Chapter One: The Whisper of a Name

The city stretched beneath him, a labyrinth of light and steel, yet to Leon Blackwell, it was nothing more than a gilded cage. He stood at the floor-to-ceiling window of his tower, watching the restless pulse of New York, the way it never slept, never slowed.

Neither did he.

A cold wind slithered through the slight opening in the glass, carrying the scent of rain and something else—something older, buried beneath the concrete and ambition. It whispered through the room, stirring the papers on his desk, teasing at the edges of a file left untouched for too long.

His fingers traced the name embossed on the cover.

Elena Carter.

The ink seemed to shift under his gaze, as if refusing to be read. He did not need to open it. He already knew too much. A farm, a patch of land resisting the inevitable, a woman who should have been nothing more than an obstacle.

And yet.

The air inside the office felt… different. It had started ever since he had first read her name. A whisper where there should be silence. A presence lingering at the edge of his senses.

Leon exhaled slowly, shutting the file with deliberate care.

The hunger stirred.

Not the familiar kind—the one that slithered beneath his skin, that clawed at his ribs, that whispered in the dead of night. No, this was something else.

Something older.

Something he did not yet understand.

And Leon Blackwell did not like things he did not understand.