Had it not been for what Grandma had done to me, I could have gotten through the day without sleeping. But that had taken too much out of me, even though Grandma hadn't even been trying to wipe me out.

I woke up a little before five. That gave me just enough time for some coffee and a shower that wouldn't need to be rushed. I brewed a pot, which was of course really just a cup. It was stale and terrible, like most hotel coffee, but it did help me finish casting off my slumber. The shower did the rest.

When I got out of the shower, Aunt Iva was in my room, already dressed for the rehearsal dinner. It was almost strange, seeing her looking presentable rather than squeezed into some skimpy little bit of lingerie.

"You're not dressed yet?" she said, eying my naked form.

"Do you usually dress in the shower?"

She snickered.

I checked my watch. We had a little time, but not enough for any play. As I dressed, we made small talk. She told me about her afternoon. First, she'd fucked Todd and Melanie. Then came the Farrier Foursome.

"Speaking of your mother," I said. "Do you know she once told me there were only two things in her life that she'd ever regretted?"

"Oh?" she asked, guardedly.

Perhaps what I was about to tell her would not come as a surprise after all, given that tone. Still, I pressed on. "She told me this morning that both of them had to to do with you. Wouldn't elaborate, except to say that you only knew what one of them was."

She was silent for a time. "Really?"

"Should I not have told you?" I asked.

"What?" she asked, turning her brown eyes from the mirror towards me. "No, I'm glad you did. It's just that," she paused, then again said, "I'm glad that you did."

And she left it at that.

I wanted desperately to ask her more about it, but I wasn't so stupid that I couldn't interpret that properly. So I simply came up behind her, wrapped my hands around her waist, and kissed her cheek.

"There's something else I need to tell you," I said.

My aunt smiled. "Okay. But first, let me just quickly go on the record as saying that it's incredibly hot that you didn't ask me what the one thing she regrets that I already know about is. I know you want to know. You reek of it. But I appreciate you respecting my privacy. I'll tell you eventually. I'm promise. Just not right now."

"Good enough," I said, kissing her dirty blonde hair. I could never decide if I liked it best this color, the deep gold she also frequently wore, or the platinum blonde she broke out every now and then. "Did you know that your darling nephew didn't actually Devour Brianna? He just exiled her to some prison world."

"No, I didn't know that," she said, voice weary. "But I should have. I sensed that he was carrying around a lot of guilt, and I'd assumed it was from Devouring her. Should have noticed that his Libido didn't grow. There's no way he could have Devoured a woman that powerful and not gotten a whole lot stronger."

"Now the part you're really going to hate is what I did when I found out."

So I told her.

Iva turned around and kissed me. It wasn't the kind of anxious foreplay kiss that says, "I need to have you inside me this second." It was tender and sweet.

"That was not the reaction I expected," I said.

"From what you described, she's not the same woman anymore," Iva said. "And people deserve second chances. Even people who do really terrible things to people they love when they're young and stupid."

I wondered just which young and stupid woman we were talking about at the moment.

But she wasn't any quicker to explain that comment than she was to tell me what Grandma had been talking about earlier.

#

Lily and I sat one one small table, as we would tomorrow. Todd and his family sat at another table. Dad, Grandma, Cindy and Iva had another.

My mother should have been there. And Natalie as well. Maybe even Skye and her twin brothers. So many people missing, without even counting the dead.

But it wouldn't do to dwell on that now. I'd shed enough tears over Mom. And would shed still more. In private.

My lovely fiance wore a slinky blue dress that exposed a bit more of her milky cleavage than was probably appropriate, given how modest all the other women had dressed. Her hair was tied up in a mini tower above her head. Blue stiletto heels added a few inches to her height, and emphasized the curves of her lower body.

I was a bit nervous. Not just about tomorrow, though obviously that was true. But about tonight. The veil had long since been lifted. She was doing a nice job of hiding it, but I sensed that she was pretty furious with me. There was still a strong undercurrent of desire there, but at the moment, it was definitely well beneath the surface.

Only an idiot would have thought it would be okay to simply arrange for her to have a date with my brother while I spent two days fucking the women of my family. She hadn't been entirely left out in the cold, but damn close.

With a smile, Lily asked, "So, you are only marrying the one woman tomorrow?"

"Yes, dear," I said. "Just the one."

"And she wouldn't happen to be a top-heavy blonde with no ass?"

"No ass?" I said. Not that I hadn't myself many times thought Iva would look better if she had just a little more of her older sister in her, but still.

"That's great. Let's argue about whether she's hot enough for you," Lily said.

"That's not what I meant," I said.

Lily offered a conciliatory smile and patted the back of my hand. "I'm sorry. I guess I just feel like I'm supposed to be angry and jealous. I mean, you've been fucking your aunts. And grandmother. And your sister-in-law."

"I have," I said.

"Which is what we immortals do," she said with a sigh. "What I did, when I still had a family. I know that. But." She didn't finish the thought, just sat there folding and refolding the napkin in her lap.

Immortals?

I suppose, if the shoe fits. After all, I'd never heard of any of us dying of natural causes. But I'd just never thought about it that way before.

"But what?" I asked.

"I don't. It's nothing. Just that I sometimes wonder what it says about me that I honestly don't miss my family in the least," Lily said.

"It doesn't say anything except that you have a shitty family," I said.

"Yeah," Lily said. "I'm sure that's it." She looked out across the room, eying the men of my family. "Anyway. I want to fuck the rest of your family. Let me do that, and I'll forget about how much fun you had over the past two days while I had to settle for one entirely too brief encounter with that stud you call a brother."

I gritted my teeth at that. Was it strange that her request didn't bother me, just the way she'd described Todd?

"Now?" I asked.

"Why not?" she asked, staring me in the eye.

"Wouldn't it be more exciting to do that at the reception?"

Her eyes widened. A smile spread across her face. "Yes. It would."

"In your wedding gown."

"The bridal train," she said.

"And I'll tell you what. You can humiliate me the whole time. I won't touch any of the other women. I'll sit in my chair, and you can go down on me while every other guy in the place takes their turn in your hot cunt. Or your ass, if you want."

"Or if they want," she said.

"Whatever," I said.

"Deal," Lily quivered, her breasts jiggling. "Oh, now I'm really excited." She covered her mouth instinctively. "Not that I wasn't before."

I laughed, touched her hand softly. "It's okay."

"I'm sorry. I understand what I'm signing up for, as well as what I'm not."

I frowned. "Well, tell me you do at least want children?"

"Oh, yeah," she said without hesitation. "Absolutely. Preferably a lot of them."

I laughed at her tone. "Okay. Good."

"I can't wait for the day that I can have sex with my son," she said, blushing.

I kissed her on the cheek. "And I can't wait to watch, and to fuck our daughters. You know, if we leave them to be raised by mortals, after a few months, they'll be of age."

She nodded slowly. "Yeah, That's certainly one option."

"Well, I don't entirely love the idea us being absent for most of their development," I said. "But this is pretty close to instant gratification. Isn't that appealing?" When I only saw a hint of a reaction, I added, "If you want to have one or two more kids after that, kids that we do raise ourselves, we can do that too."

"Yeah, that's fine," she said with a sigh. "I'm dying to raise my own children, but I suppose it would be nice to get to know each other better first before we go through that."

I lowered my voice. "Imagine if, once they came of age, we made all our children be our vassals. Talk about a boost in power! And without having to Devour anyone."

She stared at me in horror. "I don't know, Frank."

"We certainly don't have to. Just an idea," I said, feeling like an asshole.

But, at the same time, I felt a bit frustrated with her for making me feel like an asshole. You'd think I'd suggested that we Devour them. Of course, I should have said that we could ask them to be, instead of saying that we'd make them. But that didn't make me a monster.

Did it?

#

Our ceremony was briefer than brief. Once everyone had assembled in the park, Lily and I stood under an ivied trellis and said our vows to one another. We didn't bother with a flower girl or bridal party or groomsmen or have anyone oversee the ceremony.

The only thing that felt wrong about it to me was that the trees were all green. In the mortal world, it was summer, the season of weddings. But it felt like we should be marrying in autumn, with the leaves all gold and red and orange and brown.

I wore a tux with an indigo bow-tie to match her natural hair color. Lily wore a traditional white gown with a sequined bodice. Her light blue skin looked so beautiful against the white on white dress that I almost thought it comical that ordinary women wore the same colored gowns. As good as she had looked yesterday, as my fiance, wearing her mortal disguise, she looked twice as good today, as my wife, in her true appearance.

Lily and I were the only ones that were fully clothed. The men wore boxers, the collars and cuffs of dress-shirts, and neck ties the same color as my bow-tie. The women wore their best lingerie. Though none of it white, of course.

When we held hands, Lily's grip was firm. When we kissed, there was real passion. When I studied her Libido, I almost swooned at the intensity of the desire I found there, lurking beneath a warm layer of happiness. Perhaps none of that should have surprised me, even though we weren't really in love with one another. At least, not that I'd noticed. Women everywhere loved weddings, it would seem. Even those from other worlds.

Heck, I had to admit, even I found myself getting caught up in it. So much so that I almost forgot that, even among mortals, most marriages would not last, and plenty of those that did shouldn't. I almost didn't even wish that it was my mother in Lily's place, however much that would violate one of the only taboos left to a people who had no use for taboos. I even almost managed to convince myself that we were as good for each other as two of our kind could be. So what if we didn't see eye to eye on how to raise our children, or even whether to do so ourselves?

Almost, almost, almost.

Part of me knew that I'd very likely see things differently soon enough.

While we sipped our first drinks of the evening, my wife regaled me with stories from her bachelorette party. The sheer relish with which she described her various depraved acts, and those of the mortal women that passed for friends when she was still under my veil, gave new life to what was otherwise a fairly predictable tawdry tale.

"I'm sorry none of your people could be here," I said after she finished her story.

She snorted derisively. "Why? I'm not." The hard edge left her voice. "Sure, I'd gladly fuck them too if they were here, because I'm in that kind of mood, but I thought you understood by now that I pretty much hate them."

I kissed her forehead, then donned my best smart-ass grin. "Well, you see, Lily, the thing is, it's kinda hard for me to understand something you refuse to explain."

"You don't want to know."

"Are you sure? Because it feels to me like I do," I said.

"Trust me, you don't. And I don't want to talk about it. Ever. So please don't ruin my wedding day by asking about it, okay?"

"Okay, okay, sorry," I said. "But I do hope you know that you really can share things with me. That's one of the things that husbands and wives do. Or so I hear."

Lily smiled, laying a gloved hand on my cheek. "I'll keep that in mind." After taking a long sip of her wine, she added, "You know, I thought about you all the time after you left. I was glad you'd got away, because captivity is captivity. But I missed you. A lot."

"Does it look like I forgot about you?" I asked, before pulling her in for a kiss.

"I think we should go mingle," she said breathlessly after our lips parted. "I mean, as I just got done saying, I obviously don't mind having complete strangers inside me. But I think it would be nice to get to know your family at least a little bit beforehand. Or, you know, in general. I have a feeling I'm going to be seeing a lot of them after all."

Seeing as she'd only put a little bite into those last words, I only put a little force into the smack of her ass. She yelped and shuffled forward a few steps, but smiled at me afterwards.

We went over to the pavilion. Everyone was gathered around a picnic table that had been turned into a makeshift bar. I introduced her to everyone, and she took at least a few minutes to make small talk with each person. And she hit it off with everyone.

Especially Todd.

Fucking Todd.

You'd think they were old friends. This, after one night of sex, that, by Todd's account, wasn't even that great. But if he thought she talked too much though, as he'd said to me at one point yesterday, he wasn't letting it show now.

While the four of us talked, Holly made eyes at me, at least when she wasn't glowering at her husband or pretending not to be giving my wife dirty looks. The poor dear. I hoped that after her Elevation, her feelings might evolve. Or that Todd's would.

Lily was almost as comfortable and flirty with Dad as she'd been with Todd. But then, Dad was pretty funny to begin with. Often unintentionally, but sometimes even when he thought he was. And he was always in prime form at parties. It was almost as if he didn't think small gatherings were worth turning his charm up to its highest setting.

While she and Dad joked, Cindy and Iva came to join us. Cindy eased in to the conversation Dad and Lily were having. Iva stared at Cindy longingly, almost jealously, as she tipped back her plastic cocktail glass.

I pulled her aside. Lily looked back at me when I took my hand off her back, but when she saw that I was just stepping a bit off to the side, she smiled, blew me a kiss, and turned her attention back to the story my father was telling, hanging on his every word.

My aunt's outfit was just unfair. It took great effort on my part to think about anything other than ripping her soft breasts out of her teddy and sucking on them while everyone, including my newlywed wife, stared on.

"She's delightful," Iva said. "Looks like Mel wasn't kidding. You are marrying up."

"When did she say that?" I asked.

"I think I met her once, actually," Iva said, ignoring my question.

"Really? In Silas' Court?"

"Yeah. I think I saw her at parties back when I was with Silas' daughter. Never spoke to her, but I remember being taken by her." She paused. "And, now that I think about it, I also remember there being rumors about her tearing some woman's throat out with her jaws. Be careful with that one, Frank."

"I will be."

"Here," Iva said, handing me her empty glass. "Why don't you go buy me another."

I laughed, kissed her on the forehead, and made my way around the clusters of people to get at the picnic table. Not a minute later, I returned with another cosmotini. Or...