Carpathian 23 - Dark Storm

his brothers didn’t want to admit they had the same
     nature. They weren’t supposed to be civilized. The prince wanted to “tame” them, to
     subdue their natural predatory instincts.
    Mitro had tried hard to make the prince understand the harm he was doing to their
     people. The men lost emotion because their true natures were suppressed. If he could
     feel without his lifemate, the woman who would cripple him, force him into a mold,
     take away the very essence of who he was, then so could the other hunters. The women
     hobbled them—turned them into rabbits when they were meant to be at the top of the
     food chain.
    His brothers tried to stop him from advising the prince, cowards every one of them.
     They knew he was right, but they feared banishment and loss of status if the sniveling
     prince disagreed with him. Mitro had been unafraid. He knew he was right. He had the
     brains and the strength to do what had to be done. He could have anything he wanted,
     not live restrained by the dictates of a man without any vision.
    But now—at last—things would be different. Arabejila was dead, and he would soon be
     free to rule the earth, as he should have done from the beginning. He floated, rising
     slowly, careful to exert no energy, knowing any disturbance would draw the hunter
     to him. He reminded himself how close he was, he just needed to do this right, move
     so slow, drift with rising gases toward the barrier and reach that very thin wall.
     He had to time it perfectly. Already he could feel the hunter on the move. He hadn’t
     died then, but Mitro had known all along it wouldn’t be that easy.
    His heart jolted hard, sending an electrical charge through his body. The current
     robbed him of breath but gave him a deep satisfaction. He could feel what others could
     not. He had changed—evolved—to a higher purpose. His imprisonment had only made him
     stronger and more determined. He would escape and elude Danutdaxton. Without Arabejila
     to track him, the hunter had lost his edge.
    Mitro’s veins throbbed and burned; after all these years of suppressing his need for
     blood, the craving was more powerful than ever, and with it, the yearning to see that
     horror and revulsion, that terrible fear as he held life or death over his victim.
     He always chose the strongest of the warriors to kill, deliberately torturing them
     so the others would see how useless fighting him was. He could turn whole villages
     against one another. They would sacrifice their children to him when he demanded it.
     Their young daughters. Their firstborn sons.
    He fed on terror. Fear was every bit as important as blood to him. He needed it the
     way he needed sustenance—delicious, delicious terror. The more he thought of people
     trembling before him, begging for their lives, the stronger the compulsion became.
     He’d been too long without food and he craved the fear-inspired adrenaline in his
     victim’s blood when he drank.
    He flexed his muscles as he continued to rise toward the barrier keeping him from
     the top of the volcano where he needed to be when it finally blew. Without Arabejila
     calming it, the explosion would be catastrophic, flattening and killing everything
     for miles. His plan was in place, and nothing would stop him now. Not some silly woman
     and not the Carpathian hunter. He would be free, and he would reign supreme!

    The wind rushed down the mountain while towering black clouds chased to the top of
     the atmosphere, churning and boiling with a dark, ominous anger. Lightning forked
     across the sky, whips of sizzling electrical currents, snapping and crackling with
     a kind of rage. Beneath her hands, Riley felt the rising volcanic gases and with those
     noxious fumes, something else—something horrifyingly evil. These men had come with
     her and she led them into certain danger. If they remained where they were, and she
     couldn’t slow the blast or redirect it, all of them would die.
    “Miguel, you have to take the others and get out of here now,” she ordered, already
     grabbing her mother’s pack. “The volcano is going to blow. I can feel the pressure
     building in the earth.”
    More than that, she could feel the spreading triumph of evil running below the surface.
     If she hadn’t fully believed the things her mother had told her before, she certainly
     did now. The malevolence was so acute, her stomach lurched. This was the source that
     had focused on murdering her mother. The