Warren was born into a family that shouldn’t have existed. Not because his parents weren’t meant to love each other—quite the opposite—but because pureblood vampires rarely risked creating new life anymore. Too dangerous, too unpredictable, too much of the past bleeding into the present.

But Malachi and Misty Linwood had never cared much for rules, or tradition, or the watchful eyes of old bloodlines. They’d lived through empires and revolutions, lost friends to centuries, and loved each other with the kind of reckless devotion that made even immortals blush. Warren was an accident, yes—but a beautiful one.

He grew up in the soft glow of candlelight and music. His father was a musician who never stopped writing, his mother a traveler who never stopped dreaming. They filled their modest apartment with laughter and sound—violin strings, piano keys, the occasional spontaneous waltz across the kitchen floor. Warren learned early on that love could be loud, messy, and endless.

But endless was the part that frightened him.

He knew what it meant to live forever before he ever wanted to. He saw it in the way his parents’ eyes—those milky white irises that no longer reflected light—looked past the present and into centuries gone. They were happy, but their happiness was built on surviving time. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to be that strong.

As a child, Warren was quiet but curious. Other kids played in the sun; he preferred the cool shade, the safe hours between dusk and dawn. He learned to teleport before he learned to ride a bike—though the first time he did, he accidentally appeared inside a locked pantry and refused to try again for weeks. His parents found that endearing.

They found everything endearing.

Their affection was a constant, sometimes overwhelming presence. They held hands in public, whispered to each other in old languages, laughed too loud at jokes only they understood. It was sweet, and suffocating, and occasionally mortifying—especially once Warren reached his teenage years.

By sixteen, he’d stopped bringing friends home entirely. There were only so many times he could explain away the sounds from the next room or his father casually floating a wine glass across the kitchen.

Still, he loved them fiercely. They were his anchor, even when their love felt like a mirror he didn’t want to stand in front of.

At school, Warren blended in well enough. His grades were good, his manners better. He wasn’t popular, but people liked him—the quiet, observant kid with the soft voice and the strange old-fashioned way of speaking. No one knew exactly what he was, and he preferred it that way. Vampires weren’t exactly rare in the modern world, but purebloods? They were a whisper from the past, a myth dressed in black coats and silver eyes.

He kept his lineage secret, not out of shame, but because it invited expectations he didn’t want. People assumed he’d be powerful, charming, maybe even dangerous. He wasn’t. He was just... Warren.

And Warren didn’t know what to do with forever.

He didn’t dream of becoming anything great. He liked music, like his father, but only when no one was listening. He wrote sometimes, little things—poems, journal entries, bits of melody—but he never showed anyone. Life felt stretched out before him like a blank canvas that no one had told him how to start painting.

He’d dated once, briefly. A human girl with kind eyes and a heartbeat that used to distract him in class. She thought he was sweet, mysterious even. It lasted three weeks. He ended it after realizing he couldn’t kiss her without thinking about the pulse under her skin. She cried, called him cold. He didn’t know how to explain that he was afraid of hurting her—or worse, loving her like his parents loved each other and being trapped in that ache forever.

So he stopped trying.

By the time summer came around before his senior year, Warren had fallen into a quiet rhythm—classes, late nights, blood bags, piano keys, and the muffled sounds of his parents still acting like newlyweds.

And then new neighbors moved in.

He noticed them first by sound—the thump of furniture, laughter echoing down the shared hallway, the scent of something wild drifting faintly through the walls. He didn’t think much of it until that one late night, when the music inside grew too unbearable, and he stormed out to the balcony, slamming the door behind him.

That’s when he met them.