Page 51 of Bloodmoon Ritual

You belong to me

Chapter 10

The next morning, Iopened eyes that had crusted over from tears.

For a moment, I felt like something was wrong but wasn’t sure what it was, and when I rolled over, I felt cold and lost somehow.

Then I realized with a stab of fury that the feeling had been because Rhyder wasn’t here beside me, his big warm body pressed against mine, his arm pulling me close against him until I had slept, warm and cocooned.

Oh, he was not going to get around me this time like he always had: smothering me, drowning me in his love until I relented.

When I sat up, trying to comb the tangles out of my hair with my fingers, the tent flap opened and Rhyder came in, carrying a bowl full of what looked like hot steaming porridge.

“Good morning,” he said.

His eyes watched me carefully as I took the bowl and he knelt down to fold his big body to be level with mine as I began to eat hungrily.

“Let me brush your hair,” he said, his hand stroking my tangled curls.

“Rhyder, don’t—” I said, feeling something rise and almost choke me in my throat.

Oh, here he went again.

Always when we were younger when I would get frightened sometimes by the depths of his devotion, the dark possession, he’d do this.

His offerings.

The gifts that throbbed with a hard undercurrent of dark need.

So I didn’t protest when he began to carefully brush my tangled hair, sponge me off, lay out a toothbrush and toothpaste for me.

But I didn’t respond either.

The Seeking had been successful, and the Congregations there left in groups, a few dozen at a time, united through my brother’s dominance in a pact to wipe Ronan’s Congregation from the face of the earth.

“Let’s go,” Eli said. “We still have to perform the Reaping, and there are a few more Congregations to visit. We want our army as big as possible.”

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