"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."
The director shot a look at Storme's back, his expression doubtful. She was damned stubborn, Styx could almost read what the other man was thinking. The hope that they would have that information soon was dwindling.
As Styx stepped from the front of the fireplace and shot his "near" mate a disgruntled look, the back door opened once more, to admit the alpha of the Wolf packs and leader of Haven, Wolfe Gunnar, and his mated wife Hope.
Hope still had the fresh, innocent look of the college student Wolfe had kidnapped almost thirteen years before.
As Wolfe stepped to the wide entrance into the kitchen, she stepped past him, the soft Asian flavor of her features still and quiet as she moved into the living room and stepped to the couch.
"Hello, Storme." The familiarity in her voice and the sudden scent of pain radiating from Storme had Styx's senses going on high alert. "It's been a long time. Aren't you going to say hello?"
Storme laid the remote down carefully, the tension in her body mixing with the fear, the pain and the anger.
Slowly, her head turned, the dark, emerald green of her eyes glittering with so many emotions Styx nearly winced at the sight of them.
"No," Storme stated, the low tone of her voice grating, "I'm not."
She rose from the couch, moved to his bedroom, opened the door and stepped inside before closing the door softly. Behind her, she left them staring at where she had disappeared, the men in the room too aware, too sensitive and too uncertain about the emotions that flowed between the two women.
One thing was for damned certain, they knew each other well, and Storme had just found another part of her past to run away from: the lupina, whose soft blue eyes shimmered with tears.
"Storme wasn't very old when the first Breed rescues began," Hope stated as Styx set a pot of coffee on the kitchen table in front of his alpha and lupina almost an hour later. "That was fourteen years ago, so she would have been ten perhaps. I met her just after Wolfe and his pack escaped from Mexico. Delia, my mother, was sent to the Omega labs for nearly a year before we were transferred back to the States and she left me with my father's sister. Storme was there, lonely, always reaching out to a father and brother who had no real time for her."
"Navarro told me the labs there were worse than the others," Styx commented as he glanced back at her.
"They were horrendous," she agreed painfully as Jonas and Rachel watched her heavily. "I didn't know about whatever project was going on there. Mother didn't take me to the labs because she didn't want the Coyote Breeds there to sense whatever hormonal reaction had begun in my body. She wanted to study it for herself. But I know Storme was taken often to the labs where wounded and experimental Breeds were kept. It was a hellhole there. She saw only the worst of what the scientists had created the Breeds to be. The fury and the agonizing rage that filled them, a result of the pain they endured from the experiments or the wounds they carried."
"Were you close?" Jonas questioned her.
Hope shrugged. "At one time, perhaps. For years I've waited, hoping she would contact me, hoping she would trust me with whatever information her father gave her, but I never heard from her."
Wolfe spoke up then. "Jonas, what information does she have that's so important to your child?" The Wolf Breed alpha leaned back in his chair and watched the director curiously. The fact that Dr. Armani was under orders by the Bureau not to reveal the details of the information she had found was known by the alpha. It was an order he wouldn't force her to break unless he had no other choice.
Jonas sighed. "I'm not certain of the parameters of Project Omega. What I'm certain of is that somehow it coincides with whatever Brandenmore was researching as well. A serum or virus that has halted his aging and begun regenerating his cellular structure. Organs are healing and rejuvenating, at a very slow rate, yet still it's happening. At the time Brandenmore kidnapped our daughter, Amber, he injected her with something we believed was a sedative until I nearly killed Brandenmore. He told me then it was an experimental drug and that if he died, the secret of saving her if the reaction became adverse would die with him. I have to admit, I didn't completely believe him until the night I heard her purr."