Carpathian 03 - Dark Gold

and more turn vampire. Though no one has yet discovered why, the few children born to us are male, and most do not survive the first year of life. Those women who give birth and lose the child grow despondent and refuse to try after a time. So the men without lifemates are lost, without hope.
    They either greet the dawn and perish or succumb to the demon within. Become vampire, true predators."
    
    "How terrible." She meant it, sorrow filling her mind and heart.
    
    "Mikhail and Gregori have been trying to find a way to avoid the inevitable, the extinction of our race. They discovered that a small group of human women possessing psychic abilities were capable of bonding chemically with our males."
    
    "Like me."
    
    He nodded. "You did not find human men physically attractive. For some unknown reason, you were not born into our race but were made for me specifically. Your body and mine have a need to be one. Your heart and soul are the other half of mine. Mikhail and Gregori believe that those Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    psychic women of human descent are capable of producing female children, and that those children will also be capable, or at least more likely to produce female children. So you see why you are so treasured."
    
    "What is the claiming?"
    
    Aidan let his breath out slowly. "Alexandria…" There was hesitation in his voice.
    
    She stepped away from him, her chin rising. "I guess there's a lot you haven't told me. Am I expected to have a child? A girl? What are the odds that my child will live?"
    
    He reached out, framing her face in his large hands. "I do not want you for a breeder for my race, piccola . I want you for myself. I do not know the odds that our child will survive. Like you, I can only pray. We will have to cross that bridge when we come to it."
    
    "So we have a girl, she survives her first year and grows up. What happens then?" Her sapphire eyes were steady on his golden ones.
    
    "All female children are claimed on their eighteenth birthdays. The males come from all over to meet the girl. If the chemistry is right, she is claimed by the male."
    
    "That is barbaric. Like a meat market. She has no chance at living any kind of life for herself."
    Alexandria was shocked.
    
    "Carpathian women are raised to know they hold the fate of their lifemate in their hands. It is their birthright, as is bearing the children."
    
    "No wonder the poor girl ran away. Can you imagine facing a life with that man at such an early age? How old is he? To her he must seem ancient. He's a man, for heaven's sake, not a boy.
    He's tough and probably cruel, and evidently he knows more about every subject under the sun than anyone alive."
    
    "How old do you think I am, Alexandria?" Aidan asked softly. "I have lived over eight hundred years now. You are irrevocably bound to me. Is it such a terrible fate?"
    
    For a moment there was silence. Then she was smiling at him. "Ask me again in a hundred years.
    I'll tell you then."
    
    His eyes burned a liquid gold, molten, sexy. "Go home, cara mia . I will finish my work here and join you."
    
    "I brought the car," she said. "When my Volkswagen wouldn't start, I took the little sporty-looking thing that no one ever uses. Stefan said it would be all right."
    
    "I knew, and you did not hear a complaint. There is nowhere you go and nothing you do that is not known to me. We are one, piccola ." He ruffled her hair as if she was a child because his body was starting to make demands, and a vampire's remains were but a few yards away. "Drive home, and I will meet you there."
    
    As he walked her to the car, she fit beneath his shoulder, so that his body was sheltering her.
    Alexandria was ashamed of herself for liking the feeling it gave her. She was determined to hold Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    on to her independence with both hands, especially in light of what he had told her might be the fate of her daughter. She had to be strong enough to stand up to Aidan, if she wanted a daughter who was able to choose her own way. She had the feeling Carpathian males had never caught on to the twentieth-century women's liberation movement.
    
    Aidan watched the taillights of the little car disappear around the curve leading up to the main road. He shoved a hand through his thick mane of hair and turned to face the mess on the rocks.
    Several