Navarro's Promise (21 page)

“Attempt to bar me from her and there will be a war,” Navarro promised them.

“Ely believes if he is barred from her, then there’s a chance Mica could mate with a Breed willing to take on the responsibility of loving her,” Josiah snapped. “I request he be barred from her long enough to learn if she’ll be compatible with me. I’ll claim her.” His gaze raked over Navarro with insulting emphasis. “And he can go to hell!”

Shock resounded through Navarro.

A snarl slipped past his throat as he turned on the other Breed, fury spreading through his system with the force of a tidal wave.

He’d be damned if he’d allow any other Breed a chance to do any such thing.

“She’s still my fucking mate,” Navarro informed them all with icy rage. “She carries my scent.”

Josiah’s arms crossed over his powerful chest as a smirk curved his lips. “No, Navarro, she doesn’t. She smells of heat and arousal, but her scent is still her own. She has not taken your scent. Dr. Morrey believes nature would allow Mica to choose another mate, as you’ve so obviously rejected her. She’s Breed compatible and mate hungry. And I have no problem whatsoever fixing that little problem.”

Breed compatible and mate hungry?

Navarro sneered back at him. “If she had wanted you, whelp, then she would have claimed you years ago. What makes you think you can claim what’s mine now?”

“Because you so obviously don’t know how to do the job right.” Josiah smirked.

That smirk, the confidence and male gloating in his eyes, seemed to snap something inside him, something primal and vital, and before Navarro could restrain it, that unknown something disappeared from his grasp beneath the anger surging through him.

“Get the hell out of my way.” Navarro went to move around Josiah.

He was finished with this conversation.

“If the doctor is right, then perhaps we should consider what Mica has to say first, Navarro,” Dane drawled with a hint of amused interest. Enough so that Navarro knew the other man was entirely serious about asking Mica’s opinion. And Navarro was certain it wouldn’t be in his favor.

Navarro froze for the briefest second before turning to face the Vanderale heir, a man he had considered a friend until this moment.

“Go to hell!”

Turning back, he pushed past Josiah and slammed out of the vid-comm room to stride furiously up the hall to Ely’s office.

He’d be damned if anyone would take his mate.

He didn’t have to let the animal free to claim her. No matter the mating hormone that no longer filled his system, he could still claim her.

He’d already claimed her. He’d left his mark on her, and he’d be damned if he’d allow another Breed to replace it.

But to keep her, could he release the animal struggling to awaken inside him?

It was a question he wasn’t willing to answer.

But, he feared, it was one he would have to face. He could feel some unnamed emotion, a burning sense of awareness flaring inside him that he was unable to fight, unable to define. And for both his and Mica’s sake, he prayed it wasn’t the animal finally breaking free.

CHAPTER 12

Cassie had been amazingly silent since Mica’s little adventure began, but as she stepped into the bedroom and closed the door behind her, the first thing Mica spotted was the sat phone and note left on the coffee table.

Moving to it, she couldn’t help but smile.

Cassie’s having a meltdown and threatening to leave Haven. Please call her—Merinus.

Choosing the contacts option, she was thankful to see Merinus had added Cassie’s number. Remembering phone numbers was her weakness. She used speed dial for a reason.

“I’m sorry,” was Cassie’s answer before the first ring ever went through.

Mica felt her lips tremble. Cassie didn’t cry often, but when she did, her voice had a particular sound, a raspiness that was unmistakable. And from the sound of it, Cassie hadn’t been simply crying, she had been sobbing for long periods.

“Cass, stop crying,” Mica ordered as she fought her own tears now.

God, she wished the other woman were here. At the moment, she needed a shoulder to cry on herself, and she needed someone to help her figure out exactly what was going on.

“I can’t.” The sound of Cassie’s tears tore at her heart, and at that part of her that couldn’t understand what had happened.

“Look, I can’t cry.” Mica blinked desperately to hold the tears back. “You have to get control, Cassie. If I start—”

If she started crying, she too wouldn’t be able to stop.

“I sensed it,” Cassie sniffed. “I sensed he was your mate, and I sensed he would betray you, Mica. I sensed it, and I didn’t warn you.”

Mica sat down slowly, resting her head in her hand as she listened and fought to just hold the tears back.

“I could sense the mating heat on you, but I knew something would happen, that he would turn away from you, Mica. I knew it. I knew because I could feel the presence of another Breed. Maybe he’ll be your mate, Mica. Oh God, maybe you should just hate me,” she sobbed. “I should have told you.”

Mica wanted to laugh. Her only fear was that the sound of it could possibly be more hysterical than amused. This was so Cassie. Knowing and not telling, fearing that the telling would somehow change what the future was supposed to be.

Somehow though, Mica had always thought Cassie would warn her about something like this.

“Say something,” Cassie sobbed. “I keep feeling your pain, Mica. I feel it clawing at my chest and I can’t stop it. And I keep hearing a fucking Wolf howl and no one here is howling this week.”

“Stop crying, Cassie,” she whispered. “It’s okay, I promise.”

“I was at Dr. Armani’s office when Ely called her earlier. I know what he’s done. I didn’t know before, Mica, I swear I didn’t know. I had no warning that Navarro could walk away from mating heat so easily.”

“I know.” Mica wrapped her arm across her stomach and rocked forward. “It’s okay, Cassie, I swear.”

But it wasn’t okay. Because even she didn’t know exactly what Navarro had done, or how he had managed to do it.

Cassie was silent for long moments, the sound of her heavy breathing and occasional sniffs all Mica heard.

She held the phone to her ear though; as fragile as the connection was, she needed it desperately.

Cassie finally spoke again. “Dr. Armani is going over the tests results Dr. Morrey sent her. Dad spoke to me this morning though, he’s already heard there may be a mating. I pretended not to know anything. The last thing you need is our fathers heading to Haven right now.”

Mica cringed. “Thanks, Cass. That’s definitely the last thing I need right now.”

Her father would likely rupture a blood vessel. She could hear him screaming now, she could hear the anger, the concern, but even more, the fear that his baby girl would be harmed in some way.

He loved her. He just didn’t know how to let her grow up. In his eyes, she was still that child that he needed to protect from the world.

“Have you spoken to Navarro since you were with Dr. Morrey?” Cassie asked, her voice still rough, weary, but thankfully she was no longer sobbing.

“No.” Mica shook her head. “I haven’t seen him, but it’s only been a few hours.”

Long enough to allow the truth to sink in. To realize that somehow Navarro had been so against mating her that he had managed to escape it.

He had done what no other Breed had been able to do. He had been able to reverse the mating hormone.

How? How could he have done it?

“He fears what he carries inside him more than he fears losing his mate,” Cassie said softly as that thought brushed through her mind.

Mica froze. “What did you say?”

“Aren’t you listening, Mica?” Cassie asked gently.

“I missed part of it.” Her heart was racing now. How had Cassie known?

“I said, Ely told Dr. Armani that Navarro fears what he carries inside him more than he fears losing his mate. I think I believe it. I know he’s recessed, but he sometimes appears more human than even a recessed Breed.”

Mica was on the verge of breathing a sigh of relief. God help them all if Cassie ever developed the talent to read others’ thoughts. She would single-handedly start World War III.

“It doesn’t matter what he fears,” Mica finally said, the weight of the rejection pulling at her, exhausting her until she just wanted to curl into a corner and weep herself. “He started this, Cassie. He mated me. I didn’t ask for it. Now he thinks he can escape it?” Bitterness welled inside her. “He obviously wants to escape it.”

“I don’t believe that, Mica,” Cassie sighed. “But I’m not there either. You always told me you were woman enough to know when a man was yours and when he wasn’t. You’ll know if you should fight for him, or if you should see if all those vicious little mating hormones can become compatible with another Wolf Breed. Just think, girlfriend, you could set a precedent yourself by showing all Breed females, and perhaps later the world, that no one has to be a victim of mating heat. Right?”

“Yeah, right. How about I just swear off Breeds period? I think that would be the better course of action, Cassie.” All she wanted to do was find ease and sleep. She wanted to sink against Navarro’s flesh and find the comfort, the satisfaction she’d known earlier.

“And I think we both know that’s not possible,” Cassie reminded her sadly. “If I could help you, Mica, I would. I wish I were there with you. We’d give them so much hell they’d regret the day either of us was ever born.”

Mica guessed that may have already happened. They’d terrorized the Breeds at Haven and in Sanctuary for years before they’d become adults.

“I know, Cassie.” She wished her friend were there as well. It was just her luck that she was left to face it alone instead.

Somehow, she’d always suspected this would happen, and that when it did, she would have to face it without help.

“Call me, Mica, if you need me,” Cassie whispered. “You know I’m always here.”

“I know.” Mica felt her lips trembling again. “I promise, Cassie. Now I better go. I have a few things to finish here, then I think I’ll go to bed.”

“I love you, Mica,” Cassie stated, the regret and compassion in her voice nearly breaking Mica as Cassie fought to hold back the loneliness and the fear Mica could hear building inside her.

“I love you too, Cass,” Mica promised. “Good night.”

She disconnected as she breathed in a hard, ragged breath.

She couldn’t let herself cry. God only knew if she would ever stop if she started. There was too much pain built inside her, too many long, lonely nights of wondering what was wrong with her, why it seemed that even making friends was so difficult. Let alone lovers. Before Navarro, she’d only had one previous lover, in college, and she’d awakened the next morning to find him gone. He’d never even called her back, after spending months chasing her.

She’d moved to New York to escape her father’s rule and learned that the big city was less than friendly. Making friends was nearly impossible for her.

She’d never seen herself as an unlikeable person.

She was friendly. She was reasonably attractive. Sometimes, she even knew how to carry off a joke. Yet she’d spent the better part of her life alone, except for Cassie and her parents.

Alone and wondering why.

Now she was mated and her mate had rejected her in the most elemental way, proving once and for all that something was indeed wrong.

Rising to her feet, she moved slowly across the room to the windows on the other side. Standing before them, she stared into the gathering darkness, hands shoved into the back pockets of her jeans, and faced the knowledge that she would spend another night alone.

Aching.

Hurting.

So flawed that even her mate didn’t want her.

Ely paced the exam room portion of the labs as she nibbled at her thumbnail and fought to find a way to help Mica out of the hell she could be entering if they didn’t find a way to fix whatever was going on with Navarro.

If they didn’t find a way to force him to release the primal, more animalistic side of his genetics.

That had to be the answer. The recessed genetics were more or less a block between the man and animal, separating them and keeping the man from accessing some of the animal genetics inside him. Though Dash Sinclair had waged this fight for years in his mating with Elizabeth, it hadn’t seemed to affect his sanity. It also hadn’t seemed to allow him to walk away from his mate.

But walking away wasn’t something he seemed capable of doing either, if the confrontation in the lab earlier was any indication.

Moving back to the holo-comp, the holographic computer she’d finally convinced Vanderale she so desperately needed, she once again pulled up the files from the Omega labs.

Project Omega had dealt with mating heat and the variables the scientists had found within the four mated couples they’d managed to detect.

The horrific experiments that had been done on the couples still had the power to give Ely nightmares. She forced herself to go through them again, praying she could find in time the answers Navarro and Mica needed.

Everyone thought she had grown cold and hard inside. That she no longer cared.

She cared too much, but she was so much more aware of her limitations now than she had been before.

The low though nonetheless strident buzzer from within Phillip Brandenmore’s cell pinged again.

Ely turned and stared at the activated partition, the glass that had been darkened to keep Phillip from seeing out or anyone else from seeing in. It had been activated all day while she tested Mica and ran the tests for answers.

Answers she had yet to find.

The strident summons came again.

What would it hurt?

The man was crazed, she knew. A psychopath slowly dying while the senses of the animal were being born inside him. Seeing the progression from a scientist’s standpoint was incredible. Watching the tortured destruction of the man would give her nightmares for years to come.

The sound echoed through the labs once more as Ely gave an exhausted sigh and moved to the control panel.

The glass cleared, revealing Brandenmore as he sat huddled in the foam chair, his knees drawn to his chest, his face staring back at her through saddened, pain-filled eyes.

The old, diseased man was slowly regaining his prime. A thick head of hair had been brushed casually to the side. He was muscular and fit beneath the loose scrubs he was given to wear.

So handsome, and so corrupt. Even before he had injected himself with the devil’s brew he’d concocted to return his body to its former condition and his mind to its once crystal clarity.

Before he’d injected a baby with it, and forced the Breeds to halt the freedom he had so very little time left to enjoy.

“I hear whispers,” he told her as she activated the two-way communication between the rooms. “I hear a Breed has mated a human, and has now unmated her.”

It didn’t surprise Ely that he knew, despite the fact that he shouldn’t have. The guards knew now, and sometimes the small slots were left open in the door of the cell to facilitate the guards’ ability to hear his screams if the pain returned. It also allowed him to hear what they gossiped about. She had no doubt the gossip was flowing now. Talk of the Breed that had reversed mating.

“You shouldn’t listen to whispers, Phillip,” she reminded him as she returned to the holo-comp. “You know how deceptive they can be.”

Sometimes, the whispers he heard were in his own head.

“The whispers keep me company,” he said and sighed.

It seemed the day was one of his calmer ones. They were becoming few and far between.

“Have you figured out how to save me yet, Ely?” he asked conversationally, as though they were talking about anything other than his death.

“I haven’t yet, Phillip.” She shook her head. “I told you, I need your help.”

She had to have the recipe he’d used for the formula he’d injected himself with. The recipe he’d injected Amber with. He refused to tell them, certain that if he held that information back, then they would have to figure out how to save him, to save the child.

That theory wasn’t working very well. They couldn’t figure it out. The drug seemed to have mutated inside him, whereas they could no longer find traces of it inside Amber.