Chapter 30

Olivia’s POV

The next evening, after Damien cast me out of his chamber to do as I would, I went to the courtyard to start my new training regimen. The evening air was cool, and there was more than enough space here for me to move around. If I practiced nearer the gardens, I even had a small bit of privacy behind the tall bushes.

At least that was what I thought at first. But soon my spot had been discovered by another batch of slaves who had been making their way through, heading from one duty to the next. By the second batch, I realized this spot was a regular route for the werewolf slaves, likely for the same reason I had preferred it.

It offered some measure of privacy from the vampire eyes. For them, even if it was for only a few moments, to not have the vampires watching must have felt like freedom. I hated that I was taking that away from them.

I hated even more that they were giving me dark, withering looks.

By midmorning, I was coming to realize that they might actually hate me, through and threw, especially after I heard one of them murmuring. “It must be nice to be a vampire’s whore.”

I wanted to snap back. I wasn’t his whore, I was his prisoner. At least, that was what I wanted to believe. My reactions whenever he touched me or sank his fangs into me countered that, as did my aching desire for him to do so again.

Gods, maybe I really was a whore. But only for Damien.

It had to be the blood bond. There could be no other reason for his invading my thoughts.

Remember Jacob. My fated mate. The true holder of my heart.

To Damien, I was nothing but a pet. But to Jacob, I was an equal. I couldn’t forget that.

I did my best to ignore their dark looks and their taunts, focusing instead on pushing my body to the limit with my training.

Only once a vampire guard patrolled the area. At first, seeing me while I was doing pushups, he started to walk toward me like he intended to condemn me, punish me, or worse. Yet, as he came closer, his eyes flicked down to my collar.

Perhaps this was the giveaway to who I was, and who had claimed me as my master, because the guard immediately turned away. I wasn’t bothered again.

Around midnight, I stopped for lunch. Unlike the other slaves, who had to go to the slave cafeteria and hope for crumbs, my lunch of fruits and meats was brought to Damien’s room. He wasn’t there right now, so I ate quietly and alone.

Grabbing my second apple, I realized how much of a hypocrite I was. Here I was, a pampered pet, while the rest of my kind were being starved down below me.

Eating only a quarter of my lunch, I stuffed the rest into my sleeves and pockets. Then, I slipped down the stairs.

No one bothered me on my way to the slaves’ cafeteria. If they could smell the food on me, they didn’t say a word about it.

When I reached the slaves’ cafeteria, I searched out and found the old woman who had answered my questions. I went to her now, and slipped her the food I could. She accepted it without question and then passed it along.

“This is a start,” she told me. “But it is not enough to earn forgiveness for what you’ve done. Especially not if you wish to earn it from Angela and the rest who had lost family to your foolish plan in the past.”

“I know,” I said. “I will continue to earn forgiveness in the long term, but that’s not all that I hope for.”

“No one here will help you escape,” the woman said.

“I’m not looking for that either.”

The woman lifted her head to look at me, then tilted it ever so slightly to the side. “What is it you want?”

“Friendship,” I said.

The old woman stared at me for a long moment. Maybe she thought I was making some kind of joke or something. But, the longer she looked, the more she seemed to realize how serious I was.

“Is it lonely at the top?” she asked me.

I didn’t choose to be where I was, so in a way, I resented the implication that I was somehow better off than everyone else. Rather than doing hard labor, I was a blood well, existing only for Damien’s amusement.

But, when looking at the conditions here, I supposed the werewolves pushed to the brink with work and no food saw my free time and my general lax supervision with a kind of green-eyed envy.

In a way, I couldn’t blame them. I wouldn’t wish my position on anyone, not even an enemy, but I understood what they saw from the outside looking in.

Rather than argue all this, I simply said, “Yes.”

The old woman didn’t judge me. Her face smoothed out and she nodded. “Dividing us is another way they hinder us.” She paused a moment, then said, “Call me Dee.”

Immediately, I felt an emptiness inside of myself start to fill.

Dee was old for the group here, but she was still younger than my mother. She reminded me something of an Aunt or a much older sister with an age gap. Even so, around here, with so many young men and women, she seemed to take on the matronly role.

“We have to stay together as much as we can,” she said. “That’s the mindset I’m hoping to instill before I’m inevitably killed.”

“Why would you be killed?” I asked. Whenever I had seen her working, she had always seemed to do a good job.

“There’s a reason you don’t see anyone much older than me around here,” Dee said. “Sooner or later, they will replace me with younger blood.” Before I could say anything, she shook her head. “Don’t pity me, Olivia. It’s the way of things here. My bigger concern is helping the young ones, because right now they are suffering the most.”

She meant the food, I could see that. It didn’t make much sense for the vampires to hoard the food. After all, vampires survived on blood. That food would only go to waste.

“You would think they would want their slaves to be strong enough to do the labor they command,” I said.

“They negotiate for enough food to feed us all,” Dee said, “But the vampires in charge of us, at Sofia’s leadership, hide the food. They tell us there isn’t enough, that the werewolves in the fields outside the castle walls are attempting to rebel by not working. We all know it’s a lie. Hells, we are the ones unloading the trucks.”

“What do they do with the food?” I asked.

“They sell it back to the farmers,” Dee replied. “The people out there are starving too. They are pocketing the money. I bet the King and the Duke would like to know that.”

“Why doesn’t anyone say something?” I asked.

“Why would we?” Dee asked. “Word will only get back to Sofia and we will be the ones on the block.”

That was true. The slaves here didn’t have much voice, so there wasn’t much they could speak out on without being killed and forgotten. No one but the other slaves would care.

But perhaps there was something I could do. I had special privileges. No one could kill me without Damien’s say-so, and if he was one of the people would like to know about this side business…

Before I could think of a plan, I looked up and found a familiar face glaring at me from across the room.

Sofia. Looking right at me, like she already knew what I had planned.