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Suzanne closed her eyes and inhaled. When she opened them, she met Damian’s swirling gaze. “Please. I just want to go home.”
Damian let out a long breath of air. “All right. Let’s go.”
“You’re welcome to come with us,” Rex said. “Viveca and I have an auto.”
“No thanks,” Damian said. “Suzanne and I will walk.”
“Thank you for coming,” she said to Rex and Viveca. “Both of you.” She motioned to Damian. “Don’t you want to—”
“No,” he said, taking her hand. “Let’s go.”
51
“Thank God!” Isabella pulled Suzanne into a hug when she and Damian returned to the castle. “Rex came by and told us you were okay.”
“Aye, you both gave us quite a scare,” Dougal said, embracing his son. “And you have a visitor.” He pulled Damian into the living parlor.
Suzanne followed. Seated on the wingback chairs were a man and a woman.
“Meet Rohricht Telikov and his wife, Elena,” Dougal said.
The man rose to greet him.
Damian’s heart jumped. A face gazed at him. A striking face.
A familiar face.
52
Rohricht pulled Damian into a deep hug. “I would never have believed it,” he said.
Damian broke away, confused. When he inhaled, he noticed a faint smoky aroma, like nutmeg laced with patchouli.
“What is that?” he asked. “That scent? It’s…” He inhaled again. He felt as though he couldn’t get enough of it.
“It’s the scent of mates,” Rohricht said. “It’s the scent of Elena and me. It’s coming from you as well. You and your lady there.” He motioned to Suzanne. “You can’t smell it on yourself, but any other wolf can smell it on you. And on your mate. It’s a warning to others that she’s been marked.”
“You’re a—”
“Yes, I’m like you. I’m your uncle.”
“My uncle?”
“Your father was my older brother, Aleksander. We called him Sasha.”
“But how?”
“DNA testing can prove it easily enough, boy. But that would only be for your benefit. Your scent is enough for me. That and the fact that you’re a dead ringer for Sasha. Except the eyes. They must have come from your mother.”
“Damian?” Suzanne took his hand.
“Sit, lad,” Dougal said. “It’s a miracle, it is. Rohricht here came upon one of our posts.”
Damian sat down on a sofa and pulled Suzanne down beside him. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything,” Dougal said. “Just listen.”
He nodded, and Rohricht began to speak.
“We’re an ancient race of wolf shifters, known in legend as Voldlak. It comes from the Russian word volkodlak.”
“You were right, Da,” Damian said.
Dougal grinned.
“Most of us are in Russia, though a few have scattered here and there.”
“So I’m Russian, then?”
“Half. Your mother was Scottish.”
“Can you tell me anything about her?”
“Yes, but not much. Sasha came to Scotland thirty odd years ago. He was young at the time, not more than nineteen, and he didn’t expect to find his mate so soon. Most of us don’t mate until we’re in our thirties, but it can happen.”
“Mate? You mentioned that before. What does it mean, exactly?”
“Well, boy, let me ask you this. When you met your lady, there, did you know right away that she was yours?”
“Aye.”
“That’s what it means. We, like the wolves of the wild, mate for life. There is only one female for each male, and the male knows when he finds her. By her scent.
“We were plentiful millennia ago. Many different types of people inhabited the planet. But as humans propagated, the old races died out. We didn’t, but we evolved. Our males began to take human women as mates, and the females they bore were human, not wolf.”
“Then there aren’t any—”
“There aren’t any female shifters in our clans. No. All males take human mates now. Only in recent years have we learned the scientific reason for this. It seems the gene for shifting is carried on the Y chromosome. Our scientists and philosophers think we evolved in this way to preserve our race among the influx of humans. There were few wolf women, but plenty of human ones.”
“But only one for each of us?”
“Yes.”
“Then if the wolf gene is carried on the Y chromosome, any male children I father will be wolves.”
“Yes. And females will be human.”
“So we are human, then? Just with a different gene?”
“Our DNA is indistinguishable, but there are a few differences. For one, we can only impregnate our true mates.”
Damian scoffed. “Then all those years of condoms?”
“Were unnecessary. At least for contraception. But we are susceptible to most human diseases, so you were smart to use them.”
“Uh, Damian,” Suzanne said, “just how many years and how many condoms were there?”
“Not many, mo leannan. And none that mattered.”
“He speaks the truth,” Rohricht said. “When a wolf finds his mate, the feelings are indescribable.”
“The vampire said something about my bite being lethal,” Damian said.
“Our bite, when we’re in wolf form, is lethal. But only to vampires. Not to humans and not to other wolves. The legend says it can kill without breaking the skin, but I’ve not heard of that actually happening. Our saliva does burn vampire skin, though, and if it gets into their blood stream, it will result in a nasty infection, which can end in death, but doesn’t always.”
