"More than he loved his children." The words passed her lips before she could call them back.
Navarro stared back at her silently for long moments. "Or perhaps he simply expected his children to understand the responsibility he felt he owed to those he'd helped create and imprison. It's too bad, Storme, that only one of his children understood that."
Why do you love them, Daddy? a young Storme had whispered painfully when her father arrived home too late to celebrate her tenth birthday with her. Why are they more important?
She had wanted to understand, to make sense of the fact that the animals held more of her father's affection than it seemed she did.
Her father had bent down to her, his hands heavy on her young shoulders, his gaze filled with somber remorse. Because they're my children too, Storme. And they suffer where you don't.
That admission had broken her heart. They were his children too, and they were more important than she was.
"They weren't his children," she whispered painfully. "He had a choice. He could have left at any time."
"As you left the day you caught a Council soldier beating one of the young?"
Navarro asked then.
"And how did I pay for it?" she asked mockingly as she extended her arm to show the two small scars she still carried on the inside of her wrist. "Their canines may have been small, but they sure as hell knew how to use them. He attacked me like a rabid little dog."
The child had bit her, nearly slashing the veins in her wrists as she tried to pull him to safety after distracting the trainer that had been beating his back bloody.
"Stop!" Within a breath Styx moved into the room and swung her around, his head lowering, his gaze snaring hers with a gleam of command as that damned Wolf's growl in his voice rumbled in his chest. A warning to assure her that he meant what he said about calling any Breed an animal.
"That rabid little dog, as you call him, was out of his mind with fever and pain,"
Navarro informed her mercilessly as she stared up at Styx, her eyes wide.
Her heart slammed into her throat as she fought to hold back her surprise, the knowledge that the child might not have known what it was doing affecting her more than she wanted to admit. She had always believed the child had known, had been aware that he was attacking someone trying to help him.
She swallowed tightly, refusing to give any outward sign that she had heard him, agreed with him, or would obey Styx's order. She didn't dare give in to either of them, not now, not while so many eyes watched.
Slowly, deliberately, she pulled her wrist from Styx's grip, turned and walked around the coffee table before plopping onto the couch as though there wasn't a single individual in the cabin that concerned her.
Pulling the remote from the arm of the couch, she aimed it at the television and pushed the on button, determined to at least appear to enjoy a few rare moments of entertainment.
"I have to give her credit, if she didn't stink of terror and remorse, I'd swear she was making herself at home," Navarro grunted.
The volume control was handy. Too bad the mute button didn't work on real people or Breeds. She turned the sound up instead, hoping that the stink that so seemed to offend him would dissipate soon.
"Jonas, will you be staying at Haven much longer?" Styx questioned him.
"For the time being," she heard the director answer. "Our scientist Ely Morrey and one of her 'assistants' will be arriving this afternoon to help Dr. Armani on a small project she seems to have acquired." The amusement in his voice made Storme wonder what the hell he was talking about. If she hadn't known better, she would have thought it concerned her.
The emphasis on "assistant" had her lips thinning. No doubt the assistant was Jeffrey Amburg, the captive scientist the Breeds were holding. Amburg had once been a close friend of her father and brother, until her father had disagreed with him over some subject that had severed that friendship. Storme had a feeling that subject was whatever project her father had been working on with her brother.
"Navarro, inform Nikki I'll need her back here as well," Styx ordered the other Wolf Breed. "And if Cassie is on-site, please let her know I'll have to reschedule the date we had planned for this evening."
Date?
Storme refused to look at him and prayed that the fear and prejudice Navarro had spoken of earlier was still strong enough to hide the fact that her first instinct was to protest any date Styx might have.
"I'll take care of it," Navarro promised. "And you should be aware that Alpha Gunnar and his lupina are making their way here now. Have fun, Styx."
Have fun? Styx glared at Navarro before sighing heavily and turning back to Jonas and Rachel. The worry in their eyes wasn't easy to ignore. Their child was at risk here, and though Styx understood that more than he admitted to, still, he couldn't make himself frighten Storme further to reveal that information.
"Will you be staying in the alpha residence?" he asked the director, determined not to offer the spare room to Jonas and his mate.
"Rachel and I will be taking the guest cabin," Jonas informed him. "For the time being at least."