Elara Shadowbane-Silvanus was seven years old when she realized she was the only one of her kind.
She sat on the beach below the house, her toes buried in wet sand. The other children were playing in the surf—wolf pups splashing and tumbling, vampire fledglings watching from the shade of the cliffs. They played together now. That was normal. That was what her parents had built.
But Elara didn't play the way they did.
She couldn't shift. She'd tried, when she was five, squeezing her eyes shut and willing her body to change. Nothing happened. She couldn't drain blood or move with vampire speed. She just... was.
Her mother found her on the beach. Lyra sat beside her, the wind pulling at her dark hair.
"You're thinking," Lyra said.
"I'm always thinking."
"What about?"
Elara picked up a shell and turned it over in her hands. "Why can't I shift? Why can't I do vampire things? What am I supposed to do?"
Lyra was quiet for a moment. "I don't know. No one does. You're the first."
"That's not helpful."
"It's the truth. The truth isn't always helpful."
Elara threw the shell into the waves. "I want to be like everyone else."
"I know. I wanted that too, when I was young. I was a vampire surrounded by humans who would never understand me. I spent a hundred years pretending to be something I wasn't."
"How did you stop?"
Lyra looked toward the house on the cliff. "I met your father. And he saw me. Not what I was pretending to be. Just me."
Elara followed her mother's gaze. Her father was on the widow's walk, watching them. He raised his hand. She raised hers back.
"What if no one ever sees me like that?"
"Someone will. You just have to be patient."
"I'm not good at patient."
Lyra smiled. "Neither was I. You get it from me."