Married To The Mad Vampire Lord
Chapter 187: Awake_Part 1

Chapter 187: Awake_Part 1

The boy sat before the empty fireplace, where ever since the day he had lived in this lonely room, he had never seen any logs of wood burn in it. He was bent over a piece of paper as he wrote down,

"Today is the day they plan to kill me. I heard them talking about it, but surprisingly... I do not fear death as much as I feared living. I live in hell each day. I wonder what the real hell will be like, as they said I belong there. My only regret is that I never got to live before I die."

After sticking the paper into a hole next to the fireplace, he stared at it with blank eyes. He had long accepted now that his parents did not love him right, and he did not even know what true love felt like—because what they called love was suffocating and killing him every day. They were turning him into an unfeeling stone with each passing day.

Death, perhaps it would be the best thing, better than living like this, in this lonely room where his only company was the shadow of the past ghosts, his mind, and his inner demons scratching the walls of his mind and wanting to make him rebel and kill. But even with that, he did not let the demon out unless someone touched a wound they shouldn’t have, and his parents had just touched that.

His mama wanted him dead... He loved her, but she had just betrayed that love he had for her. His heart only beat and drummed faster when she was next to him. He loved her so much that he would kill and bring the world down to her feet, but today, she had just spoken and encouraged his wicked father, who never failed to beat him, to kill him.

She wanted him dead.

His heart clenched tightly inside his chest as the betrayal set in, squeezing and making his breathing treacherous.

"All I wanted is for you to care. Is that hard to ask for?" he muttered with a bitter smile, staring down at his gloved hands, the same gloves she had given him and he had promised to never take off. "I am willing to be your obedient son and do whatever you want... but you want to kill me... you want to send me to hell." His eyes filled with tears, and he wiped them off quickly with his sleeve.

"If that’s what you want, I will live in hell for you, mama," he whispered to himself, just as the door of his room was burst open, and in came men in cloaks, five of them, surrounding him as they must have heard about how strong he was. But what they did not know was that they needn’t have come in a group because he was willing to go with them and die without a fight.

However, despite the fact that he did not fight them, they quickly apprehended him with chains and ropes. They chained his limbs together and bound him like a sack. He did not cry as they handled him without care. In fact, he had a smile on his face as he raised his hands for them to tie.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. I can come lose with only this on my wrist, I am stronger than a mere rope. Use the chain, Sir. It’s much better and secure. I can’t lose a chain," he told the bulky man in charge of the chaining, and the man looked taken aback by his words before he turned and ordered his men to use the chain.

"He’s a creepy devil. Beware and make sure everything is in place. The Queen says we must make sure to remove the heart or he will not die," grumbled one of the cloaked men after chaining his hands. But what he did not know was that his words had made the smile fall away from the boy’s face.

"You want to remove my heart?" came his question, his voice holding panic and disbelief. "No, you can’t. Leave my heart alone! I will take it to hell with me. Kill me but don’t remove my treasure!!!" screamed the boy as they began to drag him out of the chamber while he tried to come loose, but he couldn’t, as they had tied him with the chains used for night creatures.

"Mama! Please don’t let them take away my heart! Not my heart! I will do everything you told me to! I will be nice to everyone and not fight and kill the people who call me a demon! I will unlive myself and go away!" he called out when the Queen and King walked out to the hallway to watch him get dragged away.

If the Queen heard any of his pleas, she did not even look at him and kept her eyes on the man in charge of the execution of the evil child.

"Cover his mouth and don’t let me hear him call me that again. Make sure this time you get the job done properly. He should be dead. Take him away."

"Mama! Ma—" his head was covered with a cloth, and his mouth was gagged, and he turned his head from side to side on the ground where they pulled him like an animal. He was willing to die, but he wasn’t willing to let go of the only thing that made him feel alive.

I don’t want to die, he cried desperately in his head as they took him to the execution room. They did not even open his face as they ran a dagger into his chest. They were killing him without giving him the right to cry out in pain. The gag muffled his cries as he felt his chest get ripped open.

And along with his ripped chest, he felt himself ripping apart internally from the betrayal. Resentment filled him, it consumed him, and he swallowed the cries.

She was no different from the King. From today onward, he had no mama.

I will kill you all for this! That was his last vow before he felt his life get ripped out of him and his soul drift away from his body without his heart.

My heart...

---

The first thing he felt, even before becoming aware of himself... was pressure.

Heavy and strange and steady, like something knocking from inside his chest.

He couldn’t move. Not yet. But he could feel it.

That quiet, persistent thudding.

He hadn’t felt this in years. The sound of it echoed in his ears, pulsing through his neck, thudding in his wrists, like something foreign had taken root in him and now refused to be ignored. His fingers twitched.

And then... he took a breath.

Tight and sharp, rushing in through dry lips and scraping down a throat that burned with thirst. His mouth parted instinctively, but the air felt thick. Too cold. Too real.

He tried to open his eyes, but his lashes were stuck together, his temples aching from the effort. Still, he moved. Just a little. The blanket clinging to his chest shifted, and then he felt warmth against him. Soft... small...

Someone was lying beside him, and he made no attempt to register who it was as he was shook by a realization that made him move to the side, away from that small warmth.

The small warmth wasn’t what shook him.

No, what shook him was his heart.

He had a heart within his chest...

He could clearly remember loosing it, but now it was back within him and it was beating.

It had never beaten like this before. Not even when he had it many years ago, and how it was inside him now was baffling and terrifying enough to shake him.

Like it had been caged too long and now it didn’t know how to slow down. Every beat echoed into his bones, like thunder inside him. Loud. Alive. Too much. Too much for him to take and handle, he wanted it to stop.

His eyes flew open.

The ceiling was unfamiliar. There was no scent of blood in the air. No rot. No shadows.

Only a dim room.

And something in his arms.

Someone, that small warmth he couldn’t make sense of as he was disoriented and his mind in disorder. He couldn’t make sense of anything, not even himself, thus he reacted without bothering to look at that small warmth.

His body jerked before he could think, instinct dragging him away from the weight pressing into his chest. He stumbled from the bed in a daze, blankets tangling around his feet as he nearly fell to the floor.

His legs buckled beneath him, and he crawled to the corner of the chamber where there were no lights, gasping, holding his chest as the noise inside him grew louder.

He pressed his palm to his sternum, feeling the beat hammer against his hand, and then he let out a ragged, guttural sound and gritted his teeth.

It hurt.