Chapter 1: See You Later
Some monsters are created.
Others are inherited
But the worst kind…
are the ones you love.
The full moon dangled in the sky like a silver coin suspended against velvet firmament, flooding Stellis with ethereal glow. Jayden crossed the central park, his steps muffled by dew-soaked grass. Mighty oaks stretched branches toward the moon, leaves whispering on wind carrying scents from the night market three blocks away—cinnamon and cardamom, fresh bread, and something sharper, more metallic. Stellis at night pretended to be a postcard, but Jayden could feel beneath his skin that it was nothing but lacquer.
“Ah.”
The word slipped from his lips like breath, barely audible. The moon tugged at something deep in his chest, a recognition older than memory. Its light seeped beneath his skin, caressing the blood coursing through his veins with mounting certainty. Beautiful. The kind of beauty where time ceased to exist. For a brief moment, from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed something blue in the air. He blinked, and it was gone.
Pain detonated in his nape. Fangs, razor-sharp and pitiless, pierced skin with surgical precision. The attacker’s cold breath grazed his ear, the metallic taste of blood flooded his mouth, and the world tilted, colors bleeding into a dull smear. For a split second, beneath pure terror, something in his veins quivered with ghostly, wicked euphoria that clenched his gut in shame even as it slammed full force.
The world tilted, colors bled and merged as vision flickered. A voice murmured in his ear, soft as silk and cold as winter rain.
“See you… later.”
Terror raked him from inside, clawing up his throat. The attacker’s breath iced his skin, and in the touch, the very presence, something made him shudder.
“No…”
His legs buckled. Grass rushed up, blades tickling his cheek as awareness sputtered like a dying flame. Through pain, haze, and blood loss, he glimpsed the attacker’s silhouette—golden hair snaring moonlight, pale skin absorbing more than reflecting it, eyes blazing with inhuman intensity. Features striking him with recognition so profound it felt like staring into a warped mirror of himself.
“What…?”
The word died on his lips as darkness swallowed him.
The impact sound rent the park’s night hush. The attacker’s body smashed into an ancient oak’s trunk with bone-shattering force, the tree groaning under the blow. Bark peeled in slabs, trunk quaking from roots to crown.
Footsteps neared with predatory grace.
She moved like death that had learned to walk—each step calculated, lethally precise. Dark hair framed a face sculpted from marble and shadow, eyes harboring the chill of someone who’d killed too many and spent too many nights exactly like this. Weapons materialized in her hands with fluid certainty—twin barrels catching moonlight, hurling it back like an accusation. The gun found its mark without hesitation, rock-steady, aimed straight at the figure peeling from the splintered trunk.
The attacker turned, golden eyes locking hers across the divide. His mouth corners lifted in a smile devoid of warmth, brimming with recognition and something like amusement. Blood stained his lips—Jayden’s blood—and he made no move to wipe it.
“Had to be you…”
The words bore weight beyond meaning, history coiled in syllables speaking of old battles and older grudges. His voice shared his unreal quality—beautiful and terrifying in tandem.
Surprise ghosted her face, lightning-brief but distinct. For a moment she felt a strange prickling inside, like a pulse. Her gun grip didn’t twitch, yet something cracked in her eyes’ expression—a hairline fracture in the ice queen’s mask.
She advanced on the prone form, eyes and barrel never leaving the blond for a second. Each step drew her nearer the young man bleeding into the grass, his transformation-altered features slack in unconsciousness.
“Jayden…”
The word tore from her throat like glass shards, rough with emotion she seldom permitted herself.
“Fuck… I’m sorry.”
The apology hung between predator and prey, living and undead, past refusing burial and future leaking into present with every ticking second. The moon beheld it all from above, mute and eternal, draping silver judgment over the scene.
“…”
“…”
“…”
“Jayden…“—an echo whispered in the darkness—“Jayden…”
Awareness slashed back like a blade carving fog. Jayden’s eyes flew open, pupils dilating to seize alien surroundings. The room had something unmistakably feminine about it—soft gray walls, minimal furniture, a leather jacket slung over a chair back that said practicality over décor. Not his bedroom. No place he recognized.
His hand flew instinctively to his neck, fingers searching for wounds that ought to be there. Smooth skin. No fang trace, no shredded nape. Yet phantom pain throbbed just beneath the surface, memory etched in nerve endings that stubbornly refused to fade. A strange pulse of the heart—not entirely his own.
“What… where am I?”
His breath accelerated, his chest rising and falling in a frenzied rhythm as adrenaline flooded his body.
Underneath the fear, however, something else stirred. Hunger. Not the usual empty-stomach kind, but something deeper, more primal. He didn’t crave food; he craved the warmth pulsing beneath skin—the phantom taste of something thick, coppery-sweet, something that shouldn’t feel familiar but did anyway.
He sat up, his movements jerky, filled with barely contained panic. The bedroom door stood slightly ajar, letting in a narrow strip of light from another room. Whatever awaited him on the other side, he was going to find out. His legs carried him to the door on shaky, unfamiliar steps, as if his joints were the wrong size.
The living room opened before him—sparse, functional, in the same raw style as the bedroom. A small kitchen nook stood in the corner, and beyond the windows stretched the panorama of Stellis. Still no answers. No clue where he was or how he’d gotten there.
“You’re finally awake.”
The voice cut through his thoughts like a bucket of ice water. Jayden spun sharply toward the sound, his muscles tensing with a sudden, previously unknown readiness to attack. The woman sat in the shadow by the window, dark hair framing features carved from stone and shadow. Her eyes held that same chill you see in people who have already inflicted violence and intend to do it again.
“Who are you?!”
The words burst from him, wild and hoarse. Before he could think, his body moved. He lunged at her, strength exploding in his muscles with surprising power. The world blurred in motion—too fast for a human, too smooth, too easy.
She slipped away from the attack like water. One economical movement. Her hand grabbed his arm, redirecting the momentum before her other hand deliberately slammed into his chest. The blow threw him off balance, his feet left the floor, and moments later his body crashed onto the floorboards with force enough to knock the air from his lungs.
“Let me go!!!”
His voice broke on the scream, overloaded with rage that seemed too big for one body. Everything hit at once, and the hunger only cranked it up.
“No.”
She moved with predatory grace, straddling his back and pinning him with her own weight. Her fingers tangled in his hair—not brutally, but firmly enough to immobilize him. Her breath brushed his ear as she leaned closer.
“How about you fucking calm down?”
“Calm… down…?”
He hissed the words through gritted teeth, each syllable dripping venom. Fury flowed through him like liquid fire, and somewhere in the back of his head a quiet voice repeated that this wasn’t normal, that this wasn’t him. But that rational part had already drowned in the raging wave of emotions.
“You kidnapped me!!”
The accusation exploded from his lips, almost a growl. His own voice scared him—when had it become so low, so rough, so inhuman? When had his body become capable of such strength?
“Arghhh!!!”
She pressed his face deeper into the wooden floor, her grip not slackening for a moment despite his thrashing. This display of strength had no right to be possible—she didn’t look particularly large, didn’t resemble a bodybuilder or professional fighter. Yet she held him to the ground as easily as if holding a child.
“Boy, I told you to calm down. I didn’t kidnap you.”
Her voice carried the weight of command, the tone that assumed obedience. She sighed quietly, and in that sound rang the fatigue of someone who had been through this routine before.
“You’re transforming.”
The words hit him like a physical blow. Transforming? Into what, the hell? The hunger twisted his insides, demanding answers he didn’t have and satisfaction he couldn’t even imagine. The emotions continued to rage—from fury to pure, icy fear, over and over in accelerated tempo.
“Who are you?”
The question came out sharper than planned, charged with anger that barely fit in his body. Nothing in this situation made sense. Nothing fit the ordered world he had lived in just hours ago.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m Clare.”
Her grip eased slightly, but she was still ready to press him back down if he tried another outburst. The name meant nothing to him, carried no associations. Yet there was something dangerously familiar in her presence, like the echo of a dream he almost remembered.
He narrowed his eyes, looking at her like a puzzle no one explained. In her features, he saw violence and secrets, a life lived in shadow. Her gaze didn’t flee his, cold and assessing. Despite the ice in his veins and the hell in his head, despite the utterly fucked situation, he managed to force out the words.
“Jayden.”
The name sounded surer than he felt—a small anchor of identity thrown into the heart of chaos. Whatever was happening to him, whatever transformation she had in mind, he was still Jayden Silverstein. Right? The hunger stabbed harder, as if to remind him he wasn’t entirely.
Clare fixed him with a look like someone reading a map, searching for orientation points in completely foreign terrain. A wrinkle appeared on her forehead, and something shifted in her expression—perhaps recognition, perhaps a shadow of unease.
The silence between them thickened, heavy with unspoken questions and truths neither was ready for yet.
“Truce?”
Clare rose from the floor in one fluid movement with not a gram of unnecessary gesture. Jayden still knelt on the boards, his muscles tense as a bowstring, something alien crawling under his skin, making every touch and every breath feel too strong, too distinct. He rose slowly, his joints protesting the movement, as if his body couldn’t keep up with what it had become inside.
The question hung between them like a challenge. Her cold eyes scanned him with the attention of a predator sizing up potential prey, and he had to fight the impulse to either bolt or lunge again. Neither of those impulses was his, not the way he knew himself. Yet here he stood, torn between flight and attack.
“What do you remember from last night?”
There was no trace of warmth in her voice. No “calm down,” no soft edge to soften what he had just gone through. She looked at him like a scientist examining a sample—coldly, objectively, without sentiment. The assessment in her gaze made his skin itch from the inside; his arms fell slightly as if he wanted to shield himself.
Jayden furrowed his brow, reaching into memory that felt ragged and alien. Images flickered behind his eyelids—moon on grass, scent of night flowers, quiet solitude torn apart by—
“I…”
Pain pierced his awareness like fangs. The phantom bite sank into his neck again, shredding the memory to pieces and reassembling it with brutal clarity. His hand went to his nape again, fingers searching for skin that should have been torn, shredded, death-defiled.
“Something struck my neck…? I thought I’d die, but apparently… I’m alive?”
The uncertainty in his own voice terrified him more than anything else. Everything was off—light caught his eyes differently, his heart beat strangely… if it was beating at all. Clare sighed heavily, the sound like stating a fact, not offering comfort.
“You died. That much is true.”
The words hit him straight in the chest. Jayden sharply drew breath, the sound harsh in the quiet room, then a hollow, sharp laugh escaped from deep in his chest—completely not his.
“Yeah, and this is supposed to be fucking life after death?”
“That would make me the grim reaper.”
She threw it in a tone that could be taken for a joke if not for the darkness lurking between the words. There was no gram of humor in her voice, only something like weary acceptance of what she was saying. She didn’t take her eyes off him for a moment, as if reading every single twitch.
“Jayden Silverstein. You’re dead.”
His surname flowed from her lips with such ease that he stiffened. How did she know who he was? How long had she been watching him? How much did she really know about his family, his father, everything? Thoughts scattered like glass, each subsequent one sharper than the last.
“If this is a joke, it’s a shit one.”
“I’d prefer if it was.”
She sighed once more, turning toward the kitchen with the movement of someone who knew this choreography by heart. He watched her move—like a dancer, like a killer, every step calculated, every action economical. She pulled a knife from the drawer with the casualness of reaching for a spoon. The blade caught the light, flashing like a brief smile.
“You’re a vampire, Jayden.”
Without ceremony, she sliced the blade across her own palm. Blood welled up immediately, thick, deep crimson. The scent struck his chest like a hammer.
The world exploded with sensations. Hunger howled within, awakening anew—it clawed at him from the inside, demanding, begging, screaming. This wasn’t just any blood; it was a lightning strike and silk and summer heat poured straight into his veins, a promise of something so good that everything he’d ever eaten suddenly paled. Before he could think, his body moved. The distance between them vanished—he was still by the living room one moment, and the next he was over her raised hand, every cell in his body howling for what dripped from the wound.
“What… what’s happening?!”
The words were torn from his throat in a voice he didn’t recognize—deeper, rougher, tinged with something inhuman. His hands trembled from the sheer effort not to lunge, not to press her hand to his lips, not to drink what his entire new, fucked-up body craved. Hunger veiled everything else, reducing him to instinct and need, to the beast trapped in human skin.
The wound on her hand closed before his eyes. The skin knitted together unnaturally fast, leaving only a pale pink trace that began to fade too. This display of the impossible should have shocked him, but the hunger was louder. The quiet, terrified part of him already knew: nothing else would taste like that. Nothing else would suffice.
“I told you.”
Her voice remained even, clinical. She carefully wiped the knife, then put it back. There was no fear in her gaze despite his predatory jerk toward her, as if she had seen this so many times it no longer made an impression.
“You don’t have to believe me.”
She headed toward the bathroom in that same fluid step, and he followed without even registering it. His feet carried him after her on their own while his head still tried to process what had just happened. The hunger was still there, somewhat muffled but present—a dull ache that had no intention of leaving.
The mirror in the bathroom reflected a stranger’s face. Cheekbones, nose, jawline—everything his.
But the eyes…
“What…? Golden?”
He leaned over the sink, staring into that pair of eyes glowing like molten metal. These weren’t his eyes. His were…
What were they?
Blue? Green?
The memory slipped from his thoughts like a wet stone from a palm.
“What… what is this?!”
The reflection looked at him with inhuman intensity, and he couldn’t look away. Everything in that image was wrong, yet painfully real. That face belonged to him now, whether he wanted it or not.
“I keep telling you. Yesterday one of them attacked you.”
Clare’s voice drifted from the living room, calm and matter-of-fact, as if discussing the weather forecast. He stood before the mirror, watching his own lips move silently as he tried to rebuild the world that had just burned down.
The world where vampires didn’t exist.
The world where he thought he knew himself.
“There’s no such thing as a vampire.”
Jayden grimaced; the words scraped his throat like shards of glass. The golden eyes in the mirror seemed to mock him, shining with an unnatural glow that fit a nightmare more than reality.
“Why are you lying?”
Clare’s reflection appeared behind him in the mirror, her face like carved from stone. No compassion, no relief from the blow of truth.
“You know I’m not lying.”
Those words hit exactly where he didn’t want to feel them. Something twisted in his chest—a recognition he couldn’t name. The hunger that consumed him at the sight of her blood, the impossible speed, his own face alien in his own eyes.
“This isn’t… this can’t be true!”
His voice broke on the last word, emotions erupting upward like a volcano. When had he last shouted at all? When had he last allowed himself such fury and such fear at once?
“What even is a vampire?!”
Tears blurred his vision, hot and humiliating. He was twenty years old, not a kid anymore, yet here he stood roaring in a stranger’s bathroom, staring at eyes that didn’t belong to a human.
“My family… I have to go back…”
The image of home—his mother’s warm kitchen, Laura’s laughter, his father’s study full of codices—yanked at him so hard it hurt. They were surely looking for him. Surely worried. They had to know he was alive, even if “alive” meant something completely different now.
“No.”
Clare’s voice cut through his thoughts like a knife. Sharp. Final. No room for negotiation.
“You can’t. You’re too dangerous now.”
He turned to her abruptly, golden eyes flaring with indignation that wasn’t entirely his.
“Because of my father? You’re making up this bullshit because you want money?”
The accusation hung between them, pathetically desperate. People always wanted something from his family, from his father—influence, cash, the name. It was easier to swallow than vampires and other supernatural nonsense.
“Unbelievable…” she hissed more to herself than to him. Her fingers drummed on her arm like someone whose patience was just running out.
Jayden couldn’t stand still any longer. The walls began closing in on him, the air thickening. He needed to get out. Anything to escape this madness. The front door beckoned like salvation.
His fingers clenched the handle. He opened it, took a step forward—
“What?!”
He recoiled instinctively, his heart—or whatever was beating in his chest now—leaping to his throat. There was no hallway, no elevator, nothing he expected behind the door. Instead, he stood next to Clare again, watching the door close with a calm click.
“What…?”
“A portal.”
She rolled her eyes as if it were something as mundane as a traffic light.
“I can’t let you run loose, Jayden.”
Vampires. Portals. What kind of fucked-up fairy tale was this, one he was being forced to believe under threat of death? His rational brain hunted for any other explanation, anything but magic.
But the hunger…
God, the hunger was only growing. It bit at him from the inside like a living creature, clawing at his ribs from within. He looked at Clare, trying to focus on her words, but all he saw was the slender line of her neck. His new senses sketched it with obscene precision—the steady pulse, the thin layer of skin he knew he could pierce, the promise of that same impossible taste.
“I…”
The world narrowed to one point.
Her neck.
Life pulsing just beneath the skin, calling to something wild and desperate within him.
Fear said: run.
Something darker purred: stay.
What if he… got a little closer… what if he just…
He realized he was standing right next to her again. He didn’t remember crossing the distance. Her neck was within arm’s reach; the hunger roared.
“Hungry?”
Her voice poured over his thoughts like ice. She moved like liquid metal, slipping out of his reach in one fluid motion. The sudden absence of her warmth, her scent, her pulse hit him like a physical cut.
“Yeah… I feel like I’m starving.”
The words tasted like defeat. Weakness. But lying made no sense when his body had already betrayed him, every cell screaming for something he didn’t understand.
Clare pulled out her phone, a few quick finger movements, and held up the front camera so he could see himself.
Jayden’s reflection stared back from the screen. This time the eyes weren’t golden. They burned pure, bloody crimson, inhuman, predatory. That gaze fit a beast, not a student from Novaterra’s suburbs.
“What…?”
Shivers ran down his back as he stared at the monster wearing his face. Fear climbed his spine and coiled into an icy ball beneath his breastbone.
“Is that… me? What’s happening to me…?”
“I keep repeating. You’re a vampire, Jayden.”
Clare lowered the phone, speaking in the tone of a doctor delivering a diagnosis.
“You died yesterday. I used that vampire’s blood to keep you alive… and you transformed. Surprise—because that kind of transformation can kill a human.”
Each word struck him separately.
Died. Transformed. Vampire.
Every syllable pushed the boundaries of his world further from everything he’d known. Jayden Silverstein no longer existed. Something else remained.
Something that had liked the taste of Clare’s blood far too much.
