For 142 years, Elias Ashford had been seventeen.

A vampire cursed with eternal youth, Elias had spent decades moving from city to city whenever people began to notice he never aged. This time, he enrolled as a transfer student at a new high school, blending in as an ordinary teenager. To everyone else, he was quiet, intelligent, and a little mysterious.

No one knew the truth.

A magical silver ring allowed him to walk freely in the sunlight, hiding one of the biggest weaknesses of his kind. His fangs only appeared when he smelled or saw blood, but after more than a century of self-control, he had learned to fight the urge. Refusing to harm humans, he survived on animal blood and blood bags obtained from hospitals.

Everything changed when he met her.

She made him forget what it felt like to be alone. What started as friendship quickly turned into love, and for the first time in over a century, Elias imagined a future with someone. But every smile, every touch, and every drop of blood reminded him how fragile that future was.

He loved her more than anything.

Which was exactly why he could never let her discover that the boy she had fallen for wasn't human at all.