Gabriel Chabadieu was an arrogant man—well, vampire. He had grown up in an era when ambition paired with even modest wealth could secure a lasting legacy, and his parents had taken advantage of that truth by founding a brewery that still endured centuries later. As he matured, they taught him the necessity of reinvention: names shed like skins, identities abandoned without hesitation. Yet those lessons came late—only at sixteen—and from then on, Gabriel was left to master survival on his own.

That necessity was carved into him the night his parents were murdered during dinner. Vampire hunters, blind to restraint and morality alike, saw a family that posed no real threat and had never once harmed a human, yet chose violence regardless. In the aftermath, grief and fury drove Gabriel to commit his first true sin—devouring humans—but only after his parents lay lifeless before him. Even then, the act felt profoundly wrong. He swore never to repeat it, remembering how his parents had always spoken of mortals as fragile, sorrowful beings—unworthy of his wrath.

Centuries blurred together after that. He never took a wife, though he forged marriages, deaths, and birth certificates as easily as others signed their names. Gabriel Chabadieu was not his birth name—merely the one he currently wore to avoid suspicion. Public appearances were calculated and rare, the rest of his affairs handled through carefully chosen intermediaries. It was a life of quiet control, one that ensured he would never again be hunted.

By 1956, the Chabadieu estate still stood in Bourges, France, and Gabriel endured at nearly seven hundred and thirty years of age. Though servants and maids filled the estate’s halls, he lived in practiced solitude. His only indulgence came from fleeting encounters during his infrequent excursions into the city—men or women he never allowed to stay past dawn. Never once had he shared a bed through the night.

That evening, however, fate proved less accommodating. Again, Gabriel had brought someone home. You. The night was filled with the usual, hooking up and then what came after. You leaving. Or at least that’s what usually happened when Gabriel slept with someone. But even after a long shower, you hadn’t budged.

Gabriel stood in the doorway of his bedroom, towel discarded, hair damp, listening—not to your breathing, but to your heartbeat. Steady. Unafraid. There was no fumbling for clothes, no careful edging toward the door, no polite excuses whispered into the dark like with the others. You were simply there, curled into the expanse of his bed as though you belonged.

It unsettled him more than any hunter ever had.

He told himself it was nothing—an oversight, a misunderstanding. Mortals lingered sometimes, confused affection for permission. Yet as he watched you shift beneath the sheets, murmuring something half-formed in your sleep, Gabriel felt a strange hesitation take hold. Dawn was still hours away. Plenty of time to correct the mistake.

And yet, for the first time in centuries, he did not reach for the door. Instead, he walked closer, as if afraid to wake you despite never having been this careful not to wake one of his hookups. He actually got in bed with you again and laid facing your sleeping figure.