the point, almost bitter in their tone.
But it was not the man's complacence that made him seem out of place, but rather the aura he exuded—dark and foreboding. He was a dhampir and a Vampire Hunter, the one many knew only as "D", and while he appeared at relative ease, anyone who had encountered him knew he was already well on the alert—inhumanly so.
But his cold demeanor and relative silence didn't seem to bother Doris in the slightest, and she continued to prattle on about the topic she was reading about, peppering the Hunter with questions that never received an answer.
Twirling a lock of dark hair in consternation, Doris snapped the book shut, having read enough before flopping down on the Hunter's chest with a heaving sigh. Were her companion from a lesser stock, he would have had the wind knocked out of him. But as it were, D didn't even flinch, and merely opted to tilt his chin forward slightly to look down upon her from the corner of his eye.
"Do you know why I love you?"
It was a typical question many asked their lovers, usually to get a ribbing, self-satisfied response in return. But D's expression remained stoic and masked as he replied.
"No."
His answer was honest, not prone to placating others just because it was the right thing to do. However, he did not frame the answer as if he were confused or self-pitying because he did not know her reasons. He was merely stating fact.
Raising her hand to cup his chin in her palm, Doris smiled as she smoothed the side of his cheek with her thumb as if she expected the response.
"It used ta' be silly reasons," she began, eyes softening in a remembered memory. "When I first saw you, you were like a dream. What girl wouldn't want you? You were beautiful, strong—a knight in shinin' armor. An' you hardly spoke. You were the mystery every girl had been taught ta' avoid since childhood. I wanted you very badly, just for that."
D flinched, almost imperceptibly, as if stung by her words; and if Doris hadn't been holding him, she would have missed it completely. D's jaw tightened for a second, muscles straining underneath the skin, before relaxing.
"Those seem rather superficial."
Doris knew better than to think she had offended him—D was, as a rule, a hard man to rile—but she caught his train of thought.
Such reasons were superficial, and for a dhampir, such attributes were merely for attracting and enticing his next meal rather than he had been blessed with them at birth. To him, they were a curse, something to be abhorred because they were unnatural.
D had never been satisfied with who he was.
Doris shook her head before turning her ear to his chest to listen to the faint sound of his heartbeat.
"Why I love you, D," she said at last, "is because your heart is human."