"More." The Vampire King growled as he dropped the third dead female body he had drained to the floor that night, gulping back every drop of crimsoned nectar he could.

Already bile rose in his throat, burning.

He had turned into a devouring beast that had little of reason left in him.

The female had spasmed and gasped and fought, but he still maintained his grip. Only when she had collapsed, her eerie blank eyes staring in the ceiling and her vein as dry as an empty cup, did he finally release his hold on her.

The Vampire King wrinkled his nose in distaste as he couldn't keep the blood down.

Fuck.

He felt sicker than ever.

Three days ago, the Vampire King ordered the servants to prepare for the wedding with the Vampyr Realm's High Priestess.

He followed the High Priest who had summoned him to get through with the wedding ceremony with determined steps as the sun dipped behind a black-bellied cloud, mirroring the resigned gloom of his mood.

A cooling breeze teased his brow. This was in just such a moment that he might have once felt the Blood Beast's mocking presence, but the Vampire King thought the Beast was one-hundred percent on board with the marriage to possess her completely as his mate.

A sense of bleak irony assailed him as he ducked beneath a stone portal to enter a wild tangle of flower gardens, but as the twilight came, the air remained empty.

There was no sense of anticipation.

The Vampire King's gloom plummeted to dread as the sun peeped out from behind the cloud to illuminate her beaming countenance.

Everything was ready except for the bride, for she was nowhere to be found. The military could not find him even with the help of Cederic, along with their best trackers and spies. He thought the search party and the captured High Priestess would arrive just in time for his wedding.

He had waited for nothing.

The High Priestess' scent was still everywhere in the castle.

But it's as if she had disappeared in this world, gone without a trace.

The Vampire King crossed the possibility that she had died because there was no dead body found. The High Priestess was seen last in the Castle's Kitchens asking for food.

"She must have been really hungry. But she vomited what I gave her when there was nothing wrong when I tasted it." The Vampire King had heard the maid gossiped in hushed whispers. "The High Priestess must be pregnant with someone's child."

Furious, he had called for the kitchen maid who claimed such preposterous rumors on his mate and had her executed in front of everyone in the Banquet, twisting her neck with his bare hands so hard that the head got detached from the body.

"I will not tolerate any rumors against my future queen." The Vampire King declared as blood splattered everywhere on the carpet, staring at the servant's detached head without remorse.

He was on edge. Again.

He wasn't like this, but he was turning crazy mad. Something in his mind whispered, "KILL."

The Vampire King would have investigated and asked questions before killing her for such a mere thing as gossip that he knew was false.

The Vampire King's body hummed, his skin prickled, and his thick muscles twitched.

He stretched out his body, trying to buy himself a little relief. It made no difference.

Maybe, he had been more touch-deprived than he realized.

He searched for the High Priestess' presence for every room he entered. He can't feel her, and it was driving him mad with lust, mad with the urge to have a killing spree so that he could get away from himself.

The Vampire King had kept the Blood Beast at bay as much as he could with sheer willpower, but it was proven to be difficult when he couldn't be satisfied with anything or anyone.

He pacified his Beast with the dark souls of the Blood slaves for the meantime as his soldiers continously search for her. The Blood Beast was getting cranky for not giving him the High Priestess, his mate.

Technically, the High Priestess was the Vampire King's mate too.

They had shared the same body.

They also shared the same person.

Nobody dared interrupt him from his feast except Jon. "Your Highness, do you require more blood slaves in your room?"

The Blood Beast wheeled around and snapped at Jon's hand with his fangs, and it sounded like a shark from an ocean who scented a creature's blood and went in for the kill.

Jon leaped back, yanking his arm away. "My King! What's your—Shit. Your eyes. They've turned."

The Vampire King paled and then stumbled away, squinting and blinking. "Jon. I didn't even know I was—"

The Vampire King glanced over at Jon, and immediately that odd, fixated look came back. Then his golden eyes shifted to the pile of dead blood slaves on the ground.

The Blood Beast's lips pared off his teeth, and he growled, loud as a lion.

"Your Highness! The curse is getting worse," Jon said urgently. "You need more blood."

His right-hand man's voice grated in his ears, and the only word that caught his attention was 'blood.' He needed real food. Food his body can take down. His bile threatened to spill over.

His stomach heaved, and he vomited all the blood he drunk from all the slaves he killed tonight. There were fourteen of them, and not even one came close to satiating him to the fullest.

If he kept this up, the dead bodies continuously piling up would make it look like a massacre.

The Vampire King was exhausted, hungry—starving--stumbling as he leaned against the wall.

"I need more." He needed warm blood from a live, jugular tap preferably from the High Priestess.

But hungry as he was, weak as he was becoming, for the Blood Beast to take over his body completely anytime now, he needed to feed himself again.

Soon.

The urges were getting stronger.

As the Vampire King took a deep breath, he caught the erotic, dark fragrance he threw off whenever he wanted to be inside a female. He could feel the lust overwhelming his body.

The Vampire King could feel the Blood Beast's consciousness again, but he wasn't completely taken over yet. He stared at the full-length mirror in his bedroom with total absorption.

Something else is in there, he thought. There was… something else looking through as he stared at his reflection. The Vampire King saw the Blood Beast staring back at him.

Shaking his head to get rid of his reflection in his mind, The Vampire King hated that he didn't know the face of this real enemy inside him when its soul was already ingrained into his identity for a long time.

Beads of sweat gleamed on his forehead as he grabbed the wall for support while he battled with himself as he clutched his chest in a poor attempt to calm his heart.

His legs trembled.

Time was slow as a snail.

It took him minutes before he sagged, his back sliding against the wall to the ground as the tension left his body.

He had won the fight but not by much.

As he looked up back to his reflection in the mirror, his eyes were back to Prussian Blue.