"He Traded Me for His First Love, Not Knowing I'm a Vampire "

Jaxsen Grant's beloved first love had barely touched down in the country when she was snatched by kidnappers. In the ransom video, the thugs didn't just demand thirty million yuan in cash; they specifically ordered me to come in exchange for the hostage. I pointed at myself, totally confused. What could a bunch of human kidnappers possibly want with a vampire like me? Before I could figure it out, Jaxsen spoke up, his voice thick with agony. "I'm sorry, Yeya. I can't let anything happen to Ziya." One second later, he had his men knock me out cold and dump me in a car bound for the exchange site. When I came to, I was in the clutches of a crew of vicious, scowling kidnappers. I watched helplessly as Jaxsen turned and walked away, the unconscious Ziya curled in his arms. As soon as they vanished from sight, the lead kidnapper set up a camera, started yanking down his pants, and sauntered right over to me. I glanced left and right, casual as could be. "Jaxsen and the others are all gone?" The kidnapper leader bared his teeth in a cruel, twisted grin. "Every last one of 'em, Yeya. You should've thought twice before crossing someone you don't mess with." I stared at his gross, leering gaze and curled the corner of my mouth into a cold little smile. "Good. I'm glad they're gone." ***** His calloused, rough hand dragged down from my cheek all the way to my collarbone. The gritty, disgusting texture sent a wave of nausea rolling through me. "Get your hand off me." My voice was ice-cold, sharp as a shard of broken glass. The kidnapper leader leered at my slim, small frame, his greedy eyes glued to my chest. He snickered, low and crude. "Nice fire, sweetheart. Hope you're still this feisty when you're under me later." He ripped my dress open with one brutal yank, and the rest of his goons burst into raucous, wolf-whistling laughter. I'd planned to just walk away and leave these losers to their own devices, but now, a furious, bloodthirsty urge bubbled up in my chest, screaming for me to kill every last one of these scumbags. When the man leaned down to slobber a kiss on my neck, my sharp fangs snapped out instantly. I sank them viciously straight through his throat. The rest of the goons froze in terror, too scared to even scream. I took every single one of them down easily. "Spit! Spit! Spit!" I spat out the leftover blood in my mouth, still in my vampire form, and huddled far off to the side, forcing down the ravenous bloodthirsty urge thrumming through my veins. Ever since I'd gotten together with Jaxsen, I hadn't let my vampire traits show for ages. All vampires in my clan are born allergic to type B blood. Marnie Voss drilled it into me from the time I was little that I could never drink blood randomly. If I messed up and drank the wrong kind, either my bloodline would turn on me and trigger a brutal backlash, or I'd draw the attention of vampire hunters. My grandma made that exact mistake once. She drank from a man with type B blood, and the backlash was so bad she couldn't hold her human form. A vampire hunter caught her not long after and locked her up in a specially made container. After that, our whole clan went off the grid. We hid out in the middle of nowhere, lying low, until the last few decades when we finally worked up the nerve to step back into human society again. Marnie said the world was nothing like it used to be. If you didn't have an education, you couldn't get anywhere these days. So as soon as I came of age, she shipped me off to a human school to study. I fell head over heels for all kinds of human food at school, especially duck blood and pig blood. To get my hands on even more delicious food, I studied my butt off to get into college and moved from my small county town all the way to the big city. That's where I met Jaxsen, too. The first time we crossed paths, he just couldn't take his eyes off me. Back then, I had no clue he was staring only because I bore a faint, fifty percent resemblance to his long-lost white moonlight—the perfect, unobtainable girl he'd pined after for years. I thought he was a vampire with purer blood than mine who wanted to drink my blood, and that's why he was so dead set on pursuing me. All my roommates gushed about how famous Jaxsen was in the wealthy elite circle for being notoriously straight-laced. Not only did he have zero women hanging around him, but his face and body were drop-dead gorgeous, top-tier all the way. They kept telling me to grab the chance to change my whole life. But I couldn't have cared less about the flowers and jewelry he sent, so I shipped every last thing right back to him. After that, I went off to pick up a job as a waitress at a local restaurant. I'd gorged on way too much amazing new food, and just two months into the semester, my wallet was completely empty. I called Marnie to beg for cash, but she said she was just as broke and told me to get a job and feed myself. "Yeya, you're a fully grown vampire passing as a human now! If you want to keep chowing down on fresh pig and duck blood in the human world, you've got to put in the work yourself. Hardworking vampires are the prettiest vampires!" Useless old vampire. She's been around for hundreds of years, and her savings are still only a lousy three figures. With no other choice, I landed a job at a local restaurant. I'd seen people online say that if you work in the back of house, you can sneak bites of leftover scraps now and then. It filled my stomach and padded my wallet at the same time. That job was basically made for me. But of course, the one time I was sneaking leftover food while all the head chefs were off at a meeting, I got caught red-handed mid-bite by Jaxsen, who was there to inspect the property. He stared in total shock at me, my cheeks stuffed full of duck blood. He went quiet for a second, then suddenly grinned. "Yeya, let me buy you dinner." That was the first time a human had ever offered to treat me to food. Before that, the only meals I ever had were the rabbits my mom would hunt down so I could drink their blood. He laid out a whole table of food—dishes I could name, dishes I'd had before, and dishes I'd never even gotten to try. The whole table was piled high. Jaxsen watched in stunned silence as I polished off every last bite. The hand holding his cigarette shook so hard he burned a hole straight through his suit blazer. "I never would've guessed someone as tiny as you has such a huge appetite. But supporting you would be no trouble at all for me. Yeya, do you want to date me? From now on, I'll pay for anything you want to eat."