Dark Gold by Christine Feehan is the third novel in her continuing Dark series.

This is the story of one of the golden twins, the blond Carpathians who are unusual from the rest of their race by their blond hair.  Specifically this is Aidan Savage’s story.

Aidan is one of the Carpathians who chose to move away from their home country for a life in the USA.  Living in San Francisco he has yet to find his lifemate and knows that he is close to changing.

Surrounding himself with a mortal family of workers he has survived longer than other Carpathians and when he faces Alexandria Houton on a deserted beach with her brother he sees in colour for the first time in centuries, the sign that he has found his lifemate.  But Aidan does not realise what it is he is seeing and believes that Alex is a vampire preying on the young child.  Attacking her to save the child he realises too late that she is not a vampire and that only a transfusion of his blood can save her life, even as it turns her into a Carpathian.  Even though the risk to Alex’s life is great, Aidan knows that he must take that risk for if she dies his own life will be lost when he either faces the sun or turns vampire at the loss of his life mate.

Alexandria and her brother have lived a normal life in San Francisco.  Unknown to them a Carpathian who has turned vampire is preying on the women of the city…and Alex is the next victim.  But the vampire does not want to kill Alex; instead he wants her to join him in his dark realm.  But Alex will not allow anything to harm herself and her younger brother Joshua who is in her charge.  She will face the vampire and protect her brother until her last breath is drawn.  But she will no longer need to face the challenge alone as she finds herself drawn into the world of Aidan Savage as he takes the siblings into his home.

This novel is one of a continuing series of novels and is the first with a Carpathian who has chosen to live more amongst the mortals than alone.  With his small family of mortals (Marie and Stefan) he is not solitary and there is a whole new range of problems for him to overcome.

Alex’s first encounter with the Carpathians is one with a vampire and as such she finds it difficult to accept the world she has now become a part of.  Not only that, she still wishes to continue to live as normal a life as possible, with a job for herself and an education for her younger brother.

With the help of Marie and Stefan, Alex settles into her new home.  But whilst Aidan can erase the trauma of the vampire encounter from Josh’s mind, he cannot erase it from hers.

But how long can the small group continue to live a normal family life when a dangerous Carpathian who has turned vampire is on their trail and could penetrate even Aidan’s fortress of a house.

There are a great many humorous episodes in this novel, particularly where Josh quickly learns that all those things that Alex said no to, like the puppy he had always begged for, Aidan will say yes to in his quest to keep Alex and Josh with him.

Another good read in this excellent series.  There is little told of those characters we have come to know in the previous two novels but there are some tasters for Gregori’s story and also Julian’s.  I also really enjoyed the fact that this story had a Carpathian who was more attached to humans and had his own family of them – helping to build a lot more problems even as it added variety to the series.
 

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Also by Christine Feehan - The Dark Series and Wild Rain

For listings of Christine's other series (of which their are several) please visit Christine Feehan's Website.