Dark Challenge (18 page)

“You are of our blood,”
the undead had said. And it was the terrible truth. How had he thought he could claim a lifemate, live as an honorable Carpathian was meant to? Doubtless Mikhail, the Prince of their people, knew the truth. Gregori, too. And Darius certainly sensed it in him. Worse, Julian now realized, what Darius knew, so would Desari.
“You are of our blood.”

Desari wandered through the campsite Dayan had chosen. They were near other campers, human campers, yet protected from prying eyes. Still, for some reason, she was uneasy, restless. She found herself pacing back and forth until Dayan told her to stop or she was going to wear a new trail in the dirt. At first she thought it was because she was angry with Julian for sending her to sleep like a fledgling. Then she decided it was anger at herself for being vulnerable to such compulsion. Now she didn’t know what it was. Her mind was in chaos, striving constantly to find Julian. That in itself was disconcerting.
Maybe what she needed to do was feed. No, what she needed to do was find Julian. Touch him. See him.

She swore softly and flounced over to the picnic table. Forest, the male leopard that always traveled with them, was stretched out the entire length of the table. Irritably, Desari shoved at him. “Get down.”

The cat answered her with a contemptuous raise of his lip, but he didn’t budge. Dayan turned around to stare at her in surprise. “What is wrong with you?”

“Everything. Nothing. I do not know. The bus is broken down for the fourth time this month. Barack has no idea how to fix vehicles; he just tinkers with them all the time. No one wants to buy a new one, and I keep saying we have to either learn to fix the motor ourselves or hire a mechanic to travel with us. It is not like we cannot afford it.” Desari began pacing again, unable to remain still.

“The cats would never tolerate a human around us,” Darius said as he materialized beside the table. He reached out to shove the male leopard from his perch.

“They will have to tolerate it,” Desari snapped, her black eyes flashing at her brother, then searching the sky and woods all around them. Where was Julian?
Where are you?
It slipped out before she could censor it, the cry for his mind touch. It was met with silence, and her agitation increased. Why did it matter so much? After all, what was he to her? A lover. People took lovers all the time. Barack was a hound dog. At least he had been for a couple of centuries there. Desari brought her mind up sharply. She couldn’t think about this. Couldn’t think about Julian and where he might be.

“Dara, be calm,” Darius ordered softly. “Your state of mind has nothing to do with our vehicle.”

“Do not presume to know my state of mind,” she
snapped back. “I have told all of you over and over that we need a new motor home. Even the truck is breaking down now. Does anyone want to do anything about it? Syndil’s too busy hiding from the world. Barack is molting somewhere. Dayan and you pay no attention to the details of our life.”

“I get up on the stage every night,” Dayan said, defending himself. “And I write the songs and the music for you. I do not know anything about motors, nor do I wish to know. We are not mortals to deal with such things.”

Darius simply watched his sister without speaking. She was rubbing her hands up and down her arms as if she were cold. The night air was cool but not uncommonly so. She was abnormally pale.

“Getting up on the stage is not attending to the necessary details, Dayan,” Desari informed him. “We have to book the tours, keep track of the accounts, plan the routes, see that we can always provide for the cats, ensure that we have adequate gas and stores for whatever could break down while we are on the road. We must look human, act human. Do you do any of that, Dayan? I say we need new vehicles or a mechanic. You others had just better choose which you prefer or shut up and live with any decision I make.”

Darius raised an elegant eyebrow. “And what do you think is the best solution, Dara? A mechanic? The cats would probably eat the man before we finished interviewing him. But perhaps if you found someone the cats found unappetizing, we could allow him to travel with us.”

“A human? A male?” Dayan was outraged. “That would not be tolerable around our women.”

Desari’s head snapped up, her dark eyes flashing fire. “We women are not your possessions, Dayan. We have
the right to do as we please, to be around whomever—male or female, mortal, or immortal—we choose. You do not rule us, and you never will.”

Dayan let out his breath in a long, slow hiss of disapproval. “This stranger you chose to consort with last night must have given you a virus. Your disposition has gone downhill, Desari.”

“Dayan.” Darius stepped between his sister and his second in command. “That will be enough. The ‘stranger,’ Julian Savage, is a powerful Carpathian, a hunter of the undead. We would do well to learn what we can from him. If he comes to this camp, you will treat him with respect as one of us.”

Dayan shook his head, annoyed at the madness of allowing a stranger into their midst. “I will do as you instruct, Darius, but I think this man has somehow beguiled Desari.”

“Why?” she demanded. “Because I am insisting you help with some of the details of our existence? You are not jungle animals, the male defending the pride and that his only requirement. You ought to help out more.”

Dayan raised an eyebrow but refrained from continuing the argument with Desari. “Deal with this,” he said to Darius. “You are the only one who can.” And then he was gone before Desari could retaliate.

Desari was left to face her brother alone. “Do not say anything, Darius. I know something is terribly wrong with me. I do not know what it is, but I feel like I am losing my mind. It is more than just physical discomfort, it is mental as well.”

“Call him to you.” Darius gave the order softly, as was his way. It had no less impact. His voice carried centuries of authority.

She closed her eyes tightly, pressing her hands to her
rolling stomach. “I cannot, Darius. Do not ask this of me.”

“I can do no other than demand it of you,” he said. “Call him to you.”

“If I do, he will believe he has the right to my obedience.”

“You are suffering needlessly. Whatever this man has done to bind you to him we cannot undo until we know more.” He forced a gentleness into his voice. “You know I cannot allow you to suffer, Desari. Call him to you.”

“I cannot. Did you not hear what I told Dayan? Women have rights, Darius. We cannot be ruled by men simply because they believe it is so.”

His icy black eyes captured her dark, sorrow-filled ones and held her gaze. “I have always been responsible for you and Syndil both. In this I must insist. I can feel your pain, the chaos of your mind. Do as I bid you.”

“Please, Darius. I do not wish to openly defy you.” Desari was actually biting her fingernails, the strain on her face terrible for her brother to witness. Her other hand nervously tugged its way through the mass of ebony hair cascading around her shoulders and down her back.

“You have done so repeatedly since this man entered our lives,” Darius reminded her gently. “I will tolerate only so much defiance from you, little sister. I realize this is a new experience, one outside our realm of knowledge, but I cannot allow you to suffer. Call Savage to your side.”

Tears shimmered in her eyes and on her long lashes. She sank onto the wooden bench beside the table, hanging her head in defeat.

“There is no need to call me.” Julian’s muscular form solidified beside her, close enough that she could feel his body heat. His arm curved around her shoulders. “I
cannot take the separation from you, Desari.” He made the admission without hesitation, uncaring that Darius was within hearing, wanting only to spare her further pain.

“What have you done to me?” There were tears in Desari’s voice as well as her eyes. Her fingers curled into two tight fists so that her nails bit deeply into her palms. Her voice became a tragic whisper. “What have you done that I cannot be without you?”

Julian bent his head to hers, his grip gentle, tender as he pried her fingers open one by one. Very carefully he brought her hands to the healing warmth of his mouth, pressing a kiss into the exact center of each wounded palm. His golden eyes held her dark gaze captive.

Desari could feel the terrible knot in the pit of her stomach begin to melt from his molten heat. Whatever fire lay deep within him ignited a matching inferno deep within her. There was also a peace stealing into her soul and heart, filling the terrible emptiness. She was complete, totally complete again with him so close. Her lungs could work; her heart beat in a strong, steady rhythm.

“I can feel your fear, Desari,” Julian said softly. “There is no need. I cannot hurt you. I am your lifemate, responsible for your happiness.”

“How can that be if I cannot even be away from you for a short period of time?” Desari glanced at her brother, a silent plea for privacy. She had trouble enough accepting such a strange phenomenon without there being a witness to her humiliation.

Julian waited until Darius had signaled the two leopards to his side and disappeared into the dark interior of the trees to hunt. He palmed the nape of Desari’s neck, his fingers caressing her silken hair. “Our physical bodies
can be in separate places,
piccola
, but our minds must touch often when we are apart.”

“You knew this, yet you withdrew. I chose to assert my independence, and you punished me for it,” she said, lifting her chin at him.

“You ignored your own safety,
cara mia
,” he said softly. “You refused to believe the things I tried to tell you, even when I gave you access to my mind. I had no choice but to allow you to learn firsthand that what I say is true. I am your lifemate; there cannot be untruth between us.”

Desari found one button on his immaculate shirt and twisted it nervously. “It was not as if I believed you lied. The things you believed—I did not doubt you thought them true. But it all seemed so unreal, like a fantasy, a dream. How could mere words bind us together for all eternity? How could one male have the power to so change a female’s life?”

“We are connected from birth,
cara
,” he explained, moving his body closer when he felt a shiver run through her. “Two halves of the same whole. There is only one true lifemate. I am fortunate that mine is so talented and beautiful. It is unfortunate, however,” he added, “that you are so willful and have no knowledge of what is expected of you.”

Desari leapt away from him, clearing the picnic table in a single bound. She looked wild and untamed, a sexy enchantress capable of taking his very breath away.

“You think me willful because I insist on taking control of my own destiny? Do not talk to me of this life-mate thing. It means nothing to me. Nothing at all. You breeze into my life, do something to tie us together, and then feel you have the right to dictate how I should live?”

Julian watched the expressions chasing across her
beautiful, furious face. Everything about her was a miracle to him. How small and delicate her bones seemed to be. The sheen and mass of her silken hair was so luxurious he could lose himself in it. “I am of the Old World, a male Carpathian. I did not take into account that you would not know the ways of our people.”

“Is that supposed to be an apology of some kind?” Desari folded her arms across her body, shivering as if cold. “I do not care about the ways of your people.”

“Our people,” he corrected gently.

“My people are the ones I live with, share my life with. For instance, my brother, the one you tried to kill.”

“If I had tried to kill him,
cara mia
, he would be dead.” He raised a hand to prevent her indignant interruption. “I am not saying he would not have taken me with him; he very likely would have. But he was not really trying to kill me either. It was more a matter of being sure. Darius was not going to turn his beloved sister over to a stranger who was unable to protect her. It was a test.”

“Darius was testing you?” she repeated slowly. “This is some kind of male thing I should understand? Approve of?”

Julian moved so quickly he was on her before she had time to run. He never gave a warning, never twitched a muscle. He simply was there, his body crowding aggressively close, his hand spanning her throat, his thumb feathering back and forth along her delicate jaw. “De-sari,
cara
, we have no choice but to learn each other’s ways. We are bound together. I would like to be able to say the pretty words you want to hear. That I was wrong to force your obedience—”

“Tried to force,” she corrected with a flash of her eyes.

Julian bent to brush his lips across the tempting satin of her forehead as amusement crept into the deep gold
of his eyes. “Tried to force. That is true. I am fortunate that my lifemate is so powerful. Still,
piccola
, I was well within my rights to see to your safety. I can do no other than ensure your well-being. Our people cannot afford to lose even one woman, Desari. The total extinction of our race is nearly complete. Our women are our only hope. I will admit that I do not always follow the laws of our people, but in this I have no choice, and neither do you. Your safety and health must be placed above all else. The other woman you have traveling with you must be guarded as well.”

She swept a hand through her hair. “Are we meant only to provide children for our race, then? That is the sole reason for our existence?”

“No,
cara
, your existence is to bring joy to this world, as you have done for so many centuries. God would not have graced you with such a voice, such a powerful tool for peace, had he not meant for you to use it. But”—Julian shrugged his broad shoulders, his thumb tracing a pattern along her neck—“in time, that would be the hope, yes, that you and I would provide our race with more female children. I am uncertain what kind of a father I would make, as I never imagined myself in such a role, but I never thought I would find or be a lifemate either.”

Something close to humor flickered for a moment in her eyes. “I cannot say you are a total success in that area.” But his praise of her talents had warmed her, as had the drawling caress in his voice, the admiration in the depths of his eyes, the depths of his mind.