Page 111 of Sold to the Dark Vampire Prince

“She’s a sickness, one you can’t get out of your head. I see that now. If the only way for us to be together is for me to get rid of her, I’ll hunt her to the ends of the sector.”

Now Alex wondered, would Lara have gone so far as to engineer the explosion at Cavalieri Industries, putting hundreds of lives at risk just to eliminate Dani and make it look like a faked terrorist attack? How had he so greatly underestimated the monster she truly was?

When he still refused to look at her, Lara gripped his jaw, bending to forcibly kiss his lips.

“You’re making me do this, husband. I don’t want things to be this way between us.” She tapped the mating mark at his wrist. “We’ve been searching the city for nearly a full day. No one can find her body or that of her sisters. If Dani Girard were dead, I would expect the mark to have faded.” Straightening, she pointed to the guards. “Hold him down.”

Going to the hearth, she selected an iron poker and placed it into the flames.

“Lara,” Alex began, voice softening as dread filled him. She was insane. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“I’m sorry, Alex. I hate that you’re making me do this. But I don’t see any other way. You’re completely obsessed with that girl.” She swiped at her eyes. “Everything was so good between us before she ruined this. Ruined us. But it can be good again. I know it.” Lifting the red-hot poker from the grate, she came towards him.

“Lara, don’t,” Alex said sharply. “This won’t make me love you.”

“You’ll thank me for this later,” she whispered. “I know you will. We’ll finally be together.”

And then, as a third guard held him down, she pressed the searing metal to his flesh.

Alex screamed, the world mercifully going black.

Alex sat in a chair in the formal ballroom as the hair and makeup team finished putting the final touches on him. Lara had already decided they would be doing the announcement seated on a loveseat, which she thought looked cozier.

He’d hoped the upcoming interview might provide an opportunity to escape. Surely Lara wouldn’t expect him to go on camera in filthy, bloody clothes? He only needed seconds with the cursed cuffs off, and he could scatter himself into smoke and escape this hell.

But just when he’d dared to hope, a needle jabbed him in the side of the neck and the world went gray around him.

He awoke in an itchy blue sweater he’d always hated, his wrist bandaged where Lara had burned him. Judas was there, observing his torture with dispassionate eyes.

Alex studied his father. His face was definitely paler than usual. Had he lost weight? Was there any chance Isabella might have been right about the cancer?

“Is it true?” he asked. “Are you really sick?”

The king smiled thinly. “Always so determined to believe the worst of me, Alexander?”

“That’s not an answer.”

Ignoring him, his father continued, “It’s unfortunate that things had to turn out this way, but hopefully with time, your obsession with that girl will come to an end and you and Lara can move forward. Lara will be a strong queen. You need that. You’ve always been too soft, much like your mother. This family’s legacy is too important to squander. We’re seeing greater dissent since the bombings. Law enforcement hasn’t been able to quell the protestors. The markets continue to fall. We need stability. And the announcement that we are moving forward with this marriage union will provide that.”

“You actually think people give a damn about what we’re doing in our gilded ballrooms, dressing up in fine silks they’ll never be able to touch and drinking champagne that costs more than they make in a month, when their families are starving?” Alex laughed bitterly. “We can still turn this around, Father. It isn’t too late.”

But his father merely shook his head, eyes bearing the disappointment he knew all too well.

“Here’s how this is going to go,” Lara said, coming to sit beside him on the loveseat. “After I talk, you’ll read the statement I’ve prepared. And you will smile while we announce our engagement to the sector. If you don’t, if you force me to tape retakes because you want to draw this out, the hundred prisoners we rounded up off the streets following your little insurrection will be executed, and another one hundred for every twenty-four hours that you refuse to comply.”

She nodded across the room, behind the cameras, where Henri sat tied to a chair. A guard held a dagger to his throat.

“And we will start with your closest friend.”

Alex met his bodyguard’s eyes. Henri was in even worse shape than he was. At least the guards had been told to mostly avoid his face in order to keep him camera ready. With fae magic in the cuffs draining his blood’s self-healing properties, Henri had to be feeling every bruise and cut and burn, just like Alex was.

I’m sorry, Alex mouthed, just before Lara gripped his face, forcing him to look at her.

“We have to put your indiscretion behind us, Alex. This can be our chance for a fresh start. I want a life with you. A future. I think we should try for a baby right away. Once the sector sees that we’re expecting, they’ll be overjoyed for us.”

Alex swallowed, feeling bile rise in his throat. “Don’t you think we should give it a bit of time?”

Lara shook her head. “It will be exactly what the people need to move on from that… other story the media was so obsessed with. Our love will be what people are celebrating as they ring in the new year.”