Book One · Blood Rage
The Bloodborne & Converted
He never asked to be royalty.
He never asked to be a weapon, either.
The Story
A War Older Than the City Built Over It
Long before recorded history, an apex predator evolved alongside humankind — the Bloodborne, immortal, nearly indestructible, and hungry. From the humans they preyed on, they learned civilization. From their own blood, shared with a chosen few, they made the Converted: reborn, powerful, and forever ranked beneath the family that made them.
For a thousand years, that hierarchy held. The Bloodborne ruled from hidden courts, the Converted were tolerated at best, and the Guardians — the Bloodborne's own police — made sure neither side let the secret slip to the humans sharing their cities. The uneasy peace has never been closer to breaking. Ancient Bloodborne are waking from centuries of hibernation to reclaim thrones they left behind, and the Converted see an opening they've been waiting for since their failed rebellion five hundred years ago.
In modern Boston, none of that means anything to Sebastian — an orphan who watched his parents die at four years old and has spent every year since fighting to keep his temper from costing him what little he's built for himself.
He doesn't know he's royalty. He's about to find out the hard way.
The Protagonist
Sebastian
Sebastian doesn't remember his birth name, his birth parents, or anything before the alley where he watched something take them both apart. The trauma erased the rest. What foster care couldn't erase was the rage — channeled, eventually, into martial arts, forensic science, and a scholarship to Boston University he is one embezzlement scandal away from losing.
He's never belonged anywhere long enough to stop bracing for the moment it falls apart. So when a street fight goes wrong and something in his blood wakes up — strength, speed, and a hunger he doesn't recognize as his own — it isn't a gift. It's a confirmation of everything he's always suspected about himself.
What he learns next is worse: he's the missing heir to the North American Bloodborne throne, presumed dead alongside his parents, and his return has just made him the single most inconvenient person alive to the cousins who inherited his place.
Royal blood or not, Sebastian isn't interested in a crown. He's interested in finding out whether the family that made him and the world he's building a place in — the Converted, the ones the court taught him to look down on — can possibly want the same thing he does.
"Bloodborne by blood. Human by every choice that actually mattered."
The World
The Bloodborne & Converted Universe
The Bloodborne
An apex predator species older than recorded history — nearly immortal, ferociously hierarchical, and ruled by courts descended from beings once worshipped as gods.
The Converted
Humans reborn through a Bloodborne's blood — powerful, effectively immortal, and permanently second-class in a society that made them and has never let them forget it.
The Guardians
The Bloodborne's own enforcers, tasked with policing both societies and keeping eight thousand years of secrets from the humans who share their cities.
The Fade & The Courts
Ancient Bloodborne, worshipped as gods in ages past, are waking from centuries of hibernation — and the thrones their descendants built in their absence were never meant to be given back willingly.
Project Status
Currently in Development
Blood Rage, Book One of The Bloodborne & Converted, is a dark urban fantasy novel by Chris Bailey-Smith, currently in the drafting and revision process. Updates on progress, world-building notes, and excerpts will be shared here as the manuscript develops.
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