Blood Bound (Permanently ON-HOLD)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT; It Is Awful, It Is Awful.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Hatred is the madness of the heart.

- Lord Byron

Juliette

Adelaide is my best friend.

It's not uncommon for Bloods to be best friends. My dad has two best friends; his brother, Felix, and someone he's known longer than he knew my mom, Rich Cross. Rich is my godfather, and he's Perry's godfather, and he's all of our godfathers. My uncles are my uncles, and considering Dad feels like Rich is his brother, he made him part of our family as best he could.

We don't see much of Rich now, he lived in the South with my dad and then moved East when my dad did. Now he's kind of all over the place. He's one of the really Traditional Bloods. He and his Blood Bound and they're daughter go to any and every Blood event they can, they're those Bloods.

He and my dad are still close, of course, which I hope will be the same for Addy and I. I can't imagine not being able to message her anytime I want with a problem or a joke or a plan to see each other. I don't talk to my friends back home anymore, but I could move anywhere and still talk to Addy. I love her, we'd make it work.

That being said, if her surname was "Hayes" I wouldn't love her, because I wouldn't have been given the chance to know her. That really makes me think sometimes, especially now, because she'd still have the same personality and she'd still be the same person but I wouldn't get to be her best friend because we're not supposed to like each other.

If Heath wasn't a Hayes would I be his best friend?

But then I start thinking about childhood conditioning – if Adelaide grew up as a Hayes, in that family, that Clann, she'd be a different person. She's what she is because of what happened to her parents and her twin brother and the way she's grown up.

And I start to think of our Clann's traits. Adelaide is supposed to be crazy and Heath is supposed to be bad and I'm supposed to be good. That is how it works.

So, no, when I begin to think about things like that I get rid of the thoughts because it's pointless. If I grew up a Cross girl I would be a completely different person. I'd think differently, value differently. That's just it.

I start rapidly blinking, trying to bring myself back down to Earth.

The reason I am thinking all this is because one of Addy and Adrian's cousins is getting married. He's about forty-something and has recently found his soul mate. I don't personally know either of them, and the only reason I'm in this old, Catholic church is because Nana Warren is announcing who the next head of the main Warren family is.

Usually when a head knows who they're going to choose they write it in their will immediately, some even do what Nana Warren does, the Traditional thing. Have a huge ceremony to announce it. It's like a new president except there's no election, just who the current head thinks it should go to, and it has to go to someone in the main family. Their wife or husband or one of their children, that's it.

The church is packed, full up with Warrens from around the world. A lot of others are here as well, but not to see this lucky man with his lucky soul mate. No, we're all here to find out who the heir is when Nana Warren dies.

Addy, or Adrian?

I cut a glance to my left and see the Hayes Clann. Olivia sits poised and proper as ever, with only Jakub and Heath beside her. It's not compulsory for any Blood to go to any Blood event, it's just courtesy to do so. Manners.

My family, on the other hand, are crammed onto the pew considering even Sebastian has dragged his sorry-ass all the way out to Michigan for this ceremony. Perry sits in-between us, squirming with emotion at the displays of affection between the two soul mates and soon-to-be Blood Bounds.