long distances, but not like the connection Julija and Elisabeta seemed to share.
Certain that the two campers were exactly what they appeared, he spiraled down until he was among boulders. He shifted and strode out, backpack on his back, looking the epitome of the lone hiker.
One of the men looked up and gave a friendly wave. “Come on into the camp. We have fresh coffee.”
Isai tried a smile. His was fairly rusty, but since he’d been around Julija, he’d found he could not only smile, but wanted to laugh. “Thanks. That sounds good.” He walked right into their camp, shrugging out of his backpack. “I have been on the trail since early morning.” At the last minute he remembered he should be using contractions instead of the more formal-sounding way he normally talked. Neither seemed to notice. “You’re the first I’ve run into in a day or so.”
“Really? What trail are you hiking?” The one pouring the coffee looked up. “We were just saying the place seems overrun this year. We went to school together and meet up every year to hike the trails.”
“I live on the east coast,” the blond said. “Josh lives on the west coast. We keep in touch, but this is what we do to catch up with each other’s life. We were just saying we’re getting too old for this.”
Both were telling the truth. Isai didn’t wait any longer. Waving his hand, he stopped both men from moving or speaking. He didn’t want either to be afraid or able to remember him. The less contact they had with him the easier it would be to erase every vestige of the memory from them. If Sergey detected even a small imprint of him, he would torture the two men trying to extract what they would never be able to give him. For all he knew, Anatolie or Barnabas would do the same. He took their blood, removed every memory of himself and left them both lying on their sleeping bags inside their tents recovering.
Coming back to the cave, he again took his time, studying the surrounding area carefully, looking for signs of intruders. He examined the battlefield. Other than a little scarring from the lightning, there was no real evidence of a life-and-death clash between mage and Carpathian.
Julija. Why hadn’t she undergone the conversion? She should have. Did that mean she was already fully Carpathian and could sleep beneath the ground? He needed to find out. Could she escape the paralysis of his kind with her mage blood? Could she walk in the sunlight without fear? If he lay out in the sun, it would kill him.
He knew he would take her blood whenever he could. The taste of her was addictive to him. Would her mage blood, over time, allow him the freedoms it allowed her? All good questions with no answer. He would have to be patient and allow those answers to come to him as time unfolded.
The surrounding landscape appeared untouched, and he slipped through the narrow crack. Blue was waiting at the entrance to the chamber where his lifemate slept. The cat greeted him, amber eyes fixed on his face. The steady, focused stare could have been disconcerting, but Isai liked the cat more for his ability to concentrate his attention where it was needed.
“Everything all right?”
The cat nodded and watched him as he carefully woke the other cats one by one and fed them. Six cats were quite a lot. He would welcome Julija’s help in caring for the animals, but not this night. When he had fed them all and reinforced the growing bond between them with pets, scratches and murmurs of assurance, he sent them all to the chamber closest to the exit. He wanted to be alone with his woman.
Isai carried Julija to the bed, removing soil and freshening her skin and hair in the way he knew she preferred before whispering the command to wake. Already, heat moved through his body. Just looking down into her face sent fire rushing through him like a freight train. He hadn’t known such an intensity of emotions existed.
“Good evening, my little mage,” he greeted when her lashes lifted, and he found himself looking into the dark chocolate of her eyes.
Her smile took his breath. It lit her entire face and brought something even more beautiful to her eyes. The beginnings of affection? Was that what he was seeing there? He bent his head and took her mouth because there was