Two Undead Husbands and an Eternal Throuple; The Perfect Package Deal
I didn’t think dad’s servants could make anxious, exhausted, postpartum me look nearly this put together to be honest. When dad said I needed a proper dress for the ceremony, I was pretty suspicious he was just trying to separate me from my undead lovers, distract me with more fairy magic and time loss, until Luc was long dead and dusted and Julian maimed with forced dental surgery. I’m still not entirely sure that’s not his scheme, so I’ve been refusing all snack offerings or proffered cups, unless my mother is the one supplying them, vetting them as safe to drink. It’s hard to keep her focused on that task while she’s holding Ben. Still, I’m glad she’s here. I do not trust any of these fairies, and I didn’t want to surrender my boy over to anyone other than his grandmother, even if it was just for an hour while I’m getting dolled up to walk down the aisle.
“You know, these last minute weddings are supposed to take place right *before* you give birth,” mom absentmindedly tells me now, as the pixies finish pinning up my hair. “That way the baby isn’t born a bastard. Though he is such a cute bastard. Yes he is!” she coos down at Ben.
“I can’t believe you can be doped up on both fairy spit and mind-control and yet still somehow be managing to criticize me.” I sigh.
“I’m not criticizing. I’m just making observations.”
“Well can’t you at least tell me I look beautiful or something?” I demand. Not that I feel anything like a blushing bride at the moment. I’m being scooped up like luggage and carried back into the main room by a complete stranger: one of dad’s knights who is not at all the man I intend to be marrying tonight. Still, this is a nice dress, with its white lace sleeves, oddly comfortable and support-giving corset, and this shimmering, silk skirt, complete with ridiculously long train.
Mom can’t take her eyes off of Ben though, so I guess she’s incapable of appreciating the ensemble.
“Look, mom, I want you to attend my wedding, even though I’m marrying a complete scoundrel. Dad was right about him to be honest…” No reaction to that admission either. Great. “But he’s a hot scoundrel. Or at least… he used to be, before the fairy blood gave him that major case of old-man face. I really wish I could see his reaction to that,” I wickedly muse. “I mean, I’m worried about him dying. I am. But the geezer look would be just absolutely hilarious, if he weren’t in danger. There’s no funner blackmail you could get on that Narcissus.” I could tease him so much, calling him grandpa or my thousand year old sugar daddy. It would get right under his skin. Then I would let him kiss me anyway, even with his current looks. “I really do love him. And I will probably stay in love with him forever, because he is just that entertaining and compelling--”
“Oo! Ben just dropped a dookie. Yes he did.”
“Right. You’re not listening. Nothing about me matters, but you’ll change Ben’s diaper, right?”
“Oh yes. I’ll do anything for the world’s cutest--”
“Great. Then take care of that and keep watching him throughout this ceremony, alright?”
I do not want my wedding day to be all about my magically beguiling infant. Maybe it’s selfish, but I’m about to take vows with an unconscious near-corpse, so I at least want Julian to be looking at me adoringly the entire time, not staring distracted over at Baby Ben and complimenting how precious he is.
I do get my wish though, as a few of dad’s most trusted servants carry me on a litter out into those woods, because Ben’s fallen sound asleep once again. Mom comes back to her senses in an instant and demands to know why we’re trekking out into the woods in the middle of the night, but I hiss for her to keep quiet and not wake him, so reluctantly, she does.
We reach an isolated glen, ringed by mist, and covered with a solid ceiling of cherry blossom branches in full bloom. These trees are hundreds of feet tall, in defiance of any plant like this on earth. Sure beats getting married in a church.
Julian’s standing there beside my father, with Luc’s frail body held cradled close to his chest. He’s dressed in plain, white linen, nowhere near as ornate as my wedding dress. The barefoot, v-neck look still suits him ridiculously well. He looks like an angel, his golden hair tinged silver in the moonlight in complimentary match with the bright white of Luc’s head. “I am marrying two geriatrics,” I remind myself, even though for Julian that’s a bit of an exaggeration. “But I have always had a thing for older men.”
“Not the words a father wants to hear,” my dad mutters, as Julian blushes bright red.
“You wanted me to marry ten different strangers who are probably thousands of years older than him, dad,” I remind him scathingly. And I do have someone my own age…
Someone who didn’t even bother to come to my rescue.
I guess our last conversation… It did sound an awful lot like a break-up speech. Maybe Gracen is just better off without me.
But to be honest, when I was a little girl picturing my wedding day… He was always the one standing proud at that altar, wearing those dorky, thick glasses, but smiling so broadly it shone right through the glamour.
It breaks my heart that he didn’t come here with Julian and Luc. He did not want to see me again, didn’t care that I’d been kidnapped.
Or more likely, he just wasn’t willing to put aside his beef with Luc and work together with his sire, not even for my sake. He hates Julian too, for killing his father…
And I hate him just a little bit for still loving that monster. I hate him irrationally for letting me get hurt, and for continuing to hurt me with his grief and ignorance.
But I miss him anyway. I miss my best friend, the relationship I lost months ago when his glasses broke and all this started.
“I… I know you don’t actually want to do this,” Julian’s whispered words jolt me right out of my reflections, as he sets down Luc and kneels at my side. Why the hell am I even thinking of Gracen right now when I have the world’s most dazzling, compassionate, perfect guy right here in front of me? The servants set down my litter and took their distance, melting off into the mists, so it’s just Julian, Luc, my father, mother, and me right now; an intimate, perfect scene.
“This can’t be the wedding you imagined,” Julian nonetheless anticipates, looking to the hardly living mummy right between us. “You’re just marrying him to save his life, and for that…” He smiles, such a heartwarming, butterfly-inducing wonder of an expression on that face. “I really do love you, Leah. You are the most incredible person I have ever known, and you need to know that Luc… He wants to spend forever with you. He really does. I know he’s unconscious, so he can’t actually give you proper vows…”
“I don’t need him to swear to monogamy,” I counter with a bittersweet grin. “I don’t need his support ‘in sickness and in health’. I have you for that.”
His smile grows all the wider, and his blush all the hotter. He never will lose that doubt and sadness in his eyes… “You don’t… It’s just Luc you have to marry. I’m alright. I’m not actually that old. I have decades left, even on mortal time. And I don’t even need to keep drinking your blood, if you don’t…” That concession pains him. I can see it clearly. “I mean, I will not force you to… I know that last time, I--”
“Julian,” I cut him off, taking his hands. “I love you. And marrying Luc…. I thought you were part of that package deal,” I tease. “But wait, was that false advertising? No eternal throuple in this future? I just have to deal with Luc, alone, for an eternity?!” My eyes widen in feigned horror at the thought.
“Eternity? You’re not… You’re not going to let Luc try to turn you?” Julian hisses, squeezing tighter at my hands. Geez, I really can’t joke with him, not the way I can with Luc, or Gracen… “Leah, most people do not even survive--”
“And I would never let that happen,” my father cuts him off coldly, looming right over us in most obvious threat.
“I am not becoming a vampire,” I correct them dryly. “How the hell would I take Ben to the park or out on play-dates if I got roasted down to ash if ever I stepped into a sunbeam? I have eternity – or at least close to that – because dad thinks I won’t age like a regular mortal due to my near-god levels of fairy genetics.”
Julian’s brow raises. “Really? That’s…” His smile returns, glowing with hope. “That is the best thing I could have ever…”
“Yes, you will both live forever, safe here with me,” King Oberon declares, and I feel my eyes grow hooded with annoyance. “There’s still time to abandon that disgusting devil laid out at our feet however, and make this a more traditional wedding between two instead of--”
“No,” Julian and I simultaneously insist, though my voice is far harsher and less respectful than his.
“Now hand over the rings, and let me get to making out with this soon-to-be skeleton,” I conclude.