I don’t want to hurt you or these animals. You need to come home.
Isai kept very still, studying the other man. He didn’t want to give away the fact that he was boosting Julija’s energy and that she had the capability to defeat the high mage in the battle for the cat.
Isai knew Xavier had known the threat to him came from the Carpathian people, nowhere else. He had been the one to befriend them centuries earlier and give them the foundation for their safeguard spells. He had thought to always be their benevolent master, but the Carpathians weren’t a lazy people. They’d begun to develop the spells themselves, adding to the basics Xavier had taught them. Coupled with their fighting skills and their ability and willingness to pool knowledge, Xavier had begun to fear and envy them.
Xavier’s grandson, Anatolie, perhaps his greatest masterpiece, was no different. He had created Julija to serve him. To serve the other mages. They needed Carpathian blood to keep them alive well past years of longevity. He hadn’t thought that she, with what he considered to be very diluted mage blood, would become powerful in her own right. It had to have been disturbing to him that she was born with the high mage’s mark, but he’d dismissed that as a birthmark only because it suited him. Once he realized that she had the potential to be far more powerful than he was, Anatolie was bound to do everything in his abilities to either get her back or kill her.
You know what will happen if I come home. Crina hates me. She makes my life a living hell. She left me locked up for over a week with nothing to eat and little water to drink. You’ve seen her, and you’ve never stopped her.
Isai hadn’t considered what it would have been like for Julija growing up with her stepmother. The woman had allowed Anatolie to get a Carpathian girl, one they’d taken prisoner, pregnant.
She continually shows me how she killed my mother. You were there, and you did nothing to stop it. I was a little girl and it was a terrifying ordeal for me. You let her, Father. You watched her hack up my mother as she lay helpless from your spells.
Isai glanced quickly over his shoulder at Julija. Her voice trembled, and tears burned in her eyes, clogged her throat and trickled down her face. He knew she wasn’t aware.
Crina had far overstepped her role. She did then and there was no stopping her. Carpathians are our mortal enemy. You know that. She also was jealous. Your mother was a beautiful woman and clearly you remind her of that. If you prefer, I will dispose of her. She has long been a thorn, but she has her uses. If it will make you agree to come home, I will strangle her right now. Or feed her to one of the shadow cats in your brothers’ shed.
Anatolie made the offer callously, so casually, for a moment Isai didn’t believe what he was hearing. He had a line on him now. Belle had settled since the high mage had begun to try to cajole his daughter into returning to him. Anatolie didn’t seem to understand that a woman like Julija wouldn’t want her father to kill her stepmother for her as if the death would be a gift.
Isai slid the pad of his thumb across the back of her hand in warning. He was about to strike. She might not want to harm anyone, but he wasn’t of the light. Darkness dwelled in him, surrounded him and would for all his days.
In his mind he built an image of everything he knew about Anatolie Brennan. The man was a master of illusion, fitting into his community and yet wreaking havoc on those around him when they got in his way. Isai struck hard, driving his fist through the mage’s chest wall, fingers open and scraping through flesh and bone to get at the heart.
Anatolie screamed, and did the only thing possible: he leapt out of the cat’s mind. Barnabas will come for you. You will return with him.
Julija still had a hold on Isai, her fingers twisted in his shirt. He felt her body jerk slightly at the threat and then a shiver consumed her.
Isai and Julija immediately built the shield for the female cat, a strong enough barrier that would keep Anatolie out, no matter what he did.
Very slowly, Isai turned to Julija. “Who is Barnabas?”
She lifted her feathery lashes and looked up at him with her dark chocolate eyes. There was fear. Trepidation. Wariness. “He is an old enemy who delights in tormenting me. He will do whatever Anatolie commands. Nothing is beneath him.” There was contempt in her voice.
She turned her head to escape his scrutiny, but he framed her face with his hands and turned her back to him. He studied her set expression. He was still in her mind and she was holding herself very, very still, as if, when she moved, she might shatter.
“Who is this man to you?”
She couldn’t turn her head, but her gaze landed on the center of his chest.
“He is nothing to me.”
That was both truth and a lie. She stepped back away from him and abruptly landed in the chair when it hit her in the back of the knees. Blue pushed his head onto her lap, sensing she was upset. Belle came toward them, slinking across the chamber, uncertain of her welcome after she had fought to attack them. Julija held out her arms, and the female completed the last few feet in one jump, her black fur once again sliding over the shadowing body, making her whole.
“It is unwise to lie to your lifemate,” Isai cautioned, but he paced across the room, giving her space. She’d already gone through a traumatic situation with her father. He wasn’t about to add to it. In any case, she was unclaimed, and he wasn’t going to force his claim on her. She had deliberately kept quiet knowing she was condemning him to death or worse.
Julija reached up to her throat and stroked one finger over the scar there, the one that covered the terrible gash that had changed her voice forever. “I hate this scar,” she said softly. “Your friend Sandu healed the wound, but it was so severe that it left this scar. Sergey wanted to make certain I was killed, or couldn’t speak, so one more male Carpathian hunter wouldn’t have a lifemate.”
Isai remained silent. She hadn’t needed Sergey to do the very same thing, but he didn’t remind her of that. He could feel sorrow beating at her, but her emotions were all jumbled up. Shame. Anger. Sorrow. All three mixed together. She didn’t look at him but sank her fingers into Belle’s fur and rubbed one cheek down the cat’s spine.
“I thought I was in love once. A long time ago.”
Isai’s heart clenched. Not because she didn’t deserve to love someone, but because whatever had happened scarred her far worse than Sergey’s talon had. He wanted to put his arms around Julija and just hold her to comfort her but from the way she held herself so stiffly, averting her face from his, he knew better. She didn’t want to be touched. She was willing to share her body intimately, but not her feelings. She didn’t want to care about him or have him love her.
She rubbed her chin on Belle’s fur. “I was so alone. And so young. My stepmother was particularly nasty to me and my father was cruel. My brothers had each other, but I couldn’t even have friends. Anatolie made that very clear. In any case, who wanted to bring anyone home when you had the stepmother from hell?”
Isai remained very quiet. She rocked herself gently back and forth, unaware that she did so. That small action told him she needed the comfort she rejected. It took great effort not to go to her. He might not have claimed her, but she was still his lifemate and every cell in his body needed to make things better for her.
“Barnabas taught a seminar on medieval spells, useful ways to combine sex and torture to get your victim to cooperate any way you wish. I was the youngest student and the only female in the class. My father was adamant that all three of us, my brothers and I, go to the seminar. He said the understanding of pain combined with sex and how it could be used against one was needed by every mage. Afterward, Barnabas and I went for coffee. I was upset. The things he taught turned my stomach. He was . . . sweet.”
He could imagine how anyone remotely nice would appear sweet after the way her family had treated her. He remained absolutely still, afraid if he drew attention to himself in any way, Julija would stop sharing. She didn’t want to, and he couldn’t imagine why she’d decided to tell him about the man when she had made it clear she didn’t want to revisit what had to have been a difficult and painful time in her life.
Isai didn’t like the way she’d met Barnabas. Why would her father insist she attend such a seminar? That made no sense to him.
“We ended up dating for several weeks. Just meeting and going for coffee or a drink. I really liked him. He liked animals and just about everything I liked. We would sit and talk for hours. Oddly, I wasn’t attracted to him sexually, but I wasn’t that attracted to anyone. That didn’t seem to matter to him. He treated me like a friend and never once pushed beyond that boundary.”
He could have told her she wasn’t physically attracted to other males because she held the light to his darkness. Her body was waiting for his. He remained silent.
“In any case, somewhere along the line, I suddenly was on fire, desperate for sex.” She rubbed her chin along the cat’s spine again, her hands still in the fur. “I burned day and night. I was scared, because to go from being reluctant to have sex to thinking of it every waking minute, I knew a spell had to have been cast. That, or I was drugged, or both.”
She fell silent for a long time. Her hands trembled as she petted the cat. The animal was far too big to remain in her lap. He knew the weight on her small frame wasn’t good for her, but he kept silent, feeling privileged that she’d told him as much as she had about her past.
“I went to Barnabas because I didn’t know anyone else that I trusted. I told him what was happening to me and that I feared it was a spell or drug. I had no one else in my life to turn to and he listened carefully and didn’t make fun of me. Or laugh. He was so caring.”
For the first time, Julija looked up at him and there was accusation in her gaze. That mixture of shame, sorrow and anger. He didn’t like her viewing him like that, but again made the decision to remain silent. What was the use of defending himself simply because he was a man? He needed to know what he was fighting against.