Hurting.
So flawed that even her mate didn’t want her.
Ely paced the exam room portion of the labs as she nibbled at her thumbnail and fought to find a way to help Mica out of the hell she could be entering if they didn’t find a way to fix whatever was going on with Navarro.
If they didn’t find a way to force him to release the primal, more animalistic side of his genetics.
That had to be the answer. The recessed genetics were more or less a block between the man and animal, separating them and keeping the man from accessing some of the animal genetics inside him.
Though Dash Sinclair had waged this fight for years in his mating with Elizabeth, it hadn’t seemed to affect his sanity. It also hadn’t seemed to allow him to walk away from his mate.
But walking away wasn’t something he seemed capable of doing either, if the confrontation in the lab earlier was any indication.
Moving back to the holo-comp, the holographic computer she’d finally convinced Vanderale she so desperately needed, she once again pulled up the files from the Omega labs.
Project Omega had dealt with mating heat and the variables the scientists had found within the four mated couples they’d managed to detect.
The horrific experiments that had been done on the couples still had the power to give Ely nightmares.
She forced herself to go through them again, praying she could find in time the answers Navarro and Mica needed.
Everyone thought she had grown cold and hard inside. That she no longer cared.
She cared too much, but she was so much more aware of her limitations now than she had been before.
The low though nonetheless strident buzzer from within Phillip Brandenmore’s cell pinged again.
Ely turned and stared at the activated partition, the glass that had been darkened to keep Phillip from seeing out or anyone else from seeing in. It had been activated all day while she tested Mica and ran the tests for answers.
Answers she had yet to find.
The strident summons came again.
What would it hurt?
The man was crazed, she knew. A psychopath slowly dying while the senses of the animal were being born inside him. Seeing the progression from a scientist’s standpoint was incredible. Watching the tortured destruction of the man would give her nightmares for years to come.
The sound echoed through the labs once more as Ely gave an exhausted sigh and moved to the control panel.
The glass cleared, revealing Brandenmore as he sat huddled in the foam chair, his knees drawn to his chest, his face staring back at her through saddened, pain-filled eyes.
The old, diseased man was slowly regaining his prime. A thick head of hair had been brushed casually to the side. He was muscular and fit beneath the loose scrubs he was given to wear.
So handsome, and so corrupt. Even before he had injected himself with the devil’s brew he’d concocted to return his body to its former condition and his mind to its once crystal clarity.
Before he’d injected a baby with it, and forced the Breeds to halt the freedom he had so very little time left to enjoy.
“I hear whispers,” he told her as she activated the two-way communication between the rooms. “I hear a Breed has mated a human, and has now unmated her.”
It didn’t surprise Ely that he knew, despite the fact that he shouldn’t have. The guards knew now, and sometimes the small slots were left open in the door of the cell to facilitate the guards’ ability to hear his screams if the pain returned. It also allowed him to hear what they gossiped about. She had no doubt the gossip was flowing now. Talk of the Breed that had reversed mating.
“You shouldn’t listen to whispers, Phillip,” she reminded him as she returned to the holo-comp. “You know how deceptive they can be.”
Sometimes, the whispers he heard were in his own head.
“The whispers keep me company,” he said and sighed.
It seemed the day was one of his calmer ones. They were becoming few and far between.