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Nobody died. It was just a bad dream." The warrior lifted a dark, grim look on Lucan, Gideon, and Archer. "We're pushing her too hard. She's exhausted, physically and mentally. All these tests and journals and analyses. It's too damned much. It stops, right now."
"No." It wasn't Lucan or any of the others who spoke to refuse him but Jenna. She drew back from Brock's embrace, shaking her head. Her face was tearstained and flushed, but her soft brown eyes were steady with resolve. "No, Brock. I don't need to stop looking for answers. I don't want to stop."
"Look what it's doing to you," he pointed out. "You can hardly close your eyes without waking up screaming from a new nightmare - usually worse than the ones that came before."
She was still shaking her head as she caught his taut face in her palms. "I'm all right. Shaken up a little, but I'm fine. I want to do this. We're getting close to something big, I can feel it. I want to understand these dreams, even if they terrify me. They're a part of who I am now, Brock. I need to know what they mean."
"There may be someone who can help," Gideon put in. All heads turned to him. "Claire Reichen," he said. "Andreas Reichen's Breedmate is a dreamwalker. She might be able to help Jenna navigate these dreams and collect details we might miss otherwise."
"Yes," Jenna said. "Do you think she would be willing to do it?"
"Claire's in Rhode Island," Lucan reminded everyone. "With Reichen in Europe at the moment, running reconnaissance on the Agency for us over there, we can't ask Claire to abandon her Darkhaven and come north on a whim."
"Maybe she wouldn't have to," Gideon said. "She's dream-walked remotely before. It's not the easiest thing for her to do, but it's not out of the question."
Brock rubbed his hand over the top of his skull-trimmed head. "I'm not feeling good about any of this. What if something happens?"
"What can happen?" Jenna asked him. "They're only dreams. Maybe they're the Ancient's memories, I don't know. But I need to know, Brock. He let me live for a reason. He made me choose, and then he put this living piece of himself under my skin. Why? What did he want from me? I can't rest until I have those answers. You can't ask me to run away from what I am becoming."
"I wouldn't," Brock told her gently. He lowered his voice to a rough whisper. "You know I love you more than anything, Jenna. I only want you to be safe."
"I am safe." She smiled at him as though no one else were in the room. "I'm safe with you, and I'm not afraid. Just promise you'll be here to catch me when I wake up."
"Forever." He kissed her, a brief meeting of their mouths that radiated as much heat as a furnace.
Jenna didn't take her eyes off her mate for a moment. "Make the call to Claire, will you please, Gideon?"
At Lucan's nod of agreement, Gideon pulled out his cell phone and speed-dialed Reichen's oceanfront Darkhaven in Newport, Rhode Island.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
HE'D HAD EVERY INTENTION of leaving.
After walking out of Mathias Rowan's kitchen, his mind had been made up. Avoid the certain contempt of his former brethren of the Order and simply disappear into the night; that was the extent of his plan. Yet, somehow, Chase instead found himself climbing the stairs to the Darkhaven's second floor.
The living quarters upstairs were quiet, most of the mansion's residents either in their own suites or out for the evening to hunt or play in the city.
The room where Tavia was stood at the far end of the broad hallway. Chase walked over the antique runner that spanned the floor from the top of the wide, curving stairwell, to either end of the living quarter wings of the regal old home. He stood motionless in front of the closed door, uncertain if he should disturb her.
From the other side of the thick panel of carved and polished mahogany, he heard the faint hiss of running water.
She was still in the shower?
She'd been up there for more than an hour.
Was she all right?
"Tavia." Chase rapped lightly on the door. No answer. He knocked again, harder this time. More of the same troubling silence. "Tavia, are you in there?"
He tried the faceted crystal knob and found it unlocked. His breath going shallow in his lungs, he pushed open the door and stepped into the unlit bedroom suite.
"Tavia? Why didn't you answer ..."
His voice trailed off to nothingness as he rounded the corner of the bedroom and found her sitting quietly against the wall in the dark.
Weeping.
"Ah, Christ."
