“I don’t even want to know how that conversation went,” Hazel said as she helped undo the buttons on Bella’s dress. “I pity the flies on your walls that night.”
“They were the worst weeks of my life.” Belladonna gathered up the skirt and slipped back into the dressing room. “But in the end, Mom saw reason. It’s time we stop hating the vampires and make real peace. Gabriel and I love each other, so what better way to start this new chapter than with a wedding?”
“It’s like Romeo and Juliet,” Hazel sighed, and Belladonna lunged out of the dressing room, her clothes hanging half off her body.
“Take that back!” she whisper-shouted. “Romeo and Juliet knew each other for like three days before they died. Gabriel and I have been together for six months, and we won’t be dying. No one, and I repeat no one, will be dying at my wedding.”
“I meant romantically!” Hazel laughed. “Warring families. Star-crossed lovers. It’s so romantic.”
“Now that you’ve stopped hiding your relationship from us, how did you two meet?” Juniper asked as the bride-to-be exited the dressing room and handed the attendant her dress choice. “How on earth does a witch find herself in the same room as a vampire without being at each other’s throats… unless that’s what sparked your romance?”
“It was not.” Bella swatted her friend’s arm before stepping up to the register. The wedding was days away, and she was thankful she’d found a dress that fit perfectly on the first try. “And I don’t know. It felt like fate. We were both at this packed human bar. There was a sea of bodies, and I was attempting to order a drink at one end of the bar while he was doing the same at the other. Neither of us could get the bartender’s attention, and we simultaneously leaned forward and noticed each other. I can’t describe what passed between us, but he ended up buying me a drink. We’ve been inseparable ever since.”
“I would call bullshit, except that was exactly what happened with Dante and I,” Juniper said. “We took one look at each other and knew.”
“But you are both witches,” Hazel said. “It’s common for magic to guide us to our mates, but Gabriel’s a vampire.”
“I’m not sure if magic brought us together,” Belladonna said, ushering her friends toward the bistro across the street. She needed lunch before they finished wedding shopping. “But he’s perfect for me. We get along so well, and we agree on everything. I didn’t want to believe it, especially after I learned he was a vampire, but something about him forced me to look past his nature and see the man.”
“Yeah, I’m sure there was something,” Hazel said with exaggerated innuendo, and both she and Juniper burst into laughter at Belladonna’s crimson blush. “Oh, come on, Bella.You’ve been holding out on us long enough. What’s a vampire like in bed? He’s got to be amazing, right? A man who looks like that has to be talented.”
“I… um… hi, can we get a table for three?” Belladonna leaped for the hostess, smiling at the girl to avoid her friends. She could feel their eyes burning holes into her back, but she refused to meet their gazes until they sat, and even then, the awkwardness was unbearable.
“Holy hell, she hasn’t slept with him,” Juniper hissed, leaning conspiratorially over the table. “You haven’t been with him yet? Why not?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to.” Bella seized the menu and shoved it in front of her face, a plastic fortress separating her from her friends. “We’re waiting until we get married. Apparently, vampires often bite their partners during sex, and if they are mates, the act intensifies their bond. We were trying to keep our relationship a secret. The last thing we needed was a connection forming while we were hiding.”
“Biting?” Juniper hissed. “As in, you would let a vampire drink your blood?”
“I’m going to marry him.” Belladonna shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I? Once we get married, we’ll want the bond to form.”
“Sure… do it for the bond.” Juniper smirked. “Bella, I know you aren’t a prude, but I hope you understand what you’re getting into because, from the sound of it, you are in over your head.”
When my daughter first told me of her engagement, I thought she’d gone insane,” Rowena said, the champagne flute held delicately in her perfectly manicured black nails, and Belladonna forced herself not to roll her eyes at her mother’s under-exaggeration. Insane was putting it mildly. Her mother, and leader of the coven, had been borderline nuclear when she’d revealed she intended to marry Gabriel.
“It’s no secret vampires and witches would rather see each other dead than wed,” Rowena continued with a smirk. “And I instantly planned to break up my daughter’s pending marriage, but I am not too proud to admit I was wrong. It’s a beautiful thing to witness your children become better than you, and Belladonna’s ability to overlook centuries of war to acknowledge the goodness of another is the start of a peace our forefathers could never fathom.” Rowena turned to where Belladonna and Gabriel sat hand in hand, the waitstaff clearing away the plates to prepare for the dessert course. The rehearsal dinner had gone off without ahitch, the few present witches and vampires surprisingly supportive of the union. It seemed Belladonna and Gabriel weren’t the only two exhausted by the hatred their ancestors passed down to them.
With her fingers threaded through Gabriel’s, Belladonna found it hard to view the vampires as their enemies. She worried she would barely survive the next twenty-four hours as she waited to walk down the aisle. She’d rarely dreamed of her wedding day as a child, but now, marriage was all she thought about… and the wedding night. Gabriel had been careful anytime a kiss had deepened, not wanting to accidentally bite her and ruin their cover, but six months of celibacy had a forest fire of need coursing through her body.
“So, I raise a glass to my daughter and her groom-to-be,” Rowena continued, and Belladonna blinked the haze of longing away and smiled at her mother. Despite the brutal verbal battle that had broken out between them when she told her parents of her engagement, Bella loved her mom more than almost everyone in this world. It filled her heart to overflowing knowing that she’d finally accepted her chosen partner.
“May your years together be long and happy.” Rowena cheered her champagne at the couple, and they returned the gesture. “May your marriage be the beginning of a peace our two races have never known. May Halloween flourish under this new era, and may we always strive to be as brave as you when following our hearts. Hopefully, this will be the first of many weddings to bind our people. Our ancestors gifted us this war as our inheritances, but I think it’s time that we threw off their mantel of oppression and learned from your love. You are my beloved daughter, and Gabriel, I’m glad to call you son.”
The wedding party erupted in cheers as they sipped their champagne, and within seconds, the room filled withthe sound of clinking glasses. Bella turned toward her fiancé, her full and perfect lips barely able to contain her smile, and her groom leaned in to give the crowd what they wanted. The kiss was chaste and sweet, over too quickly, but Belladonna understood. Her parents were watching. There would be plenty of time to explore the longing between them after the ceremony. Tomorrow night, she would be a married woman. A wife. A spouse. A vampire’s partner. She shuddered at that reality. She was eager to marry Gabriel, but sometimes, her actions still shocked her. How had they pulled off a romance when their worlds were against them?
“Have I told you how beautiful you look?” Gabriel whispered in her ear as the crowd bubbled back to life. Waiters entered the dining room with trays of dessert, and Belladonna sipped her champagne to keep from kissing him and embarrassing her parents in front of the coven.
“I can’t wait to marry you,” she said as he pulled away to grab his fork, and she instantly missed their connection. Vampires could consume regular food as long as their blood intake was high, and everyone was excited about the decadent chocolate cake, undead or not.
“Soon.” Gabriel offered her a bite. “Just twenty-four hours, although it’ll be a long day. It’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding, so when we’re done here, I’m headed to my father’s mansion for the night.”
“It’s a shame he can’t come,” Belladonna said, digging into her own dessert. “I would’ve liked both our families to be here.”
“I don’t,” Gabriel said too quickly, his voice suddenly angry. “I don’t want my father anywhere near this wedding.”
“Why not?” she asked. “I know you have a strained relationship, but you love him, right? Don’t you want your dad to watch you get married?”
“No,” Gabriel said, his tone signaling the conversation was over. “He can’t be here. He can’t know.”
