Dark Storm (Dark #23)(87)
Author: Christine Feehan

Riley allowed her lashes to sweep down, veiling her eyes for a moment so he wouldn’t see her sympathy. Dax was not a man to recognize shame or guilt, yet he felt it just as much as she did.

"Arabejila’s father was my best friend. We hunted together. When others shunned me because of my strange talent, he didn’t. He told me my gift was useful, that I could keep our people safer than any other. We shared blood when we were injured. He knew his lifemate far before he ever would have lost emotion and color so he had nothing to fear from me, I know that, but still, he felt genuine affection for me as did his lifemate and Arabejila. They became my real ties to my people."

She could see flashes of images-his memories of a laughing woman who looked very much like her. A man and a woman, holding hands, turned toward one another, a look of utter love on their faces. Their expressions took her breath away, so much love. Sometimes, when Dax looked at her, there was that intensity in his eyes, that amazing look of love focused on her, and she felt the luckiest woman in the world.

She forced herself to look at the next images, the ones in such stark contrast. The man, Dax’s best friend, dead on the ground, his hand inches from his lifemate’s, blood pooling around him, his throat and heart torn out. His lifemate dead, and Arabejila, her throat torn and bleeding, desperately trying to free her baby sister from her mother’s body.

It was a scene straight out of a horror film, and Dax had stumbled onto it-worse, felt responsible for it.

Riley could hardly bear the thought of those deaths and how Dax felt, even suppressed as his emotions had been. She couldn’t imagine knowing that happy family, being a part of it and coming upon them, discovering them dead and dying …

"When I could have prevented it."

Her gaze jumped to his. He had known all along she was in his mind. "How?" she asked quietly. "How could you have prevented it?"

"I could have executed him."

She shook her head. "That would have been murder. He hadn’t done anything yet, had he? You were genuinely shocked. I could feel your horror. You could barely believe what you were seeing. Until someone commits a crime, there isn’t much anyone can do-not even you."

Riley gripped the arms of her chair to prevent leaping up to hold him. "Dax, you know you couldn’t touch him without proof. You didn’t know for sure. You aren’t God. You aren’t a judge."

"That’s exactly what I am. The Judge. And I failed my friend and his family." He shoved his hand through the short spikes of pitch-black hair. "Arabejila was Mitro’s lifemate. He killed her mother and father in front of her and bragged that he would be the most powerful vampire ever to live by killing his lifemate as he made the choice to give up his soul. When he couldn’t finish her off-that lifemate bond was too strong for even him-in his rage, as vampire, he claimed her, binding her soul to his lost one so that she would suffer every moment she lived."

Riley found herself blinking back tears. She was Dax’s lifemate, and to her, the binding ritual had been beautiful and sacred. "What Mitro did is a sacrilege, no less."

"I still see them like that," he confessed in a low voice. "Torn apart. Katalina’s stomach ripped open. Arabejila trying to free her sister." He closed his eyes for a moment. "I took the knife from her and finished the job. I hacked up my friend’s beautiful, wonderful lifemate."

"To save a child, Dax. You saved a child. She would have wanted you to save her baby. She would have begged you had she lived."

He pressed his fingers to his eyes hard. "To see that infant torn from its mother the other night, there in the rain forest, I actually felt …" He shook his head.

Sick. The word shimmered in her mind.

Riley surrounded him with warmth, the only thing she could think to do. There were no real words to comfort him. There couldn’t be.

He shook his head. "Carpathians don’t feel sick. Not when they’re on the hunt. Mitro knows the one thing that …" He broke off again and straightened his shoulders. "What he did to Arabejila was the absolute, ultimate betrayal of his lifemate. In our world, there can be no greater sin than trying to murder one’s lifemate and condemning her to a half-life of sheer suffering and deliberately killing our children."

Dax paced restlessly again, as if the smoldering rage buried so deep was climbing too close to the surface for him to contain.

"The lifemate bond doesn’t allow one to survive long without the other," Dax continued. "Mitro chose to give up his soul, so he wasn’t affected-although he couldn’t bring himself to kill Arabejila. She traveled with me, devoting herself to tracking him and helping me send him to the next life, but she suffered greatly through the long years."

"And you felt her sorrow."

"Males lose their ability to see color or feel emotion after a couple of hundred years, or sooner if they make kills continually. I used to go to Arabejila’s home often when I returned from hunting because just being close to Katalina, her mother-and eventually Arabejila-allowed me to remember feelings easier. I didn’t see colors, but I knew what affection was. They made my life much more bearable until Arabejila lost her lifemate. I wanted to be numb, not to feel her great sorrow, or how she had to fight to stay alive. In a way I felt I should be punished by her emotions, although she tried to hide them from me."

Riley brushed his mind with hers, the lightest of caresses, needing to surround him with her love. She knew he could barely stay there on the balcony, with the night sky trying to soothe him. It was a night for recriminations. Ever since he’d seen the infant and the torn body of the child’s mother, Dax had been restless and more than uneasy. She just didn’t know how to help him.

"We’re safe here, aren’t we? Inside this house? Mitro can’t know we’re here, can he?" she asked. "I can sense that you’re unhappy here. We need a place to stay, and Riordan De La Cruz has given us this beautiful house. You have a resting place …"

"Which I would never use, and he is well aware of that," Dax said, his face darkening.

"Why? He’s Carpathian. He has a lifemate. Gary and Jubal both know him. His sister-in-law, Jasmine, is here."

"The Old One is uneasy," Dax said. "I can’t seem to settle him down. He’s leery of Riordan. And Carpathian hunters do not ever allow others to know their resting places."

The dragon soul moved against hers. The dragon was sleepy, yawning, waiting for Dax to discover it was the hunter worried, not the dragon. The dragon would flame an enemy immediately and take care of any problem. There wouldn’t be the incessant talking.