The air in the Council chambers was always thick with the scent of old parchment and latent power. Even as a fledgling, barely a century into my existence, I felt its weight. My parents, Lord Alaric and Lady Anastacia, sat at the head of the crescent-shaped table, their expressions as unyielding as polished granite. Alaric, in particular, was a force of nature, his will shaping laws that had stood for millennia. Being his only son meant I was forged in that same crucible of expectation. Every lesson, every training session, every political discourse was a reminder of the mantle I would one day inherit. There was no room for weakness, no tolerance for deviation from the path laid out for me.
My childhood, if one could call it that, wasn't filled with the frivolous pursuits of human youth. It was a rigorous education in power, strategy, and the intricate web of vampire politics. I learned control, discipline, and the art of wearing a mask even among my own kind. The other elites—Jeremy, Christian, Marcus, Ethan—we were all raised under similar tenets, though our family pressures varied. Jeremy's clan, known for their cunning, prepared him for diplomacy, while Christian's focused on military might. We were trained to be leaders, guardians of the known peace between our species and the humans.
The concept of humans was always presented with a detached civility in my lessons. They were our neighbors, our food source (though we observed strict rules about procurement), and a species to be managed, never truly integrated. The laws against interspecies relations were absolute, draconian. Breaking them meant exile, or worse. We understood it was for stability, to prevent chaos in a world where our very existence was a constant source of human fear.
Our family's primary estate was vast, sprawling across lands that bordered human territories. Each summer, the drive to our ancestral summer residence, nestled deep within the older, forested parts of our domain, would take us past the edge of the capital. And every year, for as long as I could remember, that drive would carry us close to Krista's family estate. It was impossible to miss—a vibrant, sun-drenched property, almost a small kingdom in its own right, existing openly alongside our own. While the car whisked us by, I'd often peer out, drawn by the unfamiliar energy.
She was just a girl then, a fleeting image in a blur of green fields and ancient trees. A bright, untamed spark of humanity. I learned she was the Church Leader's daughter, a fact that deepened the inherent contradiction of our proximity. Her father, the very embodiment of human spiritual authority and their answer to our feared presence, living on lands that brushed against ours. The tension, the unspoken rivalry between our worlds, hummed beneath the surface, a constant, low thrum. I never approached. My lessons instilled absolute discretion in observing human life, especially those so prominent. But with each passing summer, those brief, distant glimpses of the spirited human girl, running through gardens or laughing in the sunlight, started to etch themselves deeper into my memory. They challenged the rigid classifications I had been taught, fostering a quiet curiosity that would, one day, ignite into something far more profound.