Carpathian 23 - Dark Storm

could do. Either she’d calmed the volcano enough to minimize the
     damage, or everyone was lost.

    Arabejila had totally deceived him. Mitro wanted to rip and tear into something warm-blooded.
     His rage grew as he struggled against the tight binds woven around him. She was far
     stronger than she’d ever been. Her touch hadn’t been hesitant at all. Throughout the
     years she’d seemed to decline in strength, but now she was all powerful—a force he
     hadn’t counted on.
    She felt different to him, but it had been centuries since he’d tasted her hot blood—and
     that had been his one mistake. He should have killed her outright immediately. Once
     he’d taken her blood, he had locked them together for all time. Even then, he thought
     her weak, but she wasn’t now. She hadn’t flinched or pleaded with him. She had struck
     hard and fast without the least bit of hesitation—something she would never have done
     before.
    Snarling, he gnashed his fangs together, anger and hatred feeding his strength. She
     hadn’t even deigned to speak to him. He was her lifemate whether she liked it or not,
     his possession. He could choose to keep her alive or let her die. It was his choice.
     He was superior and always would be.
    He struggled harder against the tight bonds. Arabejila had always had a connection
     to the earth, but it seemed stronger than ever. The moment she was forced to turn
     her attention elsewhere, he should have been able to break free, but the bindings
     held tight. He couldn’t move, couldn’t rise toward that barrier he’d worked so hard
     to thin.
    He cursed Arabejila, cursed the fact that she alone had the ability to shake him up.
     He should have made certain she was dead. She was the reason the hunter had found
     him again and again over the centuries . . . She’d trapped him here. She’d kept him
     here. And now she was the only thing standing between him and his triumph. She was
     truly the bane of his life, and if he didn’t uncoil the chains she’d placed on him
     fast, he would be trapped for all time.
    He renewed his efforts, concentrating on finding each strand binding him in his fiery
     prison. Arabejila had woven the spell tight, the earth itself adding to her weave.
     He had always found it utterly disgusting that all living plant life responded to
     her instead of him. He’d tried, in the earlier years, watching her walk through a
     field with flowers and plants springing up around her, to do the same, but the earth
     refused to speak to him. The rejection had been so total and so instantaneous, it
     had filled him with a loathing for all vegetation. He despised anything that would
     choose a weak woman over him.
    Mitro had always considered Arabejila one-dimensional—good in every way. She didn’t
     know how to be anything else. He studied the binding weaves chaining him inside the
     volcano. Those weaves told him much about his adversary. Arabejila had evolved over
     the centuries, just as he had evolved, and he found her much changed and more powerful
     because of it. More, her weaves only told him she was a force to be reckoned with,
     not anything personal about her. She had left no emotion behind to aid him in defeating
     her.
    That rankled. She was supposed to be pining away for him. Her weaves should have contained
     sorrow and that ridiculous, futile dash of hope she couldn’t suppress whenever they
     had come into contact in the past. No matter what he did, how depraved he’d become,
     she’d always clung to that tiny hope that she could “save” him. She’d never realized
     that he neither needed nor wanted to be saved. Stupid woman. He found it insulting that she thought she had the power to turn him into a cowering
     rabbit like the rest of his species.
    Remembering those days, pure hatred welled up. He would destroy Arabejila in his time,
     but first he would have to escape. She would not defeat him, a stupid cow of a woman
     who thought she was special because she could make flowers grow.
    The mountain jolted hard, and he felt a subtle difference almost immediately. Arabejila
     had turned her full attention away from him and the weaves binding him. He fought
     down the urge to struggle, to panic when the explosion could happen at any moment.
     He narrowed his concentration to one strand of his bonds. One at a time. He would
     have to break through that chain in order to escape.
    Mitro tried to recall every detail he could about his recent