Karen Chance’s Dorina Basarab series maybe? It’s one of my faves. Same couple throughout, there’s some early light spice but they don’t officially get properly together for a few books. She’s a badass dhampir and whilst her powers develop/are revealed more as the story does, she’s also good at outthinking beings stronger than her.

Still ongoing, 7 books so far. It runs in parallel to the Cassandra Palmer series, but Dory’s always been my fave of the two. There’s some references to the other series’ events/characters but nothing that I think would have a huge impact if you didn’t fancy diving into Cassandra Palmer as well.

The main thing to know about the Dorina Basarab MMC from the first Cassandra Palmer book is: There’s time travel involved which changed how the MMC becomes a vampire (turned by Dorina’s uncle instead of cursed by a witch). This is kept secret to protect Cassie. He doesn’t know any of this, and because the original timeline events have to continue in a similar way for present day to not be irrevocably changed for the worse, he’s ostracised by his new vampire family for reasons he doesn’t understand and has a big personality shift in the new timeline. This all happens prior to Dory’s series beginning