Page 2 of Bootleg Love

I pull back.

“Wait,” I mumble, but Jessup reaches for me again. No one is listening, and that suffocating feeling wraps around my throat again. “Wait-”

Something shatters inside me, a dam bursting. Agony explodes behind my eyes as violet flames erupt from the ancient altar. Ravenous tendrils of witchfire lash the glade, searing fur and flesh. Screams pierce the night. Jessup staggers back, clutching his ravaged face.

I convulse on the altar, my body no longer my own as it's remade in blood and shadow and flame. The flames consume me, shredding my mortal flesh, leaving something new and terrible in its wake.

Tears of blood rolling down my cheeks.

I turn to face the pack, my violet eyes blazing. They fall back, horror and revulsion twisting their faces.

"Cursed abomination!"

“The witchblood taints her!"

"Slay the demon spawn before it dooms us all!"

Suddenly everyone I ever knew and loved is looking at me like I’m this deplorable monster thing, but all I know at the moment is searing pain, and confusion. I look to my mate to be, but already his fangs are bared.

"Cursed witch!" Jessup spits, eyes flashing with betrayal and loathing as he wipes the blood from his blistered face. "I should have known your tainted bloodline would rear its ugly head."

He backhands me away from him.

I stumble back, mind reeling, heart shattering into jagged shards. How can this be happening? An hour ago I was to be a bride, minutes ago I was reborn in flames and fury. Now I'm... what? A monster? An abomination?

The pack circles me, closing in with fangs bared and claws unsheathed. Their faces, once so familiar and dear, are twisted masks of revulsion. "We must purge the hexeblood before she brings ruin upon us all!" the elders cry, voices rising in a frenzied cacophony. "Slay the demon!"

I whirl to face Jessup, desperate, pleading. "My love, please! I'm still me, I'm still your Simone!"

But his eyes are cold flint, his mouth a cruel slash. "I have no love for witchbreed." He turns to the pack. "Kill her. Kill her now before her curse spreads!"

They lunge for me, a mass of tooth and claw and murderous rage. Choking on a sob, I flee into the bayou, bare feet flying over treacherous roots. I’m not even sure how I outrun them, but my body is moving out of necessity and I don’t realize what I’m doing until I’m already gasping and alone. Grasping thorns tear at my skin, branches claw my face, but I feel nothing but the pain shredding my heart.

Breathless, terrified, I crash through the underbrush, swamp water splashing my bare legs, mud sucking at my feet, vines whipping my face.

Behind me, the baying of the pack echoes, hungry for my blood. The elders' damning decree rings in my ears - Hexeblood. Abomination. Cursed.

My lungs are bursting, muscles screaming as I tear through the night. How could a kiss, a claiming, go so wrong? The violet inferno that ripped through me felt like hellfire and revelation all at once. Power thrums through my veins, wild and exhilarating and utterly alien. The slumbering swamp comes alive in its wake, savage and fae, bent to my will.

But none of it matters now. All that matters is escape, survival. I have to run, disappear. I have to-My foot catches on a cypress knee and I go sprawling in the fetid water, gasping and spluttering.

The pack's howls are closer now, I can almost feel their hot breath on my neck.

Rolling over with a sob, I scramble backwards on hands and knees. I'm done for. This is how I die. Hexeblood or not, I'm no match for a bloodthirsty pack of shifters.

A dark shape comes flying out of the underbrush in a spray of swamp water. A wolf, huge and black as sin. My scream dies in my throat as it lands in front of me.

I raise my hands in a futile attempt to shield myself from the wolf's lunge, knowing it's hopeless. Suddenly, an unearthly violet light erupts from my palms, engulfing my arms in searing flames.

“No!” I cry, wanting to pull myself away from it. The agony is blinding, my flesh bubbling and charring before my eyes. They dance over my skin like a living cloak, cocooning me in their eerie radiance.

Yelping in pain and fear, the massive wolf skitters back from the writhing violet flames engulfing my arms. Its ears flatten against its skull as it cowers, tail tucked between its legs. With a final whimper, the beast turns tail and bolts, crashing through the underbrush until the sounds of its panicked flight fade into the night.

My hands and arms continue to sizzle from the unnatural blaze, I lurch to the swamp's edge and plunge my arms into the inky water. The flames hiss and spit as they hit the surface, throwing up coils of steam that curl around me like ghostly fingers. Gradually, the fire sputters out, leaving my skin raw and tender but miraculously unburned.

I sink to my knees in the muck, trembling uncontrollably as I stare at my reflection in the dark water. Wide, haunted violet eyes stare back at me from a face pale with shock and streaked with muddy tears. As the adrenaline fades, a bone-deep exhaustion rolls over me and I slump forward, barely catching myself on shaking arms.

Hot tears stream down my face, carving trails through the grime. How could everything have gone so wrong? One minute I was the cherished daughter of the pack, the next a hunted fugitive. Betrayed by my own blood, my own magic. This ceremony that should have been a blessing is now a death sentence.

---