My friend and I married into the Castellar family together.

I married the older brother, who worked in high finance.

My best friend married the younger, a senior fire officer.

They didn’t tell us the truth until we were both pregnant.

They were vampires.

We were furious.

But in the end, we forgave them because we still loved them.

Until that night.

We were staying at a vacation cabin when the fire started after midnight.

The front door sealed itself shut, locked by a spell, trapping me inside.

My best friend had gone out for a walk and escaped the fire by sheer luck.

A car passed by on the forest road.

She ran into the headlights, begging the driver to ram the door and save me.

The man said coldly, “Pay first.”

Inside the cabin, blood ran down my legs and soaked the floor.

I tried to transfer the money, but my account was frozen.

I called my husband.

He hung up three times before the call finally went through.

But the voice that answered wasn’t his.

It was a woman’s.

Vicky sounded calm, almost amused.

She said he was busy.

Then she added lightly that he’d been helping her set up a subcard and had accidentally disabled mine.

My best friend called her husband next.

She was crying. She told him there was a fire and I was trapped.

He snapped back at her.

“Stop lying. I hate people who make false emergency calls. I’m with Vicky checking fire hazards in her new place. Don’t bother me.”

She didn’t hesitate again.

She shoved the driver out, and drove straight into the cabin.

The door shattered.

She dragged me out with her bare hands.

We lost our babies on the way to the hospital.

When I woke up,we looked at each other for a long time.

“I’m getting divorced,” she said.

“So am I.”

When I woke up in the hospital, my belly was already flat.

There was no connection left between me and my baby. I couldn’t feel anything anymore.

With the nurse’s help, I sent Lucien a message right away.

I want a divorce.

Not long after the message was delivered, my phone rang.

It was him.

“How many times do I have to tell you? Vicky and I have just known each other for a long time. We’re close. She’s my friend. Am I not allowed to help a friend?”

“Stop making things up. A miscarriage? Our children are strong. Vampire babies aren’t like human ones.”

“She already explained the subcard issue to me. It was my mistake. If you’re jealous, just say it. Don’t use divorce and the baby to threaten me.”

A man whose entire career revolved around money accidentally frozed my card.

And he expected me to believe it.

Before I could respond, he hung up on me.

Back then, when I became pregnant and my body weakened so badly that I couldn’t work, he was the one who said he would take care of me.

He promised he would give anything to me.

I tightened my grip on my phone and looked at my best friend.

Lucien never lacked money.

Yet because I couldn’t get any that night, my best friend’s baby died too.

I had been with Lucien for two years before marriage, married for a year, and I almost gave birth to his child.

During pregnancy, I grew frighteningly thin.

It felt like all my strength and nourishment were being drained by the life inside me, while Lucien and Ethan stayed full of anticipation.

They would place their hands on our stomachs, speaking softly, saying they could feel the heartbeats.

Sometimes they joked that the babies were talking and singing to them.

We were exhausted, but we were happy.

And then everything collapsed in an instant.

After Vicky returned, Lucien rarely came home.

She even visited us privately because of guilt.

She had married a human before. The marriage fell apart within two years and left her in debt.

This time, she said she had come back to seek help from her own kind.

As women, my friend and I sympathized with her.

We never thought twice.

She was also a vampire, skilled in ancient spells meant to protect unborn bloodlines.

Early in our pregnancies, she had placed protective magic on our children.

That cabin trip was supposed to be me, Claire, and our husbands together.

Instead, the night before, our husbands were called away by her.

Inside the fire, I experienced fear like never before.

The smoke choked me. The heat made it hard to stand.

I smelled something strange.

I pounded on the locked door, but it wouldn’t budge.

A sharp burning pain exploded in my palm.

A faint vampire spell flickered across the door.

Then silver beads poured in through the gap beneath it.

I was carrying a vampire child. My body reacted instinctively to silver.

One bead made me slip and fall.

After that, I couldn’t feel my baby’s heartbeat anymore.

Tears blurred my vision as I tried again and again to call Lucien.

When the call finally connected, it wasn’t him who answered.

It was her.

The vampire woman I once believed was harmless and kind.

“I’m sorry, Caroline,” she said lightly.

“You know Lucien. When he worries about me, he gets flustered. He must have accidentally disabled your card.”

“I mean, one night without spending Lucien’s money won’t kill you, right?” she laughed.

Through the phone, I heard my husband laughing with her.

“Rabbit blood, or deer blood?”

I looked down.

My blood had soaked into the wooden floor.

My child was dying, and there was nothing I could do.

Betrayal and terror numbed my body.

Outside the window, my best friend’s voice grew weaker and weaker.

I couldn't hear anything.

I replayed every moment of my relationship with Lucien in my mind and suddenly realized something.

He had never once joked with me.

When I finally gave up on surviving, my best friend ignored her own pregnancy.

She seized the car and drove it straight into the door.

In the roaring flames, the last thing I saw was her pants stained with blood.

She saved me.

But she lost her child forever.

At that moment, my best friend was lying in the hospital bed next to mine.

She was still very weak, yet she forced herself to stand and came to sit beside me.

Her eyes were red. She was crying quietly, trying to hold it in.

I thought she was mourning her own child.

I didn’t expect the first thing I heard from her to be an apology.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “When I went out for a walk, I saw a suspicious woman. It was so late, and I didn’t dare to catch her. She disappeared so quickly.

“If I had stopped her, you wouldn’t have…”

She wrapped her arms around my shoulders carefully, but her sobs grew louder.

My foolish friend.

She was the one who saved me.

I was about to comfort her when her phone suddenly rang.

It was her husband, Ethan, who worked in the fire department.

“You texted me saying you miscarried? And you even cursed my brother?” he snapped.

“Are you out of your mind? The babies had Vicky’s protective spell. How could anything happen? I told you already, Vicky is a friend. A friend. Do you even understand that?

“And arson? What nonsense are you making up now? At least make your lies believable. Do you know what my job is? Don’t joke about fires.

“Oh, you said you miscarried and want a divorce? Fine. I’ll divorce you. Don’t come crawling back later.”

My friend tried to say something, but her voice caught in her throat.

She could only sit there, crying in silence.

He cursed a few more times. When no one answered, he hung up.

“Claire,” I said softly, “you’re brave and strong. He doesn’t deserve you.”

She hugged me tightly, all the emotions she had been holding back finally breaking free.

“Maybe we never should have married vampires in the first place.”

We held each other, realizing how foolish we were to believe in love and loyalty from vampire.

My tears soaked into Claire’s shoulder.

Yes. They were loyal.

Just not to their wives.

They were only loyal to Vicky.

The woman who had once abandoned them for a human.

Only then did I understand why Vicky had deliberately mentioned the anniversary of her transformation that day and why our husbands had fallen silent the moment she spoke.

We had thought our weddings happened to fall on the same day as that anniversary.

We told ourselves it was just a coincidence.

We even believed what the two men told us.

We took care of Vicky.

We treated her kindly. We let her treat our home as her own.

In the end, it turned out we were the outsiders.

It was a pity that we only understood this after losing our children.

After we finally managed to calm down, just as we were about to rest, Vicky called.

Claire and I exchanged a look. We hesitated for a moment, then answered.

“Caroline? Claire? I’m so relieved you’re okay.”

“They told me you were upset. I really need to explain. We’re just friends.”

From the other end of the line, I could hear laughter.

Voices from our husbands were close and careless.

“Stop it! Lucien, Ethan! I’m trying to explain things to your wives. This isn’t the time to joke around. Hey, stop it!”

I had never heard Lucien laugh like that before.

So light. So unrestrained.

“Put me down. Put me down. Don’t mess around!”

I didn’t want to imagine what they were doing.

Even if I confronted them, they would only brush it off with the same excuse.

They had known each other for a long time.

This was how they had always behaved around each other.

Vampires were closer with each other than humans ever were.

At least, that was what they claimed.

No cheating. Just closeness between friends.

After the call ended, Claire and I looked at each other and gave bitter smiles.

“Vampires really are… open-minded,” Claire said. “I wonder if their bed at home is even big enough.”

Then she seriously started wondering whether STDs could spread among vampires.

I laughed despite myself, then winced as the movement pulled at my wound.

After a moment, I said, “It’s fine. Let’s call a lawyer. Let’s get divorced as soon as possible. Before we catch something from them.”

The lawyer told us the documents had already been delivered to our husbands.

We, however, received no response.

Maybe they were too busy having fun with Vicky to even read them.

Or maybe they thought we were just being jealous again.

Saying divorce just means we are throwing a tantrum.

That we would never actually go through with it.

But the babies were gone.

Was I supposed to keep waiting for a cheating husband after that?

Why did he think I would keep loving him forever? Keep being his wife?

I quickly lost my patience and called Lucien.

After an entire day and night without hearing from his pregnant wife, the moment he answered, all he did was yell.

“I’ve seen the papers. There should be a limit to your jokes. Do you have any idea what my subordinates would think if they found out I was getting divorced?”

“ Are you trying to humiliate me? How long are you going to keep throwing this tantrum?”

I sighed.

He hadn’t even noticed that I hadn’t been home for two days.

Claire and I were both hospitalized.

No one checked on us.

No one even thought to go home and see if we were there.

“Hey, Lucien. Show your wife some respect.”

Vicky’s voice was very close to the phone.

“Humans are fragile,” she said softly. “Pregnancy makes emotions unstable. Don’t blame her. This is my fault. I’ve troubled you too much.”

The moment she finished talking, Lucien rushed to respond, his tone noticeably gentler.

“Don’t push yourself. It’s not a burden at all. We’ve known each other for how long now? Caroline and I have only been together a few years. She should understand.”

I couldn’t listen anymore.

I leaned over the side of the bed and started retching.

Back then, he had lied to me. He said he was lonely. That he needed a wife by his side.

He had promised to turn me after I gave birth, told me not to worry about the strain on my body.

If all this pain had been Vicky’s instead, would he have allowed it?

Because I am human, he had always looked down on me.

Maybe he had never truly loved me at all.

I was nothing more than a tool. Something to make Vicky jealous.

Claire wrapped her arms around me again, holding me steady.

“Don’t cry over a disgusting vampire like that,” she said. “Once we recover, we’ll have the lawyer set a meeting and finalize the divorce.”