Chapter 1

The auctioneer chained me to the stage, ripped my dress to show my neck, and said, "Bidding starts at ten thousand gold."

I'd been kidnapped three hours ago.

Drugged, stripped, and shoved into a cage with eleven other girls — all trembling, all crying.

Not me. I was starving. The dungeon they kept us in didn't even have a vending machine.

"Lot number twelve!" the auctioneer barked. "Human female, age twenty-three, B-positive blood type — a delicacy among delicacies!"

The auction hall was enormous, carved from black stone and lit by floating candles. Every seat was filled with vampires — pale, beautiful, dead-eyed creatures in silk and velvet. Some were already feeding on servants, blood running casually down their chins like it was wine at a dinner party.

I should've been terrified.

But here's the thing about me — I'd been isekai'd into this world forty-eight hours ago. In my previous life, I was a burned-out accountant from Milwaukee who'd died slipping on a bath mat.

A bath mat.

After a death that embarrassing, nothing really scares you anymore.

"Ten thousand," someone called lazily.

"Fifteen."

"Twenty."

The bids climbed. The auctioneer's grin widened. Apparently my blood type was the high-end stuff — high demand, low supply.

Then the room went cold.

Not metaphorically. The temperature literally dropped. My breath turned to mist. The candles flickered and dimmed.

Every vampire in the hall went rigid. Some stood. Some bowed. A few actually trembled.

The massive doors at the back of the hall swung open with a sound like a coffin lid.

A man walked in.

No — walked was the wrong word. He moved like darkness given a body. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a face so brutally perfect it almost hurt to look at. Silver-white hair fell past his jaw, and his eyes — Christ, his eyes — were the color of fresh blood, glowing faintly in the dim light.

He didn't look at anyone. Didn't acknowledge the crowd. He simply raised one hand.

"One million gold," he said.

His voice was low, calm, and absolutely final.

The auctioneer's smile vanished. The hall went silent — the kind of silence that happens when every person in the room is afraid to breathe.

"S-sold," the auctioneer stammered. "To His Majesty, King Alaric Voss."

Whispers erupted.

"The Vampire King? He hasn't attended an auction in two hundred years."

"Why would he want a human? He doesn't keep blood slaves."

"That poor girl. She'll be dead before sunrise."

Two guards unchained me from the stage and shoved me forward. I stumbled, caught myself, and looked up — straight into those blood-red eyes.

He stared down at me like I was something he couldn't quite figure out.

Up close, he was even worse. The sharp line of his jaw, the slight part of his lips revealing the tips of his fangs, the way his black coat hung open just enough to show his collarbone —

My survival instincts said: run.

My other instincts said: climb him like a tree.

"You're not afraid," he said. Not a question.

I tilted my head.

"Should I be?"

Something shifted in his expression — surprise, maybe. Or curiosity.

Then he leaned down, so close I could feel the cold radiating off his skin, and whispered,

"You should be terrified."

I smiled.

"Buy me dinner first."

The entire hall heard it. A vampire in the front row choked on the blood he was drinking.

Alaric's red eyes narrowed.

And for the first time in two hundred years, the Vampire King didn't know what to say.