"Someone has a big mouth. Should I guess who?" Rachel knew the moment she stepped into Callan Lyons's office to meet Jonas that Dr. Morrey had told Jonas exactly what had happened in the labs.
She should have gotten here first, she thought. She'd run into Merinus as she came to the main floor. Merinus had been carrying Amber, cooing at her, causing the baby to giggle and laugh at the faces she was making.
They had stood and talked before Rachel took Amber and headed to the office. Stepping inside, she saw Jonas's face, and Ely Morrey's cool, composed features.
Ely was half in love with Jonas. A hero-worship that stemmed from the care Jonas had taken of her during a particularly traumatic time several months before. Rachel understood it; she wasn't jealous over it, but she was beginning to see that it could become a problem.
Moving to the small baby bed in the corner of the room, a bed normally used for Callan's own infant daughter, Rachel laid Amber on the mattress, covered her gently and caressed her head before straightening and turning to Ely.
"I'd suggest, Ely, that you find your own mate to cling to while steering clear of mine for a while," she stated. "I do understand that he's been a friend, but you're now beginning to overstep the bounds of that friendship."
Weariness filled her as she stared at the naked rage in Jonas's silver eyes.
"You would have never told him the complete truth." Ely shrugged as she headed for the door, her hand shoved into the pockets of her white jacket. "He deserved to know what happened after you left."
"Very good excuse." Rachel sighed, still staring at Jonas. "And I hesitate to say this, but I wilclass="underline" It was none of your business."
"You believe the insults he deals to my mate are none of my business then?" Jonas growled as he leaned against Callan's desk and crossed his arms over his chest with an air of arrogant assurance and fury. "She was well within her rights to report to me."
"She wasn't reporting to you, she was snitching." God, there were times it was like dealing with children.
The door closed as Ely left the room, leaving Rachel and Jonas facing each other across the room now.
"Snitching is childish," Jonas rebutted. "Her report was logical, concise and to the point. There were no embellishments."
"I didn't say she was lying."
"He insulted you." Jonas straightened from the desk. "Not once, but repeatedly."
"And I insulted him back, not once, but repeatedly," she assured him. "It's over."
Jonas stared back at her, still fighting the same sense of amazement he had felt when Ely had come to him to describe the argument, not just between Leo and Elizabeth, but between Leo and Rachel.
This was his mate, and possibly the only person he knew who had gone up against the Leo, nose to nose, and called him on his own arrogance and manipulations. She had described the Breed to a T. He was impossible. A gamesman, and so certain he could bring Jonas to heel.
He'd been certain of it since the day he had stepped into that hospital where Callan Lyons had nearly died the year before.
There were so many of them. Breeds who hadn't had the chances others had because they weren't the children of Leo and Elizabeth.
Elizabeth hadn't deserved Jonas's disregard, and that was the conclusion Jonas had come to as the sun had risen that morning. But Leo, well, the Leo deserved far worse simply for attempting to use Rachel and Amber in his battle against Jonas.
"You held your own very well." Jonas turned and walked to the other side of Callan's desk. From there, he stared down at the computer monitor that still showed the deserted lab. "And though I appreciated Ely's report, I had already caught the tail end of it anyway."
He turned the monitor to face her. "Just so you know, when I kill the bastard, it won't be because of anything Ely said. It will be because of what I saw for myself."
What he had seen had filled him with pride. His mate, so proud, her temper flashing in her green eyes, her face flushed as she stood up to one of the strongest males of the Breed species.
And though he had seen something after she left, in both his father as well as his mother, that he hadn't expected, the fact that both of them in some way had been manipulating him didn't sit well with him. By the very fact of her silence, his mother had been playing the same game as Leo.
Bringing Jonas to heel.
Jonas wasn't a dog, and he didn't take commands so well.
Rachel lifted her gaze from the monitor and stared back at him, her gaze tinged with sorrow now. "He does love you, Jonas," she whispered. "Just as she does."
His lips quirked. "It isn't love, Rachel, because they have no idea of the man I am, nor do they respect the man they see. They regret. They ache for what could be but isn't. They hurt for what might never be, but it's not love such as what you feel for Amber, or even as they feel for Dane. Regret can hurt just as deeply as disappointment, sweetheart."
What was she supposed to say to that? She couldn't defend the Vanderales, because in her eyes, they were in the wrong. But a part of her knew Elizabeth loved her child, whether that child had come from her body or been created in a lab.
They left the office and collected Erin and Amber before heading back to the cabin. Amber was fast asleep and placed gently in her crib by Rachel. Jonas gave Erin her orders for the next day before sending the Breed female back to the barracks.
Kissing Amber gently on her forehead, Rachel covered the baby and quietly left the room. Closing the bedroom door, she stood for a moment and stared at Jonas as he gazed into the fire.
As though there were answers in the flames, she thought. He frowned into the newly lit fire with a concentration that hinted at the dilemma roiling through him.
"A mother's love is all-consuming and complete," she stated quietly as he lifted his head. "A father's love is often veiled in the appearance of disappointment, or exacting expectations. It isn't regret, disappointment or whatever else you want to see it as. It's a parent's love, and a parent that even now, despite the veil of civilization, still doesn't know how to handle or to show the emotions that fill him."
His lips quirked. "God made woman to help him come up with excuses for man."
"He made woman to love man," she retorted.
"Yeah, probably because he knew nothing else would," he snorted.
She wasn't going to argue it. Rachel shook her head with a slight smile, watching as he moved slowly toward her now.
There was a new purpose in him, a hunger that had less to do with lust and more to do with pure, confusing emotion.
Like the Leo, Jonas wasn't always certain of the emotions he felt or what to do with them. These men, Breeds, they loved their women and children with a dedication that bordered the extreme at times, but when it came to loving anyone else, they became contradictory masses of complete denial.
Stopping in front of her, his hands lifted to cup her face as he held her still for his kiss. A long, slow kiss. His tongue touched hers, licked at it, mated with it.
The mating hormone wasn't filling the glands, it wasn't flavoring the kiss, but still, Jonas felt his hunger for her clear to the soles of his feet.
She was his woman. She was his life. Hell, he wondered if he had even had a life before her. Before he saw the innocence and clarity in her eyes, before he'd learned the gentleness and courage that filled her soul.
As he felt her fingers at his neck, sliding around, gripping the strands of hair that grew low along his nape, Jonas knew he had never known a moment's peace until Rachel.
She had the power to humble him, to still his rage, but she also had the power to weaken him.
His knees were nearly shaking at the thought of the pleasure to come as he lifted her against him and moved back to the fireplace.
The flames were blazing, devouring the heavy logs Jonas had placed in the pit, licking greedily at the fuel, consuming it slowly despite the heat pouring from it.