Bloodbond

Chapter 17

It was pitch black outside. I couldn't see where I was but I felt the breeze lightly pull the hair from my face. Somehow, I knew that I was in a forest, even though nothing was visible. The air was thick with anticipation. Deep down, I knew that something was about to happen. My body told me to run, to stop it before it was too late.

Without thinking, without worryng about my inability to see, I felt my feet spring into action. They propelled me forward and it seemed as if my body knew where it was headed. The farther I traveled, the heavier my heart felt and the stronger the fear was. Something was wrong. Still, I couldn't see anything around me, but my steps flowed seemlessly. Nothing stood in my way and nothing slowed me down. Where was I going? Why couldn't I stop it?

I forced my feet to move faster; I knew that I needed to get there before it was too late. It just couldn't be too late. I had to do this. In the blink of an eye, the world lit up and my vision cleared. In the distance, I saw figures rushing at each other. I tried to move faster but time slowed. My feet became sluggish and my body felt heavy. This couldn't be happening! I needed to get there!

All at once, the figures stilled and one fell to the ground. My body suddenly lightened and my pace picked up again. I rushed to the fallen figure I'd seen and I dropped down to my knees beside him. With tears streaming down my face and hopeless despair weighing on my heart, I realized that I had been too late. Gabriel was dead.

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My body shot up and a sharp cry escaped my lips as I woke from the nightmare. I was breathing heavily and I felt that my cheeks were still wet from the tears I had apparently shed in sleep. A sadness sat heavily on my chest, even though I knew that Gabriel was alive and well in his room, sleeping. I felt like bursting into tears, just as I had in my dream, this time, out of relief because it wasn't real, but also from the fear of it ever happening.

This nightmare had been so much different from the first one. I recognized now that my first nightmare wasn't really a nightmare at all. The hand and voice had been Gabriel's. It wasn't about death, but about finding myself and the person I was meant to be with. At the time, it had been utterly frightening. Now, I saw it as a foreshadowing event that I had simply misunderstood.

This time, however, was vastly different. There was no way that seeing Gabriel dead could be misinterpreted in any form. No matter how hard I had tried to save him, nothing worked. It felt like I was destined to fail, no matter what I did to try and stop it. I felt fresh tears of despair run down my face. I know it wasn't real, but I couldn't put aside the feeling that, like the dream from last week, it was forshadowing things to come.

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After waking in the middle of the night from that terrible dream, I tried to get back to sleep but I just couldn't. I ended up tossing and turning for several hours before finally deciding to get up at seven. As I was getting dressed, my thoughts kept wandering back to the previous day. It was still hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that Gabriel had said he loved me.

I have always been somewhat of a wallflower and, even though I was supposed to be his 'mate', destined by the fates, it didn't make it any easier to believe that someone like him would notice me. At the same time, I've grown so much this past week that I hardly regonized the person that I was. I needed to start telling myself that I'm worth so much more than I think. Maybe one day I'll actually believe it.

Gabriel and I had stayed together,just holding each other, for a while but eventually, he had needed to go in to check on all the others. I hadn't seen him since.