Carpathian 13 - Dark Destiny

to make him feel better.
    His grin widened foolishly before he could resume his customary mask. Warmth spread through his body and tugged at his heartstrings.
    "MaryAnn is quite a woman. She has a gift or two of her own." He was careful in choosing his words.
    Destiny nodded. "I think that's what drew me to her. MaryAnn isn't even aware of her psychic ability. I felt the small surge of power each time she connected with a woman to counsel her. I spent a lot of time standing on the balcony of her office listening to her. Even her group sessions touched me." She was admitting something to him she hoped he would comprehend. She recognized she couldn't live a normal life and had tried to find a way to heal herself.
    "You are not a monster, Destiny. Our people face many problems. Our men lose their ability to see in color, to feel emotion after two hundred years. Everything fades. In the old days, when our people were plentiful and our lifemates were close, it wasn't so. Now we feel the scarcity of lifemates acutely. With no women to give us children, there was no hope for our dying race. Many of our males have chosen the momentary rush of power, the high of a kill over honor and a barren existence. That forces us to hunt them despite the fact that they are often family and friends. Each kill we make spreads the darkness until it consumes us. It is not an easy life, tormented by fading memories of color and laughter and what it was like to have genuine emotion."
    Destiny rubbed her temples. She didn't like to think about his life, or touch on his memories. A barren life of gray and white, an endless desert stretching out in front of him. Until she had connected with him.
    She saw clearly his worry for Vikirnoff. She saw clearly his need of her.
    "Some human women with psychic abilities are capable of being converted to our species. You are obviously one of those women. We need children. Our women, our children, are precious to us, true treasures. We protect them with everything in us. Our women and children are our only hope."
    "And that's what the vampire did to me, right? He converted me. How?"
    "It takes three blood exchanges, but with a lifemate, it's not painful or terrible in the way you experienced. When we make love, it's natural to share each other's essence. To want our blood to flow in each other's veins. It's almost a compulsion. When we are with our lifemates, kissing them, skin against skin, exchanging blood is a beautiful need."

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    His voice seemed to whisper over her, a soft temptation she couldn't think about. "I see what you're trying to say to me. I look into your mind and heart and I can see that you mean what you're saying. I only wish this were all true, Nicolae, but it can never be for me. I believe that what you say about Carpathians is fact. I sense goodness in you, along with the crouching beast. But you and I both know I wasn't converted by you. Or by a Carpathian male. I can smell tainted blood miles away. The stench is disgusting. Do you believe I can't smell it on myself? In the cave, they called me to join them. You heard them calling me. Even the undead recognize what I am. Perhaps if one of your kind had converted me, I'd be all that you say, but it was a vampire, and his blood runs in my veins."
    "You can be healed."
    "Can you heal my memories? Can you remove the things that were done to me? You think you made me into a killer; Nicolae, but it wasn't you. It was never you."
    "I taught you to kill, Destiny. No matter how necessary I deemed it, killing was foreign to your nature. It is not to mine." He was not going to allow her to feel as if she were born a monster. " I touched your mind with mine. I still do. The shadows there are of a vampire's making, not yours. Already my blood has lessened the burning in your veins. With time we can overcome what he has wrought."
    Destiny shook her head. "I've lived with this forever. If there had been a way to fix it, I would have done so already. I may be partially in your world, but I'm also in the world of the undead. I'm unclean. I know it before I open my eyes, before I take my first breath on rising. I've killed so many times, I can never remove the blood from my hands." She looked at him, unaware of the terrible sorrow on her face.
    Nicolae saw it and it turned him inside out.
    "I examined your memories, Nicolae. I've had so many years of studying your mind, the