"So if you bit me, I'd feel what you were feeling?"

Aidan nodded.

Damien considered that in silence for a long time. "Do you ever bite people?"

Aidan tried to think how to answer that. "Well... I never bite anybody who doesn't want me to. But remember I said I'd bitten your mother. And my wife... we share blood quite often."

"Why? I don't think I'd want to get bit by somebody!"

He smiled. "Because of the connection. That's how I know, for certain, that my wife loves me. And I guess it's also the reason I don't live here," he added a bit more soberly. "I know that your mother likes me a lot, she cares for me, but she doesn't love me. She certainly loves you though." He smiled again.

Damien had stopped whittling. He looked down at the remnants of his stick, unseeing. "It would be nice," he said at length, "to know that somebody loved me."

Aidan blinked. "I'm sure your mother does," he said.

"I guess. Do... do you love me?"

Aidan felt a stab of pain. He wished yet again that he could be here, could be a real father to his son. "Yes I do. Very much."

"Then why can't you stay? Why do you have to leave?" Damien burst out. He looked angry, and hurt, and Aidan felt another stab to see that he was crying. He put his arm around Damien's shoulders.

"I do love you, Damien. I want to stay. But I have to choose. I can't be in two places at once. If I stayed here, than my four other children would be alone. And if I stayed here, I would miss my wife very much."

"Can't you just all come here, and live here?"

Aidan sighed. He'd thought about doing just that. But though Flame liked Shauna well enough, and didn't mind these visits, he knew she wouldn't be happy to live next to her, to have that reminder of his betrayal always present. "We can't."

"But why?!"

Aidan shook his head. "I'm not sure I can explain. I love you very much, but my wife... I love her just as much, and my other children just as much, and they wouldn't be happy here. I'm sorry."

"I don't believe you!" Damien was still crying, and now he shrugged off Aidan's arm and stood. "I don't believe you."

Aidan looked up at him. "I'm sorry. I wish I could prove it to you, but I don't know how I can. I'll come as often as I can, I do promise that."