Page 1 of Collared by the Vampire Prince

Chapter 1

Kira

Something is wrong with the magic in the forest clearing.

I have been watching it from the treeline for ten minutes, pressed back against the trunks of the pines, hidden from the others.

We are deep in the woods, and it is the strangest sight. The trees open onto a vast, perfectly circular clearing, lush green grass rising gently towards a tall hill. At its summit sits a cottage that looks almost absurdly small against the breadth of the clearing.

Nothing moves within that circle. Not even the grass stirs in the breeze.

Three wolves stand nearby, just within the clearing, their amber eyes glowing in the dark. Byron’s coat is black, Dren’s silver, while Ana’s is the rarest of the three—pure white, her fur almost luminous beneath the moonlight.

I watch from the treeline as Dren tries first. He lowers his head and pushes deeper into the clearing, only to falter after a few steps, veering sideways as though some invisible hand has turned him around to chase his own tail. Byron tries next. Then Ana. None of them gets much farther.

They haven’t scented me yet. I’ve kept downwind, pressed back amongst the pines while they test the boundary again and again.

At last, the three shift back into human form, clothes settling around them as fur recedes and limbs reshape. They draw close together, speaking in low voices as they stare towards the cottage on the hill.

“Magic,” I hear Ana say.

They’ve deduced there is some kind of ward around the clearing, though they cannot see it. No vampire, shifter, or human can sense magic unless it reveals itself, like the coloured flame of an enchanted candelabra or the slow drift of a portrait’s gaze as it watches you creep down a corridor.

Magic is rare, they say.

No one can sense it.

But I can.

I see it spilling slowly from the hilltop cottage in streams of gold sparkles, calm and sinister as it drifts across the clearing towards where I stand in the forest.

Hello, creature, it whispers in my mind. Pretty creature. Be gone, creature. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Away.

It is a warning, silent but dangerous.

And wrong.

Perhaps that is why only a monster like me can recognise it. I might be a wolf shifter, with amber eyes that carry the same strange glow as any other, but when I shift into my true form, it is no wolf at all.

It is something grotesque, even if my foster parents tell me otherwise.

Still, I cannot entirely hate my appearance. I think it may be the reason I can sense magic. Perhaps I was touched by dark magic as a child, through some cursed artefact or spell.

Or perhaps I was simply born wrong.

I inch closer in my human form, my boots silent against the forest floor, careful not to alert the others at the clearing’s edge.

Everything in me wants to turn back, but I can’t. That little hilltop cottage holds the last witch in existence. It must. The presence of the ward leaves no doubt. No one else could cast such magic.

The Resistance believes she is our only hope. Our last chance to bring down the Vampire King. That’s why Byron, the leader of the Resistance, is here with two others, trying to breach it—to ask her to join us. To help overthrow King Henrikk, the vampire who annihilated her people and enslaved ours.

The magic presses against my skin, lifting the hairs along my arms as it urges me to turn back, to step away from the clearing and disappear into the forest.

I step forward anyway.

It is Ana who spots me first, her long red hair unmistakable even in the darkness. She calls out, but I ignore her.

The moment my boot crosses the edge of the clearing, my focus slips as if I’ve forgotten something terribly important. The ward is not so much a physical barrier as a mental one, sapping the will of whoever tries to breach it.