be left behind to starve. Either way, it wasn’t a good scenario for a dog.
The stardust trail seemed to move. It was subtle, just a shifting of the particles to make it seem as if the wide swath of dust began to change course. Her breath caught in her throat. She blinked several times to make certain she had the filmy constellation in focus. There was no question, the entire path of milky stars was subtly veering from one angle to another. The change was happening so slowly she wouldn’t have noticed except that she’d been staring up at it nonstop for the last hour.
Nothing could actually change the course of the stars, so the movement had to be an illusion. And that meant someone was looking for her. She turned her head very slowly so as not to draw the eye of whoever was searching for her. It could have been anyone. Her family would come after her. The Carpathians would send someone. A shiver went through her. Just a few short days earlier she had been with them, ensuring Elisabeta had others surrounding her who would take care of her. Julija had simply walked away from them, torn throat and all. By now, their prince would have sent the message that she was an enemy and to stop her at any cost.
Her family or a Carpathian hunter? Did it matter which? Both would try to stop her, and she couldn’t allow either one to interfere. She inched downward until she was completely covered up to her eyes. There was no fire to draw attention. Campers were everywhere on the John Muir Trail and in Yosemite, but she had known her quarry would never have gone near other people. He would have sought out the wildest places in the Sierras possible.
At first, she had been able to “feel” him. Sometimes she’d known his thoughts. He was Carpathian. An ancient hunter, Iulian Florea, who was the last of his family. He had been searching for his lifemate—that one woman who held the other half of his soul—but by the time he had discovered her, she was already dying of old age.
He’d held her for all of a few minutes and she’d never spoken, never restored his emotions or color, although holding her, he had felt grief. She had opened her eyes and looked up at him right before she passed. Something like peace had stolen into her. So fragile, her body worn with age, but her spirit indomitable, she had given him a half-smile and succumbed. Julija had cried even though the Carpathian could not.
The woman had never married and ended her life alone in a nursing home. Iulian held her a long time, pressing her body to his chest, her face over his heart, before lowering her body with exquisite gentleness to the bed. The workers were busy with their many patients and while they were looking the other way at his command, Iulian had taken the body and disappeared into the night. He’d brought her to a cavern high up in the Carpathian Mountains and buried her deep. He’d stood for a long while over her, and Julija had read in his mind that he’d planned to meet the dawn the next morning.
What had changed his mind? Why had he left the cave suddenly and gone to the home of his prince? What had possessed a Carpathian hunter, a man who had lived honorably for centuries, to suddenly turn on his entire species and put their very existence in jeopardy? He hadn’t gone into the thrall when his lifemate died. It was impossible. She hadn’t restored his emotions or color, not to mention the glimpses Julija had caught of his mind hadn’t been filled with chaos. They had been filled with purpose.
She kept her eye on the constellation above her as she tried to puzzle out what her quarry was up to. She’d been on her way to warn the prince of the Carpathians, Mikhail Dubrinsky, that there was a conspiracy building against him and that she had found out almost too late. Things had already been set in motion and she’d had to adjust within minutes, make a decision and follow it through.
A book of demonic spells had been created by Xavier, the high mage. Every spell recorded in his deadly tome had been the blackest and darkest of what he’d wrought. Death. Destruction of species. Everything he had created over the years to destroy or command