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Jenna gave an eager nod. "We got something new this time. I'm not sure what it means yet, but Claire and I documented everything. As awful as it was to be in the nightmare - to be living it like my own memories - I also can't wait to go in again and try to bring back something more." Beside her, Brock emitted a quiet growl and muttered something about hardheaded females.
Jenna wrapped her arms around him and gazed up into his dread-filled eyes.
"He worries," she told Tavia and the others, giving him a private smile.
"He loves you," the big warrior quipped right back, his voice as solemn as his gaze.
"Tavia, can I look at your glyphs?" The abrupt request came from Mira, a child of about eight or nine years who'd been among the first to greet Tavia on her arrival and had been watching her with rapt interest ever since.
"Mouse," Renata admonished her, shaking her head in exasperation. "Manners, young lady." "Sorry." The flaxen-haired imp huffed out a remorseful sigh. "Tavia, may I please look at your glyphs?"
"That's not exactly what I meant, Mouse." Renata's expression was as mortified as any mother of a precocious child, even though her voice held a tinge of amusement. "It's not polite to ask something like that of someone. Or to stare."
"No," Tavia replied. "It's okay, really. I don't mind."
She inched up the sleeve of her sweater and let the child peer at the web of skin markings that tracked all around her arm. It didn't take long for the other children - teen boys, one a lanky ginger-haired youth and another, whose head was shorn to his glyph-covered scalp and whose face showed no emotion whatsoever - to drift over and have a look as well.
"These are real dermaglyphs," said the first boy, his hazel gaze suspicious under the fall of his drooping bronze hair. "So, you're really Breed, then?"
Tavia nodded. "Apparently, I am."
Mira rolled her violet-hued eyes. "I told you so, Kellan. He didn't believe me."
The boy shot her a sullen look. "I wanted to see it for myself, that's all."
"You said you needed proof, like you thought I was trying to trick you or something." There was a note of hurt in her tone. "How come you never believe anything I say?"
Kellan looked uncomfortable under the public accusation. When he finally spoke, his voice was quietly defensive. "It's stupid to take anyone on faith alone."
"Even your friends?"
He didn't answer, and while their argument faded into a silent standoff, the other boy, who was still studying Tavia's glyphs, moved closer. He had pushed up his own sleeve, revealing a similar pattern that swept around the lean muscles and tendons of his forearm.
His name was Nathan, and aside from his introduction as Corinne's son, the inscrutable young teen was a mystery. Tavia watched his long-lashed eyes take in her skin markings, cataloging them, one by one. He was serious and strangely detached, seeming vastly older than his years and nothing like any other boy she'd ever seen before.
When he glanced up at her, head cocked to the side, his blue-green eyes pierced her with the cool dispassion of a blade. "You are Gen One. Born in Dragos's laboratory."
She nodded.
"So was I."
The softly voiced confession sparked an instant kinship in her, and Tavia felt the absurd urge to hug the child who'd also been a victim of Dragos's evil. She wanted to talk with Nathan some more, ask him about his experience with the monster who created them, but the hauntedness of his gaze deepened, then was shuttered behind his dark lashes and gone altogether when he looked up at her again.
At that same moment, from a room down the corridor, Tegan and another warrior emerged and strode into the gathering in the foyer. Simply by breathing, the dark-haired male with Tegan commanded attention and respect, and there was no question that he was the leader of the Order, even before Tegan introduced him as such.
"Lucan, this is Tavia Fairchild."
She accepted the warrior's large hand and felt herself immersed in the stormy scrutiny of Lucan's shrewd gray eyes as he clasped her fingers in a firm, callused hold. "Mathias Rowan has filled us in on the basics, but I'm sure you understand we'll have questions for you now that you're here."
"Of course. Whatever I can do," she replied. "I need some answers myself."
He gave her a grim nod as he released her hand. "Until then, you'll be staying here, under the Order's protection. That means you remain on the grounds of this property at all times, and you make contact with no one beyond these walls without my express permission."
"Okay." It sounded a lot like imprisonment, but it was hard to balk at the offer when she had so few other options. Besides, she'd lived the first part of her life in one form of prison; now at least she had the truth. And she had Chase too. She felt him near her now, his presence behind her a warm comfort despite his radiating tension like a furnace.
Lucan sent a measuring look over her shoulder at him. "Unfortunately, we're in tight quarters and down to the last unclaimed room - "
"I don't need it." Chase's reply was dark and defensive, despite the negligent shrug that accompanied it. "I'm sure there's a locked cell with my name on it somewhere in here." "That'll depend on you, Harvard."
