Chapter 812: Another Set Of Fangs
The final day of the Harvest Festival should have been a time of joyous celebration in the Holyfield estate.
Fireworks should have been planned.
A grand feast should have been prepared.
Laughter should have echoed through every corridor.
But instead, the mansion was shrouded in an oppressive silence.
The maids moved through the halls like ghosts, their faces pale and drawn.
No cheerful greetings. No playful banter. Just sad, distant eyes and heavy sighs that seemed to echo off the walls.
—
Portia stood in the dining room, a silver platter in her hands that she’d been polishing for the better part of an hour.
Normally, she would have finished this task in minutes and moved on to the next. But today, she just kept rubbing the same spot over and over, her eyes unfocused, her mind clearly elsewhere.
—
Outside in the gardens, Nala was lying on the grass, her massive snake tail stretched out behind her as she stared at the sky.
Normally, she’d be slithering around, causing mischief, playing with the children, or teasing Portia about being too uptight.
But today, she was completely still.
"I should have done more." She murmured to herself. "I should have been a better friend."
"Maybe if I’d been more serious with her, less playful...maybe she would have trusted me enough to tell me what was wrong."
A tear trickled down her cheek, and she didn’t bother to wipe it away.
—
In her room, Vivi lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling.
The girl who could always find a silver lining, who could always cheer everyone up, was completely deflated.
"She told me she’d teach me more about vampires." Vivi whispered to the empty room. "She promised she’d show me all her favorite hiding spots in the mansion. She said she’d tell me about all the places she’d traveled in her long life."
She clutched her pillow to her chest.
"I was so excited. I-I was going to write everything down in my journal. I wanted to remember everything she told me."
Her eyes welled up with tears. "And now she’s gone. And I never got to say goodbye."
—
In another room, Maria sat with her head in her hands.
Tears flowed freely down her cheeks, pooling on the table before her. Olga sat beside her, her own eyes red and swollen from crying.
They held hands, drawing comfort from each other even as they shared their grief.
"Three...days." Maria whispered, her voice hoarse. "Three days since she left. Three days since my daughter disappeared."
Olga squeezed her hand tightly. "She’ll come back, Maria. She has to."
"Does she?" Maria looked up, her eyes filled with anguish. "Did you read her letter? It sounded like...it sounded like goodbye."
"Like she was never coming back!"
Olga couldn’t answer. She’d read the letter too. She’d broken down completely after reading it, sobbing so hard that Theo had to hold her upright.
So...she didn’t have the confidence to say any assurance right now and could only hug Maria to comfort her and herself at the same time.
—
Joy sat in the chapel, her hands clasped in prayer.
But her eyes weren’t closed, and her lips weren’t moving. She was just staring at the altar, her expression blank and hollow.
Aqua sat beside her, trying desperately to cheer her up.
"Joy, please say something. Anything. You’ve been like this for three days. It’s not healthy to bottle everything up like this."
Joy didn’t respond.
"We’ll find her, Joy. I promise we’ll find her. Cassius is going to—"
"Don’t."
Aqua blinked. "What?"
Joy’s voice was flat, emotionless. "Don’t make promises you can’t keep. I’ve had enough of people disappearing and never coming back."
Aqua’s heart broke at those words. "Joy...I’m not going anywhere. I’ll never—"
"It doesn’t matter what you say!"
Joy finally turned to look at her, and Aqua was shocked by the pain in her eyes.
"People always leave. They always leave, and they never come back. I thought Carmela was different. I thought she understood me."
"We were the same—both broken, both searching for something, both trying to heal. But she still left."
Her voice cracked. "She left without saying a word to me. Just a letter. A simple letter that said ’I’m sorry.’ That’s all. That’s all I got."
Aqua reached out to touch her shoulder, but Joy flinched away.
"I don’t need comfort. I need answers. I need to know why she thought she had to face whatever she’s facing alone."
"I’m sure she had her reasons—"
"Reasons aren’t good enough!" Joy stood abruptly, her chair scraping against the floor. "She was my sister! We were supposed to be in this together! And she just—"
She cut herself off, her fists clenching at her sides.
"She just left."
She stormed out of the chapel, leaving Aqua sitting alone, tears streaming down her face.
—
Three days. Three days since Carmela had vanished.
Despite widespread searches that scoured every inch of the estate and beyond, they hadn’t found a single trace of her.
Because of this the entire family was heartbroken.
In the short time Carmela had been with them, she’d embedded herself deeply into their hearts.
She’d become a sister, a daughter, a friend. Everyone had already considered her family.
And now she was gone.
But the one who was most affected by Carmela’s disappearance was Cassius.
—
When he’d woken up that morning, groggy and disoriented, the first thing he’d done was search for her.
He’d moved at speeds that would have been invisible to the naked eye, tearing through the estate, checking every room, every corridor, every hidden corner.
He’d found nothing.
Then he’d expanded his search, racing through the surrounding lands, using every tracking skill he possessed.
But Carmela was an expert at hiding her trail.
She’d lived her entire life as a fugitive, constantly evading capture, always covering her tracks.
No matter how hard Cassius searched, he couldn’t find a single trace of her.
When he’d finally returned to the mansion that night, the look on his face had been enough to break anyone’s heart.
His eyes were dark and hollow. His jaw was clenched so tightly that the muscles in his neck stood out. And he wouldn’t speak to anyone.
He’d walked straight to the garden, sat down on a bench, and stared up at the moon. And he’d stayed there the entire night, unmoving, unblinking.
Everyone had wanted to approach him. They’d wanted to comfort him, to tell him it would be alright.
But the look in his eyes had warned them away.
This was a pain they couldn’t help with. This was something he had to process alone.
So they’d let him be, their hearts breaking all over again at the sight of their strong, cheerful, unshakeable Cassius so utterly devastated.
—
Cassius’s mind was a storm of guilt and self-recrimination.
The reason he was hit the hardest wasn’t just because he cherished Carmela.
It was because he hadn’t been able to stop her.
In this world, he was the most powerful being.
Nothing could touch him, nothing could overcome him...
...other then that single being he could sense in the Capital.
And yet, a vampire with a clever trick had completely paralyzed him, rendered him helpless, and walked away without him being able to do a single thing to stop her.
How could she have done that? What had she done to him?
He’d spent hours in his library, pouring over ancient texts, searching for any mention of vampires and their abilities.
And eventually, he’d found his answer.
Carmela had injected a paralytic agent into his body.
But it wasn’t a poison or an alchemical concoction.
It was something produced naturally by her own body.
A secretion that vampires could excrete through their fangs when they bit into prey, designed to keep their victims calm and still while they fed.
It was like a snake injecting venom into its prey to paralyze it before consuming it.
The evolutionary purpose was clear: it made feeding easier, more efficient, and less messy.
But Carmela hadn’t bitten him that night. So how had he been paralyzed?
The answer was shocking, and it took Cassius a long time to process.
Apparently, not only could vampires secrete the substance through their fangs, but they could also inject it through their vagina during intercourse.
There were tiny, almost invisible fangs located inside a female vampire’s vaginal canal, a secret adaptation designed for assassination and silent killing.
In the distant past, when vampire were more common, a female vampire could seduce an enemy, take him to bed, and while they were in the throes of passion, she could inject this paralytic agent into him through his penis.
By the time he realized what was happening, it would be too late.
He’d be completely paralyzed, at her mercy, unable to fight back or even cry for help.
It was the ultimate secret assassination technique.
No one would ever suspect it. No one would even think to look for it.
And the fact that Cassius had even found a mention of it in the ancient texts was a miracle in itself.
But there was another, more romantic aspect to it.
A male vampire would only engage in such intimacy with a female vampire he truly trusted.
It was a gesture of ultimate vulnerability. To give oneself so completely, to allow oneself to be so exposed.
Only with a woman he fully loved and trusted could he lower her guard enough to be intimate.
And in that moment of intimacy, the trust had to be absolute, because the man was completely at her mercy.
So in a way, it was a test of true love. Only the strongest, most trusting couples could overcome this barrier.
So what Carmela had done to Cassius was, in a strange way, a confession of love. She’d trusted him completely, and he’d trusted her.
If Carmela were still here, Cassius would have been thrilled to discover this.
He would have spread Carmela’s legs apart, put a magnifying glass to her pussy, and searched for those tiny fangs with all the enthusiasm of the pervert he was.
He would have played with them, explored them, maybe even asked if he could see them in action.
But Carmela wasn’t here anymore. She’d left. And the realization made his heart ache all over again.
He couldn’t blame himself.
The paralysis wasn’t a poison—it was a completely different serum, injected biologically, something his body had no defense against.
He’d also been in a vulnerable position, completely caught off guard.
He hadn’t thought for a single moment that Carmela might be doing something to him.
But despite knowing it wasn’t his fault, Cassius still felt overwhelming guilt.
All he could do was watch as Carmela walked away, and he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop her.
The worst part was the look in her eyes.
She’d looked at him with such love and such sorrow, as if she was saying goodbye forever.
Or worse, that she might not survive whatever she was about to do. The thought of losing her forever made Cassius’s stomach churn with dread.
He’d never felt so helpless in a long time.
But he didn’t panic. Not completely.
Luckily, he’d managed to give her that earring before she’d left. Even though it was still a prototype, even though he hadn’t finished working on it, he knew she would be safe.
That earring would protect her. It would keep her alive.
It was the only reason he was waiting instead of acting.
But despite knowing she would be physically safe, Cassius was in a terrible mood.
The past two days, his wives had tried to comfort him.
They’d approached him gently, offering kind words, warm embraces, assurances that everything would be alright.
And he’d forced a smile for each of them, pretending to be okay even though he was hurting deeply inside.
His attempts at comfort had only made the rest of the family sadder. They knew he was faking.
They knew he was breaking inside.
