FALL OF NIGHT
A Midnight Breed Novel
Blood and destiny collide in Fall of Night, the newest action-packed, pulse-pounding novel in Lara Adrian's New York Times and #1 international bestselling Midnight Breed vampire romance series.
Breed warrior Micah is one of the Order’s best, his reputation for cold justice and lethal skill rivaled only by that of his formidable father, Tegan. So, when a mission Micah’s leading in an off-limits area called the Deadlands goes terribly wrong, leaving him the sole survivor of an apparent Atlantean attack, he won’t rest until he has answers...and vengeance for his fallen team.
Phaedra thought it was only a dream, a hideous nightmare. Yet somehow, she had been transported from her life in Rome to a stretch of barren forest when it suddenly lit up with unearthly fire, obliterating everything in its path—including the fiercely handsome Breed warrior she’d encountered in the dream. Or so she believed, until their paths cross again and Phaedra finds herself, and her Atlantean people, at the center of Micah’s wrath.
With tensions between the Breed and the Atlanteans already edging toward war, and another powerful nemesis growing bolder by the day, uncovering the stunning truth about what happened in the Deadlands will force Micah and Phaedra to work together in an alliance forged by fate and an undeniable desire neither of them can resist.
“A well-written, action-packed series that is just getting better with age.”
—Fiction Vixen
CHAPTER 1
It was the silence that disturbed her the most.
Not the black, moonless night sky overhead. Not the hours she’d spent wandering alone in that darkness, trying to find her way through an endless stretch of scorched forest and barren earth. No, it was the complete and utter stillness that made her blood run cold in her veins.
The deadness of the place chilled her to her bones. It seeped into her marrow like poison, like a warning, as her feet navigated the cinders and dead foliage on the ground.
Phaedra didn’t scare easily. None of her immortal kind did. Yet she couldn’t deny her urgency to leave this place. Her heart hammered with that need, the only sound she heard in the maddening quiet surrounding her.
Out of old habit, she reached for the bracelet on her wrist. She’d worn the leather thong with its small piece of precious Atlantean crystal for as long as she could recall. The amulet could teleport her away in an instant. But her wrist was bare. She’d given the bracelet to her friend Tamisia weeks ago, never imagining she might need it herself.
Phaedra was on her own here. All she could do now was push on.
The wasteland maze of denuded, skeletal trees only seemed to expand the more she tried to escape it. One jagged path turned into another, then another. Straight trails morphed into circular loops that carried her nowhere. Clearings she thought she was heading toward instead moved farther away before dissolving altogether, nothing more than mirages.
Frustration gnawed at her.
There had to be a way out. She just needed to keep going until she found it.
Against the pitch-dark night, a pale shape emerged from behind a cluster of gnarled, blackened trees several yards away.
A doe.
Graceful, calm, as white as milk, she stepped out to the broken path ahead of Phaedra. Dark, placid eyes blinked once in acknowledgment, no trace of fear in the animal’s gentle face. It waited, its breath softly misting in the chill night air.
“Hello, there,” Phaedra whispered.
She didn’t dare move, loath to spook the beautiful creature. All the anxiousness of her frantic trek through the alien landscape faded under the doe’s comforting presence.
“Where did you come from? Are you lost like me?”
Carefully, she took a measured step forward. The doe retreated a step.
Phaedra immediately paused, frowning in disappointment. “Please, don’t be afraid of me.”
The deer backed up farther. Then she calmly turned around and began to step back into the lifeless forest.
Phaedra followed. The doe kept an ample distance between them, but she didn’t bolt. She didn’t abandon Phaedra to the wasteland. Instead, she seemed to be leading her somewhere. Guiding her toward something.
Not out of the forsaken woods, but deeper into them.
The twisted trees grew thicker the farther she followed the animal, the scorched bracken at her feet more tangled and forbidding.
“No.”
Phaedra wasn’t sure if she spoke the word aloud or voiced it only in her head. The doe glanced back at her, halting in the darkness. There seemed to be a question in the soft eyes, an entreaty.
Phaedra shook her head, her long brown hair stirring in the night breeze. “I’m not going any farther.”
She waited for the animal to resume its retreat into the forest. She fully expected the unusual creature to disappear like the apparition she was certain it must be.
But the doe didn’t leave.
Slowly, it approached her.
It stepped toward her with serene purpose, until it stood close enough for Phaedra to touch.
She couldn’t resist the temptation to brush her fingertips over the gleaming white coat. The fur felt like velvet under her hand, the steady pound of the doe’s heartbeat a reassurance Phaedra didn’t even realize she needed until the vibration of it thrummed beneath her fingers.
Those gentle, fathomless brown eyes spoke of eons of wisdom.
And something more elusive that Phaedra yearned to understand.
“Why are you here?” She stroked her fingertips over the doe’s smooth brow and delicate snout. “I wish you could tell me wh—”
Phaedra’s words stuck in her throat. Somewhere behind her, the stillness of the wasteland forest shifted. It breathed.
Only the smallest change in the air, imperceptible, except to someone with her inhumanly acute senses. Her skin prickled at the feeling of unease that washed over her. She let her hand fall away from the white doe, slowly pivoting her head to listen closer, to scan the skeletal landscape for the intruders she instinctively knew were there.
Men.
She didn’t see them yet; she felt them.
But that couldn’t be right.
Why would anyone be in this forsaken place? What could they want?
Whatever their reasons, their presence here wasn’t good. They moved on silent feet, carrying the scent of violence and weaponry on them. And they were coming closer every second.
Phaedra now caught a glimpse of their dark shapes moving between the scorched trees in the distance behind her. At least four of them, maybe more. The group began to split up and fan out with military precision.
With a whisper of warning at the tip of her tongue, Phaedra turned back to the gentle white doe to urge it to run with her for safety.
It was gone.
Vanished without a sound or a trace.
She only wished she could disappear too. Glancing behind her, she gauged the oncoming danger. The largest of the soldiers, the one in the lead, abruptly halted the others with a sharp upward slash of his black-gloved hand as he peered in her direction.
Oh, no.
He’d spotted her.
Although she couldn’t see his face beneath the black head covering and smudges of grease meant to further camouflage him in the dark, she felt the clash of his gaze as it slammed into hers across the distance. The force of that connection pushed her back on her heels. It zinged through her veins like a lick of lightning, making the fine hairs on her arms and at her nape stand on end.