“I don’t know why I didn’t die along with my team,” he replied, shaking his head at the idea.
Why he’d been spared made no sense to him. Not only because he hadn’t deserved to live when he’d been the one who led his men into that hellish attack, but because the intensity of the blast had been strong enough to incinerate five strong Breed males standing only a few hundred yards away from him.
Yet he’d survived.
He needed to know why.
And now that he was feeling his body coming back online thanks to the blood he’d consumed, he wasn’t about to lie around in an infirmary for another minute. He needed to use every ounce of life in him to avenge his team and destroy whatever—or whoever—was responsible for the attack.
Pivoting on the mattress, he swung his bare feet to the cold tile floor. He stood up, prepared to take the first step toward the open door of the room.
“Where do you think you’re going, son?”
“Back upstairs to get some answers out of the Atlantean woman.”
His father gave a tight shake of his head. “I’ll handle that. We’re not finished here yet.”
“As for Phaedra,” Lazaro interjected, “I can personally vouch for her character. She’s been a member of this community for decades and she’s a close friend of Tamisia’s.”
Micah grunted. “There’s another Atlantean female with blood on her hands.”
“Sia’s paid for her mistakes,” Tegan said. “Since her exile from the colony several months ago, she’s proven herself an ally of the Order time and again.”
“Phaedra’s never given any reason to doubt her,” Lazaro added. “For her to have anything to do with the destruction you witnessed with your team, she’d have to be some kind of monster. For crissake, she runs a women’s shelter out of her home in the city. Phaedra’s a good, kind-hearted woman.”
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.
