Free Edge of Dawn by Lara Adrián Page B

had his reasons for leaving behind a piece of himself before he was killed by the Order. For Jenna, that bit of alien DNA and technology had meant numerous astonishing physical and psychic changes, coupled with memories of a long, often-disturbing past that did not belong to her.
    It was those memories that now filled the countless volumes of hand-scribed journals lining the built-in bookcases of the archive chamber.
    “I hadn’t heard you and Brock had arrived from Atlanta,” Dare said.
    Jenna ran her fingers across the spines of several journals on the shelf, pausing to rearrange one that apparently had been misfiled. “We got in before dawn this morning. I wanted to come early, do some work in here before the summit later this week. Dante and Tess are coming in tonight. Tegan and Elise too. Everyone else should be arriving over the next couple of nights, from what I understand.”
    Dare nodded. Lucan had informed him of the gathering of all the Order elders and their mates from their various districts of command around the world. It would be good to see them all again. The warriors and their mates were as close as kin to him, but Dare couldn’t help resenting the fact that the summons to publicly assemble was anything more than a command performance instigated by the GNC members. A means for them to show the world that the Order endorsed the peace summit wholeheartedly and would abide by the GNC’s terms without question. The politics of it all disgusted him.
    Jenna regarded him over her shoulder. “Will you be at the gala reception too, Darion?”
    He grunted. “Me, in a monkey suit? Not likely. I can think of a hundred things I’d rather do than stand around kissing the rings of those posturing GNC blowhards. That goes double for kissing their useless asses.”
    Jenna’s brows arched upward. “You’re a lot like your father, you know that?”
    “I’m nothing like him,” Dare insisted. “He’s too willing to let the humans have the reins. He’s too careful with their fragile egos, when the world would be a better place—a safer place for mankind and our own—with the Order firmly in charge.”
    “And if you ask the humans, they would argue the opposite. Sooner or later, it would be war.” Jenna strode over to him and took a seat on the edge of the table. “Things were different before First Dawn, simpler. The Breed kept their own counsel, lived in the shadows. Now that we’re out to the humans, we have more freedoms. We have more power now that we don’t have to hide our existence, but there are trade-offs. And the line we must walk to maintain peace is even thinner. Lucan’s actions impact the entire Breed nation now. He doesn’t take that responsibility lightly.”
    “He doesn’t trust anyone to help him shoulder that burden either.” Dare glanced away from Jenna’s sage expression and gave a curt shake of his head. “He doesn’t give anyone the credit that they could be useful, maybe even as capable as him, if he gave them half a chance to prove it.”
    When he looked back up at her, Jenna held him with a knowing smile. “Still fighting that same battle with him, are you? He’ll come around one day, Darion.”
    He scoffed. “Have you met my father? He doesn’t bend.”
    “Neither does his son, from what I’ve seen.” Still smiling, she leaned over to see what he was reading in the open journal. “Ah, that’s one of the oldest volumes. I was working on that one before First Dawn.”
    The frustrations of politics and parental misgivings fell away as Dare returned his attention to the journal he’d been studying for the past couple of weeks. “Do you know what this numerical sequence might be?”
    Jenna peered at the handwritten page and gave a mild shrug. “The things I record don’t always make sense. Sometimes there are symbols or numbers—like this one—that don’t mean anything to me, but because I see them or hear them through the Ancient’s memories, I make sure to