Married To The Mad Vampire Lord-Chapter 43: "Have you been stabbed before?"

"You dropped the pot, yes. But you didn’t set the stage, nor choose the moment. Someone else placed the weight in your hands and whispered in your ear. The culprit isn’t always the one who shatters the glass, Isa. It’s the one who nudged it close to the edge and watched with a smile. Congratulations, you would have lost your head today if you weren’t my bunny."

Those words resonated in Belle’s head even after he had said them. The tone in which he said that she would have lost her head if she wasn’t his bunny was of annoyance. She had known Cordelia had purposely made her pick up the plant, but then from his words, did he mean she had done something to nudge the pot? Now that Belle thought about it, when she lifted the pot, she had not lifted it up enough for it to break if she were to drop it. It had shocked her when it suddenly shattered on the ground.

Yes, she had been shocked into being clumsy enough to let it go, but she could have sworn it wouldn’t have broken so easily, as the pot was made of strong clay. Does that mean the vampiress had done something to make it break so easily? She’d heard of vampires having different abilities that made them untouchable to humans and manipulative, and being a pureblood, she must have manipulated her somehow for the plant to break...

Was that why Rohan asked more than once if she had broken it or if it was his cousin? Belle thought, her eyes widening slightly. She had not put the blame on Cordelia because she did not think it was the woman’s fault for her own clumsy and quick reaction of shock that led to the broken pot. To Belle, if she could not do something cruel to a person, she found it hard to believe that the person would do it to her.

But if her husband knew his cousin had done something to make it break, why did he still punish her and watch her suffer in the rain? She did not understand him at all.

"If you knew she had nudged it to the edge, why was I the only one to be punished?" Belle voiced out her thoughts with a frown and pursed lips. It was completely unfair of him to let her do all the work while the culprit stood watching! She could still feel her back aching.

Rohan looked down at her, his lips pulling up slightly at the side. "Because you wouldn’t have learned the consequences of what happens when you don’t attempt to save yourself. That, little bunny," he said as he leaned in toward her, causing her to impulsively lean back from him, but that did not stop his face from being in front of hers.

"Is the first lesson you get. If you do not start to push people off, you will end up being pushed and stepped on, just like you were pushed into this part of the world in your precious sister’s place," he said.

Belle quickly parted her lips to argue that she had not been forced to come here in Eve’s place in any way but had done so of her own accord. But his displeased frown and narrowed eyes made her seal her lips.

"The next time anything like this happens, whether you are at fault or not, point an accusing finger at the other person, or you will lose your life faster than it should be lived here."

"I am not someone like that. I can never blame things or accuse anyone of what they did not do. I—" Belle began to voice out her contradiction against the way he thinks and wants her to act.

"Aren’t you so naive, my little bunny? To still think you can’t blame someone for something they didn’t do when you have just been blamed for it just now?" he remarked with a humorless smile that came more from the disbelief of how his wife thinks in a way that varies from his completely.

Belle pursed her lips. "I am not naive, my Lord. Not everyone is like Lady Cordelia." And you, she added in her mind before continuing, "If I point an accusing finger to save myself when I am guilty, I will put that other person in the place I fell into today," she said, looking up at his dark eyes that bore down at her forehead.

"So? At least you are safe. That’s what matters," he remarked with a scoff that made Belle stare up at him with a disbelieving frown. How could one live with themselves knowing they had accused an innocent person?

"You..." Belle chose her words carefully, as she knew people who thought the way he did were the most dangerous ones. "Have you accused innocent people to save yourself before?" She wouldn’t be surprised if he said yes, but somehow, she hoped he would say no. But it seemed she was hoping for too much yet again from her vampire husband, who she wanted to cling to a tiny little belief that he wasn’t so bad like the rumors said.

"I don’t believe in the word ’innocent.’ To me, everyone is the same. The world works in a very shady way, and if one does not do things to protect themselves, they will die before their time or be stabbed in the back by the person closest to them," came his quiet voice that held a serious undertone, making Belle speak before she could stop herself.

"Have you been stabbed in the back by someone you trusted before?" She asked the question out of curiosity, as she believed one’s way of thinking had to do with life experiences. She had grown up believing that everyone had good in them, but never had she believed she would meet a man like him, who thought very differently from her, and who seemed to lack little to no goodness.

"Many times. The ones close to you are the ones who stab you in the most painful ways, Isa. I do not trust, nor do I have the word in my storage.

Trust is merely a more elegant form of self-destruction. Learn to protect yourself, because if you had been someone else, sweetheart, your life would have been lost today.

That plant that was broken... was my heart."

Belle saw every trace of the empty smile disappear from his face, his expression turning blank and unreadable. Without another word, he straightened up and stared down at her.

She swallowed hard. What did he mean by the plant was his heart? Was it truly that important for him to call it that?

He said he had no heart, which meant that if he could call that plant his heart, it was something so important he would have killed her for breaking it if she wasn’t...

Her thoughts trailed off. Why did he even call her that name all the time? Bunny?

And what made her different from the others that he wouldn’t kill her for such a mistake? Not that she wanted to be killed...

One moment, he had seemed like he was teaching her life lessons. Now, his expression had turned lifeless, like that of a dead man with unseeing eyes, eyes that had no visible whites. Or perhaps it was the gloomy atmosphere that made them appear like the ones described in the holy book, the eyes of a demon.

And the way he stared at her with them, so intensely, made her suddenly uneasy.

What made his eyes and his temperature so different from the other vampires? Cordelia had been deathly cold when she hooked her arm around hers earlier, but she remembered so vividly that his were unusually warm, too warm.

Not knowing what to say, Belle blinked her eyes and muttered an apology to him for the broken plant, as it was the only word that came to her head. But Rohan merely stared at her like one would at something they did not understand, then turned on his heels and resumed walking. He did not say anything again and did not walk at the same pace as her. She had to walk fast to catch up to him, as his long legs were taking him farther away from her.

She couldn’t help but keep thinking about the plant and his words as she tried to catch up. Who had betrayed him in the past to make him not trust the world anymore? And what made that plant so special to him? She wondered as she stared up at his broad back, which was getting farther away from her.

It was when they reached a certain place that was close to the apple garden she had picked, as they had gone in circles, that he stopped as if waiting for her. When she finally caught up, she was panting lightly, despite trying to keep up, she was dragging herself in her drenched dress and heavy shoes through the wet grass with puddles of water.

When she came to stand by him, he turned to her with that smile of his back on his momentarily dead face, and then, like a mischievous boy who had found something, he pointed to the ground and said, "Look what I found, Isa. What a coincidence." He clicked his tongue, and Belle, with a small frown on her face, turned her head in the direction he pointed to.

Her heart skipped a beat, and her hazel eyes rounded. She raised her head to the top of the towering castle and saw a few balconies and French windows similar to the one in her chamber, and then the realization dawned on her. The chamber window she had been searching for this whole time was in the garden, but she had failed to notice it as many of the windows looked the same!

The ring he had so casually tossed away last night was now on the ground with puddles of rainwater around it, making the silver a bit hard to see unless one had sharp eyes or knew where to find it.

Which meant Rohan had purposely led her here!

"The piece of shit I thought had gotten stuck on one of the tree branches is laying right here." Came his taunting remark that made her jaw clench as she knew he was insulting the love token to see her reaction. She stared at the ring with a longing look, knowing she wouldn’t be able to pick it up in front of the devil who had tossed it away here.

If only Cordelia wasn’t a lying witch, Belle would have somehow walked to this part with her and would have managed to spot it. Though she doubted she would have spotted it as easily as the person who threw it away, but still... her ring would have been safe with her by now.