slow flush creeping up her face. “Yes, I’m aware. Put like that, it sounds far worse than when I was thinking about it.”
“That is our reality. I searched centuries for you and then locked myself away in a monastery to keep those around me safe because I was close to being a demon, something far worse than a vampire. I no longer even heard the whispers of temptation, yet you stubbornly and selfishly refused to come to my aid and save me.”
Her head went up. “Why should a woman have to sacrifice her life for a man?”
“Why should a man have to sacrifice his life to save mankind? To save that selfish woman?”
She leaned toward him. “He doesn’t have to. He can walk away.”
“Live without honor? Without doing his duty? Is that the kind of woman you are, Julija? You have no honor? You would refuse to do your duty because it is difficult?” He kept his voice very low, but there was disappointment.
Isai had searched for this woman for centuries, more years than even most Carpathians could claim life. Throughout that time, he had done everything necessary to protect his people and the growing number of humans vampires fed on. His reward was a woman who didn’t believe in duty or service? She didn’t believe in honor? She had no code? He didn’t let it show on his face, but he felt shattered. Betrayed.
Dismissively, he waved away whatever she might say to back up her argument. “Tell me about the book and your part in its disappearance.”
She pressed her lips tightly together as if to keep from continuing their argument. He had no intentions of continuing. He didn’t want a woman who had no sense of honor. No code. A woman who would let a man become the very thing he had fought against. If she had studied Carpathians, and it was clear she had, then she knew Carpathian women were always happy. Their lifemates saw to that. He might be a dinosaur, but he would have done everything in his power to make his woman happy.
“My family, as you know, is mage. Xavier had a son named Soren. His mother was Rhiannon, of the Dragonseeker family. I know that’s a big deal with Carpathians, but I don’t know why. In any case, Soren was given a woman, a mage. They had a son, but when he was born, they both were told the baby died. Xavier had the woman killed for not properly taking care of herself and allowing the baby to be weak.”
“The baby wasn’t dead.”
She shook her head. “That man, Xavier’s grandson, Anatolie, is my father. My mother was a sixteen-year-old Carpathian girl named Francise. They wanted someone to use for blood to sustain them as they grew older. They used her until I was old enough and then they killed her.”
He frowned and rubbed his finger over the bridge of his nose. “You know they killed her, you know this for a fact? You saw the body?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I know it’s hard to think that they would kill a young girl like that, but they did. I wasn’t that old, but I remember. They wanted me to remember. Before my mother, my father married a mage, a woman very powerful in her own right. She gave Anatolie two sons. She was on board with him impregnating Francise. Theirs isn’t a love match. She wants power just as Anatolie does.”
“She isn’t a very wise woman. They killed Rhiannon and then Francise. Why won’t they kill her when she no longer serves a purpose?”
“I hadn’t thought of that. In any case, I overheard them talking about the book and how whoever had it would wield a tremendous power and could destroy any species. It was the chance to rid the world of the Carpathians. My brothers, along with my father, had devised a plan. They were developing a creature everyone refers to as a shadow cat. These cats are part illusion, part shadow and part real. They are trained to slip in where no one can go. They’ve been training and practicing with them in other parts of the world away from the Carpathian Mountains because they didn’t want to tip off the prince that they were coming for the book.”
“You overheard them, broke with your family and set out to warn Mikhail.”
She met his eyes. “That’s the truth. I don’t understand why you look and sound as if I’m lying about this.”