Dark Melody Page 0,43

real.

Dayan reached out and took her hand, needing to pull her smaller body close under the protection of his wide shoulder. He simply walked beside her in the night, enjoying the moment, thankful he could feel it, savor it. Thankful she was in his world.

"Every line of every song, every note I've ever played was written for you, played for you. The other half of my soul. My heart. In the hope that you were somewhere in my world and you would hear." In her frail condition, Dayan didn't dare reveal the truth of what he was to her. He knew the healer would find a way to save her life. There was no other possible outcome. He was very concerned that there might not be a way to save the baby. He was a shadow in her mind, connected to her. He knew she was willing to trade her life for her daughter's life. He was not. He was her lifemate. It was his sworn duty to see to her health.

Corinne blinked back tears at the utter sincerity in his voice. "You can't say things like that to me, Dayan." If he did, she would be lost and so would he. How could she resist him?

Dayan smiled down at her, tightened his fingers around hers. With every step he took beside her, he felt the heat rising between them, felt the way she was wrapping herself around his heart. It was the little things, like feeling her hand so small, entwined with his. Her breath. The scent of her. The way she smiled. He loved the way she smiled, the way she moved. The way she fought so desperately to protect him from possible loss.

Deep within his heart he was learning about true terror. The thought of losing her was beyond the scope of his imagination. He had never experienced fear in his adult life. Even during battles with vampires, he had experienced no ripple of feeling through the long centuries to give him the wisdom to handle such an intense emotion. Terror. He tasted the word. Could he face the loss of his lifemate without ever having lived with her, without ever having the time to love her and bind her to him? Dayan knew he would not want to. His life had been bleak and empty, so barren and cold he had been losing his ability to create songs, to feel the music inside of him. But now, with Corinne close to him, songs and words and notes were pouring out of his soul, begging to be heard.

She was the world. Colors and excitement and beautiful poetry. He would not lose her to mortal death. He knew now where his ability to play, to create, had come from. It was her half of his soul. He had been left with some small part of her light when they had been split, to find their way back to one another. He felt the songs in her, the music. It was in the way she walked, the way she flowed through a room, her small, slender figure so balanced. It was in the turn of her head and the way her smile lit up a room.

There was something about Corinne, something that had drawn his eye immediately. Lisa was beautiful, tall and blond and quite obviously a model. She belonged on the covers of magazines. Corinne's light shone from the inside out. Just watching her made Dayan smile. When he touched her mind to share her thoughts, he found she was thinking of others, how they felt, what they needed. She was happy despite the fact that she had recently lost someone she loved, and believed she herself was going to die soon.

Corinne lived each moment as it was given to her, determined to see beauty around her, even while she grounded herself in reality.

Dayan found the way her mind worked interesting. She often used telekinesis without thinking about it. She would glance at an object across the room that she needed and she would start to draw it to her. He could feel the difference immediately in her brain, a warmth, the building of the image and the focus on it. The image was always sharp and crystal clear, and then she would remember she was not alone and would heave a small sigh.

"What?" She was smiling up at him, her intriguing dimple mesmerizing him, so that he had no other choice but to lean down and kiss