language from neck across shoulders and down their backs. Their creed and a vow to his woman.
“You are the most important person in my life. You always will be. When I realized I had grown far too dangerous to continue hunting the vampire—”
Her head jerked up, her eyes meeting his. “What does that mean? Why would that be?”
He had forgotten, because she clearly was Carpathian, that there would be gaps in her knowledge. “We hunt our own brethren and we do so without color or emotion. In some ways, the lack of both is good because to kill someone we love and continue this practice over hundreds of years would damage us beyond repair. Still, one cannot live that way forever. At first you hear the whisper of temptation, to kill while feeding. If one does that, there is a rush caused by the adrenaline in the victim’s blood.”
“Really? A Carpathian who had spent centuries being honorable would decide to give up everything in order to feel that momentary rush?”
He nodded. “If you have not felt anything at all for centuries, that rush is a huge temptation. Think of all the males and females who cheat on their partners. It is for a momentary rush. They throw it all away, or at least risk it, for that one moment of nothing but feeling. If a warrior hasn’t had anything in his life but gray nothingness, that whisper of temptation grows louder and louder as the centuries pass.”
Julija leaned back, forgetting nothing was there to support her but rock. He waved to provide a softer cushion for her, doing so without thinking. She looked startled and then she sent him a sweet smile that struck him like a fiery dart.
“Is that what happened? Why you decided to go into the monastery? The whispers were becoming louder?”
“I wish they had continued, but after centuries, and so many kills, they stopped. Killing, even without feeling, takes pieces out of us. Steals what is left of our soul. At least, it feels that way. Each vampire hunt stole more and more of me and then the whispers stopped and there was only silence. Complete silence.”
Her dark chocolate eyes were veiled by long, thick lashes, but he could still read the compassion in them. She turned his heart over. How he thought she wasn’t worthy, he didn’t know. His woman was definitely worthy of being a lifemate. Everything about her screamed courage and compassion.
“I knew then that I had to end my days of hunting. Should I turn, with my knowledge and skills, it would take several seasoned hunters to slay me. I did not want to risk that happening. I had a few ‘friends,’ men I knew I could count on, and I told them I did not want to end my life, that if my lifemate was out there, I was subjecting her to cycle after cycle. Once I died, I would have to be reborn and still find her. Our life cycles could be far apart.”
“Someday you’ll have to explain all that to me,” Julija said. “This lifemate thing is fascinating. After what happened to me with Barnabas, I didn’t think I would ever find someone to share my life with. Now it feels like we’ve always been together.”
“Because we belong. My friends and I decided to go into a monastery. There was one high up in the Carpathian Mountains. The monks were old and slowly dying as no young men wanted that arduous, lonely life. They showed us the simplicity of the way they lived. It was quite beautiful in a way. We cared for them as one by one, they died. While they lived, we were careful of them, but we took their blood.”
“Did they know?”
He inclined his head respectfully. “Yes. We told them what and who we were. They could not communicate with the outside world without our knowledge, so it was safe to tell them. They were good men, very accepting of other cultures and ways, and in our case, other species. They helped us as best they could and in return, we did our best for them.”
“I can hear regret in your voice.”
“For their deaths. Humans die so young. You must have lost human friends.”
“I wasn’t allowed friends. I mingled with them, lived among them, but we were always aloof from them. Even the more modern neighborhoods we lived in didn’t seem to want closeness. No neighborhood barbecues, that sort of thing. That’s probably why my father