The dragon's harem

Zia's body convulsed, and her eyes narrowed. Arad's massive fangs slurped the blood out of her veins, and with it, the marrow of her bones got violently pulled out.

The pain was unimaginable and the agony unbearable. She wanted to scream, but her muscles and throat were too dry to move. She looked like a mummified husk in seconds, betraying any semblance of life.

She was still wide awake, feeling her body rapidly dying. But she was a vampire; death never came easy. A human would've already perished the moment Arad's massive fangs pierced her neck, but she wasn't.

Through the torturous pain, the dreadful silence, and fear, her mind remained calm, forgetting about everything besides survival. This process was quite necessary for her to become a vampire lord.

Her weak spawn blood needed to be changed with a stronger one, so flushing it out was a necessity, cleaning her veins and muscles was mandatory.

Blood is made in the bone marrow, so that also needed to be replaced with a stronger and better one from Arad's own blood. She needed new hematopoietic stem cells.

Feeling how painful the process was, Zia couldn't believe how Eris had endured it before. This felt worse than death, but at the same time, strangely relaxing. It can't get worse.

Sadly, it was about to get worse.

One of the main vampire powers is their superhuman reflexes and intellect, which means the next target for the evolution after her blood and marrow was her nerves.

The moment her nerves started disintegrating and getting replaced, her whole brain got washed over by a flood of indescribable agony, the very being of her soul getting ripped apart and rebuilt, over and over. It got so bad that even with her dried muscles, lungs, and throat, she managed to scream.

A chilling, death howl washed over the church as Zia's eyes flashed red, causing all of the nuns to pale. They could already sense it, Zia's aura shifting from that of a mere vampire spawn to a true vampire lord.

Akasha looked at Zia and Arad, remembering how Arad tricked her and drank her blood. Transforming from a human to a vampire should've been less painful than this. But how did he endure fighting her half-transformation? Arad's endurance was over the chart, even compared to the vampires who were used to injuries.

Soon, the red light in Zia's eyes faded away, and the blue spark returned to them. Her skin started repairing itself, and her dried veins flushed with fresh blood.

The first stage seemed to be over, but that wasn't the case. Her body got transformed, but now it was the most dangerous part. The brain itself.

Zia could feel a presence clawing at her deep consciousness, sneaking deep into her memories and self. Her mind was being morphed into that of a vampire lord, the ability to control the spawns, and the power to command over them was getting integrated.

It was then that she had to make a decision. How much of her brain would let Arad access? The more she allowed him to access, the better her chances of success were.

But that came at a cost; the more she allowed him to access her brain, the more of her self was revealed to him. Memories, emotions, will, dreams, and everything she might've wanted to keep to herself.

Like anyone else, Zia had many things she would've preferred to keep a secret from herself. But today, she decided to forget all caution and opened the vaults of her brain, letting Arad ravage everything, turn every neuron over, and make her brain stronger.

Arad could see her, a little girl living in a lavish city, the daughter of a humble merchant of weapons. She had spent the early years of her life helping around the shop, cleaning rust off the old weapons to resell them.

That kept until one day. When she was in her late teens, a letter arrived. A marriage request from one of the nobles.

She considered the letter and even went to the ball she was invited to, and saw the young noble who wanted to marry. A handsome young lad, but in the end, she didn't feel like it.

The noble lad wasn't the type she liked, too soft, too childish looking, with hands softer than hers. So when she returned home, she told her parents about the party and that she would refuse the marriage request.

Her parents were happy with that decision, they said that it was good for her to leave the hardships of the commoners' lives. The lad looked soft and young because he was young. In five or ten years, he'll grow into a mature man in his thirties. She'll like him then.

Zia didn't care about any of that, and she refused to accept the request from anyone, sending it on the same day.

A few days later, when she was walking down the streets, a carriage stopped by her side, and the noble lad walked out. She looked at him, a frown on her face.

"I didn't expect to see you again. Not in the street anyway." Zia asked and replied with a smile. He, too, didn't expect to see her.

She didn't hate the lad, and she even knew him for years. So when he offered her a ride to her hope, which was still far away, she agreed.

Everything went wrong on that fateful trip.

The conversation started normally, and slowly he started trying to flirt. She didn't mind him, even if she refused, he's free to try again, as long as he remains respectful. If he were to magically change in a day, she might even change her mind. All he had to do was grow a beard and put on some muscles, harden his hands by swinging an axe for a few days, or a sword. He could, in fact, achieve that in a year or two if he worked hard enough.

But soon, the advances started getting out of line when he touched her leg, and it was then that she noticed that something must've gone wrong. He wasn't that kind of man.

It took her only one question for him to pull the letter she sent, and her eyes opened wide. This wasn't what she sent. The letter he showed her said that she agreed, that she gets shy easily, and would rather he take on a more active role. It even included the description of what she wanted to see in him. That he should probably grow a beard, and that he should try to get a bit stronger.

That handwriting... her parents had set her up.