Dark Peril Page 0,73

you known about me, would you have allowed another to take your place?"

An image of Zacarias came into her mind. He offered. He wanted me to go to a healer and try to remove the blood. He said he would go in my place.

Her heart contracted as he replayed the exchange in his head. "Because I am his family? I despised him. He is so . . . overbearing." She was ashamed. "I had no idea he would do such a thing for a woman he has never met."

He loves his brothers. His memory of that love and of his honor have kept him going all these long endless years, Solange. He believes he cannot live with a woman who would resent his dominance. He has little left but service to those he loves.

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes hard. "Why didn't you say yes?" Her heart pounded, waiting for the answer.

I have the best chance to fight the pull of the bloodlust call. I am Dragonseeker. I will not, for my own pleasure, turn this job over to someone else. I set my foot on this path and I must follow it.

She let her breath out. Of course he would do the right thing. He had honor. "When Juliette found Riordan in their laboratory, Jasmine was taken. They managed to get their hands on my mother, my aunt and little Jasmine, although I had taken an oath to protect them--especially her. There was a jaguar who could partially shift. I'd never seen anything like that. None of us could do that, not my mother, and not Aunt Audrey. I knew how strong they were when I saw that."

She was silent and he simply waited for her to continue. The silence stretched a long time, but he never stirred, not even in her mind. She could feel his presence there, but he didn't push her. If she wanted to share, he would listen, but he wouldn't force her confidence.

Solange sighed. She'd never needed anyone, and to tell him her secrets was frightening and yet liberating. She respected his abilities as a warrior. She wanted to succeed in killing Brodrick. She didn't want to die in vain and leave her birth father behind to continue his despicable purging of any jaguar strain that wasn't pure. "I began to practice. Running and shifting. Leaping from trees and shifting. Most of all partially shifting, and I've gotten very good at it. Purebloods can do things other jaguars can't do. My blood is pure, Dominic, but it's also royal. As far as I know there are only two people left on earth with my blood type."

She reached back and touched the bite marks nearly gone from her shoulder, thanks to Dominic's ministrations. "I'm far faster than he knows. Maybe as fast as or faster than he is."

So your plan is to confront him.

She listened for the censure in his voice, but as always he sounded strictly neutral. "It's the last thing he'll expect. And he knows I'm his daughter now, that I carry the royal blood. As vile as it sounds, he will believe I'm his chance for an heir. He isn't the kind of man to allow a little thing like incest to stop him."

You believe he will hesitate to kill you, that he will seek to incapacitate you in some manner.

"Which will be another advantage."

He put his teeth into you, his claws.

"But his bite was to my shoulder, not my neck."

Her hand crept up to stroke the scars there, where, so long ago, Brodrick's claws had bitten into her neck in an effort to kill her. Had she moved just enough that he'd gone much shallower than intended? She had no idea what had saved her. She remembered his face, twisted with disgust, blood spattered across him, and those evil eyes staring down at her. He'd jerked her up by her hair and swept his claw across her neck and then, as he had the girls before her, thrown her outside the cabin into the clearing with the other bodies he considered rubbish.

So he will try to keep you alive. And if you do not succeed in killing him and he captures you, he will force you to bear his child, just as the mage forced my sister to bear his.

Her heart ached for him. She hadn't considered how similar the scenario was to his past. His tone of voice gave nothing away, but still, there was censure