Gregori swore eloquently and repeatedly in four languages. What Savannah needed was to be locked away safely, spirited out of this state—better yet, out of the country. The entire Peter Sanders affair was going to be a media circus. The police would already be scouring the city for her. Damn it to hell.

Without answering her, Gregori wrapped an arm around her waist and scooped her up. He went skyward, his normally tranquil thoughts in chaos, a jumble of unfamiliar emotions and a quicksand of indecision. He was always in total control. With his immense power, he had no other choice. But Savannah was turning him inside out. No, he couldn’t allow this. He wouldn’t. He didn’t care if she cried. If her enormous, magnificent eyes were sad and haunted. If her beautiful, perfect mouth drooped. She was not going to sway him from his path. His way was safe and responsible. Safety was the first issue, not her haunting eyes or her soft, satin mouth. Or her terrible sorrow.

He carried her through the night sky, his thoughts roiling and volcanic, spinning around and around in his head until he thought he might go mad. He knew what he had to do. What was wrong with him that he would allow himself to even consider such foolishness? It was too dangerous, too reckless. If the vampire heading the hunt for her was still persisting in his plan, what better chance to spring a trap than when she returned to deal with Peter’s funeral?

Savannah was concentrating on the treetops below them. Nowhere could she detect evidence of a dwelling. She felt empty and cold inside. Gregori was everything he had ever been called. Unfeeling. Hard. Cold. Without emotions. Her life was going to be endless hell. He could not possibly grow to love her. He didn’t even really want her. He only wanted someone to control. Someone he could use for sex. She swallowed the bile rising in her throat. She was certainly that person.

Each time he touched her or looked at her with his mesmerizing silver eyes, her body went berserk.

Oh, Peter. She had failed to keep him safe, had led a vampire, the scourge of her kind, directly to him. Now, without Gregori’s consent, she could not even provide a decent burial for him. She wanted to feel anger—hatred, even—but all she could manage was emptiness. She had known, all those years ago when she had turned to find Gregori in her bedroom, that she was lost for all eternity.

Chapter Six

Savannah never actually saw the outside of the lair. One moment they were soaring through the sky, the next they were plummeting to earth. She closed her eyes as her stomach rolled, and by the time she could pry her lashes up, Gregori was striding into a rock dwelling. The interior walls were thick and cool, smooth to the touch as if they had been polished. The ceiling was high and of the same polished rock as the walls and floor. Gregori had carved the lair from the mountain itself, a miracle of construction. There were three rooms that she could see, and Savannah was certain there was a hidden chamber below the earth, a bolt hole in case they were in deadly peril.

The moment Gregori set her feet on the rock floor, she moved away from him, a quick, feminine retreat. She refused to look at him, keeping her head bent so that she would not have to meet his gaze. She walked slowly through the unusual structure. The furniture looked comfortable, even cozy. “So this is to be my prison?” she said unemotionally.

Gregori didn’t answer. There was no expression on his face, although the lines around his eyes and mouth seemed etched a little deeper than usual. His silver eyes were pale, reflecting images around him, not his own inner thoughts. His hand went to the back of his neck to massage aching muscles tiredly. Then he left the sitting room on silent feet. Glided. Like a panther. In spite of her determination not to, Savannah found herself watching him covertly behind her lashes. There was something mesmerizing about the way he moved. Muscles rippling, powerful, sensuous. She couldn’t keep her wayward eyes from following his every movement, or her wayward heart from missing a beat when she saw his hand massaging his neck.

Gregori sat on the edge of the bed, certain she was not paying him any attention. She wanted to be as far from him as possible. But even from a great distance, he was a shadow in her mind. He could read her every thought of him. None of it was good, and he couldn’t blame her. He dropped his face into his hands. He was the monster she had named him. She feared him. She would always hate her destiny, always wish the fates had been kinder. And who knew? Maybe they would have been. After all, he had manipulated her future from the moment of her conception. She was light to his darkness, compassion to his cruelty. She could never love such a brutal beast as he. He had taken what was not his, had tampered with nature and taken her for his own.

Savannah’s heart turned over when she caught sight of him sitting on the edge of the bed, the picture of utter dejection. Gregori. He was confidence itself. Complete authority. An emotionless robot uncaring that he had taken her life from her forever. What she thought or felt didn’t matter to him. She had named him monster, heartless. A brutal barbarian. Every name she could think of had danced in her head as they had flown through the air to their destination. She had done it deliberately so that he could read what she thought of him, so that he wouldn’t know she craved his touch even as she despised his ways.

But it tore at her, the way he sat so alone. Gregori, who had always been alone. She backed up until the coolness of the rock wall was at her back, her blue eyes thoughtful as she watched him. He was giving her privacy, if it could be called that, even withdrawing from her mind. She bit her lower lip, then winced at the slight discomfort and the memory it brought with it. She realized she was familiar with his touch, so gentle in her mind. First he had come to her as the wolf, and later, in the terrible moments when her loneliness had been too painful to bear, it had been Gregori’s touch that had eased her. Strange, she had never considered that, never once thought whyshe had felt comforted.

Gregori had offered her free exploration of his mind. She knew he was capable of protecting himself, of covering his emotions and memories in layers if he chose, so that she would see only the parts he wished to share with her. She doubted many Carpathians could do such a thing with their lifemate, but Gregori could. Gregori could do anything.

But she was Savannah Dubrinsky. Daughter of Mikhail and Raven. Their blood flowed in her veins, as did Gregori’s. She had her own power, didn’t she? Up to now she had been a child running from herself, from her life with a man of such power. But if her life was intertwined with Gregori’s, she had better grow up fast and find out just what she was up against. Mikhail and Raven had raised her to believe in herself.

She took a deep breath and allowed her mind to merge fully with Gregori’s. Her touch was feather-light, delicate, a mere shadow, soft in his mind. Even so, had he not been so preoccupied with his own thoughts, she knew he would have felt her presence. She stayed quiet and simply became a sponge.

He believed himself a demon. He believed his soul was black, beyond real redemption. He was absolute in his belief that he had gotten her through his own manipulations, rather than through true chemistry. He had been so close to turning vampire that he had wagered his very soul on tampering with what was not his to do. He had touched the child in Raven’s womb, supplied it with blood, even conversed with it. Savannah had a dim memory of his light reaching her when she was in pain, wanting to let go along with the rush of blood from her mother’s body. Gregori had prevented her from doing so.