Bride (Ali Hazelwood) by Ali Hazelwood

            “Nope.”

            “Is it possible that we’re putting too much thought into this?”

            My eyes widen. “Yes.”

            We slip back inside the last store and buy a mysterious ashtray shaped like a polar bear. It’s simultaneously the ugliest thing we can find and well over three hundred dollars.

            “Where does the money come from, anyway?” I ask.

            “What money?”

            “Your money. Your seconds’ money. Your pack’s money.” I glare at him on our way back to the car, making sure no one is around. I’m wearing brown contacts, but haven’t shaved my canines in a while. Opening my mouth in public would probably get animal control called on me. “Do you work in insurance while I’m passed out during the day?”

            “We rob banks.”

            “You—” I stop him with a hand on his arm. “You rob banks.”

            “Not blood banks, don’t get too excited.”

            I pinch his left side, miffed.

            “Ouch. My . . .” An elderly Human couple walks past, giving us an indulgent Young love look. “Liver?”

            “Wrong side,” I whisper.

            “Appendix.”

            “Still wrong.”

            “Gallbladder?”

            “Nope.”

            “Fucking Human anatomy,” he mutters. He laces his fingers with mine, pulling me in his direction.

            “You’re not serious, right? About robbing?”

            “No.” He opens the door for me. “A lot of Weres have jobs. Most Weres. I had a job, before . . . Before.”

            Before his life became something his pack owned. “Right.”

            “Most Were packs have highly organized investment portfolios. That’s where the expenses for infrastructure and the leadership roles who don’t have the time to hold other jobs come from.” He watches me slip into the passenger seat and then leans forward, one hand on the door and the other on the roof of the car. “It’s different from the financial framework of Vampyres.”

            “Because our leadership positions are hereditary.”

            “I’m sure that families like yours rely on estates passed on over generations, but generally, Vampyres are not as centralized. There’s fewer of you, less community culture.”

            I purse my lips. “Kind of annoying, that you know more about my people than me and that you’re such a show-off about it.”

            “Is it?” he drawls. He leans forward and presses a kiss against my nose. “I’ll have to do it more often.”

            It’s the most fun I’ve had with someone who’s not Serena. Even more, at times. Although that might be due to the way I find him glancing at me between bouts of perusing stained glass lamps, and the fact that he silently hands me his sweater when I shiver in the AC of the store, and how when we’re alone in the car he steals a kiss that has me forgetting how to breathe, his tongue soft across my fangs until I taste a drop of blood, and then he is the one groaning, pressing his hand around my waist, telling me that he cannot wait to be home.

            Home.

            I try not to think about it—that the territory of his pack is most definitely not my home—but it’s difficult. I’m relieved when Governor Davenport welcomes us at his door, making a show of explicitly inviting me in. I wonder if in all their years of political dealings, my father never dispelled that specific myth for him. It’s the kind of mindfuck he’d indulge in.

            “It’s so refreshing to see a Were-Vampyre union that has not yet ended in bloodshed.” Going by the smell of his blood, he’s not fully drunk, but on his way there. His house is a mix of pretty and ostentatious, and his wife is definitely not his first. Probably not his second, either. When he tells me, half paternal and half salacious, “You must have been behaving, young lady,” Lowe’s glance at me clearly asks, Would you like me to hold him down while you tear his jugular to shreds?