Dark Slayer Page 0,57
did you come to have your present pack?"
Again there was a brief moment of silence while she tried to accustom herself to Razvan combing her long hair. She cleared her throat. "I still could spend little time aboveground. When I did, it was with the wolves or hunting. My pack had given birth to a new litter of pups. Six of them. Three male, three female. The entire pack was excited, and I more than any of them. The pack's good times were mine." This time her fingers traced the ancient Carpathian text. Siv pide kod. Pitaam mustaakad sielpesaambam . Love transcends evil. I hold your memories safe in my soul.
He realized the importance of that simple statement. She had no other contact, human or otherwise, that wasn't an enemy. The pack had virtually become her family and her friends, her very community and only confidants. She had seen the empty shell of her brother and needed the reassurance of her wall, her home, the words she had come to believe in. He felt the first stirrings of love for her, the beginning, and recognized he was stepping on a path he would not-could not-leave.
"Over the years, while living with the wolves, I realized a few had the ability to communicate with me telepathically. At the time the litter was born, the alpha male and female were both able to talk to me and I was not quite as lonely. I felt as if I had a family again."
She dropped her hand from the wall as if bracing herself. "One evening I rose and went in search of the pack. The vampires had gotten there before me. There was blood everywhere, fur and bones and carcasses strewn over the very meadow where they had done the same to me."
She pulled away from him, paced across the room. He could see her hands were shaking, but she put them behind her back as she turned and faced him. There was guilt and defiance mixed on her face. "I found the cubs in the den. All of them were dying. The vampires had inflicted wounds on them, but hadn't killed them outright, leaving them to suffer horribly before they died, or for other wild animals to finish them off."
She tilted her chin. "I saved them. I crawled into the den and I fed them my blood. I did not think beyond that moment. I just could not bear to lose everyone all over again. I had promised their ancestors that I would look out for them, but because they had aided me, the vampires destroyed the entire pack."
"It was not your fault."
"Perhaps not, but it felt as if it was my fault. I stayed in the den to protect them, burrowing beneath the ground during the daylight hours and staying with them during the nights. I had to give them blood and, at times, I had to take theirs as I couldn't hunt. Raja was the first to turn. I had no idea it was even possible, but I knew the ramifications. No wolf pack could be Carpathian and let loose on unsuspecting humans. They would be immortal, or nearly so as we are. The first was an accident, but the rest, although it broke a moral law, was done with great purpose."
She met his eyes, expecting condemnation. Razvan shook his head. "It seems all of us have chosen a path that perhaps has not always been the wise one. You. Me. The healer. Yet our paths have merged and become the same."
Ivory shook her head. "You are a very different type of man."
"Am I? Perhaps I have been away so long I never learned what a man was supposed to be." He gave her a lopsided half smile that stole her breath. She had never felt the strange girlish fluttering a mere smile from him seemed to generate, but the very feel surrounding him was one of peace and gentleness.
"I was not insulting you. I like that you are different." Maybe a little too much. She had a purpose-they both did-and it required full effort and attention. They didn't dare lose sight of their final objective, nor could she change the course she had set herself on.
His smile heated his eyes and changed the color to warm amber. She could get lost in his eyes if she let herself. Ivory squared her shoulders. "I made the decision to turn the pack based on my need to survive. They were all I