Gideon was nodding now, a smile breaking across his face. "And here I thought you'd written Harvard off."
"I might yet," he cautioned soberly. "It'll be up to him to persuade me one way or the other. Like I said, best we don't get our hopes up until we see him for our - "
The sudden thunder of footsteps pounding across the floor outside the room cut Lucan's warning short. He and Gideon both got up and hurried out to see what was going on.
Lazaro Archer nearly collided with them. "It's Jenna," he said, concern etched in hard lines on the Breed elder's stern face. "Come quickly!"
They followed him to the great room at the other end of the expansive residence. Brock was already there, crouched at his mate's side where she slumped in a boneless droop on the brown leather sofa.
"Jenna." Brock's voice was soft but urgent, his dark hands roaming over her listless face. "Baby, can you hear me? Come on, Jenna. Open your eyes for me. Wake up now."
Lucan glanced to Archer. "What happened?"
"I'm not sure. We were reviewing the Ancient language journals, trying to work out translations for some of the more elusive alien phrases she's been speaking in her sleep the past few weeks. She asked if she could rest a while, so I went to look in on Kellan. When I came back, she was thrashing on the sofa, panting for breath."
"Another nightmare," Gideon suggested. He kept his voice low while Brock worked to bring Jenna around as only he could. "Yesterday she told me she's been having bad dreams. Dreams about being trapped in a small compartment in the dark, about being pierced repeatedly with needles and knives, her skin flayed from her body while all she can do is watch it happen." "Jesus," Lucan hissed. "That can't be a coincidence."
"No," Gideon agreed. "My best guess is that along with the bit of alien material the Ancient implanted in her, some of his memories came with it."
And that wasn't all the Ancient had given Jenna. Her body was still changing, cells and organs adapting toward something more than human. The glyph on her nape and shoulders grew a little bigger every day; there was no telling how much of her body it would cover in a year's time or a decade. The way her physiology was mutating, enhancing, Gideon was convinced that like her superhuman strength and stamina, Jenna's life span could no longer be measured in human terms.
"Jenna," Brock soothed, gathering her close as she began to rouse and murmur quietly in his arms. "That's it, baby. You're okay now. I've got you. I'll keep you safe."
"Brock?" Her eyelids fluttered as he continued to speak to her. She moaned, breath coming faster as the weight of sleep lifted and she started to regain consciousness. Her body stirred now, waking fully. She sucked in a shallow sob and clung to him, her eyes wide and welled with tears. "There was water everywhere. It kept rising and rising, and the people ... there were people screaming all around me, drowning. Oh, God ... it was so awful!"
Lucan slanted a questioning look at Gideon, who shook his head, equally confused.
Brock took her face in his hands, holding her still, soothing her with his touch. "What people, baby? What water? Who was drowning?"
"I don't know." She pressed her cheek against his chest and sucked in a ragged sob. "I don't know who they were, but they were dying. Men and women, children. Animals too. The wave roared over everything. It washed away the whole city."
Gideon's wary frown must have been a good match for Lucan's. Even Lazaro Archer looked a bit rattled by Jenna's description of chaos and mass destruction.
Brock whispered soothing words against her ear. "Just a bad dream, baby. You're safe.
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?"