“I knew that wasn’t the true reason. You were so conditioned to believe it, Sandu, but it was because you needed to leave the city with me. And . . .” She trailed off, lifted her gaze to his and then looked away.
“And . . .” he prompted.
She took a deep breath. “You locked yourself away in that monastery because you feared you were a demon, you feared you would eventually be unable to control what was growing inside you, something more than the undead. A monster you feared could be let loose on the world. Something with too many scars on your soul to be redeemed.”
He kept looking at her with those frightening eyes. She touched the tip of her tongue to her suddenly dry lips.
“I had no way of knowing that was your fear because you are very good at hiding things. You have barriers in your mind impossible to get through.”
“You do not want to see what is behind them.”
She tried to control her heartbeat, curling deeper into the chair. “Maybe I didn’t before, but now that I realize you are making decisions without me, I do want to see what you’re hiding from me.” She kept her gaze fixed on his, regardless of the fact that he was frightening. “If we are to continue forward together, Sandu, we have to find a way to bridge this gap between us and learn to trust each other.” She had things to tell him, things to confess, but she couldn’t make herself reveal them without first knowing if he was trustworthy.
His expression didn’t change. “There is no ‘if,’ Adalasia. The ritual binding words have been spoken, and our souls have been reunited. We are bound together. You feel it just the same way that I do. You don’t have to be Carpathian to feel the pull between lifemates.”
He spoke the truth. She put trembling fingers to her neck and stroked over her pounding pulse, uncaring that he saw. “Will you explain to me what a lifemate is and what you’re keeping from me and why you’re making decisions without me?”
He studied her face for what seemed an eternity. She could hear the wind rattling the window. A branch sawed against the balcony above them. She shivered and drew her robe closer. Sandu waved his hand toward the fireplace, and the flames crackled around the logs.
“Carpathians need blood to survive, as you well know. We sleep beneath the ground. The minerals heal our wounds. If I am wounded, you can use saliva and the earth to pack my wounds, and they would heal much faster and better than using any human form.” He spoke matter-of-factly. “We heal using our spirits, shedding our bodies, and heal from the inside out. That was how I was able to push the parasites from my body. I found it interesting that they reacted to your blood.”
“Reacted in what way?”
“They were attracted to it, very aware of it, yet they stayed away from it as if repelled—or ordered to do so.” His eyes never left her face.
That wasn’t what she expected. She frowned, turning that over in her mind. “Why would they do that? Have you seen that reaction before?”
He shook his head slowly. “No.”
Adalasia rubbed at her forehead with the heel of her hand. “I thought I was prepared for this journey. And for you. I’m not at all. I feel like I don’t understand anything. I’m someone used to knowing what’s coming at me and planning my moves carefully. I don’t leave things to chance. I had this idea that we would be partners and you would be like me. We’d talk things out and decide what we were going to do before we did it. Now I feel like I’m completely alone in a world I don’t understand at all.”
She raised her eyes and met his gaze. Those flames were still burning, but they were low smoldering embers. Still, he was so focused on her she didn’t feel comforted in the way she thought a lifemate would make her feel, not after the ritual words he’d spoken to bind them together. He watched her with that same predatory stare she’d observed in tigers or leopards when she’d gone to a zoo with her mother when she was a child.
“The Carpathian world is complicated, Adalasia, and very old. There are rules that we all must follow, whether we like them or not. We are too dangerous not to follow them.”
“Rules such as?” she prompted.
“Binding our lifemate to us,” he answered. “When we find our lifemate, we have no choice but to bind her to us. Without her, we either turn vampire, or we suicide.” He studied her expression for another long moment. “Why did you try to send me away?”
She pressed the heel of her hand into her forehead again, hating to finish her confession, feeling ashamed. “Costello may look and feel human, but in the close confines of my shop, when he touched the cards, I knew he was something more. There is something evil in him that makes him more than human.” She tried to be cautious in what she said. She knew she should tell him. She had to tell him.