Married To The Mad Vampire Lord - Chapter 494

Chapter 494: Grief_Part 1
“Isa…” Rohan whispered her name as he stared at her still form, where her body, heart, and breathing had stopped completely.

It was impossible!

Isabelle wouldn’t leave him. He refused to believe his Isabelle was gone just like that.

“I will wait for you to come back, just like you always do.” He muttered the words and then made himself comfortable beside her body, sitting cross-legged with a wailing baby tucked into the crook of his arms.

“Roseline is hungry, my love. She needs you, but don’t worry, I will keep her content until you return.” He said to her body, and then he bit deep into his finger and pushed the hand gently into the crying baby’s mouth. The moment the blood touched her tongue, she latched onto his finger and sucked hungrily. Rohan repeatedly bit into his finger and fed her his blood until the baby was finally content and fell asleep with a tiny pouty mouth. He took off his bloody shirt and wrapped the small form in its warmth, and then he softly said to Belle,

“I remember when we had Angel. You made me promise to put the baby first and get him warm. Roseline is warm now, Isa. Hurry up and wake up so we can head home together and show her to Angel and the others. Angel will be happy to have a baby sister.” Rohan said with a small pull of his lips, his eyes never once leaving his wife’s face, her skin already turning ashen, the drying blood surrounding them like a dark halo.

Still believing with every stubborn beat of his wounded heart that she would find her way back to him, just like every time before when he thought he had lost her, Rohan sat there talking to her body, speaking about different kinds of topics as if she were still listening. Around them, the sounds of war raged on from the distance, chaos coming closer into town. His own blood kept trailing down his bare back, where the holes from several bullet wounds remained open, refusing to heal as the bullets were still lodged deep in his skin.

Rohan did not know how long he sat there, but he knew that night came and went, and then morning rose with him still sitting in the same spot, holding a body that had already begun to the early stage of decomposing and a whimpering daughter he did his best to keep warm and fed. It was only when Belle’s body began to turn different, when flies started drifting over the corpse like shadows, that something finally began to settle, slowly, horribly, inside Rohan.

“Isa… why aren’t you coming back? You promised you’d never leave me. You promised you’d be with me until the end of time…” Rohan moved to his knees and looked at her dead body as the truth crept into his bones. He had indeed lost her. He had failed to protect her. He had failed her and made her suffer. His little bunny, his little wife, his Isabelle… was no more. They had killed her because of him.

Rohan’s mind began to replay memories, thousands of them folding over each other, showing him how empty he had once been in his life and how Belle had filled every hollow place. Her sparkling hazel eyes flashed vividly inside his mind, and he couldn’t bring himself to look at the lifeless ones staring at the sky.

“They killed her for me… they shot my little bunny. This fucking war, they killed her.” Rohan whispered softly, his eyes staring sightlessly at nothing, at everything he had lost in this cursed war that had started all because of him. There wouldn’t have been a war if he had never taken her to Bimmerville. She wouldn’t have been taken to the west border if he hadn’t kept a crazy cousin close to him in the past…

Roseline woke with a soft whimper, making tiny baby noises as she sucked on her fist. She stared up at Rohan, and he slowly looked down at her. Her resemblance to Belle was so uncanny, he had seen Belle’s baby pictures before, and the eyes staring at him were hers, and yet instead of comfort, a deep, wrenching sense of loss stabbed at his heart. It twisted until he began to breathe in harsh, gasping pulls, his eyes burning with a torment that had no end. A raw, broken sob tore from his throat as he bent his head and began to cry, muttering over and over again,

“They killed her for me…”

Rohan cried until there were no more tears left for him to shed, until his throat was raw and every breath scraped out of him. He cried until his heart felt like it was stopping, until something inside him began to wither and die. When he finally raised his head and looked at his daughter watching him with curious eyes too sharp for a newborn, it was with eyes that had lost their light. They were the eyes of a man with a dead soul, a man who had lost the only brightness he ever had.

The black in his eyes spread outward until the whites were gone. And when he parted his lips to speak to his daughter, as if she could understand, it was with a voice emptied of all feeling, a voice hollowed out and filled with darkness.

“They killed her for us, Roseline. I will burn every single one of them down so they feel my pain… so they feel my sorrow. They will fucking taste the loss.”

Rohan rose to his feet. He walked into the doctor’s house, broke the door down with a single blow, and disappeared inside. When he came out, he carried two sheets in hand. He tied one around himself to make a makeshift sling, securing his daughter against his chest, keeping her close and safe. Then he spread the second sheet and covered Belle’s body, doing it all with barely a flicker of emotion. He wrapped her gently, then lifted her into his arms, his wings opening behind him.

“I will make them all regret. Every single one of them, the reapers and the heavens themselves.”

—

Meanwhile, back in the castle, the war had drawn into some towns and cities, and somehow Angel had made the grief-stricken Evenly come back to her senses just enough to follow him to the safe underground house with the one maid left in the castle, supporting her through the long underground steps.

Angel could feel Evenly’s sadness as she kept crying silently, even when they were safely inside the underground space. She curled up in the corner, staring at Uncle Rav’s letter in her hand. He tried to make her feel better by promising he would bring back Uncle Rav for her, but she only cried harder and hugged him tightly.

When she pulled away from him, she tried to smile through her tears and whispered, “You can’t bring him back, he’s turned completely.” But her sobs choked her all over again as she turned away, crying into her palms.

Angel wished his papa or mama was here; they would have known exactly what to say to make Enny stop crying. Angel left her side and went toward the door that led to the tunnel Uncle Rav had once told him would take someone outside into the forest. He didn’t know why, but his heart suddenly felt uneasy. The boy sat by the door with his knees pulled up to his chest as if expecting someone to appear through the door.

Of course he was expecting his parents to come back. His papa had told him to stay with Evenly, but Evenly was sad and needed someone older to tell her not to cry anymore. And he missed his mama so much, his mama who had been taken away for many days. Where was his mama? Had his papa found her?

Those questions spun around his little mind as he sat there waiting, feeling anxious for reasons he couldn’t understand, and beginning to feel sad all over again. He could sense the death of people in the land.

“Mama, papa… come back quick…” he muttered, rocking himself gently on the floor of the lamp-lit room, where the servant sat on one side and Evenly sat curled in the other corner, her hands pressed against her round belly as she felt miserable for losing Rav.

Reading his letter had done nothing but break her further. He told her to grieve for some moment, but she feared she would never overcome this, that she would never move on with her life like nothing had happened… like she had never met someone like Rav, never fallen in love with him so much that his absence was killing her from within.

Just the thought of him made her cry again, so she welcomed the numbness that washed over her on the second day, deciding not to allow herself feel anything at all. When the servant served her blood, she drank it not for herself but for their baby’s sake, and to be strong enough to face whatever came from this war until the duke returned with his wife and they decided on how to find Rav in his rogue form, so she would know if there were any other possibilities of him being cured.

But then it seemed things kept happening without any heads-up, for on the third day of their time in the underground house, she went into labor. She didn’t even know what had hit her at first, not until she remembered the description of contractions Belle had once told her about. Oh, no… Evenly thought as she called for the servant sitting opposite her.

Angel, who refused to leave the door that led to the tunnel, heard the chaos behind him as the maid moved in alarm when Enny announced her baby was coming. He finally turned away from the door and saw the maid moving urgently, carrying sheets and a basin. Angel didn’t move from where he stood; his eyes were wide, wondering with confusion and fear how they would bring the baby out of Enny.

Knowing how blood triggered that savage hunger inside him, Angel refused to go any closer. He crouched down exactly where he was instead and only listened, heart pounding, even though he worried for Enny… and worried for his own mother. He longed for her to return quickly to see if his own mama’s baby had also come. Mama had told him that his baby sibling would arrive before Enny’s, so it meant it had already happened.

That overwhelming sadness washed over his heart again at the thought of his mother, and tears filled his eyes, but he quickly wiped them away with his good hand, the one that didn’t still have a wound that burn slightly.