His Cruel Game, My Cold Revenge

I forced open my blurry, dazed eyes and looked toward the direction the arrows had come from.

Instinctively, I called out Oliver’s name.

But the face that met my gaze was not his, it was Laura’s, smiling sweetly.

“Instead of letting you die so easily,” she said, “I’d much rather watch you turn into a grotesque mutt and appear before Oliver in all your shame.”

“After all,” she added softly, “as a pureblood prince, he despises nothing more than filth like you those turned by low-level vampires.”

As soon as the words left her lips, Oliver arrived with long, urgent strides.

The moment he saw my blood-drained face, a flicker of panic crossed his eyes but he quickly masked it with icy composure. “She’s lucky to still be alive,” he ordered the butler. “Stop the bleeding. Patch her up. Now.”

Inside me, it felt like two extremes were warring ice and fire crashing into each other.

I could smell the faint, alluring scent of Laura’s blood and I could feel my body undergoing a violent, irreversible change.

I dragged myself toward Oliver, leaving a long, horrifying trail of blood across the marble floor.

Desperate, I clutched at his pant leg like a drowning woman clinging to driftwood.

“Please, I was bitten by a low-ranking vampire. I don’t want to turn into one of them. I don’t want to become something hideous and savage.”

If Oliver gave me his first embrace before the transformation was complete, I could still become a high-ranking vampire retaining my human form and mind.

He knelt down.

But not to save me.

He coldly pried my fingers off his pants, one by one.

“All the vampires in today’s hunt were nobles,” he said flatly. “They’ve already fed and left. There’s no way a rogue could’ve attacked you. And low-level vampires? They were locked away, there's no chance they escaped.”

I lifted my hand with great effort, trying to show him the bite marks.

But I froze in horror.

The wounds were gone.

Healed. Vanished.

At some unknown moment, every injury on my body had mysteriously closed.

Then it hit me, a hunger unlike anything I’d ever known. A searing thirst that clenched my throat, so overwhelming I couldn’t force out another word.

I looked up at Oliver, eyes brimming with silent please.

But he only stared down at me with cold detachment.

“Serena,” he said, “your little schemes, playing the victim, staging a ploy for sympathy! None of that will earn my favor.”

“If you want to stay by my side,” he continued, “then let go of this idea of leaving. And stop hurting Laura. I might, just might, start treating you both equally.”

I stared at his lips moving, but no longer heard a single sound.

Something inside me had broken.

In the next second, I turned my numb face toward the window expression empty.

And in the vastness of the sky, all I could see was a blood-red moon.