With Vera’s skin rent and her spirit broken, Felix finally undoes the folds of his toga. Vera whimpers, but she does not resist. I cannot stand by any longer; I launch myself into the room.
The albino is bigger than me. Stronger than me. With a weapon in his hand that is twice the length of me. But I can’t allow him to keep up his assault. He doesn’t even register when my fist hits his flesh.
“Virius, no,” says Vera, with more strength in her voice than I thought possible. “Get out of here.”
“No,” I shout, launching another strike at the brute. “I’ll save you, Mother.”
My mother straightens on her elbows. Blood drips down her back as she does so. “Do not call me that,” she hisses.
Vera’s eyes glare into mine. We have the same face. The same mouth. The same eyes. But she doesn’t claim me as hers. I’d often wondered if I came into her belly like this, by a man forcing his way into her. I later realized she likely didn’t know who my father was as she’d been spreading her thighs for food and shelter since she was my age.
“Oh, look at that,” trills a voice as gay as a bird’s. “You have a valiant little knight.”
I turn to the corner of the room. I hadn’t noticed that there was a witness to Felix’s brutality. A woman sits upon a cushioned chair.
Her beauty is beyond Vera’s. She is something otherworldly. Her skin is pale, but not as translucent as Felix’s. Her dark eyes tilt upward like a cat’s. Her hair is long and white and hangs about her cherub-like face in a shimmering curtain. She smiles at me, and I am transfixed by her blood-red lips.
“He’s nothing,” says my mother, steel coming into her voice. “Send him away, and let’s continue our fun.”
But the woman’s gaze is latched onto me. “A man who comes to a woman’s rescue even though the odds are against him. Aren’t you precious?”
“He does not need to beat her,” I say. “She will lie with him willingly.”
“But darling, it’s the beating that will make her taste so sweet.”
I know that sex is had not just with the parts between a person’s legs but with the mouth as well. It was something else I cataloged away, as I knew this would be my life one day. Likely sooner rather than later, I would be filling my belly and keeping a roof over my head by lying on my back, bending over, and kneeling down. I was born a slave, the property of Lena Marcella to her most prized and highly paid meretrix.
“Don’t worry about her, little one,” says the white-haired woman. “She won’t remember a thing when she wakes up. But you… I think I’ll take you with me. I’ve never had a pet.”
She beckons me to her. I have not been taught that I have any choices. So, I go to her.
“N-no, wait.”
I’m shocked that any sound of protest comes from my mother. But I do not glance back at her. The white-haired woman’s gaze holds me transfixed.
“How much?” she says.
The silence in the room is so loud that I can hear the soft inhale from my mother’s shock, and then her throat working as she swallows down any of the care she may have had for me as a child of her loins.
I do turn then, and I see my mother calculating. The blood on her back is ignored. The open wounds are forgotten. She names a sum.
“Done.” The white-haired woman turns my face back to hers. “Wait outside, darling knight.”
I look at my mother, but she isn’t looking at me any longer. Her eyes have glazed over in that look the puellas get when they have a particularly hard client to deal with. Felix goes back to his toga folds. He drops the flail and removes the instrument between his thighs. I see a flash of sharp teeth as he looks down at the blood on my mother’s back.
There’s a crack against my face. I have been slapped before. Never before have I seen stars behind my eyelids. I open my eyes to find the white-haired goddess looking down at me as though a demon lives behind her dark gaze.
“Outside, I said. You belong to me now, and I do not take any disobedience.”
I am shoved out the door on unsteady legs. When the door slams shut, all I hear are the sounds of a man grunting. Then I hear my mother scream.
My eyes snap awake as I go from the nightmare of my youth to the present day. Four hundred years later, and the pain is still raw in my chest. But it’s not my mother I see looking down at me in the corner. It’s not my sire who made my life a misery for two centuries.
In the corner sits a woman with fire in her eyes. She stares not at my dick, which has for centuries been the only thing of use on me to women. She stares at my mouth. I can’t tell if it’s because she wants to lick my fangs, or if she is contemplating ripping them out.
I am no longer a slave. I am no longer a boy. I could snap this woman’s neck with little effort. But I’m curious to know what she desires of me. Because for the first time in my centuries of a half-life, the desire is returned.
Chapter 2
Zahara
I stare at the beast’s body as he stirs from his day’s long sleep. He’s not hairy like many of the four-legged prey I’ve hunted in the rainforests of Central America. But he is the biggest game I’ve taken down. Because Virius Serrano is a big male.
One of his arms is thrown over his forehead, holding back his thick blond curls. His other hand is flung out to the side, fingers flexing and curling as though lying in wait for a would-be attacker to come upon him. Little does
