by Adrian, Lara
It was Lucan who answered. “Around twenty years ago, Jenna was taken captive by one of the Order’s most dangerous enemies. Before we caught up to him, he’d brutalized her and left a piece of himself behind.”
As if to demonstrate, Jenna pointed to the back of her neck. “State-of-the-art, alien technology. Enhanced strength. Adaptive cellular regeneration. Memories that play like a horror movie.” She grinned at Brock. “But hey, look at the bright side, right? I’ll never get a gray hair and I suppose the full-body glyphs are kind of badass.”
“I’m glad you can joke about it,” he growled. “I only wish I’d been the one to kill the Ancient son of a bitch.”
Ancient. The term he used was an old one, though not unfamiliar, especially not to Phaedra or any of her kind. Ancients were the fathers of the Breed. Savage otherworlders. Blood-thirsty, ruthless conquerors. A raiding party of eight such predators had come to Earth millennia ago and spent centuries hunting down and slaughtering both humans and Atlanteans wherever they could.
Ultimately, they had delivered a catastrophic blow to Phaedra’s people. After managing to get their hands on a pair of Atlantis’s crystals, they used the combined power of both to destroy the realm’s original island home, decimating the population and forcing Selene and the scant hundreds of survivors to flee to a new location where they remained to this day.
The terror of those dark days and nights happened so long ago, it had nearly faded into myth.
Much like the Ancients themselves.
But one thing didn’t make sense. Phaedra tilted her head, confused by the recent timing of Jenna’s ordeal. “According to everything I’ve heard, the Order killed all of their Ancient fathers back in mankind’s Middle Ages.”
Tegan slowly shook his head. “All but one.”
“Not counting the two who reportedly died of UV exposure soon after their ship crashed on Earth,” Lucan added.
“How did the one survive?” Phaedra asked, horrified to consider one of those monsters had been loose in the world until just two decades ago.
“Someone hid him away until he was ready to make use of him,” Gideon answered grimly.
Brynne scoffed. “Someone every bit as dangerous and savage as any of the Ancients. I ought to know. I’m a product of both of them.”
Lucan grunted. “You’re one of the few good things to come out of Dragos’s twisted laboratory experiments, Brynne. You and your sister, Tavia, both. Strange as it is, we also have him to thank for some of the Hunters who’ve either joined our ranks or proven themselves to be trustworthy allies.”
Phaedra sat back in her chair, overwhelmed with all of this new information—not to mention dozens of new questions she was dying to ask.
Before she had the chance to sort her thoughts, the sound of voices carried from the corridor outside the open war room. Everyone at the table rose as a big blond Breed male led a group of three warriors and three women inside.
A dozen conversations bubbled at the same time as the new arrivals were welcomed. It seemed like a happy reunion, even though an undercurrent of seriousness seemed to run through the handshakes and brotherly embraces of the men.
Phaedra hung back, feeling like the awkward outsider as smiles and friendly greetings were exchanged and the din of conversation filled the room.
Micah stood at the periphery of the crowd, too, though not for long.
A petite blonde who’d been caught in Tegan’s strong arms from the instant she arrived now broke away and burst through the crowd to race toward Micah. “Oh, thank God!” she exclaimed, her voice choked with emotion as she captured him in a tight hold.
“Mom,” he said quietly, encircling her tiny frame in his muscled embrace. “It’s okay,” he reassured her as she wept against his broad chest. “Everything’s okay. Ah, Christ. Please, don’t cry.”
“I was so afraid I lost you.” She drew back, eyes the same lavender color as his welled with tears. She held them back, tipping her head up to look at her son’s stern face. “I don’t want you leaving ever again, Micah. Promise me.”
“I wish I could.” His deep voice was as gentle as Phaedra had ever heard it. “You know I can’t make you that promise, Mom.”
“She knows,” Tegan said, joining them now. “Don’t you, Elise?”
He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and drew her close. She leaned into him, nodding shakily. “You two are everything to me. I can’t bear the thought of ever losing either of you.”
“You won’t,” father and son said at the same time.
There was so much similarity between them. But some of Tegan’s hard exterior smoothed away now that he was close to his pretty mate. Seeing the love between them made a tightness bloom in Phaedra’s breast.
The sense of loneliness took her by surprise. So did the sudden awareness that Micah was staring at her, his piercing gaze unblinking. Far too knowing.
Why must she always feel such a jolt whenever this male looked at her? If it was a mistake of fate that put them into the Dreamscape together, she only hoped she’d be able to purge him from her thoughts once she returned home to Rome.
Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.
Eager for a distraction from their unsettling eye contact and the tender family reunion she had no business eavesdropping on, she turned her head. At the same time, one of the Breed warriors strode toward her with an ethereal platinum-blonde female at his side.
Phaedra knew instantly that she was looking at a fellow Atlantean. The woman understood the same thing, her smile beamed as she approached.
“Hello,” she said, her warm gaze sparkling like the sea. “You must be Phaedra.”
“Yes. And you, of course, are Jordana.” Phaedra barely resisted the impulse to sink into a bow before Selene’s granddaughter, the only living heir to the Atlantean throne. Mesmerized, she couldn’t keep herself from staring. “You look so much like both your parents. You have Cassianus’s fair hair, but your beauty is all your mother, Soraya’s.”
Jordana inhaled a shallow breath. “You knew them?”
“Yes, I did. A long time ago.”
“Oh.” The young woman linked hands with the ebony-haired male at her side, as if she needed the grounding. When she spoke, there was a quiet wonderment in her voice. “I would love to hear about them, Phaedra. If it would be all right with you, that is.”
“It would be my pleasure. I’ll tell you whatever you’d like to know.”
“Thank you,” Jordana whispered, pressing her lips together. “I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced my mate. This is Nathan.”
“Nice to meet you,” Phaedra said.
“Likewise.” He was strikingly handsome, a study in black from his leather combat gear and boots, to his glossy, short hair. No doubt he was deadly, but there was no denying the tender feeling in his gaze when he looked at Jordana.
“Hey, is this a private party over here, or can anyone crash?” The whiskey-smooth drawl came from another of the warriors who’d just arrived. He walked with an easy swagger, and grinned with all the charm of a good-looking man accustomed to getting whatever he wanted. “I’m Eli.”
“Phaedra,” she replied, finding it impossible not to return the warrior’s megawatt smile.
He gestured to the last of the Breed males who’d come in with the group and was now heading over with Darion Thorne. “That’s Jax. He’s far less interesting than me.”
Athletically built and almost too beautiful for a man with his almond-shaped eyes and a curtain of sleek black hair falling around his shoulders and down his back, Jax prowled toward their little group with the grace of a cat. He wore the same black combat gear and weapons as his comrades, but slung across his muscular body was a leather strap bristling with razor-sharp throwing stars.
“Don’t judge the rest of us based on this asshole,” Jax said, winking at Phaedra as he jabbed an elbow into Eli’s side. “We just keep him around for laughs.”
Phaedra smiled. “Hi, Jax.”
“Pleasure,” he replied, with a small bow of his head.
They all talked for a few minutes, then Gabrielle came over and offered to introduce Phaedra to the people she had yet to meet. First was Sterling Chase, the leader of the Order’s Boston command center, and his mate, Tavia, who was also the half-sister to Brynne. Then came Micah’s mother and Tegan’s mate, Elise.
“It’s very nice to meet you all,” Phaedra said, finding the group of them to be unexpectedly hospitable to the stranger in their midst.
All except Micah, that was.
He hung back while his mother clasped Phaedra’s hand in greeting. “Tegan’s told me what happened with you and Micah. The dream, the Deadlands . . . all of it.” She glanced behind her to Micah for a moment, then brought her soft lavender eyes back to Phaedra again. “I don’t know how it was that you ended up in those woods with my son. All I do know is, he’s alive. If your being there that night has anything to do with bringing him home, then you will always have my gratitude, Phaedra.”
The low rumble of Micah’s voice dropped like a hammer on the tender exchange. “If we still have to meet with Jenna tonight, we should get to it.”
The gruff comment turned Jenna’s head away from the conversation she was having with Savannah and Brock. “I’m ready whenever the two of you want to get started. We can meet up in the archive room.”
Micah gave her a curt nod. “All right. Let’s get this over with.”
He pivoted away and stalked out the door. His exit prompted the rest of the gathering to start breaking up too.
As the warriors and their mates began filing out of the war room, Jordana came up behind Phaedra. “I’d love to talk with you some more. I have so many things I’d like to ask you.”
“Why don’t you join us?” Jenna suggested. “I was just about to take Phaedra for a visit to Cyborg Central.”
Jordana smiled. “You haven’t seen Jenna’s archives yet?”
“Uh, no I haven’t.”
“Then prepare to be amazed.”
CHAPTER 10
As a boy, Micah had known only a passing interest in the headquarters’ chamber reserved for Jenna’s work. When he visited the Order’s D.C. compound with his parents, he’d always been far more intrigued with the weapons room than the floor-to-ceiling bookcases housing the journals Jenna had begun using to record the history and culture of the Ancients, as shown to her by the alien DNA-infused implant embedded inside her body.
Firearms, throwing stars, explosives.
A gleaming blade crafted of Rogue-killing titanium.
Those were his passions.
Leave it to others, like Darion, to straddle the line between scholar and soldier with equal skill. Micah’s expertise had led him down a single path, and he was damn good at what he did. He didn’t need anything but the feel of a weapon in his hand and the knowledge that his dark work made the world a better place for everyone else.
Still, as he stepped inside the large room that had been Jenna’s personal workspace for the past two decades, he couldn’t help but be impressed.
She’d been busy since he’d last seen the place.
Leather-bound journals lined nearly every inch of shelf space now. Meticulous hand-drawn sketches, complicated diagrams, and indecipherable technical schematics had been affixed to the walls as if they were works of art. Hell, they practically were art, judging from the incredible level of detail she’d captured on them.
He strode over to one of the odd diagrams and was studying the tangle of linked formulas and sprawling flowcharts when several pairs of footsteps approached from the corridor.
Jenna entered first, her brows furrowing over her hazel eyes when she spied him looking at the sketch. “That one’s unfinished. I’ve only recently started seeing visions of the design, but it feels . . . incomplete.”
Micah gave a vague nod, curiosity making him peer a bit closer at the diagram. “It looks like some kind of operational sequence. A code of some sort.”
“Think so?”
He shrugged, moving away from the sketch as Phaedra stepped into the room with Jordana.
“You didn’t even say hello to me yet,” Jordana lightly scolded him, walking over to give him a warm hug. Her expression softened as she pulled back and looked at him. “It’s really good to see you, Micah. I’m so sorry about what happened to your team.”
His face hardened at the reminder. Guilt and grief still clawed at him, but he clamped the lid down on all of it. “Still working at the art museum?”
“I am. Carys too, from time to time.”
Micah had been introduced to Jordana by Carys Chase a few years ago in Boston, before Jordana had hooked up with Nathan and before anyone had reason to suspect that Carys’s best friend had not been born a Breedmate, but a full-blooded Atlantean. A fucking Atlantean princess, no less.
Now, it seemed she’d found a fast friend in Phaedra.
Not that Jordana was alone in that. Everyone at the compound seemed willing to accept Phaedra into their confidence, even his own mother and father.
So, why was he finding it so damn hard to trust her?
Part of the reason was the five ash piles he’d been forced to leave behind in the Deadlands. But he was starting to wonder if the bigger reason he didn’t want to let his guard down had everything to do with him. With the way she made his blood race with hunger unlike any he’d known before.
He wanted her, more than he was willing to admit. And that was a distraction he didn’t need and sure as hell couldn’t afford.
Not when he was fully prepared to go to war with her people if the attack on him and his unit traced back to Selene.
Would Phaedra stand in the way of that? He’d already vowed to run through her if she tried. He’d meant it. He only hoped she wouldn’t put him to the test.
While he listened to Jordana talk animatedly about her newest acquisition at the museum, Micah’s attention was rooted on Phaedra. She drifted farther into the archive room, her face lit up with astonishment as she stared at the hundreds and hundreds of volumes in Jenna’s collection.
“These are all your writings?”
Jenna nodded. “I started with one journal, thinking I might be able to make sense of the visions I was having if I wrote them down. I never expected there’d be enough to fill one book, let alone all of these. And the visions are still coming. Lately, I’ve been filling about a journal a day.”
“What kind of visions are they?” Phaedra asked.
“Sometimes I see vicious battles the Ancients waged throughout the centuries. Other times, I see wholesale slaughters of entire populations. Those are the worst things I’ve seen.” Jenna let out a slow breath. “Now and then, I also see glimpses of life on the dark planet they came from, or strange things like those diagrams and memory snapshots of alien technology and equipment.”
A small frown creased Phaedra’s brow as Jenna spoke. Although she listened with obvious interest, Micah detected a subtle change in her. She seemed on edge somehow, anxious, the longer she remained in the room.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice drawing her attention.
“I feel—” She hesitated, giving a faint shake of her head. Her gaze flicked away from him, back to Jenna. “There’s a crystal here. It’s close. I can feel it.”
Although the Order had been in possession of one of the Atlantean crystals for some time, Micah had been away training and on missions with his team the whole time. He had never personally seen the crystal Jordana’s father had taken from the realm, or been anywhere near it.
He didn’t have to ask Jenna to confirm Phaedra’s suspicion. Her reaction was convincing enough. She glanced at him, her pale gold eyes wide, a full-body shiver making her tremble.
A storm of emotions played over her beautiful face, but underneath them all was an unmistakable look of heartache.
God help him, there was a part of him that wanted to close the distance between them and draw her into his arms. He’d barely
stamped down the impulse before Jordana’s alarmed voice brought him back to his senses.
“Um, Jenna?” She pointed past Micah’s shoulder, to the far end of the long chamber where a hulking, large black floor safe stood. “You need to see this.”
Jenna hurried over to look and drew in a breath. “Holy shit.”
Phaedra let out a soft gasp when she saw it, too, her hand coming up to her parted lips.
Even Micah could only stare in astonishment.
A silvery glow surrounded the huge safe. The light pulsed with intensity, growing brighter with each passing second.
Jenna faced them, astonishment in her voice. “This has never happened before. Jordana’s been in this room before. Zael too. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Jordana nodded in agreement. “I don’t understand. Inside that safe, the crystal is housed within a titanium box. It’s supposed to keep the energy muted. That’s how my father was able to conceal the crystal from any of our people. How is this possible?”
“My parents,” Phaedra whispered. “They’re part of all five crystals. It’s their life force I’m feeling. It’s been so long since I’ve been in such close proximity to one of the crystals, I didn’t remember how strongly I feel their presence.”
Micah recalled her certainty about the presence of a crystal in the Deadlands. “Is this the same thing you felt the night my team was killed?”
“No.” A strange, sad smile spread over her lovely face. “This is different. It’s an overwhelming feeling of love, of light. That’s what the crystals were meant to be. What I felt in the woods with you was something dark, a detonation meant to inflict mass harm.”
“It sure as hell did that.”
Phaedra swallowed, nodding soberly. “Each of the five crystals holds immense light and strength. They were created to protect, to provide power as a shield. The Ancients twisted that power when they annihilated Atlantis’s original settlement. They manipulated the crystals, found a way to turn all that light and strength into a dark weapon. All it takes is the combined force of two crystals and the will to destroy.”
