I held out my arm, watching as the needle sucked the blood from the crease of my elbow and into the clear vial. I sat there for ten minutes, staring blankly ahead as I did my monthly duty as a citizen of the Vale.

Like all humans who lived in the kingdom, I was required to donate blood once a month.

This was my twelfth time donating blood.

Twelve months. One year. That’s how long it had been since my family had been murdered in front of my eyes and I’d been kidnapped to the Vale.

When I’d first been told that I was now a blood slave to vampires, I didn’t believe it. Vampires were supposed to be fiction. They didn’t exist in real life.

But I couldn’t deny what I’d seen in front of my eyes. Those pale men, how quickly they’d moved, how they’d ripped their teeth into my parents and brother’s throats and drained them dry, leaving their corpses at the bottom of that ski trail.

Why had I been the one chosen to live, and not them?

It was all because I’d fallen on that slope. If I hadn’t fallen, I would have been first down the mountain. I would have been killed. My mom would have been last, and she would have been the one taken.

But my mom wouldn’t have been strong enough to survive in the Vale. So even though I hated that I’d lived while they’d died, it was better that I lived in this hellish prison than any of them. I’d always been strong. Stubborn. Determined.

Those traits kept me going every day. They were the traits that kept me alive.

At first, I’d wanted to escape. I thought that if I could just get out of this cursed village, I could run to the nearest town and get help. I could save all the humans who were trapped in the Vale.

I didn’t get far before a wolf tried to attack me.

I’d used my gymnastics skills to climb high up on a tree, but if Mike hadn’t followed me, fought off the wolf, and dragged me back inside the Vale, I would have been dead meat. The wolves would have eventually gotten to me and feasted upon my body, leaving nothing but bones.

Mike had told me everything about the wolves as we’d walked back to the Tavern. He’d grown up in the Vale, so he knew a lot about its history. He’d told me that they weren’t regular wolves—they were shifters. They’d made a pact with the vampires centuries ago, after the vampires had invaded their land and claimed this valley as their own. He’d told me about how the wolves craved human flesh as much as the vampires craved human blood, and how if a human tried to escape—if they crossed the line of the Vale—they became dinner to the wolves.

At least the vampires let us live, so they could have a continuous supply of blood to feast upon whenever they wanted.

The wolves just killed on the spot.

That was the first and last time I’d tried to escape. And after Mike had saved me, we’d become best friends. He’d offered me my job at the Tavern, where I’d been working—and living—ever since. All of us who worked there lived in the small rooms above the bar, sleeping in the bunks inside.

He and the others had helped me cope with the transition—with realizing I was a slave to the vampires, and that as a mere human amongst supernaturals, there was no way out.

They were my family now.

“You’re done,” the nurse said, removing the needle from my arm. She placed a Band-Aid on the bleeding dot, and I flexed my elbow, trying to get some feeling back in the area. “See you next month.”

“Yeah.” I gathered my bag and stood up. “Bye.”

On my way out, I passed Martha—the youngest girl who worked at the Tavern. She slept in the bunk above mine, and along with being the youngest, she was also the smallest.

It took her twice as long to recover from the blood loss as it did for me.

“Good luck,” I told her on the way out. “I’ll see you back at the Tavern.” I winked, and she smiled, since she knew what I was about to do.

It was what I always did on blood donation day.

I held my bag tightly to my side and stepped onto the street, taking a deep breath of the cold mountain air. It was dark—us humans were forced to adjust to the vampires’ nocturnal schedule—and I could see my breath in front of me. The witch who’d created the shield to keep the Vale hidden from human eyes also regulated the temperature, but she could only do so much. And since it was December in Canada, it was naturally still cold.

I hurried to the busiest street in town—Main Street, as it was so creatively named. Humans manned stalls, and vampires walked around, purchasing luxuries that only they were afforded. Meat, doughnuts, pizza, cheeses—you name it, the vampires bought it.

The vampires didn’t even need food to survive, but they ate it anyway, because it tasted good.

Us humans, on the other hand, were relegated to porridge, bread, rice, and beans—the bare necessities. The vampires thought of us as nothing but cattle—as blood banks. And blood banks didn’t deserve food for enjoyment. Only for nourishment.

Luckily, Mike had taught me a trick or two since the day he’d saved me from the wolves. After seeing me climb that tree, he’d called me “scrappy” and said it was a skill that would get me far in the Vale.

He’d taught me how to steal.

It was ironic, really. Stealing hadn’t been something that had ever crossed my mind in my former life. I used to have it good—successful, loving parents, trips to the Caribbean in the spring, skiing out west in the winter, and an occasional voyage to Europe thrown in during the summers. I’d had a credit card, and when I’d needed something, I would buy it without a second thought.

I hadn’t appreciated how good I’d had it until all of that was snatched away and I was left with nothing.

Now I walked past the various booths, eyeing up the delicious food I wasn’t allowed to have. But more than the food, I was eying up the shopkeepers and the vampires around them. Who seemed most oblivious? Or absorbed in conversation?

It didn’t take long to spot a vampire woman flirting with a handsome human shopkeeper. I’d seen enough of vampires as a species to know that if the flirting was going to progress anywhere, it would lead to him becoming one of her personal blood slaves, but he followed her every movement, entranced by her attention.

They were the only two people at the booth. Everyone else was going about their own business, not paying any attention to me—the small, orphaned blood slave with downcast eyes and torn up jeans.

Which gave me the perfect opportunity to snatch the food that us humans were forbidden to purchase.