She stepped away from him, her chin rising. “I guess there’s a lot you haven’t told me. Am I expected to have a child? A girl? What are the odds that my child will live?”
He reached out, framing her face in his large hands. “I do not want you for a breeder for my race, piccola. I want you for myself. I do not know the odds that our child will survive. Like you, I can only pray. We will have to cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“So we have a girl, she survives her first year and grows up. What happens then?” Her sapphire eyes were steady on his golden ones.
“All female children are claimed on their eighteenth birthdays. The males come from all over to meet the girl. If the chemistry is right, she is claimed by the male.”
“That is barbaric. Like a meat market. She has no chance at living any kind of life for herself.” Alexandria was shocked.
“Carpathian women are raised to know they hold the fate of their lifemate in their hands. It is their birthright, as is bearing the children.”
“No wonder the poor girl ran away. Can you imagine facing a life with that man at such an early age? How old is he? To her he must seem ancient. He’s a man, for heaven’s sake, not a boy. He’s tough and probably cruel, and evidently he knows more about every subject under the sun than anyone alive.”
“How old do you think I am, Alexandria?” Aidan asked softly. “I have lived over eight hundred years now. You are irrevocably bound to me. Is it such a terrible fate?”
For a moment there was silence. Then she was smiling at him. “Ask me again in a hundred years. I’ll tell you then.”
His eyes burned a liquid gold, molten, sexy. “Go home, cara mia. I will finish my work here and join you.”
“I brought the car,” she said. “When my Volkswagen wouldn’t start, I took the little sporty-looking thing that no one ever uses. Stefan said it would be all right.”
“I knew, and you did not hear a complaint. There is nowhere you go and nothing you do that is not known to me. We are one, piccola.” He ruffled her hair as if she was a child because his body was starting to make demands, and a vampire’s remains were but a few yards away. “Drive home, and I will meet you there.”
As he walked her to the car, she fit beneath his shoulder, so that his body was sheltering her. Alexandria was ashamed of herself for liking the feeling it gave her. She was determined to hold on to her independence with both hands, especially in light of what he had told her might be the fate of her daughter. She had to be strong enough to stand up to Aidan, if she wanted a daughter who was able to choose her own way. She had the feeling Carpathian males had never caught on to the twentieth-century women’s liberation movement.
Aidan watched the taillights of the little car disappear around the curve leading up to the main road. He shoved a hand through his thick mane of hair and turned to face the mess on the rocks. Several weeks earlier, five vampires had arrived in the area. They had moved across the United States on a killing spree, believing no hunters would follow them so far from their homeland. Still, it was known among their people that Aidan Savage resided in San Francisco. Why had they chosen to come here, to take such a risk? Was it because Gregori’s woman was coming? But that was months away. What then? What had drawn the vampires to one of the few places in the United States where a true hunter resided?
He walked across the sand, his strides long and fast. Had they sensed Alexandria’s presence when he had not? Was something else drawing them to San Francisco? He knew several renegades had chosen to go to New Orleans because the city had such a reputation for debauchery, for being the murder capital of the United States. Los Angeles, too, drew them because its frequent violence would hide their handiwork. He hunted there, though, when he recognized their doings.