Tempest closed her eyes tiredly, rubbing her suddenly pounding forehead. “So I guess if I stay with Darius- and I don’t seem to have too many other choices-I might or might never have children. I never really considered I’d have the whole fairy tale.”
“Darius is giving up his life for you,” Syndil pointed out gently. “When the sun is high, members of our race are vulnerable. Even Darius. In the ground, few could harm us, but while he sleeps the sleep of mortals, he cannot go to ground. Anyone who found his resting place could easily kill him. As time goes on, and he loses more and more rejuvenating sleep, his great strength will weaken substantially.”
“What can I do to remedy the situation? I don’t want this. I never asked him for this. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to him because he was trying to take care of me. It’s insane for him to neglect his own needs because he’s watching over me.” Tempest couldn’t think beyond that. Everything else was far too overwhelming. “Has an ordinary human woman ever before become a lifemate to one of your kind? Surely I can’t be the only one. There must be someone who knows what to do. I can’t have Darius endangering himself.” The idea of some assassin or vampire stumbling upon Darius while he was vulnerable was frightening.
Desari tightened her hold on Tempest’s hand. “Julian told me his brother’s lifemate was human.”
Tempest jerked her hand away, unwilling for Desari to feel her elevated pulse. Desari had used the past tense. “She’s dead?”
“No! Oh, no, she is one of us now. She is like we are.” Desari glanced at Syndil, well aware Darius would not thank them for imparting this information and worrying Tempest.
Syndil hugged Tempest gently. “I am going to fix you more vegetable broth. You are quite pale.”
Tempest shook her head, answering almost absently, her mind clearly somewhere else. “I’m not hungry. Thanks, though, Syndil. What do you mean, she is like you now? How is that possible?”
“Darius can convert you,” Desari admitted carefully. “He has said he will not, that he would never take the chance of something going wrong. He has made up his mind to live as a human until your death. Then he will go with you.”
Tempest stood up, scattering the leopards, pacing restlessly. “How is it done? How would he convert me?”
“He must make three complete blood exchanges with you. It is obvious he has made at least one, perhaps even two.” Desari watched her pacing, nervous that she had told her things Darius had purposely kept to himself. “But Darius will not even consider the idea. He feels it is far too risky, as only a couple of women have survived such conversions… intact.”
Tempest stiffened. “Exchanged blood. He has taken my blood. What is an exchange?”
There was a small, telling silence. And suddenly she didn’t want anyone to say anything; the knowledge was already seeping slowly into her pores, her brain. Tempest pressed her hand to her mouth. The idea was so frightening, she pushed it out of her head in an attempt to understand what the women were telling her. “That’s why I see things and hear things so differently,” she mused aloud, looking to them for confirmation.
“And why you are having trouble eating human food.”
There was another silence while Tempest digested what they were saying. Her mind worked at it from all angels. “So if he converted me, I would have to have blood.”
Syndil stroked a light, soothing hand down the length of her hair. “Yes, Rusti, you would be like us in every way. You would have to sleep our sleep, stay out of the sun. You would be as vulnerable and as powerful as we are. But Darius refuses to take the chance. He has made up his mind to keep the risk all his own.” She said this softly, gently, her voice a beautiful blend of soothing, comforting notes, yet it didn’t help.
The sides of the trailer were suddenly closing in on Tempest, suffocating her, crushing her as the mountain had done. Tempest pushed herself away from the two women and stumbled toward the door. She had to breathe; she needed air. She flung herself out of the bus, wanting to run into the night, run to freedom.
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