The excuses had been varied, but still they had been lies.
And now Navarro had lied to her.
People lied every day, she knew that. She wasn’t a child to agonize and blame her problems on the lies she was told. It was an accepted part of life. Everyone told little white lies, black lies, and all the shades in between. She had even been guilty of it herself.
It was the specific lie that had punched her in the gut though and left her struggling for balance in more ways than the pain from Brandenmore’s attack, the shock or the fear of the past two days.
That lie. The statement that his senses were as recessed as his genetics, if his genetics were even recessed, was the one tormenting her, because she had been herself around him. She had believed she didn’t have to hide her emotions, her fears or her arousal, from him. She had thought she could simply be a woman in ways she hadn’t been able to before.
Regular men had no place in her life; besides the fact she hadn’t found one she really liked, the danger associated with her friendships was always something she worried over. After all, Breeds were stronger, tougher, and Council Breeds were merciless and vindictive. If they decided to target her, then a normal man wouldn’t have a chance against them.
Just as he wouldn’t have when she was attacked two nights before. Someone she cared about would have died, and where would that have left her?
Besides, no one else fascinated her as Navarro did.
And now she was crying over a mistake she should have known better than to make in the first place, and trying to hide it from him, when she knew it was impossible.
The sound of water running disrupted her thoughts for a moment. Dr. Morrey washing her hands, no doubt.
Mica had caught a glimpse of her from the gurney when Navarro first laid her on the table more than an hour earlier.
The doctor’s hair was pulled up into the bun Mica remembered it always being styled in, though that mass seemed much thicker than before. Much thicker. From the appearance of it, the doctor’s hair would likely fall nearly to the curve of her butt now.
Her brown gaze was more distant, her face thinner and appearing sharper than it had years ago.
She was still a beautiful woman, and still very young, but if you looked deep into her eyes, a person would swear she was much older than she actually was.
Long seconds later the water stopped and the sound of a heavy weight slapping against metal had Mica flinching.
She lowered her arm and glared up at Navarro as the doctor banged around the examination room.
She knew Ely, and she knew the confrontation in the hall had upset not just her, but also Jonas, immeasurably.
“You have no idea of the depth of pain you just caused, have you?” Mica asked Navarro, keeping her voice low, but her anger no less forceful.
She hated Breed male arrogance and superiority. They were always so damned certain they were right, that they had all the answers and knew the questions before they were even asked. It was so damned irritating that there were times Mica wondered how Cassie had escaped those irritating habits.
His gaze sharpened on her. “Are you in too much pain to be challenging me at the moment?”
Mica may have been in pain, terrified out of her mind and certain she was drawing her last breath, but she had glimpsed Jonas’s face when Brandenmore’s death was mentioned. The memory of his expression would haunt her, and it gave her the strength now to do much more than confront Navarro.
When Phillip Brandenmore died, Jonas’s hope for learning what his daughter had been injected with would die as well. That had to be hell, never knowing, always fearing from one day to the next that he could lose the child he and his wife Rachel loved so dearly, and had risked so much to save.
“That child means everything to them, Navarro,” she reminded him, incensed that he could be so cool.
“As long as Brandenmore is alive, then there’s a chance. You can’t even let them have that without trying to destroy it, can you?”
Mica could hear the doctor working in the background, but she couldn’t see her. All she could see was Navarro and the blazing fury burning in his black eyes as she had never seen it before in any other Breed’s.
The Breed least likely to feel more than lust, she thought in disbelief. Had she truly once believed that?
“Do you think the fact that it hurts makes it any less the truth?” Furious, rife with the promise of violence, his tone had a dangerous sharp edge of sarcasm now. “Do you think Jonas isn’t well aware of that? Or that I should simply stand back and allow him to risk your life, or the lives of anyone else who gets in that bastard’s path?”
“And that of course is all that should matter, isn’t it?” Mica snapped back. “For God’s sake, Navarro, there is such a thing as holding out for that last, great hope. And you’re a fine one to let just such a high principle have your back up now, when you lied to me in the worst possible way last night.”
“And don’t all Breeds know the value of that last, great hope?” Heavy mockery filled his voice. “We lived it daily in those f**king labs, Mica. Tell me, did that last, great hope ever give a damn about us then?”
The pain and the cynicism in that single question had Mica’s heart constricting in the knowledge of what the Breeds had suffered there. She knew it, she understood their nightmares, she’d lived with the knowledge of the horror they’d suffered. But still, that was no excuse for his actions, or his threats.