Long accustomed to their presence, he hardly glanced in their direction. Instead, he moved to the ship’s command center, where he tapped a darkened dashboard panel. It was here that the heart of the craft continued to beat. The technology powering this last surviving system was robust enough to outlast all life on Earth, but the primitive life forms existing here could not be allowed to have it.
Neither could the race of otherworlders who had also claimed a corner of this planet as their own. Atlanteans, they called themselves. Light-worshipping immortals whom he and his comrades intended to hunt into extinction.
They had already made significant strides in that direction.
His people would not rest until they had finished them all, including their queen.
And if it seemed he and his comrades might fail in that mission, they had agreed on a final solution.
He tapped a panel on the wide dashboard and a familiar diagram illuminated below the glass. His fingers moved over the schematic in a specific pattern, leaving a trail of light where his touch had been. It was a code he was entering, some kind of sequence.
A detonation sequence.
After he was finished, he glanced at his forearm. Beneath hisglyph-covered skin, a rice-sized object lit up with a pulsing, bright glow that echoed the one still beating like a living heart on the dashboard.
The Ancient’s interest moved on to something else now. The press of his palm unlocked a small compartment of the console beside him. It opened for him, exposing a container the size of a child’s lunchbox.
Its sturdy, silver metal sides gleamed, and he handled it as if it were made of fragile glass.
He lifted the lid, his low chuckle the only sound in the silence of the ruined ship.
Inside the box rested a pair of egg-shaped crystals infused with unearthly, mercurial light.
Enough energy to destroy Atlantis. Enough to wipe out all existence on Earth.
Life . . . or death?
How it shall end depends on you.
Shock jolted through Jenna. The vision dissolved as she sat up and let out a scream.
“Jenna. I’m here.” Brock was at her side as soon as her eyes flipped open. “What just happened?”
“The Ancient.”
She pushed herself out of the water, practically falling out of the tub before he caught her and held her upright.
“The two Atlantean crystals the Ancients took from Atlantis,” she gasped. “I saw them, Brock. I know where they are.”
CHAPTER 18
She had never been a bigger fool.
The worst of it was, she had no one to blame but herself for the hurt she was feeling.
After all, she had been the one who sought out Micah last night, not the other way around. She had gone into the weapons room to find him with clear eyes and the full understanding of what might happen if she pushed a dangerous male like him.
She had presented herself—and her heart—on a silver platter. She shouldn’t be surprised that he would take both and never look back.
Mine.
That’s what he’d growled against her lips as she had surrendered herself to him so completely. She thought he’d meant it. She had stupidly, blindly, believed that he was feeling something more for her than just the physical need they had both been unable to deny.
After the passion they’d shared last night, the way they fit so perfectly, the way Micah looked at her with such intense possessiveness and desire, she felt as though she belonged to him and only him. She’d nearly convinced herself that in spite of the terrible way they’d met in the Dreamscape, destiny actually had played a hand in bringing them together.
She didn’t realize the claim he’d been staking came with an expiration date.
Humiliation still burned in the pit of her stomach long after he’d left to meet with Lucan. Phaedra stowed her unpacked travel bag inside the walk-in closet of her guest room, trying to put the whole confrontation out of her mind.
