Page 2 of Tryst or Treat (Season’s Readings #3)
W hen 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 a hitch, 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 with the 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.”
Belladonna opened her mouth to ask why, but something about the way Gabriel said ‘can’t’ silenced her. She knew the feared vampire leader would oppose their wedding, but Gabriel’s mood seemed to imply something else. Why didn’t he want his father here? What was she missing? She wondered if she should ask him to elaborate, but his sudden change in demeanor scared her, so she ignored the nagging in her gut. If Gabriel hated the infamous Vlad, maybe she should be thankful the legendary monster still hid in Europe, where rumors had placed him for the last decade.