“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.
She was breathing.
She was weak, fear still pounding through her, reaction and shock leaving her dazed, confused as she fought to get a bearing on what had happened and the fact that she was no longer in danger.
“I will give my last breath to keep you from harm,” he whispered at her ear as he cradled her against his chest and lifted her from the floor. “Did I not promise you this, Amaya?”
Holding her close against his chest, he watched as Jonas, Lawe and Rule struggled to hold the feral Phillip Brandenmore under control until the physician’s assistant, Cameron Lucian, could inject him with the sedative created especially for the unique imbalance destroying the man’s mind.