Bride (Ali Hazelwood) by Ali Hazelwood

            Like I’m prey.

            “This is highly— Oh, my,” the officiant gasps when the groom growls in his direction. Behind me I hear the Tongue and English—panic, screams, chaos, the best man and my father snarling, people yelling threats, someone sobbing. Another Aster in the making, I think. And I really should do something, I will do something to stop it, but.

            The groom’s scent hits my nostrils.

            Everything recedes.

            Good blood, my hindbrain hisses, nonsensical. He’d make for such good blood.

            He inhales several times in rapid succession, filling his lungs, pulling me in. His hand moves up from my arm to the dip of my throat, pressing into one of my markings. A guttural sound rises from someplace low in his chest, making my knees weak. Then he opens his mouth and I know that he’s going to tear me to pieces, he’s going to maul me, he’s going to devour me—

            “You,” he says, voice deep, almost too low to hear. “How the fuck do you smell like this?”

            Less than ten minutes later he slips a ring around my finger, and we swear to love each other till the day we die.





CHAPTER 1




                             It’s been storming for three days straight when he finally returns from a meeting with the leader of the Big Bend huddle. Two of his seconds are already inside his home, waiting for him with wary expressions.

                “The Vampyre woman—she backed out.”

                He grunts as he wipes his face. Smart of her, he thinks.

                “But they found a replacement,” Cal adds, sliding a manila folder on the counter. “Everything’s in here. They want to know if she has your approval.”

                “We proceed as planned.”

                Cal huffs out a laugh. Flor frowns. “Don’t you want to look at the—”

                “No. This changes nothing.”

                They’re all the same, anyway.




Six weeks before the ceremony

            She shows up at the start-up where I work on an early Thursday evening, when the sun has already set and the entire bullpen is contemplating grievous bodily harm.

            Against me.

            I doubt I deserve this level of hatred, but I do understand it. And that’s why I don’t make a fuss when I return to my desk following a brief meeting with my manager and notice the state of my stapler. Honestly, it’s fine. I work from home 90 percent of the time and rarely print anything. Who cares if someone smeared bird shit on it?

            “Don’t take it personally, Missy.” Pierce leans against our cubicle divider. His smile is less concerned friend, more smarmy used car salesman; even his blood smells oily.

            “I won’t.” Other people’s approval is a powerful drug. Lucky me, I never got the chance to develop an addiction. If there’s something I’m good at, it’s rationalizing my peers’ contempt toward me. I’ve been training like piano prodigies: tirelessly and since early childhood.

            “No need to sweat it.”

            “I’m not.” Literally. I barely own the necessary glands.

            “And don’t listen to Walker. He didn’t say what you think he did.”

            Pretty sure it was “nasty bitch” and not “tasty peach” that he yelled across the conference room, but who knows?

            “It comes with the territory. You’d be mad, too, if someone did a penetration test against a firewall you’ve been working on for weeks and breached it in what, one hour?”

            It was maybe a third of that, even counting the break I took in the middle after realizing how quickly I was blowing through the system. I spent it online shopping for a new hamper, since Serena’s damn cat seems to be asleep in my old one whenever I need to do laundry. I texted her a picture of the receipt, followed by You and your cat owe me sixteen dollars. Then I sat and waited for a reply, like I always do.