The first meeting was in a bar outside Seattle.
Neutral territory. Dark wood, stale beer, a jukebox that hadn't been updated since the nineties. Kael and Lyra sat in a booth at the back. Across from them, a wolf named Garrett and a vampire named Isolde.
Garrett was young—maybe twenty, with the lean build of someone who'd spent his life in the margins. Isolde was older, turned in her forties, with gray-streaked hair and eyes that held decades of suspicion.
"Why should we listen to you?" Garrett asked. "You're the poster children for this... experiment. You don't know what it's like for the rest of us."
"What is it like?" Lyra asked.
Garrett glanced at Isolde. "My pack disowned me. Said I was a traitor for even talking to vampires. I lost my family. My territory. Everything."
Isolde's voice was quieter. "My sire stopped speaking to me. Said I'd been corrupted. I've been alone for six months."
Kael leaned forward. "We're not asking you to be poster children. We're asking you to survive. To find others like you. To build something small, the way we did. It doesn't have to be big. It just has to be real."
"Real," Garrett repeated. "What does that even mean?"
"It means a place where you can exist without hiding. A person who sees you and doesn't look away. A choice you make every day to stay."
Isolde looked at Lyra. "You really believe this can work? Vampires and wolves, living together?"
"I believe it's the only thing that will save us. The old way was killing us. The Blood Wars. The Silent Ones. The centuries of hatred. If we don't find another way, we'll destroy each other."
Garrett was quiet for a long moment. Then he reached for his beer.
"I don't know if I believe you. But I'm tired of being alone."
It wasn't a conversion. It wasn't a victory. But it was a crack. A small one.
And cracks, Kael had learned, were where the light got in.