I shrug. “Rather be a prostitute than a puppy.”
Jessica looks at me curiously and Chelsea shifts uncomfortably in her chair. Winona’s smile has turned to ice.
“A puppy,” she repeats with a breathy, unconvincing laugh. “Is that what you call it? To be permanently bonded to a powerful vampire—someone like the prince, or even one of the lesser members of the court, would give you the power. Haven’t you heard the saying, sweetheart? Behind every powerful man is a woman pulling his strings? You would be the string puller. As a general tribute, you’re just meat.”
I can’t help but laugh at her. “You think you’d be the one pulling the strings? Jesus. Tell the truth, Winona. You’ve obviously done enough research to know the answer. What happens to a tribute once they’re bonded to a vampire?”
She flushes a pretty pink, and her eyes narrow almost imperceptibly. “I think everybody at this table knows just as much about it as I do.”
Several girls shake their heads. A couple just look away.
“Please tell me.” A slight girl with wide green eyes glances back and forth between me and Winona. “One of you. Either of you. Tell me. I… I thought bonding was just like… a promise or something, that you’d be exclusive or whatever with one vampire until your contract expires.”
A smile spreads across my face, and not a very nice one. I don’t take my eyes off Winona as I speak. “You think anyone survives to see their contract expire? Really?”
“Oh shut up, both of you.” A girl across the table tightens the wrap around her hair and drops her elbows on the table, regarding all of us with a steel-eyed gaze. “You want to know what happens when you’re bonded to a vampire, I’ll fuckin’ tell you.”
“Oh?” Winona says icily, her nose way up in the air. “And what do you know, homegirl?”
That mocking sneer she adds to the last word turns her beautiful face terribly ugly. I wonder if she knows it’ll stick that way.
Homegirl blinks at her once, slowly, then turns back toward the green-eyed girl who’s still watching this all play out with a terrified expression on her face.
“The blood bond is a ritual that ties you to a single vampire. It connects you to them. Once you’re bonded, you never want to leave. You crave their presence. You’re addicted to them. Addicted to feeding them. Y’all remember the first time you had good sex? Like really good, good sex. The kind you keep thinking about for days and days, the kind that makes you wet just remembering it? That’s the feeling you’ll get when your vampire touches you. You’ll do whatever they say, go wherever they tell you, become whoever they want you to become, just so you’ll never have to be without them.”
She turned her cold gaze to me, her jaw set in a way I recognize. I think I’ve worn that exact expression before, in fact. “Some tributes do outlive their contracts. But bonded tributes will kill themselves before they’ll leave. I’ve seen it.”
Winona scoffs. “You’ve seen it, have you? You got here the same time we did. What are you, some baby psychic? Stop scaring the other girls.”
“You outlived your contract,” I murmur, meeting her steely gaze. “Your first contract.”
“And my second,” she shoots back, a note of pride in her voice. “This’ll be my third, and I’ll outlive this one too. You know why?”
“I’m more interested in how.”
She smirks at me. “Because I’m too trashy for these classical fucks. They wanna taste the forbidden fruit, but they’ll be damned if they’ll be attached to it. I’m good at what I do. I take care of myself and I taste good. But I never ask for too high of a bid price each time, so I’m never here long enough for any of them to get stupid ideas into their heads.”
I get that. “Okay,” I say. “So, why?”
She shrugs. “I like money.”
With that blunt answer, her expression closes along with her mouth.
Conversation over.
I like this chick. I wonder why she’s really doing this, but I’m not going to push the issue. It’s a distraction I don’t need anymore, not now that the unsettling burn of arousal in my belly from watching Prince Bastian make that girl come with his lips on her neck has died down.
The man with the nose ring at the back of the auction hall, the sexy blonde guy in the corridor, and the prince with the intense gray eyes—they’re all monsters. Nothing more. They’d happily suck these girls dry and spit them out, fuck with their heads until they can’t give anymore, then kill them.
It’s what they do.
It’s what they all do.
Even the strongest tributes fall victim to the cycle. The girl with the hard gaze, who hasn’t given her name and probably won’t, got out twice and came back for a third go. She likes money, she says, but I know there’s more to it than that.
She probably came once to get enough to get ahead, then was torn down again by the city. A city the vampires run, in every way that means anything. Her only chance to break the cycle is to get paid and get the fuck out of Maryland. She knows it too. I can see it all over her face. Something’s keeping her here. Something’s keeping us all here—mostly pretty lies and distractions.
Reality is brutal. But it’s all that matters.
I only half-listen to the conversation swirling around me at the table. Winona is smoothing things over, explaining how even codependent women can pull strings or some shit. Jessica looks pissed. Good. That’s better than giving up and rolling over for these creeps. Chelsea looks like she just realized how badly she’s fucked herself by signing that goddamn contact, but she seems to be doing a good job of talking herself into being okay with it.
A few moments later, there’s a stir by the door. Vampires and humans alike turn to look at the group of bare-chested men who have just been herded through the doorway by a trio of men about the same age and pallor as Anastasyia. The male tributes have all been oiled from the collar bone down. They look like a bunch of rotisserie chickens ready to be skewered. In a way, I guess they are.
They start moving toward a set of tables on the opposite side of the room. As they do, my heart jumps in my chest. There he is, the second one from the end.
Nathan.
Chapter Seven
Oh god, he looks like shit.
My brother is so skinny. His eyes are sunken, haunted in rings of black and blue.
I’m not a big fan of guilt, though it seems to like following me around like a shadow I can never get rid of. I keep it at bay as much as possible. When people die on my watch, murdered by vamps before I can stop it, I pour out a drink for them and fuck or fight through the pain. I fuel myself with it, but I don’t ever, ever let it take over.
Not until now.
Just looking at my older brother hurts my heart.
How did he fall so fucking far without me noticing? Dammit, that’s not true. I did notice. I noticed, and I hoped he would pull himself out of it. I thought I’d done all I could, and that maybe my ever-present assistance was just keeping him dependent, keeping him from pulling himself up and sorting his shit out.
But maybe it wasn’t that. Maybe I really just didn’t want to help him anymore. If I wasn’t already sitting, that thought would bring me to my knees, but I can’t dismiss it just because it hurts. Helping him hurt too. But I should have taken that pain. I should have trusted in my own strength instead of betting the house on Nathan’s ability to see the light from rock bottom.