All Chapters of BLOOD FOR A BRIDE : Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

-ASARAIAH KAINE-The first sound I heard was screaming.Not mine — not yet.Somewhere beyond the window, the city was alive with noise: gunfire, sirens, the deep animal roar of engines that only meant one thing.War.I sat up fast. The curtains flickered with red light — not from the sun, but from something burning far too close.Downstairs, the house thudded with movement. Boots, shouting, the low electric hum of guns being readied.“Stay in your room.” That’s what he’d said before locking me in.But walls don’t protect you from the truth.And the truth was leaking through the cracks like smoke.The phone on the nightstand buzzed.Unknown number.For a second, I thought it was Calla. I wanted it to be Calla.But when I answered, there was only static — and a voice I didn’t recognize, low and urgent.“You should’ve run when you had the chance.”“Who is this?”“He’s not saving you. He’s cleaning up the mess you made.”“What are you talking about?”“Check the window.”The line went dead

-ASARAIAH KAINE-The days blurred together after that night.Time didn’t move in the Kaine mansion—it circled. Morning became evening, evening became smoke, and sleep was just something that happened to other people.The house had gone quiet again, the kind of quiet that hummed like a secret. Leina and Liya still came and went with trays of food I barely touched. Afsana stopped humming. Even Gaya walked softer.They were all afraid to disturb him.So was I.It had been three days since I found him in chains. Three nights of silence between us. I slept in the chair across from his bed, half-dreaming, half-watching, like some strange guard keeping vigil over her own captor.Sometimes he twitched in his sleep, muttering names I didn’t recognize. Sometimes he whispered mine. And sometimes—when the moonlight hit him just right—I’d swear his skin almost shimmered, like something just beneath it wanted out.I didn’t ask questions.Not yet.The mansion felt colder now. Not because of the air,

-ASARAIAH KAINE - The mansion felt colder after the fire.Not the kind of cold you fix with blankets — the kind that settles in the walls, in your bones, in the air between two people who no longer know how to reach for each other.I moved to the opposite wing without asking.No one questioned it.Gaya oversaw the change quietly. She brought my clothes, my paints, even the cracked mug I always used for coffee. But she didn’t bring my wedding ring. I’d left it on the sink days ago.Every morning, Afsana would leave breakfast on a tray and slip out like a ghost.Every night, Leina would light candles by the windows so the shadows looked smaller.And Malrik?He didn’t come.⸻The world outside kept spinning — Kaine Syndicate meetings, new alliances, people whispering that the docks were still burning underwater.But inside this house, time had stopped.I stopped trying to fill the silence with excuses.Stopped pretending I was healing.You don’t heal from being broken open; you learn to

-ASARAIAH KAINE- Some people study their monsters to learn how to kill them. I studied mine to learn how to love him without losing myself. It started three days after the chain. The key sat on my nightstand like an accusation. I hadn’t used it yet — not because I was brave, but because I didn’t know if locking the door would actually keep him out. Malrik didn’t need doors. He just appeared. That morning, I went about pretending life was normal. Breakfast. Coffee. Half a conversation with Afsana about the flowers in the garden. The kind of domestic routine you cling to when the world around you is made of blood and secrets. But by night, the stillness always came back. And with it, the curiosity. He hadn’t come to my room again. Not once. He was keeping his promise — the distance. But that made it worse. Because silence has a sound when you love someone like him — the kind that hums against your skin like an invisible pulse. I told myself it was time to face it. Time to

-ASARAIAH KAINE- Morning came late in this house. It always did — like even the sun was afraid to show up uninvited. When I woke, Gaya had already been in. The curtains were open, the coffee was black, and the folded newspaper on the tray carried another headline about Kaine Industries expanding into Milan. A lie, of course. Expansion was just another word for conquest. I skimmed the pages anyway, pretending to care about stocks while the real markets ran on blood and loyalty. My hands still smelled faintly of smoke from last night. The tension in that room hadn’t faded — Drayan’s calm voice, Malrik’s quiet fury, the weight of what neither of them said. And that final truth: He loved her too. Zenaida. I closed the paper and whispered into the silence, “So what am I then? The sequel?” The walls didn’t answer. They never did. Downstairs, the house was too clean again. The kind of clean that meant something ugly had happened somewhere else. Afsana passed me in the hall carr