She’d been busy since he’d last seen the place.
Leather-bound journals lined nearly every inch of shelf space now. Meticulous hand-drawn sketches, complicated diagrams, and indecipherable technical schematics had been affixed to the walls as if they were works of art. Hell, they practically were art, judging from the incredible level of detail she’d captured on them.
He strode over to one of the odd diagrams and was studying the tangle of linked formulas and sprawling flowcharts when several pairs of footsteps approached from the corridor.
Jenna entered first, her brows furrowing over her hazel eyes when she spied him looking at the sketch. “That one’s unfinished. I’ve only recently started seeing visions of the design, but it feels . . . incomplete.”
Micah gave a vague nod, curiosity making him peer a bit closer at the diagram. “It looks like some kind of operational sequence. A code of some sort.”
“Think so?”
He shrugged, moving away from the sketch as Phaedra stepped into the room with Jordana.
“You didn’t even say hello to me yet,” Jordana lightly scolded him, walking over to give him a warm hug. Her expression softened as she pulled back and looked at him. “It’s really good to see you, Micah. I’m so sorry about what happened to your team.”
His face hardened at the reminder. Guilt and grief still clawed at him, but he clamped the lid down on all of it. “Still working at the art museum?”
“I am. Carys too, from time to time.”
Micah had been introduced to Jordana by Carys Chase a few years ago in Boston, before Jordana had hooked up with Nathan and before anyone had reason to suspect that Carys’s best friend had not been born a Breedmate, but a full-blooded Atlantean. A fucking Atlantean princess, no less.
Now, it seemed she’d found a fast friend in Phaedra.
Not that Jordana was alone in that. Everyone at the compound seemed willing to accept Phaedra into their confidence, even his own mother and father.
So, why was he finding it so damn hard to trust her?
Part of the reason was the five ash piles he’d been forced to leave behind in the Deadlands. But he was starting to wonder if the bigger reason he didn’t want to let his guard down had everything to do with him. With the way she made his blood race with hunger unlike any he’d known before.
He wanted her, more than he was willing to admit. And that was a distraction he didn’t need and sure as hell couldn’t afford.
Not when he was fully prepared to go to war with her people if the attack on him and his unit traced back to Selene.
Would Phaedra stand in the way of that? He’d already vowed to run through her if she tried. He’d meant it. He only hoped she wouldn’t put him to the test.
While he listened to Jordana talk animatedly about her newest acquisition at the museum, Micah’s attention was rooted on Phaedra. She drifted farther into the archive room, her face lit up with astonishment as she stared at the hundreds and hundreds of volumes in Jenna’s collection.
“These are all your writings?”
Jenna nodded. “I started with one journal, thinking I might be able to make sense of the visions I was having if I wrote them down. I never expected there’d be enough to fill one book, let alone all of these. And the visions are still coming. Lately, I’ve been filling about a journal a day.”
“What kind of visions are they?” Phaedra asked.
“Sometimes I see vicious battles the Ancients waged throughout the centuries. Other times, I see wholesale slaughters of entire populations. Those are the worst things I’ve seen.” Jenna let out a slow breath. “Now and then, I also see glimpses of life on the dark planet they came from, or strange things like those diagrams and memory snapshots of alien technology and equipment.”
A small frown creased Phaedra’s brow as Jenna spoke. Although she listened with obvious interest, Micah detected a subtle change in her. She seemed on edge somehow, anxious, the longer she remained in the room.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice drawing her attention.
“I feel—” She hesitated, giving a faint shake of her head. Her gaze flicked away from him, back to Jenna. “There’s a crystal here. It’s close. I can feel it.”
Although the Order had been in possession of one of the Atlantean crystals for some time, Micah had been away training and on missions with his team the whole time. He had never personally seen the crystal Jordana’s father had taken from the realm, or been anywhere near it.
He didn’t have to ask Jenna to confirm Phaedra’s suspicion. Her reaction was convincing enough. She glanced at him, her pale gold eyes wide, a full-body shiver making her tremble.
A storm of emotions played over her beautiful face, but underneath them all was an unmistakable look of heartache.
God help him, there was a part of him that wanted to close the distance between them and draw her into his arms. He’d barely stamped down the impulse before Jordana’s alarmed voice brought him back to his senses.
