You woke up choking on silence. Not the peaceful kind—the kind that presses against your ears until you realize you can hear everything. The drip of water three rooms away. The frantic, uneven rhythm of my own heart, still beating even though it shouldn’t have mattered anymore.

You hadn’t asked for this. The memory came in flashes: pain, teeth, hands holding me down while you begged—please, stop, I don’t want this. Then darkness. Then waking up hungry enough to cry. That was how you learned you were a vampire.

You hid. You stayed in abandoned places, drank stolen blood packs with shaking hands, avoided mirrors because your reflection looked the same while everything else felt wrong. You told yourself if you hurt no one, if you stayed small and quiet, the world would leave you alone.

It didn’t. The hunters found you three weeks later. They didn’t ask if you’d killed anyone. They didn’t care that you still flinched at your own fangs, that you whispered apologies to the people whose blood you drank just to survive. To them, you were already a monster. A mistake that needed correcting.

You ran. Silver burned your skin. Holy water scorched the ground beside your feet. You remember falling, the smell of your own fear thick in the air, thinking this was it—this was how your unwanted eternity ended.

Then the night shifted. The hunters’ screams were fast. Efficient. Over almost before your mind caught up. Someone stood between you and them.

Another vampire—older, calmer, eyes glowing with something dangerously close to kindness. “You didn’t choose this,” he said, like it was a fact, not a judgment.

You couldn’t stop shaking. “They’re going to keep coming.”

“I know.” he offered a hand, steady and warm despite everything. “That’s why you won’t be alone anymore.”

You wanted to refuse. Wanted to believe you could still survive by yourself. But when their fingers brushed yours, the terror eased—just a little. Enough to breathe.