by Lara Adrian
Selene’s rage flashed across her ethereal features. “Jordana is my daughter’s child. My last living kin. But then I’m sure the Order is aware of that too.”
“Yes. There’s a lot we’ve heard about you, Selene. Not a very flattering picture.”
Her chin rose imperiously. “You know nothing of me or my people. Tell me, Lucan Thorne, what do you truly know of yours?”
Reflections of all the violence and bloodshed his otherworldly forebears had delivered during their time on this planet filled his head. They’d been a terror worse than anything that had been seen before or since. And although the Ancients had been ruthless in their dealings with mankind and even with their own sons among the Breed, it could not compare to the decimation they visited on Atlantis.
“I know my race’s fathers attacked you without provocation,” Lucan said soberly. “I know they killed thousands of innocent people among your population and drove you into exile.”
“They annihilated us,” she corrected sharply. “But that was then. It only served to make us stronger. It made me stronger.”
Although her fury obviously still boiled, her tone was too brittle to be simply anger. Lucan had not forgotten that Selene was betrayed by someone she once loved, and that the betrayal was the spark that lit her destruction. She was still nursing old wounds. Wounds that had festered, making her dangerous, a viper cornered and coiled, ready to strike.
“Your own people seem to think the attack all those centuries ago made you unstable,” Lucan pointed out. “There are many who think it made you dangerous, unfit to rule.”
She barked out a caustic laugh. “Did Zael tell you that? Or was it Cassianus? Be careful what you believe when you listen to men with flimsy honor.”
Lucan had learned enough about the honor of both Atlantean males to trust what he’d been told. If Selene had been a good and just queen once, as Lucan understood to be true, that benevolent ruler bore no resemblance to the scorned Valkyrie in front of him now.
“Cass believed it enough to take Jordana away from you,” he reminded her. “And that’s not all he took when he fled your realm.”
The decision to play his strongest card now produced the effect he’d hoped for. Selene was visibly taken aback at the news. Her eyes widened in surprise, in accusation. “You have the crystal. Cass gave it to you?”
“Does it matter how we obtained it?”
She smiled, but it was a tight expression. “You have no idea what to do with that kind of power. It is beyond your limited capability or your unsophisticated, Earth-bound technology.”
Lucan shrugged. “We know that two crystals can be used as a weapon, as the Ancients used against Atlantis. We know you have only one in your possession. The one currently protecting you and your realm.”
“How clever you must think you are,” she replied, acid in her chilly tone.
Darion scoffed. “Call it whatever you want. Just know that you’re never going to have another crystal. You’ll never be trusted with that kind of power.”
“I suppose you think the Order can stand in my way?” she countered, zeroing all of her outrage on Dare again. “The Breed is hardly more than mortal, as far as I’m concerned. You are practically human, and just as offensive to me.”
Dare smirked, too bold for his own good. “Are you forgetting, Selene? There’s Atlantean in our blood too.”
“Only the foulest blood from our most faithless,” she shot back. “I could erase you all from the face of the Earth. Don’t think I’m not tempted to do it right now.”
“But you can’t,” Dare said, speaking despite Lucan’s low growl of warning that he tread carefully with this volatile new opponent. “The biggest fool is the one who thinks that he—or she—has no weaknesses.”
Selene’s glower should have withered Darion, but he didn’t as much as flinch. Lucan agreed with everything his son said, but there was no mistaking that the young warrior was making a very dangerous and personal enemy here today.
The Atlantean queen’s eyes flashed as she glared at Darion. “You wish to test me? Do it at your own peril. I warn you, you do not want to stand against me.”
Lucan moved closer to the monitor. “There’s not a man or woman among the Order who will bow to you either. I promise you that.”
She smiled as if he had just invited her out for tea. “I don’t intend to make the Order bow, Lucan. I mean to make you break. And that is my promise to you.” Her gaze slid to Darion. “To all of you.”
The monitors abruptly went black.
Selene was gone.
As if no interruption had occurred, all of Gideon’s machines came back online, programs churning data as they had been before, screens filled with scrolling code and images.
Gideon ran a hand over his scalp. “Holy. Fucking. Hell.”
Lucan cursed roundly, his pulse hammering in his temples and behind his sternum.
“How the fuck did she do that?” Darion demanded. “What the hell happened that she would choose to confront us now?”
“It’s my fault.” Zael’s deep voice was contrite, coming from where he now stood in the open entryway of the tech lab. “I opened the door. I led her to you tonight.”
CHAPTER 25
Zael could not have been more stunned than when he approached the command center’s tech lab just in time to see Selene deliver her threat to the Order before vanishing off the monitors.
Although it had been hard to leave Brynne sleeping naked and peaceful in her guest room upstairs, he had been interested to meet with the warriors and discuss the outcome of the night’s patrols.
Now, as he stepped inside the tech lab, the three warriors in the room all stared at him expectantly.
“What do you mean this is your fault, Zael?” Lucan’s brow was deeply furrowed, his tone guarded. “How did you open the door to Selene? What the fuck is going on here?”
“Tonight, in Georgetown,” he explained, sober with remorse. “After I left here to look for Brynne, I found her in an alleyway. She’d been in an…altercation with a Rogue.” He kept his disclosure purposely vague, still mindful of Brynne’s trust and confidence in him. “I used my powers—the light in my palms—to calm her, to help her. An Atlantean’s light is a powerful thing. None of us can discharge it without the rest of our kind feeling the ripple of energy. I’m sorry. I understood the risk, and I made the choice anyway.”
Gideon studied him. “Are you saying Selene triangulated your location based on that?”
Zael nodded. “She knows I’m here.”
“No shit, she knows you’re here,” Darion interjected. “She just demanded we turn you over to her to stand trial as a traitor.”
Fuck. He’d had a bounty on his head for too long to register any kind of surprise at that news, but he never meant to pull the Order into his problems.
Zael swore under his breath. “Now that she knows I’m in D.C., don’t think she’ll hesitate to send her guards to try to collect me. They could be on their way even as we speak.”
“Then they’ll have a fight on their hands,” Lucan said. “We’re damned well not going to surrender you to Selene. As commander of the Order, my first priority is the protection of this location and everyone inside it. That includes you now, Zael.”
The conviction in Lucan’s statement moved him, but Zael shook his head. “I appreciate that, but I would never ask it of you.”
“You didn’t. I’m offering,” Lucan said. “You’re a friend to the Order. We protect our own.”
Zael smiled. He had his own warrior’s code, even if his blade and shield had once been bloodied in Selene’s name. He inclined his head at Lucan. “Because I feel likewise about the Order, I cannot stay. It will be better for everyone here—safer for all—if I go.”
All three warriors standing before him appeared ready to argue his decision, but instead of them answering, it was Brynne’s voice he heard behind him.
“Go where?”
He turned to face her
. She stood there, looking drowsy and adorable in her untucked button-down and black pants that hugged her long legs. Her dark hair was a mass of bed-tossed waves that made his pulse kick with the urge to have her beneath him again.
Zael couldn’t couch his pleasure at seeing her, nor did he care if the rush of affection he felt was on display in his gaze for everyone in the room.
“To the colony,” he murmured in answer to her question, regret in each syllable. “I should go as soon as possible.”
The expression on her lovely face was one of confusion. And more than a trace of hurt. “You’re leaving.”
There was accusation in the words. A look of resignation creeping into her dark green eyes.
“Selene knows Zael is here,” Lucan informed her.
“How?” Brynne’s troubled gaze never left Zael. “What’s going on?”
“When I used my light in that alley earlier tonight, it broadcast my location to the realm.” He held out his hands, palms open to her. The light was absent now, but she still stared at him in dawning misery.
“Oh, my God. She found you because of me?”
He firmly shook his head. “My actions, Brynne. My decision.”
“She knows Zael is in D.C., and she knows he’s allied with the Order,” Lucan added. “She just overtook our computer systems to inform us that she expects us to turn him over to her.”
Brynne sucked in a shallow breath. “She’ll kill you.”
“Most certainly,” Zael agreed. But then, that had been the risk from the moment he first crossed the barrier that shielded the realm from the outside world.
It had been easier to accept that fact in the past, easier to disregard it. The thought of death took on new meaning when his heart still beat with the memory of Brynne tangled naked with him in his arms.
He wanted to draw her into his embrace and reassure her that if they separated now, it wouldn’t be forever. But he wasn’t certain he could make that promise to her. Not out loud. Selene drawing a line in the sand with the Order had changed everything.
Until the threat of war with her had been neutralized, so long as he was within Selene’s reach, Zael was a hazard to anyone close to him. Selene’s grudges knew no limits. Neither did her wrath.
“Selene can make all the demands she wants,” Lucan said. “She’s going to find out that the only thing she’ll get by pushing us into a corner is war.”
Darion made a derisive sound. “She’d better prepare herself for disappointment. I’d like nothing better than to deliver her defeat personally.”
Zael wanted to warn the tenacious Breed male that Selene was not an opponent who would go down easy. Before he was too eager to charge into battle against her, Darion Thorne would do well to remember that it had taken the combined efforts of several Ancients to bring Selene down the first time, and only because they were aided by sabotage, betrayal, and stolen otherworld technology.
But that was a conversation for another time.
Right now, all of Zael’s attention was rooted on Brynne. He watched her absorb all of this unpleasant news in silence. “I can’t stay now,” he told her gently. “I’ve already stayed too long.”
She didn’t reply. The tenderness they had shared a short while ago was still there in her eyes as she looked at him, but Zael also saw the beginnings of mistrust. Her dark lashes shuttered her gaze, as if she were already starting to withdraw from him.
“I have to go, Brynne.”
“Yes. Of course, you do.” She nodded crisply, refusing to meet his gaze. “I understand.”
No, he didn’t think she did. He knew her too well now to mistake her emotional retreat. He was far too familiar with her attempts to push against anything, or anyone, that might be able to hurt her. He felt that resistance from her now.
More than anything, he wanted to close the distance and offer her a proper explanation—at the very least, make her understand that his leaving didn’t diminish anything they’d shared. It didn’t lessen what he felt for her. If anything, it was only driving home to him just how much she meant to him.
In the corridor outside the tech lab came the commotion of approaching people. In moments, the room was filled with a cacophony of voices as most of the warriors and many of the Order’s women crowded into the room to hear what had happened.
After Lucan relayed his conversation with Selene, the Order’s leader turned to Zael. “Now more than ever we need to take steps to ensure that Selene does not amass any more power than she already possesses.”
Zael nodded. “We are in complete agreement on that.”
“And the colony?” Lucan prompted.
“What about them?”
“They also have one of the crystals. I will need their promise that if the time should come that Selene escalates this thing into war, the colony will pledge their crystal to us.”
Zael slowly shook his head. “That won’t happen, Lucan. As I told you, the colony’s crystal is their shield from the world outside—the same way Selene’s remaining one protects what’s left of the Atlantean realm. Without it in place, the colony—like Selene—is vulnerable to breach and attack. They will never give it up. For their own security, they can’t.”
“Then I will need their agreement that they will never surrender it to Selene either.”
“That much I can assure you,” Zael said.
Lucan didn’t look convinced. “I hope you’ll understand when I say that I need more than that to make me comfortable that the colony can be relied upon in this. I need their word, Zael, not just yours.”
“The colony wants peace as much as anyone. I have to believe the elders can be persuaded to give your their commitment that the crystal will never be given up to Selene.”
“Excellent,” Lucan announced. “I hope you’re right. We can make arrangements to leave for the colony as soon as you’re ready.”
“We?” Zael nearly choked at the suggestion, but it was obvious from the warrior’s determined expression that he had every expectation of making the trip with him. “Er, that’s not… Lucan, that will not be possible.”
A black brow arched in challenge. “I wasn’t asking, Zael.”
“I realize that. However, the colony does not permit outsiders. They never have. Most certainly not a member of the Order, and least of all the Order’s formidable Gen One leader.” Zael cleared his throat. “I’m afraid your reputation precedes you, Lucan.”
“They will have to make an exception.”
“They won’t. And if I try to bring you—or any Breed warrior—through the veil, the sentries on watch will have no choice but to kill us both.”
Lucan grunted. “They’ll die trying.”
“With all due respect, my friend, you’re only proving the point.” Zael held the hard gray stare, knowing if the tables were turned, he’d likely be pressing the Order just as insistently. “The colony has survived this long because they’re hidden, protected by the crystal. I am the only one they allow to travel in and out, and that’s by special arrangement with the council elders. I won’t break that trust by bringing a warrior to their doorstep.” Zael shook his head. “I’m afraid I cannot accommodate you on this, Lucan, but I will do my best to present the Order’s case to the elders.”
“And if you are unable to convince the colony to ally with the Order? Granted, diplomacy has never been my strong suit, but I’d feel a hell of a lot more comfortable sending someone in to plead the case for us alongside you. Someone who can speak for the Order and represent the Breed as well.”
“Perhaps I should be the one to go with Zael,” Jordana suggested from where she stood with her mate, Nathan. “I’m part of both the Atlantean world and the Order’s now. Let me speak for both.”
“Not without me at your side,” Nathan said, his tone dark and protective. “No fucking way am I letting you near that place or any other Atlantean stronghold unless I can be there too. It was only a couple of weeks ago that Selene did her damnedest to take you from me. N
ever again.”
“Nathan is right,” Zael agreed. “And as an Atlantean, you would not be permitted to leave the colony if you did pass through the veil, Jordana. They would hold you for your own protection and theirs.”
“Then what about Brynne?” Tavia’s question drew the attention of everyone, though no one looked less enthused than Brynne herself.
Eyes widened in surprise, she glanced from the intrigued faces of the Order and their mates, to Zael. He could read the reluctance in her gaze.
She frowned at her sister. “Tavia, I… I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t imagine Zael would think so either.”
No, he didn’t, and for many reasons. Not the least of which being that, like Nathan with Jordana, he wanted to keep Brynne as far away from the front lines of the coming battle with Selene as possible too. She would be safest here with the Order. Even if leaving her behind was the last thing he wanted to do.
But Tavia didn’t give him or Brynne the chance to argue.
“Why not you, Brynne? Bringing a warrior from the Order is out of the question, but why not a diplomat who can also demonstrate to the colony that the Breed can be trusted as an ally if and when the time should come? Especially one that Zael can personally vouch for?”
As much as he wanted to reject the idea outright, he had to admit there was some merit in it. He could say all he wanted to attempt to convince his people to look at the Breed as something other than an enemy, but nothing would be so persuasive as meeting one of their kind and seeing that they had similar goals and desires for the world they inhabited.
Zael considered for longer than he should have. It was a bad idea, and he knew it. But as reluctant as he was to drag Brynne into the fray with him, the even less palatable option was leaving without her.
“All right,” he relented, catching Brynne’s reticent gaze. “But we don’t have much time. If you agree, then we can—and should—depart immediately.”