Beside her, Dayan became motionless, not a single muscle moving. Even his breath seemed to cease. She felt a warmth inside her, growing, moving, spreading. She heard a faraway chant. The words were in another language, quite beautiful and soothing, so she relaxed completely. The voice was male, definitely Dayan’s, but it was in her mind, not spoken aloud. And he had a beautiful voice.
Dayan examined her enlarged heart carefully, then moved on to the baby. A tiny infant, a female. She was beautiful, fully formed and aware of his intrusion. He reassured the baby immediately, sending waves of serenity to surround her. She had the same abilities as her mother; perhaps they were even stronger. Although extremely small, the baby was perfectly formed, needing only to mature to thrive in the outside world. He left the child with encouragement and returned to his primary mission. Corinne’s heart was definitely laboring.
He was not a healer and he didn’t have the necessary skills to repair her heart. He could give her his blood to help strengthen her, but he had no idea what it would do to the child. He had touched the infant’s mind, knew her as a person; he knew that Corinne already loved her. He couldn’t chance harming the baby, not unless Corinne’s time ran out. Still softly chanting the ancient healing ritual, Dayan did what he could to shore up her weak, laboring heart.
Corinne knew the exact moment he pulled out of her body. The warmth was gone, and she felt the loss of his presence instantly. She turned her head to look at him, slightly bemused. Perhaps he was a black-magic sorcerer. She was totally bewitched by him, completely under his spell. When his black gaze met hers, she saw hunger there, a terrible aching need, a void only she could fill. Corinne felt it, although she realized the intensity of their emotions made no sense.
“I just met you,” she offered softly, her moss-green eyes examining his face.
Dayan linked their hands again, brought hers over his heart. “I have searched the world over for you, through time and distances you cannot imagine. You are the one. My other half. My lifemate.” His voice was gentle, whispering over her like velvet.
Corinne shivered, edged closer to the protection of his strong body without realizing she did so. “I like that word. Lifemate. It sounds magical. Like we were meant to be together.” Her eyes widened. “I can breathe easier, Dayan, I really can. What did you do?” She was experiencing that strange phenomenon again: Her heart was beating in the exact same rhythm as Dayan’s. “Do you hear that? Listen to our hearts.”
“We were made to be together, two halves of the same whole,” he informed her gently, knowing she wouldn’t understand. He meant it literally when she thought he was talking figuratively. “You are the other half of my soul, the light to my darkness. I hold the other half of your heart. We belong, Corinne.”
She loved the way he said her name, a lazy drawl, his strange accent curling the vowel sounds until they were intriguingly sexy. “How strange, when I’ve never believed in love at first sight. You’re overpowering, I’ll give you that much. I can’t make up my mind whether it’s your guitar playing or the sound of your voice that’s making me lose what little sense I had. Which do you think it is?”
“Something made me go into that bar tonight,” he answered softly, his teeth teasing the pad of her thumb. She could feel each gentle scrape all the way down to her toes. “I dreamed you up. You’re my fantasy come true.”
She laughed then, the sound like music in his ears, a melody even his guitar couldn’t match. “Complete with baby on the way, a broken-down heart, and killers stalking me. I’d say you need to try dreaming again, Dayan, you didn’t do a very good job.” She wanted to be his dream come true, wished she were the one he needed.
“You are the
only
one I need.”
He was so certain, so intense. There was no hint of a smile in his black eyes, rather that strange look that reminded Corinne of a predatory animal. He looked dangerous. She changed the subject abruptly. Their relationship couldn’t really go anywhere, so what was the use in speculation? “How did you find out the two men were in our house without their seeing you?”
Dayan turned on his side, propping his elbow on the bed so he could rest his head in his palm and gaze down at her face. He could see her clearly in the darkness. He was a night creature and his eyes took in everything. Right now his gaze was focused on her face. She looked beautiful to him, lying there, unaware in her innocence of what he was, what he was capable of. “I needed the information,” he replied gently, one fingertip tracing her lush mouth because he couldn’t stop himself.
“That isn’t an answer,” she told him firmly. “Don’t avoid the question.”
“I do not want you to be afraid, Corinne. I am not always the gentlest of men. Those two were lying in wait to attack you and your friend. One of them had certainly participated in killing your husband. If it is the same organization that attempted to wipe out my entire family in one evening, they would have killed both you and Lisa. They are hunting Cullen, whose only sin was to warn us. I did not feel particularly kindly toward these individuals.”
“You confronted them,” she guessed. What was he not telling her? Surely he couldn’t have faced two armed men alone and bested them. “Do you carry a gun?” She hated guns, those cold metallic instruments of death.
His broad shoulders shrugged casually. “I do not need a gun to kill,” he said honestly. “I do not need a gun for any reason whatsoever.”
She let her breath out slowly. “I’m glad to hear that.”
He knew Corinne said it because she didn’t have any idea what he was. A predator, dangerous and powerful. He had no need of a gun; he commanded the earth, the sky. He could shower the land with fire or buckle the ground beneath their feet. His voice alone could rob others of their will. He was a Carpathian male, a hunter of the vampire, his strength enormous, his ability to shape-shift only one of his many gifts. His was a dying species, a race of men doomed to wander the earth endlessly in search of the light that complemented their darkness, the one woman who was the other half of them. Without that woman they lost their ability to feel, lost the ability to see in color, so that they inhabited a dark, shadow world with only memories of honor to keep them from choosing the way of the vampire.
The insidious whisper of power was always with them, eating at them, calling to them, crouching in them, a dark beast filled with blood lust and the need to kill just to feel that momentary rush. As the centuries passed, the dark stain grew and spread, filling the males, until there was no hope, only the dark, dangerous hunger.
For the first few centuries, Dayan had suppressed the beast with his music and the poetry he had loved, but his struggle had increased in the last two hundred years. “Very recently there has been a change in our lives. You know all the band members, right?”
“Desari, of course, your singer. Barack and Syndil and you.” Corinne rubbed his arm, sensing his unhappiness.
“And Darius, head of our family and bodyguard. The change was good for my brothers and sisters, not so good for me. First Julian arrived and claimed Desari as his lifemate. Then Darius found Tempest. Barack claimed Syndil, and I was left alone. I felt isolated, Corinne. I cannot explain how difficult it was. How alone I was.” The sight of all of them so happy together had left him terribly alone. It had been a kind of hell without them all. They had been together during the centuries of their existence, yet he could no longer face them. The sight and sounds and smells of the mingling couples had made his loneliness even more intolerable.
He was different. He was a danger to them, to the women as well as the men. He saw the wary way Syndil always looked at him. She had been attacked by one of their own, Savon, after Savon had turned vampire. Darius had destroyed the vampire, but it had been a close thing.