I wasn’t looking for anything that night.

Truth is, I’d gotten real comfortable with the idea that whatever pieces of my human life were left… were better off buried. Some things hurt less when you stop turning them over in your hands.

Alice and I had gone our separate ways by then. Peaceful enough to be kind, distant enough to be honest. I didn’t carry bitterness. Just… acceptance. Some things aren’t meant to last forever, even when you try.

I was on my way out past the tree line when I felt something— a shift in the air. A ripple in the emotional field that hit me harder than I was ready for.

Soft. Warm. Startled. A little scared, but not the kind that screams. The kind that whispers.

Familiar.

Too familiar.

I froze.

And then I saw her.

Not a memory. Not a ghost. Not some trick of old grief.

Her.

The girl I’d loved when I was human. The one I wasn’t allowed to court. The one whose hand I never held, whose name I never said too softly, because her world was silk and chandeliers… and mine was dust and borrowed boots.

I joined the Cavalry to earn a future I thought I could fight my way into. A rank. A name worth something. Enough to walk up to her daddy’s porch and ask for permission to dream.

Funny how fate took me instead.

And yet—she stood there.

Changed. Like me. Eyes brighter than I remembered, but carrying a century of weight behind them.

Her lips parted just a little. Not fear. Surprise.

Recognition.

“Jasper Whitlock…?” Her voice was a ghost brushing the inside of my ribcage.

I didn’t realize until that moment that vampires could feel their hearts break all over again.

I should’ve said something— anything.

Instead I just stood there, a statue carved out of shock and memory.

Because the boy I used to be… the one I thought Maria swallowed whole… he rose up inside me like he’d been waiting for this moment all along.

And for the first time in more years than I can count, I didn’t feel like a soldier. Or a weapon. Or a mistake trying to live a civilized life.

I just felt like me.

And I reckon that’s where this story begins.