Dark Illusion by Christine Feehan Read Free Book Online Page B

century is long past. We have equal rights in this world, or in most parts of it. You’re like some archaic dinosaur, trying to impose your will on someone smaller than you through brute force. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
    “Perhaps,” he agreed mildly. “You also should be ashamed of yourself. You knew you were a lifemate to a Carpathian warrior, a man of honor. Instead of seeking him out, you chose to hide. Instead of treating him with respect when he finds you, you refuse to speak or acknowledge that you are his lifemate.”
    He pinned her with a steely gaze. “Are you aware that if a lifemate isn’t found, the Carpathian male has no choice but to meet the dawn, meaning suicide, or he turns vampire and can murder hundreds, perhaps thousands of people before he is stopped by—guess who—another Carpathian male risking his life to save others?”
    She looked down at the rug, a slow flush creeping up her face. “Yes, I’m aware. Put like that, it sounds far worse than when I was thinking about it.”
    “That is our reality. I searched centuries for you and then locked myself away in a monastery to keep those around me safe because I was close to being a demon, something far worse than a vampire. I no longer even heard the whispers of temptation, yet you stubbornly and selfishly refused to come to my aid and save me.”
    Her head went up. “Why should a woman have to sacrifice her life for a man?”
    “Why should a man have to sacrifice his life to save mankind? To save that selfish woman?”
    She leaned toward him. “He doesn’t have to. He can walk away.”
    “Live without honor? Without doing his duty? Is that the kind of woman you are, Julija? You have no honor? You would refuse to do your duty because it is difficult?” He kept his voice very low, but there was disappointment.
    Isai had searched for this woman for centuries, more years than evenmost Carpathians could claim life. Throughout that time, he had done everything necessary to protect his people and the growing number of humans vampires fed on. His reward was a woman who didn’t believe in duty or service? She didn’t believe in honor? She had no code? He didn’t let it show on his face, but he felt shattered. Betrayed.
    Dismissively, he waved away whatever she might say to back up her argument. “Tell me about the book and your part in its disappearance.”
    She pressed her lips tightly together as if to keep from continuing their argument. He had no intentions of continuing. He didn’t want a woman who had no sense of honor. No code. A woman who would let a man become the very thing he had fought against. If she had studied Carpathians, and it was clear she had, then she knew Carpathian women were always happy. Their lifemates saw to that. He might be a dinosaur, but he would have done everything in his power to make his woman happy.
    “My family, as you know, is mage. Xavier had a son named Soren. His mother was Rhiannon, of the Dragonseeker family. I know that’s a big deal with Carpathians, but I don’t know why. In any case, Soren was given a woman, a mage. They had a son, but when he was born, they both were told the baby died. Xavier had the woman killed for not properly taking care of herself and allowing the baby to be weak.”
    “The baby wasn’t dead.”
    She shook her head. “That man, Xavier’s grandson, Anatolie, is my father. My mother was a sixteen-year-old Carpathian girl named Francise. They wanted someone to use for blood to sustain them as they grew older. They used her until I was old enough and then they killed her.”
    He frowned and rubbed his finger over the bridge of his nose. “You know they killed her, you know this for a fact? You saw the body?”
    “Yes. I’m sorry. I know it’s hard to think that they would kill a young girl like that, but they did. I wasn’t that old, but I remember. They wanted me to remember. Before my mother, my father married a mage, a woman very powerful in her own