He was seeing in color. After hundreds of years of a bleak, gray existence, living in a world without color or emotion, there she was. The other half of his soul. Staring down at him with curious eyes and an amused grin. There was blood on her shoulder and bruises on her face, and she seemed to be wearing a bizarre, thin-looking gown that didn’t cover much.
His eyes narrowed, trying to see what injuries she had. She’d mentioned a hospital. “What happened to you?”
She smiled at him as if those injuries were nothing at all when they’d set his heart pounding in fear and dread coiled his belly into tight hard knots. She had no idea how important she was. His lifemate. After so many endless years.
“I was shot.” She touched her face, wincing as if it hurt. “Someone smashed me in the face. It’s all a little hazy. They’re giving me drugs and I’ve never reacted well to them.”
For the first time her body shimmered and she appeared transparent.
“Wait! Don’t go.” He nearly leapt to catch her, but knew his hand would pass right through her if she wasn’t really there.
Traian had never panicked in his life. Not that he could remember. He’d been in countless battles, but whether she was real or not, he was seeing in color. He was
feeling.
Emotion. Real emotion. He knew that much was real. Was it possible he was caught in a hallucination? He had lost a lot of blood—too much blood—and there was nothing in the cave to replenish the amount he’d left in the ground. He couldn’t imagine that he could ever conjure something like this up.
Fear. Elation. Shock. The emotions were far too strong to be memories. She had to be real. He had no idea how she’d traveled to the cave, but she was real enough to bring him color and emotion. He couldn’t lose her. Not now. Not after searching the world over for her. He had to find a way to keep her with him.
A small shudder went through her body as she made a visual effort to stay with him. “I can’t do this for too long. But,” she frowned at him, “you’re hurt too. Do you often go swimming in the mud with a gaping hole in your shoulder? You have heard of infection and gangrene, haven’t you?”
“A small run-in with a group of unsavory ruffians. I was uncharacteristically slow.” He kept his voice light, dismissing of his own wounds.
“Does this sort of thing happen often?”
He knew she had a good sense of humor from the laugh lines around her mouth. He liked her mouth, that quirky little smile that reached her eyes. “Unfortunately very often. And you?” He felt himself go very still waiting for her answer.
“Same thing. In my line of work, it’s one of the hazards you just live with.”
He inhaled but couldn’t catch her scent, telling him she truly didn’t have a physical body present in the cave. “We must do similar work.”
“
But,
” she flashed another wide smile, “you’re here in this cave and I’m in a hospital. What does that say about you?”
His own sense of humor welled up. He hadn’t bantered with anyone since his childhood and he barely had managed to remember those days. “I’m eccentric?”
Her laughter seemed a melody playing over his body like the soft brush of fingers. “You seem a bit underdressed for a cave,” he pointed out.
She looked down at her body, one eyebrow arching. She seemed to be in some sort of a hospital gown. She’d forgotten to clothe herself properly in her astral flight. She shrugged, her laughter soft and inviting. “Yes, well, a lady likes to know she looks her best when the cave crickets come calling.”
Joie studied the man below her. He was the most handsome man she’d ever seen.
Ever.
And she trained with some fairly hot men. He had a rock-hard body. Plenty of defined muscle and she was a darned good judge of such things. He exuded power, despite the fact that he was obviously severely injured. He was making light of it, but when she really studied him, she could see a horrific tear in his neck and bite marks all over his shoulders and running down his arms. When he eased his position slightly, she caught sight of more on his back.
“You look like you ran into a pack of wolves.”
She bit her lip hard, waiting for an answer. She found, when she took herself out of her body, that she didn’t feel pain, but she did feel cold, and this time, she was colder than usual and it had nothing to do with being in an ice cave. She had never held a projection for an extended period of time, certainly not over a great distance, and she’d chosen a mountain range she’d been studying with the idea of vacationing there.
The biting cold pierced her through and through. She was worried about this man. Where her body was barely there, and he couldn’t really see the damage to it, with all the blood and gore, she could see the wounds on him easily and the evidence all over the ice where he’d come in. He was really injured. Without a real body she couldn’t help him.
“More like dogs than wolves. I wouldn’t give my brethren such an insult.”
She loved the sound of his voice. “You have an incredibly sexy accent. Do women fall all over you just at the sound of your voice?” She was very good at placing people by their accents, but his was different; there was a rich turn to his words. As astral dreaming went, this one was fascinating. The longer she stayed, the more real he seemed to her.
“I have not actually noticed such a phenomenon,” he replied, his eyes glinting with amusement, “but I will watch for it in the future.”
The idea of women falling all over him irritated her on a primal feminine level which surprised her. She wasn’t that kind of person. She worked with men every day and never once had she decided she wanted one permanently. How strange that during an astral projection she would run into a man she found attractive. She loved his sexy voice, and hard, firm body. He was definitely European. His hair was longer than she usually liked on a man, but he wore it exceptionally well and it suited his aristocratic face.
She couldn’t determine his age, but he was definitely all man. A warrior. The type of man who really appealed to her. She realized she was staring at him and sent a small smile his way, trying not to let her teeth chatter. The cold was worse, deep inside her as if her core temperature had dropped alarmingly.
“You’re too charming not to have noticed,” she pointed out. “You seem a very experienced man to me.” She looked around her. “Nice cave. I love caves. This one looks like a wonderful place to explore.”
“I do not believe it has been discovered yet,” he replied pleasantly.
“Really? You just sort of stumbled in blindfolded, did you? An interesting way to explore caves. Where am I? I’d like to come back here.”
“If you did not know about these caves, how could you find them? Did you float through the air blindfolded?”
She grinned at him. “I do that sometimes when I don’t want to be wherever I am. A bad habit.”
Traian studied her. She was beautiful, even though at times her form seemed to fade in and out. “You’re in a network of ice caves in the Carpathian Mountains. This mountain range is considered home to my people. The wilds of the forest, and the deep of the earth.”
She frowned at him. “I like the way you talk, I really do, very old-fashioned and courtly, but also, you managed to neatly avoid my question. The Carpathian Mountains happen to be a very large range and run through many countries.”
Traian’s way of life had been deception for as long as he could remember. Carpathians left no traces of themselves behind, no trail, nothing that might indicate they were not human. And they certainly didn’t give the location of their homeland away. He hesitated. The prince was close by and had to be protected at all costs.
Her form shimmered and her smile faded. “They’re doing something nasty to me, I can’t hold the projection.”
He sat up, bit back a groan as the embers beneath his skin burned fiercely. “Do not go yet.”
“I’m sorry.” She looked down at her arm, looked back at him, tears swimming in her eyes. “They’re cleaning my wound. It hurts like a bear.”
“I have to be able to find you. Where are you?”
She frowned again. “I don’t know. The hospital.”
“Romania. These caves are in Romania. I can’t lose you.” He held out his hand to stop her.
She tried. He could see her make an effort. She said something he couldn’t hear, her body fragmenting.
“I
have
to be able to find you. Tell me your name. Your name.” He could find her with that.
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out and then she was gone. That fast. Vanishing without a trace. He sat there alone in the dark of the cave, astonished at how life could change in the blink of an eye. She was real. Her psychic abilities were strong. He had shared her space, shared her mind, and the path was imprinted on his brain. She would not escape him, but it wouldn’t be easy without her name, with no starting point.
He became aware of his heart hammering out a rhythm of joy. A lifemate. It was the last thing he had expected on this long journey back to his homeland. She wasn’t Carpathian, which was shocking, but the prince had been mated to a human so it was possible. He needed this woman to survive. He
had
to find her. It was difficult to force discipline on himself and not try to rush like a madman out of the cave into the rising sun.
He let his breath out with a long slow hiss of promise. The woman belonged to him. She had the other half to his soul. He should have bound her to him right then, but the distance was too great and if it took too long to find her, the ritual words would wreak havoc with both of them. No, he had to heal first and then his only mission would be to find her.
Traian lay back and waved his hand to close the small amount of soil and mud he’d discovered over him, stilling his heart, his breath, allowing the song of the earth to send him into a deep, healing sleep.
J
ubal Sanders glanced up at the sky, heavy with clouds, the temperature dropping alarmingly. “Night’s going to come fast when it does,” he announced. “Maybe two hours to sunset. If we don’t want to camp up here on the side of the mountain, we’ve got to start down.”
“You’re losing it, Joie, there’s nothing here.” Gabrielle Sanders sank gracefully to the ground and drew up her knees as she regarded her sister with cool gray eyes. “Stop making yourself crazy and enjoy the view. It’s breathtaking up here. You’ve been in a frenzy for hours now.” Tipping her head back, she stared up at the sky. “We’ve been climbing forever. If you were going to find anything, you would have done so by now.”
“I’m not losing my mind, Gabrielle,” Joie insisted. “Or, truthfully, maybe I’ve already lost it.”
There was a sudden silence. The wind paused. A hawk screamed as it missed its prey. Gabrielle exchanged a long look with her brother. They both stared at their younger sister. She seemed focused entirely on the rock surface she was studying.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Gabrielle replied, laughing. “All this time I thought I was the abnormal one.”
Joie let her breath out slowly. She knew she was acting crazy, almost out of control. What was she going to tell Gabrielle and Jubal? That she really had lost her mind some weeks ago and this was a last-ditch effort to hold on to her sanity? That she wasn’t joking, and she belonged locked up somewhere on heavy medication?
She’d woken up in the hospital in Austria with a strange buzzing in her head. Whispers that never ceased. A man’s voice, not just any man’s voice, but
his
voice, her mysterious, sexy stranger. She could imagine telling Gabrielle and Jubal she’d met a hot man during one of her numerous astral projection jaunts. Oh, yeah, and he was deep beneath the earth in a network of unexplored caves in Romania. They’d lock her up and throw away the key.
She couldn’t stop thinking about him. She was certain she was clinically obsessed with an apparition. How could he have been real? The doctors had told her she was out a long time. Who knew what went on in one’s brain when they were under anesthesia? If she told her sister and brother she wasn’t so much looking for the perfect cave as she was the man trapped in one, they’d definitely haul her butt to a head doctor. There was no way to explain her need to find him to anyone.
She’d been placed on leave, as was typical when one of the professional protectors was injured on the job. She hadn’t gone back to the States, but when Gabrielle and Jubal had come to visit her, to help her with physical therapy, she convinced them to go to the Carpathian Mountains and go caving with her.
In the beginning she’d tried to ignore the whispered intimacy, but eventually she’d succumbed to the sheer lure of it. She’d carried on silly conversations with him, sometimes philosophical ones, and God help her, sexy, nearly erotic exchanges she couldn’t imagine herself having with anyone else. The voice in her head had been growing stronger since she’d entered Romania, as if, finally, she was much closer to him.
What are you doing?
The voice came out of nowhere, unexpectedly as it always did, catching her by surprise. Masculine. Sometimes amused. Sometimes teasing. Always alluring. She tried not to hear it. Tried not to respond. But she could never help herself. She always talked to him. Laughed with him. Wanted him.
In spite of the beauty of his voice, this time he sounded infinitely weary, strained, as if he were in pain. She’d never heard that particular note in his voice and it alarmed her. Was he hurt? Could he be hurt? If she wasn’t crazy, that meant he was real and she didn’t need to feel crazy most of the time. Right now, maybe a little bit.
“Come on, I’m so close to the entrance I should be able to see it. Jubal,” Joie appealed to her brother. “You know I’m right. I’m always right. There’s a network of caves, most of them unexplored, and we’re right on top of it.”
Okay, not a little crazy. Joie was certain she’d already begun her descent into madness. She’d rather be with that voice in her head than with any real person in the world. She lived to hear that voice. She thought about him day and night, had become consumed by him.
Joie lifted her chin a little defiantly and reached for him—her imaginary friend who was fast becoming an imaginary lover.