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.”
