She had always been surrounded by men. Ever since she was a little girl, they were everywhere around her. Boys and young men, attending the parties her parents threw for her in the great hall of the palace. She was a vampire princess and it was her duty to choose a mate to help her rule over their great kingdom.
Always surrounded by men, and yet, she never saw him coming.
When Anna was five years old, she had her first proposal. At the age of ten, she started collecting them and at fifteen, when she reached 1.000, she stopped counting.
Every year, for as long as she could remember, her mother had spent almost an hour on the morning of Anna’s birthday, talking about this duty. What it meant, why it was so important and how it was traditionally done. Anna knew this speech by heart, but had accepted it as a part of her life and listened intently when her mother spoke.
There was only one part of the story that made Anna’s insides turn. The part stating that, if she reached the age of twenty without choosing her mate, her parents along with a council of elders, would choose a partner for her.
This scared Anna more than she dared to think about. To be forced into a relationship as if it was just a business transaction. But as she feared this arrangement, it also seemed to control her and force her to make all the wrong decisions when it came to choosing her partner. As if she was destined to be paired up with somebody against her will.
It was two weeks before her twentieth birthday and Anna was petrified. But she managed to keep a calm face, as vampires usually do. She was an actress and a good one at that. Only one person knew how she truly felt and that was Alex, her oldest friend.
When her parents started surrounding Anna with men, they didn’t just invite them to parties. They also made sure that Anna had a constant male presence, wherever she went. There for, all of the employees working at the palace were male. And Alex was the son of her father’s right hand man. They had been playing together for as long as they were able to stand up. Alex was born two days after Anna and they always joked about her being older and wiser than him.
Alex knew. He understood the threat and possible horror that the curse of her twentieth birthday meant. And an observant mind might suggest that the two of them take the throne together and rule as best friends. Anna had considered this once, but decided that there had to be passion. She could never live a lie and even though Alex was a dear friend, she had never pictured him as her lover.
And so, Anna remained terrified.
But on that night, two weeks before her birthday, something changed. Something intervened. Call it fate or just luck, but on that night, something or someone, had decided that Anna deserved a better destiny than to be unhappy for the rest of her existence. And so, it intervened.
On that night, Anna’s parents made a last attempt at letting their precious daughter find a mate on her own, and threw her one last party. Anna, who had almost given up trying, didn’t bother to arrange her long, blonde hair in a bow, as she always did. Instead, she let it flow freely and dance around her shoulders. She didn’t wear the dark red satin gown that her father bought for her. Instead, she chose to put on her most simple long dress, the one she usually wore on a warm summer day. It was simple and white and moved around her body as if it was constantly waving in the wind. She was barefoot and painted her eyes black and her lips red. And she felt like herself and not this doll, this puppet that the male crowd was usually presented with. That was an image of Anna, but not who she really was. And if this was her last night as a free woman, she would raise hell if she was not allowed to be herself. So, her parents didn’t say a word about it.
All of the eyes in the great hall were upon her, as she danced down the stairs and walked straight up to the drinks, where she rapidly tossed back two glasses of champagne. She threw a strawberry in the air and caught it with her lips. Its juice running down her cheek like blood. All the time, everyone’s eyes burning her skin.
She turned around and wiped her face clean with the back of her hand. The music silenced the whispers, but she knew what they were all saying. That she had given up. That she was lost.
She strolled across the floor, ignoring hundreds of complements and dance requests from vampires, one more handsome and statuesque than the other. None of them caught her interest.
She saw a large knife shining at her from one of the tables and for a split second, she considered jamming it through her heart, taking her own life. That would mean the end of things. A peaceful quiet. No more demands. But then, it happened. The thing that intervened decided to act and just like that, everything changed.
As she thought about reaching for the knife, Anna tripped on a carpet and as she stumbled forward, someone caught her. She looked up, and realized that she was in Alex’s arms and that she couldn’t stop staring at him. He was absolutely beautiful. He, like her, wore white. His blue eyes glistened like ice diamonds and his wavy blonde hair framed his perfectly shaped face. She was amazed.
For her, tonight had been about shedding herself of the masque that she usually wore to these events, but for Alex, it was about showing her the kind of man that he was and had always been. She just hadn’t noticed it before.
In that moment, they looked at each other, and knew. When he leaned down to kiss her, it felt like the most natural thing in the whole world, but at the same time, made her knees so weak that she was worried she would fall down if he’d let her go.
It was one minute to midnight and almost exactly two weeks away from a destiny that no longer existed.
She had always been surrounded by men, and yet, she never saw him coming.
