RedBedSheets

Madeline Colter despises her country, Grandor, home to the most conservative and racist people to exist, the only country to reject people of other species while having a half-vampire prince. But when the prince comes of age and every woman in the country is forced to participate in a competition for the position of queen, Madeline is dragged into it. 

She expected to be failed immediately, not that she'd meet with the so-called feared prince and realize they may not be so different after all.

Alexei, known as the fearful war monger prince, feels little affection for anyone. Ostracised among nobility with his only protector now dead he has to pick a queen to ascend the throne. What he hadn't expected was to meet a girl that would make him realize how touch-starved he truly was. 


—————————-


I stared at the people below me, all their faces enamoured with awe as they beheld me. I was a commoner moments before, but here I sat- a crown atop my head.

I felt his fingers squeeze my hand and tried to stop my flinch. His red eyes boring into the side of my face. I knew he was grinning from ear to ear. I knew he had set all this up for me. Not to show me. But… to warn me.

Thousands of eyes leered at me and I knew what was to come would be much worse than what had already happened.

“Long Live the King and his Queen!” The chants began and I could feel a prickle in the corner of my eyes.

“Do not cry”.  His cold words were warmer than the finger that brushed my eyelid. My eye stilled and slid toward him. “This is all yours now. Just as much as it is mine. A country in the hands of those who hate it. Let’s ruin it all”. The fire burning in those eyes shook my core.

“Long… live the king” I said slowly and deliberately, watching his smile stretch further.

“Long live the queen”. 

———————-

I looked at the massacre around us. There was blood everywhere… why didn't he care for that?

"Why do you want mine?" I asked curiously, face turning pink when he lifted his intoxicated eyes towards me and his face was flushed, lips panting. It sent a strange thrill through me to see a man of such power on his knees, practically begging.


"I want all of you. Everything" he laid a kiss on my skin, breathing in the scent.

Warning: slow- burn R18

The Monsters First Love

I expected him to get angry, for some sort of rage to takeover him. That he might even draw his sword and cut me down. 


But he pulled away and smiled bitterly, a laugh echoing in the library, full of all the dryness of a desert.


"I know, Madeline. I know" he said in such a melancholic manner I felt guilt stabbing away at my heart, but I couldn't be won over by guilt. My entire life was at stake.


"You wouldn't understand even if I explained. After all, you're a complete human. I'm barely a man" his words made me scoff.


"That doesn't make any sense. You're only half vampire , and being vampiric doesn't make someone less of a man" I countered.


"Does it not?" He leaned away from me with a stare that looked so cold I shivered.


"Then do you dream of spending your life with a man who bites into your flesh each night? " he asked.


"Then… women?" He looked at me in surprise and I flushed.


"Then what? You dream of a life alone with twelve cats?" He no longer seemed terrifying as he held a hand over his mouth to cover a smile.


"Wha?- no! I mean- I just meant that I have no interest in men right now. I just want my business to thrive, so I don't care who it is i spend my life with after!" I huffed, turning away to leave, but his next words had me planted.


I snapped my head back to him in surprise.


If he was, his gaze didn't give it away. In fact, I could only feel that he was testing me with a cold aloofness about him. As if whatever my answer was, it made no difference.


I turned away from him again, clutching the book closer to me.


"I don't plan on spending my whole life in Grandor…" I confessed.


He didn't reply, but I felt heat radiate onto my back and a shadow fell over me.


"I was hoping that if the store in the capital is a success I would begin tailoring clothes towards other species. After all, why stop when my brothers have made it so much farther. " 


I hadn't planned on telling this to a single soul. For fear my father would catch wind and lock me up. Most of my travels were kept secret from him. As far as he knew I had never met anyone outside the capital and our village. I didn't even dream of confessing that I had travelled to the Empire twice already.


"Then you have no plans on settling down here?" He finally spoke.


I tensed when I felt the warmth of his breath on my neck, his voice seductive as always. A finger coyly played with a loose strand of hair that fell by my earlobe.


"No. I don't care if they're human, but I learned too much about Grandor to consider it the lovely nation I've been brainwashed into thinking it is" I answered thoughtlessly. Or rather maybe I was so comfortable with the thought of speaking to Jules I forgot he was also the future ruler of the land I despised.


"Change it?" I caught sight of him in my peripheral view, there was a smile on his lips and his eyes were trained near my face. Where… I couldn't pinpoint.


"The land you so despise has given you a chance. You could change it all for the better future you dream of. To make Grandor have whatever you know it lacks" his words made my head spin.


"I have no interest in being queen!" I turned to him our faces barely apart as I glared at him.


He gave me a wolfish grin, clearly finding my troubles entertaining.


"You don't need to be queen to make changes. Rather it's better not to be queen for such matter" he stepped back as my brows knit, "I can promise I'll help you avoid being queen if you become a royal advisor".


Chapter 30