#Chapter 2: An Usual Offer

Olivia’s POV

For a length of several very long heartbeats, I stood frozen, fear clenching me in its ice cold grip.

How could this be happening to Keri? So many others of us had been passed over for years, but here, in her first time in the lottery, she was to be so unlucky as to be chosen?

There must have been some kind of mistake.

Immediately, I started forward, ready to confront the King’s Voice. Perhaps he had remembered the wrong name. They must have meant someone else.

I only made it one step before Jacob snaked his arm around my waist and gripped me tightly, restraining me fully from stepping forward.

In my ear, he hissed, “What are you doing?”

“This can’t be right,” I said. This couldn’t be real. “She’s only fifteen.”

“Fifteen is old enough for tribute,” Jacob said.

“She’s my sister.”

“I’m sorry, Olivia,” Jacob said, his voice softening. “But that’s just the way of it.”

Could he be so resigned if this had been his sister?

No, maybe I was being unfair to him. He had a good relationship with my family. The shock of this moment kept me from thinking clearly.

I watched, horrified, as my little sister weaved through the crowd. She wasn’t crying, perhaps too afraid to. Her eyes were wide as dinner plates, and even though she held her hands tightly together, they were still shaking. Or perhaps that was all of her.

She was trembling like a leaf in the wind. Soon that leaf was going to be crushed under a vampire’s heel.

My heart ached. Gods, how could this happen?

After the tribute lottery ceremony, Keri was given a half-hour to collect her whole life into only one bag, as well as to say goodbye to her family and friends, everyone who loved her.

We knew we would never see her again. We could only imagine the horrors she would experience when she left our town and the relative safety of the pack.

Mother, Jacob, and I tried to help Keri pack, but it was difficult to decide what would be needed, when we had no idea what she would soon face. We packed some clothes for her of various thickness for various climates. The rest of the suitcase we left for personal items.

As Keri packed the stuffed wolf I had given her for her seventh birthday, I couldn’t help but see her as that same snaggletoothed child once more.

To me, she would always be that small girl with the big bright eyes full of wonder. Even at fifteen, she was still too young.

There were only three other tributes chosen, and each had a chance of becoming the blood pet of the infamous and ancient Vampire Duke Damien. My sister had as good of a chance as any to be his personal slave. How could they demand someone so young to face such a cruel and bloodthirsty demon?

My mother’s expression was bleak, her face pale and sallow. My sister was still trembling, even as she packed the things most important to her.

A hairbrush from our grandmother, a picture of our deceased father and another of our family, a blanket that was only halfway completed, that she had been working on with the neighbor who had been teaching her to knit.

Jacob watched from the doorway, blocking the entire opening like he was trying to protect all of us from the outside world. But there could be no stopping what was coming.

Even as Mom and Keri held onto each other, her bag now packed, I couldn’t find my voice.

Only when Keri turned to me did words find their way out of my throat.

“What if I went…”

Before I could even finish the thought, Jacob surged forward, grabbed my arm and urged me back a few steps. In my ear, he said, “Whatever you are thinking, don’t. After all these years, we can finally be together. You can’t be willing to give that up.”

Jacob was my fated mate, and I thought that I might love him already.

But Keri was my little sister…

I felt so helpless. I didn’t know what to do.

Keri, despite her youth, was always the more sensible one between the two of us. Even as she continued to tremble, she wiped her eyes and reached for her suitcase.

“I’ll be brave,” she told us. “I won’t disappoint our family.”

Mom touched her arm, anguish in her eyes. “You could never do that, my darling daughter.”

“Never,” I reiterated, not trusting myself to say more.

Keri glanced between us again, then nodding, turned and walked out the door.

I didn’t want to follow her, not wanting to watch my sister be pulled into a nightmare. Maybe if I didn’t see it happen, I could convince myself it was a lie. That she was just playing somewhere, or at school, and soon she’d be back and we could be a family again.

“You’ll regret it if you stay here,” Jacob said, and I knew he was right. For better or worse, I had to see my sister off. For her sake, if not for my own. I didn’t want her last memory of me to be me crying in her bedroom and then refusing to see her off.

Before she even reached the front door, a harsh voice called from outside. “Hurry up in there!”

Checking the clock, I could see that we still had ten minutes left of our assigned time.

But as the vampires made the rules, they could break them too, whenever they wanted, without consequence.

As soon as Keri stepped outside, she was grabbed by the waiting vampire guard and dragged forward away from the house. The guard roughly threw her down into the dirt. Her suitcase skittered on ahead of her.

“How dare you make us wait,” the vampire guard growled, his red eyes flashing with hatred. He had a whip on his belt and lifted it now. Before any of us could react, he brought it down on my sister.

Keri screamed in pain as the whip tore through the clothes on her back and sliced into her skin, drawing blood.

I moved without thinking, ripping myself away from Jacob’s hold.

“Stop! Please stop!” I cried as I rushed forward. I didn’t slow until I was firmly between that awful whip and my sister. “I will go in her stead.”

The vampire guard paused in shock. “What?”

“I volunteer,” I said. “I offer to be a tribute in place of my sister.”

The vampire guard paused, confused. “No one has ever volunteered before.” His eyes narrowed. “Are you attempting to deceive us some way? That will not work.”

I couldn’t allow them to be suspicious of me. As I was breaking precedent here, I knew I had to say something to convince them.

“I’ve always wanted to more directly serve the vampires,” I said, lying through my teeth. I would do this, and would be convincing. I had to, to save my sister. “My desires have nothing to do with my sister. I just want to be with the vampires… in the hopes of one day becoming one…”

That seemed to satisfy the vampire guard. Vampires, I knew, had a tremendous amount of pride. They all thought that everyone was jealous of them, and that all would want to be among their number.

My lie was easily believed.

The vampire guard turned then, gesturing toward the King’s Voice. As the King’s Voice approached, the guard told him, “This one volunteered. She wants to be a vampire.” The guard laughed.

The King’s Voice remained unamused. His cold stare moved from the guard to me, and then to the trembling form of my wounded sister behind me.

Then, he waved his hand. “We will take this one instead. Apply the collar, now.”

A second guard moved from behind the King’s Voice. This one held a leather collar in his hands. It looked like something an owner would give to his dog, complete with a buckle and even a dangling tag. Though, this tag had a number, not a name, telling me the vampires viewed us as even less than pets.

As the collar was affixed around my neck, I looked down to read the tag.

My new identity, it seemed, was now the number 12.