The Alpha's Vampire Princess

Chapter 3: Prince Charming

DEMI

By the time the wedding reception began, I had scrubbed dirt from under my nails, rinsed blood from my mouth, swallowed another suppressant, and smiled at my reflection until she looked almost convincing. Almost. The forest still clung to me in places soap could not reach. Every laugh in the hall sounded too bright. Every pulse sounded too close. But the cake stood perfect, the bride was glowing, and no one had discovered that the baker in the gold dress had spent part of that morning on her knees in the woods, apologizing to dead rabbits.

Every little girl is supposed to dream about a Prince Charming on a white horse. I had always assumed mine would take one look at the blood on my hands, the secrets under my skin, and my impressive talent for disaster, then ride in the opposite direction. If someone out there had been made for me, I hoped he had excellent survival instincts, low expectations, and no strong opinions about hidden princesses with medically managed bloodlust.

For a while, I had almost believed the night might stay simple. Dominic and Leonore stood beneath strands of fairy lights, exchanging vows with the kind of devotion that made the room ache in the best way. When he dipped her into a kiss and the pack cheered, something small and foolish inside me lifted its head.

Did girls built from secrets, suppressants, and professionally frosted lies ever get to believe destiny meant kindness?

I shook the thought away. This was not my night. My job was to smile, applaud, monitor the cake, and return home later to a dignified stack of blood bags like the sad little vampire cocktail hour I deserved.

Leonore loved the cake. Dominic looked at her like he’d tear down the moon if she asked. Guests cheered. Champagne flowed. For one fragile stretch of time, it really felt like I might get through the night.

Guests filled the hall in waves of silk, laughter, perfume, and wolf. The buffet steamed along one wall, dangerously aromatic and entirely too close to my sense of self-preservation. I stayed near the edge of the room, where I could watch everything and escape if my body decided to ruin someone’s seating chart.

My champagne had been discreetly fortified with crushed suppressants. It tasted terrible. I drank it, anyway, humming along to the music and pretending chemical survival counted as elegance.

Then Hannah dropped into the chair beside me, barefoot and exhausted, and the room changed. Her smile vanished first. Dominic’s followed. Conversations stumbled, broke apart, and died. Every wolf in the hall went still at once.

The front doors opened. Cold air swept in first. Then came his scent—sharp, dark, magnetic. My gums throbbed so hard I nearly dropped the glass.

“Demi, look down,” Hannah hissed, shifting in front of me as my vision threatened to flare scarlet. I forced a breath in through my mouth, grabbed the nearest whiskey bottle, and swallowed hard enough to make my eyes water.

When I finally looked, he was already inside. Tall. Broad. Too controlled to be called graceful and too scarred to be mistaken for harmless. He did not enter the room so much as claim space from it.

Three scars dragged down the right side of his face, brutal enough to make the room look away. One eye burned clear blue, cold enough to cut. The other was ghost-white and clouded, the kind of wound no one dared to stare at for long. I knew him before anyone said his name.

Alpha Maverick Horwood.

The stories came with him: ruthless alpha, vampire hater, Black Mountain’s scarred beast. Every whispered warning I had ever heard suddenly had shoulders, hands, and a pulse I could hear across the room.

Black Mountain did not simply hate vampires. They had been built around the memory of what vampires took from them: families slaughtered, children orphaned, an Alpha line nearly broken beneath royal blood and old betrayal. To Maverick Horwood, if the stories were true, vampire blood did not mean a person. It meant the blade that had carved his childhood into ruins. If he ever learned what ran in my veins, nothing would save me. Whatever strange pull had made me look too long would only make the moment he turned on me hurt more.

Faces turned pale. Wolves lowered their gazes. Even laughter seemed to know better than to breathe near him. I should have been afraid only of being discovered. Instead, my body had the audacity to notice everything else.

“What’s he doing here?” I whispered.

“He’s Dominic’s best friend,” Hannah murmured back, her voice laced with concern. “He wasn’t supposed to come.”

Then Maverick turned his head and looked straight at me.

The pull hit like a hand around my ribs. Heat flashed through my skin. The room blurred at the edges, but he stayed clear—too clear. Across the room, Maverick’s nostrils flared once, almost imperceptibly, and his gaze sharpened as if some instinct had caught on a thread it did not understand. My body knew before my mind could object.

Mate.

The word should have felt like wonder. Instead, terror followed so fast it nearly swallowed the bond whole. He was a wolf built by grief and raised on hatred for my kind. I was the hidden daughter of everything he had been taught to despise.

If he learned the truth, would the bond matter? Or would he look at me and see blood, history, and a target?

Hannah saw it. Of course she did. Her gaze snapped from my face to Maverick and back again, and the color drained from her cheeks.

I looked down, but it was too late. He was already walking toward me. Hannah stood too, not enough to stop an alpha, but enough to prove she would try.

“Maverick,” Hannah said too brightly, “this is Demi. My human friend. She made the wedding cake.”

My human friend. I could have kissed Hannah for that lie if breathing had not suddenly become a full-time occupation. Maverick offered his hand. I put mine in it because refusing would have looked worse than dying.

Skin met skin. The bond flared. Not soft. Not sweet. It struck like lightning wrapped in velvet, beautiful enough to make me lean toward it and violent enough to remind me that beautiful things could still kill. His fingers tightened by a fraction. His breath caught once, almost too softly to hear. Then his attention sharpened again, not only with recognition, but with the faintest shadow of suspicion, as if something beneath my blockers had brushed against him and vanished. Before I could panic, he bent and pressed his mouth to the back of my hand.

“I look forward to seeing you again, Demi,” he murmured. My name in his voice was a problem. Beautiful. Fatal. The bond answered him like it had been waiting my whole life for permission to ruin me. For one impossible second, I wanted to stay exactly where I was—with my hand in the hand of the man most likely to destroy me, letting fate pull tighter because the pull felt less like a chain and more like gravity.

Dominic stepped between us before I could embarrass myself by either fainting, biting someone, or doing the truly unforgivable thing: smiling back. The interruption should have saved me. Instead, it gave me one stolen breath to stare at Maverick over Dominic’s shoulder. He watched me with that cold blue eye and the ruined white one, and I could not tell whether he looked like salvation or sentence.

Hannah’s hand closed around my arm. “We need to move.” No argument. No explanation. I should have gone at once. Every survival instinct I owned was screaming that if Maverick ever looked past the blockers, past the human lie, past the frosting and gold dress, he would see vampire blood and old betrayal where I needed him to see me. But my feet stayed rooted. My gaze went back to him again, greedy and terrified, because the bond had already done something unforgivable: it had made danger feel like home.

Maverick shifted as if he might step around Dominic, and that small movement broke the spell. Not because he threatened me. Because I wanted him to come closer. I wanted the worst possible thing with the worst possible man and wanting him had already made me hesitate when I should have been running. Hannah tugged once, harder this time. I let her pull me away before fate could teach me how quickly temptation became a trap.

Hannah did not let go until the music and voices blurred behind a closed door. One second, I was still looking back at him. The next, I was in my room, shoving clothes into a bag while my hands shook too hard to fold anything. Before panic could catch up, I was behind the wheel, driving away from Silver Pine with the taste of suppressants, champagne, and disaster still on my tongue. Distance should have helped. It did not. Somewhere behind me, fate had finally found my hiding place—and it had scars.