Dark Peril Page 0,76
been terrified of being caught. And if she hadn't been, he was terrified for her. Fear has an odor. I told myself I am invisible. In the rain forest, I often tell myself that when a jaguar male gets too close. Sometimes I believe that I am. The mage was so close to me that I could have reached out and touched him. Controlling my breathing was actually the most difficult task. He was angry that he couldn't find what he was looking for. He wanted someone from Brodrick's line, but Brodrick's blood was tainted somehow for their purpose. His depravities, the mage said. But they found no one else.
Because you're dead. Dominic realized it was the truth. Brodrick had killed his useless female child. Sabine and Audrey had carried the same royal blood, the last of their lineage. Both had mated with humans and their children had diluted that pure strain.
Your mother had never become pregnant again, in all the years of captivity. Surely Brodrick tried with her.
Aunt Audrey, too. He captured her a couple of years later. They held her about two years before we found her and she was pregnant. She and the baby both died in childbirth. I think, for a jaguar, the stress of captivity was too much for them. He beat them regularly, and viciously. I think he hates women.
Dominic turned the information over and over in his mind. So Brodrick has believed you to be dead all these years, so you were never entered into their database. The mages, the vampires, even the jaguars never knew your true identity.
He knows now. I've set things in motion. Brodrick will come after me now.
His instinctive reaction was one of violent protest, but he remained quiet, willing her to talk about the properties of her blood.
I got to thinking about how the vampires and the mages couldn't sense me. What was different about me and Brodrick? I'm a woman, he's a man; we're both jaguar, but different sexes. But then it occurred to me that everything with both the vampires and the mages comes down to blood--at least, she qualified, the mages who follow Xavier.
He is dead. The news reached me a week ago.
Xavier? So that's what shook everyone up. I knew something big had happened. There was a frenzy of activity around here.
How did you find out about the parasites? he prompted, almost afraid to ask. Because she'd done something very, very dangerous.
He had known she was an amazing woman from the first time he'd begun to talk to her in his dreams, but then, like now, when she was in jaguar form, he didn't actually hear her voice. He should have known she was his lifemate because he had begun to feel emotion, a slow emerging rather than the usual burst. He hadn't recognized what was happening because it was so out of the realm of possibility. He had thought the woman he'd conjured up to talk to had been a fearless warrior because only another warrior could understand him. Now he knew she was real. She did feel fear--she simply dealt with it because she had no other choice if she wanted to succeed. Just like she was dealing with her fear of giving herself wholly to him. He knew she was probably more terrified of him than she was a vampire.
I fought a couple of vampires with Riordan when they came up on us unexpectedly. He said they were lesser, or newer vampires and were not yet in full control of their powers. He had been working with all of us on how to kill one, so while he was occupied . . .
He told you to stay back. No De La Cruz would ever want a female member of his family in danger. Even the youngest would be influenced by their brother, the most dominant male Dominic had ever known.
Solange gave the mental equivalent of a shrug. He may have said something like that. Who listens when they are throwing out orders all the time? He is not my lifemate.
No, Dominic was her lifemate, and he had to bind her to him in such a way that she would choose to follow his dictates. It had to be her choice. Solange would fight a cage. She needed the freedom of being who she truly was, and they had to find a balance between his instincts and hers. It took a moment for him to realize he was thinking in terms of