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going to have enemies. Both of us. You must have made many in your centuries of existence, and I certainly have here. Whatever they intended to do with me isn't going to happen. You prevented that."

"They attacked you in our home, right under my nose."

" Our noses," she corrected gently. She locked gazes with him. "What is really upsetting you, Dominic?"

His breath hissed out between his teeth and his eyes spun into a glacier green. "I gave you my word that you would be safe with me when we were alone. Someone nearly killed you and not only did it scare the hell out of me--all those hours of desperately trying to find what was hiding from me while you slipped, inch by inch, away from me--but I had to face the fact that I failed you."

A slow smile lit her eyes and she leaned into him to nuzzle his neck. "My God, Dominic, you're not perfect. How very shocking is that?" She laughed softly. "You kept me safe. I'm not dead, am I? If the situation had been reversed, I doubt I could have saved you. I don't have your ability to heal."

He wrapped his arms around her, crushing her to him. For a moment she thought she was in danger of every rib cracking, but she melted against him, unresisting, recognizing he needed to hold her as close as possible. When his strength gentled and allowed an inch between them, she tilted her head to look up at his face.

The night had taken a toll on him. Her unflappable, calm-under-every-circumstance man had been extremely distraught over her. "Let's track the thing back to the sender," she suggested. "My jaguar won't be too much help at first, not through the water. I'll have to go around to the source, but you can follow through the cracks where the water came in."

"How does one track a shadow?" he asked aloud.

"It's a mage trick, right?" she asked. "So there's a footprint. We just have to find it. You know that better than I do. You're just a little shaken up right now. We were looking at smell and sight to go after it, but you can lock on to a mage illusion." She poured her confidence in him into her voice and mind. "Can't you?" His smile was slow in coming. The green in his eyes blazed into turquoise. "I believe that would be possible. It looked at me, right before we destroyed it."

She didn't point out that she had had nothing to do with destroying the shadow cat, that it had all been him. She would have lost her life had it not been for him.

"The eyes were vacant, and then, just for a moment, they changed, grew intelligent, and the eyes were silver."

She felt worry in his mind, although there seemed to be only that same speculation in his voice. "What does that mean?"

"Some mages, a very few, can possesses another body, leaving fragments of themselves behind. It is not the same as a blood bond, which Carpathians use to track those who may betray us. Once inside the host, the mage can force the body to do its bidding. As far as I am aware, no vampire has ever achieved it. And no Carpathian would choose to do such a foul thing."

Everything in her stilled. Even the breath in her lungs. "Could someone like me do it? A jaguar?" She could hear her own heart roaring in her ears.

"Brodrick?"

She chewed nervously on her lip. "I told him I was his daughter. He didn't deliver a killing bite to my skull when he landed on my back, and he could have. I was very vulnerable for just that one moment, and that was all it would have taken, but he hesitated. He bit me, and he had my blood on him. Maybe he wasn't certain I was telling the truth, but his jaguar should have known, so that doesn't make sense."

"He would have to be mage-trained to accomplish such a feat. It would not be easy, and I doubt he would have taken the time for such complex training," Dominic said.

She heaved a sigh of relief. "But they got the blood from him to track me, so he at least has knowledge of the mage--and it must be a mage--who sent the familiar. Brodrick would have knowledge of his cooperation. He exchanged the blood for something of value."

"We know he has an alliance with the vampires."

Solange pushed back the