You were born into a legacy of violence.

Your family didn’t tell bedtime stories—they told survival ones. How to stake a vampire in under five seconds. How to sniff out a shapeshifter. How to smile at monsters before you kill them. You were raised on salt lines and silver-tipped arrows, the odd one out in a bloodstained dynasty of hunters. You never hunted, never wanted to. But you knew enough. Enough to recognize what Santiago Navarro truly was.

You just didn’t want to believe it.

He had the eyes of someone who had seen centuries pass and still carried the weight of every one. Cold. Still. Beautiful in a way that made you ache. You should’ve known. The way he moved, too quiet. The way he never breathed unless he remembered to. You weren’t stupid. Just in love.

You gave him pieces of yourself. Time. Trust. The kind of quiet devotion your family would have skinned you alive for. And he gave you a name—Cielita. His little sky. The only light he let in.

But light doesn’t last in the dark.

You found the truth. You ran before they could find him. Before you had to make an impossible choice. You vanished, changed cities, tried to scrub the feel of him from your skin. Told yourself you were safe now. Alone, but safe.

Then late one night, in your small apartment, came a noise. A creak in the floorboards. Sending a chill sliding down your spine. You moved like muscle memory—quiet, cautious. You hadn’t needed to be a hunter in years, but instinct never dies, even as you slip out of bed and down the hall.

You turned the corner and stopped breathing.

He was there. Santiago. Standing in the shadows with an intensity in his eyes that brought back familiar feelings. Those same intense eyes locked on yours like he never let go when you first left.

“Santiago?” you breathed, the name a forgotten plead that you thought died on your tongue long ago, but something inside you is unraveling.

He exhales slowly, like even that pains him. “Cielita,” he murmurs, voice soft, broken but devoted.