by Adrian, Lara
“How do I know?” A bitter smile curved his lips. “Because I’m still here, and that’s not how it’s supposed to be. I was their captain, their leader. I was their friend.” His deep voice lowered to nearly a whisper. “I belong with them.”
There was a rawness to the words, punctuated by the flash of amber sparking in his irises.
Phaedra knew the Breed wore their deepest emotions in their changeable eyes, and in their dermaglyphs. Micah’s skin markings were covered by the all-black patrol gear he’d worn when he emerged from the Order’s infirmary in Rome. Still, she could see them in her mind’s eye as if they had been seared there from the first moment she glimpsed him in person, half-dressed and wild with blood hunger, pain, and rage.
Only the slightest hint of a glyph peeked out above the neckline of his shirt. The arcing tendril snaked up the side of his strong throat, pulsing from bronze to indigo to black as he stared at her in silent accusation.
Jenna’s voice broke the heavy quiet. “When Tegan called in from Rome, he said the two of you had been having the same recurring dream every night for a week before the incident in the Deadlands. I’d like to hear more about that.”
“So would I,” Lucan said. “Micah, I’ll start with you. Darion will get you settled, then both of you report to the war room in ten minutes.”
Micah gave a curt nod of compliance, then Lucan turned to Phaedra. “Gabrielle prepared a guest room for you. I’ll send someone for you when I’m ready to hear your side of the situation.”
Without waiting for her agreement, the Order’s leader turned to Tegan. “We need to bring you up to date on some recent Rogue activity since you left to find Micah.”
“Rogues? Just what we don’t fucking need.”
On a low growl, he fell in beside the Order’s leader, who gestured for Gideon, Brock, and Zael to join them.
Micah’s gaze lingered on Phaedra for a moment before he, too, stalked off in the other direction, with Darion at his side.
“Phaedra, this way,” Gabrielle said, her voice a bright contrast to her intimidating mate’s commands. “I’m sure you’d like to relax for a while. Let’s take your bag to your room and then we can all have something to eat.”
“Thank you,” she replied, although comfort and her empty stomach were of little concern to her.
As she watched Micah disappear down a long corridor, she couldn’t help thinking fate had made a colossal mistake dropping her into the Dreamscape with him. She might not be able to deny the dream that brought them together, but she refused to imagine that destiny could have inextricably tied any part of her to a snarling, violent-minded Breed warrior like him.
Forcing a smile she didn’t truly feel, she followed the trio of women to the opposite end of the mansion.
CHAPTER 8
When Lucan said he’d send someone for Phaedra once he was ready for her in the war room, Micah hadn’t anticipated that he would be the gopher dispatched to retrieve her.
After rehashing the details of his leadership fuck-up and reliving the loss of his entire team, all he wanted was to hit the headquarters’ weapons room and work off some of his self-directed aggression for an hour or ten. Instead, he found himself cutting an irritated path through the white-marble corridors of the mansion toward the guest room where he’d been informed Phaedra was resting.
The door to the large suite was open. At some point since he last saw her, she had changed out of the lightweight summer dress she wore on the flight from Rome. Now, she sat on the edge of the king-size bed with her back to the room’s entrance, wearing a wine-colored tunic and dark jeans. Her rich, long hair fell in a loose twist down the center of her spine, the curling ends brushing the top of the dove-gray duvet beneath her.
Her soothing voice was soft with affection as she spoke into the phone she held to her ear. “Please, don’t worry about me. I’m sure I’ll be fine. Yes, all right. I will. I can’t thank you enough for all you’re doing—”
Sensing him, no doubt, she swiveled her head and her gaze collided with his over her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she murmured hastily into the device. “I’ll have to call you back.”
Micah said nothing, merely stood at the threshold of the room, leaning casually against the jamb as she severed the connection and placed the phone on the bed.
Her golden eyes narrowed, she stood up to face him. “Do you always intrude on other people’s private conversations?”
“If you meant it to be private, you should’ve shut the door.”
Her pretty mouth twisted with obvious doubt. “Somehow, I don’t think that would’ve mattered. Besides, I have nothing to hide from you or anyone else.”
“So you’ve insisted.”
“It’s the truth.”
He grunted, not yet ready to admit he was starting to believe her. “Who were you talking to?”
She folded her arms over her breasts, which only drew his attention even more to the perfect swells hidden beneath the soft fabric of her tunic. “If you must know, I was talking to Tamisia. She and Trygg are looking after things at my house while I’m away.”
“You mean the shelter you run from there.” At her suspicious reaction, he shrugged, stepping into the room. “Zael mentioned your work with women and children in need. How long have you been doing it?”
“For a while.”
Something cryptic flickered in her eyes. There was sorrow there as well. Micah wasn’t accustomed to looking for tender emotions in others. God knew he did his damnedest to deny any softness inside himself too.
It was how he excelled as a warrior in the handful of years he’d been a full member of the Order. Ruthless training. Zero mercy. No exceptions.
If he was curious about Phaedra’s past, he told himself it was for the benefit of his vow to avenge his fallen comrades. She was still a question to be answered, nothing more.
“How long have you been away from Atlantis, Phaedra?”
She tilted her head. “I stopped counting a long time ago.”
“Years, then.” He stepped closer. “More than a decade?”
She exhaled a humorless laugh. “Many of them. Close to a hundred decades by now, I imagine.”
Holy shit. The answer took him aback. Despite the knowledge that Atlanteans outwardly aged as slowly as the Breed, it still shocked him to think she could be any older than the twenty-odd years that showed in her luminous, unlined face.
Somehow, she seemed more than youthful as she studied his reaction. Standing in the middle of the big suite, thousands of miles away from her home and everyone she cared for, she seemed vulnerable and alone. The realization sparked a protectiveness in him toward her that he didn’t want to acknowledge.
He couldn’t acknowledge it.
Every survival instinct in him warned to hold the wall, to not allow himself to see Phaedra as anything more than a potential crack in the Order’s security. Equally troubling, she was a distraction he sure as hell didn’t need.
Not now. He wouldn’t let her be, no matter what she or Zael believed about the dream he shared with her and the ludicrous idea that it might signify some kind of cosmic bond they were meant to feel toward each other.
Where the Dreamscape and Atlantean soul bonds were concerned, Micah felt nothing but doubt and disbelief.
As for what he felt for Phaedra, he’d only be lying to himself if he didn’t own up to the fact that she was the most breathtakingly beautiful female he’d ever seen. Desire licked through his veins as he watched her move to where her open travel bag sat. She picked up the light shawl she’d been wearing earlier, her hands graceful as she idly folded it and placed it on top of the rest of her clothing.
“I lived at the colony for most of that time,” she said after a moment, her voice quiet and contemplative. “Eventually, though, I made the decision to leave and start a new life in Rome. Time passed. Things . . . happened. One night I found a bruised, starving young mother and her small child huddled at my doorstep to wait out a heavy
rainstorm. I invited them in, fed them, and offered them one of the rooms to sleep until morning. Not long afterward, I opened my house as a shelter for any woman or child who needed a safe place to lay their head.”
He listened, struck by her courage, and her selflessness. Few would be so generous, not only with their home, but with their heart. “It’s an admirable cause, Phaedra.”
Although he had meant the comment sincerely, she didn’t seem to take it that way.
She slanted a frown at him. “I didn’t do it for admiration, or as some noble cause. It’s a necessity. With so much ugliness and violence in this mortal world, the protection my home provides is often the only thing standing between these women and children and death—whether that’s from neglect, or at the hands of someone they believed they could trust.”
The emotion in her voice was palpable. As was the ferocity of her commitment to the people she was helping. It stoked a conflict inside him, both as a warrior and a man.
He approached her, watching her expression go from defensive to cautious to confused.
“I’m well aware of the rot in this world too, Phaedra.”
“You mean because of your work with the Order?”
He lifted his shoulder, a vague confirmation. “Yes, because of that. But also because I have my mother’s extrasensory ability for reading human sin. When I’m out among mankind, in close contact with humans, I hear it all. All their negative thoughts and darkest secrets. All their vices. Every twisted, sadistic pleasure they’ve either taken or craved.”
She stared at him in a strange silence, studying him. An unbearable tenderness moved into her expression. “No wonder your eyes look so bleak sometimes. You’ve known enough hideousness and violence for a thousand lifetimes of your own.”
Without warning, she reached up to his face. Her fingertips lit softly on the edge of his clenched jaw. Her touch seared him, even that fleeting, infinitely gentle caress.
His fangs punched out of his gums, blood hunger still a beast on a threadbare tether inside him since his recent recovery. But it was the other hunger that gnashed to be let loose.
Need, raw and dangerous.
It coursed through him like fuel racing to meet with flame. A low, possessive throb pounded in his pulse points as he stared at Phaedra, unable to hide the embers sparking in his eyes.
As much as he wanted to cling to his mistrust of who she was—of what she was—what he wanted even more was simply . . . her.
Fuck.
Not going to happen.
Mentally, he squeezed his fist around the desire that ignited inside him. With countless women in this city and all the others he’d stormed through during his missions with the Order, this was one he refused to crave.
Fate be damned.
Hell, maybe he was too.
He drew back, pushing out a rough scoff. “Violence is what I do, Phaedra. I’m good at it—some have said I’m the best.”
Her smile was sad with understanding. “I don’t doubt that for a moment.”
“Good,” he growled. “So don’t make the mistake of thinking I need anyone’s pity. And don’t look for me to make apologies for what I am.”
“No, of course I won’t do that. I don’t suppose there’s much you’d apologize for. Perhaps nothing at all.”
He ground his molars together, telling himself her anger was better than the gentleness that might undo him if he wasn’t careful. He had an unfinished mission to complete. A promise he’d made over the ashes of his brothers-in-arms.
That commitment began and ended with the bolt of unearthly fire unleashed on him and his comrades that awful night in the Deadlands.
“Lucan’s ready for you in the war room,” he said, delivering the statement as crisply as a command. “And Phaedra, be warned. The deaths of my teammates will not go unmet. Not by the Order. Not by me. I will do whatever it takes, cut down any obstacle that stands in the way of my vengeance.”
She swallowed, but instead of being cowed by his threat, her proud chin lifted. “If you’re expecting me to condone war on my people, there’s nothing more for us to say here.”
Micah leaned in close, fewer than a handful of inches between their faces. “Any obstacle, Phaedra.”
She stared into his eyes for a breathless moment, then stepped past him to walk out of the room with her head and shoulders held as regally as a queen’s.
CHAPTER 9
Phaedra wasn’t sure how she managed to sit across from Micah at the long conference table in the Order’s war room for more than an hour without letting her gaze stray to him even once.
During the length of her interrogation by Lucan Thorne, Tegan, Zael, and the other Order warriors assembled in the room, she recounted every detail of her recurring dream and the one that had ultimately landed her in the Deadlands with Micah. She answered the many questions that followed, not only from the Breed males scrutinizing her every word and expression, but also the inquiries from Jenna, Gabrielle, and Savannah.
Through it all, she held her head high and kept her eyes averted from the heat of Micah’s unflinching stare.
Call it sheer determination to ignore him. Her stubborn streak had been honed over literally centuries of living. Call it outrage. Certainly, she was full enough of that after the bold threat he’d issued in her guest room—a warning she had no reason to doubt whatsoever.
She was willing to call it anything, except the awkward feeling that had clung to her from the moment she’d given in to the embarrassing impulse to touch his cheek and speak her thoughts aloud.
She couldn’t take back that idiotic, clearly unwanted, compassion, no matter how much she wanted to. Nor could she pretend she didn’t still feel sympathy for the awful gift he described.
Phaedra had seen the inhumanity of man up close more times than she cared to recall. But to walk through life as an open receiver of every sick and depraved thought that poisoned the air around him? She couldn’t imagine how he didn’t go mad with the burden of all that ugliness.
Evidently, her concerns for him were misplaced.
Not to mention unwelcome.
A lull fell over the room as the Order elders and their mates quietly considered everything she’d just told them. Phaedra folded her hands in her lap, eager to be dismissed and away from the scrutiny—particularly that of Micah.
More than anything, she just wanted to be free to go home where she belonged.
“I hope I’ve been of some help,” she said, addressing the group as a whole. She glanced at Lucan. “Now that you’ve asked your questions, how soon might I be able to return to Rome?”
She felt, rather than saw, Micah’s muscled frame tense in the chair across from her. “There’s still one question you haven’t answered. The most important one. Are you still loyal to your Atlantean queen?”
Given no other choice, she finally met his unsettling stare. “As I’ve already told you, I left the realm ages ago.”
“That’s not what I asked. Your parents served Selene as loyal subjects. So loyal, they were willing to die trying to carry out her wishes. What about you?”
His challenge drew the attention of everyone else now. Phaedra had willingly told them everything they wanted to know and then some. None of them had questioned her integrity or demanded she repudiate Selene in order to prove her good faith tonight.
“I don’t serve Selene any more than I do you, or the Order. Everything that does matter to me is in Rome. So, unless the Order is prepared to call me their prisoner, I’d like to get back there.”
At the head of the long table, Lucan exhaled a slow breath. “You’re no one’s prisoner, Phaedra. And this compound is no place for a civilian—Atlantean or otherwise. Zael and Brynne will accompany you back to Rome tomorrow. From there, they’ll be continuing on to the colony for a diplomatic meeting with the council. If what happened in the Deadlands is a harbinger of troubles to come, it seems prudent that we reconfirm the colony’s agreement to ally with us if and when we c
all on them.”
The couple nodded in agreement. “We can still escort you to the colony if you like, Phaedra,” Zael offered.
She shook her head. “I just want to go home.”
Relief settled over her to think she’d be on her way tomorrow. The sooner she could put some distance between herself and her unwanted attraction to Micah, the better.
At the far end of the table, Jenna idly tapped her pen against a notebook laid open in front of her. She seemed distracted, her forehead pinched as the rapid tap-tap-tap-tap continued from the pen held between her glyph-covered fingers.
“I know that look,” Brock said. “What is it, babe?”
“Maybe nothing. Except—”
“Except what?” Lucan asked, his own brows furrowing.
“This is the first in-person account we’ve ever gotten of the Deadlands.” She shrugged, but something about it didn’t seem as casual as she might have intended. “I’d love to take some detailed notes from Micah and Phaedra about the area, so I can add them to our archives.”
“That’s a good idea,” Lucan agreed. “You three can get started on that as soon as we finish here. Chase should be arriving with the group from Boston any minute now, so unless anyone has something else to discuss, we can wrap things up.”
The warriors and the trio of women seated around the table shook their heads. All except Brock, who had swiveled his chair toward his mate now, his dark gaze serious.
“Is everything all right, Jen?”
“Yes.” She smiled, reaching for his big hand. “I’d tell you if it wasn’t. Besides, you’d feel it in your blood. Everything’s fine.”
With his expression relaxing, if only by a degree, Jenna glanced at Phaedra. “My mate worries too much.”
He grunted, turning his hand over so he could clasp her smaller one in an affectionate hold. “My mate thinks she’s invincible.”
Jenna smirked. “Well, if the biotech implant fits . . .”
Phaedra couldn’t contain her curiosity. “I don’t understand.”
