by Adrian, Lara
Life . . . or death?
How it shall end depends on you.
Shock jolted through Jenna. The vision dissolved as she sat up and let out a scream.
“Jenna. I’m here.” Brock was at her side as soon as her eyes flipped open. “What just happened?”
“The Ancient.”
She pushed herself out of the water, practically falling out of the tub before he caught her and held her upright.
“The two Atlantean crystals the Ancients took from Atlantis,” she gasped. “I saw them, Brock. I know where they are.”
CHAPTER 18
She had never been a bigger fool.
The worst of it was, she had no one to blame but herself for the hurt she was feeling.
After all, she had been the one who sought out Micah last night, not the other way around. She had gone into the weapons room to find him with clear eyes and the full understanding of what might happen if she pushed a dangerous male like him.
She had presented herself—and her heart—on a silver platter. She shouldn’t be surprised that he would take both and never look back.
Mine.
That’s what he’d growled against her lips as she had surrendered herself to him so completely. She thought he’d meant it. She had stupidly, blindly, believed that he was feeling something more for her than just the physical need they had both been unable to deny.
After the passion they’d shared last night, the way they fit so perfectly, the way Micah looked at her with such intense possessiveness and desire, she felt as though she belonged to him and only him. She’d nearly convinced herself that in spite of the terrible way they’d met in the Dreamscape, destiny actually had played a hand in bringing them together.
She didn’t realize the claim he’d been staking came with an expiration date.
Humiliation still burned in the pit of her stomach long after he’d left to meet with Lucan. Phaedra stowed her unpacked travel bag inside the walk-in closet of her guest room, trying to put the whole confrontation out of her mind.
The look of shock on Micah’s face when she’d informed him she would be staying in D.C. for an undetermined time replayed mercilessly in her head. He had been more than surprised or disappointed. He’d stared at her as if the floor had just opened up beneath him. As if he couldn’t have gotten any worse news than the fact that she was not going to be boarding a flight for Rome at any moment.
If nothing else, it was better that she understood how he truly felt, even at the cost of her pride. She’d lived far too long and endured more than enough loss than to waste another moment feeling like a fool for allowing herself to get swept away on thoughts of fate and destiny.
Maybe Micah had it right after all.
Maybe their shared dream of the white doe in the Deadlands was just that. Nothing but a dream.
Maybe soul bonds and fated mates really were just a lot of Atlantean love-and-light bullshit.
She scoffed under her breath, reaching for her phone to call Sia. She needed to feel grounded in something real again, and a chat with her friend was a good place to start.
Before her fingers had closed around the device, a knock sounded on the other side of her closed door, followed by Zael’s voice.
“Phaedra, are you in there?”
She set down the phone and went to let him in. “Is anything wrong?”
“It’s Jenna. She had a vision a few minutes ago.” The former Atlantean royal guard was never one to rattle, but there was no mistaking the gravity in his voice. “Jenna saw the two missing crystals—the ones that were used to destroy Atlantis. She knows where they are.”
Phaedra couldn’t hide her shock. “You mean she saw them in the Ancient’s memories?”
Zael gave a grim nod. “There’s more, Phaedra. She’s in the war room downstairs. Lucan has called everyone in the command center to come and hear what she has to say.”
She nodded, hurrying after Zael. They were the last to arrive in the war room. Gideon and Savannah were gathered around the large conference table with Gabrielle and Brynne, Tegan and Elise, as well as Sterling Chase and his daywalker mate, Tavia. Micah, Darion, and Jax were on the other side of the table beside Nathan and Jordana. Micah glanced Phaedra’s way as she entered with Zael and they took their places near everyone else. As for the rest of the room, all eyes were trained on Jenna, who stood beside Brock at the end opposite of Lucan.
“Go ahead,” the Order’s leader said, giving Jenna a grim nod. “Tell them what you just told me.”
Phaedra listened in astonishment as Jenna went on to describe what she’d witnessed through her strange connection to the Ancient who had left his indelible mark upon her before his death.
No one said a word as she relayed detail upon detail of the Ancient’s trek through a dense boreal forest where the alien wreckage had lain undisturbed for millennia, cloaked on the ground where it had crashed.
She told them about the advanced circuitry and systems the Ancient had tried unsuccessfully to repair, about the life pods and the pair of bodies stowed in the rear of the ship.
And then she told them about the two Atlantean crystals the Ancient had stored there too. How he had programmed a detonation trigger into the ship, then synced the protocol with the biotechnology chip he’d carried in his forearm.
The same chip that now resided in Jenna.
“Life or death,” she murmured. “He made me choose one or the other that night in my cabin. He wasn’t just talking about my life, though. With the crystals on board that ship, then should it blow, he was talking about eradicating every living thing on this planet. That trigger was set to detonate if and when his life ended. Now, I’m the one carrying that burden.”
“Holy hell.” Lucan’s deep voice was airless, his face stark with obvious dread.
It was a feeling clearly shared by everyone in the room, Phaedra included. No one said anything for a long moment, the entire gathering gone silent under the weight of what Jenna had just revealed.
Brock gathered her against him, his arm around her shoulders as tender as his gaze. “I’m never going to let anything happen to you, Jenna. I made you that promise a long time ago, before we understood anything about that damn chip and what it might do to you.”
“Yes, you did,” she whispered, leaning into his embrace. “I’ve never been this scared of what he did to me, though. The changes in my body, the awful visions . . . I can handle all of that. Making me live with this is the cruelest part of his assault on me.”
Brock kissed the top of her head. “We’re in this together, baby. If you’re scared, you just keep holding on to me. I’ll always keep you safe.”
“It’s been more than two decades since the last Ancient died,” Gabrielle interjected quietly from her place next to Lucan.
“Yes, it’s been twenty years since he died,” Savannah said. “But he was held captive in Dragos’s lab for about twice that long, and before then Dragos had kept him in another kind of prison for centuries.”
Elise nodded. “Which means Jenna’s vision must have taken place during the time before. All the way back to the Middle Ages.”
Tegan bit off a low curse. “So, that fucking ship’s just been sitting out there abandoned and forgotten in the Deadlands somewhere all this time.”
“That would be the best scenario,” Lucan replied.
Gideon exchanged a grim look with him. “Considering the way our luck’s running lately, I don’t think we can count on best scenarios.”
Nathan’s cool gaze flicked to the Order’s leader. “There’s no such thing as luck, only opportunities to be won or lost.”
“Well, this is one we can’t afford to lose,” Sterling Chase said, abruptly standing up and starting to pace. “We need to know where that ship is before anyone else gets to it.”
“Damn right we do,” Micah agreed. “Since I’m the only one of us who’s been in that godforsaken stretch of scorched taiga, I should be the one to go.”
Phae
dra didn’t want to acknowledge the way her heart lurched to hear him volunteer to return to the area that nearly killed him once already. She had to remind herself that he wasn’t hers to worry over. Besides, she didn’t think she’d be able to stop him from taking on such a dangerous mission even if she tried.
That didn’t mean her heart had to agree.
“There is another thing to consider,” Zael said soberly. “We may not be the only ones searching the Deadlands in pursuit of the crystals.”
Sterling Chase glanced his way. “You think Opus might have intel on the crystals?”
“That’s one possibility,” Zael hedged.
“But you’re talking about a greater threat than that.” Darion’s deep voice drew everyone’s attention. “You’re talking about Selene.”
Zael nodded. “How long ago was it that the swath of Siberian land was rendered uninhabitable?”
“Ten years,” Lucan replied. “There was some kind of disaster in the region—nuclear or chemical, it was never fully determined. Whatever happened, it scorched hundreds of thousands of acres into a toxic wasteland. To this day, no one has taken blame for the event.”
“You think it was Selene?” Tegan asked Zael.
He gave a mild shrug. “If she suspected the crystals might be hidden in the area, what better way to dissuade anyone else from getting curious than to cast the entire region into forbidding Deadlands?”
Jax arched a brow. “If she made the Deadlands a decade ago, can we be sure she hasn’t already retrieved the crystals from the ship?”
“She hasn’t,” Phaedra said. “The crystals are still out there. Nothing else could have created the blast of light that hit Micah and his team.”
“You’re certain of that?” Lucan asked.
She nodded, feeling Micah’s eyes trained on her from across the room. “There is no doubt in my mind. I would never mistake their power for anything else.”
“That’s not all,” Jenna added. “The ship is protected, not only by the cloaking field that masks it to the outside world, but by a lock that can only be opened with a DNA key. I saw the Ancient press his hand to a digital panel as he arrived at the ship. It read his DNA before the portal unlocked for him.”
Gideon leaned forward as she talked, a smile edging his mouth. “So, you’re saying even if Selene knew where the ship might be, she wouldn’t be able to get inside?”
“That’s right.”
“Then, unfortunately, neither will we,” Tavia interjected from the other side of the table. “Of all of us in this room, Brynne and I are the closest genetic link to the Ancient’s DNA. Not even you Gen Ones are purer than us,” she said, glancing at Lucan, Tegan, and Nathan.
Jenna nodded at Tavia. “You’re right. There’s no Breed male or female here, be it daywalker, Gen One, or otherwise, who would be able to unlock the Ancients’ ship. The fact that Micah and his team triggered some kind of defensive reaction from the crystals when they got too close makes me certain they’ve been integrated with the ship’s perimeter security. Our best—possibly only—way to get inside is by faking out the system. There’s only one of us here who can do that.”
Brock let out a low growl. “Jenna. I know what you’re going to say, and it’s out of the question.”
She glanced at him. “I’m the only one who might be able to do this.”
“And if you can’t?” Scowling, he ran his hand over his head. “Come on, baby. There has to be another way. You know what’s at stake now if you’re wrong. You saw it for yourself—that thing is rigged to self-destruct if anything happens to you. If the crystals really are inside, then any detonation is going take the whole fucking planet along with it.”
“That’s exactly why I have to try. I’m our best shot at getting inside that ship.”
Low conversation rumbled among everyone gathered. Even Phaedra had her doubts that Jenna should risk any amount of harm. Still, her courage was remarkable.
Lucan stared at Jenna. “You sure you want to do this?”
“I have to do it.” Her hazel eyes were determined. “If we’re going to send anyone into the Deadlands to look for the crystals, you’re going to need me to come along.”
“Then I’m going to be there too,” Brock said, his voice flinty with resolve. “You go, I go.”
She reached up, cupping his jaw in her hand. “Lucky you, right? This is what you get for falling in love with a cyborg freak of nature.”
“You know I’ve been all in from day one,” he said, smiling. “No regrets, sweetheart. Not for a second.”
“I’m in too,” Micah said, the finality of his statement leaving no room for argument. Not from his parents or Lucan.
Most certainly not from Phaedra.
“Send me along with them,” she said, turning her attention toward Lucan. “If the crystals are still inside the ship, I may be the only one who can extract them without being harmed. I can also provide protection for the team, as I did last night.”
“And alert Selene and every other Atlantean to our location while you’re at it?” It wasn’t Lucan who objected, but Micah. She didn’t have to look at him to feel his disapproval practically burning her from the other side of the table. “We can’t risk tipping our hand, no matter the cost.”
“We can bring in some daywalkers,” Jax suggested. “Aric and his new team in Boston are only a few hours away.”
“Atlantean light isn’t the same as ultraviolet,” Zael pointed out. “Daywalkers will be just as vulnerable as anyone else, Breed or human.”
“Or any other Atlantean,” Phaedra added, feeling the need to caution him as well.
He nodded. “Phaedra’s right. Any team going near those crystals is going to need the kind of cover only she can provide. Without her, this mission is over before it begins.”
Lucan listened in pensive silence, then he exhaled a low sigh. “As if we don’t have enough shit to deal with already. We still need to respond to Opus for that fucked up UV ambush last night. Gideon, how are we doing on that lead you’re working on?”
“The software worm is ready to roll. All I need is a backdoor into one of Opus’s encrypted networks and it’s showtime. Once we infiltrate their digital link, there’ll be nowhere left for them to hide.”
“We need to make it happen,” Lucan said. “Jenna’s just given us a new Priority One but I don’t want us taking the heat off Opus for one bloody minute. Every one of those bastards is going down, and I mean hard.”
“For Eli,” Jax said, giving a solemn nod.
Every voice in the room echoed the vow. “For Eli.”
Lucan dropped his hand on the table like a gavel. “All right. I’ll make my decision on the Deadlands team and we can start putting that plan into motion.”
With nods and murmured agreements, everyone got up and started filing out of the war room. Phaedra waited until the rest of the group had exited before she stepped out to the corridor.
Micah was waiting for her after everyone else had gone, a look of barely couched fury in his eyes. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
She hiked up her chin. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Like hell you don’t.” Sparks flared in his lavender irises. “You’re not going on this mission.”
“I believe that’ll be up to Lucan, not you.”
She started to walk away from him, but Micah caught her by the wrist. The tips of his fangs glinted with his sharp, indrawn breath. “Goddamn it, Phaedra. I can’t have you out there with us.”
“Why, because you still think I’m hiding an allegiance to Selene? I suppose you still hold me responsible for what happened to your team in the Deadlands too?”
It hurt more than she expected to think he might believe she was his enemy. Didn’t he know she would never do anything that would put his life—or anyone else’s—in peril?
“Let me go, Micah.” When he didn’t relax his grasp, she pulled her arm free and started walking away.
“P
haedra.” A curse exploded out of him. Next thing she knew, he was standing right in front of her. “You say you can’t be harmed by the crystals, but what if you’re wrong?”
“I’m not wrong.”
“But what if you are? Have you ever tested your theory? The Ancients decimated the Atlantean population using those two crystals. Not even you could have held back the tsunami that took Atlantis down.” He stared at her, his gaze intense and unwavering. “Now, according to Jenna, those same crystals are somewhere on board a ship that’s rigged to blow to kingdom come. If we get this wrong and that fucking ship explodes, the crystals won’t protect you.” His deep voice lowered to a choked snarl. “I won’t be able to protect you, either.”
She swallowed, unwilling to imagine the potential annihilation, the total loss of life. The destruction of the entire planet itself. None of that changed the fact that she had to be part of the mission to retrieve the crystals. If anything, what he said only made her role that much more crucial.
“I don’t need anyone’s protection. And you have nothing to say about what I do or what I choose to risk.”
“I think I’ve got more to say about it than anyone else.”
“Why? Because you fucked me?”
His head reared back, eyes blazing. “That’s one reason, yes.”
“What other reason could you possibly have? Don’t tell me it’s because we met in the Dreamscape. I’m well aware of what you think about that. In fact, I’m starting to agree with you, Micah. It is bullshit. And I’m not your problem.”
He let out a harsh, humorless laugh. “You’ve been my problem from the instant I saw you, Phaedra. Meeting you in the Dreamscape had nothing to do with that.”
She steeled herself to the look of resignation in his smoldering eyes. She had already let herself believe she meant something to him. She wasn’t going to play the fool for him again.
“I will be going back to the Deadlands to help locate the crystals,” she stated evenly. “And then I’ll be going back to Rome, whether the Order agrees or not.”
CHAPTER 19
