“You didn’t say to expect no symptoms at all,” Navarro snarled.
The primal rasp had him stilling instantly, the loss of control a warning so deeply ingrained he couldn’t ignore it.
“Do you want to lose her, Navarro? Is it what you want, to have the one thing you could call your own taken from you?”
“And if nature is taking that out of my hands?” He felt as though he were numb from the inside out.
The mocking laugh was more a grim sound of disapproval than anything resembling amusement.
“She’s loved you since she was sixteen years old,” Dash stated. “We’ve all sensed it, Navarro, we’ve all known it. All but you. You’ve ignored it, just as she ignored it every time you came around. Letting her go won’t change what’s going to happen, or what has already happened. You’re changing, just as she is.
Your genetics are becoming active rather than recessed, and denying it, or fighting it, will only end up hurting both of you in the end.”
“It happened to you.” It had to have. There was no way the other man could have known all this if it hadn’t.
“It happened,” Dash admitted. “And it had the potential to steal my mate from me. I felt, at the time, that I could make the choice, Navarro. I could be unencumbered; I could accept what my heart was longing for, what my soul needed to survive, or I could let that part of me die forever. Are you willing to lose the only person that could mean anything to you?”
“The question is, am I willing to destroy her?” he asked.
He definitely wasn’t willing to stand here arguing it, not when he could smell Josiah nearing, sense the other Breed going to Mica.
As though the bastard could take his place.
A growl definitely rumbled in his chest this time. A low, dangerous sound that would have shocked him, would have had him pulling back in a desperate attempt to rein in the animal he could feel surging forward.
But it was too late.
Just that fast, he went from recessed genetics to full, raging beast, in the blink of an eye.
The door was jerked open hard enough that it bounced against the wall as he released it. The resulting crash was loud enough that as he stalked from the room, several doors opened along the hall.
Taber Williams stepped from the suite he shared with his mated wife, his broad chest bare, his jeans obviously hastily pulled on.
Behind him, his wife, Roni, stared into the hall in surprise, her fingers gripping the robe tight at the top of her neck as her disheveled hair fell around her delicate face.
“Problem, Wolf?” Taber drawled, his green Jaguar eyes knowing as Navarro moved past him without speaking.
He would get to Mica’s door before Josiah, but the other Breed would be there before Navarro could get inside her room.
Perhaps.
As he made his way to her, the most intriguing scent met his senses. A dark hint of a raging storm as it rolled in across the ocean. A taste of honey, a hint of cinnamon and spices. And heat. Pure wild heat so addictive he wondered how he’d survived the past hours without tasting her.
His tongue became sensitive, swollen. He could taste the hint of spicy sweetness in his own mouth, feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins, raging through his body.
He’d felt it that last night he’d taken her as well though. Then the next evening it was as though the mating had never happened, as though it had never existed.
Until now.
It was flames tearing through his senses. It was a rush of heat, of hunger; it was being infused by the lush, earthy scent of her and the determination rocking through him.
He couldn’t even say he was himself at the moment. Hell, he knew he wasn’t himself. He was a creature bent on one thing and one thing only.
A mate.
His mate.
CHAPTER 13