It was a life Breeds were often messing with just enough to keep it from growing, or to keep her from drawing away from them.
Navarro wondered if even Mica understood her friend, or whatever needs drove her. Sometimes, Navarro was certain no one had a chance at fully understanding the Wolf/ Coyote hybrid Breed or the friend she was so close to. Definitely, there was no Breed capable of it.
But Navarro had found himself considering the second job. There was something about Mica, a mystery he needed to figure out, and it pulled at his training, at the genetics that had gone into his creation.
He was created as a man of many faces. A Breed made to fit any situation, any personality or temperament needed for any mission.
He was a liar. A traitor. A Breed that could never be trusted because he was created to be the ultimate deceiver. He wondered what Mica would think if she knew the genetics that had gone into creating him.
“You’re not talking to me,” she stated irritably. “I’m not exactly feeling safe and secure here, Navarro. That makes me a little nervous, you know?”
He glanced down at her again, his jaw clenching as he fought against the need to growl.
It was emotion. Emotion was such an unfamiliar sensation that many Breeds could only react to it instinctively. A growl, a snarl, a sound of danger that they had little control over.
“Do you know many Breeds who do talk much?” he asked her quietly, aware of Cougar in the front, well able to sense and scent the emotions swirling behind him.
“Cassie?” There was a note of laughter in her soft voice.
Navarro allowed his lips to quirk. “She does have her moments, doesn’t she?”
“There are times you can’t shut her up,” Mica agreed. “Then times you can’t get her to talk if your life depends upon it.”
“In other words, a woman?” His brow arched as he looked down at her again, tempting the arousal that pounded between his thighs.
“That isn’t nice.” She peeked back at him through the veil of her lashes. “At least we talk. Have you tried to get a Breed to talk lately when they wanted to be silent? Talk about mule stubborn. Some of you would put the mule to shame.”
“The pot calling the kettle black?” he questioned, holding back the smile he wasn’t certain what to do with.
“I’m not in the least stubborn,” she said in denial.
She was terrified. He could smell it wrapping around his senses, and the need to alleviate it had his fingers forming fists as he fought against it.
“You are the most stubborn woman I’ve met,” he argued, fighting back the anger.
In the seat ahead of him Cougar made a rumbling Feline sound of displeasure. It was too low for Mica to hear, but Navarro had no problem hearing it. The fear reaching the Feline Breed’s senses was abhorrent to him. Women were simply his weakness, and their fear was guaranteed to piss him off.
Perhaps that was what made most Breed males so very different from their human counterparts. They responded to a female’s pain and fear, even a female that was not a Breed. Especially perhaps a female that was not a Breed, because she was even weaker, even less capable of defending herself against predators. That fear and pain seemed to dig into an unnamed animal instinct the Breed males found almost impossible to ignore. Those found to be able to ignore that instinct were rare. Even those Coyotes who still gave their loyalty to their Genetic Council masters were affected by it.
“Oh, wait, you do know Cassie Sinclair, right?” she pointed out.
The false amusement in her voice would have fooled most humans, perhaps even a Breed whose senses truly were recessed.
His weren’t recessed though, despite what he’d led her to believe.
“I know Cassie,” he answered ruefully, though he didn’t grin, he couldn’t smile back. It would take far more inner strength than he possessed at the moment to find something to even fake a smile for.
The pain and fear were too much. He wanted nothing more than to pull her to him, to hold her, to remind her that he would give his last breath before he would allow her to be harmed, just as he had promised.
Reaching out, almost without thought, Navarro let his fingertips stroke down her arm with a gentleness he hadn’t thought himself capable of.
Her head jerked back from her study of the top of the SUV, widening as she stared back at him.
“I promised to keep you safe.” He couldn’t pull her into his arms, but he could tell her again and hope that it would help.
“I remember.” She nodded slowly.
“I keep my promises.”
She licked her lips with a hint of nervousness.
“I know.” He could see her breasts rising and falling faster, her gaze darkening with an awareness he hadn’t expected.
Then, something dimmed the fear and pain, even the pain that radiated from her very bruised ribs. An emotion he didn’t want to scent, one he didn’t want to sense swirling around him as it reached out to him, as though begging to be allowed in.
It wasn’t love, not yet. It was that tender, exploratory emotion that leads to it, that reaches out so very tentatively to a man from a woman, stroking against the wall that blocked his own emotions.
Psychic tendrils. He could sense them just as any animal could. He could identify it and make the choice to accept or to reject it.
Only humans were unaware of their own extrasensory gifts. They closed their eyes to them once they learned that their adult counterparts refused to accept the gifts.
Animals didn’t block them, they didn’t deny them. In many ways they communicated with them, letting their senses do for them what man allowed his lips to do. To speak of emotion.
“Don’t, Amaya,” he whispered, blocking the fragile threads of emotion determined to reach inside him.
“Don’t what?” The whisper of emotion paused, as though even subconsciously she knew exactly what he was warning her against.
“I didn’t promise I wouldn’t break your tender heart, Mica. Protect it from me. Don’t let me touch that part of you. Don’t let me destroy both of us that way.”
It was a warning, and the only one he would give her.
Her lips trembled, and though he expected her to pull back emotionally, expected the heated warmth of that emotion to recede, still it lingered.
“What do I do, Navarro, if it’s already too late for the warning?”
Sanctuary was one of the most beautiful prisons in the world, Mica thought the next morning as she stood at the window of her bedroom and stared out into the pristine landscape that surrounded the main house of the Feline pride leader and his prima.
Callan and Merinus Lyons were the reason the world knew about the Breeds. The reason they had been rescued, the reason they were now fighting to hide mating heat and a variety of other secrets that the world would never understand.
Secrets that even Mica didn’t know. Genetic experimentation and breakthroughs in such incredible gifts, given to the creatures that weren’t wholly human or wholly animal, but were that mysterious in-between that was nothing short of terrifying, fascinating and completely supernatural.
She remembered she’d felt that fascination the moment she’d watched her first television documentary on the rescues. In school, they were taught that the Breeds were humans too, that they were no different than another race or another nationality. But Mica had known otherwise, long before she’d heard the first teacher give the first lecture.
“Mica.” A soft knock at the door had her turning from the window to rub at the chill in her arms as the door cracked open.
“I’m awake,” Mica called out as Merinus paused outside the door.