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his chin.

"Thank you."

Her gaze shifted away from his. "You know what I have to do, don't you?"

She was going to avoid talking about making a blood exchange. Nicolas hesitated, unsure whether to force the issue, but then followed her lead. She needed to come to terms in her own way. Because she had managed to let him take her blood this one time, didn't mean it would be easy the next time-or even that she could. He accepted that in her, just as he accepted his own peculiar quirks, formed from a lifetime of experiences.

"We have to do it together," Nicolas corrected. "You lured the entity, for lack of a better word, to the surface and Natalya was able to get it out of Savannah, but it was much easier with me there, wasn't it? Admit it."

Lara nuzzled his chest with her chin. "Yes. I don't mind admitting it. It seems a bit of a daunting task to check every single woman and Francesca said it would have to be done. She plans to try to journey with me so she can learn Xavier's touch in order to help."

He rubbed his palm up and down her narrow rib cage, savoring the feel of her soft skin, the movement more absent-minded than voluntary. "I do not understand how these things got into the women. Are there more than one?"

She frowned. "It doesn't appear so, at least not in Raven or Savannah. Extremophiles can be very aggressive about defending their territory and basically that's what these mutated microbes are."

"So once they're gone, everything is back to normal? It seems too fast."

"I think it is too fast. How did the organism get there in the first place? Whatever the source is, we

haven't found it. I overheard Shea talking to Francesca right before we left. She thought there was a good possibility it was transferred from male to female and that they live in the soil first."

"She is wrong about the males," Nicolas said, his hand stilling on her breast. "And they better not think you are taking journeys through every male."

Her body felt so warm beside his, fit so perfectly and when she laughed, that soft melodic sound, teasing at his senses, he felt absolutely content-right-complete. He had always known he was highly intelligent, that he'd been gifted to be fast with natural hunting instincts, but finding her had made him a better person.

"What about you? If you are infected, then I would become infected as well."

He swore beneath his breath, a time-honoredo kod belso -darkness take it! The husky male timbre combined with the words made her smile, and she leaned upward to kiss his jaw.

He cupped her breast, his thumb sliding over her nipple. "I did not even consider that."

"I think all Carpathians have to consider it."

There was a small silence. "Would you check?"

She frowned and rolled over, pressing her soft breasts into his chest so that his body reacted with a shudder of awareness. "If a single microbe first enters the male body and then is passed to the female, it would leave the male's body open as a host for a second microbe. As long as one resides in the woman, the second would stay in the male. But if Raven or Savannah, who are now without a microbe, have sex with their partners, and Mikhail and Gregori are infected, then they would be reinfected. This could be a very vicious circle, Nicolas." Especially if she was the only person able to detect the extremophile.

Nicolas sat up, pulling her with him. Her face was pale, dark circles under her eyes. She wasn't eating anymore, not even broth. And he read her mind. What if she couldn't detect the microbes once she was fully Carpathian? Natalya couldn't seem to do it on her own and she had been part mage. That would leave the entire weight of a dying species falling directly on Lara's shoulders.

"I don't understand how this happened, Nicolas. I just got up one evening and decided The Carpathian Mountains was the next area I was going to search for the ice cave, mostly because of the gaps in the memories of those I spoke with about the ice caves. Now I've got you and all this responsibility I never dreamed of. But I'm afraid for us. I'm afraid to look inside of me and see a microbe. I'm afraid to look inside of you." She framed his face with her hands, coming up on her knees beside