“Damn it, Zev, do you have to be so stubborn?” Fen demanded. “We’re your brothers. We’re mixed blood, the same as you are. We’re under that same death sentence the Lycans dole out whenever they find one of us. Do you really think we’d suddenly go the other way and kill you over something you and the ancients talked about?”

“He’s swearing at me,” Zev pointed out to Dimitri with a little grin. He would have laughed but it would hurt more.

“Yeah, he does that sometimes. He thinks it’s okay now because you’re his little brother,” Dimitri said, with an answering grin. He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s best to ignore him. Swearing makes him believe he’ll intimidate us into doing whatever he wants us to do.”

Zev nodded. “I see. I suppose we have to let him think he’s bossing us around.”

“If we don’t, he sulks,” Dimitri said. “Just answer him so he doesn’t go ballistic on us. I’m heading out in a few minutes to go hunting with Skyler. We’ve got our own wolves.” He turned around and lifted his shirt to show the tattoo of two wolves staring back at Zev. “We’re learning to hunt vampire with them. It’s a lot more fun than listening to big brother give lectures.”

“Nice,” Zev said. “I agree. I’d rather be doing anything than getting a lecture from Fen.”

“Keep it up you two clowns. Those wolves of yours can’t protect you from me, Dimitri, and you’re going to be healed sooner or later, Zev,” Fen threatened.

“It’s going to be sooner,” Zev said. “I’ll let Mikhail take his shot at this and see what he can do. I can’t very well leave diplomacy to you.” He counted his heartbeats. Five of them. “The ancients called me Dark Blood.” He frowned. “It didn’t make sense to me. They said I was of mixed blood now, but I was Dark Blood. I tried to find out what they meant, but they seemed to believe I would know.”

Fen and Dimitri exchanged a long look. “I don’t understand. Dark Blood is a bloodline. Like Dragonseeker. Like Dubrinsky. Names change but the bloodline remains the same. Dark Blood is the oldest lineage we have, and there are no more. Our last lifemated couple was lost to us centuries ago. They had a baby with them, and when the prince heard of their death, he sent out warriors to try to find the baby, a little girl, but they came to the conclusion she was killed by the vampire who slaughtered her parents,” Fen explained.

“What else did they tell you?” Dimitri asked.

“That my grandmother became mixed blood and when her pack found out, they killed her. She had a daughter, a baby, at the time. My grandfather took the baby and disappeared, went to another pack, and that child, my mother, was raised Lycan. I know that she died in childbirth.”

“The only way your grandmother could have been mixed blood would be if she was Carpathian and she mated with a Lycan. There would be no chance of her becoming Sange rau. Women don’t become vampires,” Fen said.

“So his grandmother could have been the child of the last of the Dark Bloods, thought to have been killed when her parents were,” Dimitri said. “I remember that time. It was long ago, and we mourned the loss of that couple. They were—extraordinary.”

“He was a warrior beyond what any of us had known,” Fen added. “Everyone looked up to him. She was just as strong. They were often referred to as ‘strong heart’ or ‘heart of a warrior.’ When we studied battle techniques, it was always their techniques, their strategies.”

“They became legend,” Dimitri said. “No one could figure out how a vampire could have killed them.”

“It must have been during the time the Lycans were being decimated by the Sange rau,” Zev ventured. “It would have to be for the Lycans to murder my grandmother. How else would they have even known about mixed blood?”

“So if a Lycan family found a baby during that time . . .”

“Or anytime,” Zev clarified. “Lycans are good people. If they found a baby all alone, especially if they could see evidence that the parents were killed by the Sange rau they would have raised the child as their own. They could have even believed she was Lycan. She wouldn’t know about lifemates, and if a Lycan claimed her and she fell in love with him . . .” He stopped. “Could that happen?”

Dimitri nodded. “Of course.” He looked to his brother for confirmation. Fen nodded, and Dimitri continued. “It isn’t the same, the all-consuming focus and love we have for our lifemates, but some women have found happiness with a man outside of our society.”

“If Lycans had stumbled across this child, took her in and raised her as Lycan,” Fen said, his voice gathering excitement, “then she wouldn’t have ever known why she was different. She might not even notice the difference. When she wanted to be wolf, she could shift, and she might think that’s what her family did.”

Zev nodded. “It was centuries ago and they didn’t discuss the how or why of things back then. They knew nothing of bloodlines or DNA. How she became a mixed blood is anyone’s guess, but if her parents were so skilled in combat, she probably was, too. She most likely fought and hunted alongside her husband. When wounded, he gave her blood.”

He, too, was beginning to believe in the possibility of solving the mystery. Some of the ancient warriors in the sacred chamber had been of the Dark Blood lineage and had recognized him. They knew the history of his grandmother, and that meant that somehow she’d made her way back to them.

“She gave birth to a daughter,” Fen said. “And that daughter was your mother.”

“Were there any other children? Did you have uncles? Aunts?” Dimitri asked, hope in his voice.

“My father never mentioned any other, but he was a secretive man. I doubt that he knew anything of my mother’s family. I asked him and he just shrugged and said my mother didn’t talk about them—ever.” Zev shrugged. “I honestly thought maybe her family had gone rogue and my father and mother had been too ashamed to talk about them.”

“If you really are a Dark Blood,” Fen said, “Mikhail needs to know.”

“It would explain why Branislava is his lifemate,” Dimitri added. “His blood called to hers. Her soul is the other half of his.”

At least, in the Carpathian world, he might be able to offer her something besides the detested mixed blood his people viewed him as.