Married To The Mad Vampire Lord
Chapter 262: Dream house_Part 2

Chapter 262: Dream house_Part 2

He drew back, eyes locked with hers, and Belle stood there, heart thundering, lips tingling, soul dizzy from the trace of him still lingering on her mouth.

"It’s a dream I intend to give you," he murmured. "Live it as though nothing before this moment has happened. Forget the past. Just breathe in the now, and let me give you this happiness, even if it’s only for a little while. Let’s pause reality and live in your dream, my love."

He cupped her neck, his thumb stroking the rapid pulse beneath her skin.

"No talk of what came before. Just you and me... and very soon, the three of us."

His hand drifted down to her belly just as it gave a soft, hungry growl. A smile tugged at his lips as color rushed to her cheeks.

He took her hand and led her to sit on the chair of the small wooden dining table.

"As if I knew you would be awake, I was cooking your favorite soup," Rohan announced proudly as he moved to the cast iron stove and put out the fire beneath it, while Belle watched him, still unable to believe how they had ended up here and how he knew of her little dream to live in a place like this.

"Where are we?" she asked quietly, unable to hide her curiosity even though he had told her to live in the moment without the thought of the past. He had said temporary. She had to remember that. The reality was at pause but she still couldn’t help but want to know what had happened in that reality they wanted to pause for the meantime.

Rohan didn’t pause in his task of putting out the fire beneath the stove as he replied nonchalantly, "Somewhere far away, anywhere, you know. Would you like coffee or lemonade?" he asked, turning to look at her over his shoulder as she took a sip of the water he had handed her when he sat her down.

"Lemonade," she replied, noting how he had evaded her question about their whereabouts. He nodded his head and turned back to his work, rinsing a bowl in the small basin beside him.

"For how long have I been asleep?" she asked again.

"Three days. I washed you and changed your clothes during those days. Tsk, I almost thought of taking you to a doctor when you weren’t waking up, but I can’t risk any human doctor looking at you..." He trailed off, pausing in ladling the soup for a moment as he recalled how he had felt in those three days she’d been unconscious.

If it wasn’t for the fact that her heartbeat and breathing were stable enough to reassure him she wasn’t in any life-threatening condition, Rohan would have thrown caution to the wind and found a human doctor for her. But he had held himself back, telling himself she must have been catching up on the strength she’d lost. Still, he had lived in constant worry every second.

He had blamed himself time and again for her condition. If he hadn’t left her behind, if he had just taken her with him, or even... The thoughts had haunted him, dragging him into an endless loop of regret. He replayed every moment, every choice, until they bled into guilt too heavy to bear.

More than anything, he wanted to make it up to her. To undo the pain and trauma, even though he couldn’t.

What if she had gone into labor while he was gone? What if it had happened alone, and the stress had harmed her or the baby? The very thought of it had twisted his chest and made breathing feel like punishment in those days she was unconscious.

No one could understand the relief he had felt at finally sensing her presence in the kitchen as he approached it and walked in to see his wife standing there before the table. He had wanted to do more than hug her to show how glad he was that she was awake, but her comfort had come first.

Rohan ladled the soup, then turned with a smile on his face and placed the bowl in front of her along with a spoon. Then he turned and took out the meat pie he had baked according to the cookbook and set it before her, along with the cool lemonade he had made with fresh limes from the yard. As if he had known she would awaken today, he had arranged everything to the best of his ability.

Belle stared down at the steaming white soup, the meat pie, and other side dishes laid out before her. Her stomach rumbled.

"It’s my first attempt at cooking. I hope it’s edible." He encouraged her to eat when she stared at the soup as if something were wrong with it even before tasting it.

Belle was hungry, but she asked, "This house... whose is—"

"It’s mine now. I bought it from a widow who lived here alone and paid her handsomely—and also made her forget she ever had the house. Wherever she is now, she’s swimming in wealth and luxury. You should eat before it gets cold. Let me have that."

He sat in a chair beside her and took the spoon to feed her, but Belle quickly asked her next question before he could bring the spoonful of unfamiliar soup, one that looked nothing like the white soup she knew, to her mouth.

"The house setting," she said quickly, "how come... I mean, it looks like what I always imagined I would live in someday, and with..." She blushed, embarrassed to admit that it resembled the house she had once pictured sharing with Jamie.

Back then, she had made secret plans in her heart to decorate it just like this, warm, cozy, and full of gentle light. She had also dreamed of having a husband who would cook for her when she was sick, someone who would take extra care of her the way he was doing now.

A smile pulled at Rohan’s lips.

"I read your little book in Nightbrook the day I burned the things you brought from Aragonia," he confessed boldly, speaking of reading her little diary, which he had burned along with her things after realizing everything she wrote in it reflected the life she had wanted to live with another man. He hadn’t been able to give her back the offensive book after reading what it held.

She had wanted all of this with that undeserving bastard, Merchant. He wasn’t foolish enough to return a book that held dreams without him in the picture. He had taken satisfaction in watching it burn, along with her shabby attires, back then.

Belle gaped at him. "How could you?! That’s personal and private!"

She couldn’t believe he had read her diary before he burned it. She had written many outlandish dreams in it—what she wanted her husband to do, what her future house should look like...

Rohan laughed at her glare and embarrassed face as he spooned the soup and said, "Tsk, it’s no big deal. Everything you wrote in it was simply dreams, and reading it made me realize my wife is such an adorable simpleton. She doesn’t yearn for riches or jewelry. She doesn’t want a mansion or servants waiting on her. All she ever wanted were pink sheets and curtains, a fur rug, and a cottage.

I should have given it to her sooner. But I was a man chasing the opposite of everything she dreamed of. I like wealth, I like to live in it, to spend it, and to rule. I was too focused on that to see that something so simple could mean the world to her. A simple home."

He paused, his voice softening. "And I hope she can forgive me, for realizing too late what truly mattered, and for dragging her into my mess."

Then, with a playful smile, he raised the spoon to her lips. "Open your mouth, my lovely wife."

Belle felt emotional all of a sudden.

Rather than feeling angry that he had looked through the words she had written privately, she was touched, deeply.

He had done all this for her?

He was giving her the simple home she had once dreamed of...

And more than that, he was choosing to live it, for her sake, when it wasn’t the life he was used to.

Her chest swelled with a warm, aching feeling she couldn’t name.

She wanted to ask him so many questions, about everything that had happened, about what led to this moment, but she was afraid.

Afraid that this peaceful, tender atmosphere might shatter.

Afraid that the dream he had brought to life just for her would vanish if she pressed too hard.

Tears of gratitude welled in her hazel eyes, and she parted her mouth, still looking at him through the blur, to take in the soup.

However, the sharp taste of the seasoning shattered the emotional moment like a stone cast into still water. Belle nearly spat out the soup, but when she saw Rohan’s hopeful gaze, his eyes narrowed as he waited anxiously for her reaction to his first attempt at cooking, she forced a smile and chewed the lumpy cream that tasted oddly like burnt, spoiled milk.

The soup itself was far too greasy, and when she finally managed to swallow it, a bitter aftertaste clung stubbornly to her tongue, one that no amount of lemonade could seem to wash away.