by Lora Leigh
hate her this much? She couldn’t understand that. Why was she the only woman mated to a Breed who wasn’t mated to her?
Well, at least not fully mated.
“What the hell have you managed to pull off here?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. And once she’d started, she finished. “How did you get so lucky to have escaped the mating heat, the symptoms and the ties you forced on me, Navarro? Tell me, how did I get lucky enough to get the only Breed who could beat mating heat?”
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 tha
t 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.
CHAPTER 15
She wasn’t going to put up with it.
Mica could feel the anger beginning to build inside her the more the knowledge of Navarro’s hold on her penetrated her senses.
It was her fault as much as it was nature’s that she’d become mated to him though. She’d been the one stupid enough to fall in love with a Breed when she had been too damned young to even understand the implications of it.
And had she let go of it as she grew older? As she’d realized exactly what she would be facing if the worst happened?
She hadn’t.
She’d remained distant from him. She hadn’t pushed the situation. But it hadn’t been because she hadn’t wanted to. It had been because she’d been too frightened of loving a man, a Breed, whose very genetics would demand everything she had and then more in a life that would be more dangerous than it ever had been.
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Loving a Breed and enduring the lives they lived required a strength Mica was never certain she had.
Navarro wasn’t blameless in this though. Pheromones, biology, physiology, chemical matches, whatever the hell the science of it wanted to label the phenomena, it was still a bonding, a connection, not that different from any other relationship. Mating heat simply refused to allow the Breeds, who had been trained not to feel, to dream or to love, to walk away from the man or woman that would love them with the depth it took to continue their species.
Man had created them, but God had definitely adopted them, and he had made the decision that they would survive.
It was a decision, that in their case, Navarro was attempting to cancel.
Ten days after arriving at Sanctuary, after being mated by the stubborn, taciturn Wolf Breed, Mica was still looking at full-blown mating heat while Navarro was skating by with diluted symptoms and the ability to walk away from her.
Oh, this wasn’t going to work for her.
It had taken her a while to find her footing, she had to admit, to find her “mad” emotion, but Navarro had no idea just how pissed off she was over it as she stood watching him the next afternoon.
She’d heard his warning to Josiah, and though she hated the fact he’d done something so possessive with nothing to back it up, she at least appreciated the effort. He claimed her, but he didn’t want her love, nor was he inclined to give her his love.
Lips thinning, she debated the best course of action in demanding his heart. She had a feeling simply making the demand wasn’t exactly going to work.
“You look like a woman with a grudge.” Merinus slipped out on the back porch where Mica stood watching him with Callan and Jonas as they met several of the pride commanders in the backyard.
“You could call it a grudge,” she said in agreement as she turned to Merinus. “Tell me, Prima, how do you secure a mate?”
“Secure his heart.” Her answer was quick, certain.
Perhaps she was the wrong person to ask.
“It should already be mine.” She turned and looked out to where he stood with the other men once again.
Merinus sighed deeply. “I believe he loves you more than he’ll ever love anyone, Mica, but he holds that part of him that couldn’t survive if he lost you back from you. I think it’s losing you that he fears, not loving you.”
“And that’s how he’s managed to hold back the mating,” she decided.
She was aware of Merinus crossing her arms over her breasts as they both watched the men then. “Ely agrees with me actually, as does Dr. Armani,” Merinus stated.
Nikki Armani, the Wolf Breed specialist had been telling her for years that the Wolf Breeds were far more stubborn and independent than the Felines, and Mica hadn’t believed her. After all, in the animal world, it was the predatory cats that were far more independent and less social than those of wolves.
“It was their training,” Merinus continued. “It was horrifying for the Felines, but for the Wolf Breeds, it was even more so in many cases. They weren’t considered as valuable or as intelligent. They were used as research subjects more often, and the files I’ve read have given me nightmares for weeks. No Wolf Breed mate will have it easy.”
“So how do I seduce my mate’s heart?”
Merinus gave a little light laugh. “I would say, Mica, you know Navarro far better than I do. What’s his weakness? Even more, what is his weakness where you’re concerned? What would force him to give up that part of himself that he’s holding back?”
“It’s according to the part he’s holding back.” She sighed.
“Mica, he’s your mate,” Merinus chided. “What part of Navarro do you never see? Never sense? What part needs to be seduced?”
How easy that answer should have been. “The recessed genetics,” she murmured. “Every time his inner animal begins to push forward, he finds a way to push it back.”
“Every Breed fights that inner animal in one way or the other,” Merinus agreed. “Recessive genetics are a bitch. If Ria and Mercury were here, they could tell you how that inner animal can destroy the Breed if they don’t allow it free.”
Wild and free.
The Breeds were men and women who carried the animals inside them. Animals that demanded freedom, that demanded supremacy over the human that fought to contain it.
“Recessed Breeds have a greater battle,” Merinus continued. “Mating awakens those genetics and changes everything for them. These aren’t men and women who adapt well to such change, or such loss of control. They’ve not had to deal with their animal, and dealing with it is something they will fight at all costs.”
“Even losing their mate?” Mica glanced sideways at the other woman.
Merinus was silent for a long moment before she glanced at Mica regretfully. “There have been times. I feared it would come to just that with Mercury and Ria. But his circumstances were unusual. Though”—a rueful grin pulled at her lips—“they’re all rather unique, aren’t they?”
“Women need a damned rule book to deal with them.” Mica sighed again.
“And where would the fun in that be?” The love Merinus felt for her own mated husband, Callan, was reflected in her voice. “You’ll never be bored, you’ll always be loved and warm, and above all things, they will do whatever is necessary to protect you.”
And that was the promise he had made to her, that no matter what, he would protect her. He was protecting her just fine. From everything but the mating heat.
“Callan says you’re fighting the arousal,” Merinus said then. “That you’re not going to Navarro, you’re waiting for him to come to you.”
“I’m not going to beg,” she gritted out. She felt as though she had been begging him as long as she’d known him. She would like, at least once, to see him come to her.
“And the heat is there for a reason,” Merinus stated. “Use it, Mica, or risk living in the hell you’re in forever, and perhaps losing Navarro in the process.”
Merinus turned and left then, entering the house once again and leaving Mica to watch Navarro thoughtfully.
The heat was there for a reason.
The emotions tearing through her, the anger she kept biting back, the emotions she kept such careful control of. They were all there for a reason.
Just as it would be for him. The genetics that would cement the mating heat were all there, and he was holding them back. He was denying them both, and she was tired of sitti