“No one knows. It happened during the first dance. Someone came up in a mask and just poured it all over her.”
"That's the thing, boss. The second dress is the one that got wine-bombed. The ceremony dress is missing, and besides, she couldn’t dance in it, because it has a twelve-foot train and weighs about forty pounds."
This is bad. This is very, very bad. I'm not interested in why this is all happening, it doesn't matter. I just need to fix it. Sarah's pack spent a fortune on this wedding, and they specifically chose me because of my reputation for handling disasters with grace and style. If word gets out that I failed to solve a simple wardrobe malfunction...
My business is built on perfection. On the promise that I can make any omega's dream wedding come true, no matter what obstacles arise. I've handled runaway grooms, drunken officiants, flower allergies discovered mid-ceremony, and that one memorable incident with the aggressive peacocks that still haunts my nightmares. But this...
If Sarah's wedding photos show her in a wine-stained dress, or worse, if she has to skip the reception entirely, it won't matter that it wasn't technically my fault. In the wedding industry, the planner takes responsibility for everything. The reviews will be brutal. The word-of-mouth will kill me.
My omega anxiety is spiking, and I can smell my scent shifting from cinnamon to bitter lemon, the universal omega distress signal. The suppressants I took this morning aren't hiding anything. They feel like a thing of the past when my anxiety gets this bad, which is exactly why I took up yoga in the first place. I need to get control of this situation before it spirals completely out of control.
"Here's what we're going to do. First, we're going to assess the damage. Maybe it's not as bad as it looks. Wine can sometimes be cleaned if we act fast enough."
Sharon shakes her head so vigorously her bun finally gives up and lets her hair fall loose around her shoulders. "Boss, I'mtelling you, it looks like someone was sacrificed to the wine gods. There's no saving this dress."
"Then we're going to get creative. Do we have any connections in the area? Other vendors, local shops, anything?"
"It's Saturday night in wine country. Everything's closed except the gas stations and that one diner that looks like it hasn't been updated since the 1950s."
I'm running through my mental rolodex of emergency contacts when Sharon drops the real bomb.
"Oh, and there's one more thing. Sarah's biological pack is here."
"What? But she's mated to the Riverside Pack."
"Yeah, but apparently her biological pack came as a surprise. They flew in from somewhere back east and just showed up an hour ago. They're... not happy about her being mated to a six-alpha pack. Or about pretty much anything, from what I can tell."
Well, that explains the mystery about someone in a mask throwing wine all over her dress. Birth packs can be tricky when their omega chooses a different pack for mating. There's often resentment, jealousy, and a whole lot of alpha posturing that makes everyone miserable.
"Where are they now?"
"In the bar, drinking heavily and making comments about 'omegas who don't know their place.'"
Something hot and protective flares in my chest. Sarah's happy, loved, and treated like the queen she deserves to be. No one gets to make her feel bad about that choice, especially not on her wedding day.
"Right. Here's the plan." I straighten my dress, check my lipstick in my phone camera, and prepare for battle. "I'm going to charm the hell out of her birth pack and make them feel included and important. You're going to find me anythingremotely dress-like in this venue. Tablecloths, curtains, that decorative fabric we used for the arch, anything. And Sharon?"
"Yeah, boss?"
"If anyone asks, this is all under control. We're handling a minor wardrobe adjustment, not a crisis. Got it?"
Sharon nods, her panic-scent settling slightly. This is why I'm good at my job. I don't just plan weddings; I create calm in the middle of chaos. I make people believe that everything is going to be perfect, even when it's all falling apart behind the scenes like a house of cards in a hurricane.
As I walk back to the reception hall, my device buzzes with a text from Emma: "PS - the wedding is Christmas Eve. That gives you three months to plan. No pressure! ??"
Christmas Eve. In Pine Hollow. With all my exes probably on the guest list because it's a small town and everyone knows everyone and apparently the universe has a sadistic sense of humor.
I look up at the string lights twinkling in the garden, and for a moment, they look less like fairy tale magic and more like warning signals blinking out an SOS.
"Universe," I mutter under my breath, my words puffing out in little white clouds, "I said 'what could go wrong' as a rhetorical question. You didn't need to take it as a personal challenge."
But as I square my shoulders and put on my best "everything is under control" smile, I make a decision. I'm going to save Sarah's wedding night, charm her difficult birth pack, and somehow conjure a dress out of thin air. And then I'm going to go home to Pine Hollow and plan Emma's wedding.
Because I'm Savannah Hale, owner of Bourbon Bliss Weddings, and I don't run from challenges anymore. Even when those challenges involve facing alphas who once had my heart and probably still have my scent memorized.
How hard could it be?
That's when the scream rips through the evening air like a battle cry from hell itself.
