The Alpha's Vampire Princess

DEMI

The bell jingled as I entered Sweet Temptations, and the familiar scent of vanilla and chocolate enveloped me like a bittersweet promise. Usually, my bakery filled me with a sense of peace, security, and joy. However, today, as I glanced at a quirky neon sign on the wall—featuring red lips and slightly protruding teeth sinking into the bakery’s name—I felt an undercurrent of dread. It served as a reminder of the vampire genes I carried hidden beneath the surface and how much I had to lose.

In a few hours, I would be driving to Silver Pine Pack to deliver and assemble Alpha Dominic Davis’s wedding cake—my best friend’s brother. Hannah begged me to come and not just deliver the order. That part was easy. The hard part was walking into a werewolf pack while pretending I was only a baker and not a vampire princess with a dangerous blood problem and a family name that could get me killed.

“Demi! Focus,” Zoë, my hyperactive assistant, called from the kitchen. “Your masterpiece isn’t going to stack itself.” She rushed me, trying to control the chaos that had arisen.

“Right. Cake first, existential crisis later,” I muttered, reaching for the final tier.

Crescent City was one of the few places where a girl like me could disappear. Here, I had traded court politics and whispered pity for flour on my jeans and customers who cared more about croissants than bloodlines. I preferred Demi the baker to Princess Demetria Noell Durand-Lemarchal. Demi smiled more. Demi slept better. Demi wasn’t watched.

At court, I had been called cursed, defective, and dangerous. Here, I was the girl who made wedding cakes. I intended to keep it that way. My life wasn’t always sprinkled with sprinkles or covered with sweet, colorful icing. And although for many the words royalty or princess are associated with something fairy tale related, for me, life was more like a tragedy.

I was born as a two-minute younger twin sister to a vampire crown prince, Demetrius Möell Durand-Lemarchal. An heir awaited in the kingdom for decades. Although my humble persona also had significance in the royal records, it was quickly understood that something was wrong with me, and the fact of my birth was somewhat fabricated, and my person was erased.

This wasn’t dictated by any contempt for me, of course. My parents loved me very much, and even to this day, they prove it to me. But I was born with a defect that could paint a rather unfavorable picture of a royal, impeccable line. Bloodlust. And although the lust for blood is not something unnatural for vampires - after all, it is in our nature to drink blood - mine, however, is more impressive, unrestrained, unstoppable, and, therefore, dangerous.

As a three-year-old girl, I almost deprived my brother of his warm elixir, unable to detach my fangs from his wrist. What caused it? I don’t recall. But I sent my brother to a hospital wing for a few days, and I earned myself odd, scared looks. It was then that it was decided that, for my safety, not only would the royal pharmacist devise special pills to restrain my condition, but I would also be placed under the care of people who had sworn to protect me at the cost of their lives. And so, since the age of three, I have lived in Crescent City, walking streets full of all kinds of people, stuffed with suppressants but fulfilling myself in a field I could only dream of in the royal court: I am a baker. And a hell of a good one at that.

“You still look like you’re heading into battle, not a wedding,” Hannah said when she arrived to help load the cake boxes into my car.

“Because your family is a pack of wolves,” I said. “And I am one badly timed mistake away from becoming a buffet item or a diplomatic incident.”

Hannah snorted. “With those blockers? Please. They’ll smell stress, sugar, and a girl one bad day away from biting someone verbally. You’ll pass.”

I wanted to believe her. Instead, I finished the last buttercream detail with the care of someone building her own alibi. I know wolves, at least those who come to my bakery as regular customers who always order the same set of lemon cupcakes, two large creamy lattes, and leave a big enough tip to know they’re not low-class.

Wolves are large, intimidating, and with their tendency to tear apart anyone they deem a threat, my little sweet persona, with her unbridled appetite for scarlet nectar, is just asking for trouble. So I know that the more of them there are, the greater the danger of being discovered.

By late afternoon, the bakery was closed, the cake was boxed, and my emergency supplies were in my purse: bloodlust suppressants in a bottle labeled nausea meds, scent blockers in one labeled headache relief. Very glamorous. Very royal.

The drive to Silver Pine should have been calming. Autumn blazed through the trees in amber and red, and the road curved like something out of a romance movie. Instead, I spent the whole trip rehearsing how not to die.

Be normal, I told myself as the pack house came into view between the trees. Be polite. Deliver the cake. Smile. Leave with all limbs attached.

I parked in the gravel drive with hands that were steadier than I felt. The pack house was grand without being elegant—solid timber, stone, and power. The kind of place that looked built to survive storms, sieges, and bad decisions.

Everything appeared normal and quite welcoming. However, the entire scene signaling ‘you’re going to be okay’ shifted dramatically when the double doors burst open.

A pack of half-dressed, ridiculously muscular men thundered down the steps like some cursed fitness calendar had come to life. They were laughing, shoving each other, all bare skin and reckless energy, and for one extremely undignified second, I forgot every survival instinct I possessed.

“Demi,” Hannah said sharply, smacking my arm. “Eyes up. Fangs in. Also, if you eat one of my pack members, I will never forgive you.”

I muttered something unprintable, fished the labeled pill bottle from my bag, and swallowed a suppressant dry. The hunger eased from a scream to a hiss.

“Dear gods, fairies, imps, and other shimmering creatures, I beg you, grant me the strength to survive this without causing harm to any of our lives. I promise never again to tempt fate and to remain in the shadows.”

I sent this prayer to the universe, feeling the throbbing call of hunger in my ears, echoing the rhythm of each pulse, filled with warm elixir—blood. I need blood. Without it, there’s no guarantee that the wedding won’t turn into a funeral.

Feeling the effect of suppressed hunger, I took a deep breath and followed Hannah, who was trying ineffectively to mask her anxiety with a smile. Inside, the house buzzed with wedding chaos—flowers, ribbons, laughter, trays of food, too many people moving too fast. It smelled like sugar, pine, and wolf. My nerves got louder.

Everywhere I looked, someone was carrying flowers, steaming trays, extra chairs, or ribbons that did not want to cooperate. Children darted between adult legs like tiny disasters in formal clothes. The whole house pulsed with the kind of affectionate chaos only big families could produce, and it made my own loneliness ache in places I preferred not to examine.

A bright squeal cut through the noise. A tall woman in a flowing blue dress flew down the staircase, threw herself into Hannah’s arms, then turned to me with a smile wide enough to power the building.

It should have felt overwhelming. Instead, it felt intimate in a way that made my throat tighten. My world had always treated love like leverage, blood like law, and family like obligation sharpened into ceremony. This house treated all three like noise and warmth, and there were too many people trying to help at once. I didn’t know what to do with that.

“Demi! You’re here. And my cake is safe. I love you already,” Leonore, as I deducted from her aura and behavior, said, hugging me before I could brace for it.

“I brought tiers, tools, and emotional stability,” I said, “but mostly the cake.”

The three of us laughed, and I felt my nerves ease when Hannah officially introduced me to the bride-to-be. I didn’t notice any signs that I might be discovered. Then, the atmosphere in the room shifted, and my nerves spiked up again.

Alpha Dominic descended the stairs behind Leonore, broad-shouldered and impossibly imposing, with the kind of presence that made conversation falter around him. He looked dangerous until he looked at his bride. Then he looked ruined for her.

“See?” Hannah whispered while the couple didn’t mind showing their affection publicly. “Big scary alpha. Pathetic for his fiancée.”

“That is not helping,” I whispered back just as Dominic stopped in front of us.

Hannah rolled her eyes. “You are catastrophizing in couture. Breathe.”

“So you’re Demi,” he said, studying me with sharp alpha focus. “The baker brave enough to trust our reckless Hannah with a wedding cake.”

“Be nice,” Hannah said. “She’s my best friend, and if you scare her, your cake privileges die tonight.”

Dominic’s mouth twitched. “Welcome to Silver Pine, Demi. Hannah says you’re baking royalty.”

Royalty. The word hit like a blade between my ribs. I managed to shake his hand without flinching, but every instinct in me screamed to run. If anyone here ever connected that joke to the truth, this wedding would become a massacre.

Leonore pulled Dominic away before he could ask anything else, and I finally breathed again. I told myself all I had to do was finish the cake, survive the reception, and leave.

Even carrying the cake inside felt strangely ceremonial, as if I were crossing into a place that ran on older rules than courtesy or coincidence. I told myself it was only a wedding—a job. One more delivery in a life built on pretending ordinary things could protect me. The lie had never felt thinner.

I had no idea that by the end of the wedding, leaving would be the impossible part.