Captured: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Academy Bully Romance (Royals of Sanguine Vampire Academy Book 1)

by Sofia Daniel

  “You can offer me your protection without servitude,” I whispered into his ear.

  “I could,” he growled. “But what would I get out of it?”

  “I’m not giving you my blood.” I cupped his ass cheeks with both hands and ground my core against his erection.

  Breathing hard through clenched teeth, he closed his eyes. “No blood, then. One favor in exchange for protection for the rest of the year.”

  My tongue darted out to lick my lips. He probably wanted sex. “If I stay at the academy, I want protection for my entire duration here.”

  “Fine,” he snapped.

  Triumph erupted in my chest, but I tamped down the feeling. “Don’t you vampire nobles make blood oaths?”

  His nostrils flared, but he said, “I, Nero Striga of the Noble House of Stryx do by blood and magic swear to protect Alicia Stephens for the duration of her time at the Sanguine Academy of Vampires.”

  I nodded. “What next?”

  He bit down on his thumb and offered me a bead of blood. “Drink. It will contain my scent, and everyone will know we share a bond.”

  I stole a glance into his dark eyes, marveling at the sincerity shining in their depths. If sleeping with someone I found immensely attractive would give me all the protection I needed, I would throw my reservations aside and do it. My tongue darted out to lick his blood. It was hot and thick and spicy. It fizzled onto my tongue, slid down my throat, and went straight to my core.

  Nero groaned. “I can’t wait until that tongue is lapping cum out of my slit.”

  I closed my eyes and moaned. Neither could I, but I wasn’t going to be the one to admit it.

  Chapter 14

  The next breakfast-time, I walked through the hallways unmolested by vampires. With Nero’s blood singing in my veins, they knew who would come after them if they continued their childish pranks. The other frumosi still shunned me, but I guessed they were frightened of associating with someone who had publicly attacked two vampires.

  As soon as I stepped through the double doors of the dining hall, I realized the downside to being under Nero’s protection. Both his and Dante’s heads snapped up, and they watched me walk through the room to my usual table. Dante beckoned me over, but I ducked my head, pretending to study the glass of orange juice a knocker had placed on my table. According to Mr. Sparrow’s nutrition lectures, it helped the body to absorb iron, which was excellent for building the blood.

  Micalla, Juno, and the twins strolled into the dining room, with Zarah stumbling behind them like a drunk. My hand curled around my glass. They’d fed on her. Again. One of the signs of severe anemia was dizziness and a wobbly gait, and it looked like Zarah was one bite away from fainting. Micalla’s gaze snapped to me, and her nostrils flared.

  A boulder of dread sank into my stomach. What a terrible dilemma. If I hadn’t taken up Nero’s protection, I’d be fair game to any of the vampires who wanted revenge against me for hurting Raphael. Or one of the Coven might try something worse than to throw me to a werewolf. But what would Micalla do to Zarah now that I reeked of Nero? I swallowed hard. Showing fear might encourage her to use my friend as a bargaining chip.

  Micalla strode over, flanked by the twins. Juno, the blue-haired wretch, trailed behind, wrapping her arm around Zarah’s waist as though they’d been dating for years. Vampires rose from their tables and followed them, either anticipating a spectacle or waiting for Micalla to override Nero’s protection, so they could pounce.

  I snatched my gaze away from the Coven of Bitches and raised my glass to my lips.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Micalla hissed.

  “Having breakfast.” I lowered my glass and popped a piece of blood sausage into my mouth. A quip about vampires not needing to eat flashed into the forefront of my mind, but I clamped my lips shut. There was no telling what they might to do Zarah.

  Micalla’s eyes sharpened. “We’ve already fed… directly from the source.”

  “Yum!” With a chuckle, Juno snapped at Zarah’s neck, giving me the visual.

  Anger simmered in the pit of my belly. Even if Zarah had consented to their bites, I was sure she hadn’t agreed to a state of severe anemia.

  “I never had you pegged for a murderer,” I said loud enough for everyone to hear. Even if Nero had refused to help Zarah, some eavesdropper might intervene. “You and your girl gang are dangerously close to killing someone. Again.”

  “What does that mean?” spat Pigtails.

  “Isn’t there a penalty for over-feeding?” My gaze darted toward the head table where Professor Proust and the doctor looked on with interest. “Take a look at Zarah. Juno has to prop her up. If she can’t stand on her own, it means you’ve taken too much.”

  “You’ll know all about that, whore.” Pigtails placed both hands on her hips.

  In a desperate attempt to get the headmaster to stop them, I said, “What will happen to you if you kill a frumosi before she was able to deliver a single sun-walker?”

  “Watch yourself, slut,” Pigtails said from between clenched teeth. “Nero won’t be around all the time to protect you. And when he turns his back, I’ll be there—”

  Nero appeared behind the girls. “You’ll be there to shove her into rooms with werewolves? Remember your place, Kush Preta.”

  An angry flush crept across Pigtail’s features, and she curled her lip as though ready to spit out an insult, but Ponytail pulled her sister to one side and stepped in front of Nero. With her eyes lowered in supplication, she said, “I can assure you that we didn’t have anything to do with the werewolf incident.”

  “A cleverly worded denial,” he replied.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Micalla.

  Nero turned around and addressed the crowd. “Hear this. Alicia Stephens is under the protection of the Kingdom of Stryx. Anyone thinking to attack her physically, mentally, verbally, or by proxy attacks us.”

  “Didn’t you see what she did to Raphael?” spat Micalla. “And to Dante’s face? How could you forgive such offenses?”

  The crowd parted, and Dante strode through, his aquamarine eyes glinting like jewels. “Alicia is ours. Ours to possess, ours to protect, and ours to punish as we see fit.”

  I dipped my head, avoiding his gaze. He’d just announced that this protection offered me no defense from himself and his brothers. If I didn’t think fast, I’d end up like Zarah.

  Professor Proust and the vampire guards stepped in and ordered everyone to return to their tables. I slumped in my seat. Between Nero and Dante eye-fucking me throughout breakfast, and the Coven of Bitches making fangs at Zarah, I could barely concentrate on the plate of offal dressed up to look like food.

  Our first class of the day was Slayers 101. Captain Tanar, looking as menacing as ever in his black armor, stood at the head of the room next to a large easel, which he covered in a black cloth. He rocked back on his heels and folded his arms across his chest. “Be seated, class.”

  Nero beckoned me over and gestured for me to sit in Raphael’s space, but I shook my head and took one of the tables at the frumosi side of the room. Each person sitting nearby moved to a seat further away. I huffed out a long breath. It didn’t matter that I was under the protection of the Stryx Brothers. In the Sanguine Academy of Vampires, being a pariah was contagious.

  When everyone settled, Captain Tanar pulled the cloth from the easel and revealed an elderly woman dressed in a gold-embroidered, seventeenth-century dress, complete with neck ruffles. “One of the most prominent slayers in history is Maria Feodorovich, a sorcerer who used dark magic to enslave vampires.”

  I held my breath. If the old woman was a sorcerer, did that mean she was also a descendant of Vlad Dracula’s sorcerer brother, Radu? That would also make her a frumosi. My gaze darted around the room. None of the other students seemed to have made the connection, but I held my tongue. Captain Tanar might reveal a few more clues, and if I could read up on this slayer, maybe I could learn something t
o earn my freedom.

  “Turn to page eighty-seven of your textbooks,” he said.

  I unfastened the buckles of my satchel. A glass bottle clinked onto the floor and rolled toward my feet.

  “What’s that, Miss Stephens?” Captain Tanar strode over, his dark brows furrowed.

  “It isn’t mine.” I leaned under the table to get a better look.

  Before I could kick the bottle away, he swooped down, picked it up, and turned its label toward me. It was white with a black crucifix. “Holy water?”

  Laughter filled the vampire side of the classroom.

  My insides cringed with shame. “It’s not mine—”

  His face twisted into a scowl that accentuated his hawk-like nose. “What did you hope to achieve with such a useless substance?”

  “Someone must have put it in my bag.”

  Captain Tanar ignored me and unscrewed the bottle-top. As soon as the seal cracked, he jerked his head back with a grimace and screwed it closed. “Where did you get hydrolat of garlic?”

  “I don’t even know what that is!” The words came out like a squeak.

  “Do you know what it does to vampires?”

  He slammed the bottle on the table and glowered at me through furious, amber eyes.

  I gulped. Someone had set me up to look like I was trying to poison the Stryx Brothers. Again. My gaze fixed on Pigtails, who smirked. Beside her, Ponytail propped her chin on her hand, looking thoroughly bored. At the desks behind them, Juno’s tongue flickered out and traced the shell of Zarah’s ear, and behind them, Micalla gave me such an intense stare of hatred, I knew she hadn’t been behind the prank. No one that angry would resort to something so petty. She looked like she wanted to rip me apart with her fangs.

  My gaze flickered to Dante and Nero, who stared back with hard eyes. A jolt of apprehension pierced my heart forced a shuddering breath out of my lungs. With my track record, they probably thought I was trying to poison them again.

  Captain Tanar grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and dragged me to the desk at the front of the room. “What was the plan? To trick a young, impressionable vampire into drinking the hydrolat, then stand back and watch the carnage?”

  “No!” I struggled against him, even cast a glance toward Dante and Nero, but neither of them made a move to save me.

  The captain opened a drawer in his desk, pulled out a roll of parchment, an inkpot, and one of those old-fashioned quills. Then he set them on a table at the front of the room.

  “I must not poison my benefactors.” He let go of the collar of my blazer, turned to a knocker and whispered a few words. The knocker bowed and left the room.

  “Sir?” I glanced from the writing materials to the teacher, wondering if he really intended for me to write lines.

  “Fill up this entire parchment with the sentence, or I will have you flayed alive and returned a bloody, dripping mess to the Brothers Striga!” he barked.

  The muscles in my jaw clenched with frustration, and a hot breath huffed out of my nostrils. This was ridiculous. I had no access to the outside world. Where would I obtain such a substance and the art supplies to disguise it as holy water? Most days, I’d had Commander Shanks trailing my every move. It was obvious to me that I’d been framed by Pigtails who had probably thought I’d get a much harsher punishment.

  I uncorked the ink pot, dipped the tip of the quill in the black liquid, and splattered blots all over the parchment.

  “Each inkblot earns you a reprimand from your liege lord.”

  “L-liege—?” My gaze flickered up to Nero’s. The fire in his coal-black eyes told me he knew exactly what he had done by feeding me his blood. Until I could work out a way to get out of this predicament, I was wholly and utterly, his serf.

  Throughout Captain Tanar’s lecture on Maria Feodorovich, I wrote the words, I must not poison my benefactors, over and over until my wrist ached. Each time I focussed on an interesting fact about the ancient vampire hunter and sorcerer, inkblots would splatter on my parchment. There were twelve already. I hated to think of what Nero would do, given that he had carte blanche to hurt me as much as he liked.

  At the end of the class, Pigtails sauntered over to my desk. “Enjoy the punishment,” she whispered. “The boys might think they’re gentlemen, but as soon as they draw blood and taste you, they won’t be able to stop. And you’ll be like Zarah, but worse.”

  “Did you order the hydrolat online and draw the label yourself?” I asked.

  She waggled her brows. “Maybe… And maybe next month, you’ll be fucked by a whole pack of werewolves, instead of just Gates.”

  “So, it was you.” I bared my teeth.

  She smirked. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “Leave her,” said Nero.

  Pigtails flounced out of the room.

  When the rest of the class had left, Dante closed the door. Captain Tanar pulled out a trunk from under his desk and opened it, revealing torture instruments I’d once seen on a kinky website. My throat dried, and I gulped at the array of canes, riding crops, wooden paddles, and leather floggers. There were also metal items that sent shivers down my spine.

  The captain pulled out a bullwhip and asked, “How do you wish to punish your wayward serf?”

  Nero placed his finger on his bottom lip and perused the contents of the captain’s trunk. His blue-black dreadlocks obscured his features so that I couldn’t see his expression, but Dante’s cruel lips curled, and his eyes glinted with malice.

  Cold shot through my veins, and I shot to my feet, breaths shallow. “I’m not—”

  Dante waggled his finger. “Don’t make the situation worse for yourself. Take your punishment like a good slave and don’t complain.”

  “But Kush put the bottle in my—.”

  “A bare-bottomed spanking.” Nero drew back from the case of weapons.

  “What?” The words came out in a shocked breath.

  Dante held my shoulders and dug his thumbs into the muscles. “Shh. Don’t add to your offenses by resisting.”

  The door opened, and Dr. Grannus wheeled Raphael into the classroom. His copper hair hung lifelessly over his face, and his skin took on a deathly pallor that stretched across his now prominent bones. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and he looked like he hadn’t slept for days.

  Guilt impaled me through the gut, and I wrapped my arms around my middle. This was my doing. If I had gone to the headmaster with my accusation, he would have worked out that Raphael hadn’t thrown me to the werewolf, and I wouldn’t have hurt someone who had always tried to be friendly. Raphael raised his head and fixed me with sad, green eyes.

  A lump formed in my throat and pressure built in my sinuses. I wouldn’t complain about this punishment. Not when my actual crime had been far worse.

  Shortly afterward, Professor Proust walked in flanked by Commander Shanks, the crimson-eyed vampire who had snatched me from the bathroom of the Velvet Lounge, and the guard who used to follow Gates.

  “W-what’s happening?” I couldn’t keep the tremble out of my voice.

  “You’re a protected serf.” Dante squeezed my shoulders and turned me in Nero’s direction. “These elders are here to ensure your punishment doesn’t turn deadly.”

  I gulped down breath after breath, my mind spinning as quickly as the room. Since when were bare-bottom spankings fatal, and who would hold these vampires back at the first sight of blood? I was about to ask, but the words died in my throat with a pained whimper.

  Captain Tanar strode over to my parchment. “Twenty-six strokes, but we’ll round it up to thirty.” He turned to me, amber eyes glittering with anticipation. “Remove your underwear.”

  The temperature of the room increased by several degrees, and sweat gathered on my palms. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t reveal my bare ass in a room full of men. I’d never been naked in front of a boy my age, let alone three Stryx Brothers, Captain Tanar, Commander Shanks and his two colleagues, Dr. Grannus, and Professor Proust.
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  Commander Shanks stepped forward. “Miss Stephens is a particularly willful subject.” His voice was a little too breathy for a guard who had seen it all. “Perhaps I can—”

  “No, thank you,” said Dante. “Alicia must remove it herself. Every minute she spends procrastinating will double her punishment.”

  Heat rushed to my face, and my bottom lip trembled. This was so humiliating!

  The moment I reached under the hem of my skirt, every male in the room edged forward. Even Raphael sat at the edge of his wheelchair. My heart jumped into my throat. These weren’t just regular perverts. They were bloodsuckers with the power to rip me to shreds with their hands and claws and fangs.

  I shot Nero a nervous look, trying to communicate with my eyes that this was too dangerous.

  He grinned, fangs on full display. “Thirty spanks.”

  Chapter 15

  Ignoring the hungry stares and the grunts of approval, I grabbed the sides of my panties, pulled them down to my knees, and kicked them aside. With a flash of movement, one of the dirty fuckers snatched them up. Great. Not only would one of them do something filthy with them after the gong sounded, but I’d have to trudge to my room bare-assed.

  Nero lowered himself onto a chair and spread his legs. A thick erection jutted out from his pants that made me groan. Would I have to suck on him like I had sucked on his finger the day before, or would he be content with just spanking me?

  Heat gathered between my thighs at the thought of seeing that length unleashed, and each vampire’s nostrils flared. My insides cringed. They could probably smell my excitement.

  “Come here,” Nero said, voice hoarse.

  Keeping my thighs together so as not to release the scent of my arousal, I edged toward Nero. He spread his arms and positioned me at the side of his leg, then he pressed down on my back, indicating for me to bend over his muscular thighs.

  Nero was hot and breathing hard, and so was I. He slid my skirt up around my waist, and a cool draft swirled around my trembling buttocks. Sharp intakes of breaths, presumably from the males in the room, resounded in my ears. I buried my head in my hands. This was so degrading. Why couldn’t he have done it in private?