Married To The Mad Vampire Lord-Chapter 161: Endless search

None of the participants inside Grimvale Forest had expected the rain to last this long when it first started. It was as though the heavens were angry and had let down their wrath in a relentless downpour, with gushing wind that swiped fiercely at the trees and tore through the leaves.

The sounds of thunder were constant and so loud that they seemed to shake the very land beneath. The rain poured down in thick veils, obscuring vision and casting the entire atmosphere in the gloom of evening, despite it being only late afternoon.

For the past few days, not a single drop of rain had fallen on the land, and in a place where it mostly rained all year round, it was as if the skies had decided to make up for the lost days in this one merciless storm.

While many within the forest had found shelter, a lone, small figure pressed on through that ominous weather and cutting wind, never once wanting to give up, nor seeking refuge.

Find shelter and seek refuge? Where, among sharks with large fangs?

There was no shelter in Grimvale unless one wanted to die.

Belle had reached a point where she could no longer dare to stop or turn back in her search for Rohan. At one moment, when she had taken a wrong turn, she had almost come face to face with a group she knew were close to Cordelia—among them were the vampire princes, making their camp. She had quickly turned and dashed in another direction through the relentless rain.

No matter what, the siblings were surely aware that their relative had wanted her dead and had come for her. She did not dare reveal herself to them.

The rain had made everything so difficult that she could barely see where she was going, but she kept pushing through it.

She had been walking in it for more than an hour now, her teeth chattering from the cold, but she feared that finding a hiding place to wait out the rain might be more dangerous than anything else. Every second without finding her husband sent a restless tumor of dread into her heart.

Apart from her fear of being caught, she also felt like an utterly useless person, someone who could not protect or fight to save another. Taking shelter from the rain would only give her another reason to hate her helplessness and uselessness even more.

Walking through the storm was the only way she could make herself believe that she had tried, that she hadn’t given up. She was going to find her husband, no matter what.

Her heart kept whispering that something terrible must have happened, but a tiny voice, one she had conjured for self-assurance, kept insisting that nothing was wrong. That Rohan was probably just doing his usual thing, waiting for evening to come so he could find her, like he had promised he would last night. He would come for her, and they would go back home, returning to the Forest only after the madness of the hunt was over.

He was waiting for her, and she would go and meet him in their meeting place.

She told herself those words, but with each passing second, those words were no longer strong enough to keep her worries at bay or her restless heart from knotting and clenching. Those words of assurance were beginning to get drowned out by the anxiety she had wanted to hold in and the fears of the unknown.

It was like she was alone in the vast forest with the heavens’ wrath raining down on her, her bones quivering in cold. She had not wanted to think about it this whole time, but now she realized—the vision she had glimpsed before they had stepped into the forest must have come from what had happened to Evenly earlier. She had been able to glimpse the future.

But because she did not know, she had taken it as her mind playing tricks. Had she known it was something that would happen, she would have prevented it by not letting them go into the forest and by keeping her husband by her side.

Now she was all alone, the two people she cared about lost to her in these mighty endless trees. If anything were to happen to either of them, especially her Rohan, she had no idea how she would live with herself. Her heart had come to love him so much that every minute away from him was like torture. It was like she was far away from a better half.

He meant so much to her, she could not imagine him getting in any kind of trouble. She should have known the royals would try to pull off some tricks in this hunt against Rohan, but knowing that he was different and had many tricks up his sleeves, Belle had been assured that he could get out of any trouble. Now she wasn’t so certain.

A loud thunder rumbled, and Belle flinched—snapped back to her surroundings with a jolt, only to realize the sky was growing darker with each passing hour, and she still had no clear sense of direction or where she was even heading. The forest felt endless, and every turn looked the same.

From how much her bones had been quivering, they had begun to turn numb and unfeeling from the intense cold. She had no coat on and not many layers of fabric to shield her. She wore only her shirtsleeves and trousers.

Her fingers had long since turned wrinkled and numb, and her grip on the crossbow felt like it wasn’t even hers. She kept wiping water from her eyes just to see, but darkness was quickly descending, and she could no longer make out the shadows ahead. Water had gathered into puddles across many of the paths, and she stumbled into a particularly deep one.

She gasped sharply and crawled out of it, fumbling and struggling through the cold, muddy water.

It was when she crawled under a large tree with a canopy of many leaves, enough to reduce the heavy fall of the rain, that Belle realized she could not move any further and needed to stay out the rain here. If she went any further in this heavy rain, she might really end up killing herself before she found where her husband was.

Perhaps it was her cowardice acting up again, but she suddenly felt like she could no longer go on. She was tired, exhausted to the bone, so much so that she couldn’t hold back the tears and hiccups as she crawled into the shelter of the tree to hide. Pulling her knees up to her chest, she dropped her head against them and wrapped her arms around her legs, then began to cry.

She felt utterly alone. It almost seemed like everything that had happened, her marriage to Rohan, her presence here, had all been a dream. A cruel, twisted nightmare. freeweɓnovel.cѳm

Everything suddenly felt unreal to her, and she couldn’t stop the sobs from tearing out of her. One moment she had been with him, watching him go. Another, she was with Evenly—and then came the witch, who ruined everything.

In all her life, she had never been thrust into a situation like this, where her survival depended solely on herself, where every decision might mean life or death.

Many times today, whenever she heard a movement or caught the flick of a shadow, her heart would leap, expecting to see Rohan’s familiar face and blue hair. But hours had passed, night had fallen, and still there was no sign of him. The absence began to make her realize the weight of Cordelia’s words, and the dreadful possibility they carried.

What had they done to him? What had they done to her strong Rohan?

What if they had...

Belle swallowed the words along with the tightening in her throat. No, she wouldn’t think like that. She must not allow herself to carry such negative thoughts about his well-being. She had to think positively. But, Lord help her, she couldn’t do it anymore. Not about Rohan’s condition, and not about hers.