Married To The Mad Vampire Lord - Chapter 563

Chapter 563: The unexpected event at the wedding_Part 1
Max stepped into Elle’s room, where his mother was busy fixing a broken design on the wedding dress while Enny smoothed the hem across the bed. He stopped at the doorway, taking in the room with its yellow theme. From the window curtains to the bed drapes and bedsheets, everything was a bright, warm yellow, like captured sunshine.

Sunshine. He recalled how Elle had once said she loved the color because she wanted to live under the sun, to be outside beneath it for all the hours it stayed up in the sky. She wanted to feel its warmth on her skin, to exist where its light could always reach her. I want to ride with it, if that makes any sense, Angel, she used to say so passionately, her eyes bright whenever she spoke about it. That was why sunflowers had always been her favorite.

A soft look crossed his face as he stepped farther into the room, one that suddenly made him feel far too big for the space. Everything was femininely fitted and somehow too small for his size, as though he barely fit within its walls. He stopped at the threshold, looking around awkwardly, uncertain whether he should leave or make himself known to the two busy ladies.

His mother sensed his presence and turned over her shoulder to look at him, her hazel eyes brightening immediately as she set the dress down on the bed. “Angel.” She exclaimed in delight.

His aunt noticed him at the same time, her red eyes lighting up as well as she walked toward him.

“Good morning,” he greeted the both of them with a gentle smile.

“Oh God in heaven, look at you, Angel. You look… big. And different.” Evenly chuckled as she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, which he returned without hesitation.

“My, my, what have you been eating to grow this much?”

“I guess some of us do grow with time, Enny,” he remarked shyly.

It was astonishing how the boy she had once carried in her arms had grown into this man. Though his growth had happened rapidly, she hadn’t expected him to look even bigger than his father in build by the time it finally stopped.

“I missed you so much, Angel,” Enny said softly as she pulled back to study his face again. “You left and stayed away without even bothering to come back to visit. You didn’t even send us letters anymore.”

Her voice carried both amazement and disappointment, and beneath it all, a quiet heartbreak, not only for his long absence, but because he wouldn’t be the one she would be welcoming as her son-in-law today. She had allowed Elle to choose the man she wanted, because Evenly didn’t want to repeat the same mistakes that had once been forced upon her. She had been pressured by her own father into marrying for wealth, into choosing a man not out of love alone but to add value to their family’s standing in society, and she had sworn never to do the same to her daughter.

Had she been the one to choose for Elle… she would have picked Angel a hundred times.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Max said sincerely. “I wanted to write, but we don’t have access to mail there. It’s restricted to force us to focus.”

It was only a half-lie. He could have written if he wanted to.

She hugged him again anyway. “I forgive you. I’m just glad you’re here to attend Elle’s wedding.”

When she looked into his eyes once more, Max was tempted to tell her that Uncle Rav would be returning very soon, so she wouldn’t think he had forgotten his promises. But then he decided it was better left as a surprise. Having Uncle Rav walk into the house unexpectedly would be far more meaningful than any announcement he could make now.

Though he sometimes wished he could regret going to Asterfall after what had happened, because it had made him miss out on a beautiful life with his family and a future with his Elle, he didn’t regret it. Soon, he would fulfill the promises he had made, to her, and to everyone else he had silently sworn to help.

What he regretted terribly was the path he had taken there. The one that had destroyed not just him, but everything he had once been. He shut the thought out before it could give him panic and fear again.

Enny stepped back, and mama moved forward.

“You’re here so early,” Belle said. “I thought you said you’d meet us at the venue. Still, I’m glad you came here instead. We can go together as a family, so the McKays won’t think our Elle doesn’t have any relatives of her own.”

She gave him a brief hug before pulling him fully into the room. “Have you met Elle yet? Rosey went to get her, but neither of them has returned.”

“Yes. They will be here soon.” He mused.

She guided him to sit on the edge of the bed. The frame let out a small crack beneath his weight before she placed the wedding dress across his thighs.

“We need your help,” Belle said, urgency slipping into her tone as she placed her hand on his shoulder.

“My help?” Angel asked, his gaze dropping to the wedding dress.

“Some of the designs came loose when your aunt was carrying the dress. The stones were set with heat, but lighting a fire to use an iron would take too long. We need your powers to glue the stones back onto the bodice.”

She carefully positioned the stones where they belonged and looked to him expectantly. She had meant to find her husband or Finn, but Angel’s timing couldn’t have been better.

Max looked down at the white dress. A darker thought crossed his mind at that moment, that he would rather burn the offending thing that Elle would wear to marry another man than fix it, but he pushed it aside. He nodded and asked her to show him where to start.

With the tip of his index finger, he heated each stone back into place with controlled precision while his mother and aunt watched closely.

When he finished, he lifted his gaze and smiled faintly. “Is there anything else I can fix for you ladies?”

His mother reached and brushed his hair affectionately. “No. That will be all. We need to dress the bride now. You can help us call her once you step out.”

Max nodded. “Sure.”

“Thank you,” she added softly.

Before leaving the room, Max turned back. “Where is Aryen and the others?”

Straightening the gown, Belle replied, “I believe he’s with your father and Finn. I don’t understand those three lately, they’ve been having far too many private meetings. You might find them in the study, or perhaps in the backyard.”

Max nodded and left the room.

As he stepped into the corridor, Elle and his sister emerged from the room beside it. His eyes locked with her brown ones instinctively. He offered her a polite smile, which she returned stiffly before pulling Rosey along with her as they passed him and entered Elle’s room.

I have become a stranger to people who once felt like home, he thought with quiet irony.

He didn’t let the thought bother him. Instead, he went to find his father and see what his mother meant by their secret meetings. What were they up to? He wondered.

He didn’t find them in the backyard.

Nor in the study.

He found them in the barn instead, where they were talking in low voices that were barely audible, and which stopped the moment they felt his approach.

Max walked into the barn to find his father crouched down, with a paper opened before him on the ground, and his brother and Aryen next to him. They seemed to be looking through the papers before his arrival, and at his arrival, they all looked up at him.

Max hadn’t realized just how much Finn resembled their father more than he did until that very moment, seeing them side by side.

“Brother Max, you’re here!” Finn exclaimed as he stood to his feet, his hands slipping casually into his pockets, where he hid something inside, something Max’s sharp eyes did not miss.

“Yes. What are you all doing here in the barn when wedding preparations are going on everywhere else?” Max asked, his gaze moving first to his father and then to Aryen, who had also risen to his feet.

“Nothing much. We were just going through some things,” Aryen said, his tone deliberately casual.

Rohan straightened up as well. Unlike his younger son and Aryen, who were clearly hiding what they were doing because they believed it was their secret, he addressed his elder son plainly, without hesitation or disguise of what they had been up to.

“We were looking out for demons,” Rohan said, then clarified, “or, to be more precise, the demons of light.”

Max, who had begun to feel subtly excluded and had started to believe his father might also be hiding things from him, because the ease and familiarity they once shared no longer came as naturally, sighed internally in relief before fully processing what his father had just said. That relief lasted only a moment before his brows knit together in a frown.

“Why are you looking out for them?” he asked, a little alarm.

“Uncle Rohan killed one of them weeks ago,” Aryen spoke, bringing Max’s attention to him before he continued to explain.

“Actually, it was my fault. I didn’t know about any kind of demons except your kind, and I didn’t know they had such strong animosity toward each other. I met a man at the place where I work and trusted him enough to admit that I was close to the Dagons when he mentioned that he knew them, and that your grandfather owed his family something.

“Long story short, I was almost killed in order to send a message to Uncle Rohan, that they would destroy everything close to him for something he had done to them. I fought him off as much as I could, and coincidentally, Uncle Rohan was supposed to come to the port that day. When he saw someone trying to strangle me to death, he killed the man, only for us to discover that he was a light demon in disguise, hunting for anyone close to the Dagons.”

Aryen sighed, shaking his head. “Ever since that day, we’ve been cautious, tracking and monitoring the demons before they can reach our family, especially the most vulnerable among us.”