Midnight Rising by Lara Adrian

Dylan Alexander is on vacation in Europe when she finds the cave. Her mother was supposed to have gone on the vacation with her friends, but she wasn't feeling well, so Dylan took her place. Since she is about 25 years younger than the other women, she walks ahead, looking for anything of interest.

Also along the path is the ghost of a woman who Dylan doesn't want to acknolwedge seeing. This isn't the first ghost she has seen, but this is one of the first that has spoken to her. The woman says, Help him, Save him. Dyland doesn't know who the "he" the woman is speaking of is, but she spots a crack in the wall of the cliff.

When she finds the cave, she goes directly inside and finds human bones scattered on the floor and what looks to be an open sarcophagus. Dylan is a reporter, but her first impulse is to get out of there. She is seen, however, by the Cave's only occupant, the Breed warrior, Rio. Rio and his fellow breed had been tracking the occupant of the cave, and to erase any sign of its existence, he was left behind with enough C4 and a detonator to blow the entire thing up.

But Rio delayed, having been hurt physically by an explosion that left him permanently scarred, and emotionally by the knowledge that the woman he loved had betrayed him and his fellow warriors to the people behind the explosion. She was responsible for his maiming, if indirectly, but he directs his anger and self-loathing inward, at himself. He was supposed to blow up the cave and leave, but he was feeling to angry with himself to hunt or take care of himself, so he let it go. Now, he tries to go through with his mission, only to realize he's screwed up the wires, and can't go through with it in his present weakened condition.

Dylan, meanwhile, is out for dinner with her mother's friends, and hears strange reports of a demon that attacked a man and drank some of his blood before running off. The man was alive and otherwise okay, but the only witness has since died. She immediately latches on to this and decides to make it into a story for her tabloid reporter boss, with the "Demon" roaming the countryside living in the cave. She goes back in the morning and nearly trips over Rio in the cave, but when she blinks, he is gone. She looks for him, but cannot find him. He tries to warn her away, but the flash of her camera gives him flashbacks to the explosion and makes him run. So, she takes her pictures and leaves. But Rio cannot allow those pictures to be made public, especially not of the pattern on the wall. He must track her down and get the camera back and make her and the pictures disappear. After he destroys the cave for good, which he does.

Rio soon leaves with her mother's friends for Prague, but is scared to see Rio, who she thinks of as a tramp who was living in the cave, at the train station looking for her. She has already e-mailed the pictures to several people, including her boss at the paper, and is startled and scared to realize that the markings on the wall resemble the strange birthmark at the back of her neck, which she was born with. She is even more upset when she gets an e-mail from her boss wanting her to go back and take more pictures of the cave, with a professional photographer. She submits with ill grace, agreeing to meet the photographer, and bids goodbye to her mother's friends, saying she will meet them back in America later in the week.

Before she can return to Jicin, the town where she discovered the cave, she is kidnapped by Rio, who takes her camera and laptop away from her, and takes her to Berlin so she can have her memory wiped. There, they discover she has passed her photos on, and Rio contacts his former comrades to get their help. His mission to wipe her memory is complicated by the discovery (actually, her revealing to him) of her birthmark. Rio is stunned, realizing she is a Breedmate, and thus cannot be casually disposed of by wiping her memory.

Since Breedmates, women who can mate and bear children to Breed warriors, are so rare, he must let her know of her ancestry and give her as much information as possible before letting her decide whether or not to go back to her former life and have her memory wiped, or be a Breedmate and be protected by the Breed, never to have contact with her family, friends, or job again. It's a hard choice, but one she will have to make, no matter what happens.

Dylan has begun feeling an attraction to Rio, despite the fact that he kidnapped her, and when he starts sharing information about the Breed with her, she thinks he is a madman. But even she cannot deny her own senses, and when she starts to believe in what he is saying, she finds herself falling for him all the faster. But Rio cannot believe that any woman would want him, much less someone so beautiful and accomplished as Dylan.

But as the Breed struggle to find the Ancient that was once imprisoned in the cave, and Dylan gives in to her attraction for Rio, while Rio fights against making her his, Dylan discovers that her mother's cancer has returned, and that she is dying. How can Rio ask her to choose between family and the Breed when her mother will not long survive? And when Dylan is imperiled by a man who has been kidnapping breedmates and forcing them to breed with the Ancient to build his own army of first-generation Breed, will Rio and his Breed Companions be able to save her?

This is a book where I found the romance more interesting than the story itself. How Rio and Dylan move from kidnapper and kidnapped to lovers and in love was interesting and made for compelling reading. The outside story of the ancient and the other kidnapped Breedmates, not so much. But I also realize that the external story drove the Romance along. When Dylan's mother sacrifices herself for her daughter, I was a little shocked, and even though it was one way for the writer to remove Dylan's dying mother so that it would be easier for Dylan to accept the limitations that come with being a Breedmate, it left a feeling of distaste for me in my mouth.

This is a series that doesn't appeal to me strongly enough to buy it, although the premise of the Breed (vampires created when extraterrestrial vampires mated with human women) is interesting, I don't find the stories compelling enough to buy the books, nor, after I have read them, would I read them again or want to keep them. So getting these from the library is perfect for me.