Chapter 157

How to Tame My Beastly Husband — Chapter 157. It Was Always You (1)

Chapter 157. It Was Always You (1)

I have to stay calm for now. I have done everything I can. The specialist has my blood, and they will test it, and then…

Then Annette would know if she had been poisoned.

It was unfortunate the results were not immediately available. The specialist would test her blood with various substances, and the reaction would prove whether or not Annette had been poisoned. Until then, she could do nothing but wait.

Annette did not have dinner. She had no appetite. Lying down in bed, she pulled the blanket over herself, trembling with fear. Now she understood how fearsome her enemy was. The King would pounce on any mistake she made. A single, tiny error could ruin her life.

She wasn’t hiding from it. She was…

Knock knock.

There was a sudden knock at her bedroom door, and though she was hardly in the mood to talk to anyone, the manners that had been trained into her from birth made her start up, answering automatically.

“Who is it?”

Habit could be a terrible thing.

“It’s me. You haven’t had dinner.” Raphael opened the door, even though she hadn’t given him permission to enter. Why even bother to knock, then? Well, at least it was an improvement over her last life, when he had just barged in whenever it pleased him.

It took only a few paces for the tall man to reach the bed, and his expression turned rigid as he saw her curled up in it. He bent down to lay a hand on her forehead.

“Are you sick?”

That soft voice made her eyes filled with tears, and Annette gripped his hand as she began to cry, very different from her usual quiet self.

“What’s wrong?” Raphael asked, his alarm growing. “Are you in pain? Wait, I’ll go get the doctor.”

“No, don’t go.” The doctor might be trying to poison her. “I’m fine. Just…stay with me.”

“Are you really all right?” A very confused Raphael repeated. “You look like you’re really sick.”

The sight of her was making him crazy. He didn’t understand why she was crying, and he didn’t know what to do about it; his mind was utterly blank. Finally, he slid into bed beside her and sat against the headboard, pulling her body into his arms and hesitantly stroking her back. It was good cover to secretly take her temperature.

It didn’t seem like she had a fever, at least. Raphael inwardly sighed with relief. But it made no difference to her tears.

“Why do you keep crying?” He asked anxiously, looking down at his increasingly damp chest. “What’s wrong?”

But still, she just kept weeping. In her ears was Allamand’s voice, telling her that Raphael would never choose her, a growing echo that rolled over her and made her feel like she was drowning.

“Please say something,” Raphael said desperately. Now he understood what it meant for a heart to break, and his arms tightened around her. She was crying too hard to speak, and there was a time where it would have enraged him, where he would have lashed out and demanded an answer because she was making him feel helpless. But he couldn’t do that now.

Because he loved her.

Every time her slender body shook in his arms, it struck at his heart. Her tears soaked through his shirtfront, scorching his skin. It made him want to immediately hunt down whoever had made her cry and slay them immediately. And he wanted to kneel beside her and beg her to stop.

“Haaa…” Raphael closed his eyes. Love and hate were both difficult to conceal, and his love for her had grown so great that it was as if there was no room left for him to breathe. For the first time in his life, love overwhelmed him. And Raphael, who had never conceded to any opponent, finally had to admit defeat.

“Please stop crying,” he whispered. “You’ll get a fever, like this.”

It seemed that her tears slowed as he rocked her, and Raphael kissed the top of her blonde head, softly, so she wouldn’t notice. The scent from that soft hair tickled his heart so much, the confession escaped him involuntarily.

“Annette,” he began slowly. “You asked me before how much I love you.”

He knew what she needed to hear. Her sobs stopped as if she were holding her breath.