The Vampire Lord's Substitute Bride

Chapter 6

Word Count: 679 | Released on: 21/09/2026

Sterli

back until well

ell of wet ground. He went to the hearth,

d twenty dollars sat

ed stains at his cuffs that he washed out in cold water before I got a good look at them. I didn't ask. Instead

he shelf. He didn't tell me to stop this time. He stood in the shado

h morning m

ere the signal was, a

rator came to Mom's room. If the thirty thousand isn't i

efund - I had the refund done. Five days

t re

ar myself talking too fast. "It was credited back to th

. "The hospital says noth

the wet and understood,

he shop that day, and I had stood there and let it slide off me, because I had plenty else on my mind. The money had gone back where it came from, and wher

said. "I'll ge

ith both ha

ian sat by the cold hea

in my throat. "I have to go back to the Ste

, and I had the sudden feeling he had heard

mon

Chloe's place." It came out almost too qu

is jaw set, and the shadow

" he

can." I don't know why I fe

He turned his face

s bag. There was nothi

yellow car crawled up the drive, I looked back at the window.

t the door. "442

olled dow

hind it, Julian

phone from his jacke

erlings hold. Accounts, trusts, the land they've mortgaged and the land they've

Chapter End

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The Vampire Lord's Substitute Bride

Shi Liu Modern

“Thirty thousand dollars. That was the price of my mother's life, and the price the Sterlings put on me. My sister was promised to a man the whole town called a monster - a brute they'd banished to the woods. She refused to marry him. I took her place. One year in his house, and my mother's surgery would be paid. I signed my sister's name and moved into a cabin with no heat and no lights, married to a man who watched me like I was a ledger he was reading. Then the deadline came and the money didn't. I went back for it, and my sister laughed and told me she'd spent all thirty thousand on a membership to a private club. Her mother stood in the doorway with her coffee and said nothing while they shut the door on me. I had nothing left but the box my husband had put in my hands that morning. Inside it was jewelry three hundred years old. Julian Beaumont told me his family had almost nothing left. He told me I was the lady of his house. He never told me what he was. That he doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, doesn't breathe. That he can hear every mind in this valley - every thought, every lie, every secret, all of it at once, all the time - except mine. He has a year to find out why. I have a year to decide if I want him to.”