know stealthing was a thing? Me either, till the pregnancy test came back positive.
Oh, and he confessed it to me right after he hit me and right before he tried to rape me.
Like I said. Asshole. Dangerous, abusive asshole who wasn’t going to come a hundred miles of my son.
Auggie felt even more strongly about this than I did. We had long planned to marry before I delivered, but initially our simple plan had been a family thing at my parents’ farm, with my mother officiating.
Instead, we had five weeks to pull off a real wedding in a real church, since being a king required such things.
So, it wasn’t just any wedding. It was a royal wedding. One with presidents, heads of state and other royal families on the guest list, not to mention all manner of celebrities and notables from all over the world. Oh, and it was going to be televised live for a global audience.
It was a matter of Aldaynean pride to get it right.
I had an entire team of people assisting me with this gargantuan task. There was, of course, my sister and bestie, Fern, who likewise was planning her own wedding the following spring. There was my mother and my younger sister Dallas, and of course, everybody’s favorite, my baby brother, Dash.
There was Countess Audra Tremwell, Fern’s future sister-in-law and our new, dearest friend. She was officially part of the Royal Court, having served as Auggie’s personal assistant for all the years he’d been M.I.A. from Aldayne, and was about as fierce as they come. If she wanted something done, people did it. She never needed to ask twice.
There were the Princesses, Auggie’s aunts, Princess Fiona, Princess Mariel, and Princess Giselle, all of whom had all the charm and connections to fill in the rest.
I had my own personal assistant, Kelly Murphy, who was also trained to help me with any baby stuff that popped up along the way. This was necessary after having a pregnancy complicated by placenta previa, as well as a steady occurrence of Braxton Hicks contractions due to all the stress stemming from my growing obligations.
Taking an extensive leave from the United States, my two favorite fairy glam mothers, Jorge Navarro and Darcy Masters, were on hand to help dress the entire royal wedding party, consisting of all my brothers and sisters, half of the Tremwells, a couple of Quinns and a partridge in a pear tree.
But the most important member of the wedding planning committee was the queen herself.
Maeve Quinn was poised to become my grandmother-in-law, but she was also a legit monarch who knew how to make things happen. With one phone call, she secured the venue, Crystal Sky Cathedral, an all-glass church that her husband had built for their wedding nearly sixty years before. A dozen calls more and we had celebrity performers, a fleet of dedicated newscasters (not one of which was affiliated with Christopher’s new employer PING,) as well as a virtual parade and cross-country tour, so I could be driven around Aldayne in a glass carriage for all the countrymen and women to see.
At seven o’clock the following morning, the processional would start from this very castle, Greystone, in the shadow of Grandpa Charlie, a dormant volcano officially known as Mount Charlemonde, and go all the way south towards the Queen’s castle, Shimmering Falls, and Crystal Sky just beyond. There I would exit the carriage, wave to the crowds, then walk down an aisle glimmering with the rainbows cast by all the beveled glass panes overhead, where my prince waited to make me an honest-to-goodness, bonafide princess.
Princess Peaches. Can you believe it?
If, on the previous New Year’s Eve, you had given me a million guesses that this was how my year would have gone, I would have never landed on any of this.
I honestly didn’t know whether to be grateful or terrified.
Then, I thought of the man who would be waiting for me at the end of that aisle. If there was anyone to make this crazy ride worthwhile, it was Auggie.
My heart had skipped gaily out of my possession the first time he said, “Hello.” He was beautiful. He was sexy. He was kind. He was self-assured. He was generous. He had been my hero on more than one occasion. He was a man who had a lot of love to give and nowhere to give it, until he met an awkward girl with a funny name, who just happened to find out she