Hello all! I am back in the world of the living! RL has been attacking me from all sides, but (despite my reasons for my literary absence) I apologize profusely for abandoning this story for so long. I am going to make my best effort to finish this story before I go back to school this fall because I am a Nursing student and time is often a luxury that is absent in my life during the semester. Luckily my daughter was nice enough to let me borrow her laptop since mine has decided it would rather vacation at Club HP Tech Support!
I also want to say how much I appreciate the lovely comments that you all have left for me. I just had the opportunity to read them and they gave me the motivation to get back on the bandwagon and write! Sorry this one is so short, but I have another one coming up very soon after (it is more than ½ way done - promise!) I hope you all enjoy!
He could feel the sweat trickle down his back as her pain and agony tore through him. Hadn't it been enough that she had been physically tortured and abused by vile men for more than two thirds of her short life? There were moments when Dimitri had thought he wouldn't live through the horror of her memories, but he had forced himself to feel every one like a million shards of glass in his heart. He felt the tension ease as she relaxed and let the memories slide away into oblivion. Almost immediately he mentally backed away from her; then, like clockwork, he felt her mind slide against his. He felt her heart pouring into him to sooth the pain and rage he had held back while she dealt with her own. Her care and concern for him were palpable, as was her distress at being the cause of his pain. He relaxed and opened his mind to her; he allowed himself to feel the bliss of their hearts and minds beating a synchronous rhythm. He had long since abandoned his efforts to shield her from his pain. It seemed that they were destined to break and heal together, time after time.
Now Skylar faced a new set of torturous memories, ones buried deep within her subconscious mind. They were the memories of unspeakable tortures enacted upon her by her sire, a mage-turned-vampire named Razvan. He was of the Dragonseeker lineage, which meant that Skylar was Dragonseeker as well. Her aunt, Razvan's sister Natalya, was a formidable woman. Dimitri knew that Skylar's dream was to become as strong a mage as Natalya so that she might one day kill her father. She felt that she could prevent him from inflicting the same torture she herself had suffered on any other children Razvan may have fathered.
Dimitri could appreciate her desire for justice, though he knew that he would be the one to someday yank Razvan's undead heart from his chest and incinerate it. The desire do deal out justice for his lifemate was one of the twin candles that burned in his soul and kept him from darkness while he suffered in the absence of his other half. Skylar was the other candle and she burned the brightest inside him. Each time she reached out to him of her own free will was like a tie binding him to her and to this life. Every time he felt the darkness rising in him he held her image in his mind, just as she had been that evening on the balcony. Her grey-blue eyes full of fear and trust renewed his honor and resolve. The feel of her lips moving tentatively against his called him back to life and in those moments he could see the brilliance of the world in color and feel the joy of holding her close at last. He had wanted to take her then and there; just snatch her up against his chest and fly away to the north. It took all of his strength, more even than it took to vanquish the undead, to step away from her. But Prince Mikhail's words rang in his ears; "allow her to come to you whole, healed and of her own free will - it is much more than most of us have given our lifemates." And so, he had left her there with the last of the night's moonlight glinting off her golden hair.
Now he was glad he had done it. Living in the cradle of her mind as she blossomed into a strong and resilient woman was a gift he could never have conceived of. She was unlike any female he had ever known in his youth, when he had still lived in the Carpathian Mountains. His mother had been submissive and had looked to his father in all things. His father had gladly dominated and had never, to Dimitri's knowledge, asked his mother her opinion or preference about anything. In fact, it had been rare for his mother to even leave the house. Dimitri had been sure he had wanted the same thing – a lifemate who would look to him for all things and allow him to see to her every care. He had imagined that she would gladly defer to him; allowing him to make her life perfectly happy and make up for all the pain she had suffered when he could not aid her.
The Christmas gathering had changed him. He realized that he had never seen his mother look with adoration at his father as he had seen Shea Dubrinski look at her lifemate Jaques; nor had his father ever gone to the lengths Prince Mikhail had at Christmas to fulfill his lifemate Raven's wish for a human Christmas party. His mother and father would never have stood together as one to fight evil as Natalya and Vikirnoff had done. Dimitri realized that he wanted those gifts; he wanted Skylar to do more than accept him as her lifemate and bind herself to him for eternity. He wanted her to love him.
