Pesamet andam. Uskolfertiilamet andam. Sivamet andam. Sielamet andam. Ainamet andam. His teeth flashed very white in the darkness. "I give you my protection. I give you my allegiance. I give you my heart. I give you my soul. I give you my body."

She realized he wasn't talking figuratively, but literally. He was offering to stand there while she drove a knife into his heart and took his life. This was no vampire. She had no real idea of what he was, but the words he was uttering were in the Carpathian language, a language as ancient as her aunts had been. And the words were a ritual that bound two halves of the same soul together. She had never believed in that love story, not truly, even though she knew the kinds of things that could be wrought with elements and energy and magic. But as he spoke each word in that soft, seductive tone, his black eyes glittering with possession and absolute determination, she could feel the ties forging like steel between them.

"Are you crazy? You have to be out of your mind. Don't stand there like an idiot. You need to stop the bleeding."

His eyes never left her face. Sivamet kuuluak kaik etta a ted. Ainaak olenszal sivambin. "I take into my keeping the same that is yours. Your life will be cherished by me for all my time."

She flung her head up, her red braid whipping across her shoulder, glacier blue eyes crackling and glittering with anger. "Really?

Is this what you call cherishing me?" She pressed a hand to her neck where the thin trickle of blood continued. "You took from me without permission. Without asking. Without one thought for how I might feel."

All the while she reprimanded him, her gaze kept dropping to the blood pooling at his side. He had to stop it. If he was Carpathian-and he had to be-he could close the wound on his own and keep his life's essence from flowing away.

Te elidet ainaak pide minan. "Your life will be placed above my own for all time." His expression didn't change. He kept his arms outstretched, presenting her with a kill target. His black gaze never left her face. His expression was utter, absolute serenity, although his eyes blazed with a dark possession.

Fury shook her. "You won't have a life if you don't heal yourself."

Te avio palafertiilam. Ainaak sivamet jutta oleny. Ainaak terad vigyazak. "You are my lifemate. You are bound to me for all eternity. You are always in my care."

She hissed out her breath, teeth snapping together. "You don't just get to claim me and think it's all going to work out. Not when you've taken my blood without my consent." Her heart was pounding as she watched his life ebbing away with the flow of blood.

"Do something."

"It is not my choice. Life or death is the choice of my lifemate. If you reject my claim, then you are condemning me and I willingly die by your hand."

Her blue eyes were twin chips of burning ice. "Don't you dare blame your death on me." But she was already springing toward him, unable to stop herself. Her throat nearly closed with fear as she clamped both hands over the wound in his side. She wanted to shake him. Literally just grab him and shake him until he saw how utterly ridiculous he was being.

So much for her romantic love story. "You might be the hottest man in the village, but your brain is about the size of a pea," she muttered under her breath. "Close the wound. I don't have that kind of ability."

"Then it is life you choose for me."

His voice was enough to make a woman want to strip and jump him and the effect he had on her annoyed her more than anything else.

"You deserve to die just for being stupid," she snapped, but she didn't let go of his side, pressing tightly, making certain to clamp down and prevent further bleeding. "Now heal yourself."

He gave a slight, old world bow. "As you wish."

That voice was seduction itself. Her body tingled, her breasts heavy and aching. She didn't want him touching her, or brushing her face or body with his black gaze. She could hear his heart matching the rhythm of hers. Air flowed in and out of his lungs in tune with hers, a soft sighing so that their breath mingled together. Everything feminine in her, everything she was, Carpathian, mage and human, rose up to meet the male in him.

"I wish for you to get yourself some psychological help. You can't seem to make up your mind whether you're a vampire or a hunter." She deliberately injected scorn into her voice.

His expression didn't change. He didn't even blink, but she'd scored a hit. They were connected now, all those unbreakable threads she felt between them allowed her to read his emotions and gave her an insight to the predator she was prodding. Her heart stuttered and her stomach did a funny little flip.

He didn't move, yet he was closer, much closer, his body pressing against the small palms of her hands where they were buried into his side. "Have no fears, palafertiil, I have made up my mind."

She didn't like the sound of that-the soft purring in his voice that sounded more like a threat than a reassurance. She felt the heat suddenly bursting from his body, saw the flash of white light glowing around her hands. His flesh grew hot, although it didn't burn her, merely cleansed the blood from her skin. She dropped her hands abruptly and stepped away from him, looking up the long length of his body to his incredible face.

His body up close was too masculine, too strong, too everything. Wide shoulders, solid-he looked invincible-even though she'd managed to get a knife into him. She swallowed fear and took another step back.

"I have to go."

"We go together. You cannot pretend I have not claimed you and that you did not reject my claim. You chose life for me. Our souls are one."

Lara frowned. She had a vague idea of the ritual binding words from the story her aunts told her. The words were imprinted on the male before birth. Once uttered, they bound two souls together so one could not survive without the other once the ritual was actually complete. She didn't know what the rest of the ritual was, but if it involved sex with this man, she really wasn't up to the task.

She tilted her head and looked at him with a cool steady gaze. She didn't feel cool or steady, but she wanted him to understand her-to know that if she'd ever been serious about anything in her life, she was serious about this. "I know very little about your traditions or culture. Just stories my aunts told me when I was a child, but no matter what you've done to tie us together, know this: I don't know you. I don't love you. I don't care anything at all about you. I spent the first years of my life a prisoner and I will never-never-allow anyone to imprison me again. If you try to take anything from me by force, if you try to break my will or manipulate my mind, I will fight you with the last breath in my body. So you make up your mind-choose life or death for us."

His eyes darkened to obsidian, glittering with a sensual lust that burned through her body. He cupped her chin with gentle fingers and bent his head slowly. Mesmerized, she couldn't pull herself away. She could see the long length of his lashes, the tiny crinkled lines around his eyes, the straight nose of the aristocrat, the mouth sinfully carnal, but stamped with the mark of a man who could be cruel.

Her breath caught as his hair brushed her face. She felt his mouth on her neck. Hot. Burning. Velvet soft. His tongue rasped over the twin pinpricks at her frantically beating pulse, stopping the tempting trickle of her blood.

I choose life for us.

The words slid into her mind like a caress. She moistened her lips as he straightened to his full height. "Fine then. We understand each other." She turned to go back to the inn-to safety, because no matter what this man agreed to, she knew she wasn't safe with him and it wasn't entirely his fault.

Once more his fingers settled around her wrist like a bracelet. Warm.

He stroked the pads of his fingers against the bare skin of her inner wrist, halting her. "I do not think you quite understand me and I would not want you later to say you were not in possession of all the facts."

Lara turned back reluctantly. "I'm listening."

"You are the one woman-the only woman-my woman. This is something I take very seriously. Your health. Your safety and your happiness. I will see to these things, but I will not share you. I will not allow others to interfere in our relationship. No other.

Man or woman. If you have a problem with something, you tell me. If you are afraid of something, you tell me."

"I don't know you. And I don't trust that easily."

"I did not say it would be easy. I just want you to understand who I am."

She couldn't push down the rising panic. She saw him exactly for what he was. A predator. A hunter. A man who made decisions and expected those around him to follow his lead. Already the ritual words had bound them together. She could feel the pull of him on her mind-even on her body.

Lara let her breath out slowly. "I don't share my blood."

His lips curved into a small smile. She caught a brief glimpse of his white teeth and then that predatory smile was gone and he once again wore a face carved of stone. "I noticed."

Color rose in her cheeks. "I have to get back inside. I have a friend who is hurt. Maybe you can help him. You obviously know healing."

All warmth leeched from his eyes. "Your friend is male?"

She shivered, suddenly cold. "Yes. I came with two colleagues. We're doing research nearby and we're staying here."

"What kind of research?" There was a bite to his voice, a note of suggestion.

Now her entire body was blushing. She was annoyed with herself for the fluttery nerves in the pit of her stomach. She was trying to establish herself as someone to take seriously, yet each time she looked closely as him something inside her seemed to melt.

He scared the hell out of her. She had faced monsters, yet she hadn't been as afraid as she was at this moment. This man had changed her life for all time. He stood calm and resolute, implacable even, looking at her with possession in his eyes and a mouth that was so fascinating, she could barely tear her gaze away, yet she knew he was one of the most dangerous creatures living on the earth.

"Well, it's hard to explain. Mostly we do sexual research together. You know, sex in every culture down through time.""Very funny."

"You deserved it. You had that tone."

"I had a tone?"

She swept her green gaze over him and began walking back toward the inn, very aware of him pacing beside her with the silent stride of a jungle cat. "Actually, I explore caves and I've been researching life forms in ice caves." There was an edge of haughtiness in her voice. "So answer my question: Do you know much about healing? Or do you know someone who does? We were attacked by a hybrid-part plant, part snake-and very venomous."

He caught her elbow and brought her to a halt. "Did it bite you?" He was already running his hands up and down her arms, tilting her head this way and that. And then she felt the thrust of his mind against hers.

It was such a shock, the sheer intimacy of his mind merging with hers. There was nothing at all soft about him. He could erupt into violence with swift efficiency. When she had thought him one of the most dangerous creatures on earth, she hadn't even come close to understanding the killing machine that he was, yet he hid nothing from her. He didn't attempt to pretend to be different than he was, and she saw that he could. He could have appeared gentle and sweet, but he gave her the respect of showing her exactly who and what she was dealing with.

Lara inhaled sharply. Her aunts had told her Carpathians were powerful. They had presented them as heroic, hunters of the vampires, protectors of human and mage alike. She was unprepared for the ruthless, merciless mind of the hunter. And he was beyond any arrogance she'd ever known.

She couldn't prevent the tremor of awareness or the little shiver of fear. The heat of his body enveloped her, warmed her, driving out the cold of the night when she had forgotten to regulate her temperature. She attempted to retreat, slamming down the barriers in her mind. She had always been powerful, but it had been years since she'd had to utilize her abilities to conceal her mind from any other and she was slow and rusty.

"There is no need to hide yourself from me," Nicolas said. Not only was her body shivering, but so was her mind. He had triggered a well of fear, tapping into some long-ago memories of someone close to her who had misused and abused her trust. "I cannot lie to you, nor do I attempt to access what you will not give me freely. I look only for parasites and wounds. The snakes are more deadly than you can know."

She let her breath out, somewhat relieved. He hadn't examined her memories of that lost little girl. He didn't know who she was or what she was. There was always power in knowledge and she trusted no one-least of all the man who could make her body come alive when she had been frozen for so many years. She didn't trust anything that happened so fast, or that walked in an ancient land of enormous power.

"The snakes injected venom into my friend. There were tiny parasitic organisms in the venom and the blood of the snakes burned like acid." As she spoke, she moved away from him, a delicate feminine retreat.

Nicolas wanted to smile. He didn't smile easily. Hadn't smiled in five hundred years, but her girly reaction when she was trying to be a fierce warrior was so cute. Cute. He had never understood that word before. He'd heard it a thousand times but had no real concept of the meaning until that moment. Instincts told him she wouldn't appreciate being considered cute when she thought of herself as tough, so he kept his observation to himself.

She was shorter than most Carpathian women, barely coming up to the middle of his chest, but her body was all feminine curves.

She considered herself overweight-he'd caught that small bit of information before he narrowed the flow of information to specifics. He didn't understand that either. She was perfect, but then he would have thought her perfect no matter what she had looked like. How could he not? She had restored his life, his very soul. He could feel real love for his brothers. He could feel real honor and a sense of duty to his people. She had turned a bleak, gray world into a dazzling wonderland. She was the epitome of beauty to him with her classic bone structure and the jeweled eyes of the Dragonseeker line.Power crackled in her. This was no shy, retiring maiden, but a warrior prepared to fight him at every turn. She didn't know he had already won the battle. She was part Carpathian and her nature would draw her to him. The pull between them would grow over time and he would make absolutely certain that he was by her side while time worked its magic on his lifemate.

"Stop staring at me like that." She walked faster.

He kept pace easily. "I had no idea I was staring in any particular way."

There was joy in the night as well as breathtaking beauty. He marveled that he could feel it, see it, be one with it. The heavy clouds formed whimsical shapes, drifting overhead with the helpful push of the wind. The village breathed, hearts beating, children's laughter ringing out. Why hadn't he heard those sounds before? Sounds of life and love. Fathers murmuring, mothers calling, children laughing. He had lost the magic of life over the centuries and now it was there, flooding his senses.

Her eyes flashed at him. Green again. Green was her normal color, a dazzling emerald her red hair made deeper. Glacier blue was her power color then. There was satisfaction in discovering that small fact about her. He wanted to know everything about her all at once, but he had learned long ago the lesson of patience and it had stood him in good stead for hundreds of years.

Time would reveal her secrets to him and each moment spent with her-finding out the little things, the intimacies of her true self-would bring joy to him.

He even enjoyed the unrelenting ache she brought to his body. It was another sign of being alive-of living and breathing and sharing his world with her. His soul had been so dark, so damaged, he had been unable to feel emotion, keeping pain at bay and guilt and shame, but it also kept away true life.

"You are a miracle to me. Maybe that is what you are seeing in my stare. Sheer wonder." He kept his expression calm, not allowing his joy to overwhelm her, but he did inject the dark seduction of black velvet into his voice so that it caressed her skin and slid deeper into her body, lighting little electrical sparks from breast to feminine channel.

She stopped so abruptly in the open doorway of the inn he nearly ran into her.

Chapter 3.

Lara scowled at Nicolas, her green eyes suddenly suspicious. "Are you a ladies' man? All sweet talk and syrup with no substance? Because I'm telling you right now, I've had experience with that kind of man and I can see right through flattery."

She was lying. Looking him right in the eye and lying her pretty little butt off. She had no experience with men. And she couldn't stop blushing every time she looked at him. The smile started in his mind and spread to his lips. Genuine. Spontaneous. A miracle in itself that he could smile-that he had a reason for smiling.

Nicolas wanted to carry her off to his lair and keep her to himself for a year or two, learning every detail about her. Desire rose sharp and painful. He kept his face without expression. "I do not believe anyone has ever said I talk sweet or that I am syrup in all the years of my existence."

She gave a little undignified snort. "Maybe not, but I'll bet they called you a lady's man."

"I am a Carpathian hunter of great skill but I am certain I will have the necessary skills to become your mate."

She choked and turned away from him, stomping into the inn, her shoulders stiff. Nicolas moved in behind her, very close, aware as they entered that men turned to look at her. She was striking with her skin and hair, the glow many Carpathian women had, a sort of luminous quality combined with a fluid sexy walk that drew the eye. He flashed a message, letting them know without Previous Top Nextwords that she belonged to him. Black eyes carried death as he looked directly at each man to emphasize the point. They looked away from her and two actually left, telling him the vibes he was sending out were just a little too strong. He was going to have to learn to manage his newfound emotions.

Nicolas followed her up the stairs to one of the rooms, taking the stairs two at a time. She reached for the doorknob. Nicolas's hand was there before hers. He inserted his larger body smoothly between her and the room.

"I will go in first." He had already scanned the room. Two unknown human males and Mikhail, prince of his people. Still, even with the prince, he wasn't about to take any chances on her safety. He scented vampire blood.

"It's my room," she objected, shocked at how smoothly, how easily he had taken over.

His black eyes moved over her face. "Yes it is and you seem to have a surplus of male visitors."

He didn't wait for an answer, but pushed open the door, ignoring her outraged little squeak. Mikhail had been fully aware of his arrival, his gaze shooting past him, but Nicolas's much larger body blocked the doorway, preventing Lara from entering. Nicolas took in the scene, the man writhing in pain on the bed. A second man holding his shoulders in hopes to calm him while the prince seemed to be attempting to heal the injuries of the male on the bed. Nicolas stepped aside to allow his lifemate entrance.

"Nicolas," Mikhail stepped forward to clasp both his arms in the traditional greeting of respect and honor between warriors. "It is good to see you." He didn't show the worry he had to be feeling that Nicolas De La Cruz had traveled personally from South America to bring him news. He understood that news couldn't be good or word would have been sent through the chain of Carpathians to their homeland.

"I bring greetings from Zacarias as well as my other brothers. I hope you and your woman are well."

Mikhail nodded. "I sensed a disturbance earlier."

Nicolas didn't change expression, nor did he look away. Of course Mikhail had sensed a disturbance. Nicolas had been close enough to turning that he had nearly taken his own lifemate's life. Fortunately, she had a knife and hadn't hesitated to use it. The blood was gone from Nicolas's shirt, but Mikhail wouldn't be easily fooled.

Nicolas turned to his lifemate. "Mikhail Dubrinsky is the prince of the Carpathian people," Nicolas explained to her before turning back to his prince. "Mikhail, this is avio palafertiil." He put unmistakable possession in his voice even as he rested his hand on the small of her back.

Mikhail bowed slightly from the waist. "I am pleased to meet your lifemate, Nicolas, but what is her name?"

"Her name?" For the first time Nicolas looked bewildered.

"She does have a name, doesn't she?" Mikhail asked, clearly amused.

Nicolas looked down at the bright burst of red-gold hair and those brilliant jeweled green eyes. "What is your name?"

"You tied us together and you don't even know my name," she scoffed, trying to ignore the scent of tainted, rotted blood in the room. "You're absolutely crazy, you know that? It's Lara. Lara Calladine. And you?" Her heart was pounding too hard, knowing her life had changed forever. She couldn't think about it yet, keeping emotion light until she had time to assimilate what had happened and what she could do about it.

His slow smile nearly melted her on the spot, a distraction when the room felt "off" to her.

"Nicolas De La Cruz."

"You're Carpathian." She made it a statement, looking from one man to the other. "You both are." It was difficult to be conversing when she found herself shivering with cold, a little disoriented and slightly sick.