The world remembers its monsters poorly. Fireside tales reduce vampires to pale ghouls lurking in corners, werewolves to slavering beasts under the moon, witches to shadows on broomsticks. But behind every story lies a kernel of truth—twisted by fear, watered with blood, grown into legend.
In Beacon Hills, that truth had a name.
Alaric Vlad.
He was not a man, not truly. He was the first to taste immortality, the first to rise after death, the progenitor from whom all other vampires trickled like water from a fractured chalice. He had watched empires rise and choke on their own dust, kings crowned and decapitated, cults burn themselves from the inside, and hunters sharpen stakes with the fervor of zealots. He was eternal, unstoppable, and yet… once, he had loved.
Beacon Hills, 1986
Talia Hale was no ordinary wolf. Even before the Alpha spark ignited in her veins, she carried a gravity that pulled the world slightly off course. Strength braided with compassion, laughter folded into steel. Her hair caught moonlight like wildfire, and her gaze silenced even the most restless wolves.
The Hale woods had always been ancient, but that year, the trees themselves seemed to lean toward her future. She ran with her pack, led with her heart, and believed she understood the shape of the world: wolves hunted, humans lived, vampires were stories. Until the night she met him.
He appeared at the edge of the forest as though he had stepped out of a shadow that had been waiting centuries to be noticed. Dark clothing, pale skin, eyes sharper than winter frost. He did not growl. Did not bare teeth. He simply watched.
"Who are you?" Talia demanded, claws flexing, instincts screaming.
He bowed slightly, with a grace that belonged to another century. "Alaric Vlad," he said.
Their first clash was instinct. She lunged; he blurred aside like smoke. Not violence, but containment—his words curled around her mind, pressed her limbs to stillness. For the first time, she felt hunted, and fear brushed against the edges of fascination.
Curiosity, that dangerous spark, kindled where fear should have reigned.
The nights that followed were stolen fragments of eternity. Encounters became conversations, conversations arguments, arguments laughter. He spoke of centuries as if they were days; she spoke of pack bonds as if they were sacred scripture. She teased him for his stillness; he teased her for her fire. And somewhere in that dangerous rhythm, affection rooted itself. Curiosity ripened into love.
They met under the canopy of trees, moonlight stitching silver over the ground. She pressed her pulse to his chest, daring him; he kissed the hollow of her throat, whispering he would rather starve than harm her. Her claws tore his shirt in passion; he only laughed, promising she would need sharper weapons if she truly wanted him gone.
But even the fiercest flame casts smoke.
The pack whispered about her absences. Hunters in Beacon Hills began to notice rumors of a pale man. The Argent family sharpened their interest, eyes gleaming at the thought of catching the progenitor. A wolf Alpha in love with a vampire? It was blasphemy, a scandal, a prize to unite hunters in holy fury.
The night it ended was quiet.
Talia found him on the ridge overlooking the town, a shadow against the dim horizon. He looked tired—not in body, eternal as it was—but in spirit.
"You must leave," he said softly, the first tremor in his voice. "Hunters are circling. Packs beyond yours will never forgive this. To stay is to drag you into a war you do not deserve."
"I don't care," she whispered, stepping forward. "I choose you. Let the rest fall."
"I would burn this world for you," he said, voice breaking for the first time, "but if I do, I leave you nothing to rule. You deserve a kingdom… not ashes."
She begged him to stay, but he kissed her once—slow, final—and stepped back into the shadows.
By dawn, he was gone.
Eighteen Years Later
Time dulled wounds but never erased them. Talia Hale had become Alpha of her pack, mother of strong children, guardian of Beacon Hills. Leadership was armor; heartbreak a secret even to her closest kin. She had not spoken his name in years.
Then, in late 2004, shadows moved differently. A predator older than memory walked into town. Hunger and intent led him to the backroom of a video store, where fear clung to a clerk like grease. Fangs slid; blood spilled; memories rose like flames in Alaric's mind. Faces, names, gasoline, fire.
Kate Argent. Adrian Harris. Unger. Reddick. Garrison Myers. Plans to burn a house.
Alaric's crimson eyes widened, stormy rage creeping across his face. They dared. They dared to plot against her… again.
He had abandoned her once to protect her. Now he saw that leaving had only left the door open to her enemies.
This time, he would not run.
History would remember the Hale House fire as tragedy. Perhaps an accident. Or, for the wary, as arson at the hands of one cruel woman named Kate Argent.
The truth was messier.
Two nights before the fire, conspirators vanished. Some were slaughtered; some thrown at the feet of the Hale Alpha. And when Talia Hale stepped out to see the man who had once held her heart, she found not a myth, not memory—but the progenitor himself, tall and merciless.
His name rolled across the yard like thunder.
"Alaric Vlad."
Her past had returned. This time, he had come not to love quietly… but to change Beacon Hills forever.