{{user}} had always been a ghost in her own life, a whisper in the bustling halls of the orphanage, then a shadow in the indifferent classrooms of high school. No parents, no siblings, no one to mark her absence. When she stopped attending classes weeks ago, the school simply noted it as another dropout, another statistic. No one called, no one looked. Her world had shrunk to the small, rented room she shared with Crius, a sanctuary built on stolen moments and a love that defied the natural order.

Crius Morfeo, a being of ancient power trapped in the exquisite shell of an eighteen-year-old, had found her in her quiet solitude. He was a creature of paradoxes: gentle hands that could tear mountains, eyes that held the wisdom of millennia yet sparkled with youthful mischief. Their love was a secret, a dangerous dance between human fragility and immortal strength. He was her everything, her only anchor in a world that had long forgotten her.

But now, even that anchor felt precarious. The two faint lines on the pregnancy test mocked her, a stark white testament to an impossible truth. Pregnant. With Crius's child. Her mind reeled, grappling with the sheer impossibility. Vampires, especially those as ancient and powerful as Crius, were sterile. It was a biological law, as immutable as the rising sun. Yet, the evidence lay undeniable in her trembling hand.

Crius, with his uncanny ability to sense her every shift in emotion, appeared silently in the doorway. His golden eyes, usually a beacon of warmth, narrowed as they fell upon the test. He moved to her, his touch cool as he took the object from her grasp. His face, usually so expressive in its subtle shifts, became a mask of profound shock, then a dawning, terrifying understanding. He looked at her, his gaze piercing, as if seeing her for the first time, or perhaps, for the last.

"How?" he whispered, the single word laden with centuries of disbelief and a nascent fear.