17. Chapter Seventeen #3
“Yes, almost exactly. That was the first time I really remember enjoying the taste of blood and started to feel strange around it afterwards. Especially his blood,” Ena explained, swallowing the saliva that pooled in her mouth at the memory.
“Of course,” Max said, looking over at Kaya as whatever she had realized clearly dawned on him too. “He’s your bloodmatch.”
“Bloodmatch?” Turner asked, taking the words right from her mouth. “What’s that?”
“A bloodmatch is a person whose blood, whose magic and being, directly complements yours. They’re the only human a stryx can drink from regularly, because when a stryx finds their bloodmatch, drinking their blood enhances their ability to Change,” Max explained.
“What do you mean enhances?” Ena asked.
“Instead of being able to Change only on the full moon, they can Change whenever they want. And they need significantly less blood to live too. But…there’s a downside.” Max paused, a troubled look passing over his face.
“Well, don’t stop now,” Turner said, sounding slightly annoyed. “Tell us.”
“Once a stryx drinks from their bloodmatch, they become more powerful—that’s the benefit—but they also cannot survive without regular feedings from them. Without their bloodmatch’s blood, they will descend into bloodlust permanently, and eventually…they die.”
Everyone fell silent at that, the weight of what Max had just said settling into their minds.
“And you…you’re confident that is the case? For Ena and Ty?” Turner asked, his voice grave.
“Bloodmatches are incredibly rare, but the way her cravings are only increasing…we’ve seen this before.”
“Seen it before with whom?” Turner asked.
“Me,” Max replied directly. “Kaya is my bloodmatch.”
“You descended into bloodlust after drinking her blood too?” Ena asked.
“Yes, it was an unfortunate series of events that led me to drink her blood for the first time—without knowing what she was to me,” Max explained.
“We were out on a hunt together, just a few months after she first came to us, and became stranded by a snowstorm. My stores of blood ran out and bloodlust began, so she offered her blood as a remedy. Normally, drinking another human’s blood causes hallucinations—but not violent ones—and it does cure bloodlust in emergencies.
But in this case…it wasn’t until my bloodlust continued to increase over the next several weeks without remedy that we discovered what she was to me.
Her blood is to me, as you described Ty’s to you.
The most delicious thing I have ever had,” he said, looking over lovingly at Kaya.
“And now…we can never be separated. Without regular feedings of her blood, I would immediately descend into bloodlust and weaken, and eventually, I would die.”
“But…I’m not weakening,” Ena protested. “I feel fine.”
“I think because of your partial heritage, it likely works differently for you. You may not die, because you don’t truly need blood to live, the way a stryx does, but…
it is evident that the bloodlust is only increasing.
And without Ty’s blood, it likely will never go away.
In fact, I think it may have been drinking Ty’s blood in the first place, not the pregnancy, that triggered your latent stryx side. ”
“But, but—” Ena said, grasping for some way to make this okay. “I can manage it, right? I can figure out how to live with it? They won’t always make me so…” Dangerous, she wanted to say. Wrong. Bad. Insane.
“I am sorry, Ena,” Max said solemnly. “But without his blood…you will go mad.”
You will go mad.
The words echoed in her mind like a cruel joke, and she found herself filled with a rage she had never experienced before—an anger at everything and everyone who had led her here, to this exact moment.
Because was this why Gaia’s will had led her here? To lose Ty just as she needed him most? To discover her heritage, only to learn that she may not survive it—at least not as herself?
Was this what the Canus Elk had portended?
That she would suffer and descend into madness—maybe one day become a danger to her own child?
The thought that she would not be able to be there for the life that depended on her, and on whom she had begun to depend in return, absolutely destroyed any glimmer of hope she had left.
And how dare she. How dare Gaia put her through all of this for it to end this way.
She’d always done what she was told. She’d served Gaia, served the balance.
Fuck—she’d even served Iblis when called to.
She hadn’t shunned him the way the other witches had—she’d embraced him. Could he not save her now either?
She looked up at the concerned faces around her and shook her head. She wanted to laugh at the cruel irony of it all, and sob until her eyes were dry at the despair.
Because not only had she lost her Coven, her home, but then she’d lost the love of her life, and now…she wouldn’t even get to love the child they’d made together. If she even lived to birth it, then afterwards, she knew, she’d have to be put down.
It was all over for her—truly, finally. Completely.
Without another word, she turned around and left the tent, walking alone into the darkening woods just as she walked alone on her path towards death.