We will talk about the weave of spirits when we’re alone.
He marveled at her ability to sound so sweet when she was laying down the law. There was a note of absolute steel in her musical voice. The sound of it made him want to smile. He was alpha, he’d been recognized as alpha even as a child. Few in authority ever stood up to him, but here was a little slip of a woman, with porcelain skin and enormous green eyes, giving him the look from under feathery lashes that said she meant business.
“Zev. I need to know,” Fen insisted. “What exactly did they say to you?”
“I thought you said the conversation with the ancients was meant to be private,” Zev countered.
Do you know what Dark Blood means? he asked Branislava. He would much rather she deliver bad news to him than Fen, if it was bad. The ancients had welcomed him, not rejected him. If being a Dark Blood was bad, surely they wouldn’t have called him family.
She gave the slightest shake of her head. I heard Xavier speak of hunting a Dark Blood, but as far as I know, he never found one and I had no idea what it was.
“Damn it, Zev, do you have to be so stubborn?” Fen demanded. “We’re your brothers. We’re mixed blood, the same as you are. We’re under that same death sentence the Lycans dole out whenever they find one of us. Do you really think we’d suddenly go the other way and kill you over something you and the ancients talked about?”
“He’s swearing at me,” Zev pointed out to Dimitri with a little grin. He would have laughed but it would hurt more.
“Yeah, he does that sometimes. He thinks it’s okay now because you’re his little brother,” Dimitri said, with an answering grin. He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s best to ignore him. Swearing makes him believe he’ll intimidate us into doing whatever he wants us to do.”
Zev nodded. “I see. I suppose we have to let him think he’s bossing us around.”
“If we don’t, he sulks,” Dimitri said. “Just answer him so he doesn’t go ballistic on us. I’m heading out in a few minutes to go hunting with Skyler. We’ve got our own wolves.” He turned around and lifted his shirt to show the tattoo of two wolves staring back at Zev. “We’re learning to hunt vampire with them. It’s a lot more fun than listening to big brother give lectures.”
“Nice,” Zev said. “I agree. I’d rather be doing anything than getting a lecture from Fen.”
“Keep it up you two clowns. Those wolves of yours can’t protect you from me, Dimitri, and you’re going to be healed sooner or later, Zev,” Fen threatened.
“It’s going to be sooner,” Zev said. “I’ll let Mikhail take his shot at this and see what he can do. I can’t very well leave diplomacy to you.” He counted his heartbeats. Five of them. “The ancients called me Dark Blood.” He frowned. “It didn’t make sense to me. They said I was of mixed blood now, but I was Dark Blood. I tried to find out what they meant, but they seemed to believe I would know.”
Fen and Dimitri exchanged a long look. “I don’t understand. Dark Blood is a bloodline. Like Dragonseeker. Like Dubrinsky. Names change but the bloodline remains the same. Dark Blood is the oldest lineage we have, and there are no more. Our last lifemated couple was lost to us centuries ago. They had a baby with them, and when the prince heard of their death, he sent out warriors to try to find the baby, a little girl, but they came to the conclusion she was killed by the vampire who slaughtered her parents,” Fen explained.
“What else did they tell you?” Dimitri asked.
“That my grandmother became mixed blood and when her pack found out, they killed her. She had a daughter, a baby, at the time. My grandfather took the baby and disappeared, went to another pack, and that child, my mother, was raised Lycan. I know that she died in childbirth.”
“The only way your grandmother could have been mixed blood would be if she was Carpathian and she mated with a Lycan. There would be no chance of her becoming Sange rau. Women don’t become vampires,” Fen said.
“So his grandmother could have been the child of the last of the Dark Bloods, thought to have been killed when her parents were,” Dimitri said. “I remember that time. It was long ago, and we mourned the loss of that couple. They were—extraordinary.”
“He was a warrior beyond what any of us had known,” Fen added. “Everyone looked up to him. She was just as strong. They were often referred to as ‘strong heart’ or ‘heart of a warrior.’ When we studied battle techniques, it was always their techniques, their strategies.”