Gregori swore in the ancient language. “Gary. When you lose emotion too fast, it is dangerous. Horrendous. You cannot be with Gabrielle when that happens. You will need help through those first dark months.”
Gary cursed his own intellect. He had known. He didn’t want to know, but he had. He had lost Gabrielle. “I can’t face her. If I see her cry one more time, or if she pleads with me, I won’t be able to resist the love I have for her.”
Mikhail let out his breath slowly. “Andre has found his lifemate. She believes she has the ability to extend the ancients’ time before they become so dangerous they cannot hunt the undead or feed from innocents. Gregori was going to go to the monastery up in the mountains to talk to Fane, who seems to run the place. We were hoping that if Andre’s lifemate could really do such a thing, the other healers could be taught as well. Perhaps you should go in Gregori’s place.”
Gregori stirred as if to protest, but Mikhail’s gaze lifted to his just once and Gregori subsided.
It is possible she can aid him as well.
Gregori took a deep breath, glided a step closer to Gary as if he would shield him from what was coming in the future.
Gary glanced at Gregori, held his eyes for a long moment and then nodded. It would give him time and distance, something he needed to separate himself from Gabrielle. He would either find a solution in that time, or he would learn to accept that he had lost her forever.
3
Gabrielle streaked through the dark sky. She was going to be too late. She felt it. That terrible buildup of tension. Of dread. It was there, a tremendous pressure in her chest. Her belly was in knots. Her heart hurt. An actual pain. No one would tell her where Mikhail had sent Gary, but he’d definitely been sent away. He was gone the following rising when she went looking for him. She’d done what she’d never attempted to do before. She’d used her deep connection with him to call to him—and then she had tried shapeshifting on her own. Flying on her own.
The echo of his answer was faint—very faint. She knew he was a very long distance away from her, but it didn’t matter, she could follow his psychic trail. She’d had time to really think about what her life would be like without him, and she knew she didn’t want to live in the Carpathian Mountains. She would go away, far from everything and everyone she knew. Disassociate. That was what she did. She lost herself in her research so she didn’t have to face life. A lonely life. Gary was the only one who “saw” her. She needed him to be real. To exist.
She didn’t even care if she was chasing after him, needy as hell. Psycho ex-girlfriend. Because she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he loved her. He would walk through fire for her. If she didn’t get him away from the prince and Gregori, she would lose him forever and she would lose herself.
Below her the mountains streaked by. She caught glimpses of the dense forest and craggy mountaintops. Ahead were the mists surrounding the monastery where the ancients went when they wouldn’t walk into the sun but could no longer be trusted around humans or Carpathians. When they could no longer safely hunt the undead. They were dangerous men.
Gabrielle didn’t want to go anywhere near the monastery. She didn’t want anything at all to do with them, but if that was Gary’s destination, then she was going to be there first. She knew, from sliding into her sister’s mind, that he had gone to see Andre and his new lifemate, Teagan. Together, the three would approach those in the monastery to see if they would be willing to have Teagan try to help them. Gabrielle intended to catch them outside the gates. She had followed Gary’s psychic trail and found her way.
The air had gone cold, unnaturally so. She could feel the safeguards woven into the mists broadcasting a warning that got under her skin even when she knew why and how it was there. Inside the mist things moved. Shapes. Voices whispered warnings. The mist swirled, dense and heavy, so that even in the form she’d taken, she was saturated, the water penetrating her feathers, a nearly impossible feat.
She could easily see how the ancients had stayed undiscovered for so many years. Their warning system was brilliant and cleverly in play all year round as well as both day and night. The actual location of the monastery appeared to change as well. She’d catch a glimpse of it, the mist would close over it and when the veil parted again over what she could swear was the exact same spot, the buildings were gone.
She was fully Carpathian with all the powers. She had never really utilized her gifts before. No one had really talked to her about what she could and couldn’t do, and she hadn’t asked. She should have asked. She knew most humans were converted by a lifemate and their lifemate taught them everything they needed to know. She’d been converted and, although grateful to be alive, she had disappeared into her work so she wouldn’t have to face a life that was very alien to her.
Perhaps if someone had worked with her, she wouldn’t have felt so cut off, but no one thought to do so, and she couldn’t ask. Not the prince. Certainly not Gregori. She had counted on Gary. She had always counted on Gary. He would teach her what she needed to know.
Now, she used her mind to keep herself in the air. She knew everything started in one’s mind. Her feathers might be soaked, but she could shift in the air if she had to. Whatever the ancients tried, she would not be afraid. She would not back down. Gary belonged with her. No one was going to take him away from her. She’d seen in his eyes that he was close to capitulating.
The owl began to falter in the center of the mist and she forced a shift, one she’d never attempted before, but she was very familiar with molecules and the molecular structure of the human body, so she wasn’t as afraid of becoming molecules as she had been when she’d first learned how to shift into the form of an animal or bird.