Rejected By Wolves, Claimed By The Vampire King

My name is Lena, and I am a princess. At least, that's what the woman in my dreams calls me. In real life, in the Wolf King's house, I am not a princess. I am not even a person. I am Item Number Seven. The vampire slave. I was on my hands and knees at 6 AM, scrubbing the marble floor of the main hall. The floor was already clean. There was a cleaning robot that could do it in ten minutes. But the wolves liked to see me like this. On my knees. Above me, on the second floor balcony, the pack meeting was happening. All the important wolves of the Shanghai Wolf Pack in black expensive suits.

Their voices were low, but my vampire hearing could hear everything, even through the burning pain of my collar. The silver collar around my neck was thin and pretty, like a choker. But it was poison to vampires. For nineteen years it had burned my skin, leaving a permanent red scar. It locked away everything I was. My fangs only came out when I was bleeding badly. My speed was gone. I was slower than a human girl. "We lost the East Bund project," Elder Zhang growled. "The Northern Pack is angry. They want their payment. Two million and a bride to seal the alliance." Marcus Wolf, the Wolf King, sat on his large chair that looked like a throne. He was tall, his hair grey at the sides, his eyes still yellow even in his human form. Every wolf in Shanghai feared him. I called him Father in my head, but he never once called me daughter. "We have no daughter to give," Marcus said coldly. "My son Ethan is not married, but we have no daughter." Ethan Wolf, his real son, the Crown Prince, laughed. He was twenty-two, handsome in the cruel way that rich boys are handsome. He leaned over the balcony and looked down at me. Then he lifted his polished black shoe and stepped right onto my hand. Hard. On purpose. I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood. The taste of my own blood always did something strange to me. It made the world go red for a second. "We do," Ethan said, grinding his shoe into my fingers. "We have the little blood pet. The vampire slave. She's nineteen. She's untouched. And Alpha Gunnar from the North likes... exotic pets. He told me last time he always wanted to taste a vampire." The other wolves laughed. One of them whistled. "Little Lena, you should be honored," another wolf said. "Alpha Gunnar is sixty, but he is very strong. He killed his last two wives because they annoyed him, but you are a vampire, maybe you will survive a week longer." My fingers were numb. My nails were digging into the cold marble. Under my cheap grey maid uniform, hidden under my shirt, my mother's jade pendant felt hot against my skin. It was the only thing I had left. A broken piece of dark red jade, carved with a small bat with its wings open. The wolves told me my mother was a low-level blood whore vampire who seduced a wolf and died giving birth to me. That I should be grateful the Wolf King didn't kill me as a baby. But I had dreams. Almost every night. A woman with my same long silver-white hair, wearing a beautiful ancient red dress, holding me as a baby and singing a lullaby in a language I didn't know. She would touch my forehead and whisper, "You are Yue. My little princess. Don't forget. Your blood is royal." Marcus Wolf finally looked at me. His yellow eyes were empty. Like looking at a chair. "Prepare her," he ordered. "The Northern Pack comes tomorrow night. It's full moon. We will gift her to Gunnar to seal the deal. Wash her. The silver collar stays on. We don't want her vampire side to act up." No. No no no. I stood up. My legs were shaking so much I almost fell. Nineteen years of washing their clothes, cooking their food, being bitten when Ethan was drunk and wanted to taste vampire blood because he said it got him high, being called pet, dog, blood bag, thing. "I'm not a thing," I said. My voice was very small, but in the silent hall, everyone heard it. "I'm a person. I have a name." The hall went dead silent. Ethan's face turned dark. In less than a second he used wolf speed - he was in front of me. He grabbed my collar and yanked me up into the air. The silver burned, sizzling, smoke coming off my neck. The smell of my own burning flesh filled my nose. "You are what we say you are," he hissed into my face. His teeth were growing longer, his eyes yellow. "You are a slave born in the house of wolves. You have no pack. You have no clan. If we throw you outside, the vampires will kill you too because you smell like a dog. Remember that, pet." He threw me to the ground. My head hit the marble. Blood trickled from my forehead, and instantly, my fangs - small and weak because of the collar - slid out on their own. "Lock her in the basement," Marcus said without emotion, already turning away. "So she doesn't try to run and embarrass us." Two young wolves dragged me by the chain of my collar like an animal down to the basement. Concrete room. No windows. A bucket. A thin blanket. The same room I had lived in since I was seven years old. The iron door slammed. Lock clicked. I lay on the cold floor and tried to cry, but no tears came. Vampires don't cry easily when collared. We bleed instead. I pulled out the jade pendant. In the dark basement, it was glowing. Faintly, pulsing red, like a heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Thump. It had never glowed before. Never in nineteen years. Outside, through the tiny vent window near the ceiling, I could see a sliver of the moon. Tomorrow was full moon. The wolves would be at their strongest. Their howls would shake the whole city. And they would gift-wrap me and give me to a sixty-year-old monster. If I stayed, I would die. Or worse, live as his tortured bride. If I ran, where would I go? The wolves always told me no one wants a half-breed slave. The human world would not want me. The vampire world would kill me because I smell like wolf. But anything was better than being a bride to a man who kills his brides. I made a decision. I would run tonight. Right now. I held the pendant tight and whispered to my mother, to whoever she really was. "If you were a princess, help me. If I am a princess, give me strength. Please." The pendant suddenly burned hot - so hot it burned my palm. I gasped and dropped it onto the concrete. And then something impossible happened. _Crack._ A tiny, hairline crack appeared on my silver collar. A puff of black smoke came out of it. The collar made a hissing sound. The silver collar had never cracked. Never. Not even when Ethan once tried to cut it with a silver knife to scare me. My heart was beating so fast it hurt. I touched the crack with shaking fingers. Underneath, my skin was not burned. For the first time in nineteen years, the skin under the silver was pale and clean, not red and scarred. From upstairs, a howl started. The pack was starting their pre-full-moon chant. The whole house vibrated with their howls. Awooo! I stood up. I grabbed the broken leg of an old wooden chair - the end was sharp. With all my strength, with all nineteen years of anger, I jammed it into the crack of the collar and pulled outward. Pain. Fire. White light. My neck felt like it was being ripped apart. I screamed, but the howling upstairs was louder and covered my scream. _CRACK! - CLANG!_ The collar snapped in half and fell to the floor, still smoking and spitting sparks. Instantly, air flooded my lungs like I had been underwater for nineteen years. Power - wild, hot, cold, ancient power - flooded my veins. My back arched. My head snapped back. For the first time in my life, I felt my fangs slide out fully, long and sharp and dangerous. My nails grew long and black and sharp. My eyes - I saw my reflection in the dark water bucket - my eyes were glowing solid blood red. And deeper, even deeper than that, behind the vampire power, something else woke up. A low, angry, lonely growl that was not vampire. It was coming from my chest. From my bones. From my soul. A wolf. I clapped a hand over my mouth. No. That's impossible. I am a vampire. The wolves always said I was just a dirty vampire slave. Then why is there a wolf howling inside me? There was no time to think. Heavy footsteps were coming down the stairs. Ethan's voice, annoyed: "Pet? Are you ready to say thank you for your wedding gift? I brought you a pretty dress to wear for Alpha Gunnar." I didn't think. I jumped. I jumped up to the tiny vent window - a jump no human girl could ever do - smashed the glass with my fist and squeezed through, cutting my shoulders and back on the broken glass. Blood poured, but I didn't feel it. Fresh air. Rain. The city of Shanghai at night, lights blurring in the rain. Freedom. I ran. Barefoot. In my bloody maid uniform, covered in blood from my neck and shoulders. I ran ten blocks, twenty blocks, my new vampire speed making cars look like they were standing still. Behind me, far behind, I heard the first furious roar. They realized I was gone. "SHE BROKE THE COLLAR! FIND HER!" I didn't stop until I couldn't breathe, until my legs gave out and I collapsed in a dark wet alley behind a street full of red neon lights. A street I knew wolves never came to - because it was Vampire Street. Blood Moon Nightclub. Humans thought it was just a goth club. Wolves knew better. The rain poured on my face, washing away blood and dirt and nineteen years of being called nothing. Then a shadow fell over me, blocking the neon rain. A man stood there. He wore a long black coat that cost more than the Wolf King's whole house. His hair was black as ink, his skin pale as snow. He was beautiful like a forbidden statue, but his eyes - when he looked down at me - his eyes were glowing purple-red, just like mine. He knelt down slowly. He didn't look disgusted by my bloody bare feet or my torn dress. He looked... shocked. Like he was seeing a ghost. He reached out, his cold fingers so gentle they trembled, tilted my chin up, looking at my broken collar on the wet ground beside me, and then at my long fangs, and then at my neck where the scar was still there. He inhaled. Smelled my blood in the rain. "Royal blood..." he whispered, his deep voice shaking with disbelief and anger. "A pure royal vampire princess... how is a pure royal princess wearing a dog's collar in my city?" Behind him, two more men in black appeared out of the shadows. They saw me, then they saw him kneeling, and they instantly bowed their heads low and whispered in fear and respect, "Your Majesty..." My eyes widened. Your Majesty? The man in the black coat smiled at me, and his own fangs slid out - longer than mine. So long they touched his lower lip. Beautiful and terrifying. "Little one," he said softly, picking me up in his arms as if I weighed nothing at all. His coat smelled like cold night and roses and blood. "The dogs hurt you for nineteen years. Would you like me to help you kill every single one of them?" And for the first time in my nineteen years of life, I wasn't afraid of the dark.