All three warriors standing before him appeared ready to argue his decision, but instead of them answering, it was Brynne’s voice he heard behind him.
“Go where?”
He turned to face her. She stood there, looking drowsy and adorable in her untucked button-down and black pants that hugged her long legs. Her dark hair was a mass of bed-tossed waves that made his pulse kick with the urge to have her beneath him again.
Zael couldn’t couch his pleasure at seeing her, nor did he care if the rush of affection he felt was on display in his gaze for everyone in the room.
“To the colony,” he murmured in answer to her question, regret in each syllable. “I should go as soon as possible.”
The expression on her lovely face was one of confusion. And more than a trace of hurt. “You’re leaving.”
There was accusation in the words. A look of resignation creeping into her dark green eyes.
“Selene knows Zael is here,” Lucan informed her.
“How?” Brynne’s troubled gaze never left Zael. “What’s going on?”
“When I used my light in that alley earlier tonight, it broadcast my location to the realm.” He held out his hands, palms open to her. The light was absent now, but she still stared at him in dawning misery.
“Oh, my God. She found you because of me?”
He firmly shook his head. “My actions, Brynne. My decision.”
“She knows Zael is in D.C., and she knows he’s allied with the Order,” Lucan added. “She just overtook our computer systems to inform us that she expects us to turn him over to her.”
Brynne sucked in a shallow breath. “She’ll kill you.”
“Most certainly,” Zael agreed. But then, that had been the risk from the moment he first crossed the barrier that shielded the realm from the outside world.
It had been easier to accept that fact in the past, easier to disregard it. The thought of death took on new meaning when his heart still beat with the memory of Brynne tangled naked with him in his arms.
He wanted to draw her into his embrace and reassure her that if they separated now, it wouldn’t be forever. But he wasn’t certain he could make that promise to her. Not out loud. Selene drawing a line in the sand with the Order had changed everything.
Until the threat of war with her had been neutralized, so long as he was within Selene’s reach, Zael was a hazard to anyone close to him. Selene’s grudges knew no limits. Neither did her wrath.
“Selene can make all the demands she wants,” Lucan said. “She’s going to find out that the only thing she’ll get by pushing us into a corner is war.”
Darion made a derisive sound. “She’d better prepare herself for disappointment. I’d like nothing better than to deliver her defeat personally.”
Zael wanted to warn the tenacious Breed male that Selene was not an opponent who would go down easy. Before he was too eager to charge into battle against her, Darion Thorne would do well to remember that it had taken the combined efforts of several Ancients to bring Selene down the first time, and only because they were aided by sabotage, betrayal, and stolen otherworld technology.
But that was a conversation for another time.
Right now, all of Zael’s attention was rooted on Brynne. He watched her absorb all of this unpleasant news in silence. “I can’t stay now,” he told her gently. “I’ve already stayed too long.”
She didn’t reply. The tenderness they had shared a short while ago was still there in her eyes as she looked at him, but Zael also saw the beginnings of mistrust. Her dark lashes shuttered her gaze, as if she were already starting to withdraw from him.
“I have to go, Brynne.”
“Yes. Of course, you do.” She nodded crisply, refusing to meet his gaze. “I understand.”
No, he didn’t think she did. He knew her too well now to mistake her emotional retreat. He was far too familiar with her attempts to push against anything, or anyone, that might be able to hurt her. He felt that resistance from her now.
More than anything, he wanted to close the distance and offer her a proper explanation—at the very least, make her understand that his leaving didn’t diminish anything they’d shared. It didn’t lessen what he felt for her. If anything, it was only driving home to him just how much she meant to him.
In the corridor outside the tech lab came the commotion of approaching people. In moments, the room was filled with a cacophony of voices as most of the warriors and many of the Order’s women crowded into the room to hear what had happened.
After Lucan relayed his conversation with Selene, the Order’s leader turned to Zael. “Now more than ever we need to take steps to ensure that Selene does not amass any more power than she already possesses.”
Zael nodded. “We are in complete agreement on that.”
“And the colony?” Lucan prompted.
“What about them?”
“They also have one of the crystals. I will need their promise that if the time should come that Selene escalates this thing into war, the colony will pledge their crystal to us.”
Zael slowly shook his head. “That won’t happen, Lucan. As I told you, the colony’s crystal is their shield from the world outside—the same way Selene’s remaining one protects what’s left of the Atlantean realm. Without it in place, the colony—like Selene—is vulnerable to breach and attack. They will never give it up. For their own security, they can’t.”
“Then I will need their agreement that they will never surrender it to Selene either.”
“That much I can assure you,” Zael said.
Lucan didn’t look convinced. “I hope you’ll understand when I say that I need more than that to make me comfortable that the colony can be relied upon in
