Chapter 1

Isla

“On your knees!” A stick lands with a loud sharp smack on the back of my knees.

I grit my teeth, trying my best not to cry out, and sink to the hard stone floor.

They came to take me from my home an hour ago, dragging me away from my family and into the night.

As long as I live, I’ll never forget the look of shame on my parents’ faces when the initiates broke down our door. “Isla Oliver. You have been summoned to attend the harvest.”

Bile pushed up in my throat, and I wildly looked to my father for help. He shook his head at me. “I told you to get a breed mate.”

The biggest shame of all. Their daughter is eighteen and unpaired.

My father, the diplomat, couldn’t stand having me in his house. I was a disgrace, and being hauled off by the initiates for all the see, when his other nine children were such upstanding citizens, was a betrayal my father couldn’t stomach.

I turn my head to the side, to the big windows overlooking the bay. A thick fog is rolling in over the ocean, covering the city in a fluffy, white blanket. The full moon casts her ghostly white glow, bathing dark shadows in a halo as they rush to make it home before the stroke midnight.

I used to love nights like tonight. The way to fog swallowed the sounds and the city seemed to disappear. The soft caress of cold droplets on my skin, and getting lost in the white embrace.

The bell tolls.

Midnight.

The fairy tale hour, my mother always calls it. That’s when the magic ends.

A foot lands on my neck. “Bow, you ingrate,” the woman hisses.

She’s just a human like the rest of us, but she has been given power by our masters, and she wields it like a sword.

Pain shoots through my neck and into my shoulders. She grinds her heel into my spine until my forehead touches the rough stone. Her boot cuts into my neck. Warm trickles of blood runs down my skin and stains my pristine, white dress.

I grit my teeth and try my best not to sob like the girl who is kneeling next to me. Snot, tears and spit runs down her chin, and collects on her yellowing blouse. “Stop,” I whisper. “They’ll hurt you.”

The human behind me takes her boot of my neck and hits me across the back with her cane. “Be quiet!”

I bite into my bottom lip and try to breathe through the pain. I can feel her, the heat of her, right behind me. Her breath stinks of garlic and onions – two scents the vampires hate – and she reeks of sweat.

I hear the creak of the large double doors, and a whisper ripples through the crowd gathered in the vampires’ great hall.

They move like ghosts. We don’t see them. We don’t hear them. But we can feel them. Their presence.

It’s magnetic and undeniable. The air shifts around them like a current. Nature bends to their will.

“The harvest will commence!” a man cries out.

Those of us who are not chosen tonight will be taken to the donation centres where we’ll be bled dry and discarded. This is our last chance.

Trumpets blare, the lights go out, plunging us in darkness to protect the vampires’ sensitive eyes.

The girl next to me reaches out, blindly searching for me. I take her wet hand and curl my fingers around hers. “It will be all right,” I say under my breath – more as a way to reassure myself than her.

I don’t know her, but I understand her. The fear. It’s gnawing away at my insides like a caterpillar. My heart is going so fast that I can’t tell one beat from the next, and my tongue is glued to the roof of my mouth.

“No,” she sobs. “No. I’m ugly and barren. My breed mate abandoned me.”

“I’m sorry,” I mutter.

I turn my eyes sideways, in the direction of the crying girl. I can just about make out her shadow in the darkness. “They say it’s not a bad way too die. Just like going to sleep really. There’s no pain.”

“I did everything right,” she screams and grunts as the cane lands on her back.

“Be quiet.”

I didn’t. I never wanted to be a breeder. It’s the highest honour for a human, but I rejected all advances. I was never interested in any of the boys who tried to breed me.

“Welcome Prince Aeron,” a man calls out.

The trumpets echo.

The hall falls quiet. We can feel their approach, and we’re drawn to it – like helpless little moths to a hundred flickering flames.

My mouth starts to water and I go a little weak in the knees, butterflies flap around in my stomach, and heat flushes through my core like lava.

Cold, firm fingers wrap around my chin and forces and my face up. “Lights,” the man holding my face says softly.

Someone comes running with a lantern. The orange glow casts enough light for me to see him, but it’s not so bright that it will hurt his eyes.

“Look at me.”

I lift my eyes and stare into the icy blue eyes of Prince Aeron. “Interesting,” he says softly.

He’s pure perfection, with long dark hair, high cheekbones, a straight nose, and full lips.

I swallow past the lump in my throat. The allure of a vampire is undeniable. No one can resist them. They are… magnetic.

The prince’s eyes flash red and my insides shrivel up a little. “A virgin,” he says in a low, gritty voice that sends shivers down my spine. “How… quaint.”

The other vampires start to whisper in papery voices.

“A virgin?”

“There are no virgins.”

“She’s one.”

The prince lets me go, hikes his trousers up, and crouches in front of me. “I know you.”

I nod. “I am Elijah Oliver’s daughter.”

“Of course,” he says in a deep, dark voice that turns my insides to mush. “I’ll have you.”

He rises and the lights go out again.

Air puffs from my lips and I sag forward, shaking from top to bottom.

“Start sorting them,” Price Aeron says. “Take the leftovers to the donation centre.”

His voice seems to be further away when he calls out. “Bring the girl.”

Someone takes me by the upper arms – big rough hands – and lifts me up from the hard, stone floor.

Only then does it all sink in. What this means.

Aeron chose me. The prince of the vampires chose me.