Navarro's Promise (10 page)

That ride from her home to Haven had been so painful she’d cursed Cassie the whole time she was there. Just as she’d cursed her the time she and Cassie had been training in the gym at Haven and she had fallen and cracked the bone in her forearm.

Those earlier misadventures had taught her something though. Years’ worth of accident-prone missteps, and Mica was used to having to move when it hurt. She was used to walking with a broken ankle, helping a concussed Cassie through the forest days after Mica had cracked the bone in her arm because a Coyote Breed had managed to slip into Haven to target her.

Cassie had directed her through her forest, and Mica had helped her friend walk as the world had spun around her. She’d supported her when unconsciousness had nearly taken Cassie, and she had prayed enough that she still whispered her prayers through her dreams when she remembered that time in her nightmares.

This wasn’t a nightmare though. And she wasn’t in the middle of a forest with plenty of room to move around and hide. She was in the middle of a steel-lined hall, floors beneath the earth, with a madman slamming her into the wall as she tried to jerk to the side to escape him.

That didn’t keep a cry from escaping her though, or the agony from radiating through her. Even that was diluted, though, by the sheer terror of the creature growling at her ear, his saliva dribbling to the bare skin where her shirt slipped to the edge of her shoulder.

He was supposed to be dead.

Mica tried to dig her nails into the steel-lined wall the side of her face was pressed against, her breathing shallow, knees weak as from the corner of her eye she watched Navarro and Josiah struggle to their feet.

“I know you.” The creature snarled at her ear, his fingers biting into the side of her neck, ragged nails trying to tear at her flesh. “You’re not supposed to be here, whore.” The fingers of his other hand tangled in her hair, jerking her head back until she could see nothing but the twisted, enraged features of a man that was supposed to be dead.

She stared into the flickering red of his brown eyes, gasping for air as spittle dripped to her cheek. As though he couldn’t swallow, couldn’t contain the poisonous venom in his soul any longer.

“Sorry ’bout that,” she gasped. “Just give me a sec here, and I promise I’ll leave.” She couldn’t help it. The words had just slipped out as the blaring alarms echoing through the halls suddenly stopped.

The silence her words were injected into seemed to shatter with the same discordance as the sirens.

“Whore!”

She couldn’t hold back the agonizing expulsion of breath, the whimper, the pain too intense to allow enough breath to scream.

She heard a low, dangerous growl, the sound of footsteps, a curse echoing around her as the pain threatened to steal her consciousness.

“Stand down, Navarro!” Jonas’s snarl was thick, dangerous, as the feel of the heavy pressure in her ribs had tears spurting from her eyes.

Brandenmore had his arm pressing tight into the tender area, putting a horrible pressure in an area where no pressure could be tolerated.

“Jonas Wyatt.” The demented voice made the greeting sound more a curse. “You did this, didn’t you, freak? You got her here. You found out I had plans for her.”

Plans for her?

“Oh yeah,” she gasped, all but writhing in agony. “Fuckup Coyote was your baby?” The bastard Coyote that had all but broken her ribs had to have been taking someone’s orders.

“He’ll die now,” he hissed at her ear. “You got him killed.”

Oh yeah, she was going to feel guilty about that one. Next year maybe.

“She’s not going to help you, Phillip,” Jonas warned him, and Mica wanted to just laugh.

It was the pain, it was making her crazy, and Cassie wasn’t here to bitch at because of it.

“Cassie Sinclair’s self-proclaimed best friend?” Phillip’s snarl sounded like a Breed’s. “Your little princess’s favorite person, Wyatt? You’d trade your own sire for her.”

“No doubt,” Jonas drawled with a facade of amusement. “She likes me more.”

And wasn’t that the damned truth.

“Does she now?” Sardonic, manipulating, Phillip Brandenmore sounded like a monster ready to bite her head off. A chill raced up her spine as the ragged nails caressed her jugular. “Would she like you so well if she knew you’d deliberately allowed her to go home? That you’d been warned she would be targeted?”

“Too late,” Mica wheezed. “Already knew.”

God, she had to get his arm off her ribs before she blacked out for good. She could barely breathe. This was even worse than having Navarro lying over her in the back of the SUV.

Brandenmore laughed at the pain in her voice. “Did you know I was here, little girl?”

“Nightmares,” she gasped.

Brandenmore paused. “What did you say?”

Was there a lessening of the dementia in his tone? In the pressure against her ribs. Oh God, what had she said to make him think? She would surely say it again.

“You’re hurting her, Phillip, is that what you want?” Jonas asked then, his voice dropping, softening.

Those ragged nails caressed over her neck again, scraping, feeling as though they were peeling the protective layer of skin from her flesh.

“Do you have nightmares?” He was tense behind her, and so strong. His fingers were clenching in her hair, unclenching, pulling at the tender strands as her knees threatened to buckle.

His nails scraped her flesh again as she blinked against the tears.

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t inhale deeply. Her ribs felt as though a dagger were wedged between them.

“Answer me!” he roared.

Mica whimpered at the pain. She couldn’t cry, she couldn’t scream. There was no breath for it, the pain screaming through her body.

“Do you have nightmares?”

“Yes,” she wheezed, her hands jerking from the wall to the powerful wrists of the creature holding her so effortlessly.

He was Phillip Brandenmore, yet he wasn’t.

God, Kita Engalls, his niece, must live in hell knowing what her uncle had become.

“What nightmares do you have?” He seemed to pause, his nails now digging into the flesh of her neck as another little whimper slipped free.

Behind Brandenmore, she could hear Navarro growling. That low, almost unconscious growl Wolf Breeds used when pushed to their last, enraged nerve.

If Bradenmore gave him so much as a single opening, then he would be dead.

“Monsters,” she answered, fighting back more tears, fighting back the fear and the panic, the knowledge that she would die if one of the Breeds didn’t figure out how to get their hands, or their weapons, on the monster holding her. “Monsters find me.”

It was the truth. That was her nightmare, a dream pulled from the bleak, horrifying night she’d spent lost in the mountains around the ranch her parents had owned in Kansas, just after Cassie and her mother had been there with Dash Sinclair.

She had had a Coyote stalking her, playing with her, assuring her that her father was dead when he hadn’t been.

Once again that fear was tearing through her sense.

Navarro. Why hadn’t he made a move yet? Why wasn’t he saving her?

“I’m the monster,” he whispered at her ear, his fingers straightening until they were wrapped around her neck too snugly for comfort.

Her eyes closed for a moment, the labored breathing finally taking its toll as she felt herself weakening.

She was clawing at his fingers, but they didn’t loosen.

“You’re hurting her, Phillip,” Jonas repeated, his voice too calm as she began to struggle, desperate to escape now.

“I want to hurt you,” he snarled at her ear.

There were too many sounds. Jonas was suddenly snarling, a snap of fury behind Phillip, Callan’s voice suddenly entering the fray as a sharp command. “Mica, stop fighting. If he kills you, his niece Kita will never forgive him.”

Kita? Kita wasn’t here. Mica had only met Brandenmore’s niece once; she was the same niece he had tried to kill when he learned she had mated with a Breed last month.

Behind her, Phillip tensed again, but his hold loosened. His fingers unclenched just enough for her to take a deep breath, to prepare herself.

And then all hell seemed to break loose.

Navarro struggled with the order Jonas gave to hold back, to wait. He could sense the insanity inside Phillip Brandenmore, the demented animal born of the Breed serum he’d injected himself with, clawing with feral rage as all semblance of his humanity crashed beneath the wave of fury.

The hunger for blood, for death and vengeance was a dark oil scent, putrid and abrasive to the senses. And it was focused entirely on Mica.

Her pain and fear reached out to Navarro, tendrils of them wrapping around his senses like a scream born of desperation.

Where the wisps of hunger and emotion born of evolving love had warmed and aroused him, this sensation tore across his senses and seemed to awaken the animal slumbering inside him to full, enraged consciousness.

It came to awareness with a suddenness he couldn’t have predicted and damn sure hadn’t expected. Clawing talons of fury raked across his senses as a furious snarl pulled his lips back from his teeth and had him crouching, preparing to spring.

He would have only one opportunity. If he failed, God forbid, if he didn’t take the monster down with that first try, then Mica would pay the cost.

“Stand down!” Jonas snapped, and a distant, almost human part of Navarro recognized and fully ignored the order.

Jonas Wyatt commanded the loyalty of the man, not whatever entity was roused to full, furious life inside him now.

It was similar to what raged inside Phillip Brandenmore, except the animal snarling inside Navarro was a natural part of his genetics, of what made him who and what he was at his core.

A Wolf Breed.

Beside him, he could feel Josiah tensing as well, signaling to Jonas that he would hold Navarro back. There would be no holding him back and they both knew it. They were wasting their time in the attempt.

Josiah might try. And he might find his blood spilling for the effort to keep Navarro from the woman.

Navarro felt her weakening. The scent of her tears shredded the finely weaved bonds that had always held the animal within him in a deep, peaceful slumber.

It hadn’t meant to awaken.

It gave its strength and its senses, but not its awareness. The calculated, finely honed instincts that were raging inside Navarro now were different, unusual. They were the animal awakening with a sudden, ravenous hunger for blood.

His lips drew back from his teeth. He felt it. A rumbling sound of fury, low and intense, and it was coming from him when it never had before. Rising from the pit of his stomach, building in his chest, and emitting a low-level sound of such fury that he would have been surprised if he weren’t so focused on the sight of Brandenmore’s fingers wrapped around Mica’s throat.

“I could kill her, Jonas,” Brandenmore said placidly, his tone so calm he could have been discussing the weather rather the life of an innocent woman.

The life of Navarro’s woman.

That thought would have shocked him ten minutes earlier. Now there was no time for shock, there was no thought of it. There was only the imperative, overwhelming need to save her.

“I hear that animal behind us,” Brandenmore chuckled at her ear. “Navarro Blaine. The liar. The deceiver. Do you know”—he caressed her neck again before wrapping his fingers around it once more—“he was created to have no Breed scent. His genetics erased to the deepest level, but for that sense of smell.” His fingers tightened. “Hearing.” Further. “Sight.” He hissed the words at her ear. “Created to identify and to assassinate any Breed, recessed or hiding. He thought he could outsmart me. That he could defeat me. I helped create him. He can’t escape me.”

Mica tensed, her breathing ragged as Josiah stepped in front of him.

Navarro was losing the last of the chains that tethered his self-control, that held back the rage rising through him with a force he could no longer control.

“Kita will never forgive you, Brandenmore. Is that what you want?” Jonas warned as though he really cared, as Navarro felt the animal rip free.

“She won’t forgive me anyway—”

Brandenmore’s fingers tightened, but the sound of Mica’s whimper of fear and pain was overshadowed by the enraged snarl that suddenly echoed through the hall.

Josiah was thrown against the wall with a force that stole the air from his lungs and left him collapsing against the floor, wheezing with the agony tearing through his diaphragm as Jonas and Callan rushed for him. They didn’t move to stop Navarro; it was too late.

In the space it had taken to make those few steps to the fallen Breed, Brandenmore was screaming in his own agony, his wrists in Navarro’s grip as Navarro moved them slowly, slowly from Mica’s flesh and took the man to his knees.

Brandenmore was screaming, the sound of his pain like a symphony of vengeance echoing through Navarro’s ears as Breeds rushed through the hall. Lawe Justice, Lion Breed, one of two that were called Jonas’s right hand, rushed for Mica as she stumbled.

“No!” The sound was primal, animalistic. Navarro threw Brandenmore, slinging him with a strength that broke the monster’s wrist with a snap and a howl of agony as he crashed into Lawe and Navarro caught Mica as she went to her knees.