Once, Navarro had felt a measure of sympathy for him. Now, his gaze flickering to the woman he held in his arms, watching as she massaged the reddened, scraped flesh of her neck, he felt nothing but a killing fury.
His gaze lifted to Jonas.
“Better to let me kill him now.” Hoarse, brutally dark, his voice held the promise of violence. “You’ll save us both the trouble of my having to expend resources to do it later.”
He didn’t make promises he wouldn’t give his life to keep. He would kill Brandenmore if that damned drug he injected into himself didn’t kill him first.
A Breed hormonal concoction Brandenmore had created to cure the cancer killing him and to stop the aging of his decrepit body.
Instead, he’d created a serum that was slowly rotting his mind, destroying him, and would very soon, Navarro had heard, kill him.
“Don’t make that mistake, Navarro,” Jonas warned him. “He’s too important to allow that to happen.”
A furious snarl of denial snapped through Navarro’s teeth. “If the bastard were going to give you the secret to the serum he injected into your child, then he would have already,” he retorted. “His mind is so gone now I doubt he remembers what he took, only what he still wants.”
“Take that step, and I’ll have to kill you,” Jonas promised, and like Navarro, he didn’t make promises he didn’t intend to follow through with. “That man holds my daughter’s very life in his hands.” A grimace pulled at Jonas’s features, then, as pain seemed to explode from him, he pulled it back. The sense of the emotions raging through Jonas sent a chill racing up Navarro’s spine. “Attempt to hasten his destruction, and you will be the one that dies.”
With an imperious flick of his fingers, Jonas had Brandenmore dragged, weak and incoherent now, back toward whichever cell he was being confined within.
“Let him get loose again,” Navarro growled in deadly earnest, “I promise you, I’ll be waiting.”
Turning, he strode quickly to the turn in the hall, opposite the direction Bradenmore was being dragged, and headed toward the silent, pale Dr. Elyiana Morrey as she watched the scene.
“Take her to the examination room.” Her soft, compassionate voice held an edge of weariness, and wariness. “I have to check on Phillip . . .”
“No.” Navarro stepped in front of her before she could pass him and commit the ultimate sin of daring to make that bastard more comfortable as Mica fought to breathe, the scent of her physical pain ripping across his senses. “Mica needs you more. As do I.”
He couldn’t put it off any longer. The mating tests she ran when Breeds mated would have to be run on his and Mica’s blood now. Right now. His behavior was changing too quickly. The signs of mating heat that came with the extreme possessive moodiness were too suspicious.
The glands beneath his tongue weren’t swollen. His skin wasn’t hypersensitive, but his senses seemed to be remarkably stronger the moment he realized the bastard had put his hands on her.
He wouldn’t allow it.
Manipulative and calculating, Brandenmore had been dangerous to the Breeds before he’d ever used them as research to create his fatal brew. If he was dying now, then it was by Navarro’s own hand.
Brandenmore wouldn’t allow the Breeds to ever live in peace, not as long as he was living.
The only answer left was to see him dead.
CHAPTER 6
He lied to her.
Lying on the gurney of the examination room, Mica kept her eyes closed, her arm thrown over her face despite the additional pain the position caused.
Perhaps it was just that time of the month due to arrive early, or the shock and fear of the past few days. She wasn’t a weepy woman, but tears were falling from her eyes like a faucet that insisted on dripping.
Except this was silent. It was a misery she couldn’t contain and she didn’t understand why.
It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been lied to by someone she loved before. Hell, Cassie was always lying to her over something, or simply not telling her. A lie of omission was no better though. Her parents had lied to her countless times over the years when they had been forced to run for Haven as though the hounds of hell were after them. Of course, that was usually exactly what had been after them. But rather than telling the truth, so many times her parents had assured her they were just long overdue for a visit.
Jonas had lied to her, Wolfe and Callan had lied to her, each time Cassie had been harmed in the past.
Those times, Mica had missed the calls Cassie made on a regular basis and had called the two Breed leaders.
To be told Cassie was busy, but she fine.
Studying for exams, she’ll call later.