The Alpha's Vampire Princess

Chapter 5: Hiding from Fate

DEMI



Three days after the wedding, I was still hiding in my apartment, surviving on blood bags, cold coffee, and denial. The curtains stayed drawn, the sink held too many rinsed-out blood bags, and the place had never felt smaller. Outside, Crescent City kept moving. Inside, I kept replaying one impossible truth: Maverick Horwood was my mate.

I wanted him. That was the ugly, inconvenient center of it. I wanted the scarred wolf who had looked at me once and rearranged every careful lie I lived by. Unfortunately, he had also been raised to hate vampires, and I was not only a vampire. I was the hidden royal problem his world would burn on principle.

Sleep had turned traitor. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in that reception hall: his hand around mine, the bond snapping tight, his mouth brushing my skin. Then the dream shifted, because apparently my subconscious had no respect for survival plans, and his lips did not stop at my hand.

I woke flushed, furious, and starving in three separate ways. My body had accepted the bond with humiliating enthusiasm. My brain, the alleged adult in the room, kept pointing out that craving a man who might kill me was not ideal long-term planning.

The suppressants helped with bloodlust. They did nothing for the absence. Maverick’s scent had settled somewhere under my skin, and no amount of blood bags, showers, or aggressive pillow-fluffing made it leave.

Every possible future ended badly. If I told him the truth, he might see a monster. If I kept lying, the bond would turn every day into a slower kind of bleeding. Excellent options. Really top-tier work from Fate.

My phone buzzed. Zoë. I ignored the first call, then the second, then stared at the screen as if it had personally betrayed me. On the third try, guilt won. The bakery should not have to survive my emotional quarantine.

“Hello?” I answered, aiming for mildly ill and landing somewhere near haunted Victorian governess.

“Demi?” Zoë’s voice crackled with concern. “Are you okay? You sound like a haunted cupcake. Do I need to come over?”

“No, no. Nothing dramatic,” I lied. “Stress flu. Wedding hangover. Cake trauma. Pick your favorite.” I forced a laugh and immediately hated it. “The cake was a success, though. Every crumb was eaten.”

“Alright, if you say so. Just remember to take care of yourself, okay? I’ll keep an eye on things at the bakery.”

“Thanks, Zoë. You’re the best. I’ll be back soon.” I hung up before she could hear how little I believed myself.

By that evening, I had made one decision: tomorrow I would go back to Sweet Temptations. I did not have a plan for Maverick, the bond, or the fact that my body had started treating distance like a medical emergency. But I had orders to fill, dough to proof, and a life I refused to abandon because fate had developed a flair for melodrama.

That resolution lasted until sleep found me.

I woke from a scream caught halfway out of my throat. The dream still clung to me: Maverick on his knees, blood at his mouth, Demetrius standing over him with scarlet eyes and royal power burning through the room. My brother’s hand closed around Maverick’s throat with the terrible calm of someone delivering mercy. Now you’re free, he had said, as if killing my mate could be love if he named it protection.

My hands shook when I grabbed my phone. Several missed calls from Demetrius glared up at me. Of course they did. My twin had always known when something was wrong. Distance dulled habits, tempers, even the easy rhythm of childhood, but it had never fully dulled the thread between us. We had been separated too young, guarded too carefully, and loved through doors, reports, coded calls, and silences shaped by the fact that my existence was dangerous. But the thread between twins did not ask permission from politics. It lived under the skin.

I called back before cowardice could dress itself as strategy.

He answered on the first ring. “Demi.” Then, softer, with the old nickname he used only when he was worried enough to forget protocol, “Little menace.”

Two words, and I heard all of him: worry sharpened into irritation, sleeplessness, restrained command, and beneath it, the brother who used to sneak sugared figs into my room because court physicians thought joy was medically suspicious. Demetrius had spent most of his life learning how to sound like a prince when all he wanted was to sound like my brother. I hated how much that still hurt.

I lied smoothly. The wedding had been beautiful. The cake had been perfect. I was tired but fine. Crescent City was safe. Sweet Temptations had not burned down. My voice did not crack once, which felt like either growth or treason.

Silence followed.

Demetrius did not believe me. He rarely pushed at first. That was his most dangerous form of restraint. He waited, patient as a blade left on the table, until the truth crawled out because disappointing him hurt worse than confessing. When we were children, that patience had saved me from court physicians, frightened tutors, and guards who watched me like a disaster with teeth. As adults, it made lying to him feel like swallowing glass.

“You’re tired,” he said at last.

“I said that.”

“No,” he replied. “You said the word. You did not tell me why.”

I pressed my forehead to my knees and closed my eyes. If I told him Maverick’s name, the fragile mess in my chest would become a royal incident before dawn. Demetrius knew the Black Mountain story. Everyone did. The m******e. The dead. The scarred Alpha raised on hatred for my kind. Worse, if Demetrius had already seen reports of Black Mountain moving near Silver Pine, he would connect the dots faster than I could bury them. If my brother learned fate had tied me to that man, he would not ask whether the bond felt real. He would ask how far away Maverick was and how many guards it would take to put a wall between us.

And Demetrius did not only have guards.

He had a crown waiting for him, old blood in his voice, and royal power that could bend a room before anyone realized they were kneeling. He had spent his life protecting the hidden sister the world was not allowed to know existed. Love had made him loyal. Fear had made him dangerous. If he decided Maverick was a threat, he would call it duty, not possession. He would call it history refusing to repeat itself.

He would be wrong. Maybe. The uncertainty hurt most.

“Demi,” he said again, softer now. “Talk to me.”

I almost did. For one weak, aching second, I wanted my brother more than I wanted air. I wanted to tell him I had found the one person fate should never have chosen for me. I wanted to say that Maverick scared me, not because I thought he would hurt me on purpose, but because wanting him had already made me reckless. I wanted to ask whether love could survive a history soaked in blood.

Instead, I laughed too lightly. “I’m fine, Dem. Wedding exhaustion. Too many wolves. Too much champagne. One emotionally aggressive bouquet toss.”

He was quiet long enough for shame to settle.

“You know I can send Felix,” he said.

There it was. Protection disguised as practicality. Felix at my door. A report in Demetrius’s hand. A cage built from concern.

My throat tightened. “No.”

“Demi—”

“No,” I said again, sharper than I meant. “I need you to trust me. Just this once.”

The words hung between us, heavy with all the times trust had been treated like a luxury we could not afford. He exhaled slowly.

“I do trust you,” he said. “It is everyone else I have a problem with.”

I smiled despite myself, then hated that tears followed. “That makes two of us.”

He let the silence stretch, and in it I felt everything we never said: his guilt for being the brother who stayed visible while I was hidden, my guilt for resenting the protection that had kept me alive, and the old ache of loving each other across a distance neither of us had chosen.

“Call me tomorrow,” he said finally.

“I will.”

“Demi.”

“I know.”

“No,” he said, voice low. “You do not. Whatever is happening, do not make me find out after it has already hurt you.”

My fingers tightened around the phone. Too late, I thought. But I only whispered, “Goodnight, Dem.”

After the call ended, I sat in the dark with the screen cold against my palm and understood something that made the pull toward Maverick ache worse: before I could face him, before I could test whether fate had given me a future or a blade, I had to keep my brother from turning love into a prison.

Dawn arrived gray and rude. I stood in my kitchen with one hand on the counter and the other around the coffee I had forgotten to drink. Mixing bowls were drying by the sink. Invoices hid under a magnet. Vanilla still clung to my hoodie. Everything looked normal, which felt deeply offensive.

So, I did what I knew how to do. I washed my face, tied back my hair, and wrote the day’s pastry orders even though Zoë had probably already done it. Routine would not fix the bond. It would not make Maverick safe. But movement was better than lying in bed while fate chewed through the furniture.

By the time I reached Sweet Temptations, one thing was clear: hiding had bought me three days. No more. The bond had not faded. The fear had not improved. Avoiding fate, as a strategy, was showing disappointing long-term results.

I unlocked the bakery doors and stepped into flour, sugar, and the one place that had always made sense. If I focused on work, I could almost pretend the bond was just another crisis to manage between croissants and customer complaints. Almost. Fate, unfortunately, did not seem like the kind of force impressed by pastry cases.