Dark Lycan (Carpathian)

Gregori nodded. “Good. We’ve got a couple of brilliant researchers working for us, and this was one product I thought would be good to use if the Lycans are invading.”


Fen shook his head. “They aren’t like that. They’ve never been like that. They remain in the background, working quietly to keep their packs as strong as possible, but they’ve integrated into human society well. I can’t see them making a decision out of the blue to suddenly go to war with Carpathians.”

The small mouse grew and kept growing fast, until another Carpathian male, looking very much like a clone of the first one, came forward to greet Fen with the traditional forearm clasp. His eyes were as brilliant aquamarine as his brother’s. His hair was identical as well as body frame, but Lojos had a web of scarring running down his left shoulder and arm, all the way to his hand. It was very unusual for any Carpathian to scar. The wounds had to be near fatal, the suffering great.

“Well met, brother,” Fen said, meaning it. “Veri olen piros, ek?m.” Literally the greeting translated to blood be red, my brother, but figuratively, it meant “find your lifemate.”

They stood eye to eye, staring into each other’s pasts. Fen knew what it was like to struggle against the darkness, to be alone in the midst of others—even those you could only cling to the memory of loving.

“This is your lifemate? A Dragonseeker?” Lojos shook his head. “You are a very lucky man, Fen. This Lycan hunter you call Zev, the one so badly wounded, with his belly ripped open. I have watched him, and he is healing at a remarkable rate for the extent of his injuries.”

Fen knew they all were listening for every detail. “Lycans regenerate very quickly, which is one of the reasons, when you take them on, you have to know how to properly kill them. They aren’t easy. Zev is an elite fighter, one of the best I’ve ever seen. He was willing to take on the rogue pack alone in order to allow me to get Tatijana out of harm’s way.”

The men looked at one another, secretly amused that a Lycan thought to protect a Carpathian, especially one who was Dragonseeker.

“Obviously he didn’t know what, or who she was,” Fen said.

“You admire this man.” Gregori made it a statement.

“Yes, very much. You don’t get to his position without seeing hundreds, if not thousands of battles with packs. The moment he and Dimitri realized the one leading the rogues was one of the Sange rau, they held off the pack in order to allow me the opportunity to destroy the demon. Zev didn’t hesitate to put himself in a very dangerous situation. He knew he could die, but he didn’t back down.”

The small beetle fit snugly in the knot landed on the floor and grew with alarming speed into the shape of the first two brothers. When he clasped Fen’s forearms in the warrior’s greeting, Fen could see the droplets of scars down the right side of his face, almost like tears, all the way to his jaw. The same strange scars ran up his temple and disappeared into his hairline.

“Bur tule ek?met kuntamak—well met, brother-kin,” the third brother greeted Fen. “It is good you found your lifemate. I have thought often of you over the last centuries, and hoped I would never have to meet you in battle.”

“I felt the same, Tomas,” Fen admitted honestly. “So many of us have been lost to the darkness.”

He took another careful look around. The prince had these three experienced warriors, Gregori, Falcon and Jacques to protect him against an unknown Lycan/Carpathian combination. In his house. Close quarters. Gregori had an inkling of what he could do. There was another somewhere. Someone extraordinary, their ace in the hole. There was one other from his childhood. A little older, only by a decade or so, which was nothing in the years of Carpathians. He’d always been a little odd, but he’d been a source of vast knowledge. Andre. Some called him the ghost. He often passed through, wiped out any vampires in an area and was never seen or heard from. But he left his mark, and Fen had tried to keep track of him. He’d heard that he often was near the triplets, banding to hold on in order to keep the darkness at bay.

The Carpathians had prepared for a war. They’d spent the last two years of peacetime getting ready for anything that might threaten them as a species. He was just seeing the tip of the iceberg.

“Fen.” Mikhail’s cool voice brought him back to the business at hand. “The Carpathian people know the difference between a Carpathian and a vampire. You are no threat to us. In fact, your added speed and abilities as a Lycan only serve to aid our cause.”