Micah still didn’t like the idea that Phaedra was coming along, but he knew there was no persuading her away from it. In fact, she’d seemed more closed-off than ever in the hours before they boarded the Order’s private jet with Jenna, Brock, Zael, and Brynne for the thirteen-hour flight to their first stop in Kazakhstan.
She had all but avoided him on the trip as well, except to discuss mission details with the group or pore over the sketches Jenna had made based on the Ancient’s vision of the ship’s interior and maps of where Jenna envisioned the vessel to be hiding.
Phaedra’s distance was driving him crazy, especially after the amazing night they’d shared. Her blood still thrummed inside him, warm and electric. Through his bond to her, he knew something was bothering her.
Worse than that. What he felt from her was overwhelming regret.
Because of him?
Fuck, he hoped not.
He had left important things unsaid between them last night, chief among them the fact that he was in love with her. She had to know that even without him saying the words, but she’d deserved to hear them and not be left to wonder what she meant to him.
If she was having second thoughts about letting him drink from her, he wasn’t sure he could blame her. Despite the fact that she had granted him the honor, it had been a selfish thing to do. Just as it had been selfish to presume she would abandon her life in Rome to be with him.
Now, there would be no breaking his psychic bond to her no matter where she chose to live. For the rest of his life, he would feel her strongest emotions. He would know her heart like it was his own. As for his future, she would be the only woman for him as long as either of them drew breath.
Then again, he didn’t need a blood bond to guarantee that. He was hers, and always would be.
That was pretty much what he’d told his father and Lucan Thorne this morning, when he’d put in his request for a new assignment with the Order.
His gaze clung to Phaedra as she stepped away from the worktable littered with papers, maps, and schematics. With the rest of the team taking a break from their strategy talks, Micah stood up and followed her into the private lounge area of the jet’s main cabin.
With little time left before they would have to prepare to touch down at the Kazakhstan airport, he couldn’t take the chasm of silence that seemed to be opening between Phaedra and him. There would be no time to talk once they transferred to the military helicopter chartered to drop the team in the Siberian taiga for the long trek into the Deadlands.
Hell, he was already half out of his mind just from not being able to touch her or kiss her all these many hours of the flight.
He strode up behind her as she was gathering her long brown hair into a thick braid for the mission. The bared curve of her neck and shoulder was too great a temptation for him to resist. When he stroked his fingers along her tender skin, she ducked out of his touch and whirled around to face him.
He frowned. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You didn’t.” She swallowed, glancing away from him and letting her unfinished braid swing against her back. “I’m sorry I’m so jumpy.”
“Are you nervous about the mission?”
She shook her head, her brow pinched. And damn it, she still wouldn’t lift her eyes to his. He caught her chin on his fingertips and guided her gaze to him.
“You haven’t wanted to look at me or talk to me since we got out of your bed this morning, Phaedra. Tell me what I’ve done wrong.”
The strangled noise she made in the back of her throat put his heart in a vise. She took a few steps away, as if she couldn’t stand to be near him. “It’s nothing you’ve done, Micah, believe me.”
Ah, Christ. He really had fucked things up, then. Her face said it all. She stared at him in uncomfortable silence, her expression anguished and filled with remorse.
He lowered his voice and moved closer. “If I pushed you too far last night . . . if I asked things of you that you weren’t prepared to give me—”
“That’s not it. You didn’t do anything I didn’t want.”
But he was still losing her. He could feel it through his blood bond to her. “Was it something I said, then? I shouldn’t have told you I didn’t want you going back to Rome. I want you to live wherever you’re happiest. That’s why I’ve put in a request to be assigned to Lazaro Archer’s command center.”
“Micah, you shouldn’t—”
“I’m in love with you, Phaedra.” He blurted the words because he needed her to hear them, before she tried any harder to push him away. “I never believed in fate or destiny, but I do now. We belong together. I feel it in my soul and I think you do too . . .”
He had more to say—a lifetime of promises he wanted to make to her—but his words evaporated in his throat when he heard her quiet sob. When she swiped at the trail of wetness that rolled down her cheek, he couldn’t find his voice at all. Her sorrow was all he could taste.
“It wasn’t real, Micah.”
“What are you talking about?”
