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Beneath the Serpent Shrine
Chapter 1
Our village was tucked deep in the mountains, cut off from the outside world. Most of the folks here made a living by catching snakes.
Years ago, the elders made a deal with the Lady Serpent to avoid her wrath. Every May, when the snakes were in heat, they would offer up a man for her to mate with.
Snakes were known to be lustful creatures. No one had ever actually seen Lady Serpent, but every man who had been sent into The Serpent Shrine-no matter how strong he was-came back barely able to stand. Some were so broken they didn't even look human anymore. The worst of them didn't make it through the night.
Over time, the number of men in the village started dropping. The smart families, especially the rich ones, packed up and moved far away.
To keep things going, the village elders came up with a fair system. Every year, they would draw lots to decide which family had to hand over a man. And it didn't have to be someone from that family, as long as the sacrifice was male, the village counted it.
Last year, my mom drew the short straw.
The problem was that the only man in our family was my older brother, Judd Mendez, who had been stuck in bed for years. So my mom, just like a bunch of other desperate families before us, called me in the middle of the night while I was away at college. She told me to find a boyfriend and bring him home in May.
The moment I picked up the phone, I knew exactly what she was asking me to do.
She wanted me to find a man to die in place of my brother.
Judd had been sick since he was little. He wasn't paralyzed, but even walking across the room left him gasping for air. If we actually sent him to that shrine, Lady Serpent wouldn't even have to touch him. He would probably drop dead the second he crossed the threshold.
As May crept closer, my mom got more and more desperate. What started as one call a day became ten. She kept pushing, begging me to figure something out, or else Judd would be as good as dead.
But I didn't want to hurt anyone.
I was the only one in the village who had ever gone to college, with years of proper education under my belt.
I knew this whole sacrifice thing was total BS-an outdated, twisted tradition. I didn't have the power to change it, but that didn't mean I could go along with it either.
And then one day, everything changed.
Right after another exhausting call from my mom, I saw a news story.
A girl from our campus had been kidnapped by traffickers. She tried to escape, but they beat her to death. Literally tore her body apart-organs, limbs, everything. It was horrific.
Yet the traffickers were still out there, walking free.
The university went into full panic mode. Posters, announcements, warnings everywhere, trying to keep us all safe.
But when I saw that news, something in my mind snapped.
After weighing it over and over, I decided to take the risk and texted my mom, "Mom, I found a guy. I'll definitely bring him back by May."
When she got my message, she was thrilled, showering me with praise before finally hanging up. But inside, I felt nothing, just started thinking about how I was going to pull this off.
Why were we always the victims?
If traffickers could snatch up girls and sell them off like cattle, why couldn't we flip the script?
It was a crazy idea, I knew that. I was just one girl and I didn't have any weapons or training. One wrong move, and I could end up just like that girl in the news.
But then, I got lucky. A few nights later, I met him.
His name was Leland Jackson. He wore glasses, polite on the outside, but there was something sleazy under the surface-a wolf in sheep's clothing.
It was late at night when I slipped out of campus alone to grab something, and that was when he came up and started chatting me up. The moment I saw him, I knew exactly what he wanted. I didn't push him away. Instead, we exchanged numbers and became friends from there.
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