Bloodline
544 Words
She stared into Seth’s eyes she knows she can trust him but not ready to tell him the story about her and the tragedy she faced.
MaLeeka’s Flashback
The cottage was small.
Hidden deep in the forest, its walls were made of stone and sorrow. Smoke rose gently from the chimney, and outside, a little girl with thick curls and wide eyes chased fireflies barefoot through the grass.
MaLeeka was nine.
That was the last night she ever felt safe.
MaKeena
Her mother, MaKena, was tall—5’9, with deep brown skin that glowed like copper in firelight. Her thick curls were always tied back with a strip of cloth, streaked with leaves and war paint.
She never smiled for long.
A long, jagged scar stretched across her chest, half-hidden beneath her tunic. MaLeeka had asked about it once, and MaKena had turned to stone.
“He was a wolf,” she’d said flatly. “But not a man.”
MaKena never told her the whole story. Not then.
She didn’t explain how the scar came from being r***d by a ranked wolf in her former pack. How she’d bled, fought, survived, only to face disbelief from her Alpha. How she’d been punished for speaking.
How her mate—MaLeeka’s father—had stood by her.
How he’d been murdered in the dark by an assassin’s blade just one week later.
Right in front of their daughter
Running
After that, MaKena ran.
She ran through borders, through blizzards, through the kind of grief that never sleeps.
She never stopped long enough to bury her mate.
She never stopped long enough to love again.
Only long enough to teach MaLeeka how to track, how to fight, how to disappear.
“You don’t get the luxury of innocence,” she said once, sharpening a blade over the fire. “Not with blood like yours.”
MaLeeka hadn’t understood. Not fully.
But she never forgot the way her mother’s hands shook that night.
⸻
The Truth
MaLeeka was eighteen when she finally demanded answers.
“You’ve trained me like I’m a weapon,” she hissed. “You tell me to hide who I am. Why?”
They were camped in a cave beneath a dead pine tree. Rain fell in sheets outside.
MaKena finally looked at her daughter.
And this time, she didn’t hold back.
“You’re different,” she said. “Not just because of me. Because of what’s in you.”
“What’s in me?” MaLeeka whispered.
MaKena touched her daughter’s face. Her own reflection stared back—those same firelit eyes, those same stubborn curls.
“You look just like me. But you’re not me. You’re her.”
“Who?”
“The first Luna. The one who cursed the Firstborn. The one the wolves still whisper about when the moon bleeds.”
MaLeeka’s breath caught.
“I don’t understand.”
MaKena leaned forward, voice barely above a breath.
“Your power is old. Buried. Tied to a bond that was broken by fire. And one day… it’ll come looking for you.”
That was the first time MaLeeka saw her mother cry.
And the last time she ever asked why they were running.
Because after that night
She started preparing to stop.
- Writer
