“I don’t think he would have been this close to the road where humans travel. He would have wanted privacy. He was suffering. His grief was so strong, I could barely breathe with it.” Julija turned her head to look up at Isai’s face. “I find it so strange that Carpathians without their lifemates can’t feel, yet I could feel your emotions and his as well.”
“I have heard that from some of the other women. I thought, when I first heard it, that those women were gifted in some way, but perhaps we broadcast what we do not feel ourselves.”
She kicked at a small pebble. It rolled away from the lake, spun around and came back toward her as if she was a magnet. Her heart took another plunge and a thousand knots seemed to form in her stomach. She pressed her free hand there and tightened her fingers through his.
“Isai.” She kept her gaze fixed on the small, rounded rocks lining the path they were taking around the lake. “He’s here.”
“Of course he is.” Isai didn’t ask who “he” was. His voice was the same. Steady. Matter-of-fact. Unemotional. “We knew he would come. Anatolie is a very powerful mage and we cannot discount him, but never for one moment forget who our true enemy is. Barnabas is far more dangerous. Because Xavier was the mage before everyone’s eyes, he became the greatest enemy of the Carpathian people. Everyone thought he was more dangerous than anything they had faced.”
“You don’t think he was?”
“How much do you know about the battle that took place quite recently between the Carpathians—specifically four women, three born Dragonseeker and one mated to one—and Xaviero? He tried to start a war between Lycans and Carpathians. His intention was to bring Xavier back. He would have succeeded if those women hadn’t been able to stop him. The brethren analyzed all the data, as we often do, and we concluded that it was not Xavier who was the most dangerous. We do not even think it was Xaviero. There is a third brother, Xayvion.”
“Yes, of course. Anatolie mentioned him several times.”
“He showed himself briefly but disappeared. He was heard calling to Xaviero, advising him to leave while he could, but Xaviero refused his advice.”
“Why do you think Xayvion is the most dangerous?”
“He had nothing to prove. He read the situation and left a battle he could not win. He succeeded in wiping out the Jaguar shifters. Yes, a few remain, but they cannot possibly rebuild their species. He remained in the background, allowing his brothers always to take the forefront, allowing them to think themselves superior. His ego is not what theirs was. He will not be taken down easily.”
She was silent for a long time as they continued around the cold, glacier-blue water. “Why do so many people crave power, Isai? Why don’t they want families and people to love them?”
“I do not know the answer to that.”
She wanted to weep endlessly. Her heart hurt it was so heavy. She pressed a hand to it and took a few more steps, feeling as if she waded through quicksand, and her grief for the world was so severe, so deep, she could hardly go on. She forced herself to put one foot in front of the other when all she wanted to do was sink down and just rest. She needed rest desperately.
“Julija.” Isai’s voice was extremely gentle. He cupped the side of her face. “You are feeling Iulian. We have found his psychic footprints. Can you manage to follow them?”
She honestly didn’t know. His sorrow was overwhelming. Terrible to endure, to feel. She also felt like a voyeur. This was Iulian’s private grief and she didn’t belong there. In a way, it was his tribute to his lifemate.
Sívamet, he cannot feel as you can. This grief was buried so deep he was unable to tap into it and that was a good thing. He went to her. He told her he would find her in the next realm. I do not know if he bound them together, which is a possibility even without his taking her blood or she his. Once the ritual binding words are said, their souls are tied. You said she couldn’t speak. If that is so, he felt no emotion, he saw no colors, but he could find her, and clearly, he always meant to follow her.
She swallowed hard, fighting not to go down to her knees under the weight