Page 24 of Forged in Blood

I close my eyes and smile, aware of Xavier snickering as he lies down beside me.

“Well, I’m going to study.” Ophelia huffs, feigning indignation, but she isn’t fooling anyone. We can all sense the excitement sizzling through her veins. She pretends to hate us as much as we pretend to hate her.

“I’ll just sit right here and watch,” Malachi says, and I open one eye to see him leaning back against the tree beside her.

It really is a nice spot, and we’re all silent for a few minutes before there’s another unexpected spike in Ophelia’s heart rate. I open one eye and check to see if Malachi’s doing something to her, but he’s simply sitting as he was before, his eyes focused ahead of him rather than on Ophelia.

“Why does that always happen when you see that girl?” he asks.

Ophelia startles. “What? Who?”

Malachi turns to face her, and I roll my eyes at the concerned expression on his face. “That girl from your high school. The one you said was mean to you.”

The slender curve of her throat works as she swallows. “Why does what happen?”

“Your pulse spikes. You feel…” His nose wrinkles. “Not scared, but uneasy. Anxious?”

“H-how do you know that? Can you read my mind or something?” She clutches her book to her chest like that might stop him if he could.

Malachi laughs. “Not exactly, sweet girl.”

“So how?”

He sighs. “We can read people. If they’re in close proximity, anyway.”

She puts her book down, angling her body so I can no longer see her face. I close my eyes and listen, not only to the sound of her voice, but her racing heart and that intoxicating life-giving blood pumping through her veins. “How?” she asks him.

“We can hear your heartbeat and feel the vibration of your pulse. And we can sense emotion. Not all emotion, but when someone has a strong reaction to something, it changes their scent. So we can literally smell fear. Anxiety. Excitement.”

“So you can smell my emotions?”

He laughs again. “Kind of. It’s a whole lot of small things added together.”

“But only if I’m close by?”

“Yeah. Unless we bite you.”

I stifle a groan as an image of sinking my fangs into her juicy flesh sears itself in my brain like the negative of a photograph. What I wouldn’t give to bite our little pyro.

“And if you were to bite me?” Her breathing grows faster. “Could you read my mind then?”

“No. But if we bite someone, we can tune into their emotions, their feelings and intentions, wherever they are.”

“Like forever? Like you’re in their head? How many people have you bitten?” Her voice goes up at least two octaves.

“Not in their head exactly. And we have to actively tune into them. Most people we wouldn’t bother with because we have no need, but we could if we wanted to.”

Find out more about the chick from high school, I tell him through our bond.

“And every time you see that girl, Penelope, you have the same intense reaction.”

“Oh,” she murmurs.

“What did she do to you, sweet girl?” His tone is soft, and I can picture him smiling at her in that reassuring way he has about him.

She barks out a harsh laugh. “You don’t want to know.”

“Try me.”

---