Page 38 of Blood Witch

“Someone tell me what is going on?” I murmured, looking at the picture of my parents.

Madeleine Armstrong.

My mother.

I gasped, memorizing every feature of her face. Her image stared back at me from the faded photograph. She truly was a thing of pure beauty. A petite princess from a fairytale with the perfect dress and smile.

Nothing like me.

I sighed as I traced her hair on the tiny picture. It was long, down to her waist, and it fell like a glossy sable curtain across one shoulder as she posed with the tall, handsome man with familiar black eyes and equally dark hair. They were both dressed up like they were attending a wedding or something, and I must have voiced that aloud because the headmistress answered me.

“Yes, that is their wedding picture. They ran away and got married in an old courthouse. Then they shared a handfasting under the moon, and your father claimed her that night with his bite,” she told me. “Madeleine insisted on getting dressed up. She believed in living in the moment. Your father adored her, so he did. Gabe would have done anything for her, you see, she was hiscor lucis, his heart light. She brought him warmth, heat, desire, love, everything he had never had. You know, your name was a combination of the two of theirs. Mabe, Madeleine and Gabe’s little girl,” she whispered.

“Hisheart light?” I asked dumbly.

“Holy fuck, Mabel, you’re half-vampire,” murmured Fin. “That’s why you needed blood. Your witch side reached out for magic when it felt you flailing, to help sustain you,” he continued, making sense out of what had been a very confusing few years for me in the simplest of terms.

“I think you’re right,” I whispered, awed by his insight and the feeling I had that he was right.

“Told you she’s a hybrid. Pay up,” Magnus grunted in the background.

“Yeah, but you said a badger, dude. No way am I paying you,” Brandon returned.

“You guys guessed and couldn’t tell me?” I snapped, rolling my eyes as they simply shrugged.

“Told the healer,” Magnus replied.

All eyes turned on the healer, and Jade elbowed her man.

Oops.

Guess he didn’t tell her either.

Ugh.

Men.

“Ow. They did, but when I ran your blood, I was looking for shifter DNA, not vampire,” Arlo explained. “Headmistress, you were the one who hid the blood I have been stealing from the Council!”

“Yes. I did not know for sure if Mabe would inherit her father’s tendencies, you see, vampires are notoriously secretive, and as for hybrids, well, there is not much information on them at all.”

“Oh, wow, so that’s why thehungry for your bloodfang girl thing. Okay, now we get it,” Rio stated.

Everyone seemed excited by the news, but I was just damn confused. My parents had this whole forbidden romance thing, and I’d been born, but obviously I had family.

So why was I thrown away?

Pain hit me in the gut, and I tried to shake it off, but it was not the kind of thing that would simply go away. Fin brushed a hand across his face, and I got scared for a second, thinking he was going to reject me too. Instead, he grabbed me and pulled me to him, and for one indulgent moment, I allowed myself to be encapsulated by his love.

“Why did you give me away? Didn’t anyone want me?” I asked, easing out of his embrace.

“Oh, sweet girl, I wanted you. I did. I would have tried, Mabe, but it was dangerous. Your father’s Clan was hunting you. They would have killed the offspring of a vampire and witch,” she said, and I gasped. “He came to me with you after Madeleine passed away giving birth. He begged me to hide you. But I kept tabs. I did, and thought you got away from me for a while, I found you again and only when I knew for sure you had powers, I set Stolbright to bring you here. Not telling her you were my, my niece,” she whispered the last.

“All those years in the orphanage,” I mumbled, my head spinning.

“Mother Diana was a friend. She knew of our kind, used to be a priestess, actually. I did what I thought best, and that was for you to live in the human world. It was the safest place at the time,” Armstrong tried, but I shook my head.

I didn’t want to hear it. I hated her for it. I hated her explanation. And I hated her for leaving me. Fin was there, holding me as my anger washed everything in a haze of red.

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