Carpathian 23 - Dark Storm

expressions took her breath away, so much love. Sometimes,
     when Dax looked at her, there was that intensity in his eyes, that amazing look of
     love focused on her, and she felt the luckiest woman in the world.
    She forced herself to look at the next images, the ones in such stark contrast. The
     man, Dax’s best friend, dead on the ground, his hand inches from his lifemate’s, blood
     pooling around him, his throat and heart torn out. His lifemate dead, and Arabejila,
     her throat torn and bleeding, desperately trying to free her baby sister from her
     mother’s body.
    It was a scene straight out of a horror film, and Dax had stumbled onto it—worse,
     felt responsible for it.
    Riley could hardly bear the thought of those deaths and how Dax felt, even suppressed
     as his emotions had been. She couldn’t imagine knowing that happy family, being a
     part of it and coming upon them, discovering them dead and dying . . .
    “When I could have prevented it.”
    Her gaze jumped to his. He had known all along she was in his mind. “How?” she asked
     quietly. “How could you have prevented it?”
    “I could have executed him.”
    She shook her head. “That would have been murder. He hadn’t done anything yet, had
     he? You were genuinely shocked. I could feel your horror. You could barely believe
     what you were seeing. Until someone commits a crime, there isn’t much anyone can do—not
     even you.”
    Riley gripped the arms of her chair to prevent leaping up to hold him. “Dax, you know
     you couldn’t touch him without proof. You didn’t know for sure. You aren’t God. You
     aren’t a judge.”
    “That’s exactly what I am. The Judge. And I failed my friend and his family.” He shoved
     his hand through the short spikes of pitch-black hair. “Arabejila was Mitro’s lifemate.
     He killed her mother and father in front of her and bragged that he would be the most
     powerful vampire ever to live by killing his lifemate as he made the choice to give
     up his soul. When he couldn’t finish her off—that lifemate bond was too strong for
     even him—in his rage, as vampire, he claimed her, binding her soul to his lost one
     so that she would suffer every moment she lived.”
    Riley found herself blinking back tears. She was Dax’s lifemate, and to her, the binding
     ritual had been beautiful and sacred. “What Mitro did is a sacrilege, no less.”
    “I still see them like that,” he confessed in a low voice. “Torn apart. Katalina’s
     stomach ripped open. Arabejila trying to free her sister.” He closed his eyes for
     a moment. “I took the knife from her and finished the job. I hacked up my friend’s
     beautiful, wonderful lifemate.”
    “To save a child, Dax. You saved a child. She would have wanted you to save her baby.
     She would have begged you had she lived.”
    He pressed his fingers to his eyes hard. “To see that infant torn from its mother
     the other night, there in the rain forest, I actually felt . . .” He shook his head.
    Sick. The word shimmered in her mind.
    Riley surrounded him with warmth, the only thing she could think to do. There were
     no real words to comfort him. There couldn’t be.
    He shook his head. “Carpathians don’t feel sick. Not when they’re on the hunt. Mitro
     knows the one thing that . . .” He broke off again and straightened his shoulders.
     “What he did to Arabejila was the absolute, ultimate betrayal of his lifemate. In
     our world, there can be no greater sin than trying to murder one’s lifemate and condemning
     her to a half-life of sheer suffering and deliberately killing our children.”
    Dax paced restlessly again, as if the smoldering rage buried so deep was climbing
     too close to the surface for him to contain.
    “The lifemate bond doesn’t allow one to survive long without the other,” Dax continued.
     “Mitro chose to give up his soul, so he wasn’t affected—although he couldn’t bring
     himself to kill Arabejila. She traveled with me, devoting herself to tracking him
     and helping me send him to the next life, but she suffered greatly through the long
     years.”
    “And you felt her sorrow.”
    “Males lose their ability to see color or feel emotion after a couple of hundred years,
     or sooner if they make kills continually. I used to go to Arabejila’s home often when
     I returned from hunting because just being close to Katalina, her mother—and eventually
     Arabejila—allowed me to remember feelings