Page 12 of Cruel Vampire King

Me? Could I be the reason things had been… uneventful so far? I tried to shove aside that thought. I wasn’t going to be pulled into the fairytale again. There was no grand love; there was no destiny. Luken wanted something from me and he was punishing me for denying him. I wasn’t going to grow complacent. I wasn’t going to let myself start thinking I wasspecial. It would only get me killed.

“I bet he’s planning a spectacle,” Ysara said. “It is an anniversary year, after all. They tend to have something more exciting every five years.”

Yes, that must be it.

The tablet flickered to life. Luken’s image appeared on it, smiling broadly. The sight of him caused my heart to ricochet off my ribs, and I scolded myself harshly for it.

“All of you, contestants and viewers, are no doubt wondering why we have this strange start to the Trials. Where is the bloodshed? Why have there been no attacks, no action? Arethese the Blood Trials or a picnic in the forest?” Luken chuckled, sending prickles wash under my skin.

Why did I still respond to him like the naïve eighteen-year-old I once had been?

I struggled to pay attention to his words when my head was so full of other thoughts. My body was responding to the sound of his voice, heat pooling in my belly. There was something dangerously seductive about him. I understood now how I could have been so deceived four years ago. That girl I was didn’t stand a chance?

Taking a deep breath, I dug my fingernails into my palm. Hard enough to cause a slight prickle of pain, but not hard enough to cause damage.

It was how I’d trained myself to preparing to bring drunk from at the end of the Trials. It had been a… difficult task. A vampire drinking caused a surge of hormones in the person they bit, sending that person into sexual bliss. I’d started small, putting myself through pain every time I was sexually aroused. I’d even allowed vampires to drink from me before, pairing these instances with more pain. It was supposed to train my body not to respond to the stimuli… and except for these damned reactions to Luken, I believed I’d gotten to the point where I masted my own body enough to ignore the arousal.

It was hard to be horny when you were writhing in pain. Even now, with that low simmering heat in my belly, my shoulders were tense, waiting for the pain to befall it.

The sting of my fingernails in my palms helped ground me. But it also highlighted an unfortunate side effect I hadn’t counted on when training myself. Every now and then, it worked in the opposite way. The pain would cause this heat to flash through me. It was rare, though, and I knew I could handle it.

“Glory be to the Gods,” Luken said. The image disappeared off the screen.

I blinked, cursing myself. I’d missed the whole speech! What was the real reason for the delays? I glanced at my team to find their faces all grim, except for Thessa, who had both hands over her mouth. Did I dare ask what I’d missed? It would show a terrible weakness on my point… although, it might also make them underestimate me even more.

I gripped my staff in both hands and leaned against it. Quickly, as the others were still staring at the tablet, I arranged my face into a confused expression.

“I don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head slowly.

Greyson arched one manicured brow. Today, his hair was braided into a single plait, exposing the slender, pointed tip of his ears. “You don’t… get it?”

“What’s there not to get?” Kael spat. “They’re letting loose creatures into the forest that have been specially trained to hunt us down and have twice as many contestants as they normally do. It’s going to be quite the spectacle, isn’t it? Bad enough that they’ve made watching the channels mandatory.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t talk like that,” Thessa said, her hands fluttering.

Kael turned on her. “Why not? I never even wanted to be here!”

“But they’re watching,” Thessa insisted. “And if they don’t like what we say…”

She trailed off, looking around nervously as though a vampire was going to jump out of the bushes and attack us. I wondered, suddenly, how many people were turned into our channels. Every person in the Trials had their own channel,broadcasted through the kingdom. It would keep playing until that person died. Betting on the Trials was a common practice among all levels of society. Not that it helped anyone within the Trials. They didn’t get anything from it, except recognition if they won.

Winning the combat section of the Trials did bring recognition and fame. The person who survived the colosseum was given land and wealth. They often made even more money by writing about their experiences or using that fame to propel their careers. None of them had successfully resisted Luken when he drank from them, but that didn’t mean they came out with nothing.

I’d watched the interviews with past winners. Whenever they were asked what it was like to be drunk from by the King, they would all get these wistful, far-off looks. Most refused to talk about it, and those who did ended up waxing poetic. One woman I remembered had said,“It’s what I think about every night and every morning. I would go through the Trials again just to have the honor.”

Funny how that worked, though. Once a person went through the Trials, they weren’t permitted to volunteer again. Now, I couldn’t help but wonder if Luken chose the winner every year, the person he wanted to taste, and manipulated the Trials to ensure their survival. And then I wondered how far he went with them when he drank; men and women both had won the Trials. Orcs, elves, shifters, gnomes, humans, even other vampires. The winner could be of any species.

Surely, not all of them could be his type. Surely, he wouldn’t want to sleep with every winner. But then, perhaps he did. Maybe it was less about who and what he laid with, and more about the power he held over them as soon as his teeth sunk into their skin.

A shiver ran through me as I tried to imagine Luken with, say, Kael. But in my mind’s eye, it wasn’t Kael in Luken’s arms but me.

Dammit.

We started to move through the forest with Ysara leading us in her wolf form. We moved in a tighter group than we had the previous day. The same silence hung over us, but it seemed darker and deeper than it had been before.

When a twig cracked behind us, it echoed like a gunshot. Kael and Thessa whirled. Greyson pivoted, facing to the right of us. Ysara gave out a short bark and lunged to the left. I brought up my staff in a defensive position. I searched the brush around us.

The ambush came at us from all sides. They shouted and whooped as they came at us. A human with a broadsword charged at me. I braced myself, caught his first blow on my staff, and then shoved him away. Pirouetting, I faced off with him. He laughed, a sound that sounded both fascinated and desperate. The human already had a gash on his forehead and moved with a jerky gait. Clearly, he’d been wounded before. His lips pulled back over his teeth, his eyes wild and bulging. His pupils were blown, so huge it filled nearly his whole eye. Drugged or concussed?

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