Dark Descent by Christine Feehan

from their eyes.”
    She glanced at him over her shoulder. “We’re invisible? Sheesh. Is your life easy or what? I wouldn’t mind being invisible in my line of work. No wonder those things are afraid of you.”
    “They fly, and they can cloak their presence as well.”
    Joie pushed open the door to her room. “How perfectly charming of them. Where do they come from?”
    Traian followed her into the room. She heard his heavy sigh and turned around to face him. “I’m not going to like your answer.”
    “Vampires are Carpathians who have chosen to give up their souls for a brief moment of power, the thrill of the kill. Our males lose their emotions and the ability to see in color after the first two hundred years of existence. Some earlier, some later, but all of us eventually lose everything we hold sacred if we do not find a life-mate. Our race has few women and fewer children. We are on the verge of extinction. There is little hope, and more and more of our males are turning.”
    There was compassion in her eyes. “How terribly sad for all of you. So you and the other hunters are forced to police the vampires. Even if they were once boyhood friends... or family.”
    He nodded, astonished at the wealth of understanding he read in her expression. She clearly saw what others did not: deep below the surface, every destruction of a childhood friend or cousin had cut pieces out of his soul until he feared there was little left. Yet her understanding, the compassion washing over him, changed something. He felt it, felt the first healing touch and the power a lifemate wielded. She stood there in her filthy clothes with mud smeared all over her face, and she was beautiful to him. A lump the size of his fist rose in his throat, and he turned away from her, afraid of allowing her to see the emotion threatening to choke him. How could she possibly understand what she meant to him? “I’m sorry, Traian. I know I can’t begin to understand what it must have been like, but I feel the weight of it in your mind.” More than that, she felt how alone he had been. The intensity of his pain shook her. His life had been stark. Ugly. Bleak. She caught frightening glimpses of scenes in his past. Terrible battles that lasted for hours. Severe injuries. Death all around him. No one to comfort him. No one to care.
    “This is becoming a habit.”
    Joie closed her eyes briefly, overwhelmed by longing, by the need to wrap her arms around him and just hold him. “I have to contact Jubal and Gabrielle. I can feel that they’re close, so I’m certain they made it.” When she picked up the phone to dial their rooms, her hand was trembling.
    Traian waited while she talked to her siblings, assuring them she was fine and that she would meet them downstairs after she showered. She was instantly relaxed, laughing, her voice soft with love, firm with reassurance. He had forgotten so much. Just the tone of her voice brought back memories of his life before he left his homeland to answer the call of his prince.
    Joie was uncomfortably aware of her appearance now that Traian was staring at her. “I need to take a shower.”
    “Is that an invitation?”
    She stared at him, at the hard angles and planes of his face. At his dark, fathomless eyes. If the attraction between them was merely physical, Joie would have thrown him on the bed and ripped his clothes off right there. But he stirred unfamiliar feelings in her. Deep and frightening feelings for a woman in charge of her own destiny.
    With indecision written so clearly on her face, Traian felt as if his world was balanced on the point of a needle. He was afraid to move. Afraid to speak. He knew their joining was inevitable. He would have her. She was his. She belonged to him. But he still wanted it to be her decision. He wanted her to want him in the same way he wanted her.
    “It’s a small shower stall,” she said.
    She put both hands behind her back and knew that she was afraid of the next