Threads of Destiny

Chapter One

A hard, muscled arm wrapped around her waist, making her gasp. Before she could react, Kathryn Piedmont was dragged up against a solid male chest. “You’re late,” a rough, masculine voice whispered in her ear.

She relaxed as soon as he spoke, recognizing the voice. “I couldn’t get away any sooner. I have to act as normal as possible, especially now.” Tienan’s arm loosened and she stepped away from him. Reaching out, she hit the light switch on the wall by the entrance, illuminating the suite of rooms that she occupied in her family’s palatial home. As always, the room seemed to press in on her with its drab colors and dark furniture. Sighing, she rubbed her temples.

“Hard day?” She managed to smile at the other man lounging on an antique settee in the corner. About six-foot-two with wide shoulders, he looked even more masculine in contrast to the fragile piece of furniture. His short blond hair was standing up in spikes on top of his head, reminding her of his habit of dragging his fingers through it when he was agitated. Still, from looking at him, you wouldn’t know he had a care in the world.

“It wasn’t easy.” She softened her tone and tried to send him a reassuring smile.

Though he didn’t show it outwardly, Kathryn knew that Logan was the more sensitive of the two. She knew just how much trouble both these men were in. How much trouble she would be in if her father found them in her rooms.

Tienan grunted and began prowling around the room and she knew he was thinking, calculating their options and their chances of success. But that wasn’t unusual.

He was always thinking. He had a computer-like brain that never stopped. Both men had off-the-chart IQs but Tienan was able to remove emotion from the equation. It was his greatest strength and consequently, his greatest weakness.

Tienan was the same height as Logan but that’s where the similarity ended. Where Logan’s hair was blond and short, Tienan’s fell to his shoulders in a straight black curtain. His body was leaner but no less muscular. He reminded her of a jaguar she’d seen in an old film—all coiled muscles, just waiting to attack. Both men were handsome.

Tienan was good-looking in a classic sense, while Logan possessed more of a craggy, rough look that was impossible to ignore.

They were also her friends and, as of yesterday, her responsibility.

“What’s the word on the jail break?” Logan sat forward, his hands loosely clasped between his legs.

Kathryn strode across the room, trying to appear confident as she dumped her sweater and purse on a chair. Her stomach burned from all the stress of the day and she rubbed her hand across it, trying to settle it. She knew she had the beginnings of an ulcer. The doctor had warned her at her last appointment that she needed to take better care of herself. Easier said than done.

Tienan’s green eyes narrowed and he stalked to the mini-fridge that was tucked into a cabinet in the corner. Opening the door, he pulled out a small container of milk.

He unscrewed the top as he strode to her side. “Drink.” Grateful for the slight reprieve, she took the plastic bottle, brought it to her lips and drank. The cool liquid coated her throat and hit her stomach like a cooling balm.

Sighing with relief, she licked her lips. “Thanks.” One corner of Tienan’s mouth turned up in a slight smile as he reached out and used his thumb to wipe away a bead of milk from the corner of her mouth. Bringing it to his lips, he licked it away. “My pleasure.”

She could see the barely banked heat in his eyes and it set her blood racing. The corner of her mouth tingled where he’d touched her and her stomach fluttered again.

This time it had nothing to do with her burgeoning ulcer.

Neither Tienan nor Logan were being shy about the fact that they wanted her. She was very attracted to both of them as well, had been for years. She’d never acted on that attraction and neither had they. They knew that to do so would bring serious consequences for them all. Kathryn shivered at the thought of what her father might do if he ever discovered how much both men meant to her. Certainly, she’d never see them again. And that was probably the least of it.

There was no doubt they were both handsome men but it was more than that.

Kathryn knew them to be good men, honorable man, unlike her father and the General.

But there was no place in her life to indulge in an affair—with either of them. All their lives were in danger.

“Tienan.” There was a warning note in Logan’s voice, telling him to back off. The tension between the three of them was mounting with every moment they spent together in close confines.

Tienan glanced at his friend and then back at her, his expression blank. “Tell us what happened.”

Carrying her container of milk with her, Kathryn made her way to one of the velvet wingback chairs and sank down into it as exhaustion swamped her. “You’d think that in this advanced year of 2133 this kind of thing wouldn’t happen.” She was living it.

Heck, she was part of it but that didn’t mean she understood it.

“Kathryn.” Logan’s softer voice pulled her back to the task at hand. He rose from the settee and came over to kneel by her feet, taking her hand in his much larger one.

“Tell us.” His brows were furrowed and she could see the concern in his eyes.

“The security breach was discovered just after we left last night.” Beads of sweat formed on her forehead as she thought about how close they’d come to being discovered. “They’ve been questioning—” she broke off and gave a shaky laugh. “No, they were interrogating everyone all day. They think your release must have been facilitated by one of the terrorist factions from outside the Gate.” The Gate, as it was referred to, was really a high-tech shield, which protected the enclosed city from contamination from the outside. Climate-controlled and almost impenetrable, the ruling class lived inside the safe urban confines, while everyone else resided outside in poverty, filth and disease.

Her family, the Piedmonts, was part of the upper crust. In fact, her father was a member of the Ruling Council. Her ancestors had lived in this mansion for more than one hundred fifty years, amassing wealth and power. When the wars, natural disasters and disease had struck after 2015, her family had risen even higher, being major players in such things as hydroponics, genetic research, pharmaceuticals, oil and weapons.

When the dust had settled, what remained of the world had been segregated into two distinct classes—those who ruled and everybody else.

Tienan gave a grunt of satisfaction. “Their misdirection should give us a few days to figure out what to do while they run around chasing their own tails.” His disdain of the security force was well known.

“I’m not so sure.” Kathryn set her milk container aside and rubbed her forehead.

She had a massive headache brewing. “General Caruthers is not convinced.” Both men froze at the mention of his name. Known for his brutal ways and iron fist, the General, as he was called by one and all, was a man to be feared. Any resistance to the will of the Ruling Council, of which he was a member, was dealt with swiftly and without mercy. The man had spies everywhere and was in full control of the security forces. If there was one man to be feared, it was he.

It was the General who’d decided that Project Alpha had been a failure and that the test subjects needed to be terminated. Since Tienan and Logan were the test subjects in question, there was no love lost between them and the General.

Tienan growled low in his throat and, once again, Kathryn was reminded of a lethal animal just waiting to pounce and devour his prey. She shook her head and then had to stifle a groan as pain shot through her skull. “You should be safe here for another day or two. After that…” she trailed off, not wanting to consider what might happen if they didn’t find a way to get both men out of the city.

“Are you in any immediate danger?” Logan gently squeezed her fingers.

“I don’t think so.” She refused to tell them just how terrifying the interrogation had been for her. The General himself had questioned her for hours. She had bruises on her upper arms where he’d dragged her out of her chair and shoved her against the wall.

His breath had been hot against her skin as he’d spewed his venomous anger. He all but accused her of helping the men escape. Only his knowledge of whom her father was had saved her from imprisonment or worse. But she knew that wouldn’t save her for long. And if her father discovered what she’d done, he’d personally hand her over to the General.

“Kathryn?” Tienan came to crouch beside her.

“I don’t know, okay?” She jumped to her feet, needing some space. “I need to think.” She headed for the door. “Stay here and hide if anyone comes. They might do a random search for security reasons.”

“We know where the tunnels are,” Logan assured her.

That was the one good thing about living in this huge mausoleum that she called home. Her ancestors had built several escape routes and they’d used them more than once over the years. Now she was using them to hide her friends. She wasn’t even sure her father knew they existed. She only knew because of some old blueprints she’d found in the attic.

“Kathryn,” Logan began but she shook her head, not wanting to talk about the situation any longer. The memories of her traumatic day were still too fresh. She needed some time alone. It would be easy to lay her head on Logan’s shoulder and cry and that she couldn’t do. She had to be strong if they were to have a chance at surviving.

The attic. That was what she needed right now. Space to think. “I’ll be back in a bit.” Not giving them a chance to question her further, she hurried out the door, taking care to close it behind her. There was no one around as she made her way to a door at the end of the east wing of the house. It was late and most of the servants had departed.

Her father disliked having too many people in his home and only a trusted few actually lived in the house. The rest lived in barracks on the estate. The security guards were stationed outside. They were a constant.

She looked around before she opened the door enough to squeeze through. She needed no light to find the stairs and climb them. She’d been coming to the attic for years, since she was a teenager. It was her private space. A place not tainted by her father’s presence.

Opening the door at the top of the stairs, she sighed with relief as she stepped inside and flipped on the light. Years ago, she’d cleared out a corner, setting up an old comfortable chair and table for her own use. She went to that chair now and sank into its welcoming depths. What was she going to do?

Burying her face in her hands, she took a deep breath. Her father and his team of scientists had started Project Alpha about thirty years before. They’d gone beyond the Gate to find victims for the experiment.

Using a mixture of genetic engineering and computer programming, they’d created male babies who would grow into alphas. Their purpose was to be faster, stronger and to live much longer than any human. Their genetics were manipulated in such a way as to give them the best of everything. But they were also given computer implants to make learning quicker and to make them controllable by their handlers. The Ruling Council had decided that they needed an army of super-soldiers, men who would fight until they dropped and who were expendable. If Project Alpha were a success, they would use that technology to create a race of super-soldiers to protect them and the city against the ever-increasing unrest beyond the Gate.

Over the years, most of the subjects had been weeded out as unsuitable. Kathryn remembered how horrified she’d been by this when she’d come across the dusty old file several months ago. Many of the boys had barely reached ten years of age before they were murdered. She knew the scientists saw it as simply destroying expendable test subjects. To her it was outright genocide.

Now thirty years and many failed experiments later, they were ready to terminate this project. They’d been working on robotic soldiers for more than a decade now and these were deemed more acceptable to the task at hand.

There had been problems with Project Alpha.

The two remaining subjects had developed as they’d hoped, quickly becoming experts in martial arts and hand-to-hand combat as they grew. By the time they were twenty, they were experts in every weapon known to mankind. Unfortunately, rather than living longer, they were aging at a rate just the tiniest bit faster than humans. Their life expectancy was just around sixty to sixty-five years. Kathryn speculated that this was due to the extreme physical and emotional strain that they’d been under since the day they were born.

The scientists had also not counted on the men thinking for themselves. Even with the computer implants, they were not easy to control. They reasoned and thought and made their own decisions, plus they’d showed emotions, something the scientists had tried to breed and train out of them.

The Council deemed the experiment a complete failure and General Caruthers had ordered the termination of the two remaining Alphas—Alpha One and Alpha Two— Tienan and Logan.

Kathryn sat back, leaning her head against the cushions. She’d been the only one to object, the only one to find the edict heinous and unacceptable. The other scientists on the team had looked at her with pity and disdain as she reiterated the fact that Tienan and Logan were men, not machines. They were living, breathing people. No one listened. No one else cared.

A child prodigy, Kathryn was used to being viewed as unusual, as a freak of nature.

She’d always been different, advancing quickly in her studies when she was young.

Speed-reading was a talent that had allowed her to get through school quickly, that and a photographic memory. By the time she was twenty, she had advanced degrees in robotics, genetics and computer science, as well as degrees in botany and chemistry. By the time she was twenty-three, she’d added a medical degree to the list. Her father had supervised all her studies, pushing her harder as each year went by. Failure was not an option for a Piedmont. She had no friends and no life beyond her work. Kathryn had long felt like just another study subject, one who often disappointed.

For years, she had desperately wanted to leave this house and have a place of her own, a life of her own. But she was just as much a prisoner as Tienan and Logan. Rental units were at a premium inside the Gate. They were costly and offered only to those who met stringent requirements. Kathryn certainly had the pedigree to get one, but the one time she’d tried, her father had sent a note to the rental company and that had been that. The offer of the unit had been withdrawn, leaving her with nowhere else to go.

Her father often said it was for her personal safety but she knew better. He’d invested a lot of money in her over the years and Smithson Piedmont always made sure his investments paid off.

She’d gone to work at Piedmont Corporation at the ripe age of twenty-three and had begun working closely with Tienan and Logan. That was seven years, and seemed like a lifetime, ago. Back then, she’d believed in what she was doing. Back then she’d truly thought she could make a difference for good, to help the people beyond the Gate.

It didn’t take her long to discover that wasn’t the objective of the Corporation. The only thing the Corporation cared about was making money and maintaining power.

The only good out of her time there was that she’d met Tienan and Logan. The same age as she, they’d become her friends.

Taking a deep breath, she reached out and plucked her favorite book from the table.

Its cover now tattered and torn, she’d discovered it among a box of books in the far corner of the room a few months ago. She’d never read anything like those books in her life. They were filled with tales of erotic love and romance. For a woman who’d only had one single relationship in her life, which had been an unmitigated disaster, it had been a revelation.

Christina’s Tapestry had quickly become her favorite of them all. The tale of a woman plucked from her mundane life and swept away to another place and time and into the arms of not one but two warriors had enthralled her. In the land of Javara, women were scarce and the brothers had engaged in a sexual competition in order to convince Christina to stay in their land and choose one of them as a husband. The men shared the woman but only one man could be her husband and claim the children as his own.

That was fine in a book, she supposed, but Kathryn didn’t see how it could work in practice. It was fine for Christina and Jarek, the older brother in the book, but what about poor Marc? Although accepting of the arrangement, Marc had seemed lonely. As silly as it was, Kathryn had cried for Marc. He was a special man and deserved a woman of his own. She’d actually gotten angry with the author for leaving him in such a state.

“Oh God,” she moaned. “I’m losing my mind. I’m worried about a character in a book when Tienan and Logan’s lives are in danger.” She didn’t want to think about what would happen to her if her part in this were ever discovered. Using their superior physical skills and intellect and her knowledge of the lab and the security systems at the various checkpoints in the city, they’d managed to get both men out of their confinement cells last night and away from Piedmont Corporation. Now, they had to figure out what to do next.

She wrapped her arms around herself, blinking back the tears that threatened.

“What I need is a magical tapestry to whisk all three of us out of this mess.” She smiled wistfully, thinking how nice it would be not to have to worry about her father, the General and the entire situation for just one day. Her entire life had been stressful for as far back as she could remember but the past few months that stress had increased tenfold. Exhaustion hit her and she knew she had to go back down to her rooms or eventually Tienan and Logan would come looking for her.

She pushed to her feet and stumbled slightly. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast. The interrogation teams didn’t concern themselves with such mundane things as food and water and now she was feeling lightheaded. Extending her hands to steady herself, she hit the corner of a small trunk. It slid off the top of the larger trunk it was resting on and crashed to the floor. “Shit!” She pitched forward, barely avoiding ending up face first on the floor.

The fallen trunk had popped open and she glanced inside as she wiped her hands on the legs of her pants and steadied herself. A leather-bound journal caught her eye and she plucked it from the depths of the trunk. It was obviously old, the leather cracked. Opening it carefully, she sucked in a breath when she realized it was from one of her ancestors, a woman who’d lived more than one hundred years before. “This is amazing.” She turned one page, then another, reading rapidly.

Closing the book, she tucked it under her arm. She needed to read this. She was about to close the top of the trunk when something caught her eye. Plucking the bundle of fabric from the trunk, she shook it open, coughing and sneezing when dust flew from it. Carrying it closer to the light, she exclaimed with delight as the pattern emerged.

“Well, you wanted a tapestry.” It was exactly as she imagined the one in the book would be and although it was dirty, she could see the myriad colors in the fabric. Red, green, blue, black, brown, white, silver and yellow all peeked from beneath the layer of dust, forming a picture. There was a stone castle in the center, surrounded by an abundance of flora and fauna, most of which she’d only seen in pictures. The river beyond the castle looked so real, she thought that if she touched it her fingers would get wet. “Incredible,” she whispered. The colors would be positively vibrant after a good cleaning.

A man stood in front of the castle, tall and proud. He was dressed in brown pants and boots, his chest bare. Long brown hair fell to his waist and his golden-brown eyes seemed to stare at her, through her. Her nipples tightened dramatically, making her gasp. What was wrong with her? The longer she stared at him, the more aroused she became. Her panties were damp and her body felt heavy, almost lethargic.

This was crazy. It was definitely time to break out her vibrator. She groaned as she realized that wouldn’t happen anytime soon. Not with Tienan and Logan staying with her. She’d spent the last seven years trying to think of them only as friends but with them here with her now that was becoming much more difficult. They were both handsome, virile men and she was only human after all. And she was a woman who, because of her commitment to her work and the lack of opportunity to meet someone who wasn’t cowed by her father, hadn’t had a man share her bed in over five years.

A noise startled her, sending her pulse racing. “Who’s there?” She thought about what she’d heard. It had sounded almost as if someone had sighed. That was crazy. It was probably the wind in the eaves or something.

No one answered but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t alone. She’d become very paranoid in the past few months, even more so in the past twenty-four hours. Draping the tapestry carefully over her chair, she laid the journal on top of it. She had to leave them here. She couldn’t risk bringing them down to her room. If any of the staff discovered either item they’d tell her father and he’d have them thrown out just because they were important to her.

She closed the lid on the trunk and crept back to the door, listening carefully. After a few moments, her pounding heart settled and she cracked the door open. Seeing no one, she turned off the light and made her way down the stairs, placing each foot carefully on the step. A part of her wanted to bring the tapestry with her but logic prevailed.

“I wish that the tapestry was magic and it would bring Marc to me.” She sighed, her words drifting back up the stairs, as she pulled open the door to the hallway. One night of hot sex with the man from her fantasies would at least relax her and maybe make it easier to face the coming days ahead. Her life was changing, no doubt about it.

No matter what happened, she knew she couldn’t stay here any longer. Tienan and Logan didn’t know it yet but when they left the city, she was going with them.

Glancing up and down the hallway to make sure no one else was there, she sneaked back to her room, ready to face Tienan and Logan. They needed to make plans.