Bride(11)

He straightens up from the desk, full of confusion and something that could be hope. “No other Were Alpha—”

“The name. You said a name. Who . . . ?”

“Moreland?” he repeats.

“His full name—what’s his first name?”

Father’s eyes narrow suspiciously, but after a few seconds, he says, “Lowe. Lowe Moreland.”

I look down at the floor, which appears to be shaking. Then at the ceiling. I take a series of deep breaths, each one slower than the other, and then run a trembling hand through my hair, even though my arm weighs a thousand pounds.

I wonder if the blue dress I wore at Serena’s college graduation would be too casual for an interspecies wedding ceremony. Because, yeah.

I guess I’m getting married.

CHAPTER 2

He used to think that all Vampyres’ eyes looked the same. He may have been wrong about that.

Present day

Such an unfortunate, desolate choice. What loving parent would choose to name their child Misery?”

I don’t consider myself a sensitive person. As a rule, I’m not opposed to people implying that I am a disappointment to my family and my species. But I do ask for one thing: that they keep that shit away from me.

And yet, here I am. With Governor Davenport. Leaning on my elbows over the balcony that overlooks the courtyard where I just got married. Biting back a sigh before explaining:

“The council.”

“Pardon?”

Gauging intoxication levels in Humans is always a struggle, but I’m fairly sure the governor is not not drunk. “You asked who gave me my name. It was the Vampyre council.”

“Not your parents?”

I shake my head. “That’s not how it works.”

“Ah. Are there . . . magic rituals involved? Sacrificial altars? Seers?”

So self-centeredly Human, the assumption that everything that’s other must be shrouded in the supernatural and the arcane. They nurse their myths and legends, in which Vampyres and Weres are creatures of magic and lore, capable of curses and mystical acts. They think us able to see the future, to fly, to make ourselves invisible. Because we’re different from them, our existence must be governed by otherworldly forces—and not simply, like theirs, by biology.

And maybe a couple of thermodynamics laws.

Serena was like that, too, when I first met her. “So crucifixes burn you?” she asked me a couple of weeks into our cohabitation, after I failed to convince her that the viscous red liquid I kept in my fridge was tomato juice.

“Only if they’re, like, very hot.”

“But you guys do hate garlic?”

I shrugged. “We don’t really eat food in general, so . . . sure?”

“And how many people have you killed?”

“Zero,” I told her, appalled. “How many people have you killed?”

“Hey, I’m Human.”

“Humans kill all the time.”

“Yeah, but indirectly. By making health insurance too expensive or stubbornly opposing gun control. You guys suck people dry to survive?”

I scoffed. “Drinking directly from a person is kinda gross and no one ever does it.” It was a bit of a lie, but at the time I wasn’t sure why. All I knew was that a few years earlier Owen and I had walked into the library to find Father latched onto the neck of Councilwoman Selamio. Owen, who’d been more precocious and less of a social pariah, had covered my eyes with his hand and insisted that the trauma would stunt our growth. He’d never explained the reason, though. “Plus, blood banks are right there. So that we don’t need to hurt Humans.” I wondered if it had more to do with the fact that killing someone would be a lot of exhausting work, what with the thrashing around, and the burying of the corpse, and the Human police potentially showing up in the middle of the day, when all we want is to crawl into a dark space.

“What about the invitation business?”

“The what?”

“You need to be invited into a room, right?” I shook my head, hating that she looked disappointed. She was funny, and direct, and a little odd in a way that made her at once awesome and approachable. I was ten, and I already liked her more than anyone I’d ever met. “Can you at least read my mind? What am I thinking about?”

“Um.” I scratched my nose. “That book you like. With the witches?”

“Not fair, I’m always thinking about that book. What number am I thinking?”

“Ah . . . seven?”

She gasped. “Misery!”

“Did I get it right?” Holy crap.

“No! I was thinking of three hundred and fifty-six. What else is a lie?”

The thing is, Humans and Weres and Vampyres might be different species, but we’re closely related. What sets us apart has less to do with the occult, and more with spontaneous genetic mutations thousands of years down the line. And, of course, the values we developed in response. A loss of a purine base here, a repositioning of a hydrogen atom there, and ta-da: Vampyres feed exclusively on blood, are wimps with the sun, and are constantly on edge about extinction; Weres are faster, stronger, （I assume） hairier, and they worship violence. But neither of us can whip out our magic wand and lift a sixty-pound suitcase on top of a rack, or find out the Powerball numbers in advance—or turn into bats.