Dark Curse, A Carpathian Novel by Christine Feehan

Lara Calladine is of the Dragonseeker line of the Carpathian race. But she also carries the blood of mages in her body. When she was young, her mother and father were captured by her grandfather, Xavier, and tortured and drunk from for the old man's amusement. The treatment killed her mother, and drove her father insane. Xavier took over her father's body and used it to perform horrible deeds to both Lara and other people.

The only thing that kept Lara sane through all of this was her two aunts, who had been transformed into Dragons by Xavier's magic and kept imprisoned within the ice. They mind-spoke with Lara, telling her stories of her people, training her to use the magic she was born with and giving her someone to turn to when Xavier or her father, Razvan, beat or brutalized her. When she was eight, though, her aunts finally helped her to flee the caverns of ice, far away from her father and grandfather.

Now, she has returned, trying to find the caverns she fled from as a child. With two male human friends of hers, she finds the cavern, but is attacked by trees that turn into snakes and bite one of her friends, injecting him with tiny parasites that fill his blood. She helps him as much as she can, but they return to town to get more help for her friend, where she meets Nicolas De La Cruz, a Carpathian Hunter who is almost ready to turn vampire. But when he attempts to drink Lara's blood, he realizes that she is his lifemate, and although she reacts very badly to his attack, he becomes determined to help her, and to have her obey his dictates.

Lara can't believe his arrogance, but reluctantly agrees to have him help when he summons Mikhail, the Carpathian Prince. When the situation is beyond his help, they both summon Gregori, the Carpathians' greatest healer. But his silver eyes bring back bad memories to Lara, and she nearly attacks him when she gets a glimpse of his eyes. Nicolas helps subdue her and takes her to a cavern of his people where she can relax while Gregori heals her friend.

But when Nicolas won't let her go, and uses his much-greater strength to make her obey him, Lara has no choice but to stay with him. She then sttempts to take her life back in the only way possible for her: suicide, and nearly succeeds. Nicolas realizes how wrong he has been, and pleads with her to come back to him while feeding her his blood. But in her suicide attempt, her soul has been drawn into her own past, and to bring her back, Nicolas must follow her and suffer along with her younger self to bring her back to her present body.

What he learns in her past enrages him for what she has suffered, and leads him to a greater understanding of the woman he is coming to love deeply. He can ease the scars she carries on her body, but can he win her love when all he has done so far is hurt her even more? Now that he finally realizes why she hates being bitten and fed from so much and why the sight of silver eyes upsets her, Nicolas must help Lara seek resolution from her past, and to save her aunts from Xavier's living death.

But first, Lara must help the Carpathians discover what is causing their women to miscarry and their children to die. And to do that, she needs the help of her aunt, Natalya, another scion of the Dragonseeker line who thinks she holds no power as a mage. But can Lara help Natalya to claim her mage power even as they fight against the Dreadful creations that Xavier unleashed? And later, can the two of them and their lifemates defeat Xavier's traps and creations to rescue Lara's aunts from their frozen hell and learn the truth about her father, Razvan?

This was an interesting entry into the Carpathians series. Lara is part Carpathian, but has strong mage abilities. To survive, she relied less on her Carpathian abilities and more on those from her mage ancestry, to the point at which we are introduced to her in the story, she seems to have almost forgotten about her powers as a Carpathian.

On the contrary, Nicolas is more of the typical "Alpha Male as bastard" type heroine. He thinks he alone knows best and pushes Lara around in a typical Alpha male fashion. It's obvious he won't beat her or mistreat her, but he thinks that he alone should run their relationship and make the decisions. And he does love her, but his arrogance and unwillingness to listen to her made me want to slap him silly. Because he's so much larger and stronger than Lara, and he has some mage powers in the bargain, it seems that he holds all the cards and therefore has all the power.

This realization forces Lara to try and kill herself rather than be made prisoner to his will. When he first expresses remorse and regret for what he did to her and how he treated her, I didn't believe him, even though the shock of realizing the woman you were trying to protect and keep safe would kill herself rather than stay with him had to be immense. No, it was only afterwards, when Nicolas had to experience some small part of the hell that Lara grew up in, and was unable to use his powers to shield her in her memories that I started to forgive him a little.

Realizing that he, with all his powers and arrogance, was unable to save her from her own childhood memories was the kind of humbling experience his character needed to pull his head out of his asshole. And the actions of Lara in saving two female Carpathians from Xavier's extremeophile creations designed to cause them to abort their children gave her a power that all of those powerful male hunter Carpathians lacked.

In short, their power levels were equalized and they began to work together rather than at cross-purposes, which eventually allowed them to meet and love each other as equals, something which is desperately needed in these sorts of stories. It can be hard to read when one person in a relationship has all the power and dominates. It's an unequal relationship That is the opposite of romance instead of its fulfillment. Partners can be strong in different areas, but they must have narly equal strength or there is no partnership, just a borderline abusive relationship.

In the end, I did come to like the book, but the starting part is hard to read, and Nicolas had a hard row to hoe to get me to feel anything positive for him. It is not a book I'll want to read over and over to relive the romance, but I was glad to have read it. I won't recommend this one, but I won't steer people away from it, either.