Outside Woman By Bloodstone นิยาย & เรื่องราว

My in-laws' place was a three-story house with a yard, so whatever happened in the yard was visible to the street. Maeve stood up and grabbed my hand. "She's Lydia! Lydia, how could you do something so cruel? You're on your own this time!" The neighbors started whispering to each other. "So it was Lydia who hit those people a few days ago!" "She seemed so quiet before. How could she be so vicious? That baby was only a month old, and she ran over them twice!" Their words triggered the grieving family. One of the men shoved me to the ground. "You little tramp! So it's you. Don't bother denying it. Your outfit gives it away!"

Every sound felt swallowed by the fog curling low over the moss, ghostly tendrils winding around my ankles as if trying to hold me back. A moonless sky pressed heavy overhead, the air damp and tinged with wolfsbane. Its bitter-sweet scent clung to my tongue. Barefoot, I stepped carefully between roots and fallen leaves, my grip tight around the small pouch in my hand. Inside, the Bloodstone throbbed faintly with stolen magic, wrapped in wolfsbane and etched with a sigil the Order kept locked away from anyone like me. I shouldn’t have it. I shouldn’t even be here.

I felt it like a punch to the chest, the bond screaming in warning. Too close. I shoved Amelia behind me just as the predator lunged through the clearing. My blade met its claws, sparks flying as I blocked the strike. The force rattled my bones, drove me back a step, but I held firm. Not fire. Not steel. Stone. The beast snarled, snapping its jaws inches from my face, but I didn’t yield. I pressed back, every muscle burning, every instinct roaring to protect what was mine. Because she was mine. Ours. The bond wasn’t some distant promise—it was here, alive, demanding. And I would break myself before I let this thing claim her.

The only one left with any pavement on it. The cut comes quickly — a clean, burning line across the center of my palm. My blood rises to meet the air, dark and vivid, filling the space immediately around me with the storm-edged scent of Blackwell power. I hold my hand over the moonstone bowl and let it fall. Each drop hits the silence of the hall like a small decision that can’t be walked back. Morwen turns toward Emily. “The mother’s blood now, to tie the life she carries into the working.”

Finally we reached a door carved with thorned vines. Lucien pressed his palm against the wood and it swung open silently. The garden beyond stole my breath. It should not exist this far underground but somehow it did. A courtyard open to the night sky above where stars glittered like scattered diamonds. Black roses grew everywhere climbing walls and spilling from their stone planters. Their petals absorbed light rather than reflecting it just like Queen mother seraphine's hair and at their centers had a faint crimson glow pulsed like heartbeats. "My mother's blood garden." Lucien moved down a path between the roses. "Each plant is fed with vampire blood mixed into the soil. It sustains them

In a moment of recklessness, she rammed the car into the roadside barrier. Strangely, despite the severity of the crash, everyone else walked away unharmed. Only Mariam’s legs were crushed beyond saving. Mariam did not notice that the Bloodstone bracelet she had snatched from me was pulsing with a dim, malevolent glow around her wrist. It was like a warning she could not hear.

She stood in the garden and looked up at the sky, her chin lifting slowly, her face settling into something that the careful warmth she wore around everyone would never have allowed anyone to see. “I have suffered long enough for something I did not deserve.” Her voice came out low and cold, more declaration than prayer. “Tonight, that changes.” She let the silence hold for a moment. “Before midnight, the Bloodstone will be mine.” Her fist closed at her side. “I know exactly where it is. I just have to let the red moon rise first.” Her eyes dropped from the sky. “But before that.” Her lips curved in a way that held nothing warm. “I have someone to ruin.”

“And Lia? Clean your knuckles. The blood under your fingernails is too careful. Too clean. Real blood stays for days.” She fled into the neon-lit night, the walls of her identity crumbling around her. She had infiltrated the Moretti family. And in doing so, she had been utterly, completely caught. The hunt was on, but she was no longer the hunter. She was the prey on a very short, very invisible leash, held by the most dangerous man she had ever met. And the ghost of her sister’s earring seemed to burn in the darkness between them, a silent witness to the devil’s bargain she had just made.

She stood beside a table with a single object on it. The Bloodstone. Red. Smooth. About the size of my closed fist. This one was different from the vault replica. I felt it from the doorway without trying to. A low steady pull against the Nightshade frequency in my chest, like a current running against the tide, patient and persistent and designed specifically to find what it was looking for. The real one. I crossed the warehouse floor toward her without hurrying and without showing the particular alertness that was running through every sense I had simultaneously.