She felt, rather than saw, Micah’s muscled frame tense in the chair across from her. “There’s still one question you haven’t answered. The most important one. Are you still loyal to your Atlantean queen?”
Given no other choice, she finally met his unsettling stare. “As I’ve already told you, I left the realm ages ago.”
“That’s not what I asked. Your parents served Selene as loyal subjects. So loyal, they were willing to die trying to carry out her wishes. What about you?”
His challenge drew the attention of everyone else now. Phaedra had willingly told them everything they wanted to know and then some. None of them had questioned her integrity or demanded she repudiate Selene in order to prove her good faith tonight.
“I don’t serve Selene any more than I do you, or the Order. Everything that does matter to me is in Rome. So, unless the Order is prepared to call me their prisoner, I’d like to get back there.”
At the head of the long table, Lucan exhaled a slow breath. “You’re no one’s prisoner, Phaedra. And this compound is no place for a civilian—Atlantean or otherwise. Zael and Brynne will accompany you back to Rome tomorrow. From there, they’ll be continuing on to the colony for a diplomatic meeting with the council. If what happened in the Deadlands is a harbinger of troubles to come, it seems prudent that we reconfirm the colony’s agreement to ally with us if and when we call on them.”
The couple nodded in agreement. “We can still escort you to the colony if you like, Phaedra,” Zael offered.
She shook her head. “I just want to go home.”
Relief settled over her to think she’d be on her way tomorrow. The sooner she could put some distance between herself and her unwanted attraction to Micah, the better.
At the far end of the table, Jenna idly tapped her pen against a notebook laid open in front of her. She seemed distracted, her forehead pinched as the rapid tap-tap-tap-tap continued from the pen held between herglyph-covered fingers.
“I know that look,” Brock said. “What is it, babe?”
“Maybe nothing. Except—”
“Except what?” Lucan asked, his own brows furrowing.
“This is the first in-person account we’ve ever gotten of the Deadlands.” She shrugged, but something about it didn’t seem as casual as she might have intended. “I’d love to take some detailed notes from Micah and Phaedra about the area, so I can add them to our archives.”
“That’s a good idea,” Lucan agreed. “You three can get started on that as soon as we finish here. Chase should be arriving with the group from Boston any minute now, so unless anyone has something else to discuss, we can wrap things up.”
The warriors and the trio of women seated around the table shook their heads. All except Brock, who had swiveled his chair toward his mate now, his dark gaze serious.
“Is everything all right, Jen?”
“Yes.” She smiled, reaching for his big hand. “I’d tell you if it wasn’t. Besides, you’d feel it in your blood. Everything’s fine.”
With his expression relaxing, if only by a degree, Jenna glanced at Phaedra. “My mate worries too much.”
He grunted, turning his hand over so he could clasp her smaller one in an affectionate hold. “My mate thinks she’s invincible.”
Jenna smirked. “Well, if the biotech implant fits . . .”
Phaedra couldn’t contain her curiosity. “I don’t understand.”
It was Lucan who answered. “Around twenty years ago, Jenna was taken captive by one of the Order’s most dangerous enemies. Before we caught up to him, he’d brutalized her and left a piece of himself behind.”
As if to demonstrate, Jenna pointed to the back of her neck. “State-of-the-art, alien technology. Enhanced strength. Adaptive cellular regeneration. Memories that play like a horror movie.” She grinned at Brock. “But hey, look at the bright side, right? I’ll never get a gray hair and I suppose the full-bodyglyphsare kind of badass.”
“I’m glad you can joke about it,” he growled. “I only wish I’d been the one to kill the Ancient son of a bitch.”
Ancient. The term he used was an old one, though not unfamiliar, especially not to Phaedra or any of her kind. Ancients were the fathers of the Breed. Savage otherworlders. Blood-thirsty, ruthless conquerors. A raiding party of eight such predators had come to Earth millennia ago and spent centuries hunting down and slaughtering both humans and Atlanteans wherever they could.
Ultimately, they had delivered a catastrophic blow to Phaedra’s people. After managing to get their hands on a pair of Atlantis’s crystals, they used the combined power of both to destroy the realm’s original island home, decimating the population and forcing Selene and the scant hundreds of survivors to flee to a new location where they remained to this day.
The terror of those dark days and nights happened so long ago, it had nearly faded into myth.
Much like the Ancients themselves.
But one thing didn’t make sense. Phaedra tilted her head, confused by the recent timing of Jenna’s ordeal. “According to everything I’ve heard, the Order killed all of their Ancient fathers back in mankind’s Middle Ages.”
