Chapter 174: Chapter 174: The Groom 2

AWARENESS RETURNED SLOWLY, like surfacing from deep water.

Warmth. Light. The scent of roses.

Grayson blinked, his vision clearing to reveal… the wedding venue?

He stood at the altar beneath the archway drowning in white roses, exactly where he was supposed to be.

Golden Tuscan sunlight filtered through the courtyard, casting everything in that perfect late-morning glow. Guests filled the curved rows of chairs—familiar faces, supernatural beings he’d known for decades, even centuries.

Everything looked exactly as it should.

Had he… imagined the rest? The van, the chemical fog, the woman’s laugh?

A nightmare, he thought with profound relief. Just a nightmare. Wedding anxiety manifesting as an abduction scenario. That’s embarrassingly predictable for someone who spent three centuries avoiding commitment.

The officiant stood beside him—a tall figure in ceremonial robes who nodded encouragingly. The music swelled, shifting into the processional, and Grayson’s heart kicked into a higher rhythm.

Mailah.

The entrance veil drew back with perfect dramatic timing.

And there she was.

His breath caught, the same way it had caught every time he’d seen her, but magnified a thousand-fold because she was walking toward him in a wedding dress that seemed to capture light itself.

The veil covered her face, but he could see the shape of her through the delicate lace—the curve of her cheek, the line of her throat, the way she moved with careful grace despite obvious nerves.

Lucien walked beside her—when had they arranged that?—offering his arm, guiding her down the aisle with surprising gentleness.

The guests turned to watch, murmuring appreciation, and Grayson felt a swell of pride so intense it bordered on painful.

That’s my bride. My Mailah.

She reached the altar. Lucien stepped back with a small bow, taking his place among the crowd.

Mailah stood before him, close enough to touch, her veil still in place. Through the lace, he could see her eyes—blue as summer sky, bright with what might have been tears or joy or both.

“Hi,” she whispered.

“Hi,” he managed, his voice rough with emotion.

The officiant began speaking—words about bonds and choices and permanence that Grayson barely registered because all his attention was focused on Mailah.

On the way her hands trembled slightly holding the bouquet. On the rapid flutter of her pulse visible at her throat. On the small smile playing at the corner of her mouth, the one that suggested she was as nervous and overwhelmed and desperately happy as he was.

“Do you, Grayson Ashford, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?” the officiant asked.

“I do.” The words came easily, naturally, carrying three centuries of loneliness and the absolute certainty that it was finally, miraculously ending.

“And do you, Mailah—”

“I do,” she said before the officiant could finish, drawing soft laughter from the guests.

“Then by the power vested in me, I pronounce you bound by choice, by bond, by love. You may kiss your bride.”

This was it. The moment he’d been simultaneously dreading and desperately anticipating.

Grayson reached for the veil with hands that shook slightly despite centuries of supernatural control. The delicate lace felt real beneath his fingers—textured, gossamer-light, expensive. He lifted it slowly, savoring the moment, watching as Mailah’s face was gradually revealed.

Her forehead. Her eyes—still that impossible blue that reminded him of—

His breath stopped.

The eyes looking back at him weren’t Mailah’s.

They were violet.

Impossibly violet, like crushed amethyst, like twilight in a realm he hadn’t seen in three hundred years.

The face beneath the veil shifted, features rearranging themselves with supernatural fluidity. Hair darkening from Mailah’s brown to black so deep it seemed to absorb light. Skin paling to alabaster. Lips curving into a smile he’d spent two centuries trying to forget.

“Hello, Grayson,” Seryn said, her voice carrying harmonics that didn’t exist in the human spectrum. “Did you miss me?”

The world fragmented.

Reality cracked like broken glass, the wedding venue shattering into a thousand prismatic pieces. The guests dissolved into smoke. The roses withered and fell, petals turning to ash before they hit the ground. The golden light twisted into something sickly, greenish, wrong.

Dream. This is a dream.

No—not a dream.

A manipulation.

Grayson tried to move, to step back, to do anything, but his body remained frozen. Trapped in this constructed reality by power he recognized too well.

“Oh, don’t look so betrayed,” Seryn continued, circling him with predatory grace. She still wore Mailah’s wedding dress, but it looked different on her—darker somehow, despite being the same white fabric. “You had to know I’d come for you eventually. Three centuries is a long time to hold a grudge, but I’m very patient.”

The dream space solidified around them—no longer the wedding venue but something else entirely. A throne room Grayson remembered from nightmares, all black marble and violet fire, existing in a pocket dimension between states of consciousness.

“This isn’t real,” he said, testing his voice, relieved when it worked. “You’re in my head.”

“Technically, you’re in my head. Or rather, you’re in a carefully constructed dreamscape I’ve been preparing for months.” Seryn gestured to the space around them. “Do you like it? I modeled it after our old meeting place. Nostalgic, isn’t it?”

“How?”

“How am I here? How did I take you from your own wedding?” Her smile widened. “Oh, Grayson. You always underestimated me. That was your brothers’ mistake too.”

She moved closer, and he felt the dream space tighten around him—not physically restraining him, but making movement feel impossible, like trying to run through water.

The dream space shuddered, and Grayson felt something pulling at him—consciousness trying to surface, his body attempting to wake.

She moved close one final time, close enough that Grayson could see every detail of her face—still heartbreakingly beautiful despite everything she’d done, despite three centuries of separation.

The dream space collapsed.

Reality rushed back in fragments—not the cold metal of the van this time, but something different. Stone beneath him. Not floor, but a bed. Fabric against his skin. Warmth instead of chemical cold.

Grayson’s eyes opened slowly, his vision swimming before gradually focusing.

A room.

He was in a room.

Stone walls, but not dungeon-rough. These were smooth, precisely cut, fitted together with supernatural craftsmanship. Violet light emanated from crystals embedded in the walls at regular intervals, casting everything in that familiar, unsettling glow he remembered from another realm, another lifetime.

He lay on a bed—an actual bed with silk sheets and pillows that smelled faintly of lavender and something darker, more exotic. His wedding suit was still intact, though rumpled from travel and unconsciousness.

Grayson tried to sit up.

His body refused.

Not bound—he could see his hands lying free at his sides, no restraints visible. But the paralysis remained, as if someone had severed the connection between intention and action. His limbs felt distant, unresponsive, like they belonged to someone else entirely.

Move, he commanded his body. Get up. Fight. Do something.

Nothing.

He reached for his supernatural nature, trying to access the power that should respond instantly to his will. The ability to manipulate desire, to feed, to sense the emotions of others. The demonic strength that could shatter stone or tear through metal.

It flickered weakly—a candle in a hurricane—then guttered out.

Whatever they’d given him hadn’t just paralyzed his human form; it had somehow dampened his supernatural abilities. And his three centuries of carefully controlled feeding, of maintaining minimal power to avoid temptation, meant he had no reserves to burn through it.

He was helpless.

The realization should have terrified him. Instead, a strange calm settled over his thoughts. This was it, then. The consequence he’d been waiting for since the day they were exiled. Three hundred years of running from his past, and it had finally caught up.

A door opened—he heard it rather than saw it, somewhere beyond his limited field of vision.

Footsteps. Light, precise, moving with unhurried confidence.

Then she appeared.

Seryn.

Not in the dream this time. Not a manipulated vision or nightmare construct.

Real.

She’d changed from the wedding dress—or perhaps that had only ever existed in the dreamscape. Now she wore a gown that seemed to cling to her form. Her black hair fell past her shoulders in waves that moved independently of any breeze. And her eyes—those violet eyes that had haunted five brothers for centuries—gleamed with satisfaction.

She was exactly as beautiful as he remembered.

And exactly as dangerous.

“Awake at last,” she said, moving to stand beside the bed where he lay paralyzed. “I was beginning to think I’d miscalculated the dosage. That would have been inconvenient—I’ve gone to such effort to bring you here.”

Grayson tried to speak, but his throat felt lined with sandpaper. A rough sound emerged, barely a whisper.

Seryn tilted her head, studying him with the kind of clinical interest a scientist might show a fascinating specimen. “The sedative will wear off eventually. Probably. It’s calibrated specifically for incubi, which is quite difficult to obtain, as you might imagine. Had to trade three favors and a minor blood oath for it.” She smiled. “You should feel honored.”

He managed to swallow, forcing moisture back into his mouth, and tried again.

“Princess…Why?” The word came out hoarse but audible.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep