This is just the main character's background and a bunch of Triste history and traits I made up. It's very slow, but a bit shorter than the first chapter. Basically, Helena lives in an ancient land with ancient people and ancient, harsh customs and traditions.
Helena was born with features not unusual to her people. Her hair was the color of rose petals, a deep dark crimson. Her skin held the bronzed glow of most of her neighbors, but it was slightly lighter in shade. If it weren't, she would practically be as brown as the bark of the trees that surrounded the Eastern edge of her city. Her eyes were like two deep pools of sapphire, the color of the waking sky. But it wasn't Helena's beauty that caused her to radiate and stand out of a crowd. It was her aura, her magic, her blood. For as Helena would soon learn, she was not like other people. She was not human. She was immortal, born and raised. She had the strength of ten men, and magic to rival any descendant of Macht, the immortal mother of the mortal witches.
There were other creatures on earth stronger than humans and those that possessed magic in their very essence and even those with exceptionally strong mental abilities. She and her kind were also not the only immortals walking this earth, but the one trait that set her and her kind apart from all others, was their blood. It was poisonous to the most hated and feared creatures ever damned to exist; the vampires. That made her and her kind the most feared and hated in the vampire world. They were the perfect vampire killers.
As soon as Helena could walk, she was trained. After birth, she would not see her parents again for another twenty years at least. A Triste nurse and guardian took charge of her life. Neither love nor nurturing were known to her. While her nurse went to collect food, her guardian made her exercise, walking long distances for a child, building the endurance and muscle needed for fighting the beasts she was born to destroy. At night, when Helena would cry, her nurse would enter her mind and influence her to sleep. This was Helena's first exposure to the lack of free will available to her. Only when she was strong enough to repel her guardian's mental invasions and defeat him in training would she win her free will and title as a true predator. As with most Tristes, this did not occur until the middle to late teenage years. On average, Tristes stopped growing and maturing by their early twenties. From then on, few kept records on their age. They kept time by seasons: growing, harvesting, wet, and dry. They knew no snow or desert. Flood and drought were natural occurrences.
Helena grew and learned and lived a hard life. Her days were consumed by training and lessons and stories. She had to know her enemy's nature and history. She had to know how others of her kind had fallen to a vampire's grip. Tristes had human weaknesses that hindered them. Almost anything that would kill a human, from a broken neck to blood loss, would kill a Triste. Diseases did not affect them, but procreating did. Tristes could only give birth before their immortality set in. That gave them anywhere from ten to seven years to mate. Once more, female Tristes were born with only enough eggs for two children. Premature birth and miscarriages were devastating to their kind.
When Helena was three years old, she was prepared to be mated first with a young Triste from a neighboring village when she was able. He was two years her junior. The females were usually older than the males. Helena was prepared for the ritual, but there was no way for her to predict what would happen that night.