He wasn’t human. Not Atlantean, either.
Breed. The longtime enemy of her people. The blood-drinking, lethal offspring of the savage otherworlders who nearly succeeded in wiping out all of Atlantis many millennia ago.
That unerring stare locked on to her, the immense warrior broke away from the rest of his group and started for her through the bracken.
Phaedra started running.
Without her amulet to fly her home, she had no other choice but to flee and pray she might be faster than the heavily armed soldier at her heels.
His boots crunched in the cinders and dead foliage on the ground behind her. Brittle branches snapped like gunfire as he crashed through them.
He was going to catch her; she had no doubt about that. What he meant to do with her once he had, she didn’t want to guess.
She ran harder, drawing on all the preternatural speed she could muster.
And still he kept coming. The chase pushed them deeper into the wasteland, the rest of the warrior’s companions far behind them now.
“Stop,” he called out to her, his deep voice tight with urgency.
Phaedra kept running. She didn’t know where she was headed, nor how long she could manage to go before the dangerous Breed male caught her. The only thing she knew for certain was the need to get as far away from this place as she possibly could.
She heard him gaining on her. She felt the sheer strength and power of the male as his booted feet chewed up the distance between them.
Faith, help her. She couldn’t hope to outpace him. Though she wasn’t helpless—far from it.
Pure Atlantean blood coursed through her veins. She felt the heat of it rising inside her with every frantic step she took. Her palms tingled, already beginning to glow at her sides.
From behind her, the warrior’s words grated in a hiss. “Damn it, female, I said stop running.”
She sensed the instant he leapt into the air at her back, but it still came as a visceral shock to see him land on the ground right in front of her.
Phaedra jolted to a halt, her breath heaving. As tall as she was, this Breed male towered over her by several inches. Hulking shoulders and muscled limbs moved with the predatory grace of a big cat.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
The gaze that had skewered her across the distance when he first spotted her was no less arresting up close. His eyes were too beautiful on the face of a male built for war. The stormy shade of lavender burned away as she stared at him, amber sparks lighting his irises with unearthly fire.
“Answer me.” Full, sculpted lips peeled back from gleaming white teeth and long fangs. “Who are you? What are you doing out here?”
Phaedra edged backward. “I could ask you the same thing.”
His lips flattened. “It’s not safe for you.”
She didn’t think this awful stretch of deadness could be safe for anyone, possibly not even this dangerous male or his comrades. “What is this place?”
“You don’t know?” A flicker of confusion softened the hard edge of his suspicion, but only for a moment. He glanced down at her hands and a tendon jerked in his jaw. She could feel the glow in her palms increasing under his scrutiny. He cocked his head. His eyes glowed now, filled with amber fire and suspicion. “Holy shit. You’re one of them.”
He took a step toward her.
“Stay back.” Phaedra brought her hands up in front of her like a shield.
More than a shield, they were a terrible weapon. The Atlantean light she carried inside her was a fearsome power, one she was loathe to wield, especially when this Breed warrior hadn’t threatened her with any harm.
Yet.
He reached out a black-gloved hand. “You’re coming with me.”
“Don’t move any closer or I’ll—”
Far from afraid, he bit off an incredulous-sounding curse, his teeth and fangs flashing white in the moonless night. “Or you’ll what?”
Faith, she didn’t know what she’d do. Nor did she have the chance to respond.
All at once, the inky night sky exploded. Blinding white light erupted all around them.
Unearthly light.
Not from her, but not of the mortal world, either. Phaedra closed her eyes, but it did little to block the blast of illumination behind her eyelids. The power of it buffeted her, taking her legs out from beneath her.
She felt herself flying backward, yanked by an invisible hand. She waited to feel her body crash down onto the hard forest floor. Instead she was still in motion, pulled backward even faster, as though caught in a vortex.
Somewhere, growing ever more distant, the sound of men’s screams shook the lifeless forest.
Agonized screams. The sounds of indescribable suffering.
Was the lavender-eyed warrior among the tortured and dying?
For reasons she didn’t understand, the thought that he might be sent an arc of pain like a dagger into her breast.
“No!” Phaedra felt the cry erupt inside her, but it stayed trapped in the back of her throat. Caught in that invisible grasp that hauled her backward, she couldn’t speak at all. She tumbled through an endless chasm, the sounds of annihilation still ringing in her ears.
The anguish of it raked her to her soul.
“No . . . no. No!”
“Phaedra?” Soft pressure landed on her shoulders, giving her a little shake. “Phay, wake up.”
Her eyelids flew up and she found herself blinking up into the sky-blue eyes of her friend, Tamisia. The platinum-blonde Atlantean female frowned, her beautiful face filled with worry. “Are you all right?”
“What? Oh, yes. I—I’m fine.” Phaedra sat up in her chair, embarrassed by her outburst. “I’m sorry, I must’ve dozed off.”
She and Sia had been enjoying some tea and a light lunch on the rooftop garden area of Phaedra’s little house in Rome before her friend had stepped away to take a call from her mate, Trygg. She couldn’t have been gone for more than a few minutes, yet it was evidently long enough for Phaedra to drop into a thick sleep.
A disturbing and awful one.
Sia lowered herself into the chair next to Phaedra. “That must’ve been some nightmare. You’re as pale as a sheet.”
Phaedra swallowed. “I dreamt about the scorched forest again, and the white doe.”
For more than a week now, it had been a recurring theme every time she laid her head down to sleep. The dream had played out roughly unaltered, until now.
“It started the same way it always does,” she murmured, still caught in the weblike strands of her sleep. “I followed the doe into the charred woods, but someone else was there too. Sia, the dream changed into something terrible this time. And all of it felt so real.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“No.” Phaedra shook her head. The anguish of what she’d heard and imagined behind her closed eyelids as the wasteland went bright with annihilating power was still too fresh in her senses. She didn’t want to think about it any longer, much less try to put the nightmare into words. “It was just a silly dream, that’s all. I don’t want you thinking your friend has gone mad.”
Tamisia’s gaze was sympathetic, her expression gentle with concern. “Do you want to know what I really think? You’re working too hard, Phay. Running the shelter here at the house is a twenty-four hour obligation. It’s too much for just one person to handle, even for you.”