Page 37 of Sold to the Dark Vampire Prince

That was when the first explosions rocked the capital.

Beside him, Lara screamed.

It was the last thing he heard before the world went black.

CHAPTER 7

BY HALFWAY THROUGH HER shift, Dani knew something was seriously wrong. She’d spent the morning fumbling to pack boxes as quickly as she could, aware that she was moving too slowly and failing to meet her quotas.

But try as she might, she couldn’t seem to get her eyes to focus. The bright lights on the warehouse floor had caused her headache to intensify. Every time she reached for a product to pack it into a shipping container, it made her so dizzy she thought she would pass out.

After the third mistake stuffing packing envelopes, she was pulled off the floor and sent home without pay.

Outside, she leaned against the warehouse wall where there was a bit of shelter from the falling snow and pulled her lunch from her satchel. She hadn’t gotten a chance to take her break, and she was starving. There were two small rolls filled with sliced cheese, ham, tomatoes and lettuce, an absolute delicacy. She tucked into her lunch hungrily, pausing to drink from her water bottle.

The snow was starting to come down heavier, and there was more predicted by nightfall. If she didn’t get home soon, it would make a mess of the only road back into the city. The main road that the delivery trucks had to use would be plowed at regular intervals. Luciano Cavalieri wouldn’t lose a single silver in shipping delays no matter what sort of conditions he had to send his drivers out in. It was the roads closer to home that worried her as the poorest blocks in the city were either saved for last or not plowed at all during blizzards. No, she had to get home before this got any worse.

Shoving her lunch bag into her satchel, she started for home. Powering on her phone, she pulled up the group chat with her sisters.

Dani: On my way back now. Not feeling well.

A response from Evan came back right away.

Evan: Got Ava from school. Errands to run. Will you be home in the next hour? I think she needs help with her math homework.

Ava was frighteningly good at math, to the point that her teachers had talked about moving her up into high school classes next year to keep her challenged. She definitely did not need help with anything math-related, and certainly not from Dani, whose talents lay more in creative writing and who got a headache just from thinking about algebra.

Pulling her satchel snug across her body, she quickened her pace, remembering Evan’s warning from earlier. It was two miles back to their apartment, two miles where she would have to walk through a sparsely populated industrial area of the sector. Worse, she couldn’t walk much faster than this if she didn’t want to risk falling on the ice.

Her phone pinged with another text.

Alex: I can’t see you again. Something has come up. You’ll probably see the announcement in a little while.

The frozen road suddenly seemed to swirl around her. Snow whispered against the ground as it fell, tears freezing on her cheeks.

She’d known this was how things would eventually end, that a prince and a sanguine would never be allowed to secretly correspond. Their lives were too different. He had everything. She came from nothing. Worse, was what their friendship represented. Even the possibility of it was far too dangerous.

But for a few fleeting hours, some tiny part of her had fantasized about it, what it could have been like for Alex to be hers. The actual details had been hard to imagine. They came from two completely different worlds. The idea of inserting herself into Prince Alexander’s royal life at the palace, with its protocols and daily schedule, felt as foreign to her as picturing him having morning tea at their chipped table in the kitchen that was propped up by a piece of brick under one broken leg, or imagining him huddled around the fire with her and her sisters reading books aloud when the heat was running low.

In the end, it was nothing more than a fairy tale. It had been a lovely fantasy to indulge in for a short while, but it was over. She had to forget about Alex, about the guarded prince she’d barely gotten a chance to know. For all the trappings of luxury he possessed that she didn’t, the infinite wealth and the power of the crown, his life seemed incredibly bleak.

So why did her heart ache every time she tried to accept that she would never see him again? Why couldn’t she make herself go in and delete his contact information from her phone?

Scrolling through her media feeds, she found a broadcast about to go live from the palace. The royal seal of the Visconti family, a silver crown dripping with blood, shimmered away in a ghost of fog, revealing Prince Alexander and Lara Cavalieri standing together behind a podium.

Lara was stunning. Her long mahogany brown hair flowed over her shoulders in soft waves. The silk blouse she’d chosen looked stylish and put together when paired with tiny pearl earrings. She was the image of a future princess standing beside her prince.

Alex looked… awful. Was he sweating under the bright lights? Something was definitely wrong. Had those dark circles been under his eyes last night?

Clearing his throat, Alex began to speak.

“Lara and I are so excited to announce a new foundation that our two families have decided to form together. Both of us feel strongly that access to healthcare is a fundamental human right and one we want to ensure everyone in the sector has access to, especially our most vulnerable citizens.”

He blinked, hesitating. Dani slowed her steps as she squinted down at the screen. They were making the announcement live. This pause clearly wasn’t planned, if the twitch by Lara’s left eye was any indication.

Lara smiled, quickly jumping in. “Alex and I couldn’t be more thrilled to be supporting a foundation that will provide medication to vulnerable children in our sector. Our partnership between the royal palace and Cavalieri Pharmaceuticals will help identify families that need assistance and make sure they get the medications they need. We identified our first family, and wanted to ensure they got not only medication, but food and heating oil as the upcoming Christmas holidays approach.”

Dani’s heartbeat raced. It was a ridiculous bit of theatre, designed to repair the damage caused by the pictures that had appeared in the tabloids, but if there was any chance that they might get the insulin Ava needed—