5

But Francois looked around as though we were surrounded by luxury, his gaze bright and alive as he scanned our surroundings. “I’m so glad you’re here, ma petite. You’ll want for nothing. Can you see how grand our life together will be? All that I’m able to offer you?”

I nodded, a polite lie sticking in my throat as I pressed the nails of my free hand into my palm. I could do this. I could bide my time and plot and scheme my way to escape.

He tugged me closer to his side and bent to press his nose against my hair again. Then he led me to the back of the stairs and drew aside a fraying curtain on noisy wooden curtain rings, revealing a cage door and a rickety old elevator that looked like a prototype model for the actual first elevator.

“Come in, ma petite.” He obviously sensed my reluctance. “It’s perfectly safe, I assure you. I will always protect you.”

I closed my eyes for the entire descent, although it involved Francois winding us down, and where I expected the movement to be jerky, he made it perfectly smooth.

When the elevator stopped, I took a couple of deep breaths until Francois pushed the cage door aside, and I opened my eyes, expecting damp stone walls, green slime, and a part-flooded basement.

But stark white met me. Gleaming walls, proper electric lights, and a true, clean hospital smell—but more technology than in any district hospital.

“Do…Do you drink from blood bags, too?” The question crept from my lips before I even thought to ask.

Francois curled the corner of his lip and for a moment he looked like he might spit on the floor. He lifted a finger and rested it at the base of my neck. “I have only one blood source now, ma petite.”

I tensed against a full-body shudder but drew away just enough to create almost imperceptible space between us. Space I thought he wouldn’t notice, but he did.

He leaned toward me, his voice low as he spoke at my ear. “Soon you will learn to love being at my side, my touch, my body, and you’ll be mine willingly.”

I drew back. There was that word again. Talking about my will but completely ignoring it. What the fuck was wrong with all these guys? But even as I tried to hate them all, all the fucking vampires who’d crashed into my life, I couldn’t.

I wanted one of them.

I yearned for Nicolas Dupont and all the safety he suddenly represented. I was willing now.

Goddamn, I was willing.

“Where am I?” I looked around again and made my voice confident.

A man in a white coat approached, and he was studying a clipboard. He glanced up at Francois then bowed low. “Your highness. Is this the virgin?”

Francois wrapped his arm around my waist and drew me tightly against him. “This is ma petite,” he growled.

The man frowned. “But she is the human virgin?”

Francois nodded.

“I’ll have to confirm that.” The man’s pen scratched across his paperwork.

“I can confirm it.”

I jumped as Francois’s loud words echoed from the walls.

“Or do you need more than my word?” He lowered his voice to something deadly and threatening.

The man in front of me blanched as pale as his coat. “I’ll start the other tests,” he muttered and tugged my wrist so that I’d follow him.

Francois growled. “Doctor, do not touch my bride.” But he didn’t follow us as the doctor led me into a room and gestured for me to get onto a table. My ridiculous gown draped off the sides, but he didn’t seem bothered as he wheeled some sort of scanner over me. Light passed up and down my body, and a 3D version of me was rendered in a chamber on the other side of the room.

After drawing some of my blood, the needle at my elbow sharp, the doctor stepped over to study the hologram, leaving his clipboard on the table alongside me, and Francois joined him, his hands clasped behind his back. He glanced over his shoulder at me, his gaze taking in the blood-filled vials, and his nostrils flared.

Then he looked away, facing forward once more as the doctor explained something to him.

I glanced to my left, angling my head until my neck protested the position as I tried to read the writing on the paperwork. V something. Then the letters formed upside-down words.

Virgin blood…

The clipboard disappeared from view as the doctor guy grabbed it away.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he chided before turning away again. “I need to strap her down for the next tests,” he called to Francois, who simply nodded, but when the doctor pulled the straps around my wrists, his eyes shone with malevolent excitement, and I closed my eyes.

There was a lot there I didn’t want to unpack.

“Just make sure you find out,” Francois said, tension in his tone.

The doctor nodded. I wanted to ask, find out what, but from the glazed look in Francois’ eyes and the barely hidden apprehension in the “doctor’s,” I wasn’t sure Francois even knew what he was asking for.

Time passed slowly. It could have been hours, but I was poked and prodded and some of the tests hurt. One seemed to be a bone marrow extraction without anesthetic, and as I hissed in pain, building in intensity until I was nearly screaming, Francois approached.

“What are you doing to her?” He wrapped his long fingers around the doctor’s neck and pressed until the man’s eyes bulged. “Why are you hurting her?”

The doctor opened his mouth but only made a gasping noise. When Francois relaxed his grip a little, the man managed to choke out his reply. “The tests… You wanted…”

Francois shook him. “Continue carefully.”

But I shook my head as the pain level increased, the pressure on my bone growing until I could almost feel my hip cracking. “No, Francois. I…”

His face blurred and I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t stop the shadows creeping in from the edge of my vision or my eyes from closing as I succumbed to the dark.