“They backed me into a corner. It was rather clever. Much more so than I would have thought they could do. It makes me feel even better about exactly how ruthless they will be when they are finally who they were born to be.” His smile broadened. “And they said they wanted you to be alive and well. I didn’t agree to the second part. No one noticed. I don’t care if you’re well. You’ll be alive, and they won’t care. In the meantime, you’re ours. And I intend to make the time worthwhile. We are going to feed on you. A lot.”
I tried to wrench my arm away, but it was futile. His fangs elongated, and he bit my wrist. Hard. I cried out in pain. Unlike the first time, it wasn’t an easy, quick bite. No, he prolonged the agony as I struggled. The more I did, the more he liked it. Finally, he let go.
“Any vampire who wants to feed from her can. She just has to be alive for that meeting. That’s the law. If she tries to run, find her. She’s ours. It’s been so long since we had someone we could really play with.” He shook his head. “So glad to have a feeding tube for a while. Just keep her alive.”
That was when I knew I was really fucking screwed. I struggled, but it was for nothing more than the show of it, so that I could live with knowing that I had done everything I could to get away. Even in that moment, I knew it was fruitless. But it wasn’t until Tanner’s father bit my other wrist that I truly believed it.
They had me.
It turned out it took five bites to addict me. And for that, I had Caesar and Griffin’s fathers to thank. The pain was horrendous, even as the numbness started to take over. I was fully aware that everything hurt, even as the vampire venom made it so I really didn’t give a shit that it was happening. Run away? How could I bother when nothing mattered at all? My mind slipped into the chemicals that I’d avoided my whole life.
I’d lost my best friends. Now I lost myself too.
* * *
Bite.Work. Sleep. Bite. Bite. Bite. Bite. Work. Sleep.My days blended into one moment of a vampire feeding off of me to another. In between, I did their chores.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Wash.
Rinse.
Repeat.
Six monthslater
I threwup for the fifth time, holding my head over the toilet to see if there was anything left to come out. Charlotte pushed her head in the bathroom, then came over to kneel next to me. “You should be about done now. I can’t imagine you have anything left in there, considering you don’t eat.”
Lifting my head to stare at her, I tried to find her amusing and not interfering. “I’m sorry that I’ve been puking so much lately that you’ve become an expert on my vomiting.”
On days when I got bit more than eight times, I tended to spend the next day throwing up. It was like my body desperately tried to rid itself of the poison, but it was to no avail, because I would get bit again and it would just start back up.
She slid to the ground. Lately, the glow usually in her gaze was gone. Had the shine finally been rubbed off in Charlotte’s eyes? Did she finally see how sick and messed up this was?
My friend sighed. “I was thinking about running.” She kept her voice down. “But then I changed my mind.”
This was new. I’d never heard her even suggest it before. I wished she would actually do that. She was hardly ever fed from anymore. They might not even notice if she left. The servants were really all the same to them.
Charlotte was never going to be anyone’s paramour. They picked them out from other places, not from within their own community. It was sad, really.
I had no legs to stand on when it came to being pathetic. My arms were a really good indication of just how far I had fallen in life. Rowan had arranged for me to live. It would have been better if they’d just ended it that night when they’d all left this world.
Vampires could make it so you never scarred when they bit you. No one took that time with me. I stared at my wrists. What would anyone who didn’t know what was going on think was happening to me? I hadn’t left the vampire area since it started six months ago. I really had no idea how anyone would react to me.
“Ladies.” Bethany, one of the older servants, walked over to me. She knelt. “We have things to do. Charlotte, I want you to clean the main room in Fredrick’s house.” That was Rowan’s father’s name. I’d never known it until the women servants started using it. She smoothed my hair off my face. “Bad one?”
I nodded. “Bad one.”
Fredrick had miscalculated just a smidge with hisabuse Maciplans. The servants were less enthralled seeing what he was doing. Maybe he didn’t care? They could probably always find women who wanted to serve them, for the chance of being eternally a vampire. I still didn’t understand it.
On their own, in moments like this, the women I now lived with were lovely human beings. For moments, I could forget that they had chosen this life, that they had left their old lives, came to this place, and decided to work for these monsters so they could have the potential of becoming one themselves. They got bit every so often.
But all in all, they were better off than the paramours.
Those women were in the pits.
Prancing around in their expensive clothes, showing off the bites on their neck like they were some kind of new accessory every time it happened. Willingly deciding to have sex with the creatures that would ultimately kill them when they’d had enough. Well…maybe not. Maybe they’d impregnate them, then change them into monsters at that point.