The Blood Knows

RHIANNON

After a hot shower and a very long nap, it’s nearly sundown. I pace around the room nervously.

“Umm…baby?” Isaac’s voice draws me out of my head. I look down to see him below me. I blush and return to the ground.

I hadn’t realized I had released my wings and was flitting around near the ceiling.

“I’ll be right there with you, everything’s going to be fine,” he holds me against his chest, the deep thumping of his heart calming me.

Alpha Hunter is waiting in the lobby with Rhodes and Madelyn.

“Alpha, we want to come with you. We’ll stay back, but we want to be close enough to help if you need it,” Madelyn tells him with her head bowed slightly.

He nods and they follow us out. As we reach the edge of the pack house, I see her in the distance.

She’s leaning against the trunk of a large tree. A glowing green light is hanging from a branch just above her head.

As we approach, she doesn’t move or acknowledge our presence. When we’re close enough, I can see that her eyes are open, unblinking, trained on the pale moon.

A low humming sound is rolling through the air. I can’t tell if it’s coming from her. If it is, she hasn’t stopped to take a breath.

Isaac and I stop, interlocking our hands, waiting.

After several minutes the sky begins to grow darker, the streaks of red and purple fading to deep blue.

The green light flickers wildly and her trance is broken. The humming stops and she turns to us and says, “Alpha, Luna.” Then she gestures for me to come closer.

Isaac squeezes my hand before releasing it. As I step forward, he stays back, his body alert and rigid.

“Sit,” she says as she pulls the glowing light from the branch.

She sits in front of me, placing the strange bulb in between us. She pulls a small glass jar and a dagger from a bag by her side.

She holds the dagger up, bows her head, and chants something quietly to it, like a prayer.

“Give me your hand,” she says as she holds hers out to me.

I place my hand in her palm and she turns it, placing my palm up.

“Take a breath.” She almost smiles as she places the dagger against my finger. She makes a small, painless cut on the tip of my pointer finger and blood pours into the jar below.

The jar fills quickly. She speaks a strange, echoing word into the darkness and the bleeding stops immediately.

She tightly closes the jar before handing me a pin with a small silver ball dangling from it.

“What is this?”

“Open the silver ball,” she whispers.

The ball is very small and doesn’t look like it should open. I press it between my fingers and it opens, splitting down the middle. Inside is a pearl. At least, it looks like a pearl.

I hold it up against the green light. It looks like it’s filled with a strange, cloudy liquid. It swirls like mist, moving on its own.

“What is it?” I whisper to her quietly. I assume she was whispering for a reason.

“When life is at stake, use it.”

“How? What do I do with it?”

“When the time comes, you will know.”

Hm… okay. I’m not going to argue with her, but if a life is at stake, I would like to know exactly what I’m supposed to do with this thing.

“Who is your blood tie?” she asks quietly.

“My blood tie? I’m not sure what that is.”

“Someone has been granted access to your blood. A blood bond is a tie between you and another person. You have one.” Her voice is as cold as ever, but something ominous lurks in her tone.

“How do you know?”

“Your blood told me.”

I gape at her. It’s still hard to wrap my head around the fact that she can communicate with blood.

“Who is it? Is that a bad thing? Why don’t I remember it? I just got my memories back, did it happen during the gap of time I can’t remember?” I’m rapid-fire spewing questions at her.

“It was before the memory loss, but the tie was severed when you forgot yourself. You may not have known it was happening if someone gave you a tie seal without you knowing it.”

“Can I break it?”

“You can control everything,” she says quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“Your body, your blood. You can control the pieces, you just have to connect to them. You can stop the connection, you can do anything you want. Use your link to the dark.”

I stare at her stupidly. That doesn’t make sense.

Without warning, she pulls the dagger from her lap and makes a deep gash across my palm.

I gasp and clutch my hand to my chest.

“Stop the bleeding,” she says calmly.

I press my palm into my skirt before she swats at it. “No, not like that! Close your eyes, focus, tell your blood to stop. Push it back from the wound. Visualize it in your mind.”

I close my eyes and focus on my hand, willing my body to stop bleeding. After a moment, she sighs angrily.

“Connect to your blood, go deep within yourself, see your veins, connect with the blood running through them. Talk to it, command it. Darkness doesn’t mean evil. Use it, Rhiannon.”

I focus harder, visualizing my blood, telling it to stop.

Suddenly, I feel a strange tingling, like when your hand or foot falls asleep, but I know what it is. I can feel my blood running through my veins.

My wings release as I focus on my blood. It feels like taking a deep inhale after holding your breath. I can feel my mind opening and my blood responding to my command to stop.

When I open my eyes, the cut is dry.

“I did it!” I squeal loudly. From the corner of my eye, I see Isaac shift slightly. I realize I haven’t been able to feel him since I sat down.

“I blocked the bond,” Rhazell explains like she can read my mind. Maybe my blood told her?

“I couldn’t have him freaking out, so I blocked your emotional connection, only for now,” she tells me.

“Practice communicating with your blood. You have a great power, Rhiannon, make sure you can use it.”

She stands and I can feel Isaac again. I pull myself up from the ground and he’s wrapping his strong arm around my waist. He must have sprinted as soon as he saw us standing.

“I’ll see you soon.” Rhazell looks at Isaac before disappearing into the tree line.

“I have so much to tell you!”