Back at the Enforcer's Hall, the atmosphere was heavy.

Marcus displayed his findings before the assembled enforcers. "The victim endured extended torture before death. Multiple broken bones, systematic blade wounds. The methods were deliberate — whoever did this took their time."

The faces around the room darkened.

The cellar wasn't the original crime scene. The body had been moved there, which meant the real location was still out there, along with whatever evidence it held.

"Search every patrol log from the past week," Damien ordered. "Check the boundary wards for anomalies. Someone carried a human body into our territory — the wards should have flagged it."

He turned to Marcus. "Run the Blood Tracing Rite. I want to know who she is."

Then he swept out with his team.

My husband poured more effort into identifying a stranger's corpse than he had ever spent on me while I was alive.

I thought of last month, when I gave him my mother's talisman.

It was the only thing I had left of my family. A small bronze disc engraved with protective symbols, worn smooth by decades of use.

"My mother said it kept her safe her whole life," I told him, pressing it into his palm. "Now I want it to keep you safe."

For a moment, something shifted in his expression. His fingers closed around it gently. I thought — maybe, finally — I had reached something real inside him.

Vivienne came by the next evening.

She spotted the talisman on the table and picked it up, holding it like something diseased. "What is this? Some human superstition charm?" She laughed. "Damien, wearing something like this is an insult to your bloodline."

She dropped it on the floor and ground it under her heel.

I slapped her. Hard. The crack echoed through the room.

Damien's reaction was instant. He seized my wrist, his grip so tight I felt the bones shift. A vampire's full strength against a human arm.

"You dare strike Vivienne?" His face was twisted with rage. "A human, raising her hand against a pureblood? You should be grateful she even acknowledges your existence."

He dragged me to the underground chamber and threw me inside.

Two days. No food. No water. Just darkness, and the sound of Vivienne's laughter drifting down from above.

Now, as Damien's hands moved gently over my ruined body, he murmured, "Tortured like this... her mate must be devastated."

I almost laughed. My mate would probably feel relieved. One less inconvenience.

His fingers traced the long scar running down my back.

I got that scar a year ago. A rogue hunter had ambushed Damien with a Holylight dagger — one of the few weapons that could truly kill a vampire. I saw the blade arc toward his back before he did.

I didn't think. I threw myself between them and took the strike.

A human body against a weapon designed to kill immortals. The blade carved a wound from my shoulder to my hip. The healers said I was lucky to survive.

But afterward, Damien couldn't stand to look at the scar. "Cover it up," he would snap. "I don't want to see that thing."

The scar that proved I would die for him disgusted him.

Could he recognize me through it now?

I held my breath, watching his face.

"Old wound," he said flatly. "Unrelated to the case."

He moved on.

Marcus spoke up. "There's something lodged in her throat." He reached in carefully and extracted a crumpled piece of paper, forced deep enough to choke on.

Damien frowned. "Too damaged to read. Send it to the analysts."

Just then, Vivienne reached out through their blood bond — the telepathic link between bonded vampires. Damien's entire demeanor shifted instantly. The hard lines of his face softened. His voice dropped to something tender.

"Vivienne? What is it?"

"Tomorrow's treatment ritual — will you be there?" Her voice carried that signature sweetness, fragile and brave. "And please, don't pressure Lena about the blood donation. I understand if she doesn't want to help me."

"Nothing is more important than your treatment," Damien answered. "And as for Lena — I will make her come. A human doesn't get to decide whether you live or die."

"I heard she's claiming to be pregnant with your child?" Vivienne sighed softly. "She must be so frightened of the blood draw to make up something like that."

"She's not pregnant," Damien said. "She's lying to avoid saving you. I won't let her get away with it."

Vivienne's voice turned gentle with concern. "Be careful, though. Someone killed a human in our territory. That's unsettling."

"You focus on getting better. Lena can go wherever she wants — as long as she doesn't disappear before I get your blood from her."

They said all of this just steps away from my body.

They planned my future — my blood, my compliance, my usefulness — not knowing that everything Vivienne wanted from me had already gone cold on that stone floor.

My death was Vivienne's design. Every step of it — the fake illness, the impossible demand, the hired killer — all her.

But Damien's blindness made it possible.

Even if he found out the truth right now, would he grieve? Or would he simply rage that Vivienne had lost her only compatible donor?

Damien had barely finished his connection with Vivienne when Clara appeared at the Enforcer's Hall.

"Damien, have you heard from Lena? She had an appointment with a human physician tomorrow — a pregnancy checkup. It's been scheduled for weeks."

Clara was my only friend in the vampire world. She had known Damien before me, but she chose my side. In a world full of vampires who treated me like mobile blood bank, Clara's friendship was the only warmth I had.

"Pregnancy checkup?" Damien's lip curled. "What pregnancy?"

"I've been trying to reach her for days," Clara pressed. "No response to anything. Nothing. I'm worried, Damien."

"Worried about what? She's probably off somewhere throwing a tantrum."

Clara's voice sharpened. "She's your mate. She could be carrying your child. Do you not care at all?"

Damien cut her off. "You don't understand how things work among vampire and human, Clara. Don't let Lena use you. She made up this pregnancy to avoid giving blood to Vivienne. She has always been selfish."

"Tell her this," he continued, his tone turning cold. "If she still refuses to donate, I will dissolve our bonding vow. I won't let her selfishness kill the woman I love."

The woman he loved.

Not me. Never me.

He walked away before Clara could respond.

Later, Marcus approached him quietly. "Lena's been out of contact for days now. Should I send someone to look for her?"

Damien waved it off. "She probably went back to the human world, waiting for me to chase after her. She'll come back on her own in a day or two."

I remembered the first time Damien brought me to meet the pureblood aristocrats. It was shortly after our bonding ceremony — a formal gathering at one of the Court's grand halls.

I had agonized over what to wear. Tried my best to look presentable. I was nervous, excited even — Damien said he wanted to introduce me to an old friend.

He didn't tell me Vivienne was his first love.

The hall was full of purebloods. Vivienne stood at the center, radiant, every gesture dripping with centuries of grace. When she saw me, she smiled.

"Damien, so this is your human mate?" Her gaze swept over me from head to toe. "She looks... healthy, at least."

Soft laughter rippled through the room.

Damien's face darkened — not at Vivienne's mockery, but at me. For embarrassing him.

"Can't you dress properly?" he hissed. "You're humiliating me in front of everyone."

I was already wearing the best thing I owned. But a human in a room full of immortal aristocrats — it didn't matter what I wore. I would never fit in.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"Just go," he said. "I'll stay with Vivienne."

That was the first time I understood — I would never belong in his world.

Back at the Hall, a junior enforcer delivered his report. "No humans have been registered as missing in the territory over the past several days."

Another enforcer shook his head. "A human woman killed in our domain, and nobody has come looking for her? What kind of mate doesn't notice his wife is gone?"

"Hard to imagine," Damien agreed.

He had no idea they were talking about him.

Damien would mobilize his entire unit for an unknown corpse. But his own wife vanishing for days didn't deserve a second thought.

He handed the crumpled paper from the body over to the analysis team.

Marcus hesitated. "Damien, what if something really happened to Lena? Maybe I should look into it..."

"You know how she is," Damien said. "Give it a couple of days. She'll come back on her own."

But there would be no "couple of days."

No one was coming back.

No more apologies. No more begging for a love that was never mine.

The last time I "disappeared," it was during a hunting gathering hosted by one of the pureblood families.

Vivienne had suggested we take a walk together, just the two of us. "Let's get to know each other properly," she said with that gentle smile.

Once we were deep in the woods, far from the others, she shoved me into the Darkmist Bog.

Every vampire knew the bog was harmless to their kind but toxic to humans.

The mist alone could knock a person unconscious in minutes.

Damien had mentioned at dinner once that I couldn't even handle basic exposure to the wilds — and I'd seen the way Vivienne's eyes lit up when he said it.

The poisonous fog flooded my lungs. I couldn't breathe, couldn't see. My legs sank into the muck as the world spun.

Somehow, I dragged myself out. I don't know how long it took. My leg was injured, my clothes ruined, my body shaking.

When I finally limped back to the gathering spot, everyone was gone. They had packed up and left without me.

It took me hours to make it home alone.

Damien was waiting, furious. "Where did you go? Vivienne said you wandered off on your own. Can you ever stop causing problems?"

I couldn't defend myself. Anything I said would just be another lie in his ears.

Behind him, Vivienne stood with a small, secret smile.

Clara came to help me that night. She cleaned the cuts on my leg and wrapped the swelling gently. "He does care about you," she said quietly. "He just can't see straight when Vivienne is around."

But I knew better. Next to a pureblood aristocrat like Vivienne, a human like me would never be worth his concern.

If I were still alive, I'd be preparing his blood tonic right now — the special blend I'd learned to mix for his blood thirst episodes, delivered to the Enforcer's Hall during his long shifts.

But this time I couldn't show up with an apology the way he expected.

Because I was already dead.

The analysis team came back with results. The crumpled paper from my throat was an apprenticeship application — a registration to study under a vampire blood compounder.

Silas, the vampire who tortured and killed me, had shoved it down my throat with a sneer. "Learning to brew blood tonics for your husband? He'd probably only drink what Vivienne makes him anyway."

"What is this?" Damien frowned at the document.

Marcus checked the records. "It's an apprenticeship application. A human applied to study blood compounding — specifically, formulas for treating blood thirst conditions."

Damien took a team to find the compounder. The old vampire was startled to see enforcer insignias at his door.

He cross-referenced the registration and nodded. "A human woman came to see me a few days ago. Said her vampire husband suffered from chronic blood thirst. She wanted to learn how to prepare tonics suited to his constitution."

"She never showed up for her first lesson, though. I tried to reach her afterward, but got no response."

He pulled out his course notes. "She chose the blood thirst specialization. Very few students ever pick that track — it's too obscure for most."

Damien took the notes. Something shifted in his expression. "Do you have any memory crystals from that day?"

The compounder retrieved a small crystal and activated it. The image of that day's visitor materialized in the air.

Everyone in the room went silent.

Damien stared at the projection. His jaw tightened.

"That looks like... Lena."

The compounder brightened. "Yes — Lena. That was the name on her application."