Chapter 1
I treated the pureblood progenitor as nothing more than a worthless blood slave.
Every day, I drank from him and made him help me into my stockings at my bedside.
"Pathetic. Is making me happy truly beyond you?" I taunted.
While I squandered his fortune, I lashed his back with a silver whip.
That was the day my system let out a shriek of pure terror. 'Host, that's the merciless prince, the one who's been asleep for a thousand years!'
The whip slipped from my fingers, and I spun to flee. His icy, silken hair coiled around my ankle and held me fast.
He licked the blood from his lips, his eyes wild and crimson with madness. "Sweetheart, you've had your fill. Now it's my turn to feast."
The silver whip fell from my trembling hand and clattered sharply against the obsidian floor.
His ink-black hair wrapped tighter around my ankle, cold and slick as a nest of serpents, squeezing until my bones threatened to snap.
He remained on his knees as he slowly lifted his head.
On that god-kissed, devastating face, a trace of my bite still glistened at the corner of his mouth.
His crimson tongue swept out and curled the drop of blood inward with an elegant, unhurried grace, as though he were savoring a rare vintage.
His scarlet eyes blazed with a madness and possessiveness he no longer bothered to conceal. "And where do you think you're going, my master?"
He bit down on the last word, his voice dripping with mockery.
My mind went blank. The system kept screaming inside my head, its voice cracking with panic. 'Host, run! He's Nyx Blackwood.
'He's an S-rank threat. The system database has a fatal error. We're doomed!]
Run? With my ankle locked in his grip, how was I supposed to escape?
The cold tangle of hair around my ankle yanked me off balance and sent me crashing backward. I braced for the impact, but instead I landed in an unyielding, icy embrace.
Somehow, Nyx had risen to his feet and swept me into his arms. His long hair cascaded over me like a midnight waterfall.
He carried me step by step toward the lavish, enormous bed where I had spent the last three months ruling over him.
My body went rigid. I could not breathe.
"Sweetheart, these past three months have been a genuine pleasure," Nyx murmured against my ear, his voice low and steeped in a dark, dreamlike satisfaction.
He said, "You are the first in a thousand years bold enough to lash me with silver."
His fingertips brushed the spot on my wrist where I had gripped the whip. He applied no pressure, yet the touch burned like a brand searing straight to the bone.
"Ordinary silver would reduce me to ash," he said, his tone almost playful. "But what you used, the sacred silver of the Silver Sanctuary, does not destroy me. It awakens me."
I stared at him, my eyes wide with horror.
Every act of humiliation, every torment I inflicted over these three months, was it all nothing more than an amusing alarm clock to him?
"And your blood." Nyx buried his face in the curve of my neck and drew a slow, deep breath, his voice thick with intoxication. "The most exquisite taste I have ever known.
"A little each day was enough to stir me from centuries of slumber and coax my strength back to life."
The truth crashed over me in a cold wave. I had never been the hunter. From the very beginning, I was a pampered lamb, fattened and groomed for the slaughter.
He flung me onto the plush bed and leaned over me, his hands planted on either side of my body, his shadow swallowing me whole.
"Now I am awake." His hair spilled down, icy strands winding around my throat, tightening inch by inch. "Now it is my turn."
Right as the darkness began to crowd the edges of my vision, his hair loosened and fell away.
Nyx drew back a little, watching with keen interest as fear turned my eyes red-rimmed and glassy.
"If you shatter so easily, where is the sport in that?" A low chuckle escaped him, and he traced my lips with the tip of his finger. "Rest easy. I do not intend to devour you all at once."
His words brought me no comfort. They sent a deeper chill seeping down my spine.
A knock sounded at the door.
"Your Royal Highness, Lady Evelyn requests an audience." The servant's voice carried through the door, steady and reverent.