Rayne

Chapter Three: Adrian

"You're being awfully weird." Eleanor snapped me out of my thoughts. I was busy looking at the bruised up girl that had her head on my lap as I sat in the back seat with her.

"What? Why?" I asked her in confusion.

"What's so special about that girl? Why are you so drawn to her?" She questioned, eyeing me.

"I'm not!" I argued.

"You are! Look at you!" Roland sided with Eleanor, making me role my eyes.

"I'm not drawn to her! I just feel sorry for her. She looks like she has been tortured for so long and she looks so...innocent," I tried to justify my actions to them. A voice inside of my head told me that whatever I was feeling was not just out of pity.

"Be careful, we don't know her kind yet, and she will most probably be a human, you know the rules," Roland warned me.

"Of course I know the rules, I'm an emperor," I muttered. According to the law, Vampires cannot get in any kind of relationship with human beings. Friendship is the only allowed connection and it is not preferable. If a vampire fell in love with a human being, then both of them shall be executed. Many people got executed because of that law. No matter how harsh the laws are, I think you can never control your feeling towards somebody in spite of its kind.

"Can you hurry? Her skin is getting colder, she will die if you didn't drive faster," I asked Roland since he was driving.

"So what if she dies? We've witnessed more tragic deaths in our lives," Eleanor said causally. Why was she being so heartless towards her?

"I don't know, I just want to save her," I confessed, looking down at her. Her chest was rising and falling slowly, as if it was not moving at all, giving me the feeling that she might stop breathing in any second.

An hour later, we finally arrived at my castle and the moment Roland parked the car, I picked the girl's injured body carefully yet quickly and ran with my supersonic speed to the hospital ward inside the castle.

The doctor, who was a human, immediately stood up once he saw me and I gently lay her body on the bed. Humans had their own doctors who were also considered slaves, yet they did not do any kind of slavery jobs and same thing was with the nurses.

I kept a human doctor in my empire in case one of my slaves got sick. I was never fond of mistreating my slaves. Although I was known to be a cold-hearted monster among vampires, humans saw me as a merciful emperor. A part of me always wanted to give them a glimpse of what they got deprived of.

"Can you treat her?" I asked him as I saw him examining her. I could read his thoughts, he thought that she was a lost cause.

"I'll do my best," he answered me. His answer was diplomatic and that was what I liked about him.

"What do the primary examinations indicate?" I asked him and the first word that came to his mind was 'death'. "Something apart from death," I added and he gave me an apologetic look.

"Well, she is severely malnourished and dehydrated. Her blood pressure is very low and so is her sugar level. Her heart is barely beating too," he informed me.

"Do your best and treat her, I don't want her to die," I told him before leaving the room. I did not want to show my emotions in the presence of anyone. Emotions are a dangerous weapon that usually backfires. Emotions are better off hidden.

I made my way to my room, hoping that I could be blessed with a couple of hours of sleeping. After I took off my clothes, I lay down in my king sized bed. My room was divided into three parts. A part that contained the bed and the dresser, the other part consisted of a big L shaped couch and a TV and the last part was the dressing room.

I spent five hours tossing and turning, failing to sleep. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw her in front of me. I saw her beaten, bruised and bloody body. I saw her with her closed eyes, torn clothes and long tangled brown hair. Her image was haunting me down and I could not escape it. I groaned out in frustration and sat up in bed. I looked at the clock and saw it was already 10 in the morning.

I gave up on sleeping and got out of bed. I went to the bathroom and took a shower in an attempt to relax my muscles. After thirty minutes of staying under the hot water, I decided that I have had enough and stepped out of the shower.

I dried myself then wrapped a towel around my torso and made my way to the dressing room. I got dressed in a black suit and a white shirt and black shoes. I did not bother to wear a tie as I hated them a lot. I saw them as nothing except a means of suffocation.

I couldn't help but keep thinking about what James said to me. He didn't have any ounce of guilt in his bones for what he has done to her. He spoke of it as if it was pure justice. What could this girl have done to him to make him torture her like that? If anything, she seemed powerless and weak.

I wonder how long he has been torturing her to make her reach that state. By reading Brian’s thoughts, the human doctor, I could tell that it would be a miracle if she survived.

I left my room and made my way to the hospital ward to check on her, hoping to find her alive. I walked to the doctor's office and found that another doctor has taken the shift.

"Good morning," I said, gaining his attention as he was busy writing some things down.

"Good morning, sir," he said, standing up.

"A girl was brought here last night, how is she doing?" I asked him, "and I'd like to see her," I told him.

He walked from behind the desk and we both walked to the room where she was; she was in the ICU.

"We managed to stabilize her blood pressure, her sugar level and her heart beats, but she is still not fully okay. After running tests on her, we found that she doesn't suffer from any terminal diseases," he informed me.

"Is she still asleep?" I asked him and he nodded his head.

"She is weak, her body couldn't take the amount of pain she was put through, so she ended up passing out. We gave her a lot of painkillers to numb her pain, but these painkillers also wore her out. She will most probably wake up around sunset," he answered me.

"Do you think she will die?" I had to ask that question, I had to feed my curiosity.

"No, she was brought at the right time," he assured me. Relief washed over me once he uttered that sentence. I didn't want her to die, I had a feeling that there was a huge secret behind this girl and I wanted to reveal it.

I walked inside the ICU and saw her thin body on the bed. She was all cleaned up and her wounds were stitched. It was more obvious now to see her facial features and she looked really pretty, more like gorgeous.

"Inform me once she wakes up, I'd like to talk to her," I told the doctor.

"But she won't be able to talk a lot once she wakes up."

"Understandable, I won't exhaust her," I said and he nodded.

I left the hospital ward and went to my study room to look at the daily reports about the empire.

"Finally saw you!" I heard the familiar cheery voice of Olivia as she jumped out of nowhere, startling me as I walked to my study.

"Have you ever heard of a vampire who died because another vampire scared him?" I asked her and she shook her head innocently as she grinned, looking at me. "Well if you don't stop doing that to me then you'll hear about that," I said making her smile. I was too busy thinking about the girl that I didn't hear Olivia's thoughts before she scared me.

"I missed you!" She said as we both walked together through the long halls. Olivia could be considered my little sister. I have known her since we were both humans. She is younger than me by twenty years. Her father was a close friend to my family and I have always been nothing but a big brother to her. She got turned during the same time I got crowned and I can still remember how scared she was. Luckily, she was blessed with two gifts which made it easy for me to take her to live with me in the castle since not all kinds of vampires were welcomed inside according to the sick protocol we all had to follow. However, I managed not to make her do any job, but since she wanted to be a nurse, she sometimes volunteered at the hospital ward for both vampire and human patients.

"I know I've been so busy," I looked at her apologetically as we both walked inside my study. Not everyone was allowed here, but she was allowed to be anywhere in the castle.

"Hey! What about that girl you brought in last night?" She asked me, looking extremely curious.

"Words travel so fast, huh?" I chuckled, causing her to laugh a little and nod her head.

"I don't really know much about her," I shrugged.

"Tell me what happened! How did you find her?" She insisted, not letting go of the topic. This was normal, Olivia was being Olivia and I had no other option but to tell her.