Her Vampire Prince

Prologue

Life doesn't always go how you expect it to. It doesn't always deal you a fair hand, or cut you some slack. There is no reverse button, no second chances. It isn't perfect – nothing ever is. After all, life is the art of drawing without an eraser. You are bound to make mistakes, experience heartache and pain, and be torn down from time to time; it is a 'life special'. But it's what you do with yourself after you experience these perturbing events that really define you as a person. Will you give up? Carry on? No one can truly break your spirit unless you let them. Your life may be temporary, but the goal is to create something spectacular that will be remembered forever.

Breathe. You might be having a bad day, but it doesn't mean you have a bad life.

Faith Alexandria Halsey always prided herself in being meticulous and circumspect. She was a planner. Every situation was always prepared for; every possible outcome thoroughly looked into. She couldn't help being a teacher's pet, or having a different diary for each day of the week. She was highly organised, and incredibly competitive. To her, being the best was not good enough. Her ten-year plan was crafted after weeks of careful filtration and amendments, finally becoming something she was proud to present framed above her bed. It must have been somewhere in the coding of her DNA to be a people-pleasing straight-laced Sally. If anyone ever insulted her on the way she lived her life, she would simply remark that as a result of being a goody two-shoes, she had a great relationship with her parents and a bright future ahead of her. But to her little sister Hope and others around her age, she was a boring embarrassment of a teenager, who had never even drunk alcohol at the age of nineteen.

A big point on Faith's ten-year chart was getting married to a highly successful lawyer (hopefully her current boyfriend), an organised and career-driven man like her father, offering maximum compatibility. Of course, weddings require the compulsory attendance of your parents, a landmark event when a father hands over his daughter to the worthy gentleman she has chosen. Although, that is a hard wish to fulfil when your mother and father both unexpectedly die in a terrible car crash, driving home from Paris one night. As soon as Faith got the call, it was as if a bomb went off in her life. Everything she had planned was a wet excuse of a mess puddling at her feet. Her parents were away for a business trip one minute, and gone the next, setting off a chain of reactions completely knocking her life off course.

Death is such an unnatural thing.

For Faith, this ruined everything. Her mother was her best friend, her confidant since she was a little girl, and suddenly all the love and support she relied on her mother for was harshly ripped away. If it wasn't for her sister Hope, Faith doesn't know what she would have done. After her parents died, the mortgage was paid for as well as some surprising debts, and there was a little money left, but not enough to cover all the expenses a big, old, lonely house takes. There certainly wasn't enough for Faith to continue her master's degree in Business Administration at Cambridge University, and Faith wanted to concentrate on her vulnerable little sister for a while. So instead, for the first time in her life, Faith decided to wing it, sell up and start afresh. She had to do something to save her small family of two, which was slowing sinking under the heavy weight of pitiful stares and the constant reminder of the loss of their parents. Therefore, she got a dart, her sister and a map of England, and told Hope to throw. Throw is what she did, and the arrow selected a place neither had ever heard of before.

The town of Blackstone, in the far south of England, consequentially built on the land surrounding Blackstone Cove.

Faith would soon realise that something much more superior then her boring, tragic life was happening in Blackstone, and perhaps it wasn't so random a move... Perhaps the wise hand of destiny was directing her to the life she was truly fated for.

Edited