Page 69 of Shadow Bound

“Who said Ransom is falling in love with me?”

Winslow’s head tilts back as she barks out a laugh. “Man, for someone who hardly ever misses anything, you’re fucking blind to the things right in front of your face.” Rolling her eyes, she juts her thumb in my direction. “You should see the way he looks at her, it’s disgusting,” she tells her aunt. “He’s like a lovesick puppy right now.”

“He is not.” I gape. “Don’t tell her lies.”

“The only person that’s lying right now is you and you’re only hurting yourself by doing it.”

“Ransom isn’t falling in love with me,” I repeat, more for my own sake than anyone else’s.

“You know what? I’m not going to argue with you about this because I have a feeling it’d be like debating with a brick wall. A brick wall might actually be easier to sway.” Winslow’s big eyes roll in her head, her thin arms folding tightly in front of her. “How do they complete the bond?” she asks Esme. “If this works out the way I think it will, she needs to know. Is it like the shifter mating ceremony?”

“Not exactly.” Esme flips through the pages of the book until she reaches one where the woman vampire shown before is feeding off of a man. He doesn’t appear to be in any pain or panicked, he looks calm—euphoric even. “The bond is completed when the vampire drinks from their mate. It’s not a small amount either. They’ll need to take as much blood in as they can without actually killing their mate. I’ve read of many cases where the vampire accidentally kills their bloodmate when completing the bond.”

Well, shit.

“I...” —I point dramatically at myself— “have no control when feeding off someone. There is a reason I stick to blood bags. Once I start feeding, I can’t stop until they’re drained dry. So once again, Iwillkill him.”

Esme gives me a sympathetic look—one I really want to punch off her pretty face. “You’ll have to find the will to stop. It won’t be easy, but I have faith you can do it.”

“You just met me, how on earth can you have faith in me?”

“My niece doesn’t trust or open up to many people, but she did with you. That means she sees something in you, and I’m inclined to believe her judgment. Plus, I’ve known the Weylyn kiddos since they were in diapers. If Ransom likes you, you must be something special. That boy has the attention span of a fruit fly when it comes to women.”

A cocky smile grows on Winnie’s face. “Told you.”

Esme stands from her stool and shuffles to the bookshelf again, beginning another search for another book. “Isabeau, I think there is something you should know about your mother.” Nessa’s not really my mother, but I don’t correct her. “Over the centuries, witches have been collecting and writing down information on other species. We aren’t as physically strong as vampires or shifters; our knowledge is what makes us strong. Every piece of information we high priestesses learn, we write down in our journals, these journals are then passed down to the next generations. While this is how we stay knowledgeable on all the events of the past, it’s also how information is easily distorted. Like how it was never confirmed that firstborn vampire’s offspring were affected by bloodmates, it was written about and theorized in many journals, but again, never confirmed until now.”

She pulls five books from the shelf so she can reach for one tucked behind. “One of the journals I have is on the firstborns. While information on many of this is scarce, Nessa Claremont is written about here and there.” She brings the book she was looking for to me, opening it to a page with Nessa’s name scrawled across the top. A seventeenth-century style portrait sits beneath it, she looks exactly as she does now, having not aged a day. Her hair was longer, much like mine back then. Now it’s cut into a razor-sharp chin-length bob making her look harsh. Her dark eyes are less cold, the slightest tip of her lips makes her look almost… happy. The Nessa I know has never been happy. “While they talk about Nessa, they also talk about her bloodmate Hugo.” Esme points to the male’s name that is scrawled into one of the journal passages.

My head snaps up from the page to look at the witch. “Nessa has a bloodmate?”

“Hada bloodmate,” Esme clarifies. “He was executed when they caught Nessa feeding from him. They called them devil worshipers and sentenced them to death. Hugo was a human, his blood bond with Nessa kept him young and healthy, but he wasn’t as strong as Nessa. While she got away, escaping her execution, Hugo wasn’t so lucky. He was killed by a horde of God-fearing humans. It’s said that Nessa watched as her bloodmate was set aflame.”

I think back to Nessa and all her lessons. More specifically what brought her and Sterling together. They aren’t a likely pair. She could easily kill the man if she wanted to, but she never did because they have a common enemy. Humans. Sterling believes that shifters and vampires alike are the more powerful races and shouldn’t be living in the shadows while humans dominate. He’s been trying to build the perfect army for over two decades now. I never understood Nessa’s hatred toward them, just figured she thought they were beneath her like the rest of us. Now I know she hates them because they took the most important thing from her.

Noah’s offhanded remark finally makes sense now. I’d forgotten about it until now, thoroughly distracted by other things.‘Things’being Ransom Weylyn. Noah had said, “She wants revenge on the people that took her mate just like I want revenge on the people who stole mine from me.”

Their deceased mates are what brought the unlikely pair together, what’s fueling them to work together. That and their mutual hatred for the Weylyn family.

Now that I better understand Nessa’s motivator, I better understand her as a person. The reason she’s so cold and angry at the world. She lost the reason she lived and had to go on without him.

That kind of love is terrifying, and I don’t know if I’m capable of what Nessa had with Hugo. I’ve never needed anyone before, but now IneedRansom.

Acategory five hurricane is less chaotic than my mind right now. My thoughts and concerns are spinning wildly out of control as we walk down the street to where Winslow’s black SUV waits. I’ve never wanted to go stand on the edge of a cliff and scream into the nothingness as much as I do right now. I need a release, a way to make myself feel in control again. I need to fucking fight something. I wish Noah and Nessa would just make their moves because I would really like to kill something right now. Painfully and slowly.

My body is humming with energy, the unsettledness under my skin making me uncomfortable.

Esme’s parting advice was to stop feeding altogether. Any blood I drink other than Ransom’s will poison my body and make me sicker. Her theory is that if I cut out the poison, it’ll help with the stomach pains. So, the cherry on top of my already shitty afternoon, is that I now have to starve myself again.

Winslow walks silently beside me. I know she’s waiting for me to say something, but I have nothing to say. What is there for me to say? All the plans I had for whatever future I had just blew into a million pieces. Granted, my future wasn’t looking all that great before this, but now it’s looking even more grim.

He won’t pick me, he’ll realize that his infatuation with me is fleeting—a lapse in his judgment.

“You were not created to feel the joy and pain that is love, Isabeau.”Nessa’s voice fills my already full head, adding to the chaos. I wasn’t aware of it before, but I now know that she herself has felt the joy and pain of love. She’s more familiar with it than me.

“Fuck!” Without really thinking, I turn to the brick wall of the shop we are passing and slam my fist into the rough surface. Pieces of it break off and fall to the sidewalk below. I wish it hurt more; I wish I could feel something other than the panic I’m feeling now.

“Jesus, Beau,” Winslow scolds. “There are better outlets than punching walls.”

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