Jared swore aloud, leaping to his feet, and pushed past Scott and across the room. He cursed his own lack of intuitive abilities, an innate skill that his warrior's life had never allowed him to nurture. "Where did he take her?" Jared wondered aloud. "And how did he?" It was the question each of them sought to answer. There had to be knowledge here within the room, if they could only discern it.

On the floor, Thea stirred, lifting her pale eyes to meet his own. "The man has a name," she said in a quiet voice, "a secret name that no one else knows."

"Tell me," Jared said, dropping to the floor beside her.

"Marek Shaekai. It's his Refarian birth name," she said.

Scott shook his head, not recognizing it. Neither did Jared. Thea stared into the fire. "He knows you, Jared," she said. "Extremely well."

"I've met no one by that name."

Scott shifted on his feet, rubbing the bridge of his nose, and said, "You might know him as someone else. Maybe by his human name."

Marek Shaekai. Jared turned the name over within his mind. Bracing his hands on the mantel, he swept his thoughts over his comrades, the Refarians who had served him these many years. Who had left his ranks disgruntled? Who had spun damaging rumors about him? Not a man or woman in his corps.

"What does he look like, this Marek?" he asked, already knowing that if either of them had seen an image of the man, they would have reported it.

"Dark," Thea answered. "I see only darkness, cousin."

Scott murmured his agreement, but offered nothing more.

Thea turned where she knelt, gazing up at him. "You should try to reach across the bond to her," she said, unable to disguise the anguish the words caused her. "Your connection with her is very strong, Jared, and wherever he's taken her, you might be able to..." Her voice trailed off, and she swept her gaze toward the hearth, the words unfinished.

"You're right," he agreed, bowing his head. What he didn't say was that for the past minutes he had repeatedly been spinning his energy toward Kelsey, bringing more and more of his soul's force to bear. But in return he felt nothing. Sensed nothing. The resounding emptiness was the cause of his despair.

Still, he had to try again, and closing his eyes, he quieted his mind. Focus-she needs your focus, warrior. Her life depends on your discipline.

And so, in his heart's center, he conjured the image of his beloved's blue eyes, her fiery hair. Then, fanning the energy inside of himself, he centered on her soul, the vibrant magentas and purples and blues he'd glimpsed as they'd mated.

The bond did not come to life in answer-not precisely. Yet he did sense something in the room, something of extreme importance.

Behind him! Whatever it was lay on the floor behind him. Jared wheeled in the direction of the object he sensed, dropping to his knees. Beneath the bed, he detected the object that seemed to burn into his consciousness.

"What is it?" Scott asked, pressing behind him.

Jared knelt there, grasping with both hands beneath the dark wood of the bed frame-pulling with his intuition to identify the clue he had detected. His palms met dust and hardwood, but still he swept his hands, feeling, reaching...

Until his open palm centered on something cold and solid-yet smoldering like all the stars overhead at night.

Marco held Kelsey within his grasp, his hands crushing her face in a rough gesture. She could feel the tendrils of his power reaching into her mind, yet she had no concept of how to resist such an invasion. With every shred of her will, she worked to block him, focusing all her mind's reserves against his alien prying. Perhaps she succeeded, or perhaps her captor didn't discover what he sought, but with the same maelstrom's power she'd felt invade her thoughts, she sensed him retreat.

But he never once released his physical hold on her. "Tell me why this time matters," he insisted, yanking her closer. "Why was it targeted?"

She could think of only two reasons why their future selves might have deemed this date of monumental importance: It was the night of their mating, and Jared's data still remained lodged within her mind. But she wasn't about to reveal either detail to her captor, not if she could help it.

"I-I don't know," she whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

"How can you not know?" he shouted, tightening his grip upon her. "You are his trusted. You are his wife!"

"No," she said. "No, I'm not." There, maybe if he would finally accept the truth, he would relent, she thought hopefully, but the roar that erupted from the man's chest silenced any wishful thoughts on that count. "It's like I already told you. We aren't married-not, uh, yet."

"You've been lying to protect him." He met her eyes intently, and she could almost feel him drawing things out of her, some part of her mind giving way to him.

She began to shake. "No, it's the truth!" she cried, wondering if her plan had been such a great idea after all. But she'd felt that the revelation might gain his trust somehow, and now there'd be no turning back. "I am telling you the truth."

He made a low sound in the back of his throat. "Kelsey, you are such a disappointment to me. To think how many years I've admired you."

"I've never seen you before tonight," she tried. "How do you even know me? None of this makes sense to me. I keep on telling you that I don't understand!"

"You understand that I am here because of Jared." She trembled in his grasp, but said nothing. "You understand that you have something of priceless value to me," he continued. "Do you not?"

The creeping nausea returned, and she whispered, "But what is it?"

Releasing her, he rocked back on his heels and sat in thoughtful silence, clearly considering his next move. She didn't dare flinch, even though she desperately wanted to scurry backward, to distance herself from him as much as she could.

Tapping his fingers on the cold floor, he seemed to reach a conclusion. "You are not yet married," he said. His eyes shifted from hers in slight hesitation, and Kelsey was struck by the odd notion that his incorrect a.s.sumptions about who she was at this point in time had been disconcerting to the man-and on a deeply personal level. It left him seeming strangely vulnerable.

She seized the moment. "I hardly know Jared Bennett," she lied. At least, it was a half-truth.

He furrowed his brow in thought. "None of us under-stood how to set the mitres precisely," he reflected, obviously speaking of her future self. "Perhaps our calculations-your calculations-were wrong."

"My calculations?" she asked numbly.

His black eyebrows shot upward. "It was you who taught us how to use this weapon."

She glanced around them both, at the dimly lit chambers. It looked more like a science lab than a weapon. "What kind of weapon?" she asked. "Biochemical or nuclear?"

He actually laughed. "Far more devastating than that, my dear."

"Then what?" she demanded. "If you don't tell me a d.a.m.n thing, then how can I possibly answer these questions? You're an idiot if you think I can."

He didn't flinch at the insult, but rose to his feet, walking to the center of the room, and placed both of his hands on a large, liquid-filled tube. It glowed with a phosph.o.r.escent color, and as he touched his palms to it, the bluish green changed, morphing to a dark, cloudy consistency-as if it had reacted in some fundamental way to Marco's nature.

"We stand within the mitres," he said, his voice formal. "Capable of altering time, creating portals of entry and exit throughout eternity and s.p.a.ce; this is the revolution's greatest weapon. Jared Bennett's greatest weapon. And only one in our midst possessed-excuse me, possesses," he corrected with a light flourishing bow, "the power to harness it. You, Kelsey Bennett." He continued to use her married name, though it seemed as much out of long habit as from any confused or darker motivation.

Kelsey was beginning to understand. She stated what she had already begun to surmise within the past hour. "You used it to travel back from the future."

"I pa.s.sed through a portal, designed by you, Kelsey- and arrived from the future to this point in time."

She was a geologist-granted, she had delved deeply into geophysics as well, but she found it difficult to imagine herself capable of such advanced and technical calculations. Without even intending to, she voiced her doubts aloud. "How could I possibly have done that?"

He spun to face her. "You alone could harness the power of the mitres. You alone were the one capable of it."

"Why me? I'm a geologist."

He c.o.c.ked his head sideways, appraising her. "You really don't know, do you? I would sense your subterfuge, but there is none in you." Refusing to reply, she waited for him to reveal more; at last, he did continue. "It was not only the knowledge you possessed of physics and the geology of this location that gave you the ability," he said, sweeping his hand about the chamber, "but the data that Jared fused with your mind."

Fused? Fused sounded permanent, not like temporary safekeeping, as Jared had described his actions by Mirror Lake. An uncontrollable shiver swept down Kelsey's spine.

"You came here a week ago?" she asked. It would have been the night after she had first encountered Jared by the lake.

"Precisely."

"Maybe it wasn't the right date," she speculated, although she didn't want to go giving this man any ideas, either. But maybe their future selves had meant to stop the data transfer-perhaps that had been the intention.

"Or perhaps you miscalculated on purpose-to deceive me."

"You're dealing with universal laws of physics, Marco, not exactly something to go tampering with." She frowned, unable to contain her derision. "How far back did you travel in time, anyway?"

He stared at her-through her-ignoring her question. "Or perhaps this time was the intention," he mused, black eyebrows. .h.i.tching upward. The ugly scar became more p.r.o.nounced with the gesture, the white striation stark against the natural black hair of his eyebrow. "Perhaps now is, in fact, the pivotal moment. Perhaps only my a.s.sumptions have been incorrect."

s.h.i.t. The man was smarter than he appeared to be-very smart, with a mind that seemed to be calculating faster than she could outthink him.

"Now I see that my strategy has been all wrong," he said, whirling his full attention back upon her. "My focus has been on the wrong Jared, the one who tried to send you back in time. We cannot know what my enemy was thinking-his thoughts are as lost to me as that time will ever be." He slipped his hands firmly about her face again, clasping her hard. "Yes, the other Jared is no longer of any importance," he said dismissively, "and so now I will learn all about your Jared."

Marco closed his eyes, and an electric sensation shot through Kelsey's mind, followed by a report of immediate, searing pain. He flinched, and his expressions altered repeatedly as she felt her mind being sucked of something, almost as if a giant vacuum were engulfing her thoughts. And then, just as suddenly, the sensations stopped. His eyes flew open, growing wide.

"You have spoken the truth," he whispered fiercely. "You are not Kelsey Bennett. Not the wife of the leader of the rebellion."

Kelsey drew in a sharp breath, bracing for his next words as he dropped his hands.

"However, I see now that you are extremely important to the Refarian ruler. You are his bonded lifemate, and that means one thing," he said into the hush. "Your Jared will be simple to defeat."

In the center of his palm, Jared held the gold ring, staring into the circle of it as he might a scattering of mystics' reading leaves.

"What is it?" Scott and Thea demanded in unison, each trying to see the object he held close inside his palm.

With a mystified shake of his head, he extended his hand toward them in explanation. "A wedding band."

"Whose?" Scott said, kneeling beside him. "Who in h.e.l.l's name would have left a ring in here?" They had purchased the cabin from its builder; no one else besides their team had ever lived within the large home.

"Marek did," Jared answered, his gaze never leaving the object. Against his skin, the gold burned like a strake stone, almost scalding him with its supernatural energy, but he wasn't about to relinquish the object.

"How do you know that, Jared?" Thea asked, gazing over his shoulder and into his palm's center.

"I saw it. Him. And her." It was the vision that had sent him to his knees, searching. Oh, yes, he had seen Kelsey here on the floor, naked and frightened, had seen her clutching this same band in her pale hand, unwilling to relinquish it. But what had it meant to her? That he did not yet know.

As he turned toward Thea, the air crackled with energy and came alive around him. The floor shifted beneath his feet as he caught a glimpse of Kelsey in front of his bathroom mirror with nothing but a towel wrapped around her beautiful body. Before he could make sense of it, the image dissolved and faded into another: Kelsey on the floor of his bedroom, a threatening stranger towering over her half-naked form.

He jerked his head toward the center of his bedroom, as if he might actually see her sprawled there, and flashed on the strangest vision of all. He saw someone who looked very much like himself, but older, harder. Scarred. Ruined. Jared dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and began to shake as the air all around him cooled unnaturally. What was happening to him? What had happened in this room, intense enough to leave a visual imprint in the atmosphere?

Jared looked up slowly, lifting his face out of his hands. "I... I'm getting things... off this room," he told them, wheeling his gaze about. "Things that might help us find Kelsey."

Scott placed a strong hand on his shoulder. "What sorts of things, my lord?"

"Emotions... images." Not that such a discovery should be surprising-only surprising in that he, a nonintuitive, should see so much.

Jared closed his eyes. Grief ... a solid wall of grief. Terror. Delirious ecstasy... more grief. The impressions washed over him in rapid succession, almost like watching a fast-forwarded movie, the images were that vivid and fast. But of all the sensations swimming through his mind, one in particular kept surfacing out of the murky depths: terror. Kelsey's terror shooting like ungrounded electric current all about them; it was the starkest, most recent imprint he was picking up.

A sharp wave of nausea knotted his stomach, and he buried his face in his hands again, willing the room to stop its spinning. He had to quiet himself, no matter how difficult-especially because he recognized the emotions in this room.

And he'd felt this kind of raw, confused terror only one other time in his life.

Chapter Fourteen.

When Jared was twenty-six, just two years after his arrival on Earth, he'd become embroiled in a ferocious firefight somewhere over the open s.p.a.ces of Idaho. Air force jets had closed in on him, much as they had done recently near Mirror Lake, chasing him with patient resolve. He'd been sure he would die. If not for his craft's advanced engineering, which allowed him to evade missile-lock repeatedly, he would have been killed. Still, in the face of the American crafts' continuing onslaught, his plane's propulsion system had eventually lost power, sputtering and lurching until in one heart-stopping moment he had found himself free-falling straight toward the blackened expanse below. With no other alternative, he ejected into the night.

Scrambling through brush and gra.s.s and blackness, his body gashed and broken, he stumbled until almost sunrise, trying to make his smashed comm system work and praying that the base had tracked his descent. As the first pink light fingered across Earth's sky, Jared glimpsed soldiers appearing out of the morning mist, and he'd thought himself rescued. Collapsing in a heap on some fanner's open field, he gasped his grat.i.tude, until he realized that it wasn't rescuers who had him, but his Antousian enemies. He hadn't even possessed the wherewithal to make his Change.

Hours later, beaten senseless and within an inch of his mortal life, Jared found himself kneeling before his greatest enemy: the Antousian warlord Veckus Densalt. Leader of the Earth conquest, Veckus wished Jared dead more than he cared for intelligence or blood debts-or even that he finally had the Refarian monarch within his grasp. Veckus l.u.s.ted for one thing: vengeance. So for three interminable days the warlord had extracted it, Jared's captivity a study in depraved torture. In fact, he still bore the scars on his back and face and upper thighs; the initial beating had been but a dress rehearsal for the bloodthirsty Antousian's true skills at torment.

During that long darkness, Jared moved in and out of a death dream, rank visions pa.s.sing through his beating-muddled mind. Images of formless Antousians and silver-eyed devils and winged creatures buoyed him through timelessness. Still, always at the edge of awareness he sensed protection-perhaps from those winged creatures he swore he glimpsed in his fever dreams, or perhaps from the shadow men hovering near; he never knew. By the third night, when Scott finally managed to locate him and send in retrieval forces, Jared's spirit had set to wandering the midplaces; he was certain of it. But his soldiers did come, and although the terrified dreams still tormented him even now, he had lived. Thanks to Scott Dillon. And perhaps thanks to some divine force that still breathed purpose into his existence.

But even without the dreams, he could never shake the horror he'd known for those three days, which was why, as he sat on the edge of his bed now, the stench of Kelsey's terror felt so familiar. And he'd be d.a.m.ned if his blessed lifemate would experience anything approximating the suffering he'd known at Veckus's hands.

"Thea, I need you to help me." Both soldiers had been waiting on his word while he held the band, fielding the impressions it radiated.

"Is it something with the ring?" she asked, dropping heavily beside him on the mattress's edge.

Staring into his open palm, he nodded, turning the band over in his hand. "This belongs to Kelsey," he explained, speaking from instinct rather than factual knowledge.

"But... I don't understand. It's a wedding ring."

He nodded. "Yes, I know. It's inscribed as well. Look." He extended the band to her. "It's worn down some, but hold it to the light. You can still read the inscription."

She did as he instructed, lifting the ring to eye level and squinting. " 'Sonnet twenty-nine, verses thirteen to fourteen,' " she read, her pale brows furrowing in confusion. "I-I don't understand the significance of this, Jared."

In answer, he folded both arms over his chest and began to recite the Shakespearean poem from memory: " 'For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings-that then I scorn to change my state with kings.' "

"Does that mean something to you?" Scott asked.

Jared met his friend's questioning gaze. "It's our wedding vow, I believe," he answered, feeling an unstoppable wave of grief rise up within his chest. Grief for a beautiful future, stolen like some intricate, fragile snowflake lost forever in a harsh wind.

"What the h.e.l.l?" Scott asked, his fair face flushing with emotion. Thea gaped at Jared, stricken, but he alone remained calm, a center of focused purpose amid the tumultuous emotions pa.s.sing between them all.

He looked from one to the other of his two most trusted soldiers. In a soft voice, he said, "It's our sonnet, given by me to Kelsey tonight." Thea's blue eyes welled with tears- she understood; without another word of explanation, she understood exactly in what way he'd "given" that verse to his mate. "And apparently," he continued, drawing in a steadying breath, "the day we were married, it served as part of our wedding vows-three months from today. Take a look at the date inside the band."

"Three months from today? Sir, your words make no sense," Scott answered, placing a firm hand on his shoulder. "You're upset. Grieved-"

"No, Lieutenant, I am perfectly rational about this. I saw it." He indicated the bedroom with a sweep of his hand. "Saw it all here, in this room-and there in the future. This ring belonged to another Kelsey, years from now, and somehow it was brought back to my Kelsey from that time. I saw myself, older somehow-and I saw her, older too." For a moment, Jared had to drop his head; the graying man he'd glimpsed had been a diminished shadow of himself, ravaged by years of warfare. His wife's bold and strong spirit had been like a beacon in that future, his other self's true sustenance.

His two advisers exploded in dispute and challenge, but with a lift of his hand he silenced them. He met his cousin's confused gaze and extended his open palm with a resolute gesture. "Lieutenant Haven," he said in a calm and determined voice, "I require your help."