The Vampire Prince's Toxic Consort (BL)
Chapter 16 The Ash of Passion

As the heat of lust ebbed, the silence seemed to be protracting. Dorian pulled himself out of Lucius gingerly and lowered him down. Lucius’s legs were like noodles and he stumbled, but Dorian caught him before he fell.

Lucius noticed the blood soaking through the bandage on Dorian’s right arm and panicked, “shit! Your arm is bleeding!”

“It’s ok, just going to take an extra day to heal,” Dorian answered in such a calm, cool tune that Lucius had a hard time believing they just had sex.

They tried their best to make themselves presentable. Dorian’s clothes were still intact, but Lucius’s shirt’s buttons were almost all missing, and his belt was torn in half. He gave Dorian some dirty looks, and the latter tacitly took off his jacket and gave it to Lucius to cover his half-naked body.

“I will go inform Volke we will retire early.“Said Dorian.

“Ok. I don’t really want to go back there like this.”

“You can wait for me here. ”

Dorian didn’t let him wait for long, and soon they were brought to a much more comfortable lodging than before. Lucius went to the washroom and bathed first, trying to clean out Dorian’s semen with his fingers. He was exhausted, but his mind couldn’t stop spinning.

Dorian was very quiet on the way here. He didn’t speak anything to him except simple phrases like “let’s go”, “careful,” and so forth. It wasn’t really out of the vampire’s character, but it somehow bothered Lucius much more than before.

How did everything just... happen? Sure, the sex was the best he had ever had, but up until this morning, if anyone told him that he would make love to Dorian, he would have laughed his head off.

What should he be expecting now? Would this change their relationship?

Did this mean anything to Dorian?

There was only one bed in the room. Should he be expecting anything else to happen? Lucius quickly dried himself, put on the bathrobe, and left the bathroom with an anxious heart.

Dorian was not in the room, though.

He ignored the disappointment creeping at the bottom of his heart, changed into pajamas and slid under the comforter. He tried not to think too much of Dorian’s disappearance. The crown prince probably just had to deal with some urgent matters.

Dorian didn’t come back when he fell into the realm of dreams.

The next day they still didn’t talk about it. Dorian woke him up at around 2pm and told him they would meet with Volke again in an hour to discuss the following plan for the negotiation. He also explained that last night he left to make a phone call to Eternia, letting them know that they were rescued by The Guardians and were mostly unscathed.

Lucius mostly kept his mouth shut but ears open during the meeting. Apparently, there were tension and disputes among werewolves in terms of the direction and goal of the uprising. Some clans only want to force vampires to admit their encroachment of werewolf lands and their systematic oppression and discrimination against werewolves. While others want to oust the vampire dynasty completely.

Nocturne, the biggest clan, belonged to the former group and had been trying to convince other clans to be practical and focus on what was attainable rather than starting a full-scale civil war that would bring tremendous loss to their people. But Shadow Bane accused the queen of Nocturne of being soft and gutless. They claimed that werewolves had been betrayed by vampires once and had suffered oppression for centuries, and it was time to take back what had been stolen by the vampires. Shadow Bane had high hopes that The Guardians would support them as their values shared similarities.

Shadow Bane would be really pissed off after knowing about this new alliance.

“Shadow Bane’s new chief is a radical nationalist. There is no point in trying to persuade him. You should focus on winning the trust of other leaders.” Volke siped at the herbal tea and asked, “The first step to gain that trust involves admitting the wrongdoing on vampires’ part. Will you be able to do that, Prince Dorian?”

Dorian replied, “that is my intention. I acknowledge the history and intend to make amends for the lost friendship.”

Volke hmmed before continued, “your father, King Cosmo, is known for his unapologetic and megalomaniacal attitude, and he never apologized for any of his mistakes, fearing it would undermine his almighty and all-knowing image among your people. Though these two years, for some reason, he has somewhat retired backstage and passed some of his responsibility to you, but he is still the King, and you are still under his power. How much can you really promise?”

“My father has entrusted the negotiation to me. I have full authority over it.”

“But do you? What if your father deems you are too soft in the negotiation and replace you with one of your half-brothers? Will your promise still stands?”

Dorian’s lips curled slightly, “I am not that easy to replace, Chieftain. I’ve proved my capability to my father in the past few years. He trusts me and recognizes the importance of reuniting with our eastern friends. And I am sure someone as informative as you must have already known that he has some other priority in his life at the moment.”

Lucius heard about the rumor that the King had a certain ailment, which was why he no longer appeared in public as often as before. But the one time he saw the King at his wedding, Cosmos looked healthy and strong as his often public appearance. Maybe there was some truth in the rumor, after all, inferring from Dorian’s words.

But Lucius also knew Dorian was not as confident about his father’s trust as he was showing to Volke.

“It is unusual that a vampire desires peace. But I will lend you my trust, Prince Dorian. I will address the clans on your behalf as much as I can. But if Shadow Bane challenges you, you have to resolve it on your own.” Said Volke. They shook hands, but before ending the meeting, Volke’s piercing eyes shifted to Lucius’s direction, “I presume our deal still holds?”

Lucius was hoping now that they were allies Dorian would not impose that deal they made on him. But apparently, that was not the case.

Dorian glanced at him and said, “there are some great doctors in Eternia. Perhaps I could arrange for them to come and see if there is anything they can do?”

“As far as I know, there is no medical or magical solution for werewolf rabies after the symptoms begin to show. Unless you claim Eternia has developed a cure?”

“I can’t say that, but....”

“Do you not believe in your consort’s sacred ability?” Volke derided, “as mates, you two have so little confidence in each other.”

There was no way out. Volke’s allegiance was still very brittle and could be recanted if Lucius refused to fulfill the deal. Successful or not, he had to perform it.

Maybe a miracle could happen. Maybe as the twin of the chosen one, Lucius could also borrow some of his brother’s ability? S~ᴇaʀᴄh the Find_Nøvel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

But deep in his heart, he knew he would fail and become the huge fraud the whole world knew. And then Anthor would have the perfect opportunity to say that since “Julian”’s body was going to be defiled by the vampires, God pitied him and transferred his real soul and ability to Lucius’s body, and the real Julian could re-emerge from hidden and re-assume his High-Priest title under Lucius’s name. It was a blatant lie, but people in Anthor would buy anything the Churches said. Or even if they guessed the truth, they would have agreed that it was a good deal. And vampires had no proof that he was the fake Julian all along.

And what would happen to Lucius after all that?

Who cares.

Werewolves require less sleep than humans and vampires, and their sleeping time generally falls between 4am to 8am. The forest city fell into a tranquil serenity in the darkest hours before sunrise. Dorian stood alone on the balcony of their lodge, contemplative eyes looking into the distant mountain shadows, a glass of blood in hand.

“Are you really going to pretend nothing happened?” Lucius’s voice disturbed the quietude.

Dorian closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and turned around to look at his consort.

Lucius was wearing a thin white shirt with the top two buttons opened. The purple and red love marks scattered on his collarbones and ivory neck.

The vampire lowered his gaze, “last night was...not in my plan.”

“So it was a mistake?” Lucius asked quietly, something fragile quivering in his eyes, “even though we were not even drunk yet?”

Dorian turned back to the forest, hating himself for being a coward. He looked at the swirling blood and said, “look...you probably have guessed it...but there was a reason I wanted to marry Julian.”

“You knew each other.”

“Yes. Julian saved my life when I was exiled by Eternia and captured by humans, and I fell in love with him.“Dorian scoffed, “I told him to wait for me for five years, and I will come back to find him. But he didn’t wait. He took the vow the very next year. Maybe he never loved me the way I loved him. I can never read him well.”

It felt strange telling about Julian. Dorian never told this to anyone. He waited for Lucius’s reply, but only silence answered him.

He looked back, finding Lucius still leaning against the door frame, his eyes cast down to the floor in front of him, a look of forlornness.

Gosh, he looked exactly like Julian...Thought Dorian. And that very thought made him feel bad.

Lucius bit his bottom lip hard to swallow the bitter taste in his mouth. He should have known. Of course, the only reason that Dorian wanted to fuck him was that he looked exactly like Julian, which was the very reason he was sent here anyway.

This was his function from now on, to be Julian as long as he could, and he knew it from the beginning. So why did it hurt so much?

“My brother never mentioned you, even when I was visiting him at Greendale.” Lucius drew a wry smile, “you both are very good at keeping secrets about each other. Did he know you love him?”

“I think so.”

“And he still took the vow and became a priest. It is very foolish of you to try to marry him knowing he didn’t return your feeling. What were you expecting? He will be happy to renounce his religion and just be your lovely consort?”

“I told you. I’m not a good person. I just...missed him very much, and I need someone I can trust to be with me for whatever is coming. And he was the only one I could think of.”

Lucius scoffed bitterly, “sorry to disappoint you.”

“No...maybe it’s for the best.” Dorian gulped down the remaining blood and turned to look at Lucius, “I’m sorry that you are dragged into this.”

Lucius looked at some spot on the floor for a while, feeling the chill in the night wind all of a sudden. Ere long, he shook his head and replied flatly, “it’s fine. At least I know my place now.”

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