There was safety beneath the ground. Solace. No one could get to her. She was alone and no demands could be put on her, but she had known all along it wasn’t going to last. Every rising, each time the sun set, the danger began. She tried to sleep, but they came to feed her. At first many had come. Different ones. That had been frightening, but the blood had revived her, made her stronger, and no one had asked anything of her. She was allowed to go back to sleep in the healing soil to repair her body and fractured mind. Now, only he gave her blood.
Elisabeta tried not to waken, but it was too late, the song had played through her mind, those beautiful weeping notes of rain. The sun had set, and the moment it did, her body had tuned to it. She was Carpathian, that ancient race paralyzed during daylight hours and needing blood to sustain their lives. There were few of them left in the world and the fight to keep from dying out was made worse by the vampires trying to kill them.
A little shudder went through her body. Elisabeta had been tricked by a friend when she’d been young and naïve, and she’d been kidnapped, taken from her home and family and hidden away by one such vampire for centuries. She no longer remembered that young girl, or her family. She’d been reduced to this woman, who hid herself away in the ground, too terrified of everything and everyone to show herself. Sergey Malinov, the master vampire, would come for her and he would use her to destroy everyone who had shown her any kindness because that was what he did. He would never let her escape him. Never.
The moment she surfaced, he would use her, and they had no idea how powerful he was. They had rescued her, and he was angry, whispering to her, trying to get past the barriers and shields they had erected to protect her, but he was there, crouched and waiting to strike. She knew him, knew he was wholly evil. There were children in this compound, this place her rescuers thought safe. No one was safe from Sergey, least of all children.
The world had passed her by while she lived in a cage, with only her sadistic captor for company. One moment he could be falsely sweet; the next, savagely ugly, torturing her, starving her, hurting others in front of her. Leaving her alone for long periods of time so that she thought she would slowly starve to death and even welcomed that end. He was her only company. She couldn’t speak unless he gave her permission. She made no decisions for herself, and after centuries, no longer knew how to make them.
She had been rescued, put in the healing ground to recover from the wounds to body and mind, but there was no recovery from centuries of captivity. She had no idea how to fend for herself. She was terrified of having to talk to strangers. They had told her she had a brother and that he had searched for her for centuries. She had thought of that often, ashamed that when she tried to remember him, her mind seemed to explode with pain, rejecting the idea of her past. She knew they would expect her to remember him, but she didn’t.
She didn’t remember herself as a young Carpathian woman, nor did she remember her parents. Her mind had been fractured and no amount of healing in the earth was going to change that. She wasn’t that same girl who had been taken from her home. She was—nothing. No one. She wanted to remain where she was, hidden away from everyone, but she knew her time was fast running out. Her lifemate had found her. Just thinking of him made her heart pound out of control. She knew better. She knew to control herself. That simple sound would alert him, and of course it did.
Elisabeta.
His voice filled her mind. Calm. Soothing. A masterful voice. One always in control, unlike her. Her heart accelerated even more. Panic began to set in. At once the ground above her opened before she could begin to struggle for air. He did that for her. She hadn’t done it for herself and it shamed her that she always had to be taken care of. The least little detail of her life had to be arranged for her because