Authors: Lora Leigh
She couldn’t believe it had happened to her, and she wanted to know why. She wanted to know how. And she wanted to know how to fix it, one way or the other.
Either he mated her fully, became as desperate for her as she for him, loved her as deeply, or she wanted a cure. And she wanted it now.
CHAPTER 14
The only Breed that could beat mating heat?
Where the bloody hell did Mica and Ely come up with this crap? Simply because the hormones in his blood weren’t at the level they should be didn’t mean he wasn’t being driven insane by it.
“I’d like to know how the hell you and Ely can assume I’ve beaten anything.” Navarro glared back at her, amazed at the scientist’s deductions and Mica’s assumptions. “Wolf Breeds only knot their mates, or have you forgotten that?”
He sure as hell hadn’t forgotten it, and he was damned tired of feeling guilty over something they were only assuming. Or imagining.
Damn them, he felt mated, didn’t that count for something?
Evidently it didn’t.
“And Wolf Breed males show the hormone in their own systems, they feel the same pain their mates feel.” She stopped, swallowed tightly and told herself she wasn’t becoming overwhelmed with emotion.
He could almost feel her pain himself as it sliced across his senses, sharper than a scent, more intense than any smell could ever become. It dug sharp, vicious claws into his chest, clenched it, and made him wonder if it wasn’t physically tearing into his heart.
Never had he felt another’s pain as he felt hers now. He hadn’t even had a connection this sharp with his twin. “And you think I don’t feel your pain?” Then what the hell was he feeling? It damn sure wasn’t warm and fuzzy.
Rather than answering him, Mica shot him a glare as she forced herself not to rage at him before swinging around and heading to the large walk-in closet that held all the clothes a girl could want, and they were all in her size. There were shoes, stockings and boots. There were scraps of lace and silk parading as panties, bras, leather belts and lacy socks. Merinus had always taken care of Cassie and Mica whenever they were here, and she had done so once again.
It was too bad a cookie couldn’t fix her hurt feelings anymore though.
It was too bad one of Merinus’s warm hugs couldn’t make her feel like everything was going to be good again. And it was really too damned bad that Navarro couldn’t get a clue and wouldn’t hold her himself and at least attempt to comfort her.
“Stop!” His fingers curved around her upper arm, drawing her to a stop. “I don’t understand why I didn’t sense, didn’t feel your arousal last night. I assumed your reaction to the mating heat would be the same as mine. I assumed it had calmed and eased for you as well.”
“Then you assumed wrong, didn’t you, Navarro?” Her voice was rough, and she hated it. Her emotions were there; that meant she wasn’t hiding them. She wasn’t as calm and controlled as she had hoped she was.
She was hurt and she was angry, and she felt betrayed. She felt as though everything had been taken away from her when she had learned she was suffering alone and Navarro was as content as he had been before he had ever supposedly mated her.
“Why?” She stared up at him as she fought back as much as possible, fought to hide as much of the pain as possible. “Why did you bind me to you, yet I couldn’t bind you?”
It was the betrayal. Nature. Navarro. They had turned on her together and left her out in the cold. She didn’t like being in the cold. She didn’t like this feeling. She didn’t like feeling alone at a time when she was supposed to be a part of something. The one time when she had been certain that she would have someone to hold on to.
“Do you think I’m not bound to you, Mica?” He frowned down at her, his expression somber as his fingers stroked down her arm, caressing the sensitive underside.
That stroke, so light it was barely there, seemed to sink inside her. Gentle and caressing, it stole past her defenses with the unexpectedness of it, threatening to leave her in tears.
“I think I don’t know what’s going on anymore,” she informed him bitterly as she stepped back from his touch. As much as she needed it, ached for it, she couldn’t afford it at the moment. “What I do know is that I need to figure this out and I need to decide what to do from here.”
“What to do about what?” Confusion colored his tone. “You’re my mate; it’s that simple, Mica. I don’t give a damn what Ely or her tests say.”
Mica could only shake her head. “Just because you say it doesn’t make it so,” she whispered hoarsely. “The mating heat is going away in you, Navarro, it’s only rising in me.”
“I mated you, Mica. That knot wasn’t a figment of my fucking imagination. I don’t care what Ely’s damned tests say. Once we return to Haven we’ll have Dr. Armani run her tests. Ely knows Felines dammit; she doesn’t know Wolves.” Mica could frustrate him as no other woman ever could. She had the power to make him crazy and to tempt his control in ways it had never been tempted before.
“It wasn’t a figment of my imagination either.” Shaking off his touch, she entered the closet and chose the clothes she wanted to wear that evening.
Jeans and another soft sweater, this one a bright scarlet red, soft cashmere socks, silk panties and bra and a silk sleeveless tank beneath the sweater.
Navarro watched as she carried the clothes to the shower and carefully locked the door behind her. As though a locked door would ever stop him. As though it could stop him.
In this case, it wasn’t the locked door, it was the pain centered so deep inside her that he had no idea how to face it. Even more, he was afraid Mica didn’t know how to face it. She was fighting it with everything inside her, pushing it back as far as she could push it and struggling to come to grips with just the small amount that was slipping past her control.
Son of a bitch, how was he supposed to handle this? What the hell was he supposed to do?
Mating heat was just changing a bit, that was all.
Or was it?
Ely couldn’t answer his questions, and the research he’d found on the Omega Project hadn’t been decoded enough that he could find even a hint of how to fix this. Hell, he’d never faced anything like this before. A mate that wasn’t a mate. An anomaly that prevented the hormone from showing in the male’s blood while driving the female mate through the gamut of mating symptoms. None of it made sense.
And now, Mica was hiding. Hiding and hurting, and she didn’t want his comfort.
Where the hell did that leave him?
He wished they were at Haven. It was just his damned luck to be stuck in Sanctuary with a Feline specialist pouring over his tests when he should be at his own base, with Dr. Armani, the Wolf Breed specialist attempting to make sense of this.
As she told him earlier that day, it could be something as simple as a single recessed gene holding back the full power of the mating heat. Something she couldn’t say for certain until she examined him and Mica herself.
He stared at the door and grimaced at the pain that still swirled from her and seemed to spear straight through him. In his chest, in the deepest pit of his soul, he swore something wild swirled and howled in rage before he could shut it down.
That was why he had always been so drawn to Mica. She was one of the few humans that could do as he had learned early to do. To shut her emotions off, to keep them put away where they wouldn’t or couldn’t affect the Breeds around her.
But that wasn’t the reason she did it.
He’d never truly learned why she did it. But she wasn’t able to do it now, and he knew the pain was tearing ragged holes into her soul as she was losing that control.
Moving from the suite, he headed downstairs to search for Merinus, and to hopefully learn why. He knew she talked to Merinus. Merinus had known her since she was a young girl. She would know far more than what little information he had been about to drag out of Cassie over the years.
It wasn’t Merinus he found in the parlor downstairs. It was Josiah.
Leaning back comfortably in one of the heavily padded chairs arranged in a conversation area, sipping at the liquor in a short glass, the other Breed watched him with brooding unconcern.
“Pack Leader Blaine,” he murmured as Navarro entered the room. “So damned commanding and full of himself.” He smiled tightly. “You think you have this one won, don’t you?”
“She’s my mate,” Navarro reminded him. “No one takes what’s mine and survives it.”
“She doesn’t carry your scent. All she smells of is sweet, hot need.” Josiah sat the glass on the table, each movement carefully controlled. “You don’t carry a mating scent either, Navarro. You can’t claim her without it.”
“She carries my mark,” Navarro informed him as he felt adrenaline beginning to flood his veins, his muscles tensing with the need for violence. “Don’t try to trespass, Josiah.”
He didn’t take the warning further; there was no need to. He’d said all he needed to say. The warning was implicit in and of itself. He’d stay away from her. It was that simple.
Josiah may have decided they were enemies for the moment. Perhaps forever. Navarro didn’t give a damn. He’d made his position clear. If Josiah attempted to touch what was his, then he’d pay for it.
“Navarro. We need to talk.”
Turning, Navarro watched as Jonas stepped from the office farther up the foyer. Dark, icy cold, the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs looked as imposing as hell and not in the least pleased as Navarro moved to the end of the wide foyer and stepped into the office.
“What the hell are you up to?” Jonas growled as he closed the door behind them.
“Hell if I know.” Turning to face him, Navarro crossed his arms over his chest and wondered exactly what burr Jonas had up his ass this time. “You’ll have to be more specific, Director.”
“Why did you return to the labs after leaving earlier? And why were you attempting to access Phillip Brandenmore’s cell?”
Navarro stared back at him in surprise. Now here was a new one. With the security in the labs it should have been pretty damned evident he hadn’t been in the labs since that time he’d been there with Mica for those damned inconclusive mating tests.
“I haven’t been back to the labs, Jonas. And I’ve definitely not attempted to access Brandenmore’s cell. I have far better things to do than to fuck with him at the moment.”
Jonas stared back at him with icy suspicion. Navarro knew the director’s inability to scent deception from him was a sore point. Jonas’s sensitivity raked off the charts as well, making it impossible to know exactly how sensitive his sense of smell could be. The difference was, as director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs, Jonas’s inability to confirm any of his enforcers answers as truth or lie was a problem.
Finally he grimaced, a sign that he was willing to trust, but only for the moment.
“Your access code was used to attempt to breach Brandenmore’s cells an hour ago. We have it logged.”
“And I was with my mate an hour ago,” Navarro stated with icy distain even as he began to feel a cold edge of premonition beginning to run through him. “Change my codes,” he told Jonas. “Something’s not right here, Jonas.”
Jonas watched him for long, careful moments, though this time, there was no suspicion marking his expression. There was instead a barely glimpsed hint of calculation in his gaze.
“Someone breached the cells the other day when you went down with Mica for the first mating tests. We had the protocols changed to log all access codes into the hall leading to his cell. Someone released him. He didn’t get himself out.”
“What do the security camera’s show?”
“An error notice that an electronic jammer was being used. That message alerted us to the problem but by the time we managed to get to the cells, whoever it was was gone. But your access code was the last one entered into the security panel at the time.”
“It wasn’t possible.” He shook his head again. “I was with Mica and before that I was involved in a confrontation with Josiah that began in the labs. He’s an asshole, but he’ll tell you where I was.” His lips thinned then. “Has it occurred to you, Jonas, that perhaps if you didn’t allow the humans within Sanctuary’s secured areas, that perhaps you wouldn’t have nearly so many spies?”
“It occurs to me every fucking time one of them betrays us.” Jonas cursed. “But isolating ourselves isn’t going to solve the problem. We’ll only become easier to frame. And the problem is becoming more Breed than human. Our spies, Navarro, are our own people.”
And wasn’t that the truth. Breeds who had been too strong to maintain the normally high level of genetic animal coding. Their human genetics had instead taken precedence, and greed and prejudice took over.
“Then what options are left to you?” Navarro asked bitterly. “The humans begin the problems, Jonas. You’re sacrificing Sanctuary for the sake of world opinion?”
“Not hardly.” Jonas grunted. “It’s taken us a while, but we’re finally uncovering them. We were aware it was possible we still had one or two working with Brandenmore, but until now, we weren’t entirely certain.”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t suspect me of this then. This time,” Navarro stated roughly.
“I suspect everyone, Navarro.” And there was no doubt Jonas didn’t have ample cause to do just that. “No one is beneath my suspicion except my mate and my child. Remember that. And remember what’s important in your life.”
“Meaning?” Jonas was always all about the advice.
Jonas let a rueful grin tug at his lips. “You’re used to being alone, You’ve not had to worry about anyone but yourself. You’ve not had to watch anyone’s back but your own since the rescue of the labs. Having a mate, having that responsibility, changes things.”
“I don’t need a mating lecture.”
Jonas brows lifted. “Then how about a friendly warning. Get your head out of your ass and get your mating scent on your woman before you lose her forever. Until then, I want you in the labs with me and help me figure out what the hell is going on there and why someone is trying to make it look like you’re aiding Brandenmore in an escape.”
Jonas left the office, leaving Navarro to watch his back until he jerked the door open and disappeared along the foyer.
The mating scent still wasn’t there?
What the hell was nature doing to them now?
And who the hell thought they could frame him for Brandenmore’s release? He’d see the bastard dead before he’d ever see him free.