lara-adrian-fall-of-night-v1

by Adrian, Lara

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  FALL OF NIGHT

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  PLEASE HELP WITH A REVIEW

  READ MORE BY LARA ADRIAN

  About the Author

  COPYRIGHT

  FALL OF NIGHT

  A Midnight Breed Novel

  Book 17

  NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  LARA ADRIAN

  © 2021 Lara Adrian, LLC

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (v1)

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  KING OF MIDNIGHT

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  FALL OF NIGHT

  A Midnight Breed Novel

  Blood and destiny collide in Fall of Night, the newest action-packed, pulse-pounding novel in Lara Adrian's New York Times and #1 international bestselling Midnight Breed vampire romance series.

  Breed warrior Micah is one of the Order’s best, his reputation for cold justice and lethal skill rivaled only by that of his formidable father, Tegan. So, when a mission Micah’s leading in an off-limits area called the Deadlands goes terribly wrong, leaving him the sole survivor of an apparent Atlantean attack, he won’t rest until he has answers...and vengeance for his fallen team.

  Phaedra thought it was only a dream, a hideous nightmare. Yet somehow, she had been transported from her life in Rome to a stretch of barren forest when it suddenly lit up with unearthly fire, obliterating everything in its path—including the fiercely handsome Breed warrior she’d encountered in the dream. Or so she believed, until their paths cross again and Phaedra finds herself, and her Atlantean people, at the center of Micah’s wrath.

  With tensions between the Breed and the Atlanteans already edging toward war, and another powerful nemesis growing bolder by the day, uncovering the stunning truth about what happened in the Deadlands will force Micah and Phaedra to work together in an alliance forged by fate and an undeniable desire neither of them can resist.

  “A well-written, action-packed series that is just getting better with age.”

  —Fiction Vixen

  CHAPTER 1

  It was the silence that disturbed her the most.

  Not the black, moonless night sky overhead. Not the hours she’d spent wandering alone in that darkness, trying to find her way through an endless stretch of scorched forest and barren earth. No, it was the complete and utter stillness that made her blood run cold in her veins.

  The deadness of the place chilled her to her bones. It seeped into her marrow like poison, like a warning, as her feet navigated the cinders and dead foliage on the ground.

  Phaedra didn’t scare easily. None of her immortal kind did. Yet she couldn’t deny her urgency to leave this place. Her heart hammered with that need, the only sound she heard in the maddening quiet surrounding her.

  Out of old habit, she reached for the bracelet on her wrist. She’d worn the leather thong with its small piece of precious Atlantean crystal for as long as she could recall. The amulet could teleport her away in an instant. But her wrist was bare. She’d given the bracelet to her friend Tamisia weeks ago, never imagining she might need it herself.

  Phaedra was on her own here. All she could do now was push on.

  The wasteland maze of denuded, skeletal trees only seemed to expand the more she tried to escape it. One jagged path turned into another, then another. Straight trails morphed into circular loops that carried her nowhere. Clearings she thought she was heading toward instead moved farther away before dissolving altogether, nothing more than mirages.

  Frustration gnawed at her.

  There had to be a way out. She just needed to keep going until she found it.

  Against the pitch-dark night, a pale shape emerged from behind a cluster of gnarled, blackened trees several yards away.

  A doe.

  Graceful, calm, as white as milk, she stepped out to the broken path ahead of Phaedra. Dark, placid eyes blinked once in acknowledgment, no trace of fear in the animal’s gentle face. It waited, its breath softly misting in the chill night air.

  “Hello, there,” Phaedra whispered.

  She didn’t dare move, loath to spook the beautiful creature. All the anxiousness of her frantic trek through the alien landscape faded under the doe’s comforting presence.

  “Where did you come from? Are you lost like me?”

  Carefully, she took a measured step forward. The doe retreated a step.

  Phaedra immediately paused, frowning in disappointment. “Please, don’t be afraid of me.”

  The deer backed up farther. Then she calmly turned around and began to step back into the lifeless forest.

  Phaedra followed. The doe kept an ample distance between them, but she didn’t bolt. She didn’t abandon Phaedra to the wasteland. Instead, she seemed to be leading her somewhere. Guiding her toward something.

  Not out of the forsaken woods, but deeper into them.

  The twisted trees grew thicker the farther she followed the animal, the scorched bracken at her feet more tangled and forbidding.

  “No.”

  Phaedra wasn’t sure if she spoke the word aloud or voiced it only in her head. The doe glanced back at her, halting in the darkness. There seemed to be a question in the soft eyes, an entreaty.

  Phaedra shook her head, her long brown hair stirring in the night breeze. “I’m not going any farther.”

  She waited for the animal to resume its retreat into the forest. She fully expected the unusual creature to disappear like the apparition she was certain it must be.

  But the doe didn’t leave.

  Slowly, it approached her.

  It stepped toward her with serene purpose, until it stood close enough for Phaedra to touch.

  She couldn’t resist the temptation to brush her fingertips over the gleaming white coat. The fur felt like velvet under her hand, the steady pound of the doe’s heartbeat a reassurance Phaedra didn’t even realize she needed until the vibration of it thrummed beneath her fingers.

  Those gentle, fathomless brown eyes spoke of eons of wisdom.

  And something more elusive that Phaedra yearned to understand.

  “Why are you here?” She stroked her fingertips over the doe’s smooth brow and delicate snout. “I wish you could tell me wh—”

  Phaedra’s words stuck in her throat. Somewhere behind her, the stillness of the wasteland forest shifted. It breathed.

  Only the smallest change in the air, imperceptible, except to someone with her inhumanly acute senses. Her skin prickled at the feeling of unease that washed over her. She let her hand fall away from the white doe, slowly pivoting her head to listen
closer, to scan the skeletal landscape for the intruders she instinctively knew were there.

  Men.

  She didn’t see them yet; she felt them.

  But that couldn’t be right.

  Why would anyone be in this forsaken place? What could they want?

  Whatever their reasons, their presence here wasn’t good. They moved on silent feet, carrying the scent of violence and weaponry on them. And they were coming closer every second.

  Phaedra now caught a glimpse of their dark shapes moving between the scorched trees in the distance behind her. At least four of them, maybe more. The group began to split up and fan out with military precision.

  With a whisper of warning at the tip of her tongue, Phaedra turned back to the gentle white doe to urge it to run with her for safety.

  It was gone.

  Vanished without a sound or a trace.

  She only wished she could disappear too. Glancing behind her, she gauged the oncoming danger. The largest of the soldiers, the one in the lead, abruptly halted the others with a sharp upward slash of his black-gloved hand as he peered in her direction.

  Oh, no.

  He’d spotted her.

  Although she couldn’t see his face beneath the black head covering and smudges of grease meant to further camouflage him in the dark, she felt the clash of his gaze as it slammed into hers across the distance. The force of that connection pushed her back on her heels. It zinged through her veins like a lick of lightning, making the fine hairs on her arms and at her nape stand on end.

  He wasn’t human. Not Atlantean, either.

  Breed. The longtime enemy of her people. The blood-drinking, lethal offspring of the savage otherworlders who nearly succeeded in wiping out all of Atlantis many millennia ago.

  That unerring stare locked on to her, the immense warrior broke away from the rest of his group and started for her through the bracken.

  Phaedra started running.

  Without her amulet to fly her home, she had no other choice but to flee and pray she might be faster than the heavily armed soldier at her heels.

  His boots crunched in the cinders and dead foliage on the ground behind her. Brittle branches snapped like gunfire as he crashed through them.

  He was going to catch her; she had no doubt about that. What he meant to do with her once he had, she didn’t want to guess.

  She ran harder, drawing on all the preternatural speed she could muster.

  And still he kept coming. The chase pushed them deeper into the wasteland, the rest of the warrior’s companions far behind them now.

  “Stop,” he called out to her, his deep voice tight with urgency.

  Phaedra kept running. She didn’t know where she was headed, nor how long she could manage to go before the dangerous Breed male caught her. The only thing she knew for certain was the need to get as far away from this place as she possibly could.

  She heard him gaining on her. She felt the sheer strength and power of the male as his booted feet chewed up the distance between them.

  Faith, help her. She couldn’t hope to outpace him. Though she wasn’t helpless—far from it.

  Pure Atlantean blood coursed through her veins. She felt the heat of it rising inside her with every frantic step she took. Her palms tingled, already beginning to glow at her sides.

  From behind her, the warrior’s words grated in a hiss. “Damn it, female, I said stop running.”

  She sensed the instant he leapt into the air at her back, but it still came as a visceral shock to see him land on the ground right in front of her.

  Phaedra jolted to a halt, her breath heaving. As tall as she was, this Breed male towered over her by several inches. Hulking shoulders and muscled limbs moved with the predatory grace of a big cat.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  The gaze that had skewered her across the distance when he first spotted her was no less arresting up close. His eyes were too beautiful on the face of a male built for war. The stormy shade of lavender burned away as she stared at him, amber sparks lighting his irises with unearthly fire.

  “Answer me.” Full, sculpted lips peeled back from gleaming white teeth and long fangs. “Who are you? What are you doing out here?”

  Phaedra edged backward. “I could ask you the same thing.”

  His lips flattened. “It’s not safe for you.”

  She didn’t think this awful stretch of deadness could be safe for anyone, possibly not even this dangerous male or his comrades. “What is this place?”

  “You don’t know?” A flicker of confusion softened the hard edge of his suspicion, but only for a moment. He glanced down at her hands and a tendon jerked in his jaw. She could feel the glow in her palms increasing under his scrutiny. He cocked his head. His eyes glowed now, filled with amber fire and suspicion. “Holy shit. You’re one of them.”

  He took a step toward her.

  “Stay back.” Phaedra brought her hands up in front of her like a shield.

  More than a shield, they were a terrible weapon. The Atlantean light she carried inside her was a fearsome power, one she was loathe to wield, especially when this Breed warrior hadn’t threatened her with any harm.

  Yet.

  He reached out a black-gloved hand. “You’re coming with me.”

  “Don’t move any closer or I’ll—”

  Far from afraid, he bit off an incredulous-sounding curse, his teeth and fangs flashing white in the moonless night. “Or you’ll what?”

  Faith, she didn’t know what she’d do. Nor did she have the chance to respond.

  All at once, the inky night sky exploded. Blinding white light erupted all around them.

  Unearthly light.

  Not from her, but not of the mortal world, either. Phaedra closed her eyes, but it did little to block the blast of illumination behind her eyelids. The power of it buffeted her, taking her legs out from beneath her.

  She felt herself flying backward, yanked by an invisible hand. She waited to feel her body crash down onto the hard forest floor. Instead she was still in motion, pulled backward even faster, as though caught in a vortex.

  Somewhere, growing ever more distant, the sound of men’s screams shook the lifeless forest.

  Agonized screams. The sounds of indescribable suffering.

  Was the lavender-eyed warrior among the tortured and dying?

  For reasons she didn’t understand, the thought that he might be sent an arc of pain like a dagger into her breast.

  “No!” Phaedra felt the cry erupt inside her, but it stayed trapped in the back of her throat. Caught in that invisible grasp that hauled her backward, she couldn’t speak at all. She tumbled through an endless chasm, the sounds of annihilation still ringing in her ears.

  The anguish of it raked her to her soul.

  “No . . . no. No!”

  “Phaedra?” Soft pressure landed on her shoulders, giving her a little shake. “Phay, wake up.”

  Her eyelids flew up and she found herself blinking up into the sky-blue eyes of her friend, Tamisia. The platinum-blonde Atlantean female frowned, her beautiful face filled with worry. “Are you all right?”

  “What? Oh, yes. I—I’m fine.” Phaedra sat up in her chair, embarrassed by her outburst. “I’m sorry, I must’ve dozed off.”

  She and Sia had been enjoying some tea and a light lunch on the rooftop garden area of Phaedra’s little house in Rome before her friend had stepped away to take a call from her mate, Trygg. She couldn’t have been gone for more than a few minutes, yet it was evidently long enough for Phaedra to drop into a thick sleep.

  A disturbing and awful one.

  Sia lowered herself into the chair next to Phaedra. “That must’ve been some nightmare. You’re as pale as a sheet.”

  Phaedra swallowed. “I dreamt about the scorched forest again, and the white doe.”

  For more than a week now, it had been a recurring theme every time she laid her head down to sleep. The dream had played out roughly unaltered,
until now.

  “It started the same way it always does,” she murmured, still caught in the weblike strands of her sleep. “I followed the doe into the charred woods, but someone else was there too. Sia, the dream changed into something terrible this time. And all of it felt so real.”

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “No.” Phaedra shook her head. The anguish of what she’d heard and imagined behind her closed eyelids as the wasteland went bright with annihilating power was still too fresh in her senses. She didn’t want to think about it any longer, much less try to put the nightmare into words. “It was just a silly dream, that’s all. I don’t want you thinking your friend has gone mad.”

  Tamisia’s gaze was sympathetic, her expression gentle with concern. “Do you want to know what I really think? You’re working too hard, Phay. Running the shelter here at the house is a twenty-four hour obligation. It’s too much for just one person to handle, even for you.”

  “It’s not work,” Phaedra insisted. “Looking after the women and children who come here looking for safety and protection never feels like an obligation to me.”

  “I know it doesn’t.” Sia knew that better than most.

  Very recently, she had helped Phaedra run the shelter for a few weeks after Sia had been exiled from the Atlantean colony where she’d once been a high-ranking member of the Council of Elders. Sia’s misplaced alliance with one of the colony’s own had cost her dearly, but she had since redeemed herself. Now, she lived at the Order’s compound in Rome with Trygg, the Breed warrior she’d fallen in love with and taken as her mate.

  For Phaedra, an immortal who’d lived for as many countless centuries as her friend, the shelter had become her life’s purpose.

  It was all she had left in this world.

  “I’m perfectly fine, Tamisia. Please, don’t worry about me.”

  “I’m your friend. Worrying about you comes with the territory.” She placed a tender hand on Phaedra’s arm. “You need a break. Actually, what you really need is a full-time assistant here at the shelter. I’d be more than happy to help you find someone trustworthy and qualified. In fact, I’ll manage the shelter myself while you’re gone.”