SOLD TO THE VAMPIRE EMPEROR

THE FIRST TASTE

NYRA'S POV

The cloak smelled of candle wax. I wrinkled my nose, yet I held it tighter around my shoulders as I leaned on the corridor wall and listened.

Twelve steps to my left, the guards changed shifts every twenty minutes. I knew because I had spent two days counting. Two days eating food without tasting it and sleeping in a bed that felt more like a prison and watching the servants move through the castle.

By now, I had a rough map of the place, not a perfect one though, but enough.

A servant had accidentally left this cloak outside the laundry passage. I had taken it without guilt, pulled the hood over my head, and hidden my hair. Now I blended in. Just another grey figure among many others. I had already slipped past two corridors and down a staircase without anyone noticing.

The outer passage was just ahead. From what I had learned by listening to servants and studying the view from my window, a gate lay beyond it and past the gate, a forest. I could survive in a forest.

I kept moving. The passage was narrow, with a low ceiling and rough stone walls close enough to touch on both sides. It was clearly built for servants, not nobles. These hidden hallways were the castle's lifelines.

I walked quickly, keeping my footsteps light while counting the doors. My heartbeat was very loud in my ears.

Come on.

At the end of the passage, I met face to face with a heavy wooden door with an old iron handle and hinges. One careless pull would make them squeak. I grabbed the handle with both hands and dragged slowly.

The door eventually swung open with only a faint creak and cold air rushed over my face. I stepped out into a narrow service yard paved with stone. A wall with an iron gate was left partly open for the morning delivery carts.

The opening led to a cluster of thick trees fifty feet away. I gathered the cloak around myself and started walking. I'd barely covered fifteen feet when a familiar voice stopped me.

"The forest stretches for sixty miles in every direction," Zevran said behind me. "There's nothing in it that can help you but there are plenty of things that can kill you."

I slowed to a halt and curled my hands into fists under the cloak. I counted to three, then swung round.

He was about ten feet away with no guards, coat or anything that suggested he had been chasing me. He could have passed for someone who came outside for fresh air and happened to find me there. His face revealed nothing.

"You're not angry?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I knew you'd try to escape sooner or later," he shrugged lightly. "I was interested in seeing how far you'd get. You made it farther than most."

"That doesn't make me feel better."

"I didn't expect it to."

He nodded towards the castle. "Come."

"I'm done following you." I refused to back away. "I'm not your pet, neither am I your prisoner. I never agreed to whatever deal someone made with you, and I won't live by it."

"That's a fair opinion," he said calmly. "Come anyway." He walked back inside.

I stayed where I was. My eyes dashed between the gate and the trees and the endless forest he had described so casually, then at the doorway where he'd disappeared.

Finally, I trailed behind him because the other choice was getting lost in sixty miles of unfamiliar forest and I'd already decided that I wasn't going to die before learning the truth. Dead people didn't get answers.

He led me deep into the castle, past the floors I already knew and higher, into places I'd never seen.

At the top of a staircase, we entered onto a wide stone balcony that expanded into the east side of the castle. The view took my breath away. The city extended into the distance. It truly was an empire; tall towers reached the sky, stone bridges connected various districts and wide streets were in every direction. Below us, thousands of people occupied the streets.

Zevran walked to the balcony railing and rested his hands on the stone. The second he appeared, everyone below knelt. Every single person, all in their thousands, dropped to one knee until the streets, bridges, and squares were filled with bowed heads.

I had never seen anything like it. Only then did I truly understand what power meant.

"You wanted to know where you are," Zevran said. "Now you know."

I strolled to the railing, leaving a safe distance between us. My hands closed on the cold stone. "You said, 'Not yet,'" I said. “When you caught me from leaving, what did you mean?"

"There are things that must happen first," he answered. "Before leaving, become safe."

"Safe for whom?"

His eyes met mine. "For both of us."

"You owe me the truth." I tried not to get irritated. "No more avoiding the question. You bought me and brought me here. You know things about me that I don't even know.” I glanced at my hands. "The silver light…what does it mean?"

For a long time, he watched the city below. "Hybrid blood hasn't existed in any realm for four hundred years."

I waited.

"The oldest records describe it as a union. Wolf blood mixed with something far older. Something that existed before the realms were separated." His voice sounded more like a scholar than a ruler. "The records say hybrids could do things no ordinary creature could. They could cross between realms without gates. They could even reverse death under certain conditions." He paused. "And if pushed to the edge, they could destroy entire kingdoms." He let that sink in. “The silver light isn't a wolf ability," he continued. “It isn't vampire magic either. It belongs to neither world, only exists in between."

"And you think that's what I am?"

"I think that's what your blood suggests, yes."

"How would you know what my blood suggests? You haven't touched me.”

His countenance shifted, but disappeared almost immediately. I noticed it anyway.

"You're either lying or you're mistaken. I know who I am. I'm a wolf, born in a pack and grew up there too. My whole life has been with wolves. There's nothing ancient, impossible, or hybrid about me."

"The silver light says otherwise."

"It only appeared because I was under pressure. I don't know what it was. I'd never seen it before."

"I know," he said. “That much was obvious."

I was about to answer... When pain exploded in my chest, right below my breastbone where the mate bond scar was. It had been a dull ache ever since I arrived here, but now it burned sharply. So intense that I struggled to breathe. I grabbed the stone railing with both hands and bent forward. My free hand grabbed against my chest. It felt exactly as it had the night Aeron died.

For one horrible second… I was back there covered in blood and surrounded by darkness, watching him die all over again.

"What is that?" Zevran's voice had changed.

I raised my head. His face had changed too. The calm expression was gone. His eyes were locked on the place where my hand covered the scar.

For the first time… I saw fear in his eyes, real fear from the man who ruled an empire.

"What is that scar?" he asked. His voice had lost its usual control.

"It's a mate bond." I struggled to breathe. "My mate died."

His eyes moved from the scar to my face. Whatever he saw there altered his facial expression. I couldn't tell what.

"That's impossible," he whispered.