Midnight Awakening(100)

“All part of his ruse,” Savannah said. “After they killed the others, Dragos helped hide his father in a protective crypt he’d built specifically for him in the mountains outside Prague. Dragos’s wounds were from his father, but only to help conceal the truth of what actually happened. The plan had been to leave the Ancient in a state of hibernation until things settled down with the Order. Then the Ancient would be awakened to feed again, and to start a new generation of his Breed offspring.”

“Holy hell,” Gideon muttered, ripping off his pale-blue glasses and rubbing his eyes. “Did Kassia know if Dragos ever got the chance to go back and free the bastard?”

Savannah shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m not picking up anything to indicate that she knew the outcome. Dragos told her where the crypt was located, and that’s what she stitched into the tapestry. She wanted Lucan to have the clues in case anything were to happen to her.”

“Oh, Lucan,” Gabrielle said, wrapping her arms around him.

“There is…something more,” Savannah said. “There was a child. Kassia was pregnant when she made this tapestry. Dragos was away on a mission for nearly a year—so long that she had her son in secret and sent him away to live with another Breed family before Dragos returned. She refused to let her only child be a victim of her mate’s dangerous alliance, so she took steps to protect the baby and give him a safer future.”

“Let me take a wild-ass guess about the name of the family Kassia turned to,” Gideon drawled.

Savannah nodded. “Odolf.”

“You know,” Kade interjected, “I’ve heard that under the right conditions, the Ancients were capable of hibernating for generations.”

“Try centuries,” Tegan said, reflecting on the savage otherworlders who spawned him and the rest of the Breed’s first generation progeny. “For all we know, that last remaining Ancient is still out there, holed up near Prague and waiting to be unleashed.”

“Christ,” Dante hissed. “The world would be a very different place if an evil like that was turned loose again.”

Niko clucked his tongue. “And if someone thought to ally himself with that kind of deadly power? Somebody like Marek…”

“We can’t afford that risk,” Lucan said. “So, it looks like we need to haul ass to Prague and see what we can find.”

“Reichen’s only a few hours away from there in Berlin,” Tegan said. “He’s offered us his help in whatever way we can use him.”

Lucan narrowed his eyes, considering the idea. “Can he be trusted?”

“Yeah,” Tegan said, nodding in certainty. “I can vouch for him.”

“Give him a call then. But keep the details to a minimum. Let him know we’re on the way and we’re going to need transportation. We can rendezvous with him on arrival at Tegel Airport.”

“Shouldn’t we head straight for Prague instead and meet up with him there?” Brock asked.

Tegan shook his head, picking up on Lucan’s tactic. “Reichen may be trustworthy, but we don’t know about anyone else around him. Marek’s already aware that we’ve got an interest in Berlin. No sense tipping our hand about Prague.”

Lucan nodded. “We’ll fill Reichen in once we arrive.”

“Right,” Gideon said. “I’ll get clearance for a flight out tonight.”

There was none of the usual bravado as the lab emptied out and the warriors each went to prepare for the mission ahead of them. Tegan normally would have gone off to suit up by himself and think in peace. He thought he probably should now, but then Elise linked her fingers through his as the two of them paused in the vacant corridor.

“Are you all right?” she asked, her gaze as sober as his must have been. “If you want to be alone, or if you have something you need to do…”

“No. I don’t.”

He thought about calling the denial back and feeding her some line of bullshit that he was needed somewhere else right then, but the words wouldn’t come. And he found he couldn’t let go of her hand.

He’d be leaving in a few hours, and the odds were pretty damn good that he wasn’t coming back.

He was going in this time with one goal: to personally take out Marek. Even if he had to take himself out in the process. Tegan was more than ready to bring the war to Marek, and, one way or another, that son of a bitch was going down.

“Come on,” he said to Elise, tipping her chin up to meet his kiss. “There’s only one place I want to be right now.”