"I will," he replied, eyes remaining downcast.
Lucan reached out and lifted the youth's chin until he had no choice but to meet his gaze. "You will tonight. That's an order, son."
Kellan frowned. His body threw off a palpable mental recoil, like an animal suddenly getting backed into a corner. "My grandfather said he'd go with me. I've been waiting for him to have the time, but he's been so busy helping Jenna ..."
Lucan shook his head, dismissing the comment as the excuse he was certain it was. "I'll take you myself if I have to. Tonight, Kellan. We clear?"
Finally, a nod, accompanied by another hard look in Mira's direction. "Yeah. We're clear." With that issue resolved, Lucan glanced over at Jenna. The former Alaska State Trooper was the most recent addition to the Order's female population. Unlike the rest of the warriors' women and little Mira as well, Jenna was not a Breedmate but came from basic Homo sapiens stock. The other females had been gifted with unique DNA and blood properties that allowed them to share a life-extending blood bond with Breed males and to carry their offspring.
Breedmates, a rarity among their mortal sisters, were identifiable by their unique ESP talents and personal blood scent, as well as a small scarlet birthmark somewhere on their bodies in the shape of a teardrop falling into the cradle of a crescent moon.
Although Jenna had been born human, to call her mortal now would not be quite accurate. "Gideon tells me your latest blood work looks good. A few fluctuations in cell counts, but no more big surprises."
The tall brunette gave a sardonic laugh. "Nothing too unusual. Still a cyborg freak in progress."
"Freakin' hot, if you ask me," added her mate, Brock. The huge black warrior flashed her a broad smile that held a hint of fangs. "I kinda dig having my own personal RoboCop."
"Oh, yeah," she replied, smiling along with him. "I'll remind you of that the day I'm strong enough to kick your vampire butt."
Brock exhaled an exaggerated sigh. "Damn, woman. You already have me on my knees where you're concerned. Now you want me on my ass?"
Across the room, Nikolai laughed. "Hey, welcome to my world, man."
The jibe earned him a playful cuff in the shoulder from Renata. She reached over to Mira and covered the girl's ears before adding quietly "On their ass or on their back, it's all good. Right, Jen?"
At Jenna's chuckling agreement, Brock drew her close and planted a kiss on her mouth. He wrapped his palm around the back of her neck, possessive but tender as he gazed into his mate's brown eyes. "She knows she's got me, any way she wants me. Forever, if I have anything to say about it."
Where his fingers rested at Jenna's nape was a rice-size bit of alien biotech matter embedded beneath her skin. An unwanted souvenir she'd woken up with following a recent, prolonged attack by an Ancient, the last of the eight vampiric otherworlders who'd fathered the first generation of the Breed on Earth. Jenna emerged from that ordeal miraculously alive, but changed in many ways. She was still changing, evolving both physically and genetically.
Her body was able to heal itself from injury, something Gideon described as adaptive regeneration - similar to the way the Breed healed, except in Jenna's case, she didn't require ingested blood to aid the process. She didn't have fangs or blood thirst, but she was stronger and faster than any human, as supernaturally agile as any of the Breed. Gideon wasn't entirely certain, but early tests seemed to indicate that some of the Ancient's DNA contained within the biotech chip was integrating with Jenna's genetic structure. Overtaking it, on several levels. Part of that was obvious, even to the casual observer.
Curling around to her shoulders from the back of her neck, where the implant resided, were the swirling arcs and flourishes of a growing dermaglyph. The skin markings were unique to Lucan's kind and the otherworlders who fathered them, yet this human woman now bore her own. Jenna's glyph had never changed colors or pulsed as Lucan and his Breed brethren's did in moments of extreme emotion or hunger. Her glyph's color remained static, just a shade darker than her fair skin.
And then there was the matter of Jenna's tendency to speak in the Ancients' language while she was asleep. The nightmares were a new development, having come on strong in just the last couple of days. Violent dreams of combat and catastrophe.
The Order was still trying to make sense of everything Jenna was becoming, and it seemed that one key to solving that question might be found in deciphering the alien words and images that plagued her unconscious mind. Lazaro Archer had enlisted himself to assist on that front. At somewhere near a thousand years old and a first-generation Breed like Lucan and Tegan, Archer also brought the useful experience of having spent more time than most in the company of his Ancient sire. Relying on his memory of the otherworlders' language, Archer was helping Jenna to journal all that she could in the hopes that the writings would offer some answers.
Lucan was about to ask for a quick update when the sound of his own mate's voice behind him snagged his full attention. "I hope you weren't planning on decorating that Christmas tree without us."
Gabrielle snaked her arm around his waist and smiled up at him as he wrapped her in the shelter of his arm. Just the feel of her close to him, her soft brown eyes like melted chocolate, made his pulse kick into a harder rhythm.
"Ohh, it's beautiful," said Dante's mate, Tess, who'd come into the room as well now. She held their three-day-old infant son in her arms, a pink-skinned, swaddled bundle that cooed and gurgled within the pale blue blanket that surrounded his tiny form. She lowered her voice to a tender whisper as she dipped her face toward her child. "Look at this, Xander. Your very first Christmas tree."