“I don’t believe that, Mica,” Cassie sighed. “But I’m not there either. You always told me you were woman enough to know when a man was yours and when he wasn’t. You’ll know if you should fight for him, or if you should see if all those vicious little mating hormones can become compatible with another Wolf Breed. Just think, girlfriend, you could set a precedent yourself by showing all Breed females, and perhaps later the world, that no one has to be a victim of mating heat. Right?”
“Yeah, right. How about I just swear off Breeds period? I think that would be the better course of action, Cassie.” All she wanted to do was find ease and sleep. She wanted to sink against Navarro’s flesh and find the comfort, the satisfaction she’d known earlier.
“And I think we both know that’s not possible,” Cassie reminded her sadly. “If I could help you, Mica, I would. I wish I were there with you. We’d give them so much hell they’d regret the day either of us was ever born.”
Mica guessed that may have already happened. They’d terrorized the Breeds at Haven and in Sanctuary for years before they’d become adults.
“I know, Cassie.” She wished her friend were there as well. It was just her luck that she was left to face it alone instead.
Somehow, she’d always suspected this would happen, and that when it did, she would have to face it without help.
“Call me, Mica, if you need me,” Cassie whispered. “You know I’m always here.”
“I know.” Mica felt her lips trembling again. “I promise, Cassie. Now I better go. I have a few things to finish here, then I think I’ll go to bed.”
“I love you, Mica,” Cassie stated, the regret and compassion in her voice nearly breaking Mica as Cassie fought to hold back the loneliness and the fear Mica could hear building inside her.
“I love you too, Cass,” Mica promised. “Good night.”
She disconnected as she breathed in a hard, ragged breath.
She couldn’t let herself cry. God only knew if she would ever stop if she started. There was too much pain built inside her, too many long, lonely nights of wondering what was wrong with her, why it seemed that even making friends was so difficult. Let alone lovers. Before Navarro, she’d only had one previous lover, in college, and she’d awakened the next morning to find him gone. He’d never even called her back, after spending months chasing her.
She’d moved to New York to escape her father’s rule and learned that the big city was less than friendly. Making friends was nearly impossible for her.
She’d never seen herself as an unlikeable person.
She was friendly. She was reasonably attractive. Sometimes, she even knew how to carry off a joke. Yet she’d spent the better part of her life alone, except for Cassie and her parents.
Alone and wondering why.
Now she was mated and her mate had rejected her in the most elemental way, proving once and for all that something was indeed wrong.
Rising to her feet, she moved slowly across the room to the windows on the other side. Standing before them, she stared into the gathering darkness, hands shoved into the back pockets of her jeans, and faced the knowledge that she would spend another night alone.
Aching.
Hurting.
So flawed that even her mate didn’t want her.
Ely paced the exam room portion of the labs as she nibbled at her thumbnail and fought to find a way to help Mica out of the hell she could be entering if they didn’t find a way to fix whatever was going on with Navarro.
If they didn’t find a way to force him to release the primal, more animalistic side of his genetics.
That had to be the answer. The recessed genetics were more or less a block between the man and animal, separating them and keeping the man from accessing some of the animal genetics inside him. Though Dash Sinclair had waged this fight for years in his mating with Elizabeth, it hadn’t seemed to affect his sanity. It also hadn’t seemed to allow him to walk away from his mate.
But walking away wasn’t something he seemed capable of doing either, if the confrontation in the lab earlier was any indication.
Moving back to the holo-comp, the holographic computer she’d finally convinced Vanderale she so desperately needed, she once again pulled up the files from the Omega labs.
Project Omega had dealt with mating heat and the variables the scientists had found within the four mated couples they’d managed to detect.
The horrific experiments that had been done on the couples still had the power to give Ely nightmares. She forced herself to go through them again, praying she could find in time the answers Navarro and Mica needed.
Everyone thought she had grown cold and hard inside. That she no longer cared.
She cared too much, but she was so much more aware of her limitations now than she had been before.
The low though nonetheless strident buzzer from within Phillip Brandenmore’s cell pinged again.
Ely turned and stared at the activated partition, the glass that had been darkened to keep Phillip from seeing out or anyone else from seeing in. It had been activated all day while she tested Mica and ran the tests for answers.
Answers she had yet to find.
The strident summons came again.
What would it hurt?
The man was crazed, she knew. A psychopath slowly dying while the senses of the animal were being born inside him. Seeing the progression from a scientist’s standpoint was incredible. Watching the tortured destruction of the man would give her nightmares for years to come.
The sound echoed through the labs once more as Ely gave an exhausted sigh and moved to the control panel.
The glass cleared, revealing Brandenmore as he sat huddled in the foam chair, his knees drawn to his chest, his face staring back at her through saddened, pain-filled eyes.
The old, diseased man was slowly regaining his prime. A thick head of hair had been brushed casually to the side. He was muscular and fit beneath the loose scrubs he was given to wear.
So handsome, and so corrupt. Even before he had injected himself with the devil’s brew he’d concocted to return his body to its former condition and his mind to its once crystal clarity.
Before he’d injected a baby with it, and forced the Breeds to halt the freedom he had so very little time left to enjoy.
“I hear whispers,” he told her as she activated the two-way communication between the rooms. “I hear a Breed has mated a human, and has now unmated her.”
It didn’t surprise Ely that he knew, despite the fact that he shouldn’t have. The guards knew now, and sometimes the small slots were left open in the door of the cell to facilitate the guards’ ability to hear his screams if the pain returned. It also allowed him to hear what they gossiped about. She had no doubt the gossip was flowing now. Talk of the Breed that had reversed mating.
“You shouldn’t listen to whispers, Phillip,” she reminded him as she returned to the holo-comp. “You know how deceptive they can be.”
Sometimes, the whispers he heard were in his own head.
“The whispers keep me company,” he said and sighed.
It seemed the day was one of his calmer ones. They were becoming few and far between.
“Have you figured out how to save me yet, Ely?” he asked conversationally, as though they were talking about anything other than his death.
“I haven’t yet, Phillip.” She shook her head. “I told you, I need your help.”
She had to have the recipe he’d used for the formula he’d injected himself with. The recipe he’d injected Amber with. He refused to tell them, certain that if he held that information back, then they would have to figure out how to save him, to save the child.