Bride (Bride, #1)

by Ali Hazelwood

This marriage, it’s going to be a problem. She is going to be a problem.

Following a few too-harsh punishments and a poorly executed assassination attempt, Serena and I concocted plans for a grand escape, which was going to involve pyrotechnics-based diversions, stealing our math tutor’s car, and flipping off our caregivers in the rearview mirror.

Sounds fun. Sign me up!

He gestures for me to follow him. “I hope they vaccinated you for rabies while they were at it.”

💀

“But if you care to live a bit longer, try tossing a stick when he starts mauling you. I hear they love to fetch—”

Owen watches us leave, expressionless, then yells after us, “Hope you packed a lint roller. I hear they shed.”

Maybe we share a stylist. As good a starting point for a marriage as any, I suppose.

He cages me, pins me, and stares down at me like he forgot where he is and I’m something to be consumed. Like I’m prey.

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

😏

Not a healthy thing, power.

the average Vampyre still thinks that Humans are cunning but feckless, and that their main talent is for procreating and filling the universe with more Humans.

“Their succession of power is not particularly sophisticated. Weres are most closely related to dogs, after all. Suffice to say, Roscoe is dead.” I refrain from pointing out that our dynastic, hereditary oligarchies seem even more primitive, and that dogs are universally beloved.

Heartbeats are like fingerprints, one of a kind, distinctive, the easiest way to tell people apart. Father’s was pressed into my flesh on the day I was born, when he was the first person to hold me, the first person to care for me, the first person to know me. And then he washed his hands of me.

💔

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

“Humans kill all the time.” “Yeah, but indirectly. By making health insurance too expensive or stubbornly opposing gun control.

😭

I’m just glad I managed to explain to the planner that one doesn’t sip blood at a party, that feeding is a private act for Vampyres, never communal or recreational, and that no, serving blood cocktails with little umbrellas in them was not a “fun idea.” When she asked, “What will the Vampyres do, while the Weres eat?” I guessed “Glare at them?” Boy, was I right.

He got rid of his jacket, and the sleeves of his white shirt are rolled up.

😏

What’s some eavesdropping among foes?

“So.” I glance up, attempting conversation. In these shoes I push six feet, but there’s no towering over this man. “I smell like sewers or something?”

😂

His face is so…not handsome, even though it is, but striking. All-consuming. Like he invented bone structure.

“I’m the Alpha of my people.” His voice is hoarse. “Not a white-hat hacker who only miraculously made it to twenty-five.” Ouch, and fuck you. “What I am is an adult woman with agency and the tools to make choices. Feel free to, you know, treat me accordingly.”

She is, I would estimate, anywhere between three and a young thirteen. I have no way of narrowing this down any further: with this one, my staggering indifference toward children meets my twenty-five-year-old determination to avoid anything Were.

Ana runs to her, but not before whispering at me, “I like your pointy ears,” entirely too loud.

😭😍

I can live without hanging out with someone whose skull hasn’t even properly closed yet. Though Ana is technically my BFF in Were territory. Slim pickings over here.

Some guy took it without asking, while we were dangling our feet in the water. Then he showed it to us and said he’d only return it if one of us gave him our number. We did the only logical thing: caught him in a headlock and forcibly took the photo.

I love when women.

His cheeks have an olive tinge. God, I think he’s blushing. Because of course they’d flush green.

I love him 😍

“You’re married.” “Not for real, though. Lowe and I didn’t meet on a Caribbean vacation and fall in love while getting our scuba diving certificates.”

She is resilient. He tries to imagine how he’d feel if he were in her position—alone, removed, used, and discarded. He has nothing but reluctant respect for her, and that angers him.

“What I am is worried that my Vampyre wife will get herself killed. I’d have to bury her corpse in the raised bed under the plumbago, and the next batch will sprout ugly.”

The birth control shot I was given before coming here was a joke, not just because Lowe and I are as likely to have sex as we are to start a podcast together,

😂😂😂

Can I let him roam around the house, or will Max try to frame him for racketeering?”

Being gone is a relief. And sheer agony.

I love to think that we bonded when he took his first night shift: I noticed him slumping against the wall, pushed my rolling chair into the hallway, and bam—instantly BFFs. Our three-minute conversation about water pressure was the apogee of my week.

When I look up from my keyboard, the moon is high, my room is dark, and a small, creepy creature stands in front of me. It’s wearing owl leggings with a chiffon tutu, and stares at me like the ghost of Christmas past.

“Yes. We steal cars and talk with the beautiful ladies. But Alex says that Juno isn’t supposed to know.”

😂

She settles on the bed next to me and I’m briefly worried that she might pee on it. Does she have a diaper? Is she housebroken? Should I burp her?

Me with kids...

There is something disarming about the way she leans against me, soft and trusting, as though our people haven’t been hunting each other for sport in the last couple of centuries. Her tongue sticks out between her teeth as she tries to snatch apples, and when a dark curl slips in front of her right eye, I catch myself with my fingers hovering right there, tempted to fold it behind her ear.

😭😍🤗

They rarely touch. When they did, her wrist accidentally brushed against the front of his shirt, and he found himself tearing off the piece of fabric where her smell was most intense. He slipped it in his pocket, and now carries it everywhere.

😭

I know exactly what I’m looking for—a phone, a laptop, possibly a diary titled “That Time I Abducted Serena Paris” with an easily breakable lock—but

💀😂

I wonder whether I’m invited to partake. What the reaction would be if I made my way downstairs, waved at the guests. I could borrow a bikini from Juno. Pour myself some blood on the rocks, sit at a table in the shade, ask my dinner companions, “So, how about them football players?”

A heavy silence stretches, broken only by Lowe coming to stand in front of me. I’m ready to say my final words, but all he does is take off his zip-up hoodie, wrap it around my shuddery shoulders, then admire the result for a beat too long.

Not me giggling 😛

“She’s my—” Lowe’s hand jerks up to clutch Max’s jaw. “Apologize to my wife.”

She's your what, Lowe?! 😏😇😂

“I thought it was a myth,” Cal whispers. “That our elders used to scare us.” I can relate, since I grew up fairly sure that if I misbehaved, a Were would crawl up the toilet to eat my ass.

“Just promise you won’t do it to me, okay? You were scary in there.” “I would never. You’re my most beloved jailer.”

Ana might be growing on me, but she wasn’t the one who slept next to me for a whole week when I was fourteen and gave myself seizures by trying to file off my fangs for the first time. With a cheese grater.

💔

It’s not until I follow his gaze that I realize he’s staring at our wedding band on his ring finger.

Fuck bruh...

But at times, there are decisions that feel right, deep in the marrow of my bones.” He wets his lips. “You are one of them.”

“Did you just eat?” “No.” I flush, mortified. “No,” I repeat, but the peanut butter sticks to the roof of my mouth, garbling the syllable.

😂😂😂

“This is so undignified. Can you please not tell anyone and throw my corpse in the lake after I run myself through the garbage disposal, which I’m going to do right now?”

Their voices lower to soft whispers, and I turn to climb the stairs. The last thing I hear is a phlegmy, “Okay, but did you cut the crusts off?” and a deep, hushed response that sounds a lot like, “Of course, love.”

😭