Dark Celebration

Dark Celebration is a paranormal romance novel by Christine Feehan, published in 2006 and the seventeenth book in her Dark series. It differs from the others in the sequence because it offers glimpses of the lives of characters from the earlier books as well as introducing new ones.

Raven Dubrinsky, the lifemate of the Prince, has contacted the other lifemates in order to bring the Carpathians together for a Christmas celebration. Jacques's lifemate Shea is due to give birth at any moment, and the women believe that gathering the community will help her, so the celebration has a practical purpose as well as a festive one.

Before it begins, Mikhail feels obliged to visit all of the Carpathian couples who have appeared in the previous books, and all the while their enemies are working on a plan to destroy the Prince and his people. The gathering is therefore both a reunion and a target, and the book takes its title from the mixture of celebration and danger surrounding it. The celebration is also the first time many of the scattered families have been in one place together.