What he really wanted to do was pick her up in his arms, take to the sky and carry her back to the monastery secreted high in the Carpathian Mountains. He would have no problem telling his beautiful, fractured woman what to do and guiding her gently into the world they would create together, but he was her lifemate and he provided what she needed. She needed to know that she had her own power.
After centuries of being enslaved by a vampire and treated so cruelly, Elisabeta would never be like Andor’s wife, Lorraine, a very modern woman who Ferro respected and admired but would never be compatible with. He wouldn’t want that. He couldn’t live with that. He was too protective, but he didn’t want Elisabeta to feel fear, not of the world around her and never of him. He would seek every solution possible to figure out a way to help her find what was taken from her—her own power.
Already a plan had formed in his mind. He’d allowed Elisabeta to stay hidden in the healing grounds longer than was strictly necessary while he thought out his strategy to find a way to empower her. In the beginning, he knew the world around her would be too big for her. After being in such a confined space, just being out in the open would be disorienting and frightening. He would have to go slow, introducing her to small portions of the compound rather than all of it at once.
Everyone was eager to meet her, but she couldn’t be overwhelmed with too many people. He would have to shield her, although he knew others would misinterpret what he was doing, thinking he was keeping his fragile lifemate from them because he was an ancient and held to the old ways. Opinions didn’t bother him in the least. He was ancient and he did hold to the old ways.
Ferro also had a strange foreboding. Elisabeta had been given blood by several of the ancients before he had discovered he was her lifemate. That had been an accident. He had heard her moaning. That soft little sound of distress had opened an entire new world for him, but it had also triggered his very sensitive alarms. There was danger stalking his woman—and it wasn’t coming only from the master vampire. He felt a vague threat to her coming from inside the compound. From someone he trusted. Someone who should be protecting her. The threat was so vague, almost as if it wasn’t fully formed, but it was enough to put him on alert.
Ferro felt a small shudder go through Elisabeta’s body and he wrapped his arm around her tighter, pulling her front to his side. “Just look at the beauty surrounding you, piŋe sarnanak. Tariq Asenguard found a place to build his world a long time ago. The others have been securing the land around his compound to add to this fortress. We weave safeguards together to keep everyone protected.”
She tilted her head up to look at him. “No one will ever be safe from him as long as I’m here. I think you know that.” Her voice trembled.
He realized it took great effort for her to speak to him at all, to voice her concern. Just talking was a strain on her when she hadn’t done it in so many centuries. She didn’t think herself brave, because she didn’t understand true courage. Just the fact that she could stand there beside him instead of staying crumpled in a little ball in the earth the way she wanted was a testimony to her mettle.
Ferro brushed his lips on the top of her head in a little caress, trying not to frighten her. He was feeling his way with her. Elisabeta had had no human contact other than when Sergey punished her for infractions. Now, he was surrounding her with—him. He wanted her to get used to relying on his strength until she found her own. He was determined she would find it, even though, for him, it would mean she would most likely not want to remain with him. He couldn’t think too long on that or what it would do to him. That way lay insanity. Elisabeta deserved a chance at life after all the centuries she had endured as a prisoner, and he intended to give her that chance.
“You are now bound to me, Elisabeta. I will build a shield in your mind he cannot get through. He cannot command you as you fear. He cannot use you to spy. You will never give him information on anyone here as you have been so afraid of. I have been alive far longer than he has been, and I am more powerful.”
He felt the quick shake of her head, but she didn’t speak. In fact, her hand came up to press her fingers against her lips to hold back whatever was on her mind.
He gently captured her wrist and pulled her hand down. “Speak to me, päläfertiilam. I wish to know what is on your mind.”
Her long lashes fluttered, but she didn’t look at him. She shook her head twice before she finally spoke. “Is this a command?”
“If it needs to be.”
The tip of her tongue came out to moisten her lips. For some reason he found that little action much more sensual than it should have been. He waited, holding her close to him, staring down at her instead of at the beauty of nature surrounding them. The gardens and lake seemed to pale in comparison to her.
“Everyone always underestimates him. His brothers did. The mages have done so. He has slivers of them in his head now, so that gives him access to their knowledge. He has created spies using human psychic males. He has an army of vampires here in this country and abroad. He planned for centuries so quietly, allowing others to make fun of him and to treat him as if he wasn’t bright. He never quite lost all of his emotions because he thought, ahead of time, to take me prisoner. If you underestimate him, the way everyone has, simply because you’re older and have more fighting experience, you will lose.”
Her voice was so low he could barely hear her, but it was impossible not to catch the notes of fear, of weeping, of utter hopelessness. She didn’t believe he would listen to her. Men were arrogant. She had seen so many die over the centuries, men who had been intelligent and had risen to power only to be defeated in the end. Sergey was the last of the Malinovs, the last of the five brothers and the only brother no one, Carpathian and vampire alike, thought would ever be leader, yet he had proved the most powerful of them all.
“I did not live this long by underestimating my enemies, piŋe sarnanak,” Ferro said gently. “I appreciate that you would worry about me, Elisabeta. Always tell me when you have concerns.”
Her lashes lifted again, and this time he found himself staring into her dark, liquid eyes. His stomach did a strange clenching. His groin tightened. It would not be good for either of them if that liquid spilled over onto her high cheekbones. He wouldn’t know what to do with tears. He had never dealt with such things.
“You aren’t going to punish me for the things I said to you?” Her hand tightened in his shirt as if she were bracing herself. He felt a little shudder go through her body.
“I might have to kiss you now and then,” he said. “That is the closest you will get to a punishment and only because it is difficult to resist you.”
She blinked up at him as if she couldn’t process what he’d said. He took a step out of the healing grounds, forcing her to move with him. That instantly took her mind off what he’d just said and put it back on the world around her. He kept her in the gardens, avoiding the playgrounds where the children might be or the homes where the women often gathered to talk on the front porch. He wanted to just walk with her in the beauty of nature so she could feel air on her face and freedom surrounding her.
Ferro knew she couldn’t be out of the ground too long. They were going to have to start their life together in baby steps. So many people were waiting to meet her. Tariq, the owner of the compound—the man the prince of the Carpathian people had appointed to take his place in the United States—wanted Gary Daratrazanoff to examine her for signs that Sergey had left something of himself behind in her to spy on them. He wanted that done as soon as possible. Although he understood why Tariq felt it was needed, Ferro would rather take Elisabeta and leave than subject her to that.
Ferro was very uneasy subjecting Elisabeta to Gary’s examination. Both Carpathians had given Elisabeta blood numerous times. Ferro’s soul was tied to Gary’s through Andor and Lorraine, a tie that bound them together with several other ancients. Ordinarily, that would have assured that Gary’s first loyalties were the brethren, but Gary was second-in-command to Tariq. His lineage, the Daratrazanoff line, had always been second-in-command to the prince. Gary had been sent by the prince to guard Tariq, and that would put his loyalty to Tariq first. Ferro knew the strange, vague threat was emanating from one or both of the two men he should have every reason to trust.
Women were sacred, particularly Carpathian women. Lifemates were held as cherished treasures. In a time when children were so scarce their people were on the very verge of extinction, the last thing a Carpathian male would do was threaten a female, especially a lifemate. Ferro couldn’t even say if there was a concrete threat, only that he had the vague impression of one and that it seemed to emanate from a man tied to him soul to soul. Even that he wasn’t one hundred percent certain of, but to a man like him, it was enough to make him wary and to want to take his woman and leave.
Her brother, Traian, had arrived with his lifemate, Joie, from the Carpathian Mountains. Traian was very eager to see his sister after so many centuries. Ferro knew it was natural to want to see her, but she was nervous and didn’t clearly remember him. Sergey had deliberately stamped out her memories of her past as much as possible. When she tried to remember, there was pain involved, although she didn’t associate the emotional and physical pain with the vampire anymore. It was going to be a long road back for her.
The moment Ferro had heard the sound of Elisabeta’s voice and knew she was his lifemate, he had taken over her care when he wasn’t hunting the enemy. He very gently moved through her mind to examine the fragmented pieces of her memories each rising as he fed her. He hadn’t been invasive on purpose, not wanting her to associate him with Sergey. The glimpses he caught of the vampire’s punishments had set the predator in him snarling and ready to hunt down Sergey until the task was complete. He knew, right then, Elisabeta needed him more, and he would have to wait to hunt the master vampire.
Elisabeta stumbled as she walked, every step hesitant, like a small child relearning her steps. She didn’t take her eyes from the ground and her fingers dug into his arm and rib cage as if those were her lifelines. The ground was very uneven on the path through the gardens, unlike the healing grounds made up of soil rich in minerals smoothed over every day by the Carpathians. Ferro inwardly cursed himself for not considering that Elisabeta wasn’t simply having a difficult time walking because she wasn’t used to shoes, it was because she hadn’t walked.