"Did you think we were going to make you starve?" Gabrielle asked from the opposite end of the table. Her smile was friendly, inviting.
"I'm not sure what I thought," Jenna answered truthfully. "To be honest, I don't know how to process any of this just yet."
Gabrielle inclined her head in a slow nod, looking sage and regally serene, even though she was no doubt a few years younger than Jenna's age of thirty-three. "That's understandable. You've been through a lot, and your situation is unique to us all."
"My situation," Jenna said, idly pushing a piece of syrup-soaked bread around her plate. "Meaning the unidentified object that's lodged at the base of my skull?"
"Yes, that," Gabrielle acknowledged, a gentle note to her voice. "And the fact that you were fortunate enough to escape the Ancient with your life.
The fact that he fed from you and let you live is--"
"Unheard of," piped in another of the women from her seat next to Gabrielle. She had a mane of fiery red hair, her pretty face dotted with peachy freckles. "If you knew what he was capable of--if you had any idea what's happened to so many others ..." Her voice trailed off, a small shudder making her fingers tremble around the fork she held. "It's nothing short of a miracle that you're still alive, Jenna."
"Dylan's right," Tess agreed. "Since roughly a year ago, when the Order first discovered the Ancient had been awakened, we've been trying to locate him and Dragos, the son of a bitch responsible for bringing that kind of dangerous being back into the world."
"I'm not sure which of them is the worse evil," Renata interjected.
"The Ancient has claimed a lot of innocent lives, but it's Dragos, the Ancient's sadistic grandson, who's been pulling all the strings."
"You mean to tell me that creature has offspring?" Jenna asked, unable to contain her revulsion.
Gabrielle took a sip of her coffee, then carefully set the cup down in its saucer. "That creature and several others like him fathered the entire Breed race on Earth."
"On Earth?" Jenna barked out a disbelieving laugh. "Are you talking about aliens now? That vampire who attacked me--"
"Was not from this world," Savannah finished for her. "It's true. No harder to believe than the existence of vampires themselves, if you ask me, but it's the God's honest truth. The Ancients raped and conquered after crash-landing here some thousands of years ago. Over time, a few of their victims became pregnant with what would become the first generation of the Breed."
"This actually makes sense to all of you?" Jenna asked, still incredulous. She glanced over at Alex beside her. "You believe this, too?"
Alex nodded. "Having come to know Kade and everyone else here at the compound, how could I not believe it? I also saw the Ancient with my own eyes, in the moments before he was killed on a cliff outside Harmony."
"And what about this other person--Dragos?" Jenna asked, unwillingly curious to make all of the pieces of this astonishing puzzle fit together somehow. "Where does he come in?"
Dylan was the first to answer. "As it turns out, Dragos woke the Ancient much earlier than we had guessed. Decades earlier, in fact. He held him in secret, and used him for creating a whole new generation of Gen Ones--the strongest members of the Breed, being that they are directly descended from the Ancient's bloodline and not genetically diluted, as the later generations are."
"Dragos has been breeding a personal army of the most powerful, most deadly members of the race," Renata added. "They are raised under his watch, trained to be ruthless killers. Dragos's private assassins whom he can call out at any time to do his bidding."
Gabrielle nodded. "And in order to create those first-generation offspring, Dragos also needed a stock of fertile women on which to breed the Ancient."
"Breedmates," Alex said.
Jenna glanced at her. "And what are they?"
"Women who are born with unique DNA and blood properties that make them capable of sharing a life bond with members of the Breed and bearing their young," Tess said, her hand idly roaming over the top of her pregnant belly. "Women like all of us gathered around this table right now."
Shock and horror clenched Jenna's gut. "Are you saying that I--"
"No," Tess said, shaking her head. "You're mortal, not a Breedmate.
Your blood work is normal, and you don't have the mark that the rest of us do."
At her frown, Tess held out her right hand, which bore a small red mark between her thumb and forefinger. It was a tiny crescent moon with what looked to be a teardrop, falling into its center. "All of you have this same tattoo?"
"It's not a tattoo," Alex said. "It's a birthmark, Jenna. All Breedmates are born with one somewhere on their bodies. Mine is on my hip."
"There aren't a lot of us in the world," Savannah said. "The Breed considers all Breedmates to be sacred, but not Dragos. He's been collecting women for years, holding them captive, we assume for the sole purpose of birthing his Gen One assassins. A lot of them have been killed, either by Dragos himself or the Ancient."
"How do you know that?" Jenna asked, horrified by what she was hearing.
Down the table from her, Dylan cleared her throat. "I've seen them.
The dead, that is."
The cop part of Jenna perked to full attention. "If you've got dead bodies, you've got hard evidence, and probable cause to turn this ass**le, Dragos, in to the authorities."
Dylan was shaking her head. "I haven't seen the bodies. I've seen the dead. They ... appear to me sometimes. Sometimes they speak to me."