Dark Slayer Read Online Free PDF Page B

snow falling around her, she was that sensitive, or maybe it was a fear she’d developed over the years. It mattered little.
    “How does he possess you?”
    “I gave him an opening.” His gaze held hers captive as he made his confession. “There was a young mage woman who was kind to me. At that time, without my knowledge, Xavier was experimenting with ways to possess a body. He used mine to impregnate women. He wanted a blood supply and thought having children would do it for him. I am his grandson.”
    Ivory raised her arms to allow the pack to merge with her skin. Grateful that she was at long last preparing to go, the pack took their places one by one, covering her back and arms as if they were only ink on her skin and not immortal creatures. She never took her eyes from her lifemate, never changed expression even though inside she could hear herself screaming.
    “The young woman had my child, a little girl, quite beautiful. She was amazing and talented. We were all held prisoner. My aunts, me, my child’s mother and beautiful little Lara. I didn’t want him to kill Lara as he’d ultimately killed her mother, and I told him I would do anything.”
    She gasped in disbelief. “To the high mage? You traded your soul? To the high mage?” She felt a little idiotic repeating herself, but who did that? Who would be that . . .
    “At the time, I had been tortured severely. He had left Lara’s mother’s dead body to rot in front of us, and I could not bear for Lara to be tortured. In truth, I was not thinking clearly.” He shook his head. “I cannot remember facts accurately anymore. Time has blurred together for me. But you cannot trust me. He can take this body at any time and force me to do unspeakable things to those I love. I have betrayed everyone who ever meant anything to me.”
    “And yet you fought him. You still fight him.”
    “I am my father’s son. Xavier killed him as well and tried to possess my sister. I would not let him have her. I traded my life for hers and then my soul for my daughter. I have nothing left for you.”
    Those piercing eyes never once left her face, and if there was regret or remorse in his confession, she didn’t hear it. He had traded his life and was willing to die this day, as the sun came up, to protect everyone else, Ivory included.
    “He cannot have you,” she said. “I am sorry, but if what you say is true, then I have no choice but to render you unconscious so you do not know the way to my lair.”
    For the first time his expression changed. “You cannot take me there, woman. I forbid it.” Both hands came up, and she felt the beginnings of the spell he was casting, one to force her compliance.
    She was faster. Palms out, she shattered his spell so that small sparks clashed between them. She whispered softly and he blinked and fought for a moment, but starved and weak, his head slipped to one side as his eyes closed.
    Ivory didn’t hesitate once she’d made up her mind. She slung the Dragonseeker over her shoulder and took to the sky, racing the sun as it climbed toward the higher peaks. She streaked up through the driving snow, scanning the trails leading into the mountains for tracks of human vampire hunters, rare now, but still a menace to her kind. She let her senses flair out, seeking signs of the undead who may have taken refuge near her lair, or a stray hunter, one of the Carpathian males she was careful to hide her existence from.
    In midflight, she found herself rolling her eyes. A fat lot of good that had done her when she’d stumbled across her lifemate, just lying out in the snow, so thin and drawn, so emaciated from starvation and suffering that she couldn’t be heartless enough to leave him there.
    “O jelä peje terád— sun scorch you, päläfertiilam— lifemate,” she hissed aloud.
    It had never occurred to her that she would find herself in such a predicament. A male. She was bringing a sodden male to her home. Her haven. She should have