Whether he was dead or alive, she wasn’t leaving him in this state. “Listen, handsome, I’m going to run back and get my pack. I can clean you up. That’s the least I can do for you.” Even as she spoke to him, whispered into his ear, her hand went to his chest, directly over his heart. Hoping. She was still praying. She needed him to be alive, but there was no indication whatsoever.
Pushing back a sob, she jumped to her feet, wincing when her leg protested—when her face told her the swelling hadn’t gone down at all. She glanced at her watch as she hurried back through the various chambers to the one she’d left her backpack in. Sunset was approaching and hopefully, since Armend and his friends hadn’t found her yet, they wouldn’t as night fell. She’d be able to rest.
Andre only had one dream in his entire existence, a recurring one, and it was a nightmare—or more precisely, a memory he wished to forget. He slept the sleep of Carpathians. Heart stopped. Breath gone. Essentially, by human standards, dead. A paralysis settled over them and they couldn’t move even if their minds were still active. But he had to be dreaming.
A soft voice—a woman’s voice. His lifemate. The whisper of a touch against his skin. The little plea that touched his heart even though it wasn’t beating. He dreamt in color. Bright, vivid color. It was so beautiful, so real, each color distinct, not bleeding gray into it, but there behind his eyes, in his brain. Blues and greens and vibrant reds.
He struggled to lift his lashes, to open his eyes to see. He hadn’t buried himself completely in the soil as he should have. He’d lost far too much blood and he knew his safeguards were strong. The vampires would have gone to ground as well. All of them were wounded, including Costin Popescu, the master vampire. He knew he was safe enough and he was just too tired to do anything but lie down in the fresh, clean soil.
He lay there now, his heart beginning its slow revival. He took his first breath, drawing her scent into his lungs. She was real. He didn’t know how to feel about that after centuries of hunting for her. Centuries of giving up on her. Centuries of being so alone he didn’t know how to be with anyone else, or even how to be civil.
The brief moment when he’d managed to beat the paralysis and open his eyes just enough to glimpse her had to be real, not a figment of his imagination, because he saw her in all her glorious color. Still, how had she gotten into his sleeping chamber? Into his cave? He had put up safeguards. Intricate safeguards, not based on mage guards, but ones he had devised himself over the centuries. Guards that shouldn’t have been penetrated.
He had to be dreaming. But in color? Nothing made sense. The moment his heart began to beat, blood began to stream from the various wounds on his body. Hunger struck. Clawed. Pain had to be shut off. Automatically he repaired the internal damage to his body, even as his mind went over every detail he remembered of the brief glimpse.
His lifemate had been very slight, very small, but he could see the steel in her. The determination. She was beautiful, more beautiful than any woman he’d ever seen—that in itself should tell him he was dreaming. Her skin was amazing, a dark soft expanse that any man would have a difficult time resisting touching. But she’d been covered in bruises. He could see blue and black in the mixture of color along her cheek, up by her eye and along her jaw. Her face was swollen, her lip torn.
She had a beautiful mouth, tilted at the corners, an inviting bow, her teeth small and white. Her eyes were a dark, dark chocolate. The lashes surrounding them were full and very black.
Her hair was long, a luxurious gleaming black, not dull gray, done in intricate cornrows and then swept back in a ponytail of small braids. The ponytail was easily as thick as his arm and fell to her waist. When she walked away from him, she was limping. He had to have been dreaming, because how could she be real after all the long centuries? And how could she have gotten past his safeguards?
He stayed very still, absorbing the feel of the cave. His senses told him he wasn’t alone. He smelled her. There was a mixture of fresh air, fog, the mountains, sweat and something else, something that called to him, like a particular scent carried on a summer wind. Almost like the earth smelled after a fresh rain. He needed more of it. He wanted more.
He heard her then, the soft running as she returned to him, just as she’d promised. She thought him dead. He’d heard the sorrow in her voice. She had asked him to stay. To come back to her. Had she come to find him? Had he been close to dying? He doubted it. He had work to do. Several vampires to kill. He wouldn’t have left them alive to harm others.
She dropped a backpack that was nearly as tall as she was onto the floor beside the entrance to the small chamber. She had a flashlight in her hand, the light dancing along the walls as she hurried toward him. He could see the colors of the wall. The rich veins of various minerals and the few gems that sparkled in the light. The edge of the light caught a crystalline rock jutting out of the wall. He remembered the formation from his youth, and was shocked that he hadn’t noticed it again until her dancing light spotlighted it for him.
Her scent enveloped him. This time he recognized the interesting mixture of wildflowers and rain. He inhaled her. The moment he did, she cried out and dropped to the ground beside him.
“You’re alive. Oh. My. God. You’re totally alive.”
Her hands ran over his chest. Her touch was featherlight, but everywhere the pads of her fingers touched he felt heat and something else, something that penetrated deep, right through his skin. He recognized the touch of a natural healer. She had immense power. He stayed very still, listening to the musical cadence of her voice. The sound of her struck an answering chord in him.