by Adrian, Lara
Tegan seemed to agree. “I sensed no enmity from her at all when we were introduced. If she were hiding something, she damn well wouldn’t have been able to conceal it from me.”
For what wasn’t the first time, Micah wished he’d inherited his father’s psychic ability to read another person’s emotional state with a touch. An ESP talent like that would make his work for the Order a hell of a lot more efficient. To say nothing of how it would benefit him when it came to dealing with beautiful, possibly homicidal, Atlanteans.
Instead, like most Breed offspring, he’d been born with his Breedmate mother’s unique extrasensory gift. If Phaedra had been human, Micah would have been able to telepathically hear all her sins and negative impulses.
Since he was denied that advantage, he’d have to settle for more primitive methods. Starting with an hour or ten of thorough interrogation.
He turned around to face his father. “Enemy or innocent, she was there with me in the Deadlands. I won’t be satisfied until she gives me a damn good reason why.”
From the infirmary room doorway behind him, he heard a quiet clearing of a female throat. Then Phaedra’s soft, yet direct, voice answered.
“Actually, I believe I may have been there to find you.”
CHAPTER 6
He rounded on her from where he stood with his back to the open doorway.
“So, now you do admit you were there.”
The low, gravel-rough voice that had accused her of murder and worse upstairs in the foyer sounded less rusty now, but the deep growl had lost none of its menace.
Or its sharp bite of accusation.
He took a step toward her, his movement alone seeming to take some of the oxygen out of the room. Even half-dressed and without any weapons in his hands, this Breed male was formidable. Judging by the amber sparks glittering in his lavender eyes, his animosity for her hadn’t cooled at all.
Phaedra felt Zael tense where he stood at her side. She’d persuaded him to bring her to the warriors’ infirmary in spite of his advice against it. While the former Atlantean guard had been allied with the Order for some time, his readiness to protect one of his own practically radiated off him as Micah advanced.
“What do you mean you were there to find me? Who sent you?”
She shook her head. “No one.”
Until she saw him in the foyer, alive and undeniably real, she had assumed her dream was merely a product of stress and long hours at the shelter, as Sia had suggested. But now she had to wonder. Atlanteans were a race full of empaths, telepaths, and other illuminators. Tapping into unseen energies and forces of light came as naturally as breathing to most of their kind.
Phaedra’s parents, Maenos and Sindarah, were among the most powerfully gifted psychics the realm had ever known. With their passing, all those incredible talents were lost for good. She had inherited none of their gifts, nor her parents’ shared obsession with science and alchemy.
Still, she wasn’t without some Atlantean strengths. And she hadn’t been living among humankind for so long that she didn’t recognize the prickling of her immortal instincts.
“I believe I was meant to be in those woods with you that night,” she said. “Whether to witness what occurred or to try to save you from it, I don’t know.”
A brittle scoff hissed through his full, sculpted lips. “Convenient.”
“I’m telling you the truth. I have no reason to lie.” Although his muscled body all but blocked her path into the room like a solid wall, she stepped forward anyway, refusing to let him think she could be intimidated. Even if she was, just a little. “As for whether I was there as we stand here now, flesh and bone, or on some other plane, I can’t be sure. All I can tell you is it felt like a dream. Right before it turned into the worst kind of nightmare.”
“Finally, something we agree on.”
Zael cleared his throat. “Phaedra asked me to bring her down here out of concern for you, Micah. She wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“Or maybe she wanted another chance to try to finish me off.” Skeptical, those fire-tinged, pale purple eyes hadn’t left her gaze for a second. “Keep your concern. As you can see, I’m alive. Unfortunately, that’s more than I can say for my teammates. They’re nothing but piles of fucking ashes now.”
Phaedra had stood up to her fair share of rage-blinded men in her work at the shelter, but Micah’s fury was something different. Not explosive and swift to burn out, but controlled and dark. His anger was pain-fueled and lethal, and it put a tremble deep in her marrow.
“I’m sorry about what happened to them, Micah. I truly am.”
His face hardened at her sympathy. If he could have pushed her away from him physically, it wouldn’t have been any more effective than the forbidding coldness of his expression.
“I’ll ask you again, Atlantean. What did you mean you were in those woods to find me? How did you know my team and I would be there?”
“I didn’t know. I was led there in my dream. A recurring dream I’d been having for about a week before that night.” Phaedra paused, feeling the weight of Micah’s scrutiny along with that of the other warriors in the room. “The dream never changed: I’m lost in a barren forest, alone. Just when I think I’ll never find my way out of it, an animal appears on the path ahead of me as if it wants me to follow.”
“What kind of animal?” The question rumbled out of Micah. The look on his face was challenging, but now edged with more curiosity than suspicion.
“A deer. It was a gentle white doe, the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen.”
Micah’s clenched jaw tightened as she spoke. Although he remained unmoving, staring at her in unnerving silence, she didn’t miss the subtle glance that passed between Tegan and Lazaro on the other side of the room.
Zael spoke up as he moved farther inside the room. “None of you seem surprised to hear this. What’s going on?”
“That’s what we need to figure out,” Tegan said. He looked at Phaedra. “This white doe you saw in your dream—it led you to Micah and his unit?”
She shook her head, then shrugged faintly. “I didn’t know she was bringing me to them, but now I think maybe she was. When I realized the doe and I weren’t alone in the woods this time, that there were men there too, she vanished. That’s when Micah spotted me. He had weapons on him, and he was dressed for war. He started chasing after me, driving me deeper into the trees.”
“I wasn’t going to hurt you, Atlantean,” he muttered.
Phaedra met his glower. “Nor I you, warrior. Or your men. You can believe me or not, it’s your choice.”
“And you say you’d also been having this dream repeatedly?” Lazaro interjected.
She nodded, then felt some of the blood drain from her cheeks. “Also?”
Her attention had never fully left Micah, but now she felt the tug of something deeper than just an unwilling attraction when her eyes clashed with his again. “You’ve been dreaming about the white doe in the woods too?”
He inclined his head in grudging acknowledgment. “For a full week, every time I slept. It was the same dream over and over. I encountered the white doe in the Deadlands forest and it led me farther and farther into the labyrinth of skeletal trees. The sequence never altered. Not until you appeared.”
“No. That can’t be right.” She drew in a breath, her pulse taking on a wilder tempo. “It’s impossible.”
It was one thing to suspect her dream had been some kind of premonition or a signal she was meant to follow. But this was something different.
That she and Micah might have shared the same recurring dream in identical detail went beyond coincidence. It was a sign of something much more than that. Something she refused to consider, let alone accept as truth.
Zael’s quirked brows only made her discomfort double. “I’ve never heard of an Atlantean and one of the Breed sharing the Dreamscape before.”
“That’s because it doesn’t happen. It can’t.” She turned
her frown toward Micah. “You must be mistaken.”
He seemed to take her denial as a personal affront. Arching a brow, he crossed his muscled arms over the bared, glyph-covered skin of his chest. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“No, it’s just—”
“Just what? Now, what are you trying to hide?”
While she grappled with the very idea that she and this Breed male, this warring man, might share any kind of connection—psychic or otherwise—Zael stepped in to fill in the blanks for the rest of the room.
“The Dreamscape is sacred territory. To share it with someone else requires a rare bond, the rarest, in fact. A bond of the soul.”
“Please,” Micah scoffed. “It’s not unusual for people to have similar dreams. Just last month, two of my teammates both had dreams they were rock stars with their own harems full of groupies. Their souls had nothing to do with that.”
“Yes, people do have similar dreams from time to time,” Zael said, sober where Micah had been dismissive. “But I’m not talking about people in general. I’m not even talking about the Breed. I’m talking about my people. Phaedra’s and mine. And what you and she described was something more than just a similar dream. You didn’t have the same dream about the white doe on separate occasions. It was identical, and you shared it at the same time. Not just once, either. The dream became reality. It brought you to the same place and the same moment in time through your connection in the Dreamscape.”
Tegan’s mouth had flattened into a troubled line while he absorbed what Zael was saying. “Are you talking about dreamwalking?”
“That’s what it sounds like to me,” Lazaro agreed. “Andreas Reichen’s Breedmate has that ability. Claire can enter someone’s dreams with them and walk around inside their unconscious mind. Is that what we’re talking about here?”
Zael slanted Phaedra a meaningful look before he replied. “Not quite the same as that, no.”
And wasn’t that an understatement?
She couldn’t keep her gaze from sliding back to Micah. He was a magnetic force, even when his mistrust and animosity pulsed off him in waves. He didn’t appear enthused to be the subject of this discussion any more than she was.
He’d be even less enthused if he understood what their shared dream seemed to indicate.
“We saw the dream through one pair of eyes,” she said, astonished to so much as think it, let alone put it into spoken words. “We experienced the dream together, Micah. As if we were one entity, the same being.”
“The same soul,” Zael helpfully added. “That kind of soul bond only exists between the most destined pairs of immortals. It’s formed before birth, a destined connection. Fated mates.”
“Bonded souls? Fated mates?” Micah let out a chuckle. “No offense, Zael, but save the Atlantean love-and-light bullshit for someone else.”
Zael merely shrugged off the remark with his typical laid-back calm. Phaedra, however, rankled. The former legion guard didn’t need her to defend him, but she couldn’t stand by and listen as Micah denigrated one of the most sacrosanct bonds of an Atlantean’s life as if it was some kind of crude joke.
Even if she herself suddenly wished she didn’t believe it could be true.
“Our culture is not, as you call it, bullshit.” Her sharp tone drew his attention her way. She couldn’t read the look on his handsome face, but some of his bluster seemed to fade under her glare.
He cocked his head, studying her. “You don’t actually buy into this, do you?”
“It’s not a question of whether I do or not. The dream we shared was real. It led us to each other in those woods. It happened. Even you can’t argue that. It can’t be wished away, no matter how much both of us might like to.”
“I’d like to wish away everything that happened over this past week,” he said. “But I can’t do that, either. I’m a soldier. I deal in facts. Hard truths. I deal in reality, even when it’s ugly. What I don’t deal in is mystical, metaphysical nonsense.”
“Soul bonds are not nonsense,” she shot back. “My own parents shared that kind of bond. It was nothing short of destiny and fate that brought them together.”
He grunted, a harsh smile on his lips. “Fortunately for both of us, those are two more things I don’t believe in.”
Phaedra wanted to laugh at his naivety, but there was nothing humorous about any of this to her. It was bad enough that she had to defend herself against his accusations that she somehow had a hand in whatever killed his men and nearly took his life too. Now, she felt compelled to convince this man—this overbearing, arrogant Breed male—that the dream they shared meant they were destined by some higher purpose to find each other.
She nearly groaned at the weight of that thought.
All her life, she’d assumed the soul bond would elude her the same way her parents’ extraordinary gifts had passed her by. She had never been more desperate to hold on to that belief.
Why now? Why him?
It didn’t make sense. And if it was fate controlling their paths, she couldn’t think of anything worse than being linked to a warrior.
She’d built her life outside Atlantis on caring for people, on keeping the peace no matter what it cost her.
Now this?
Closing her eyes for a moment, she brought her fingers to her temples where the sudden throbbing of her pulse was beginning to grow into a headache. Maybe if she went home and threw herself into her work at the shelter, she could forget about the dream, this man, and all the questions swirling in her mind.
“If there’s nothing else you need from me, I’d like to go back to my house now.”
The grave look on Tegan’s face didn’t give her much hope of that. “Actually, we’re only getting started.”
“What more can I tell you?”
“We still don’t know enough about the attack on Micah and his men.”
“I already told you, I had nothing to do with it.”
Tegan gave her a nod. “I believe you, Phaedra. But you’re the only witness to what happened. Anything you can tell us would be a help to the Order.”
“Because we’re going to find out the truth one way or another,” Micah added in a low growl. “Whoever’s responsible is going to pay for what they did. I mean to see to that personally.”
She didn’t doubt that for a moment. Micah may have been near death’s door only hours ago, but he was healing now. The dangerous soldier she met in the scorched woods was a lethal force of nature now—much of it focused on her.
“I told you everything I know. If I could help you, I would.”
As she held Micah’s penetrating stare, she couldn’t stop the horrific incident from replaying in her mind. The sudden blast of light. The visceral pulse of the energy that exploded all around them. She didn’t know where the attack had come from or who had ignited it . . . but she recognized the unmistakable force of it.
She knew that power all the way into her marrow.
“What is it?” Tegan frowned, suspicion glinting in his eyes. He slowly shook his head. “You haven’t told us everything, Phaedra.”
He said it with such certainty it felt as if he could read her troubled thoughts. She didn’t want to hide anything, especially when lives had been spent. Yet to voice what she was thinking might ultimately cost lives too. Innocent Atlantean lives.
She sent a nervous glance at Zael.
His brow creased with concern. “If you have information, you need to tell them. Tell all of us now, Phaedra.”
She knew he was right. She looked at Micah, her chest tightening at the thought of the agony he must have endured. Astonished that he’d survived. Despite their clash, she couldn’t deny her relief that he wasn’t killed along with the others.
“The light didn’t come from Atlantean hands. Not mine or anyone else’s. It was too strong for that, too pure.”
“Ultraviolet?” Lazaro asked, dread edging his deep voice.
She shook her head. As deadly as sunlight
was to members of the Breed, what she felt in that barren forest was something beyond even that.
“There’s only one source that can emit that kind of light and power.” She looked at Zael again, seeing the grim understanding wash over his face. “It came from a crystal.”
Tegan raked a hand over his head. “Holy hell. How can you be certain?”
“She is,” Zael said. “Phaedra’s probably the one person in all of the Atlantean realm who could tell you that without a shred of doubt.”
“How so?”
“Because all five of the Atlantean crystals were created by her parents.”
Everyone stared at her now, a mix of reactions playing across the three Breed males’ faces. Surprise, curiosity, intrigue. All of those emotions churned like a storm in Micah’s piercing gaze.
“Your parents created them?” he asked. “How?”
“They were alchemists and mystics. They were also soul bonded, which made their gifts doubly powerful. Using those combined gifts, they created an enormous energy source that provided nourishing light and impenetrable protection for our people.”
Zael nodded in sober acknowledgment. “Without their work, Atlantis would’ve been vulnerable to every enemy. Even now, both the realm and the colony are shielded by their crystals. Our people owe Maenos and Sindarah a debt that can never be repaid. Peace be upon their souls.”
Phaedra smiled sadly at his praise for them.
Micah frowned. “Your parents are dead?”
“For a very long time,” she replied, still feeling their loss. “They gave their lives for their work with the crystals. The realm had five, but after losing the first two, Selene wanted more. Eventually, she pressed them to make a sixth. My parents didn’t tell anyone that creating each crystal demanded some of their own inner light. The last one they attempted to create proved too much. There was an accident in their laboratory and they . . .” Phaedra glanced down for a moment. “They sacrificed everything for their work.”
Tegan and Lazaro offered murmured condolences, but it was Micah’s silent, lingering gaze that reached inside her and made the ache of loneliness feel even sharper.