Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 188: The Consequence of Choices (Jamie’s POV)

I wracked my brain thinking of what to do, eventually making a decision I later regretted.

That day, Mira had entered a bloodlust state and was barely able to control herself. It was even a miracle she lasted months without a single drop of blood.

However, she reached her limit, so I made her do the one thing she had been avoiding the most.

’I made her feed on me.’

Vampires had a 70% chance of losing control during their first taste of blood. If that Vampire was starved for a certain amount of time before that, then 70% became 150%.

Mira had been starved for months.

So, it went without saying that as she had her first taste of blood, she lost control.

Everything came pouring out.

Her primal vampiric instincts came to the forefront, as such, her uncontrollable urge to feed blurred the lines between reason and desire.

One of such desires was one Mira still hadn’t recognized herself.

Her desire for me.

I was fully conscious and I could have stopped her, but I had made up my mind to allow her to feed to her satisfaction.

Which was why I didn’t stop her when her lips moved from my neck to meet mine.

Mira bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood and sucked the blood from it along with the tongue itself.

That bloodied kiss was the first we ever had.

It didn’t last long as Mira’s urge to feed probably overtook her desire and she instinctively felt it was better to drink from my neck, leading to her returning her fangs there.

Sure, having her feed on me calmed down her berserk state.

But when she calmed down and the realisation of what had happened hit her...Mira broke.

When I saw the look in her eyes at that moment, I realised that I’d fucked up.

I underestimated how much I meant to Mira. I underestimated how strongly she felt about me.

The one thing I underestimated the most, was how much Self-hatred had been festering within Mira.

No matter how much I understood Mira’s thought processes, I wasn’t Mira. There was no way I could claim to understand her 100%. I couldn’t read her mind, nor did I have any desire to exert any control over her even though I could.

As such, my actions caused her even greater pain and had probably been what caused her desire to seal her Hybrid powers away to bloom.

Mira locked herself up again that day, and just when I was scared I’d only made her situation worse, Mira came out of her own volition the next day.

She was perfectly fine. She acted the same as always.

That was...surprising. It felt strange.

I knew what saw in her eyes the previous day. It wasn’t a case of me misreading her; I was sure of that.

Mira’s state at that time was not something that could be dealt with in a single night.

When she approached me with her usual smile, I wanted to find out what happened. But first, I needed to address the happenings of the previous day.

But the words that she responded to me with were ones that shocked me still.

"Yesterday? What’re you talking about Jay? I didn’t see you at all yesterday."

"...what?"

My mouth hung open and I let out a dumbfounded sound. Was she joking? Or was this her way of saying she didn’t want to talk about it?

Those thoughts of mine didn’t last too long as I quickly figured out the reason for her reply.

Looking right into Mira’s eyes, I could see it.

A very faint, barely noticeable ring of blue light surrounded her irises.

I recognized that light. I had seen it in the eyes of the man I first tested my compulsion ability on.

This allowed me to understand what Mira had done.

Self Compulsion.

Vampires could use powerful charm, compulsion and hypnosis abilities on others, with the required conduit being their eyes.

They used the eyes as the windows to the soul and voiced out their commands in order to control their targets.

If they could look into another person’s eyes and compel them, then didn’t It make sense that they could compel themselves if they could look into their own eyes?

As for how they could look into their own eyes, all you had to do was pick a random mirror. Well, this only applied to Trueborns who had reflections.

There were certainly mirrors in Mira’s room. A lot of them.

She had shattered all her mirrors to pieces after she was burned by the sun. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Even so, there was bound to be a fragment large enough to capture both her eyes, and she used that to compel herself.

She did this many more times, erasing portions of her memories. But there were two things she never erased.

Her abhorrence for her Hybrid powers, and an overwhelming desire to permanently seal them away.

◇　◇　◇

Disbelief and Shock.

The expression on Mira’s face and the look in her eyes; those two words described them best.

’My dear, dear Miranda.’

At that moment, as she gazed at me, another emotion surfaced—Realization.

In the years that had passed since we became Hybrids, Mira and I had become even closer than before, and our understanding of each other was profound.

That was why she realised from my statement, that I had zero intentions of helping her.

When the wolfsbane-drenched sword struck her, I knew it would paralyze her limbs, disrupt her energy circuits, and neutralize her body’s natural resistances, letting the poisons mixed with it take effect.

Wolfsbane was pretty deadly for Werewolves, after all. Just as effective as Silver and Solar Light was on Vampires.

But if she was to release the seal on her Hybrid Nature—a seal only she could release—, then the pain, the paralysis, the messed-up energy circuits and the damage she took would all be things of the past.

Her body would instantly return itself to pristine condition.

An Immortal Body capable of regenerating completely from even just a single cell nucleus.

All Six Hybrids possessed such bodies.

Unless you stopped time itself, we’d heal from almost anything; even Destruction law energy could only slow down our regeneration...not negate it permanently.

We didn’t have the weaknesses of our constituent races.

For me who was a Vampire-Werewolf Hybrid, Sunlight did nothing to me, Silver was as good as a random iron sword, and using Wolfsbane was just like trying to drown a fish in water.

That should have been the case for Mira if she didn’t seal her Hybrid nature.

"...why...Jay?"

Mira’s trembling voice entered my ears and I barely held back the sigh that escaped her lips.

Why? —she asks.

Crouching down to her eye level, I wiped the tears running down her cheeks with my finger as I responded to her query.

"Why? You shouldn’t ask me that, Mira. You know exactly why."

"..."

She went silent.

That was natural, as I had told her before exactly why I was against her sealing her powers.

I didn’t know how long those two deities would need to get back here from the places on the other side of the planet where I had displaced them to, so I needed to round this up before then.

Taking a deep breath, I readied myself to speak reason with the woman I loved so dearly.