Married To The Mad Vampire Lord novel Chapter 5

Chapter 5: My wife

The rain had slowed into drizzling drops by the time the wedding was over, and Belle would have been glad had the rain delayed everything until she'd had the time to follow her heart and escape the wedding to meet Jamie, but what was done was done, and she was married now and on her way to the faraway land of Nightbrook for who knows how long until she would find the vampires weakness and give it to the humans.

The rain hit softly against the royal carriage that they sat in, and she tried not to focus on the little details that made her uncomfortable in the carriage with her husband—yes, her husband. He was sitting so close to her despite the fact that there was space on his other side of the cushion seat. His knee was grazing hers whenever the carriage jolted, and sometimes his broad shoulder leaned too close to hers, and she occasionally felt his gaze on her but dared not look his way or let herself be aware of him.

When they were getting out of the hall and her vision was blurred with tears, she had almost stepped into a puddle of rainwater, but he was quick to grip her waist and hurl her against him, half-carrying her with one arm into the carriage like she weighed nothing. He had taken her by surprise because she had been looking at Jamie when he did that.

Aragonia was a land where they barely saw the sun; it rained almost all year round, and the sky was always gloomy and cold. And now, she stared out the window and looked at the Dawson house that was getting farther away from her. She looked up at the thick layers of gray and dark clouds stretching across the evening sky and shivered in dread of what her life would be like in Nightbrook when her entire life had been spent in Aragonia.

She had never left the land, and the one time she and her mother had traveled to attend a relative's wedding in a neighboring kingdom years ago, they had been attacked by vampires who preyed on humans at the borders. She had been no more than five or six when it happened. She'd watched the bloodsuckers tear apart their coachman and guards, and she would have died if it weren't for...

"You don't have to be afraid," came the voice of her husband, who had not spoken a word since she had met him, not even inside the hall when they were getting married. And if his voice had not startled her already frightened heart, it would be a lie. He had a deep voice with a breezy, intimidating, dead tone to it that sent a shiver down her spine.

Belle jerked her gaze away from the window and looked towards him. He wasn't looking at her face but at her hands. She followed his line of sight and realized she was clenching her fists around her dress to the point her gloveless knuckles had turned white and her veins were bulging. She unclenched her fists and hid her hands under the veil that dripped from her face to her lap.

Clearing her throat, she lied, "I... I am not afraid." She was afraid—not just of him but of where he was taking her and how she would survive it before the king sent people to come and get her and kill all of these bloodsuckers.

He raised his eyes away from the hand she hid under her sheer veil and looked up towards her face. Her heart trembled within her chest. She didn't know whether it was from fear or from the fact that he had the most handsome yet dark face she'd ever set eyes on.

Though her eyes were obstructed by the veil, the carriage was built with lamps that highlighted his face and made her see every perfect outline of a face she had believed would be hideous to look at. He had the sexiest full lips she had ever seen, and they were unnaturally red with a cleft over his upper lip.

His nose was long, and the only features of his face she could not see clearly now were his eyes. Those dark eyes. He was staring at her so intensely she wished she could bolt out of the carriage. He was good-looking, but it did not change the fact that he was not normal or that he could kill her right now.

He suddenly tilted forward and leaned toward her without warning, and Belle almost jumped out of her seat at the action as she believed he was going to bite her and take her blood against her will. She regretted jumping like that because he had only leaned forward to fix her sliding veil yet again—something he was supposed to take off her face after the marriage but had not done and wanted to fix for her again. Or was he going to take it off her face? She didn't know and didn't want to find out now as her jumping seemed to have offended him.

His face was expressionless and hard, but his brows drew together as he moved back and regarded her in a moment of silence. Then he said, "Hmm, and you said you are not afraid. You do not have to be. I will not hurt you, little lamb. You are not the kind I hurt because your heartbeat sounds pure. You are the kind I keep." He said this with his head crooked to the side as he watched her in a way that made it seem like he was studying her, and Belle shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

She had almost forgotten he could hear her heartbeat. She knew that much about his kind, as most humans were educated about the bloodsuckers, though their education never taught them that not all vampires had red eyes and fangs and that not all of them were deadly pale. Because he was not pale, and his fangs were not showing in his mouth. The vampires that had once attacked her family's carriage were hideous in her opinion, but the man sitting and studying her was anything but hideous—if only he wasn't a bloodsucker and a madman, though she still had not seen anything mad about him except for the manner in which he spoke.

What did he mean by the kind he keeps? As if reading her thoughts, he spoke again.

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