Chapter 2

 Doc

The sterile overhead light spat cold shadows across my desk, where discarded reports lay matted with blood-slick notes. Every nerve in me screamed for release, for what I hadn’t tasted in days—and the craving threatened to obliterate what remained of my sanity. I refused to give into Shelby’s request of buying a blood donor, I had no problem sourcing a willing partner, but it seems like I’ve been banned from every blood center’s, bars, programs, even the back alley sketchy shit banned me. They all heard of what I done. And What I threatened to do to the other agency owners, i mean Who wouldn't use their corpse eye socket for their own personal Cum dumpster? But in all fairness, it was one part of  Raven leaving, another part, my Rolling Bloodlust, I had went on a  killing binge hoping  It made me feel better, it didn’t. And third part, My uncontrollable rage did all the talking, Landing me in this mess. My vision swam; rational thoughts began to bleed away under the onslaught of my primal instinct. My own heart—each beat echoing the reminder of the  nights without a feeding.

Eight nights to be exact.

 My last discreet donation was from a fresh corpse that I was called to pick up at the local hospital’s morgue. I slipped The only nurse working that night two hundred bucks to look the other way.

Thank bloody hell she did. 

The night nurse understood my situation, since she mentioned her mate is also a vampire. She turned around giving me privacy with my new meal- That quick drain,  became a brief  pipeline for one night, but that ended just as quickly as it started, a new, observant, administrator, just severed my dreams of a possible new route-  No more fresh blood from the morgue’s storage units. For eight days I’d subsisted on Shelby’s damned cupcakes: The Bloody Cupcake Bakery’s infamous monstrosities, each one iced in congealed human blood that tasted like sweet oblivion. The first bite had hit me like lightning—ecstasy and agony fused in a single instant—but the high evaporated within seconds, leaving only a deeper void. Now those treacherous sugar-and-blood layers were all I had. A brittle lifeline I knew would snap any moment. The cupcakes were a stopgap, a child’s treat for a monster’s appetite. They kept the shaking at bay but left the core of me starving. The ache in my gut was a living thing, gnawing relentlessly, a inner beast that refused to be starved. I’d tried noise, pacing, even forced sleep, but nothing quelled the siren’s call echoing in my veins: for the pure, red, hot, salvation. I pressed my palms to my temples, willing the whispers to fade. But the hunger only roared louder, hammering through my skull, drowning out every thought but one. The last door had slammed shut on me—no feeding program, no charity, no mercy. I was forsaken, left to wither in my own fucking mortuary. 

Ironic.

The thought dragged a dry, humorless laugh from my throat. It echoed in the sterile silence of my office, a place that smelled of lemon polish and an underlying decay. My vision is now swimming on the edge of a crimson  haze. My hands shook. I curled them into fists, the nails biting into my palms. The pain was a pinprick, useless. Then it hit me: Bloodmatch. The name felt like a curse and a promise all at once—dangerous, illicit, irresistible. Desperation clawed through my chest. trembling fingertips hovered over the slick black card, its glossy surface pulsing with a dark invitation. Shelby was right; I needed a donor, and this was my only option. I flipped it over. A glowing hotline number glared back at me, cold and unyielding.

My phone trembled in my hand as I dialed.

 “Fuck, pick up, pick up” I rasped, throat raw with need. 

Three rings later, a raspy voice answered:

“Well, hello little brother. I was wondering when or if I would hear from you.”

The rasping, knowing voice on the other end, crashed into the present. He’d been expecting me. “Elijah?” I palmed my face. Why am I not surprised? “You own BloodMatch?” I asked.

Elijah: “Well, someone has to make sure all my loving idiot brothers eat on a regular” 

Elijah, the eldest brother, also known as the Chameleon. A predator that could blend into the human world. And you wouldn’t even know he was there. Till he struck – it  wouldn’t surprise me if Elijah’s new venture included, Human Trafficking. Under the guise of getting paid to feed us poor abominations. Finding willing innocent humans wasn’t hard, if you promise to pay them for feeding us, so they become part of his So-called agency. While behind the scenes, he just secretly sells them off to private elites like cattle.

Elijah “Now, what can I do for you on this lovely night?” He asked, his voice a smooth tenor.

I swallowed; my throat was dry. “Shelby mentioned you were selling a donor”

“Yes, I have several”

“ I want one.”

I could almost picture him with a smug smile on his face. And there it was, just a slight curling at the corners of his mouth

 Elijah: “Great. I have the perfect one too.”

Elijah paused on the other end of the encrypted line. his voice returned, smooth as oiled silk.  

Elijah: “I got a new personal Donor. She is a bit on the feisty side—but I’m sure you will have no problem… breaking that and bending her over to your liking.”

Something about his words made my dick stir. It hardened behind the zipper, a sudden, urgent demand. It threatened to break free. I pinched the bridge of my nose, closed both eyes. A fantasy began to form in my mind. The little Donor on her knees between two draped tables, Her eyes were wide, a little frightened, I saw myself unzipping, freeing my cock, which was already thick and heavy in hand. Tapping it against her lips, a silent command, not a spoken request.

Elijah: “She’s three hundred and fifty grand,” his tone conversational, as if discussing the price of a rare wine.

The number cut through the carnal fog. My eyes opened.

 “Come on, Elijah. That’s a rip-off. The donors I was paying for was half that price.” I secretly resumed the fantasy. The fantasy wasn’t enough; it just stoked a deep roaring fire. I needed, No, wanted the real thing. 

But at that price?

Elijah: “You’re not paying for sustenance alone Doc,” He purred. “You’re paying For the privilege of breaking in something beautiful and wild. Like a cheap tag, That Alone, costs extra, Little Brother”

Elijah’s smooth, voice echoed in Doc’s ear.

Elijah: “She has virgin veins, she’s never been fed from, Don’t you want to be the first to taste the sweetness that’s all her?”

I hadn’t missed the implication. Something about knowing her skin had never been touched, never been pierced, filtered through the ancient, possessive part of my brain. It was a brand of ownership older than any currency. I was going to be the first. And the first to ruin her and her dignity. The purity of it, the uncontaminated heat of taking a first feed, was a luxury even among our kind. Elijah knew exactly what to dangle in front of me. To get my attention. My voice is now rough. “Send me the details. And a fucking picture.” 

The line went silent for a moment, filled only with the faint hum of encrypted data streaming. I needed to know the mystery woman whose got my dick in such a stir. And whose throat I’m choking with it. A soft chime from my desktop monitor announced the arrival of the files. I opened the first, a scanned dossier. Her face stared back, a standard ID photo. Emma Carter . Twenty-five. Human. Next of kin: unknown: Medical history: clean, remarkably so. Then, the final note: Blood Classification: Premium. The next document was the bill of sale. My name, her name, And a string of zeros followed. A commodity transfer. The final was the donor form, a clinical piece of paper that granted me irrevocable rights to her bodily fluids for the term of the contract. Forever. I signed both with a quick, sharp stroke of the pen. “It’s done,” I said into the phone, my eyes never leaving her picture.

Elijah “Congratulations, little brother,” his voice was a dry rustle. “You just bought yourself a blood paramour.”

Paramour. 

An old-fashioned word for a kept pet. A pretty wrapper for an owned thing I now get to play with. “Elijah,” I said into the phone, my voice echoing in the oak-paneled silence of my office.

Elijah. “What?”

“She better be worth the money.”

“Let’s just say, her mouth is in dire need of your expertise, you know me, I like my pets, submissive” 

“Bring her to me, tonight, Midnight”

I ended the call without another word. The silence in my office was absolute, broken only by the slow, determined beat of my own heart. The paperwork was legal, binding in our circles. She was mine.  I stared at the screen, at the list of her known allergies. Her past  employment history, her unremarkable human life. Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. An expensive bargain, for a cure to a specific, gnawing hunger. For a toy that I hoped wouldn’t shatter immediately.