by Anna Santos
“I am. He makes me happy.” Jade smiled. “And, we are meant to be.”
“Yet that story about you being his beloved...”
Jade stared at Jenna. “Don't you believe it?”
“I don't know,” Jenna confessed. “We’ve all heard rumors. But, it seems to be something uncommon among vampires, or they don't advertise it that often. Do you feel it?”
“What?”
“That he is the one.”
“I can't explain it, but I do. Since the first time we met. Although he was rude, there was something about him. Every time we kiss, it feels perfect and right as if…we belong together.”
“I'm so jealous.” Jenna pouted. “I want a vampire lover to make me his beloved.”
“I don't care if he is a vampire or not. We are meant to be. He can sense it because he is a vampire, but I'm sure we would still be in love if he wasn't a vampire. It's hard to explain.”
“Okay, you don't need to. You need to pinch your cheeks and prepare yourself for your vows. Daniel is downstairs waiting for you,” Jenna announced happily. “I'm going to scream so loud when you say yes that everybody will think I'm crazy.”
“You will do no such thing. You will behave and stop me if I try to run.”
Jenna laughed while helping her fix the dress and setting the veil on her head. It was a simple tulle veil adorned with a princess tiara.
“You are the prettiest thing. You look stunning, don't doubt yourself. Now, let's go,” she ordered, giving Jade the round bouquet of white roses. Jade liked simple and chic. She didn't want to overdo it with the flowers and the colors.
Daniel waited patiently next to the priest who would perform the ceremony. He was nervous, he couldn't deny that. A lot more nervous than when he got married the first time. He didn't take it seriously back then.
At the time, it was necessary to have a wife and a family. He had married because he liked the girl and wanted to be a respectable businessman. They divorced shortly after. His wife couldn't handle his busy life, and they weren’t able to conceive a child.
Soon after the divorce, he found out that he had a terminal disease. He fell into a spiral of depression, wild parties, and drugs. It was then that he met Sakura and Dominic. They were a couple back then. They fancied him and decided to give him eternal life. He had taken it willingly and never regretted his decision. Sakura saw to it that he changed his ways. She made sure he became a good vampire—one that cared for others and respected human lives. With her guidance, he studied and worked harder. He partied, had fun, and enjoyed life, but he was driven by the wish to find the cure for cancer.
It'd been a long time ago. He had become a solitary rich man, unsatisfied with eternity. Loneliness was the worst for vampires. He wasn't an exception. He had girlfriends, some crazy passions, but nothing like the overwhelming passion and feeling of belonging that he felt for Jade.
His quest to find a companion was only shadowed by his love for inventions. In the end, it was his father's outrageous plan to make money with reality shows where vampires were the stars that gave him Jade. His sweet and innocent Jade. His gorgeous and sexy bride who was coming down the aisle with her brother, in her strapless dress and tulle layered train.
His future wife was a vision. He wouldn't change anything about her. Happiness reached its peak when he noticed the beautiful smile she had on her lips as joy glinted in her eyes. It was going to be the perfect wedding because they were in love and their vows would last forever, even after death.
Yet he felt restless. The need to walk to her and the thought to bring her closer taunted him. He wanted to hold her hands and feel that she was real and not a product of his imagination.
Dominic's hand on his shoulder stopped him. His dad was stern, but he knew that he wasn't against his marriage. He simply didn’t like rushed decisions. Nevertheless, Dominic knew about the existence of beloveds. He hadn’t found his yet. Still, he couldn’t deny Daniel the happiness of finding Jade. Dominic had been with Sakura for a long time. They loved each other until they eventually grew apart. Sakura left him to pursue her own dreams and interests. She was too young when he found and turned her. Once she experienced freedom, no one was ever able to tame her and make her stay in the same place for long. Sakura wasn’t Dominic’s beloved, therefore, he didn’t understand what Daniel was experiencing.
Daniel turned his thoughts to the boy walking with his bride.
Stevie looked cute in his tuxedo, wearing the white rose in the lapel. He was taking his job seriously and gave Jade's hand to Daniel with solemnity. Many were affected by how adorable he looked, and they were smiling widely at the boy. He was the center of attention. Daniel didn't mind. He liked having Jade's attention to himself.
Holding his bride’s hand, he escorted her to the altar. It was decorated with white roses and small lilies. Their eyes locked and even when the priest began his speech, they stood there, hand in hand, smiling at each other and barely listening to what the priest was saying about the happy occasion.
Several minutes later, they were exchanging the vows, putting on the rings, and Daniel was kissing his bride. He brought her closer, holding on to her waist and sealing their lips together. He gave her a tender but passionate kiss. The cameras were recording everything, the photographers were immortalizing the moment. Daniel didn't care because that was their moment and nothing could ruin it.
Jade had spent the night greeting the wedding guests. She hardly knew anyone. Some guests were famous and others were Daniel’s business partners or old friends. She only had Jenna, Jenna’s parents, and Stevie that she knew.
Daniel wanted to introduce her to everybody. She didn’t mind because she wanted to be a part of his life and that meant being introduced to everybody he knew and considered to be his friend.
She barely had time to eat. Not that she was hungry. Yet she enjoyed herself when it was time to dance. They waltzed and swayed to the rhythm of modern songs. They danced with Stevie, shared glasses of champagne, kissed, and whispered romantic words to each other.
Before she collapsed of fatigue, Daniel took her to their bedroom where she changed clothes and left for their honeymoon destination before the sun was up.
Daniel told her to dress in warm clothes and get ready to fly. His airplane was waiting for them, and they were going to leave the country. Somewhere where they could be together, alone.
The limousine parked next to the airplane, and Daniel helped Jade out of the car. She was exhausted, but she could rest on the plane.
“Where’s Arthur?” Daniel asked the captain that was coming outside the plane to greet them.
There was a hostess outside and another big man that went to get the luggage.
“He is sick, I’m going to replace him for today,” the captain said, touching the lapel of his hat and smiling at Daniel.
“That’s strange, I talked to him today and he said nothing about it,” Daniel declared, looking at the man and then at his driver.
Before Jade could understand what was going on, the captain was holding a gun and shooting Daniel three times in the chest.
She screamed, horrified.
The captain pointed at her and shot, but instead of her being the target, the bullets hit the glass of the limousine that was bulletproof and didn’t harm the driver. The driver ducked instinctively and reached for his gun.
Jade kneeled in front of Daniel, panicking at the sight of blood. Vampires weren’t that easy to kill, but Daniel wasn’t moving. Did the man use some kind of gun that killed vampires? Why didn’t he kill her?
The answer came shortly after. The hostess grabbed Jade and forced her to enter the plane. The man that had the luggage shot at the limousine, stopping the driver from exiting.
The captain rushed everybody to enter the plane. Jade tried to get free, but the hostess was strong, abnormally strong. She easily restrained Jade and forced her to sit and buckle her seatbelt.
“Play nice or I’ll have to hurt you,” the ho
stess hissed as she handcuffed Jade’s hands.
“Daniel,” Jade screamed out loud, afraid he might be dead.
The hostess slapped her hard, and Jade lost consciousness.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Alexander
Jade slowly woke up, growing aware of her throbbing headache and parched mouth as she drifted back towards consciousness. She realized her limbs had gone numb from the uncomfortable chair she was positioned in and tried to adjust herself, only to find that her arms and legs were tied up. The darkness around her remained oppressive due to the dark hood over her head. Her thoughts became a blur of panic as the desperation of her situation set in. She didn’t know if it was day or night and where she was. She couldn’t imagine why they had kidnapped her. Jade didn’t even know who they were or what they wanted from her.
Worse of all, she didn’t know if Daniel was dead or alive. With the saddening memory, she began to cry as her heart shattered into tiny little pieces. They shoot Daniel three times and he didn’t move. They must have aimed at his heart. There was a lot of blood.
“I’m glad you are awake,” a husky voice said as Jade listened to footsteps closing in on her.
Large, masculine hands uncovered her head, allowing her disheveled chestnut hair to fall around her shoulders. She blinked rapidly to adjust to the bright lights.
“Hi! How are you feeling?”
Jade turned her head slightly to the right and frowned at the source of the voice.
Is he joking?
Even through her outrage, however, she couldn’t help but notice that he was quite an attractive man, especially when he displayed his perfect teeth like an actor in a toothpaste commercial.
“Hi, I’m Alexander. Nice to meet you!” Again, he flashed her that smile, which reached all the way to his eyes.
“I’m sorry but are you insane?” Jade asked bluntly. She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she rapid-fired the rest of the questions that had been plaguing her since she’d woken up. “Who are you? And why am I tied up in here? Why did you kidnap me? I’m rather poor. And if you wanted to blackmail my husband, why did you tell your men to shoot him!” She yelled the last part, feeling the tears rushing back to her eyes. Verbalizing that Daniel could be dead was excruciating. They had just got married.
“Hmm.” Alexander kept smiling while checking out Jade from head to toe. “You are quite beautiful. Much better looking than on TV.”
“Go die in a hole!” she growled. “What do you want from me?”
“I want to ask you a few questions,” he answered smoothly, his smile never wavering.
“You didn’t need to kidnap me for that,” her voice shook but grew louder. “You didn’t need to shoot Daniel either.”
“I think I did. You see, I’ve been looking for you for a while now. Then I got lucky and saw you on TV. But there were a lot of vampires around you. Hell, you married one! I had to take you out of there to protect you.”
“What are you talking about?” Jade asked, confused by his reasoning. “Protect me? You killed my husband, and your thugs hurt me!”
“Kierra shouldn’t have hurt you. She can be a bit temperamental sometimes.”
“Why did you kill Daniel?” she asked on the verge of crying.
“We shot him, that doesn’t mean he is dead.”
“He isn’t?” Her eyes widened and her face showed sparks of hope.
“I don’t know. He is a vampire and isn’t easily killed. Besides, it wasn’t my intention to start a war because I had killed the vampire prince. I just wanted to get to you.”
“Why?”
“I’m an old friend of your father’s. Since he died, we’ve been looking for you and your brother.”
“That’s bullshit. I know all of my dad’s friends. You weren’t his friend.”
“I was. We were working partners. You were quite young when I traveled abroad to pursue my research elsewhere.”
“You are too young to be dad’s co-worker. Unless… Are you a vampire?”
Alexander blanched. “God no! I wouldn’t like to be one of those nasty beings. I’m a werewolf.”
Jade frowned, unimpressed.
“Your dad asked me for my help when…well, Octavio tried to kidnap you, but I was out of reach. I was in a faraway part of the world, questing for a plant that would help me speed up my research. I had just found out that you and your family were in danger when I returned to America. By then, your parents were dead, and you and your brother had disappeared.” His tone dropped in seemingly genuine sadness at the end of his story, and Jade almost wanted to believe him. If she hadn’t been kidnapped, tied to a chair, and held hostage, she might have, but she couldn’t bring herself to trust a word this man said.
“That’s a nice story.” Jade spat. “But if you were my dad’s friend, you wouldn’t kidnap me and hold me here against my will.”
“Oh, I’m sorry about the ropes. I didn’t want you to run away before I could explain everything to you,” he said, leaning down and starting to untie Jade’s bonds. “By the way, it’s useless trying to run. We are inside of a secret facility in the middle of nowhere.”
“Great,” Jade said, rubbing her sore wrists as the last of the rope fell away into a pile around her. “Is Daniel alive?”
“You shouldn’t worry about him.”
“He’s my husband,” she reminded him.
“An unfortunate mistake.” He sighed deeply.
“If Daniel isn’t dead, you will be sorry. He will find me,” Jade warned, hoping that her threat scared him and he didn’t hear her voice shake.
“Yes, I’m aware of that. Aren’t you glad that he can’t find us underwater?”
“No, not really,” she answered. Then, curious about his words, she asked, “Underwater?”
“Yes. Do you want to see? We are in a secret lab to study marine life. We are almost one kilometer deep.”
“Wouldn’t the pressure kill us?” Despite herself, Jade’s interest was piqued. “How would a lab even be constructed so deep in the ocean?”
Alexander’s voice had a hint of amusement when he answered her. “One kilometer isn’t that deep. A new transparent material was developed that can support the pressure of the water. We are in a quite extraordinary underwater maze.”
Jade stared at the guy, confused by his behavior. “What do you want from me? I’m not in danger anymore. Octavio is dead, and I was happy with my vampire husband, for your information.”
“Do you love him?” he probed. “Wasn’t it just a show to please the audience?”
“Of course not. Daniel and I are in love.”
Alexanders handsome face contorted in bewilderment. “This changes things,” he mused to himself. “He won your trust and made you fall for him. You would do anything for him, wouldn’t you?”
Jade pondered his words for a second and nodded.
“Even let them kill your little brother for researching purposes?”
Jade’s stomach dropped and an icy prickle crawled up her spine. “What the hell are you talking about? Who would kill Stevie?”
“Vampires.”
Jade frowned. “Why?”
“To get to your father’s research. Can you imagine how the world would change if vampires could come out in the sun?”
Her dad was researching about vampire vulnerability to light when Octavio fired him. But his research was not finished. Jade remembered him complaining about how hard and complicated it was to study vampires and find something that could make them invulnerable to the sun.
“What does Stevie have to do with Dad’s research?”
“Stevie was born shortly after your father completed his research. He claimed to have found out how to fix vampire’s DNA. Your mother’s pregnancy wasn’t unexpected. He planned it, inseminating her with human and supernatural genes to give birth to the first hybrid.”
“You are saying nonsense. Dad wouldn’t do experiments on his own son.”
“He was trying to create a cur
e.”
Jade blurted out, “But he hated vampires by then. Why would he want to fix them?”
“To have leverage. If he could find the cure, Octavio would have to give up on you and pay your dad a lot of money.”
“Dad wouldn’t do that to one of his children. Stevie… He loved him. He wouldn’t make mom give birth to him to prove a theory. Dad wasn’t like that.”
“Are you sure?”
Jade objected, “He had principles!”
“Maybe, but he was also desperate.”
“You are lying,” Jade accused him, annoyed and revolted by his attempt of tainting her father’s memory.
“I can prove it. All we need to do is get your brother, and I can test him to see if Frederic had found the cure or not,” Alexander said with a serious face.
“Who else knows about this?”
“Just me, but I think others may suspect. Octavio was insane. He had a crazy fixation on you. Many weren’t happy about him firing Frederic. He was the most talented one.”
“So why did no one help him? Why didn’t they force Octavio to stop stalking me and my family?”
“Because they were afraid of Octavio. He was an important vampire. They have ranks and degrees of importance in their community. Octavio had power, money, and means to chase you. He could buy-off judges and kill other vampires that could help your dad.”
“If what you are saying is true, then why didn’t you kidnap my brother? Why did you take me instead?”
“We need you to gain Stevie’s trust. You are his sister, the person he loves the most. We don’t want to harm him. We want to help him hide. I have no intention of letting the cure fall into vampires’ hands. I brought you first because we saw a unique opportunity to rescue you from their domains.”
Jade sucked in a breath. “Daniel knows nothing about what you are saying. He didn’t even know about my past. I’m his beloved. Do you know what that is?”
“Yes, it means that he would do anything to get you back. Even trade you for your brother, don’t you think?”