My Father Sold Me To An Immortal King For A Debt — But I Was A Biological Weapon
Part 1
Blood was never supposed to be the currency of the corporate world.
For three generations, Reynolds BioTech had been a pillar of the pharmaceutical industry, built on the steady, methodical progress of human medicine.
I sat in the glass-walled boardroom overlooking the gray expanse of the city, keeping my posture perfectly unbroken.
The sky outside mirrored the bruised, heavy atmosphere pressing down on the mahogany table.
Across from me sat my father, Dan Reynolds, a man who had aged twenty years in the span of six desperate months.
He was a trembling husk of his former self, his bespoke suit hanging loosely off a diminished frame.
He had made a fatal error in his pursuit of a highly experimental, off-the-books gene therapy project.
When the banks had refused to fund the escalating costs, he had turned to the shadow market.
He borrowed heavily from Pendleton Holdings, a sprawling private equity firm that officially dealt in real estate and rare antiquities.
I had hacked his encrypted files months ago, uncovering the terrifying truth behind the corporate facade.
Pendleton Holdings was the modern face of a society that predated our oldest historical records.
They did not sleep in dirt or wear velvet capes.
They manipulated global markets in tailored suits and treated humanity as a combination of a labor force and a livestock reserve.
The heavy glass doors of the boardroom slid open, and the ambient temperature immediately plummeted.
Craig Pendleton entered the room.
He moved with a fluid, predatory grace that instantly forced the hairs on my arms to stand at attention.
His sharp, aristocratic features and midnight-dark hair were striking, but his eyes held the cold, ancient gray of a winter ocean.
Without blinking, the immortal surveyed us.
Existing merely as an immovable force, he radiated an aura of absolute authority that crushed the oxygen out of the space.
Behind him stood his lieutenant, Tyler Davis, a man whose easy smile barely concealed a sociopathic cruelty.
The deadline has arrived, Craig announced, his rich baritone flawless yet carrying the faintest echo of old money and older power.
Two billion in debt, or the immediate liquidation of all assets, intellectual properties, and your personal collateral.
My father choked back a sob, burying his face in his trembling hands.
The trials failed, and the money is completely gone.
Then the contract defaults to clause four, Tyler noted, sliding a thick leather-bound folio across the table.
I reached out, resting my manicured fingers on the heavy parchment without bothering to read the text.
I already knew what clause four demanded.
It was a blood debt.
Craig had been watching our family for decades, and he didn’t actually want the failing company’s remaining assets.
He wanted a human plaything of high pedigree to parade before his elite circle of predators.
“I will marry you,” I stated, breaking the silence with a voice entirely flat and devoid of emotion.
Craig’s cold eyes snapped toward me, revealing a flicker of genuine surprise beneath his arrogant facade.
Accustomed to weeping, begging, and the intoxicating scent of raw, unfiltered terror, the immortal hesitated.
Inhaling subtly, he searched the room for my pheromones, fully expecting the sharp spike of panic.
Despite the horrifying reality, my heart rate remained a steady, rhythmic sixty beats per minute instead of hammering against my ribs.
“You do not know what he is,” my father gasped, desperately reaching across the table for my arm.
Refusing to break eye contact with the ancient monster standing before me, I delivered my grim assessment.
“He is an apex predator suffering from chronic boredom, and if I do not go, he will kill you and seize the company anyway.”
Leaning forward to rest his hands on the polished wood, Craig let a slow, dangerous smile curve his lips.
“You will not be a partner in this arrangement, Brenda.”
“Living at my isolated estate, you will be a possession and serve as my vessel in practice.”
Ignoring the heavy, freezing pressure of his aura, I unspooled a pen from my purse.
“There are two conditions before I sign.”
Stepping forward to put a human in her place, Tyler barked a harsh laugh.
Silencing his lieutenant instantly, Craig simply raised a single finger.
The debt is wiped clean, and Reynolds BioTech remains under my father’s control with total immunity from your syndicate, I demanded.
Craig agreed effortlessly, viewing it as a paltry price for absolute dominion over a mortal prize.
I signed my name with a steady hand and pushed the folio back across the table.
My human life technically ended that night as I boarded his soundproofed helicopter bound for a fortress in the Swiss Alps.
The violent downdraft whipped my trench coat around my legs as we landed on the jagged precipice of his isolated estate.
The air was bone-chillingly cold, the altitude high enough to make a normal human lightheaded, but my breathing remained perfectly even.
The cavernous foyer was breathtakingly opulent, dripping with medieval tapestries, priceless Renaissance art, and modern brutalist architecture.
Craig stepped close behind me, intentionally allowing the freezing unnatural cold of his body to radiate against my back.
He warned me that there were no locks on the doors, but the perimeter was secured by a blizzard that never ended.
Over the next few weeks, Craig initiated a campaign of psychological warfare designed to crack my stoic facade.
He paraded the horrors of his existence before me, dining on human thralls in the massive obsidian hall while expecting me to shatter.
I simply cut my steak methodically, suggesting that his thralls needed a diet richer in iron for optimal oxygenation.
When Tyler finally lost his temper at my clinical detachment and lifted me off the floor by my throat, I didn’t struggle.
I simply checked his pulse point, noting the bizarre bradycardia driven by magical rather than mechanical forces.
Craig intervened, deeply unnerved but entirely fascinated by my total lack of fear.
He announced that the blood moon had arrived, and the binding ceremony would finalize my eternal servitude.
The inner sanctum was illuminated by thousands of black candles, filled with the elite of the immortal world dressed in extravagant couture.
I stood at the altar in a heavy silk gown the color of dried blood.
The high priest chanted the binding rites in a dead, forgotten language.
Craig sliced his palm with a silver dagger, mirroring the cut on my own hand, and pressed our bleeding flesh together.
The freezing cold of his skin seeped into my veins, but I didn’t flinch.
He leaned down, his fangs extending past his lips in a display of brutal, primal violence.
The cold, terrifying king of the shadows sank his fangs into my neck to seal the bond, and for exactly three seconds, I let him think he had won.
