Parallel Attraction Page 18

  But even without the dreams, he could never shake the horror he'd known for those three days—and that was why, as he sat on the edge of his bed now, Kelsey's terror felt so familiar. And he'd be damned if his lifemate would experience anything approximating the suffering he'd known at Veckus's hands.

  "Thea, I need you to help me."

  Both soldiers had been waiting on his word while he clasped the wedding band, fielding the impressions it radiated. "Is it something with the ring?" Thea dropped heavily beside him on the mattress's edge.

  Jared turned the band over in his palm. "This belongs to Kelsey," he explained, speaking from instinct rather than factual knowledge.

  "But... I don't understand. It's a wedding ring." Thea frowned in confusion.

  Jared nodded. "Yes, I know. It's inscribed as well. Look." He extended the band to her. "It's worn down some, but hold it to the light. You can still read the inscription."

  She did as he instructed, lifting the ring to eye level and squinting. "'Sonnet twenty-nine, verses thirteen to fourteen,'" she read, her pale brows furrowing in confusion. "I don't understand the significance of this, Jared."

  In answer, he folded both arms over his chest and began to recite the Shakespearean poem from memory: "'For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings—that then I scorn to change my state with kings.'"

  "Does that mean something to you?" Scott asked.

  Jared met his friend's questioning gaze. "It's our wedding vow, I believe," he answered, feeling an unstoppable wave of grief rise up within his chest. Grief for a beautiful future, stolen like some intricate, fragile snowflake lost forever in a harsh wind.

  "What the hell?" Scott asked, his fair face flushing with emotion. Thea gaped at Jared, stricken, but he alone remained calm, a center of focused purpose amid the tumultuous emotions passing between them all.

  Jared looked from one to the other of his two most trusted soldiers, then said in a soft voice, "It's our sonnet, given by me to Kelsey tonight." Thea's blue eyes welled with tears: without needing another word of explanation, she understood exactly in what way he'd "given" that verse to his mate. "And apparently," he continued, drawing in a steadying breath, "the day we were married, it served as part of our wedding vows… three months from today. Take a look at the date inside the band."

  "Three months from today? Sir, what you're saying makes no sense." Scott placed a firm hand on his shoulder. "You're upset. Grieved—"

  "No, Lieutenant, I am perfectly rational about this. I saw it." Jared indicated the bedroom with a sweep of his hand. "Saw it all here, in this room—and there in the future. This ring belonged to another Kelsey, years from now, and somehow it was brought back to my Kelsey from that time. I saw myself, older somehow—and I saw her, older too." For a moment, Jared had to drop his head; the graying man he'd glimpsed had been a diminished shadow of himself, ravaged by years of warfare. Yet his wife's bold and strong spirit had been like a beacon in that future, his other self's true sustenance.

  His two advisers exploded in dispute and challenge, but with a lift of his hand he silenced them. He met his cousin's confused gaze and extended his open palm with a resolute gesture. "Lieutenant Haven," he said in a calm and determined voice, "I require your help."

  Ashen, she stared at his hand wordlessly, his open palm an unanswered question until he explained his plan. "I need your power, cousin," Jared told her gently. "It's the only way I can do what I must."

  Hesitating only one moment longer, she extended her own pale, trembling hand to him. Before their fingers had even locked together, the tendrils of her immense energy had already begun to twine with his, giving him the strength he hoped would enable him to reach Kelsey across the expanse that separated them.

  Kelsey sat on the smooth floor of the mitres chamber, leaning against the tiled wall. She drew her denim-clad knees close against her chest, making herself as small as possible—almost willing herself to disappear—as if an auburn-haired, nearly six-foot-tall woman could ever escape notice. Without being obvious about it, she stole glances around the place, trying to get a better fix on her location. Was she underground? On Refaria? She hadn't a clue, because the catacomb-like place didn't seem to possess a single opening to the outside world. It reminded her of her grandparents' farm in Montana, where she'd once seen a basement fallout shelter left over from the 1960s, still stocked with dingy soup cans and dusty supplies. Only this weaponry complex—for surely that was what it had to be, even if that revelation had come from Marco—was the sort of place that sent people into shelter. It didn't provide it.

  Kelsey studied the large, luminous tube in the middle of the main chamber's floor. It held no meaning for her, no relation to anything she had ever encountered as a student of the physical sciences. Yet apparently ten years from now she knew exactly how to operate the damn thing. She let her gaze slide over other parts of the chamber, squinting as she followed the trail of a dark, narrow hallway until it vanished into blackness. Maybe the way out was down that hall? With a surge of hope, she knew she had to break away from Marco somehow, at least long enough to see if her freedom lay at the obscured end of that tunnel.

  She lifted wary eyes to study her captor. Marco sprawled against the wall opposite her, his lean frame imposing the strength and weight of an armed fortress without so much as twitching a single muscle. His long legs extended in front of him with a casualness that belied whatever purpose had dragged them both to this alien place. His calculating black eyes locked with hers in challenge, and one dark eyebrow shot upward, daring her to question his motives.

  She dropped her chin to her knees and fixed her eyes on his weathered black hiking boots—anything to avoid that cold, vacant stare. One boot had a long gash along the side, the kind a penetrating knife might have left in the middle of a struggle, and as she stared at that slash of leather, she thought of his scar. Again she wondered why it felt so familiar and significant.

  Glancing upward, she studied the way the silver line sliced through the otherwise silken black hairs of his eyebrow. With his waving black hair and sultry-eyed appearance, he possessed the dangerous, graceful looks of the unattainable, the sort of bad boy she would never have dared to pursue in high school. Not if she didn't want her heart smashed into thousands of pieces. Then again, Jared had the same kind of breathtaking good looks about him too. But in every plane of her lover's face, every realm of his heart, he transmitted goodness. Strength. This Marco's dangerous beauty made her shiver like she would in the middle of a snow squall.

  "You study me," he observed, that eyebrow cocking upward in question again.

  She countered, "How'd you get that scar?" and locked her eyes with his in challenge. Unflinching, he stared back at her for a long, thoughtful moment. Against the wall, he stiffened, as if he meant to come after her, but she refused to cower. Just as suddenly, their battle of wills seemed to subside, and he released a breath, settling back again without another word.

  But she remained undaunted. "You're not going to answer me?"

  He released a low, soft chuckle. "I owe you no answers, darling."

  "Oh, so . . . what? You just get to snatch me from the bathroom half-naked, send me flying through God only knows what that was earlier, but I can't ask about a scar?" She snorted with ironic laughter. "No, I'm sorry, but I think you owe me plenty of answers."

  His black eyebrows drew together with a focused expression, but he said nothing, only retrieved his weapon—a silver pistol unlike any she'd ever seen before—from a side holster and gazed down the barrel at her.

  "That doesn't intimidate me," she said as he sighted on her.

  His full lips pulled into an amused expression. "It would if I pulled this trigger."

  "No, that would just kill me," she answered, trying to sound nonchalant "But it still wouldn't intimidate me."

  This statement, for some inexplicable reason, earned her a grudging look of appreciation. He lowered his pistol and immediately re-holstered it. "I don't believe I
am ready to kill you, Kelsey." He lifted a thumb to his marred eyebrow, rubbing it with a thoughtful gesture. "Why do you mention the scar?" he asked, searching her face.

  "It's important." She'd felt the undercurrent of knowing in those first moments when he'd taken her captive. She sensed it even more now. "Tell me why." If she could get control here, be the one in command of this situation, then maybe she could control him.

  "It's an odd question, Kelsey," he answered, his hard gaze never leaving her face. "Again, I wonder why you ask."

  "Maybe the scar is part of all this."

  His expression darkened, and she swore that the dusky skin of his face reddened, but he said nothing more. No answers, no reasoning behind what they were doing here in this strangely lit chamber; only a heavily drawn and oppressive silence.

  She dropped her gaze again and began to trace her finger in little circular patterns on the smooth floor. "Well, if that question's no good, then here's another one," she said. "What are we doing here?" Maybe being direct was better with this enemy. "Other than carrying out your plan to destroy Jared Bennett, that is."

  He seemed to gaze at some distant point, a surprising mixture of emotions flashing across his features. Sadness, regret, emptiness—all those passed over his dark face, and he made no effort to disguise them. Then, just as quickly, he grew guarded again, his expression steely and harsh as his gaze bore down on her. "I think I prefer the first question, Kelsey Bennett," he said, his voice assuming a formal tone. "And yet I shall answer the second one." He shifted on the floor, sitting more upright. "We're going to call Jared in a few minutes and have him meet us here."

  Jared would come, marshaling all the soldiers at his disposal, before he'd let this man touch her. "Why not just call him now?" She leaped to her feet, unable to suppress her fury and fear another moment. "Why are you even waiting at all?"

  "Ah, well, there's reason to my madness." He folded his muscled arms across his chest. "He needs time to realize you're gone. To feel that loss inside… to let it shape him for a while. Because his fear for you will be his weakness."

  "Of course he knows I'm gone!" she cried in frustration, pacing the floor. "You kidnapped me from his freaking bedroom!"

  With unexpected swiftness, one dark hand shot out, clasping her ankle like a manacle. "I want him to feel your absence," he said calmly, holding her fast. "To wonder if, perhaps, you've been lost to him forever. Only then will I allow him to know the full measure of his defeat. Now," he said, his voice edged like a knife blade, "sit down."

  "So we can wait for Jared to know 'the measure of his defeat,'" she taunted, trembling as she sank back against the wall opposite Marco.

  "I wish the battlefield to assemble well."

  And for Jared to realize that I'm as good as dead? She shivered at the thought, but forced herself to focus on getting Marco to talk—to reveal some hidden detail that might help her escape.

  "Why do you want to destroy Jared? You must be Antousian."

  Marco had told her at the outset that he was Refarian—but from his actions, he seemed much more like one of Jared’s Antousian enemies.

  "Antousian?" He let out a deep, gravelly laugh, something she hadn't expected. "No, I told you before—I'm Refarian. Just like you and Jared."

  She would have sworn that her heart stopped beating, turning her chest into a chamber as hollow as the one around her. Then with a violent lurch, the hammering resumed in an erratic, crazy tempo, the room nearly fading to black as it did.

  Finally she found her voice again. "Like Jared, you mean," she corrected with a swallow. "You're Refarian like he is."

  Marco's eyebrows drew together in confusion as he studied her. "Like you, Jared—all of you." Awareness grew in his expression. "Kelsey, don't you know what you are? Surely you've learned the truth by now."

  "What kind of game are you trying to play with me?" she demanded, hot tears stinging behind her eyes.

  "I was merely answering your question as to my genetic makeup." He cleared his throat with a wry laugh. "I did not expect to bump into something so . . . awkward, shall I say, as your not knowing which species you belong to." He bowed his head dramatically. "I do hope you'll forgive my indiscretion."

  "What you're saying... it can't be true. It's impossible." Her hands began to tremble uncontrollably, the tears still prickling her eyes.

  "Kelsey, it is very much possible, because it is who you are."

  "I have human cells," she insisted. "Human blood! My father is Jordan Patrick Wells. My mother—"

  "He changed you."

  "My mother," she continued, "was Erica Marshall Wells—"

  "When Jared left this mitres data inside your mind, Kelsey, it changed you on the most basic cellular level. I'm sorry, but you are part Refarian now." His voice had assumed a quiet, soothing tone, "Between the soul joining and the mind bonding, and the presence of his data, it transformed you. So you're part Homo sapiens and part"— he chuckled—"Homo refarius, I guess you'd say, since our genetic codes are more than ninety-nine percent the same."

  "No, you're wrong." Kelsey shook her head adamantly. "There's no way you could know this at all."

  He studied her with a sympathetic expression. "Actually, I know firsthand that it is the truth."

  "How?" she rasped.

  "Because I came to serve as your protector—pardon, I will come to serve two years from this time." He met her eyes with a steady gaze. "Both you and Jared—it was what I was bred and engineered for. I vowed my allegiance before the high Refarian council, pledging my service, my indenture, my very blood to the throne. So you see, I know a great deal about you, Kelsey—apparently more than you know about yourself. I am sorry if my revelation shocked you."

  Swiping at the tears, Kelsey buried her face in her knees. She didn't want Marco to know that his bizarre tactic was unnerving her so badly. Yet something deep within her ignited at his words, and she knew that they were true. Slowly she raised her head and found Marco studying her coolly.

  "Then why are you here to destroy Jared now?" She couldn't help the pleading tone that had entered her voice. "Why have you kidnapped me? If you're our protector, then—"

  "I was your protector." She swore a note of compassion softened his words.

  "But you just said it was what you were bred for," she tried to argue, hoping to appeal to some forgotten sense of purpose in the cruel man. "Why would you hurt us then?"

  Marco rose, brushing off his faded jeans, and began to slowly pace the length of the chamber. For a long moment he seemed to consider his reply as he braced his arms on the tiled side of the mitres' walls. Finally he pivoted to face her, meeting her eyes with meaningful intensity.

  "I'm here because that's what Veckus has asked me to do, Kelsey," he answered quietly. "And I serve him now, not Jared."

  Jared pressed his eyes shut and allowed Thea's power to bolster his own. He'd sat still for several silent moments, seeking the necessary strength to forge a spatial bridge with Kelsey. He'd caught foggy glimpses of her sitting on the floor somewhere, but could get nothing more, and the need to place her in time and space had made him almost wild. As his eyes searched for her in the darkness, he could almost recognize her location, but the outlines were just too vaguely defined, shaped only by mist and shadow. So he'd waited, allowing the buzzing energy to build within him before he pushed forward toward her. But now Kelsey pulled into focus, the haziness around her parting like summer storm clouds over a valley.

  Stepping across the bridge—immersing himself in their bond—he walked toward her and knelt beside her on the floor. But she was busy talking, and even though he kept repeating her name, she couldn't hear him.

  Kelsey. Kelsey, sweetheart, he tried, forcing a semblance of calm into his words.

  She continued with her conversation, unaware of his presence. He was little more than a mist to her. Or a ghost. That thought sent an unsettling shiver up his spine. If only he could make out what was being said—or the face of the person to
whom she was talking.

  She buried her face against her knees, fighting back tears. Who was hurting her? His heart rate soared, and he spun first in one direction, then another, seeking Kelsey's tormentor. Nothing to be seen! No discernible forms around her. At last she became quiet, so he tried again. Placing a tender hand on her back, he began to rub her shoulders. With every caress, a blazing fire built within his abdomen, then his hands and legs, until at last he swore that his raging power would overtake him and incite his Change. But he tamped down his restless energy, focusing only on his life-mate until finally she lifted her head, glancing around her as if she expected to see someone. She had felt his touch! He saw little goose bumps shoot across her arms. He hadn't ignited their bond, not yet, but he was very close.

  Stepping around her, he knelt on the floor facing her. He placed his hands on top of hers, whispering her name like one of the mystics' sacred chants.

  Kelsey . . . Kelsey, he called to her, offering a breath of golden life. A tether of safety. A promise of his protective love.

  No answer.

  The heat that had begun in his belly now radiated outward until it seemed to explode within every part of his body—until he burned, maddeningly so. He spoke across their soul bond, propelling himself across distance and space, right into her immediate presence: Kelsey, my love. My mate! Hear me! It is Jared. J'Areshkadau! Love, love....

  His energy careened uncontrollably, his Change nearly unstoppable now—but he clenched his teeth, refusing to allow his fire to engulf him.

  Again, Kelsey glanced around her in confusion, unsure of what she had sensed. Gently he placed his hands on top of her head, allowing the heat and energy that had been building inside of him to flood her.