Carpathian 22 - Dark Predator

turned her head toward him. Her lashes fluttered and she looked directly into his eyes. The impact of her gaze hit him like a punch. He could see the change in her eyes already, the color deeper and richer. Before she could speak, her eyes went wide. He felt the wave as it consumed her, faster and harder, a shock to his body when it had been centuries since he’d acknowledged actual pain.
    The sensation of a thousand knives stabbing at the insides of his body, slashing and cutting all at once burned through him. His insides felt shredded and tangled, tied into thick, hard knots. The breath left his body and the punch came, a tidal wave like a battering ram, slamming through him. His skull was suddenly too small for his brain, an explosion of shrapnel bursting in his head sending shock waves through his body.
    Beside him, Marguarita’s body convulsed. He held her to him, skin to skin, sharing the agony, riding on top of it with her, his body sweating tiny beads of blood that smeared over the matching ones dotting her body.
    He hadn’t known. How could he not have even asked his brothers? Had each of them shared information, told one another just how bad conversion could be?
    “It is fading, sívamet ,” he whispered. By sharing the pain with her, at least he had lessened the violence of the seizures. “Try to breathe evenly. Your heart is beating too fast. Let your body follow the rhythm of mine.”
    Deliberately he matched the frantic, accelerated pounding of her heart, the gasping, ragged breathing of her body, and very slowly, holding her to him, began to slow both their rates. Her gaze clung to his. His heart stuttered for a moment. She looked defeated, not at all like the Marguarita who went alone into a rain forest at night with a predator stalking her. Marguarita who would smile at him when he was at his worst.
    Marguarita. He breathed her name, holding her close to him, inside his mind.
    She didn’t fight him this time, far too weak to make much sense of what was happening to her. He lay there beside her and listened to the rain falling on the roof, amplifying the sound enough that she could hear the soothing sound through the roaring in her head. Deliberately he added small bursts of a breeze to change the pattern of sound against the windows and walls.
    Beside him, Marguarita slowly relaxed, the tension easing from sore, knotted muscles enough to allow her to breathe in the soothing mixture of lavender and chamomile scents. She didn’t fight him again and Zacarias found the terrible knot in his own gut easing.
    He stroked her hair in a gentle caress and murmured nonsense in his own language. Or maybe it wasn’t nonsense, maybe he tapped into those feelings of that stranger dwelling deep inside of him, the one who knew he couldn’t lose her, not for the burden of his soul, but for the overwhelming emotion that welled like a tsunami he couldn’t stop.
    She couldn’t possibly know what he was saying, he hardly knew. But when the next wave hit, she turned her head and looked at him, focusing on him, rather than turning away. Her eyes went wide, glazed, as the pain hit. This time, Zacarias was prepared and knew exactly how to take most of it from her. Her body was cleansed of all toxins and well on its way to becoming fully Carpathian. As the pain receded, he sensed it would be safe to put her in the healing earth.
    “I can send you to sleep, Marguarita. When you awaken you will feel hunger and the need for blood, but you will not be in such pain.”
    Her gaze jumped to his as his palm wiped those tiny dots of blood from her forehead.
    “You will awaken fully Carpathian.”
    Her tongue touched her dry lower lip in an attempt to moisten it. It doesn’t matter. I just want this over with.
    He detested the defeat in her. Marguarita was all fire to his ice, not outwardly, not in the sense of temper and picking fights, in fact, just the opposite. But she was passionate about what she believed in and who and what she loved. She poured herself completely into everything she did, just as she had wholly given herself to him.
    She was worn out, her body and mind exhausted. He couldn’t blame her. He felt wrung out and he hadn’t suffered as she had.
    “I do not want you to think I am doing anything else without your knowledge.” He waited, but she didn’t respond. “I will command your first sleep, and after that, your body will take over and sleep on its own when you command. You have my blood running