Beneath Saint Mercy College, a vampire has been waiting for someone brave enough to find him.
Micah Bell was once a rising star in the art world. Then he exposed the wrong donor, lost his career, and learned how quickly powerful institutions abandon the truth when money is at stake.
So when Saint Mercy offers him a prestigious restoration fellowship, a path back to professional respectability, and access to thirteen damaged portraits hidden inside its private collection, Micah knows the offer is too good to be clean.
The portraits watch him.
The chapel breathes.
And beneath the altar, chained in darkness, waits Elias Wren.
For more than a century, Saint Mercy’s secret order has harvested Elias’s blood to grant beauty, influence, wealth, and unnatural longevity to politicians, clergy, artists, professors, and donors. Now the vampire is failing, and the college has chosen Micah as his replacement.
But Saint Mercy does not tempt Micah with chains.
It offers him everything he has ever wanted.
His reputation restored.
His enemies humiliated.
His own institute.
A body untouched by age.
The power to make every person who dismissed him finally regret it.
Elias offers him none of that.
Only danger. Truth. Hunger. And the possibility of being loved without being owned.
As Micah uncovers the buried history of Saint Mercy, he learns that the college’s rituals were built on coerced betrayal, stolen desire, and a love story twisted into a prison. To free Elias, Micah must restore the very portraits that strengthen the ritual, infiltrate the secret society preparing to crown him, and decide how much of himself he is willing to risk for a man who may never be safe.
Their attraction is forbidden.
Their blood bond is intimate.
Their trust is fragile.
And when Saint Mercy gathers its most powerful members for an extravagant masked Founders’ Ball, every secret in the college will be dragged into the light.
The Vampire Beneath Saint Mercy is a dark, sensual MM vampire romance filled with gothic atmosphere, dangerous desire, dark academia, blood rituals, cursed portraits, institutional horror, morally complicated characters, and a hard-won romantic ending.
Perfect for readers who love:
Dark academia with secret societies
Gay vampire romance
Forbidden attraction and gothic obsession
Haunted colleges and cursed artwork
Consent-forward intimacy with dangerous supernatural stakes
Morally gray characters and powerful emotional tension
Occult conspiracies, ritual horror, and blood-soaked revenge
He was chained beneath the chapel.
Micah was invited to take his place.
Saint Mercy never expected them to choose each other.
