The sleepy town of bran was suddenly brought to life by the roaring engine of the Bugatti soaring through the town's old streets. Through the car's tinted mirrors, the man leaning back on his seat was staring lifelessly at the unknown structure the town had acquired through centuries of development. It was no longer the place he remembered from his memories.

Nothing had remained the same, neither the towns nor its occupants.

‘It was never home.’

To his surprise, the mention of ‘home’ brought a gray-eyed smiling girl to his mind. A glassy look suddenly masked his eyes as his thoughts started wandering in different directions.

‘I shouldn’t have left you alone that day. I should have taken you with me.’

Guilt couldn’t even come close to describe the feeling he held in his heart for the night she disappeared from their castle.

The memories from the night were still fresh in his mind, as if it had been only a day since that incident occurred, not a whole week.

He had been extremely disturbed since the day Faith returned from the past. Although was relieved to find out that his efforts to save their baby had been successful, it wasn’t enough to put his heart to ease. She had Cyrus’ lineage flowing in her veins, ultimately complicating the situation more.

He wanted to trust her and he had started trusting her as well but her sudden uninformed rendezvous with Ruth had formed cracks in their budding relationship.

From the time she stumbled in front of his castle, he had tried hard to avoid doing the things she had complained about on her last night in the medieval times. He tried keeping his distance, not letting her near him; he didn’t want her to feel the suffocation her past self was claiming to have felt in his grasp.

Nothing worked.

Contrary to how the girl had belittled his touch and love in the medieval era, the girl from the present never kept his distance from him. No matter what he did, she kept coming back to him. In the end, he was still turned to stone, punished for a crime he never committed.

He had been looking forward to that confrontation since the night he thought that he had gotten betrayed by her. He wanted answers and he did get them.

It was up to him to believe her words, but this time he didn’t want to dive in blindly.

He had failed once. His carelessness in taking a woman with no background cost him multiple human lives and a burnt castle.

He needed to confirm the authenticity of every word spoken to him. He was no longer a lord now, he was a king. His lack of attentiveness could cost a huge deal to the vampire race.

Until he could prove the truth behind Faith’s story, he had chosen to bring her back with him. No matter what, she was his wife, pregnant with his child. He couldn’t ask her to go away, not in this condition. But he was not going to behave stupidly either.

He knew he had to keep his distance from her this time. She was his beloved, her presence always clouded his senses and he couldn’t afford to act rash this time.

One bad decision and the Vampire Kingdom would fall into a killer’s hands.

His temples had started throbbing by now, causing him to massage the top of his eyebrows with his long fingers. He hadn’t slept properly for days. It was the same for Henry, who had been driving silently for hours by his side.

Henry genuinely liked Faith and did everything he could to find evidence in her favor. It had taken him some time but eventually he was able to prove it to Ares.

Gabriel was indeed killed that night. Eve was captured, brought to Romania, forced to turn into a vampire slave before she eventually fled to America and changed her name to Elizabeth Stone. She was married to Faith’s father, Arthur Matthaeus and gave birth to a daughter. Despite the premature birth, she delivered her daughter alone at home in perfectly healthy condition.

Henry had left no stone unturned in collecting documents and pictures to strengthen Faith’s claims and no one could be more relieved than Ares to find it out.

She hadn’t betrayed him.

He no longer had to watch her from a distance, wait for her to fall asleep before he could sneak inside their room to rub her swollen belly, stay stuck to his window every night to stare at her strolling through the garden, glare angrily at Henry’s back as every time he walked to Faith’s door wishing it were him standing before his wife, not Henry.

Once he came to know the truth, he became even more remorseful to face her, but he knew he had to.

With this intention in mind, he had gone to meet her in their room only to find that she was taking a shower. Sitting at the edge of the tub, he couldn’t stop his eyes from becoming mesmerized the moment he saw Faith emerging from the shower stall.

His gaze had never settled on anyone more beautiful than her.

He wanted to express so many emotions in that moment, his gratitude, apology, so much more yet he was unable to find any appropriate words. Centuries of staying caged in an empty space had sucked the emotions out of him; his communication skills had become terrible. He had tried getting across his feelings through his actions, helping her change, holding her hands, softly grazing her exposed skin, massaging her belly, but the situation got out of hands quickly.

He knew he was lacking words, so he had decided on showing her the world through his eyes.

When she had asked him to leave, he hadn’t left the room. He only got out of the bathroom and entered the second room attached to his bedroom whose door had usually remained locked for others.

As soon as he entered that room, he was greeted with multiple pairs of gray-blue eyes staring at him from all over the room. In one corner, the owner of those eyes was crouching down, hiding her face in between her legs, only her pleading gaze visible through the darkness of her surroundings. In the other corner, he found her standing at the end of a dimly lit hallway, wearing a dull colored cotehardie. Her body was facing forward, only her head was turned to look back at the person looking at her. Her lips were stuck in the shape of ‘o’ as her glistening eyes expressed a thousand emotions in them.

The room was full of her portraits.

The most recent one was the one where a heavily pregnant Faith was rubbing her belly with one hand whilst putting a red rose in her hair with the other one.

At the right bottom side, initials . were signed in bold.

Carefully grabbing the canvas, the Vampire King stepped out of the room to present it to his angry wife, wanting to share how he had spent his time without her.

But only after he had stepped out of his room did he realize that he could no longer sense Faith’s heartbeat in the bathroom.

“Faith?”

There was no answer. She was not in the bedroom.

Straining his ears, he tried locating her heartbeat anywhere throughout the whole castle but he was unable to do so.

“Faith?!”

The canvas fell out of his hands onto the mattress as he stormed out of their bedroom, shouting the same name again and again like a madman.

“Faith!”

“My lord?”

Hearing his lord’s disoriented cries, Henry had come running out of his room.

“I can’t hear Faith. I can’t find her.”

Anyone looking at him could tell that the Vampire had lost his senses.

“Did you check in the garden?”

“No. There was no sound coming from there.”

He seemed to have realized his mistake as soon as he spoke. The garden was silent, too silent to be exact.

Both of them had ran outside in full speed but the moment they reached the front gates, it was already too late. Neither the vampire guarding the entrance nor Faith could be seen there.

It was as if all there traces had been removed from that place.

A vampire could never have done that. It was a witch’s doing.

‘Felix.’

The name left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Ares had started searching for Faith immediately after her disappearance but the Vampire-Wizard Hybrid was too cunning. He had left no clues behind.

It would’ve helped if Ares and Faith were sharing a bond but they were not.

‘If only…’

Faith’s search had brought Ares to Romania, a place he had sworn to never visit again.

He had been roaming aimlessly in Transylvania for days but so far, he had failed to get his hands on any information.

The only thing left to do was investigate the council as their King and that’s what he was going to do. He was going to get his wife and child back. No matter what.

Suddenly, the car came to a halt stopping his train of thoughts. Barely a second later Henry got out of the car to open Ares’ side of the door, urging him to step out.

Everything turned deadly silent the moment his feet made contact with the concrete. The creatures hiding in the dark had sensed his presence.

The Dracula had returned to his castle.