drew her closer to him as he drank. The sensation was intimate, sensual and possessive. She wanted to drown in the feeling, just stay there forever with him.
The cats moved closer, Blue pressing into her so that his nose could nearly touch Isai. Julija knew the ancient Carpathian was aware of the cats, especially the big male. She felt his heightened alert, but he finished feeding before running his tongue over the twin piercings in her neck to stop the bleeding.
“I think your pets are looking for a meal.”
She stroked a caress over the male’s head. The cat didn’t take his eyes off Isai.
He leaned toward the animal. “Are you hungry, friend? Didn’t they feed you?”
His tone was smooth, soft, even gentle. Very friendly. A shiver of awareness crept down her spine. She found, in spite of their very rocky beginning, there were quite a few things she liked about Isai. He treated animals with respect and compassion.
“My brothers liked to keep the cats hungry. They sometimes fed them human flesh.”
Isai frowned. “The cats are natural predators and they clearly tried to make them even more vicious, yet they aren’t nearly as ferocious as one would think. Why aren’t they attacking me? If they are hungry, by rights, they should be looking at me as if I am their next meal.”
“I think, because I gave them my blood on a regular basis—”
“Wait,” he interrupted. “Did you take their blood at any time?”
“I had to. I wanted to be able to control them if needed or know if they were hurt. I didn’t want my brothers to kill them.”
He regarded her for a long moment and then casually bit into his wrist and offered the blood to the male cat. Blue nearly leapt forward and hungrily lapped at the drops of blood.
“What are you doing?” Julija’s breath caught in her throat. “You could make it worse. Your blood is far more powerful than mine. My brothers still control the cats with pain. If they command them to kill us, if they find out the cats are with us, they’ll hurt them until the animals comply with their commands.”
Fear for Isai nearly swamped her. Normally she would have been afraid for the shadow cats, but now, all she could think about was Blue tearing into Isai.
Isai calmly swept his free arm around her. “We are going to prevent that from happening. You are from a lineage known as Dragonseeker. That particular line is legendary.”
“Elisabeta was telling me something about it.”
“Although you have the mark of the high mage, straight from Xavier’s line, you have more Carpathian blood in you than mage. You have converted these shadow cats to Carpathian and they need blood to survive, but they also have taken on the traits of a Carpathian. Your brothers bred them for intelligence, and they have that. It is very evident, even the way they work in pairs. He sent her forward to check me out, but he was waiting to kill me if need be.”
“You can’t know all that.”
“I feel their blood calling to mine. If you are still and you know what to look for in your mind, you will feel it as well. When they are both fed, we will first work on the shield in your mind to prevent your father or brothers from harming you and then together, we will do the same in theirs.”
Julija wasn’t certain what to think. Could it be true that she was far more Carpathian than mage? She was extremely good at casting illusions. “Isai,” she said in protest.
“Think about what you do and how fast you became good at it. Your father is not going to let on to you that you hold the power of both the high mage and Dragonseeker. He keeps you in line with pain because he has no other way. You have dared to break away from him and he has to get you back. You are too valuable to them.”
Calmly he instructed the male cat to stop drinking from his wrist. The cat snarled at him but backed up to allow the female to take his place.
“Let me, Isai. You’ll be too weak for us to build shields or fight enemies. We still have to find the book and get it somewhere safe.”
“They both need to recognize that I am head of the family. I will give the orders to them the same as you do. If we keep these animals alive, they have to recognize