From Servant to Savior

The alarm shrieked through the silent mansion, a sound I knew better than my own heartbeat. For fifteen years, I had been Dorian Steele' s living, breathing medicine, my blood the only cure for his fatal seizures.

But then, his fiancée, Ainsley, arrived. She was flawless, a vision of cold, stunning beauty, and she looked like she belonged here.

He shoved me away from him, pulling the silk sheets up to cover my worn pajamas as if I were something dirty.

"Kira, clean this mess up. And get out." He dismissed me like a servant, after clinging to me for life just moments before.

The next morning, she sat in my chair, wearing his shirt, a love bite visible on her neck. She taunted me, and when I spilled coffee, he didn't even notice, too busy laughing with her.

Later, Ainsley accused me of breaking Eleanor' s prized porcelain vase. Dorian, without question, believed her. He forced me to my knees on the broken shards, the pain searing my flesh. "Apologize," he growled, pressing down on my shoulder. I whispered my apology, each word a surrender.

Then, they drained my blood for her, for a fabricated illness. "Ainsley needs this," he said, his voice flat. "She's more important." More important than the girl who had given him her life.

I was a resource to be exploited, a well that would never run dry. He had promised he would always protect me, but now he was the one holding the sword.

I was nothing more than a pet, a creature he kept for his own survival. But I was done.

I accepted an offer from the Estes family, a desperate, archaic idea of a "propitious marriage" to their comatose son, Emmett. It was my only escape.

Chapter 1

The alarm shrieked through the silent mansion, a sound I knew better than my own heartbeat.

It was Dorian's alarm. The one that meant his body was betraying him again.

For fifteen years, I had been his living, breathing medicine. My name is Kira Campbell, and my blood contains the only thing in the world that can stop the fatal seizures that wrack Dorian Steele's body. I am his antidote.

The Steele family, a dynasty built on cold steel and colder hearts, kept me here for that single purpose. To them, I wasn't a person. I was a cure.

I ran. Down the polished marble hallways of the Steele mansion, my bare feet silent on the cold floor. The house was a gilded cage I had lived in since I was a child.

His room was at the end of the west wing. I didn't knock. I never did.

The scene inside was always the same terrifying chaos. Lamps were overturned. Medical equipment lay smashed on the floor. And in the center of it all, on the vast bed, Dorian was convulsing. His handsome face was twisted in pain, his body a rigid arc of agony.

His eyes, usually a cold, piercing blue, were wild with fear and suffering.

"Kira," he choked out, his voice a raw whisper.

It was a command, not a plea.

I moved to his side, my actions honed by years of practice. This was our ritual. The maids and doctors would prepare the serum from my plasma, but sometimes, the seizures came too fast. In those moments, only my presence seemed to calm the storm inside him. His family called it a "treatment." I knew it was just his desperate, violent need for me.

He lunged, grabbing my wrist. His grip was like iron.

"Dorian, the serum is on its way," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. "Just hold on."

"No," he growled, pulling me down onto the bed. "Now."

He wasn't listening. He never listened when the pain took him. He buried his face in the crook of my neck, his breath coming in ragged, hot gasps. His arms wrapped around me, crushing me against him. It wasn't an embrace. It was the desperate clutch of a drowning man.

My bones ached from the pressure. My own breath hitched in my throat.

"Dorian, you're hurting me."

His only answer was to tighten his hold. I could feel the tremors in his body slowly begin to subside. This was the secret no one outside the family knew. My physical presence, the simple fact of me being there, soothed his neurological disorder in a way the serum couldn't. It was a bizarre, twisted codependency.

And God help me, I loved him. I had loved him for as long as I could remember, cherishing these violent, desperate moments because they were the only times he ever truly needed me. The only times he held me.

I closed my eyes, enduring the pain, waiting for the storm to pass. The scent of his skin, a mix of expensive cologne and the metallic tang of illness, filled my senses.

Suddenly, the bedroom door creaked open.

I froze. No one was supposed to enter during a treatment.

A woman stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the hall light. She was flawless. A silk robe clung to her perfect figure, her blonde hair was a shining halo, and her face was a mask of cold, stunning beauty. She looked like she belonged on the cover of a magazine.

She looked like she belonged here.

Dorian's head snapped up. The haze of pain vanished from his eyes, replaced by a sharp, cold clarity. It was like a switch had been flipped. He looked from the woman to me, still tangled in his arms, and a flicker of something-annoyance, maybe shame-crossed his face.

He shoved me away from him.

The movement was so abrupt I almost fell off the bed. He pulled the silk sheets up, covering my worn pajamas and bare legs as if I were something dirty, something to be hidden.

"Ainsley," Dorian's voice was smooth now, all traces of his earlier agony gone. "What are you doing here?"

The woman, Ainsley, glided into the room. Her eyes swept over me with dismissive contempt before landing on Dorian.

"I heard a noise," she said, her voice like honey laced with ice. "I was worried about you, darling."

Darling. The word hit me like a physical blow.

Dorian smiled at her, a charming, easy smile he never gave me. "It was nothing. Just a bad dream."

He stood up, walking over to her and completely turning his back on me. He took her hands in his.

"Ainsley Sandoval," he said, loud enough for me to hear clearly. "My fiancée."

Fiancée. The room tilted. My heart, which had been pounding with fear for him, now felt like a lead weight in my chest.

He gestured vaguely in my direction without even looking back.

"Kira, clean this mess up. And get out."

His voice was flat, devoid of any emotion. He had gone from desperately clinging to me for life to dismissing me like a servant in the span of a minute.

He and Ainsley walked out, their arms linked, leaving me alone in the wreckage of his room. The silence was deafening.

My arm throbbed where his fingers had dug into my skin, leaving dark bruises that would surface by morning. My whole body ached.

But that was nothing compared to the pain in my chest.

Fiancée.

I had been a fool. A stupid, hopeful fool. I had convinced myself that his need was a form of love. That one day, he would see me. Not the cure, but Kira.

I heard their voices drifting from the hallway. Ainsley's was a low murmur, but Dorian's reply was sharp and clear, cutting through the stillness.

"Her? Don't worry about her. She's just the household staff's daughter."

The household staff's daughter.

Fifteen years of my life, of my blood, of my love, reduced to that. I was a tool, a thing to be used and then discarded in a messy room.

My lungs felt tight, and I couldn't seem to draw a full breath. Outside, a storm was breaking. Rain began to lash against the windowpanes, mirroring the tempest in my soul.

I wasn't his anything. I was his nothing.

He had promised me. Years ago, when we were just kids, he had whispered it to me after a particularly bad seizure. "You're my Kira. Always."

It was a lie. It had always been a lie.

I was nothing more than a pet. A creature he kept to ensure his own survival.

Slowly, mechanically, I began to pick up the broken pieces of the lamp from the expensive rug. A shard of glass pricked my finger, and a single drop of red blood welled up.

I didn't even flinch. I was used to the pain.

I was used to cleaning up his messes.

But as I looked at that drop of blood, my blood, the blood that kept him alive, a cold clarity settled over me.

That night, the local news was on the television in the staff kitchen. There he was, Dorian Steele, smiling for the cameras, with the beautiful Ainsley Sandoval on his arm. They were announcing their engagement, a merger of two of the country's most powerful corporate dynasties.

They looked perfect together. A king and his queen.

I watched, unseen, from the shadows of the servant's corridor. A silent sob escaped my lips, a sound I quickly smothered with my hand.

The love I had harbored for him, the hope I had clung to for fifteen years, was dying. It was a slow, agonizing death.

I couldn't stay here. I couldn't be his living medicine anymore.

With trembling fingers, I pulled out my old, cheap phone. There was only one number in it that didn't belong to the Steele household.

The Estes family.

They had contacted me a month ago. An offer. A new life. In exchange for being a companion to their son, Emmett, who was in a coma. They had called it a "propitious marriage"-a traditional belief that a joyous event like a marriage could ward off bad luck or illness. It was a desperate, archaic idea.

But right now, it felt like my only escape.

I typed out the message, my thumb hovering over the send button.

"I accept your offer."

My heart hammered against my ribs. This was it. I was choosing to trade one cage for another. But at least this new cage didn't have Dorian Steele inside it.

I hit send.