by Adrian, Lara
Micah and his team had gone willingly to the front lines of that mounting war, but he never expected the kind of ambush that had confronted them in the middle of that Siberian wasteland.
He thought it had all been a dream.
He’d nearly had himself convinced it was all just a terrible, unspeakable dream. A nightmare of shock, agony . . . and guilt.
One that had been followed by a black, bottomless oblivion that had taken hold of him and seemed to last for an eternity.
Now, with his senses slowly coming back online, he realized it was worse than a nightmare.
It had been real.
His team was dead.
Their mission had ended in disaster.
And him? He’d rather be ashes on the ground along with his Order comrades than live and have to carry the weight of failing them so unforgivably.
Groaning again, he cracked open his lids and breathed through the sensation of hot daggers piercing his eyeballs.
Maybe this was hell. Maybe he’d finally reached the floor of the pit that had been sucking him down and this was where he’d spend the rest of forever, reliving his shame and agony.
His vision was bleary at best, even in the cool darkness of the room where he lay. Dim memories of musty tent walls and the stench of livestock and campfires seemed out of place as he tried to take note of his current surroundings.
A soft pillow cushioned his head. Underneath his battered, depleted body was a narrow bed with a comfortable mattress and crisp white sheets. Monitoring wires were taped to his chest, arms, and hands. Next to the bed, medical equipment beeped and hummed.
Not hell, then.
A hospital room.
But that didn’t seem right, either. No hospital was of any use to one of the Breed. The only thing that could heal his kind was blood. Fresh red cells, taken from an open human vein.
And Christ, he was starving.
Pushing himself up off the mattress felt like trying to move through hardening concrete. His limbs felt as though they hadn’t been used for a year. Every muscle in his body screamed with every inch of movement he managed.
How long had he been in this place?
How the hell did he get there?
In the back of his mind, he could almost hear his father’s deep voice urging him to hang on, reassuring him that he would be all right.
Impossible, considering Tegan was back in the States with Micah’s mother, Elise, and the rest of the Order. Micah hadn’t seen any of them for some long weeks. Not since he and his unit had deployed to Budapest. The way he felt right now, that black ops assignment could have been years ago.
Micah slowly swung his legs over the edge of the mattress and paused to catch his breath. Someone had been taking care of him, as much as they could, anyway. His combat gear and weapons had been removed at some point. Barefoot and bare-chested, he was dressed only in a pair of loose-fitting gray sweats. His skin had been cleaned of the blistering and the blood and the sweat that clung to him as he’d dragged himself out of the Siberian taiga.
Thanks to his Breed genetics, the worst of his wounds were mending, but too slowly. If he didn’t feed soon, the burns would be the least of his concerns.
His vision still burned, even in the low light of the room. Fever from his thirst painted everything in shades of red. Glancing down at his hands where they rested atop his thighs, he watched the colors of his dermaglyphs churn and roil in all the shades of hunger.
The deep purples and dark reds edged dangerously close to black—the stage at which he would have little to no control over the ferocity of his need for blood.
By the look of his glyphs and the gnawing hollowness of his body, he couldn’t be more than a few hours away from that edge.
He had a choice to make.
Lie back down and wait to join his comrades in death, or get up and fight to live.
Live to avenge them, by doing whatever it would take to bring down Selene and all who serve her.
That was enough to live for.
Hell, it was more than enough reason.
Reaching up, he tore the monitoring wires away from his chest. The ones on his arms and hands came off next. He tossed the leads in a tangle on the narrow bed as he pushed himself up to his feet and tested the shaky strength of his legs.
His head swam, his senses whirling as he struggled to hold his balance.
Shit.
He hated feeling out of control. Despised the unfamiliar weakness of his body. His father was a Gen One Breed, which meant Micah’s blood was among the purest of his kind. Yet he rocked on his bare feet as if he were a human toddler just learning to stand.
Fury alone kept him upright.
Fury would carry him out of wherever he was now, and outside to hunt for a vein.
Once he’d fed, once his body had taken enough fresh red cells to heal itself, fury would keep him on the path toward justice for his fallen brethren.
He wasn’t going to rest until he had it.
And he would let no one stand in his way.
CHAPTER 4
“I’m still not sure this is a good idea.” Dressed in a casual, cotton summer dress and flats, Phaedra set her small travel bag down in the grand foyer of the Order’s Rome headquarters to greet her friend. “I’ve never been away from the shelter for as much as a day since I opened it.”
“That’s exactly the point.” Sia arched a platinum brow before pulling Phaedra into a brief embrace. “This little break is long overdue.”
Phaedra sighed, uncertain, as she met her fellow Atlantean’s gaze. “Maybe I should rethink the whole idea. After all, I haven’t been back to the colony in ages.”
It was no exaggeration. The enclave of immortals who had defected from the larger realm of Atlantis millennia ago would always be her people, but it had been nearly a century since Phaedra had left their mist-shrouded island to make a new life for herself among the mortals in Rome.
During those many decades away from her Atlantean people, she had lived fully, loved deeply, and had lost more profoundly than she believed possible. Now, her life was devoted to helping others. All that mattered to her was trying to bring a bit of light to a fragile world that seemed eternally cursed by violence and self-destruction.
For the scores of terrified and abused women and children who’d sheltered in her home over the years, the food and safe haven she provided had often meant the difference between life and death. Sometimes, Phaedra’s efforts weren’t enough to save them. It was those rare few that haunted her sleep. The failures. The circumstances she had been powerless to change.
Her dreams were haunted with another face now, too.
She didn’t even have to close her eyes to see the harsh handsomeness of the Breed warrior with the piercing lavender gaze.
He’d crowded her thoughts like a ghost for the past week. Despite that he wasn’t real—that none of her awful nightmare existed anywhere but in those fitful, disturbing moments of her sleep—Phaedra still recalled the cold accusation in his deep voice when he realized she was Atlantean. She still felt the stunning heat from the blast of otherworldly light that had ignited without warning, incinerating everything in its reach.
She could still hear the anguished screams that ripped through the wasteland in the instant before she woke up.
She shook her head, more in an effort to chase away the terrible memories than anything else.
Not that it worked. So far, nothing had.
She didn’t think a week at the colony would be much help, either. Idle days on a mystical Mediterranean island would only give her more time to think. More time to relax, and possibly fall back into the dream she never wanted to visit again. She didn’t need a vacation. What she really needed was to keep busy, like always.
Hesitating, she caught her lip between her teeth. “This is a mistake, Sia. I should go back to the shelter—”
“The shelter will be just fine without you until you return. Trygg and I will see to that personally.�
�� Looping her arm around Phaedra’s, Tamisia started guiding her farther into the mansion. “Anyway, you can’t back out now. Zael and Brynne are already here, waiting to bring you to the colony with them.”
As she spoke, Sia walked Phaedra to one of the large rooms off the foyer. The quiet rumble of conversation faded to a pause as they reached the entrance. Seated inside on sumptuous sofas and chairs were several members of the Rome command center she’d met through Sia and Trygg, along with Ekizael and Brynne, the mated couple who in recent months had taken on a diplomatic role between the Breed warriors of the Order and the Atlanteans of the colony.
Another Breed male sat with the group as well, someone Phaedra had never seen before. Tawny-haired and grim, he glanced at her in unreadable silence from across the room, his broad shoulders hunched forward as if he carried a heavy burden on his back, his big hands clasped together between his spread knees.
As she entered the room with Sia, all of the males rose, including the stranger. Her fellow Atlantean was the first to greet her. Zael’s golden handsomeness and dazzling smile belied the fact that he had once served in the highest ranks of their queen’s legion of deadly guards.
“Phaedra. It’s been a long time. How good to see you again.”
“You as well, Ekizael.”
He reached out to the stunning brunette beside him and brought her closer. “This is my mate, Brynne.”
“Hello, Phaedra.” The tall beauty spoke with a refined British accent. “I’ve very much been looking forward to meeting you.”
“Likewise,” Phaedra said, returning Brynne’s warm smile and greeting. “The pleasure is mine, Brynne.”
Although this was their first face-to-face introduction, Phaedra was well aware of the daywalking Breed female who had captured Zael’s seemingly untamable heart. That she was gorgeous came as no surprise, but there was also a keen intelligence and courage in Brynne’s eyes.
As for Zael, he gazed at his mate with unmasked pride—and no wonder. Brynne had recently won the trust and respect of the entire colony when she helped defeat a traitor who had not only slain one of their council elders, but had also intended to steal an irreplaceable treasure—the colony’s sacred, powerful crystal.
Without it, the hidden enclave would have no protection from the outside world, including the whims of their mercurial queen, Selene, whose reign over the larger Atlantean realm appeared to be growing increasingly desperate . . . and volatile.
“Tamisia told me about the trouble on the island a few months ago. The colony was very fortunate to have both of you on their side when Elyon’s collusion with Selene was exposed.”
Zael gave a grim nod. “All credit goes to Brynne, if you want to know the truth. Without her at my side, I wouldn’t be standing here today and Elyon would’ve escaped back to the realm to trade the crystal for Selene’s favor.”
Lazaro Archer, the dark-haired commander of the Order’s presence in Rome, gave a dry grunt. “Trading it to the Atlantean queen might’ve been the best-case scenario. Imagine if the traitor had decided there might be more profit in taking the crystal to Opus Nostrum.”
Phaedra’s skin prickled at the mention of the secret cabal whose escalating acts of terror had been making news around the world for months. The idea of a violent group like that obtaining the power of an Atlantean crystal made her blood run cold in her veins.
There were only five of the egg-sized, unearthly energy sources in existence, and no chance of there ever being any more. Phaedra felt that reality more personally than most. After all, her parents had been the ones responsible for creating the crystals long, long ago.
Brilliant scientists and alchemists, they had literally given their lives in devotion to their work. They’d been gone for many centuries, from the time Phaedra was just an infant, but she still felt their loss to this day.
“Who’s to say Selene and Opus aren’t working together?” The low-growled comment from the tawny-haired stranger drew everyone’s attention. “Someone’s pulling Opus’s strings. We can’t be sure it’s not the Atlantean queen.”
Lazaro let go of a quiet curse. “We’d better all pray to hell they’re not. The Order’s got its hands full enough lately putting out Opus’s fires. If they were to join forces with a madwoman like Selene—”
“It would be all-out war.” This time, it was Trygg who chimed in with a grave prediction.
Phaedra swallowed. Before the warriors had the chance to delve any deeper into Order business or the tactics of their violent trade, Tamisia pointedly cleared her throat.
“Please, forgive my manners. Phay, I don’t think you’ve met Tegan.”
“No, I haven’t.” The rest of the males halted their conversation, all of them staring at her now.
“Tegan, this is my dear friend, Phaedra.” She offered a reassuring smile. “Tegan and his son will be flying back to the States with Zael and Brynne after they return from the colony.”
He acknowledged her with a vague incline of his head and a perfunctory shake of her hand, as if he wasn’t accustomed to social gatherings, or had no patience for being friendly. Something weighed heavily on him. Phaedra could see the burden of it in the hard lines of Tegan’s beard-shadowed face.
It was hard to picture the hulking warrior as the father of a child, and she couldn’t help but wonder what kind of son a menacing-looking Breed male like Tegan might produce.
Breaking away from his sharp gaze, she glanced to Zael and his mate. “Thank you for offering to escort me to the colony. I feel terrible for imposing on you and Brynne.”
“I’m the one who should feel terrible,” Sia cut in. “And I do. If I hadn’t lost Phay’s crystal amulet at the bottom of the Mediterranean, she’d be able to teleport to and from the colony—or anywhere else—anytime she wanted.”
Phaedra shook her head. “Please, stop blaming yourself. I gave it to you willingly. Besides, if you hadn’t been wearing the crystal, you wouldn’t have been able to reach Trygg in time to save him. Seeing the two of you so happy together is well worth the amulet’s loss.”
Tamisia’s gaze warmed as it lifted to meet Trygg’s. The big warrior wrapped his muscled arm around her slender waist, drawing her against his side. If Tegan looked menacing, Trygg, with his shaved skull, scarred face and dark eyes bordered on monstrous. But there was a rugged handsomeness in his expression, especially when he was looking so smitten with Sia.
It had been a long time since a man had looked at Phaedra with such tender affection. Not so long, however, that she couldn’t recognize true love when she witnessed it—between Trygg and Sia, as well as Zael and Brynne.
“It’s an honor to escort you to the colony today,” Zael said. “I’d be pleased to do so even you didn’t need me just for my amulet. If you’re ready, we can leave at any—”
The jarring sound of a piercing alarm went off somewhere inside the mansion.
Phaedra shot an anxious look at her friend. “What’s happening?”
Lazaro Archer was the one who answered. “Someone tripped the security system down in the command center.”
“Micah.” The name was barely off Tegan’s tongue before the temperature in the room went a little colder and the air shifted as with the coming of a storm.
The source of that disruption was making his way toward the foyer. Uneven, heavy footsteps slapped on the marble flooring. Labored breathing huffed and hissed, punctuated with a low groan unlike anything of this earth.
With Tegan rushing out of the room ahead of everyone else, the others followed, Phaedra included. She hung toward the back of the group as they all poured out, gripped in a mixture of apprehension and curiosity.
Between the bodies in front of her, she caught fleeting, obstructed glimpses of the obviously pained Breed male who had staggered up from the warriors’ headquarters located below the mansion at ground level.
Even with his head slumped forward over his bare chest and broad shoulders hunched from obvious pain and weakness, there
was no mistaking that he was easily as sizable as Tegan or Trygg. He prowled into the foyer like a wounded animal—and no less dangerous, Phaedra was certain. Menace rolled off him, along with an iron-willed determination that seemed to power him forward despite that he looked only a few steps away from death’s door.
Tegan rushed to his side, catching the equally immense male under the arms and lending support just as his bare feet faltered and his knees began to buckle.
“It’s all right, son. I’ve got you.”
This was Tegan’s son?
All her imaginings of him with a child went up in flames. His son was not a boy at all, but a full-grown, formidable man. Thick, tawny-brown hair in a soldier’s cut crowned his head, choppy and bed-mussed. Smooth golden skin covered in Breed dermaglyphs, which pulsed with mesmerizing, dark colors. All he wore were loose gray sweatpants that clung indecently to his thick-muscled thighs and the unavoidably distracting area of his groin.
Phaedra was far from a blushing maiden, but the sight of his raw masculinity flooded her senses with an intense, uncomfortable awareness. Cheeks overheating, she glanced down, embarrassed to be ogling an injured man who was also clearly suffering.
She heard Tegan curse low under his breath. It sounded less angry than racked with concern. “You shouldn’t be out of the infirmary, Micah. It’s too soon. You need rest.”
“Fuck that,” came the deep, snarled reply. Micah’s voice was all gravel, as if he hadn’t used it for a year. “I need to . . . feed. Need to get out of here.”
Phaedra glanced up again as Micah started to push forward. Tegan moved in front of him, blocking his path.
“Yes, you do need to feed. But you’re not going anywhere. For one thing, it’s morning beyond that door. For another, the only place you’re going is back to D.C. with me.”
“My team—”
“We’ve got a search unit going in tonight to find them. We’ll comb every godforsaken corner of Siberia until we locate—”
“They’re dead,” Micah growled. “They’re all fucking dead. I should be too.”
He lifted his head then, and from over Tegan’s shoulder, his gaze pierced through everyone and landed on Phaedra. He blinked once, dark lashes falling over the stormy lavender eyes that had haunted her for over a week.
