Home > The Thrall (Seven Sins MC #3)

The Thrall (Seven Sins MC #3)
Author: Jessica Gadziala

 

THE

Thrall

 

 

Chapter One

 

 

Nova

 

 

Most mistakes in life aren't permanent.

No, you couldn't take something back, or undo anything, but life always gave you a chance to turn things around, to make it right, to choose a different path. That was the beauty of it all, wasn't it? Free will.

Freedom.

I barely understood the meaning of that word anymore.

See, I made my mistake when I was just eighteen years old. Young and stupid was a phrase designed just for me, it seems.

I could feed you all the excuses I had. I had a terrible family. I was an outcast among my peers. I never felt seen or loved or wanted.

Then someone came along who made me feel seen, loved, and wanted. He made me feel like family, like I finally had a place in the world.

So when he asked for one thing from me, I wanted him to have it. I never thought I would regret it, would want something else. But that was simply because, at the time, I hadn't known there could be something else out there for me.

That was the double-edged sword of this deal, wasn't it?

He showed me the world.

Then made me acutely aware that I could never have it.

He gave to me, yes. There were beautiful homes, lavish parties, jewels, my every human need taken care of.

But he took from me, too.

He took my future, he took away love and motherhood and a career, he took away daylight.

Then, when he was done taking all of that, he took the only thing I had left.

The blood running through my veins.

And he would continue to do so.

Until I got old or sick, when my blood wouldn't taste as good anymore.

Then he would drain me.

And it would all be over.

But I was still young. Twenty-five.

I was no longer the favorite, of course. That title always went to the newest one of us, the one whose blood was fresher, whose enthusiasm was more contagious, who was still so caught up in their infatuation that they fell into bed with them all night long.

There were more of the ones like me, these days. The hardened girls. The ones who were waking up from the spell a bit, who were seeing the repercussions of our rash actions.

No amount of designer clothes could fill the void of a life lost. Because that was exactly what we'd given up. To sustain them.

And we'd done so willingly.

That was the kicker, right? We only had ourselves to blame. They couldn't coerce us. We were asked, and we acquiesced.

But that was where our free will ended.

That was when we became what we were.

Enthralled.

Or, in the more common vernacular, thralls.

We were thralls.

Because we were under an ancient sort of magic that made it impossible for us to leave.

We'd all tested the boundaries of the enthrallment. We tried to deny our masters, or move away from the grounds without them.

I couldn't describe the intensity of the pain that gripped us in those moments. All I remembered was screaming so loudly that when they finally pulled me back into the house, and the pain eased, I was swallowing my own blood from having a vocal cord hemorrhage.

The other memory from that night was my master having me sit on his lap, leaning over him with my mouth open to drip the blood down his throat.

We don't waste good blood, he'd said, not even when it comes from bad girls.

I never tried to leave again. I knew the very distinct borders of my prison. I made sure never to step a toe over the line. Though, in a sick way, I was glad for the experience. It stripped away any illusions I might have had left about my situation.

"It won't do any good to mope," Irina, my roommate, reminded me, turning on the stool of her vanity to face me.

Irina was tall and curvy in all the right places with rich, dark skin, a mid-length medium-brown afro, and stunning golden-brown eyes.

Looks-wise, we were a stark contrast, what with my black hair, blue eyes, pale skin, and willowy thin body.

I'd been curvier once, back before I became a thrall, before they took enough blood to cause me to become weaker, anemic. I found it hard to eat enough to keep flesh on my bones. My appetite wasn't what it should be.

Irina had been the "new thrall" right before me, which was why we'd chosen to room together. There were plenty of bedrooms in the estate. We didn't have to share. But the connection to other humans became vital as the months and years stretched on.

"I know," I agreed, moving away from the window seat now that the sun had finally set. I could practically hear our masters waking, stretching, getting ready to call for some of us to break their fast.

"Have you been taking your iron?" she asked, slipping a pair of rainbow-colored hoops I'd given her for her last birthday onto her ears. "I worry about you. I can practically see through you these days."

She wasn't wrong.

When I turned my arms, my veins stood out in shocking blue contrast to my skin. I could trace one from the bottom of my hand, up my wrist, forearm, all the way up to where it finally disappeared in my upper arm.

"I know," I agreed, sighing. "And yes."

"Who has been drinking from you so much?" she asked.

We each had one "true" master. And then there was our core "family" of five. But any of the vampires in the home could feed on us. That was how it worked.

Guests and friends came to stay all the time, taking a fancy on some of us, and choosing us for their personal thralls for the length of their stay.

I didn't mind my "core family" so much.

But they'd been into the new girl lately.

Which left me as free game to the guests.

To one guest in particular.

One who showed no signs of ever leaving.

"Davor," I said, feeling my bile turn bitter in my mouth even at the mention of him.

Irina's face went hard at that even as her eyes filled with sympathy. "He's evil."

"They all are," I reminded her.

"But he is a different kind of evil."

Again, she was right.

Davor was old for a vampire. I think the story went that his son had been turned, and he'd been upset at the idea of living eternally without his father, so he'd turned him as well.

Davor was seventy if he was a day with age-spotted hands, a face of cavernous wrinkles due to a lifetime out in the sun as a human, and skin that sagged off his bones. He was tall and thin, and should you see him around, you'd think him frail.

Only, he wasn't frail. He had the same strength they all did. The kind that left bruises if they weren't careful. And, typically, our masters were.

Davor, though, he was truly the sick kind of evil. He liked to grab me too hard, to leave finger or hand-sized bruises on my delicate flesh. He liked when I winced or cried out in pain.

I didn't even want to tell Irina this, but when he was going to feed off me, he made a sick, painful game of it, sinking his fangs in little by little, pricking my skin until I writhed and tears slipped down my cheeks.

Only when he'd tormented me to his satisfaction, had gotten his fill of my fear, did he drink.

"I think he chose you because you are weak," Irina suggested. "He gets off on that."

"I know," I agreed.

"We need to fatten you up a bit, get some color in your cheeks. Maybe he will leave you alone. Maybe we can even hope that he will get the fuck out of here already with his stinking old ass. I swear he smells like mothballs. Who smells like mothballs anymore?"

Hot Books
» House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1)
» A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire
» From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1)
» A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime
» Deviant King (Royal Elite #1)
» Den of Vipers
» House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2)
» The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air #
» Sweet Temptation
» The Sweetest Oblivion (Made #1)
» Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels #6)
» Wreck & Ruin
» Steel Princess (Royal Elite #2)
» Twisted Hate (Twisted #3)
» The Play (Briar U Book 3)