Dark Slayer (36 page)

“I do not mind you wanting to stick up for me, but truly, Ivory, it is not necessary. I have learned to live without Natalya’s admiration these long years. I do worry for my daughter, Lara. I hope we can alleviate her problems by eliminating Xavier, but I have no wish to disrupt her life or Natalya’s, or even the aunts’. I am fine the way I am. Happy the way I am.”

He tucked her hand against his chest as they walked, bringing them close together. “Lara did not come to see me, which you and I both know means that she was not ready to face me. I am uncomfortable in the presence of so many. Emotions, which I am unused to, can be difficult. I need peace in my mind, and with the combination of their doubt and guilt pressing on me, I found myself having to work at keeping my mind calm, which hasn’t happened in more years than I care to count.”

“They are fools, Razvan, not to understand what you suffered for them. For all of the Carpathian people.”

“My aunts will tell them once they emerge from the healing ground. They were kept too long starving and Gregori has long been trying to aid them to recovery,” Razvan said. “When we shared minds, I could see them very clearly.” He smiled, and this time his eyes held affection. “I observed them as women, as he saw them, not in the form of dragons as they were held captive. It was . . .
astounding
.”

Ivory walked through the snow, swinging hands with him, wishing she’d paid more attention to the various people in Gregori’s mind. If they hadn’t pertained to battle or seemed significant to her, she had tried to be careful of his privacy. Now, she could scarcely recall the two women who had saved Razvan’s life by turning him fully Carpathian. They had Rhiannon’s blood flowing in their veins—Razvan’s grandmother. Rhiannon had come from such a powerful Carpathian line.

“Dragonseeker,” she murmured aloud. “How often that name was whispered in awe and respect. You carry that line and you stayed true to it.”

The first flakes began to fall. Small crystals of enormous beauty. Razvan watched them as they walked, their tracks light and then, when Ivory wished it, nonexistent. They still left their scent behind, making certain that anyone who might wish to track them would see the wide curve of a new direction.

Razvan walked along beside her, feeling content, occasionally scooping snow into his hand and packing it to form a ball just to throw it at a tree trunk as they passed. It made him feel a bit like a kid again, carefree and happy, just as much as when he’d run with the wolves.

“You take every moment,” Ivory said, “and you live it right then.”

He shrugged. “I found that in order to survive I had to live in the moment. I do whatever I am doing with everything in me. I enjoy it, or endure it or survive it.” He looked around at the drifting snow and the heavily laden trees with their crystal formations. “This is paradise to me.”

“Walking through the forest in the snow, hoping to throw off anyone tracking us?” She laughed, shaking her head. “You really are a little bit peculiar. I like it, but you are still weird.”

Razvan’s laugh was joyous, the sound deep and pure, sliding into her body and making her heart sing. It made her feel like a bit of an idiot, but she didn’t care; she kept the silly smile on her face anyway.

“We have everything we could possibly want right here in this moment. You. Me. The pack. Look around you. The snow is beautiful, the trees unbelievable. We are happy. Whatever comes later, we have these moments right now. Right here. We may as well make the best of them because we will never get these moments back.”

He lobbed a snowball at her. It landed in her hair and broke, covering the blue-black strands with flakes. He sprinted away from her.

Ivory gasped and went after him scooping up snow on the run, packing and throwing with the tremendous speed and accuracy born of throwing her arrowheads.

Razvan dodged, looking over his shoulder at her, laughing. She was so beautiful to him, running in the snow with her long strides, her muscles rippling beneath the smooth expanse of skin. Just the way she moved was pure sin. Her eyes were enormous with excitement. Crystal flakes landed on her lashes and she batted the two thick crescents to get the snow off. The gesture was feminine, sexy beyond measure yet totally unintentional.

He took advantage and reversed direction, running at her fast, hurling three snowballs to distract her, uncaring where they hit, watching her mouth, that beautiful bow of a mouth, curved and soft and so tempting. He dropped his shoulder and caught her low, lifting her and taking her down in one smooth move.

They landed in the snow, sinking into the icy powder. Razvan caught her wrist before she could stuff another snowball down his shirt. She laughed up at him, looking good enough to eat. Before he could take advantage and kiss her, she pushed up with her heels, loosening him enough to roll them over so she was on top, trying to pin him down. They wrestled there in the snow, the flakes rising like a whirlwind to meet the ones falling from the sky, their laughter stirring the needles on the trees. The wind carried the sound on the stillness of the night.

They lay side by side, throwing arms and legs out, like two small children, making snow figures on the ground and then leaping to their feet for another wild battle with snowballs flying furiously.

Ivory finally leapt on him, arms circling his neck, her legs wrapped around his hips in an effort to stop the crazy game before she laughed so much she cried. “You are so crazy, Razvan,” she said, holding him tightly. She buried her face against his throat, afraid she really would burst into tears at the emotions welling up, threatening to overwhelm her.

She knew he thought her some kind of miracle, but in truth, to her
he
was the miracle. She had no idea how to have fun, and she had no idea how he did. There had been no fun in his life, only cruelty and torture; she at least had played with her pack, but it was Razvan who brought fun into her world again.

“Ivory?” His voice was gentle with inquiry.

She refused to lift her head, only held him tighter, keeping her face pressed against his throat, listening to the wild beating of his heart and feeling the reassuring throb of his pulse.

Razvan tightened his arms around her, rocking gently as if comforting her, but he said nothing at all, not asking for an explanation to the end of their game. He simply accepted. She closed her eyes and savored him. It wasn’t the physical strength Razvan possessed in abundance that drew her to him, it was the sheer strength of his character, the absolute well of determined spirit deep inside of him. He was so steady. A rock. For her.

She lifted her head and smiled down at him, not realizing her heart was shining in her eyes. “You are mine, Dragonseeker.
My
rock.”

His slow, answering smile nearly stopped her heart. “That I am,
hän ku kuulua sívamet
—keeper of my heart. I will be your everything.”

Ivory allowed her feet to drop down into the snow. “Let’s go home.” More than anything she wanted to be home with him. She wanted her private sanctuary to welcome him, to feel as if he was as much a part of the pack—of her home—as he was her heart.

Razvan held out his hand to her. She glanced up at the sky, scanned the trees, hesitating. She was a warrior first. She could never lose sight of that.

“You will never be diminished by what is between us,” he said softly.

Something in her settled. She couldn’t imagine being diminished by Razvan. If anything, she would be better, stronger,
more
. She looked at his upturned palm. His hand was large. There were scars up and down his wrist and forearm. Her heart fluttered. She placed her hand in his and watched his fingers close around hers, binding them together just as the ritual words had done.

Do you remember?
She couldn’t ask aloud; it meant too much. She was very spiritual and believed, whether anyone else did or not, that they had been created to be together, and those words imprinted on him from birth ad made them one.

Razvan brought her hand to his chest and stepped close, brushing the snow from the strands of hair tumbling around her face, pulled from her thick braid in their wild battle. “I remember every word, Ivory, and I meant them. I wanted the binding between us. It was not desperation. And it was not the need to save me.”

He bent his dark head in that slow way of his. He still had snowflakes on his lashes. As he moved, a thick heat slipped like molasses through her veins. His mouth closed over hers and the snow melted around her, she was certain of it. She swore she could see steam rising from the ground and feel molten liquid gathering like thick magma in her most feminine core.

She leaned into him, melting like the snow. She felt on the edge of a great precipice, teetering, knowing she was going to fall and it was far too late to save herself. In truth, she didn’t want to; she already craved the taste of him, the heat and white lightning arcing through her body, sizzling in her mind, shorting out her brain for way too long when they were out in the open.

When he lifted his head she took a moment to drown in the intensity of his desire. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Ivory stepped away from temptation. “You are the most lethal man I know.”

“I will take that as a compliment.” He kissed her again. “You like lethal.”

He knew how to kiss. Long and slow and delicious. A slow, burning heat that scorched from the inside out. She found herself smiling up at him all over again as he lifted his head. “Yes, I suppose I do.” Although, she was scared to care that much about anyone ever again.

They walked through the drifting snow for several miles until the flakes began to look like a white blanket falling from the sky. It might have been the muffled world they found themselves in, alien and white and so quiet that even their breathing seemed too loud in the vast silence, but Ivory began to feel uneasy. Another mile and her wolves stirred. She felt the itch spread over her skin as Raja lifted his head out of her back and bared his teeth in a snarl.

I know
, she soothed.
We have company
. Ivory glanced at Razvan. “We are being followed.” Her voice was a thread of sound, as muffled and as quiet as the snow.

A small, unexpected smile of amusement lit up Razvan’s face. “Well, I guess we get to have a little fun.”

She frowned at him. “Fun? Razvan, it is not the undead who are following us. We cannot have anyone finding our lair, nor do we want to engage them in battle if they are Carpathian as I suspect they are.”

His grin widened. “I was fairly certain someone would try to follow us. I have been giving it quite a bit of thought as we walked, working out a plan.”

Ivory’s amber gaze narrowed as it drifted over his face. He looked younger. Happier. She had done that but . . .

“Trust me, Ivory. I am not the experienced fighter you are, but I am very good at planning battles and strategies. This is a situation made for me.”

She sent her senses racing out into the night, seeking information, looking for any blank spots that would indicate vampire. The hunters were well hidden, so much so that she wasn’t entirely certain she was right, but Raja was never wrong and he had issued his warning.

“What do you want to do?”

“We should make our way to the valley of mists. That is where we will disappear altogether and leave those following behind. But in the meantime, I think a little lesson is called for, don’t you?”

“Lesson?” she echoed faintly. There was way too much amusement in his voice.

“They need to learn a little respect for my woman. You are a warrior, equal to them, and yet they treat you as if you are an amateur. They did not even give us the respect due by confronting us face-to-face. It might be a good thing for all of them to know they are not as good as they think they are.”

“I do not think these are children following us, Razvan. They are experienced Carpathian hunters, possibly ancients who have thousands of battles under them.”

His cocky grin made him look boyish when there was nothing boyish about him. “Perhaps, but then again, we may make them remember their childhood.”

“What do you all think you are doing?” Gregori demanded as he came upon the small group of Carpathian hunters.

Vikirnoff had the grace to look uneasy. “We are not children to be reprimanded, Gregori,” he answered.

Gregori’s eyebrow shot up. “No, you are not. You are an ancient hunter, Vikirnoff, one far more experienced than me. Nor did I come to reprimand you. I asked what you were doing merely to see if you needed aid of any kind.”

The others looked at one another. It didn’t surprise Gregori that Vikirnoff’s brother, Nicolae, traveled with him. The brothers had been guarding one another’s backs for hundreds of years. The other four hunters were also ancients, returning to the Carpathian Mountains to establish ties with the prince. It occurred to Gregori that all of these ancient hunters did not really know Mikhail and had every reason to worry about his judgment. They were far older and more experienced than the prince, and were used to relying solely on their own judgment.