The Vampire Duke’s Forbidden Mate

What Wears His Face

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"You," Bryn said, cheeks flushed, embarrassment sharpening instantly into indignation, "are the insufferable one from the ball."

"So you've said." Karl retrieved the bolt of green silk from where it had nearly slipped from her arms and held it out to her, unbothered, as though the collision hadn't happened at all. "Twice now, in fact. I begin to wonder if it's the only thought you're capable of holding."

The words landed harder than his usual dry dismissals, and Bryn's mouth opened, then closed, some of her bravado faltering before she recovered it. "Excuse me?"

"You march through a crowded market without watching where you're going, then act wounded when the world doesn't part conveniently around you." His voice remained level, unbothered, which somehow made it worse than shouting would have. "I don't say this to be cruel. Only to observe that a woman who wishes to be taken seriously might start by paying attention to something beyond her own delight."

Bryn stared at him, something flickering behind her eyes that wasn't quite anger anymore—closer, for one unguarded moment, to hurt. "You don't know anything about me."

"I know you nearly upended a merchant's entire table admiring silk you have no coin to purchase," Karl said. "I know enough."

"That's not—" She stopped, jaw tight, and Elsie, hovering several feet back, shifted uncomfortably, sensing the shift in the air even if she didn't understand its cause. Bryn drew herself up instead, chin lifting, though her voice had lost some of its earlier fire. "You're cruel."

"I'm honest," Karl said. "There's a difference, whatever you've been told."

He inclined his head, the same cool, unbothered formality as before, and walked on without waiting for her response, leaving Bryn standing amid the market's noise with her cheeks burning—not entirely from anger, this time, though she'd have denied that fiercely if asked.

---

Maren noticed something was wrong the moment she stepped into the front hall that evening.

The staff moved differently—quicker, quieter, eyes darting toward the upper floors before dropping back to their work. A young footman nearly dropped a tray of glasses at the sound of a door closing somewhere above, and when Maren asked Odera where Cassian had gone, the housekeeper's usual composure slipped, just slightly, into something more careful.

"Lord Cassian has retired for the evening," Odera said. "It would be best not to disturb him."

"Is something wrong?"

"He has his moods, on occasion." Odera's voice was measured, deliberately even, in a way that told Maren more than the words themselves. "It's best, on such nights, to let him be."

Maren might have accepted that, once. But she'd caught the murmur of two maids in the hallway earlier, voices hushed but not quite hushed enough—*not since the last one*, one had said, before noticing Maren and falling silent, faces going pale. She hadn't understood it then. She understood, now, that she didn't like not understanding it.

She waited until the house had gone mostly quiet, until Odera had retired and the halls had emptied of anxious staff, before she made her way up the west staircase—toward the wing she'd never once been invited into, Cassian's private chambers, a place that had remained, until tonight, entirely his own.

The door was unlocked. That, more than anything, unsettled her—some part of her had expected resistance, a barrier she'd have to argue her way past. Instead it gave easily beneath her hand, swinging open onto a room steeped in darkness, curtains drawn tight against the moon, the air thick with the sharp, bitter smell of liquor.

"Cassian?"

No answer. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom, picking out shapes—an overturned chair, papers scattered across the floor, the glint of glass. Several bottles lay discarded near the hearth, one shattered against the stone, dark liquid pooled beneath it like something spilled and forgotten.

And then she saw him.

He was curled against the wall near his bed, knees drawn to his chest, utterly still in a way that made her breath catch—not the composed, graceful stillness she knew from him, but something folded in on itself, small and wrong.

"Cassian." She crossed the room slowly, carefully, crouching beside him. Up close, she could see his hands trembling faintly where they gripped his own arms, his head bowed low enough that his hair hid his face entirely. "Cassian, it's me. Can you hear me?"

Nothing. Not a flicker of acknowledgment.

Some instinct told her to leave, to fetch Odera, to not be alone in this dark room with a man who wasn't answering her. But a stronger instinct—the same one that had carried her toward him at the ball, tether-tight and unquestioning—pulled her hand toward his shoulder instead, gentle, meant only to comfort.

The moment she touched him, his head snapped up.

His eyes were open, and they were red—not the brief, flickering red she'd seen at the lake, gone as quickly as it came, but a deep, saturated crimson that filled his gaze entirely, glowing faintly in the dark like something lit from within. There was no warmth in them. No recognition. He looked at her the way she imagined a starving animal might look at something finally, helplessly within reach.

"Cassian, you're scaring me," she whispered, her voice small, her hand frozen where it had landed on his shoulder. "Please, say something—"

He moved before she'd finished the sentence.

It happened too fast to track—one moment she was crouched beside him, the next her back hit the floor, his weight pinning her beneath him with a speed that stole the air from her lungs entirely. A cry tore loose from her throat, sharp with shock, but he didn't seem to hear it, didn't seem to see *her* at all behind that hollow crimson stare.

"Cassian—" His name came out broken, pleading. "Cassian, please, it's me—"

He didn't answer. His face lowered instead, nose grazing along the line of her throat, dragging in a slow, unsteady breath that ended in a low, guttural sound rumbling deep in his chest—not quite a groan, something rawer, hungrier. She felt the graze of something sharp against her skin, felt him shudder above her at whatever he found in her scent, and terror closed cold and absolute around her heart.

"Please," she sobbed, hands pressing uselessly against his chest, finding no give at all in the iron stillness of his body. "Please, stop—"

His tongue dragged, slow and deliberate, along the curve of her throat, and she went rigid beneath him, every part of her screaming to run, to fight, to do anything at all—but there was nowhere to go, no strength in her limbs that could move him even an inch.

It was only when his fangs finally broke skin—a sharp, searing sting at the side of her throat—that the sound tore out of her at last, loud and raw and utterly involuntary, a cry of pure pain that seemed to crack something open in the silence of the room.

He went still.

Then, with the same impossible speed that had pinned her only moments before, he was gone—off her, across the room, pressed against the far wall with one hand clamped over his own mouth, his whole body shaking.

"Maren." His voice cracked on her name, horror flooding back into features that had gone slack and human again, eyes wide and pale grey once more, stripped of every trace of red. "Maren, I—what did I—"

She didn't move. Couldn't. Her hand rose slowly to her throat, fingers coming away slick and dark, and the sight of her own blood on her fingertips seemed to break something in him entirely.

"No." He said it like a plea, backing further into the wall as though he could somehow put more distance between them than the room allowed. "No, no—get out."

"Cassian—"

"*Get out!*" The shout tore out of him, ragged, more anguish than anger, his hands fisting in his own hair as though he might tear something out of himself by force. "Get out, Maren, please, before I—just *go*—"

She scrambled backward, legs unsteady beneath her, some part of her still reaching for him even as every instinct screamed to run. "You need help, let me—"

"*GO.*"

The word cracked through the room like a whip, and this time she obeyed, stumbling toward the door with her hand pressed hard against the wound at her throat, blood warm and slow against her fingers. She didn't look back—couldn't, didn't trust herself not to return to him if she did—and the door shut behind her with a soft, final click that felt far louder than it should have.

She stood alone in the darkened hallway, shaking, her back pressed to the wood of his door, listening to something inside crash against the wall—a bottle, perhaps, or a fist—followed by silence.

For the first time since the mark had bloomed like a lotus beneath her collar, Maren allowed herself to wonder, cold and quiet beneath the pain, whether the man she'd fallen for existed at all—or whether she'd only ever seen the mask he wore over something far less gentle underneath.