The Princess's Dangerous Vampire Mate-Chapter 412: The silence

< royal residence of astria >

Gone.

She was gone.

Tristan had been through the entire jungle, front and back, North, west, East, and South, every direction he had been through to find her, but he came up with absolutely nothing.

Not a trace of her scent that he could catch up with.

Even the dogs that had been bred for this came up empty.

The vampires who have been trained to catch up on scent came up empty.

Now he stood at the entrance of the gardens, overlooking them as the sun came above, slowly, yet quick enough for everything to be lightened and visible.

"She has not been found and so has her sister." His uncle Dominique said from behind him. "They came back from the ride and went into the gardens. Unfortunately, no one was walking behind them or to see—"

"Do you think I would not know if she ran away?" His voice was soft, yet a vampire present in the ground heard it. "Why do you think I came back, dearest Uncle?"

It was going to be a little time until everyone realized what he was thinking about. Everyone in his court, especially the vampires, were intelligent enough to catch onto everything quickly. It was only a matter of time before they came to his train of thoughts.

"Do you mean," Dawson asked, " that perhaps Genevieve has not run away, rather was taken?"

Thank the goddess.

"Yes."

Dominique huffed. "But how—"

"Explain to me, otherwise why is there not a single trace of her scent here? We have been checking every thing that encounters her and nothing has been brought from the outside that we do not know. No potion and no medicine that can do anything for us yet there is no scent of her being in this garden. Explain how I, her beloved, cannot smell it?"

When Genevieve, almost months ago, had orchestrated an entire mutiny with the humans, she had used some kind of medicine that they had never encountered.

That the humans were never supposed to know about.

It had made all of them lose consciousness for the night yet, when he woke up, he was able to find her. Right to the doorstep of where she had hidden.

How was this possible now that he was not able to trace her when he had marked her? The bond was supposed to take him straight to her yet he could not feel it. It only meant that she was unconscious at the moment.

"I only came back when I felt the fear she felt. It took me a little time to come back given that I had human soldiers with me. But she felt fear." Fear that his beloved should not have been through.

Fear that in a palace surrounded by vampires, should have never been something she felt.

"That explains a lot of things, Dominique. Tristan came back because he felt her fear. his needs to protect her overcame instinct, but before he could come, she was gone. She did not run away, otherwise she would not be afraid." Dawson tsked. "B—"

"She must have been afraid because she was going to get caught. The human princess must have been flooding out for a long time."

Dawson hissed. "Are you listening to yourself? The girl did not have the time to do that. Irene has been watching her, Anna has been watching her. The addition of a little sister barely came for time to plan anything of such. Not to mention the mark on her neck. The amount of nervousness it would have given her would have made Tristan aware."

Just when he expected his rather intelligent Uncle to agree, he heard him say, "I do not believe this—"

In a flash of a second, he turned around and was nose to nose with his uncle. "What I do not believe at the moment, is your lack of intelligence, Uncle. She did not run away and I know it. She felt fear of her life and I felt it with her. I came back, not because I knew she ran away, but because someone took her away from me and that someone was smart enough to not allow me to trace her back to them."

"Someone has challenged us, in the house we all live in and they won. They won with you in charge of this house, of this community. They won and you lost. What do you have to believe about that now?"

If Dominique wanted to argue, he knew better than to challenge the king; the ruler, the leader they all had chosen.

He simply took a step back and lowered his head.

"You failed at security, and you blame my beloved for that. I would have your head—"

Dawson took a small step. "Not everything needs to have a priority at the moment. Our priority should be making sure that we have found our Queen and her sister, unharmed, and as soon as possible. We do not know where she might be and how far."

With the lack of scent came a lot of disabilities. It was as if they were all blinded—

"I can tell."

Tristan stiffened. He remembered that voice.

He remembered the voice that had once been of a teenage girl that had now changed into the voice of a man.

The man whom he had covered for when he had turned and killed the healer who had cared for him and brought him back to life.

The man whom his beloved had grown closer to, the very man whom he had sent away because of the very reason.

"Diwal?" he turned around and faced the boy who had come closer, yet was five steps away from him. "What do you know?"

The young boy, young in comparison to him, bent down on his knee in front of the king. "I know where the queen is, my king. And if I may ask, we should start moving towards her right away."