The woman leaned closer, her lips brushing against his. His heart stuttered. She barely touched him, featherlight, but it was the most intimate sensation he’d ever experienced. Her mouth was exquisite. Perfection. A fantasy. Her lips moved over his again, soft and warm, melting into him. She breathed into his mouth, a soft airy breath of clean, fresh air. Once again he tasted her. Cinnamon. Spice. Honey.

Breathe, Zev. You are both Lycan and Carpathian and you can breathe anywhere when you choose. Just breathe.

He was not Sange rau.

No, not Sange rau, you are Hän ku pesäk kaikak. You are a guardian.

The breath she had exchanged with him continued to move through his body. He could almost track its progress as if that precious air was a stream of white finding its way through a maze until it filled his lungs. He actually felt her breath enter his lungs, inflating them.

I’m not dreaming, am I?

She smiled at him. A man might kill for one of her smiles.

No, Zev, you’re not dreaming. You are in the sacred cave of warriors. Mother Earth called the ancients to witness your rebirth.

He had no idea what she was talking about, but things were beginning to come back to him. Sange rau was a combination of rogue wolf and vampire blood mixed together. Hän ku pesäk kaikak was Lycan and Carpathian blood mixed. He wasn’t certain what or where the sacred cave of warriors was, and he didn’t like the word rebirth.

Why can’t I move?

You are coming to life. You have been locked away from us for some time.

Not from you.

She had been with him while he was locked in that dark place of pain and madness. If there was one thing he knew for absolute certain, she had been there. He couldn’t move on, because he hadn’t been able to leave her.

He remembered that voice, soft and pleading. Stay. Stay with me. Her voice had locked them both in a sea of agony that seemed endless.

Not endless. You are awakening.

He might be waking, but the pain was still there. He took a moment to let himself absorb it. She was correct, the pain was subsiding to a tolerable level, but the heat surrounding him was burning his body. Without the air she’d given him, he would be choking, strangling, desperate.

Think what body temperature you wish. You are Carpathian. Embrace who you are.

Her voice never changed. She didn’t seem impatient with his lack of knowledge. Before, when she was a distance from him, she hadn’t been aloof, she simply waited. Now she felt different, as if she expected something from him.

What the hell? If she said to think about a different body temperature other than the one burning his flesh from his bones, he could give her that. He chose a normal temperature and held that in his mind. She spoke to him without words, telepathically, so she must be able to see he was doing as she asked.

At once, the burning sensation ceased to be. He took a gasping breath. Heat filled his lungs, but there was air as well. He knew her. Only one woman could speak to him as she did. Mind to mind. He knew her now. How could he have ever forgotten who she was?

Branislava.

How had she gotten trapped with him in such a terrible place? He sent up a small prayer of thanks that he hadn’t left her there. She had been the one to whisper to him. Stay. Stay with me. He should have recognized her voice, a soft sweet melody that was forever stamped into his bones.

You recognize me. She smiled at him again and he felt her fingers brush along his jaw and then go up to his forehead, brushing back strands of hair falling into his face.

Her touch brought pleasure, not pain. A small electrical current ran from his forehead down to his belly, tightening his muscles. The current went lower, coiling heat in his groin. He could feel something besides pain, and wouldn’t you know it would be desire?

It seemed absurd to him that he hadn’t known all along whom she was. She was the one woman. The only woman. The woman. He’d known women, of course. He’d lived too long not to. He was a hunter, an elite hunter, and he was never in one place long. He didn’t form attachments. Women didn’t rob him of breath, or put him under spells. He didn’t think about them night and day. Or fantasize. Or want one for his own.

Until her. Branislava. She wasn’t Lycan. She didn’t talk much. She looked like an angel and moved like a temptress. Her voice beckoned like a siren’s call. She had looked at him with those unusual eyes and smiled with that perfect mouth, inciting all sorts of erotic fantasies. When they danced, just that one unforgettable time, her body had fit into his, melted into his, until she was imprinted there for all time, into his skin, into his bones.

Every single rule he’d ever made about women in the long years he had lived had been broken with her. She’d robbed him of breath. Put him under her spell. He thought of her day and night and fantasized far too much. He wanted her in every way possible. Her body. Her heart. Her mind. Her soul. He wanted her all for himself.

How did you get here? In this place?

It alarmed him that he might have somehow dragged her down into that sea of agony because he’d been so enamored with her. Could a man do that? Want a woman so much that when he died, he took her with him? The idea was appalling. He’d lived honorably, at least he’d tried to, and he’d never hurt a woman who hadn’t been a murdering rogue. The idea that he might have taken this woman into hell with him was disturbing on every level.

I chose to come with you, she replied, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to do. Our spirits are woven together. Our fate is entwined.

I don’t understand.

You were dying and there was no other way to save your life. You are precious to us all, a man of honor, of great skill.

Zev frowned. That made no sense. He had no family. He had his pack, but two of his pack members, friends for so many long years, had betrayed and tried to murder him. He was mixed blood now, and few of his kind would accept him.

Us all? he echoed. Who would that be?

Do you hear them calling to you?

Zev stayed very still, tuning his acute hearing to get past the heartbeat of the earth, the flow of water beneath him, reaching for the distant voices. Men’s voices. They seemed to be all around him. Some chanted to him in an ancient language while others throat-chanted as the monks from long ago had done. Each separate word or note vibrated through him, just as the heartbeat of the earth had.

They summoned him just as the earth had. It was time. He couldn’t find any more excuses and it seemed no one was going to let him remain right where he was. He forced himself to open his eyes.

He was underground in a cave. That much was evident immediately. There was heat and humidity surrounding him, although he didn’t feel hot. It was more that he saw it, those bands of heat undulating throughout the immense chamber.