The Vampire’s Guide to Wooing a Dressmaker (Fated Vampire Mates #1)

Prologue

Cordon had tried begging. He’d tried arguing. He’d even stolen his maker’s trunks and buried them in the basement, where he hid from the scorching rays of the sun. Unfortunately, his attempts only seemed to make Marguerite de la Valencia more determined to leave.

“Why?” he asked as he stood in the stone doorway of her room.

A beam of light pierced the thick curtains and formed a line on the tile.

Dust motes sparkled in the air, forming yet another barrier, however insubstantial, between him and his maker.

He stormed inside, ignoring the searing pain and eye-watering smell of scorched flesh, and clutched the thin hand of the woman he loved more than the mother who had brought him into the world one hundred and twenty-three years prior.

“Do you need to feed?” He removed his dagger from the sheath on his hip, drew the sharp edge along his wrist until blood bubbled up, then held it out. “Here.”

Marguerite smiled, although he could barely make out her bright-green eyes and straight, black hair beneath the heavy veil draped over her head.

The edges of his wound knitted together. He hadn’t cut deep enough. He laid the edge against his skin again, but his maker wrapped her fingers around the hilt of his dagger and drew it away.

“My darling Cordon. I will always love you. You must never forget that.”

His head was fuzzy, as if he’d drunk an entire bottle of ratafia de cassis, even though alcohol hadn’t affected him in decades.

He wished the rest of his nest was with him to plead their case, but they had voted that afternoon and chosen him to represent the group.

The only voice of dissent had been young Jonathan, who had been so upset by the prospect of Marguerite’s departure that Cordon had been forced to put him to sleep.

He’d assigned another member of the nest as a guard, fearing when Jonathan awoke and discovered their maker had abandoned them, his fragile fledgling mind would shatter, and he’d walk into the sun.

Marguerite tilted her head, as if gleaning some insight from the even sound of water dripping through a crack in the ceiling. Then she slipped out of Cordon’s grip, removed a slim, leatherbound book from her pocket, and handed it to him.

“Your journal?” He ran his fingers over the shape of a spider carved into the soft leather and remembered all the times he’d entered her room to find her scratching away with a pen. It was the one item she possessed she’d forbidden anyone from touching.

A pit opened in his stomach. She was abandoning them and there was nothing he could do about it. “Why are you giving me this?”

“Keep it safe, my child,” she said. “I have done what I can to see to all of your futures, but—” Her voice cracked. She lurched forward and drew him into a tight embrace.

At the sudden affection, his heart ached.

She hadn’t held him in years, not since she’d turned the youngest of the nest. He’d suspected there’d been something wrong with her for more than a year, but she’d consistently dismissed his concerns and urged him to focus on training his new nest siblings instead.

“Promise me,” she whispered. “Promise you will never give up searching, Cordon.”

The pit in his stomach turned into a chasm as everything suddenly made sense. “You’re dying.”

She sighed. “I cannot avoid it. My time has come. I watched my maker at the end. I would not have that for you.”

He squeezed her tighter, as if he could turn into an anchor chaining her to him forever.

She’d told stories of what would eventually happen to vampires who failed to find their fated mates, but he’d thought of those more as myths than facts.

Like the fantastical tales his mother had spun for a human boy all those decades ago.

“Please,” he whispered. “We need you. I need you.”

“Don’t give up,” she said.

Then she vanished.