CHAPTER 5
“DANI, ARE YOU HURT?”
The question escaped Alexander before he could help himself. The moment it did, he wished he could claw it back. He realized the mistake the instant the room stilled. Though most eyes remained lowered, they flicked from him to Dani’s crumpled form, wondering what their connection might be.
No one could resist a Visconti royal family scandal.
The bastards.
Daniela shivered on the floor of the stage, clutching the torn panels of her red silk dress to her chest. Tearing off his jacket, Alex wrapped it around her bare shoulders. A curse hovered at his lips as her pale fingers reached out to clutch the lapels closed.
She shouldn’t have been here at all. No woman in a sector he was responsible for should have been forced to come to one of these godforsaken auction houses.
They had better options for feeding given the current scientific advancements.
Blood donors. Synthetic blood that was effective, even if not particularly palatable.
This wasn’t the seventeenth century, for pity’s sake.
But for all the times he and his father had argued on the subject, he’d had no success in getting them shut down.
He took a tentative step towards her. Pale gray eyes found his.
“Zander.”
The room exploded in whispers.
Dani’s eyes widened in alarm. Alex silently bit back a curse.
That she’d addressed him by his given name would have been a breach of royal protocol even if she had been a vampire and part of the aristocracy.
From a human, it was particularly scandalous.
Even worse, she’d called him by the nickname reportedly only ever used by his family, as if they were somehow friends.
“Your Highness,” she corrected quietly, eyes cast downward.
Yes, it was only right that she address him this way. And still…
Alex wished he could have told her how much he hated that particular skin he’d always been forced to wear, how he vastly preferred all the stolen hours he’d gotten to work at the aid center as Zander Hunt, an inconsequential nobody.
They could never go back to the way things had been before.
He’d been able to work at the legal center longer than some of his other positions, but he couldn’t go back.
Not now, not at the risk his father might find out where he’d been and shut it down.
No matter how much he just wanted the freedom to be Zander for a few hours, not to have to wear another mask.
“You know this girl?” Luciano Cavalieri whirled on him, clearly still smarting over having been denied his prize.
Alex hesitated. He couldn’t admit how he knew Dani. It would get the legal aid center shut down entirely. Everything he’d tried to accomplish there would have been for naught.
He forced ice into his tone, retreating behind the mask the world knew him by. Cruel Prince Alexander. The future tyrant king.
“A desperate charity case. One of my mother’s. I only remember her because she was one of the last ones my mother had us visit before her disease progressed.”
Throats cleared. The madams were careful to dress the girls in fine gowns, do their hair and makeup so they were paraded out on display like sumptuous morsels to be ravished.
No one liked acknowledging that the only girls who sought out the auction houses were those who were close to starving.
They were in danger of becoming unhoused on streets where falling asleep as a female alone in a doorway might mean you woke up in a werewolf camp on the other side of the border, an unwilling participant in their breeding programs. Or they were someone like Dani, with a family member who couldn’t obtain critical medicines.
There were no good outcomes for the few human survivors who were left. And despite all his father’s denials on the subject, that was why pockets of resistance remained.
“Forgive me, Your Highness.” Dani dipped her head into the lowest gesture of submission she could manage while clutching the panels of her dress to her shaking chest. “I was feeling faint and I mistook you for someone else. I’m afraid I’ve never reacted well to the sight of blood.”
Her voice remained low, but Alex could feel her pulse thrumming a wild staccato beat in her veins, her fear impossible to mask.
His fangs sharpened, growing longer. The raw, dull ache of thirst burned at the back of his throat.
The other vampires shifted, eyeing the veins at her neck.
He had to end this, draw the others off the scent without revealing she mattered to him. But how?
“And you walked into a blood auction?” He laughed, a sharp cruel thing. “You silly, brainless girl.”
Her cheeks flamed as the room broke out into derisive laughter. She remained on her knees as he slowly circled her, not daring to look up. What had their society devolved into that there was nothing that excited a feral pack of men more than seeing a woman silenced and humiliated?
Sometimes he feared his brother was right and there was nothing left of their world worth saving.
That the only answer was to burn it all to the ground.
Tilting Dani’s chin up with a single finger, he studied her face with bored disinterest. A single tear streaked from the corner of her eye, down the curve of her cheek. Finally, he turned his back.
“Get up.”
There was a rustling of skirts behind him as she rose. He turned to one of the attendants, who up until then had remained motionless in the corner.
“Get her something else to wear. I certainly can’t feed from her in this condition. And send that dress off to be fixed.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” The girl started forward, eyes cast downward, but Cavalieri made to block her path.
“Your Highness, I must ask you to reconsider. Are you sure this is the best course of action?”
“Are you questioning me?” Alexander asked quietly.
“I merely meant that with your preparations for the ball and the imminent announcement we’ve all been expecting, I assume you must have many responsibilities to attend to. Perhaps it would be best if I was the one to—”
“Thank you for your concern, Lord Cavalieri. But that won’t be necessary.” He gestured to the attendants, who hurried forward to drag Dani from the room. “I believe I can deal with one human girl.”
“This is most irregular,” Cavalieri insisted as the others retreated back to the bar. “I think given the circumstances, it would be best if the girl comes with me.”
“No.”
“Why her?” Something dark flashed in the older vampire’s eyes. “You didn’t even look at the others.”
Alex glanced away, sure he would be sick.
He certainly hadn’t looked. In fact, he’d only consented to attend the auction at all because it was the only place Cavalieri would agree to meet tonight to discuss working conditions in his factories, including requiring that the heat be turned on in the winter on the factory floor and mandating breaks every four hours.
For years, his mother had championed reform, fought for better living conditions for the working class and even volunteered in the same legal aid center where Alex quietly worked now.
But the king was in the pockets of the oligarchs, who controlled their sector’s fragile economy.
They were funding the war against the wolf shifters, a war they were prevailing in only by the barest degree.
He’d been sickened when they’d started parading the girls out, and had silently panicked when Dani’s name had been announced on stage.
“They weren’t my type. Her blood calls to me.” He raised an eyebrow. “Surely you have certain tastes of your own?”
Cavalieri was grinding his teeth so hard, he sounded close to breaking a fang. But Alex knew he wouldn’t challenge him. At least not here, and not so openly.
“Fine.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Have your fun. But end it by the solstice. Don’t forget that you’re proposing to my daughter at the ball.”
Alex said nothing as he stalked away. What had he gotten himself into?
“Besides,” Cavalieri called over one shoulder. “The next one’s younger.”
Outside in the hall, the house madam, Yvonne, hurried towards him. “Your Highness, we’re always honored to have you patronize—”
He held up a hand to stop her. “The dress she wore, was it hers, or one of the ones belonging to the auction house?”
For a second, the madam merely gaped. Quickly, she regained her composure. “I don’t believe I’ve seen that dress before. We update our selection of gowns frequently, however. If there’s something you’d like to see her in, I can have it sent up to the room.”
“That won’t be necessary. Find out if it’s hers. If it is, I expect it to be repaired immediately by a reputable seamstress and delivered to her apartment.”
“Of course, Your Highness. We’ll send it out at once.” Yvonne handed him a keycard. “You’ll be in the atrium suite. I thought you would enjoy it tonight, with the snow falling outside.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you.” He glanced up as a figure appeared on the stairs. His sister Serafina looked constantly exhausted these days, but then, moving between safe houses for the past two years would do that to a person.
He nodded to Sera, who turned to follow him down the corridor towards the elevators.
“I gave Dani something else to wear,” she said in a low voice. “She’s a bit shaken up.”
“Well, that’s to be expected given what happened in there.”
The moment they were out of earshot, Serafina rounded on him. “What the hell were you thinking?” she hissed. “You bid on a sanguine?”
Alex checked to make sure they hadn’t been followed. “I didn’t have a choice. I only came here to meet with Cavalieri. Daniela is one of my clients at the center. I couldn’t exactly let her go to him. You know what would have happened.”
Serafina’s expression softened. But just as quickly, she shook her head. “You still have to complete the blood ritual. If you don’t, she’ll be resold.”
“You think I don’t know that?” He lowered his head. “It’s one time. Nothing will happen.”
“This is a mess. She really had no idea who you were?”
“I couldn’t exactly tell her the truth.”