Despite the pile of perfectly wrapped gifts on the coffee table and the festive music, it didn’t feel much like a party. If anything, it felt like the start of a bad joke.
Four vampires and an arrant walk into a Burden’s Moon party…
Dahlia sent Colin a pleading look. Sucking in a bracing breath, he summoned a wide smile and slung his arm around his vampire’s shoulders. “So,” he chirped, “this is nice, isn’t it? Our daughter did such an incredible job with the decorations.”
Alastair tapped his cane on the floor. Tilting his silver head slightly toward his anchor, he gruffly replied, “Of course she did. She’s good at everything she does.”
Dahlia flushed. “Not everything,” she muttered, picking at the polish on her thumbnail.
One thing she didn’t love about being a vampire was that her nails had gotten a lot thicker and sharper. The change made her a little self-conscious, which meant she’d also gottenreallyinto manicures recently.
“That’s the one thing we can agree on,” Felix announced. Laying a hand on her wrist, he stalled her nervous picking. “Though I’ve got some complaints about her guest list.”
Checking his phone, which had been vibrating off and on for the last few minutes, Tomas drawled, “I don’t know. She got theratio mostly right. Next time all she needs to do is leave the one Amauri in the room off the list.”
Felix turned a sharp smile toward her cousin. Tapping the puncture wounds in his neck, he replied, “If you recall, there aretwoAmauris.”
Alastair glowered. “Donot?—”
“What? Complain about having to share air with the man who pointed a gun in my face and kidnapped mybride?”Felix’s voice hardened in the way she knew meant he wasn’t playing around or poking at the Bowans just for fun anymore. “Sorry, I don’t forgive as easily as Dahlia.”
Alastair bared his teeth. Shaking off Colin’s hand, he leaned forward to remind her husband, “You kidnapped mydaughter.You didn’t even have the decency to bring her to her family before you sank your fangs into her. You didn’t court her properly and you didn’t show her an ounce of the fucking respect she’s owed. I haven’t evenbegunto forgive you, boy.”
“Alastair,” Colin warned, drawing him back into the cushions. “We talked about this.”
Felix gave Alastair a disdainful look. “And you left her to bleed out on the rooftop, knowing full-well that there was a good chance she’d be turned. Youabandonedyour daughter, Bowan. You’re fucking lucky she’s deigned to have a relationship with you at all.”
“There was no way for him to know his blood would take,” Tomas snapped. “We’d never abandon our own. Unlike you family-killing degenerates.”
“Hey!” she snapped, standing abruptly and cutting off what was likely the prelude of Felix pulling out the gun he thought she didn’t know he’d brought. Sending a sweeping glare around the room, she reminded them, “This is my first Burden’s Moon as a vampire and my first one without Cece in— in— since I wasfive!I cannot and Iwillnot have my family fighting. Understood?”
Dahlia hadn’t realized how upset she really was until she started talking. Humiliated by the way her chin had begun to wobble, she braced her hands on her hips and turned away from them all quickly.
“Aw, fuck,” Felix breathed. The warmth of him radiated down her spine a moment before he wrapped his arms around her middle. “Don’t cry, please. We’ll stop fighting.”
Colin hurried around the coffee table to stand in front of her. “We know how much this means to you,” he assured her, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye with his knuckle. “No more fighting. Right, Alastair?Tomas?”
In a moment, she was surrounded by fretting vampires. Felix let them in close with hardly more than a growl, which she considered great progress.
Alastair smoothed a hand over her hair, ignoring the way her husband dragged her backward into his chest. “I apologize,” he muttered, lips tight with displeasure.
Tomas didn’t reach for her, which was probably smart. Instead, he fished for something in his pocket. Pulling out a key fob, he said, “We might not get along, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work togethersometimes.”
Dahlia gave him an odd look as he dangled the key fob in front of her face. “What are you talking about?”
“This is the spare,” Tomas informed her, a sly grin spreading across his handsome face. “You should probably beep it.”
Felix skimmed his hands down her arms. Guiding her right hand away from her hip to accept the key fob, he nudged her toward the large windows that overlooked the street. “C’mon, pet. We started a group chat for this. You gotta make it worth the sacrifice.”
Completely lost, Dahlia gave them all baffled looks as she slowly walked toward the windows. Squinting against the glarefrom the lights, she peered down at the street below and raised the key fob.
No sooner had her thumb hit the button than a flash of headlights lit up a dark corner of the street.
There, parked between two street lamps, was her car — or a new, redder version of the car Tomas had totalled.
Gasping, she cried, “My car! You got my— Wait, who’s getting out of…”
Her heart stopped when a miniature pink-clad figure climbed out of the passenger’s seat. She was too high up to see features clearly, but she didn’t need to. Sheknewwho that was in the same way she’d know the shape of her own reflection.
