Chapter 1

My name is Chloe, and I am a monster.

At least, that' s what he calls me now.

I gave him everything. I sacrificed the very essence of my being so he could walk in the sun again, so he could feel the warmth of a human life he claimed to miss so desperately. I was a creature of the night, powerful and eternal, and I gave it all up for him.

The reward for my sacrifice was this: a cold, damp basement, chains biting into my wrists and ankles, and the unending hatred in his eyes. He got his humanity back, but the process left a scar on his soul, a venom that he now directs entirely at me.

The heavy iron door groaned open, and Ethan Vance walked in. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered, casting long shadows that danced around his perfect, human form. He looked just as he always did-impeccably dressed in a dark suit, his face a mask of cold indifference. He was the charismatic tech mogul the world adored, the man who had supposedly built an empire from nothing.

They didn't know his empire was built on my bones.

He stopped a few feet from me, his eyes scanning my pathetic state. I was chained to the wall, my clothes tattered, my body weak from a hunger that was a constant, gnawing ache.

"Still alive, I see," he said, his voice flat. It was the same voice that once whispered promises of forever in my ear.

He kicked a metal bucket toward me. It skidded across the concrete floor and stopped just out of my reach. The coppery scent of blood filled the air, sharp and agonizingly tempting.

"You blame me for what you' ve become," I said, my voice a dry rasp. "But this was your choice, Ethan. You begged me for it."

His face twisted into a sneer. He took a step closer, grabbing my chin and forcing my head up. His grip was strong, humanly strong, but it felt more brutal than any supernatural force I had ever known.

"I begged you to cure me," he hissed, his face inches from mine. "Not to turn me into this… this fragile thing. You took my power, Chloe. You left me weak."

"I left you human," I corrected. "It' s what you wanted."

He laughed, a bitter, ugly sound. "And look at the price. I still feel the echo of what I was. A constant reminder of what you did to me. Do you have any idea what that' s like?"

He let go of me, and I slumped against the wall. He began to pace, the sound of his expensive leather shoes echoing in the silence.

"But I' m finding a solution," he continued, a new, cruel excitement in his voice. "Your kind. They' re quite fascinating. I' ve been running tests, you see. In my labs. Trying to understand the source of your power, to see if I can reclaim what was lost, or at least erase the memory of it."

My blood ran cold. My kind. The others. He was hunting them.

"They' re innocent, Ethan. They have nothing to do with this."

"They are the same as you," he shot back. "Monsters. And they might hold the key to fixing the damage you caused. I have a whole facility full of them now. Their screams are quite… informative."

The images his words painted in my mind were horrifying. My brothers and sisters, locked in cages, subjected to his cold, scientific cruelty.

A desperate idea formed in my exhausted mind.

"Then stop," I pleaded, the words tearing from my throat. "Stop hurting them. Use me instead. I was the one who turned you. I am the oldest. The strongest. Whatever you want to know, my body, my blood, will tell you more than all of them combined. Just let them go."

I was offering him the perfect specimen. A sacrifice to save the others.

He stopped pacing and looked at me. For a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of the old Ethan, the man I had loved. But it was gone as quickly as it came.

He knelt in front of me, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face.

"Oh, Chloe," he whispered. "You don' t get it, do you? Their suffering is part of your punishment. But your suffering… that' s the main event. I have no intention of killing you. Not for a long, long time."

The door opened again. This time, it was Olivia Reed. His fiancée. The perfect, smiling social media influencer whose entire life was a lie propped up by the success he stole from me. She glided into the room, her sweet perfume a sickening contrast to the stench of blood and despair.

"Is she still being difficult, darling?" Olivia asked, her voice dripping with false sympathy. She walked over to Ethan and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him deeply, her eyes locked on me the entire time. She wanted me to watch. She wanted me to see what I had lost, what he had chosen over me.

Ethan pulled back from her, but his arm stayed around her waist. He looked from her smiling face back to me, his expression unreadable.

"She was just offering to be my lab rat," Ethan said, a mocking tone in his voice. "So noble."

Olivia giggled. "She always did have a flair for the dramatic."

She looked down at the bucket of blood, then back at me, her smile turning sharp. "Are you hungry, Chloe? You look so pale."

My stomach churned, the hunger a physical pain. I hadn't fed in days. The weakness was becoming unbearable.

Ethan watched me, enjoying my torment. He nudged the bucket a little closer with the toe of his shoe, but it was still just beyond the length of my chains.

"If you want it," he said, his voice low and commanding, "you' ll have to crawl for it. Just like the animal you are."

He was enjoying this, the absolute humiliation. Olivia stood beside him, a silent, gleeful spectator to my degradation. My pride, the last thing I had left, screamed in protest.

But the hunger was a beast, clawing at my insides.

I looked at his cold, merciless face, and at Olivia' s smug one. And in that moment, something inside me broke. Or perhaps, something was finally forged.

I knew I would not be his plaything forever.

He thought these chains and this hunger were his ultimate weapons against me. He was wrong.

I had one of my own. A final, irreversible way out.

And I was going to use it.