The hospital appears through the car window like a ghost from a past life.
Recognition slams into me before James even parks—the same brutalist architecture, the same sterile entrance, the same fluorescent lights that now bleed into my enhanced vision with chemical intensity. This is where they took my blood. Where they catalogued my body like inventory. Where I signed away pieces of myself for money I thought would buy Alan's freedom.
"You're taking me to the Virtue Exchange medical center." Not a question. An accusation.
James cuts the engine, and the silence that follows feels deliberate. "Yes."
"You were here." The pieces slot together with sickening clarity. "That day. When they were testing me. You were watching."
He doesn't deny it. "I wanted to make sure you were safe."
"Safe." The word tastes bitter. "Or shopping?"
His jaw tightens. "Both."
The honesty should enrage me—the premeditation, the stalking, the way he orchestrated this entire transformation from the shadows. He didn't just stumble onto my listing. He hunted me. Tracked me. Decided my fate before I ever agreed to it.
But beneath the anger, something else unfolds. Something that feels disturbingly like relief.
He saw me. When I thought I was invisible, degrading myself in clinical rooms under fluorescent lights, reducing myself to a transaction—he was there. Watching. Wanting. Claiming me in his mind before his body ever touched mine.
"I should hate you for that," I say quietly.
"I know." He turns to face me, and his expression carries no apology. "But I won't pretend I regret it."
The absence of shame does something to the knot in my chest. Loosens it. If he'd begged forgiveness, made excuses, tried to soften the predatory nature of what he did, I'd have lost respect for him. But this brutal honesty, this refusal to pretend he's anything other than what he is?
It makes me feel seen.
"Show me why we're here," I say, and drop the subject like a stone.
The hospital's interior amplifies with my new senses—disinfectant burning my nostrils, the fluorescent hum drilling into my skull, and underneath it all, that maddening pulse of living blood. My fangs ache in their sheaths. The hunger hasn't diminished since waking. If anything, proximity to so much life makes it worse.
James leads me through corridors I remember walking as human. When we reach a door marked "Private Wing - Authorized Personnel Only," he enters a code without hesitation, and the lock clicks open.
"This wing doesn't exist on any public record," he explains as we walk. "It's where consenting donors come to be fed from."
"Donors." I taste the word. "You mean people sell their blood here."
"People offer their blood here. The compensation is secondary to the experience." He stops at another door, hand on the handle. "The vampire bite is intensely pleasurable, Theresa. For both parties. What we take, we also give."
He opens the door to what looks like a hospital room reimagined as a bedroom. Soft lighting instead of fluorescents. A bed with actual sheets instead of paper. And on that bed, a young man—maybe twenty-five, attractive, calm—who looks up as we enter with an expression of anticipatory excitement rather than fear.
"This is Colin," James says. "He's been coming here for months. He'll let me demonstrate, and then you'll try."
The clinical nature of the explanation contrasts sharply with what happens next.
James approaches Colin with predatory grace. No preamble. No small talk. Just intent made physical. He sits on the edge of the bed, and Colin tilts his head immediately, offering his throat with practiced ease.
I watch James lower his mouth to vulnerable skin. Watch his lips part. Watch fangs extend. And when he bites, when those fangs sink into Colin's jugular, the man's entire body arches with pleasure so intense it borders obscene.
James drinks. Not frantically. Not desperately. With controlled pulls that make Colin moan, hands fisting in the sheets, pupils dilating with what looks exactly like sexual ecstasy. The intimacy of it steals my breath—this isn't violence. It's an exchange. A transaction where both parties take something they need.
When James pulls away, blood stains his mouth, and he licks the wound with careful attention. The punctures close before my eyes, healing with supernatural speed until only faint marks remain.
Colin lies back breathing hard, hazel eyes glazed, expression blissful. "Thank you," he whispers, and means it.
James stands, and the hunger in his gray-blue eyes when he looks at me makes my stomach clench. "Your turn."
A woman waits in the next room. Younger than Colin, maybe twenty-two, blonde hair spread across white pillows. She watches me enter with calm curiosity, and when James explains I'm newly turned, her expression softens to something almost maternal.
"First time?" she asks.
I can't speak. The hunger has grown teeth, clawing at my insides, and her pulse—God, her pulse—beats so loud it drowns out thought.
"It's okay," she says gently, tilting her head to expose her throat. "I want this. Take what you need."
Permission. Consent. The words should make it easier, but approaching her feels like walking toward a cliff edge. Every instinct screams that crossing this threshold changes me irrevocably.
I sit on the bed. My hands shake. The hunger howls.
I lower my mouth to her throat. My fangs extend without conscious thought, sharp and ready. And when they pierce skin, when that first drop of blood hits my tongue—
The world shatters.
Nothing has ever tasted like this. Nothing has ever been like this. The blood is heat and life and something indefinable that floods my system with euphoria so intense my vision whites out. I drink, and with each pull, power surges through me. Not just physical strength but existential certainty. This is what I'm meant to do. This is what I'm for.
The woman beneath me gasps, her body responding with pleasure that mirrors my own. I'm giving her ecstasy even as I take her life force, and the reciprocity of it makes the act feel sacred.
I understand now why James fights for control constantly. Why hunger could drive vampires to drain victims dry. Because stopping—pulling away from this transcendent experience—requires will I'm not sure I possess.
But I do stop. Barely. My tongue licks the wound closed, mimicking what I watched James do, and the woman sighs with satisfaction.
"Thank you," she whispers. "That was beautiful."
I stand on shaking legs, blood on my lips, power singing through every cell. I'm not tired. Not weak. Not the exhausted woman who sold herself for her brother's debt.
When I turn, James is staring. His control has frayed to threads, hunger naked on his face as he watches blood stain my mouth. I see what he wants—to taste me, to feed from what I've become, to claim me in this new form.
The power shifts. Settles. Clarifies.
"You bid on me at the auction," I say, meeting his eyes without flinching. "You won. Which means you owe me money, and I need it. Now."