He guided her unerringly along the path, cutting through the interior and picking up his pace. His warning system was beginning to give off little ripples.
"You gave me a gift beyond measure, my lady. Walking with you is both peaceful and exhilarating. Just to have your interest in my past is a miracle I did not expect."
She gave him a glance from under long lashes, a brief glimpse of her astonishing green eyes. "I have an interest in your future as well, Fen. From what I've gleaned about lifemates, one does not do well without the other for long."
"Then I will continue with my story. I followed Vitrona for a full, very long year, and during that time, I became aware of another hunter tracking him-a Lycan. He was an elite hunter, one who tracks down and kills rogue werewolves, those who kill humans and their own kind, just as we destroy the vampire who preys upon humans. The Lycan's skills were formidable. I found myself having great respect for him. He came closer than me on two occasions and yet, he, too, missed Vitrona."
"How awful for both of you," Tatijana said. "What was so different about this vampire?"
"When one hunts the undead, there are certain signs to look for, but this vampire was nearly impossible to find by any of the usual means. There were no scorch marks in his passing unless he deliberately made them. There were no blank spaces indicating he was hiding. The Lycan, his name was Vakasin, eventually hunted him solely by scent. We joined forces, knowing that would double our chances of executing the monster. Many times we engaged him in battle, and both of us sustained terrible life-threatening wounds." Fen hesitated, uncertain how to tell her the rest-fearing her reaction.
Tatijana stopped walking and turned to stand directly in front of him, blocking his path, forcing him to halt. "I told you about Xavier. He was the most hated criminal the Carpathian people had. Women lost their babies and eventually couldn't have children. The high mage who committed such treachery against the Carpathian people was my own father. I think whatever your secret is can't be as bad. Whatever happened, you need to tell me."
The only person Fen had trusted enough to tell his secret to was his brother. He had just met Tatijana, but she was his lifemate, and one couldn't lie to one's lifemate. She could slip in and out of his mind at will, just as he could hers, making it impossible to hide anything.
He found it strange that he was already so comfortable, as if they'd been together for a long time, yet the mystique surrounding her was as strong as ever, drawing him with a magnetic pull as strong as their obvious connection.
"I often needed blood and there was no one else to provide it but Vakasin. I sometimes provided blood for him when our hunt took us places where there was no sustenance for either of us, or our wounds were too many and we had to wait to heal. In a battle, we both sustained life-threatening injuries and we had to have large amounts of blood to survive."
Tatijana continued to look up at him, wide-eyed. Unblinking. Holding him captive so that he could not look away from her even though his next words might turn her against him.
"Vakasin and I both became an abomination-what the Lycans refer to as the Sange rau, which is literally bad blood, a mixed blood. We became like Vitrona. Both Lycan and Carpathian. We had no idea how it happened, probably over time, our blood mixing, yet not mixing, changing us, yet not really changing us." He confessed his sin quickly, in a rush to get it over.
She didn't change expression or step away from him. She just looked at him as if expecting more. He cleared his throat. "Perhaps you don't understand what I said. I am not Carpathian and I am not Lycan. I am both. An outcast that cannot be tolerated by either species. The Lycans have elite squads that hunt and kill someone like me on sight."
Tatijana frowned. "Why would that be? Lara is lifemate to Nicolas, and his brother Manolito is lifemate to MaryAnn. Manolito and MaryAnn are as you are, and no one is hunting them."
Fen shook his head. "That cannot be."
"I heard Nicolas telling the prince that MaryAnn was Lycan and they were as you describe. No one seemed upset by it."
"No one can know. They cannot. This has not been made common knowledge or my brother would have told me. They are in terrible danger. If the Lycans hear of this, they will send their hunters. They hunt in packs and once set on a trail, they do not stop until they kill their targets."
Tatijana drew in her breath. "If the Lycans killed or attempted to kill MaryAnn and Manolito, his brothers would start a war. As I understand it, the De La Cruz brothers would take on the world for one another. Lara and Nicolas gave us quite a bit of information when they would come to give us blood while we were healing in the earth."
"It is important, Tatijana. You have to warn them. Once the death sentence is handed down by the council, the elite hunters will spend centuries, if necessary, to find and destroy them. There are only a couple of us. Vakasin was killed by his own kind after he helped me to rid the world of Vitrona. They were savage with him when he had done nothing wrong. He tried to tell them that Vitrona had turned vampire, that he didn't represent what we could be, but they wouldn't listen."
"Could Vakasin have turned vampire?" Tatijana asked. "That's what they were afraid of, wasn't it?"
Fen nodded slowly with a small sigh. "He didn't have time to find out. Like Carpathians, Lycans live long lives. I don't know what the consequences of a Lycan-Carpathian cross would be. Obviously, I could turn without my lifemate, but staying in Lycan form helped throughout the long, empty years." He hesitated. "The gifts grow stronger over time, mutating, and as one grows more powerful, that aid disappears and the call to darkness grows."
He shook his head, sorrow nearly overwhelming him. He had respected Vakasin as a hunter and a man, but until this moment he hadn't realized he'd felt affection for him. Camaraderie. The bond between two men who shared battles and watched each other's backs. He'd been unable to feel those things until Tatijana. Emotions, he found, were both a blessing and a curse.
"From the Lycan's point of view, I can see why they would condemn such a powerful being. It took years to bring Vitrona to justice. During the long centuries he nearly single-handedly destroyed the Lycan world. He killed pack after pack in brutal and vicious ways."
"He was vampire," she pointed out. "It's unreasonable to think every single Carpathian-Lycan cross would do the same, any more than it would be reasonable to think every mage is evil because Xavier was."
"Surely there must be some suspicion when Carpathian meets mage," Fen replied. "You know there would be. The Lycans are fully integrated into the human world. They take jobs in the field of law enforcement and they keep small packs within the cities, all with jobs of humankind. They are ruled by a shadowy government of their own and those who rule use human resources. Nearly all the elite hunters are considered wildlife experts or specialists and they travel the world secretly hunting rogue werewolves."
"How many are like you?"
Fen hesitated. He didn't know exactly what that answer was, and he feared the truth. "As far as I know for certain, there is only me, and now Manolito De La Cruz and his lifemate." He had a small suspicion that his brother might have already crossed into his world as well, but he didn't know for certain.
"So few," Tatijana mused. "That does present a problem. If there were more, perhaps the Lycans would think twice before they decided to try to kill all of you, but with only three, they could strike and no one would know."
"You are kin to this Lara?"
Tatijana nodded. "She is the daughter of my brother's son, Razvan. My brother, Soren, was killed by Xavier and Xavier held Razvan and Lara prisoner as well."