THE HOSPITAL BRACELET CHAPTER 1 - THE GIRL WHO WASN'T THEIRS*Elara never knew what it felt like to be wanted.At 19, she knew how to make herself small. Small enough to not be in the way when her foster mother, Diane, was drinking. Small enough to not be noticed when her foster father, Mark, was angry about the electric bill.She had lived with them since she was 5. The story they told everyone was that she was abandoned at the hospital. No name, no family. Just a baby in a too-big pink blanket with a misspelled bracelet that said "BABY GIRL - MORGAN."They took the state's money for her, and they took everything else too.On her 19th birthday, no one remembered. She was scrubbing the kitchen floor at 11 PM when Diane threw a stack of papers at her feet."Social worker called. You're an adult now. You got 30 days to figure it out."Inside the stack was a single photocopy. An old hospital form. St. Jude Memorial Hospital, 2006. And a tiny Polaroid of a bracelet that said MORGAN, not Elara.Her name wasn't even Elara. Elara was what Diane had named her because she liked it.*CHAPTER 2 - THE MAN IN THE OLD HOUSE*The house on the hill above town had been empty for as long as Elara could remember. Victorian, black windows, perfect garden that no one ever saw anyone tend to.She walked past it every night on her way back from her dishwashing shift at the diner, because the long way meant 15 more minutes away from home.Tonight, it was raining. And for the first time in 19 years, a light was on.A man stood on the porch. He was impossibly still. Tall, white, with black hair pushed back from his face, and he was handsome in a way that didn't feel human. Like a statue. Like something carved.He was watching her."You shouldn't be walking in the rain," he said. His voice was low, quiet, but she heard it clearly from the sidewalk.Elara clutched her backpack. "I have to get home.""You don't want to go there."She froze. How did he know?He came down the steps, and he didn't get wet. The rain seemed to avoid him. "I am Julian," he said."I know you," she whispered, without knowing why. She had never seen him before. But her chest hurt looking at him, like a memory trying to surface.He looked at her face, at the faint bruise on her cheek from yesterday, at the old hospital papers sticking out of her bag getting soaked."Who hurt you?" he asked, and the air around him went cold."No one.""Don't lie to me, little one." His eyes, she saw now, were not blue or grey. They were silver.*CHAPTER 3 - BLOOD REMEMBERS*Julian was not a man. Elara learned that the second night, when she came back because she had nowhere else to go.He didn't invite her inside. He sat with her on the porch swing and let her talk for three hours. No one had ever let her talk that long."I was born at St. Jude," she told him, showing him the bracelet photo. "But they lost me. They told my parents I died.""They didn't lose you," Julian said softly. "A nurse took you. She sold you to a private adoption contact. That contact was your foster mother."Elara stared. "How do you know that?"Julian looked away, pained. "Because I've been looking for you for nineteen years."He rolled up his sleeve. On his forearm was an old, faded hospital bracelet too. Sealed in plastic. It read: BABY MORGAN - 05/11/06 - 3:42 AM - FATHER WAITING."I was there that night," he said. "I am not... I was not what I am now. My name was Julian Morgan. I was 26. My wife, Helen, was giving birth to our daughter. There were complications. While they worked on her, they took you. Told us you didn't make it."Elara's hands started to shake. "You are...""I am your father," he whispered. "Biologically, yes. But I didn't get to be your father."That night in 2006, broken by grief, Julian had walked out of that hospital and never gone home. On a back road, something found him that fed on grief. It offered him a choice: die, or live long enough to find her.He chose to live. As a vampire."So I waited. I can't enter a hospital, but I can watch. I watched that nurse, and I watched Diane. I watched you grow up from this hill because I couldn't get close without them using you against me. And last week, when you turned 19, the blood oath that bound me away from you broke."He reached out, but stopped just before touching her cheek. Asking permission."You are not abused because you are unwanted, Elara. You were abused because you were stolen from people who wanted you more than breathing."*CHAPTER 4 - FINDING THEM*Helen Morgan was alive. Julian showed Elara a house two towns over, with a garden full of sunflowers and a room that had been painted pink for 19 years and never used."She never stopped believing you were alive," Julian said. "She still goes to the hospital every year on your birthday."He was afraid to go near Helen. "She thinks I'm dead.

Bound of shadows 2: The Return of the ShadowsThree years after the kingdom of Eldoria believed its darkest nightmare had ended, the shadows return—and this time, they are no longer hiding in the darkness. They are living inside the people the kingdom trusts most.Kael Ardent, a warrior who once sacrificed everything to save his world, returns from beyond death with a mysterious black sword called Eclipse. The weapon possesses a consciousness of its own, whispering secrets into his mind and warning him that the ancient evil he fought was never truly destroyed. Something beneath Eldoria's royal palace has awakened, and the boundary separating the world of the living from the realm of shadows is beginning to collapse.