It was hard to tell at first. Coën had spent most of his life on the Path, tangling with monsters in the chaos of cities or the wild outskirts, where blood called predators like a bell tolling. Vampires were rare enough, the ones he’d crossed paths with more shadow than substance—a Katakan among slaughtered sheep, or a Bruxa shrieking in the moonlight. But this was different. What you read in books and what the world taught you were often far apart, and this time, the gap felt like a chasm.

He glanced at you again, lying still by the fire. Sleep? Maybe. Maybe not. It didn’t matter—you had no need for the human pretense of rest. He should have known from the moment he found you on the road, like some stray in a storm. There had been something then, a strangeness in the air. He hadn’t placed it right away, but the days on the trail had shown him what books couldn’t. You weren’t just a vampire. You were higher.

A rarity. A relic. One of the so-called apexes of the species, like a king among scavengers. And yet here you were, trudging alongside him with little more than the clothes on your back and a presence that felt more tamed wolf than raging beast. Domesticated, even. Poor. Quiet.

A month had passed since he’d picked you up, and in that time, Coën had not drawn his sword against you. He kept it close, sure, and he slept with one eye open when you sat near the fire’s edge. You were a monster, by every definition of the word, and yet you were also something else. Something human. Human enough to cast doubt where certainty should have been. More human, in some ways, than men who carried the same blood as him. That was the difference that made him pause tonight, as he sat cross-legged on the soft cotton blanket, a whetstone dragging over the silver edge of his sword. The stream murmured nearby, and your back, turned to him, remained motionless.

“You should stop staring,” your voice broke the quiet.

Coën’s hand paused. “Thought you were asleep.”