“Why?” She stared up at him as she fought back as much as possible, fought to hide as much of the pain as possible. “Why did you bind me to you, yet I couldn’t bind you?”
It was the betrayal. Nature. Navarro. They had turned on her together and left her out in the cold. She didn’t like being in the cold. She didn’t like this feeling. She didn’t like feeling alone at a time when she was supposed to be a part of something. The one time when she had been certain that she would have someone to hold on to.
“Do you think I’m not bound to you, Mica?” He frowned down at her, his expression somber as his fingers stroked down her arm, caressing the sensitive underside.
That stroke, so light it was barely there, seemed to sink inside her. Gentle and caressing, it stole past her defenses with the unexpectedness of it, threatening to leave her in tears.
“I think I don’t know what’s going on anymore,” she informed him bitterly as she stepped back from his touch. As much as she needed it, ached for it, she couldn’t afford it at the moment. “What I do know is that I need to figure this out and I need to decide what to do from here.”
“What to do about what?” Confusion colored his tone. “You’re my mate; it’s that simple, Mica. I don’t give a damn what Ely or her tests say.”
Mica could only shake her head. “Just because you say it doesn’t make it so,” she whispered hoarsely.
“The mating heat is going away in you, Navarro, it’s only rising in me.”
“I mated you, Mica. That knot wasn’t a figment of my f**king imagination. I don’t care what Ely’s damned tests say. Once we return to Haven we’ll have Dr. Armani run her tests. Ely knows Felines dammit; she doesn’t know Wolves.” Mica could frustrate him as no other woman ever could. She had the power to make him crazy and to tempt his control in ways it had never been tempted before.
“It wasn’t a figment of my imagination either.” Shaking off his touch, she entered the closet and chose the clothes she wanted to wear that evening.
Jeans and another soft sweater, this one a bright scarlet red, soft cashmere socks, silk panties and bra and a silk sleeveless tank beneath the sweater.
Navarro watched as she carried the clothes to the shower and carefully locked the door behind her. As though a locked door would ever stop him. As though it could stop him.
In this case, it wasn’t the locked door, it was the pain centered so deep inside her that he had no idea how to face it. Even more, he was afraid Mica didn’t know how to face it. She was fighting it with everything inside her, pushing it back as far as she could push it and struggling to come to grips with just the small amount that was slipping past her control.
Son of a bitch, how was he supposed to handle this? What the hell was he supposed to do?
Mating heat was just changing a bit, that was all.
Or was it?
Ely couldn’t answer his questions, and the research he’d found on the Omega Project hadn’t been decoded enough that he could find even a hint of how to fix this. Hell, he’d never faced anything like this before. A mate that wasn’t a mate. An anomaly that prevented the hormone from showing in the male’s blood while driving the female mate through the gamut of mating symptoms. None of it made sense.
And now, Mica was hiding. Hiding and hurting, and she didn’t want his comfort.
Where the hell did that leave him?
He wished they were at Haven. It was just his damned luck to be stuck in Sanctuary with a Feline specialist pouring over his tests when he should be at his own base, with Dr. Armani, the Wolf Breed specialist attempting to make sense of this.
As she told him earlier that day, it could be something as simple as a single recessed gene holding back the full power of the mating heat. Something she couldn’t say for certain until she examined him and Mica herself.
He stared at the door and grimaced at the pain that still swirled from her and seemed to spear straight through him. In his chest, in the deepest pit of his soul, he swore something wild swirled and howled in rage before he could shut it down.
That was why he had always been so drawn to Mica. She was one of the few humans that could do as he had learned early to do. To shut her emotions off, to keep them put away where they wouldn’t or couldn’t affect the Breeds around her.
But that wasn’t the reason she did it.
He’d never truly learned why she did it. But she wasn’t able to do it now, and he knew the pain was tearing ragged holes into her soul as she was losing that control.
Moving from the suite, he headed downstairs to search for Merinus, and to hopefully learn why. He knew she talked to Merinus. Merinus had known her since she was a young girl. She would know far more than what little information he had been about to drag out of Cassie over the years.
It wasn’t Merinus he found in the parlor downstairs. It was Josiah.
Leaning back comfortably in one of the heavily padded chairs arranged in a conversation area, sipping at the liquor in a short glass, the other Breed watched him with brooding unconcern.
“Pack Leader Blaine,” he murmured as Navarro entered the room. “So damned commanding and full of himself.” He smiled tightly. “You think you have this one won, don’t you?”
“She’s my mate,” Navarro reminded him. “No one takes what’s mine and survives it.”