He could almost feel her pain himself as it sliced across his senses, sharper than a scent, more intense than any smell could ever become. It dug sharp, vicious claws into his chest, clenched it, and made him wonder if it wasn’t physically tearing into his heart.
Never had he felt another’s pain as he felt hers now. He hadn’t even had a connection this sharp with his twin. “And you think I don’t feel your pain?” Then what the hell was he feeling? It damn sure wasn’t warm and fuzzy.
Rather than answering him, Mica shot him a glare as she forced herself not to rage at him before swinging around and heading to the large walk-in closet that held all the clothes a girl could want, and they were all in her size. There were shoes, stockings and boots. There were scraps of lace and silk parading as panties, bras, leather belts and lacy socks. Merinus had always taken care of Cassie and Mica whenever they were here, and she had done so once again.
It was too bad a cookie couldn’t fix her hurt feelings anymore though.
It was too bad one of Merinus’s warm hugs couldn’t make her feel like everything was going to be good again. And it was really too damned bad that Navarro couldn’t get a clue and wouldn’t hold her himself and at least attempt to comfort her.
“Stop!” His fingers curved around her upper arm, drawing her to a stop. “I don’t understand why I didn’t sense, didn’t feel your arousal last night. I assumed your reaction to the mating heat would be the same as mine. I assumed it had calmed and eased for you as well.”
“Then you assumed wrong, didn’t you, Navarro?” Her voice was rough, and she hated it. Her emotions were there; that meant she wasn’t hiding them. She wasn’t as calm and controlled as she had hoped she was.
She was hurt and she was angry, and she felt betrayed. She felt as though everything had been taken away from her when she had learned she was suffering alone and Navarro was as content as he had been before he had ever supposedly mated her.
“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 fucking 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.”
“She doesn’t carry your scent. All she smells of is sweet, hot need.” Josiah sat the glass on the table, each movement carefully controlled. “You don’t carry a mating scent either, Navarro. You can’t claim her without it.”
“She carries my mark,” Navarro informed him as he felt adrenaline beginning to flood his veins, his muscles tensing with the need for violence. “Don’t try to trespass, Josiah.”