“Just because you’re a Breed male doesn’t mean you have to display your arrogance and sense of worth like a damned banner, Navarro. You are still just an enforcer.” Exasperation rather than anger filled her tone, but still, the words she used, and the insult behind them, set his teeth on edge.
He stopped in front of her slowly, his head lowering. Just because the confrontation in her tone had disappeared didn’t mean her disrespect had.
He knew the moment she caught the scent of the fury raging inside him.
Her eyes widened as she swallowed tightly, the knowledge of his strength as well as her own lack of judgment flickering in her gaze.
“Never speak to me in such a way again.” The growl definitely escaped. “I am not one of your pets here to plead for your help, nor will I ever be. I am not a Breed that you can speak to with such disrespect and expect that the memory and/or the guilt of what happened to you in these labs last year would convince me to allow you to take such liberties. I may no longer carry the title of commander, or of pack leader, but what you should well remember, Dr. Morrey, is that dropping those titles was by my choice, and there isn’t a Breed alive that would have dared to attempt to force it from me.”
Navarro turned sharply on his heel and stalked to the exit, the flames of such hidden anger building in that dark, icy pit he normally kept them locked within. He couldn’t afford to lose the precarious control he had been holding on to since the moment he’d realized the danger Mica was in.
Activating the earbud communication device he wore, he snapped the code in for the locks that automatically slid into place each time the door closed.
This time, the locks slid free, allowing Navarro to jerk the door open and stalk through it before easing the heavy steel panel closed behind him.
Hell, ever since that bastard Brandenmore had managed to bribe two Breed physician’s assistants to drug and betray Ely, she had had this attitude. She was changing before their eyes, and Navarro knew it greatly worried every Breed that called Sanctuary home.
They had hoped that once she came out of the padded cells that Jonas had been forced to lock her within for her own protection, she would heal. She had been so damned moody and confrontational, though, that even Jonas was having problems with her now. And normally, Jonas was the one person Ely refused to get angry with.
The subject of mating Mica seemed to be a particularly sore one with her, however. Ely seemed insistent on locking mating heat back into the parameters it had once existed within. The fact that nature was dictating its metamorphosis, rather than Ely predicting it, seemed to be throwing her off her game.
Navarro had warned Wolfe it would happen.
He had warned Callan and Merinus it would happen, and no one seemed to want to hear him. He had watched and listened as the scientists at Omega had fought with the conflicting and often confusing phenomena for years.
He knew just enough about it to get himself into trouble as the old saying went. Because he was damned sure nature wasn’t finished playing with them yet.
What he did have was more than twenty years in the Omega lab, watching, listening, waiting. He’d spent his time there wisely once he’d matured into adulthood. He’d worked, along with his men, to contact those who could help them, who could provide the needed backup for escape. He’d gathered information, stolen as many files as possible, and fought to help those who mated within his own pack, of which thankfully there were few, to escape.
And through those years he’d listened to the agonized screams of those suffering the research that merciless scientists had conducted without guilt or compassion. Because he hadn’t been able to help those that the Council brought in from other labs. There hadn’t been a damned thing he could do to rescue them or to ease their plight.
He’d done whatever was possible to save those men and women he could, who were a part of the group he commanded. In the year before the rescues, the entire team had fought to protect one too small young woman and Navarro’s second in command, the brother whose blood he shared. Nothing had mattered but hiding the truth of what had happened from the scientists, trainers and Coyote jailors.
He’d raised the girl, and his brother—
For a brief second his eyes closed in agony. He’d raised his brother alongside her, and now both were gone.
Opening his eyes, Navarro punched the button for entry to the secured elevator and waited until control identified him and the doors slid open slowly.
Stepping inside, he clenched his teeth until his jaw ached, suddenly so f**king impatient to find Mica he could barely stand it.
He got like this whenever she was around.
He knew when she arrived at Haven, whether he was told or not. It was as though his body became too sensitive, too aware of her. His response to her had always been confusing, uncertain. Even as a woman/child Mica had had an effect on him that had made him highly uncomfortable. An effect no woman could inspire.
It was the reason he had stayed away from Haven as much as possible, and the reason why he tried to remain indifferent now. When a man realized what he was doing to a woman as gentle as Mica, then it was time to fix it. Or it was time to mate her. And for whatever reason, the remnants of the animal inside him hadn’t made the move to claim, and to mark, her as his alone.
Not that he wanted a mate, he assured himself as the elevator dropped him off on the second floor, just around the corner from Mica’s suite. He hadn’t gone out looking for what other Breeds considered the only consolation to be found for the suffering they’d endured.
And perhaps he even understood it now, because when he was with Mica, a part of him seemed to ease, to find a small measure of peace.
Mating heat. As Ely had said, it was changing, becoming harder to detect, harder to match and harder to treat the females with the hormonal therapy that had been created by the doctor that had helped Callan’s pride survive outside the labs all those years.
And Navarro couldn’t say that what he was beginning to sense himself wasn’t mating heat, because she drew him as no other woman ever had.
And she was there, waiting for him.
He’d wondered if she would be.