Because the other man was his director, Styx felt he deserved the warning that Styx wasn't going to stand back and allow Jonas to run over his mate.
"A request for examination is not a mating, Styx," Jonas said and sighed. "All this will grant you is, at best, six weeks. If mating heat hasn't been established yet, then it isn't going to be. You're wasting your time, and your emotions, my friend."
There was an edge of weariness in Jonas's voice that sliced at Styx's feelings of guilt.
"How is the babe?" he asked, knowing Jonas's desperation to find a way to neutralize the threat Brandenmore had brought to the baby.
"She's all smiles and wonder." Jonas sighed as he shook his head. "But there's a difference to the baby scent of her. Something no one within Sanctuary can put a finger on. I've brought her here with Amburg and Dr. Morrey to consult with Nikki and the Coyote Breed specialist Del Rey has in the mountain. Hopefully, tighter, they can figure it out."
"And Brandenmore still isn't talking?"
"He still isn't talking," Jonas agreed. "Half the time he's not even in his right mind. Whatever he injected himself with has begun affecting logic and memory. He's currently confined to one of the cells the scientists had built in Sanctuary for Breeds suspected of having feral fever."
A small, padded cell reinforced to ensure the captives held there couldn't hurt themselves.
"There have to be files, Jonas," Styx urged him. "Like Montague, he wouldn't have destroyed them."
"Unlike Montague, Brandenmore was a paranoid nut-case before we ever managed to capture him," Jonas cursed. "Whatever he's been taking to mimic the hormone that slows down aging in mating heat has literally begun rotting his brain."
"I believe Storme will give up the information she has, Jonas," Styx stated, as he wished he could give Jonas more to believe in. "I don't believe Storme is holding the data chip back out of malice. Fear perhaps, but not any true desire to bring harm."
"Whatever the reason, she is endangering Amber," Jonas growled, his silver eyes flashing in momentary rage before it was hidden once again. "How much longer do you believe I will tolerate this, Styx?"
Styx fought back the challenging snarl he would have emitted with any other Breed making such a statement of intent.
"Do you believe I'll tolerate a threat to her, Jonas?" Styx asked, his tone smooth, dark. "Never doubt, I will not. But I am willing to work with you on this. If you can work with another refusing to obey your every command that is." The last words were mocking, doubtful.
There wasn't a Breed or human that knew Jonas who wasn't well aware of his penchant for insisting on giving the orders.
Jonas stared back at him silently for long moments before saying, "What do you have in mind?"
What he had in mind might not be possible. He could be counting too much on a heart Storme might well not possess.
"She's stubborn," he finally said and sighed. "It's her loyalty and her fear that are making her hold on to this. She has heart, Jonas. I want to find that heart. If I can convince her to accept the need to give us the location of the data chip, then I think it may solve the problem of a mating that isn't."
It was only a thought, a feeling. Styx was well aware he could be grasping at straws here, but he was willing to try anything at this point.
Jonas narrowed his gaze back at him. "Explain," he commanded, his voice low.
"Storme is fighting a battle within herself, Jonas," he said. "I gave her something she never believed she could find with a Breed. Safety, and warmth. Storme is a woman who fears the very thing she craves."
"You," Jonas stated.
Styx gave an abrupt nod. "Me. What she's finding with me is something I believe she is fighting even as she's drawn to it. If I'm right, until she accepts it, then the mating heat won't fully begin."
Jonas stared back at him almost blankly for long moments before his gaze flickered with a sense of recognition. "Your hypothesis is that mating heat begins with love, not the other way around?"
Styx nodded. "Hormones, pheromones and chemical reactions have been proven to contribute heavily to the state of love. All the ingredients for it are there, Jonas. I believe fear is holding her back. Fear and whatever emotion keeps her holding on to something so dangerous as that damned information."
"You could be wrong," Jonas warned him.
Styx blew out a hard, heavy breath. "And I could die tomorrow, but she's worth it."
"Is she?" Jonas leaned forward slowly. "She hates Breeds, Styx. We're animals to her, nothing more. As far as she's concerned, we have no right to our freedoms and no right to our lives."
Styx shook his head as he allowed a small smile to tug at his lips. "No, Jonas, that's what comes from the fear and the anger that fills her. That's not what Storme feels. If she felt it, then I would never hold her in my bed each night."
"You're setting yourself up, Styx." Jonas sighed then. "The steps you're taking will place your status here at Haven, as well as your life, in jeopardy when she betrays you. If a single Breed dies from her actions, then you'll be under Breed Law along with her."
The laws listed in the public archives and law books were discreet, not easily discernible. Those that every Breed and human signed before entering to work in Haven or in Sanctuary were clear-cut and concise.
In this area, mating law ruled every Breed that had mated, especially those who had mated a human. If that human was proven to have deliberately betrayed either community or a Breed of the human's own free will, then punishment could be severe. That punishment extended to the Breed who had mated that human. If the mated pair had produced children, then those children could be taken by the community they were aligned with and raised within that community rather than by the parents they were born to.
The laws were strict, although the harsher punishments were used only in the most extreme circumstances and were at the discretion of the full twelve-member Breed Ruling Cabinet.
Styx found himself staring in the face of the knowledge that if Storme betrayed Breed Law, then he too could be, at the very least, exiled.
For a Wolf Breed especially, that could be hell. In many ways Haven was more social, more interactive than the Feline Breed Sanctuary. Felines were by nature more self-sufficient and less inclined to interact on a more personal basis.
"She's my mate." The animal part of him refused to accept anything less than his mate, and the human side could do nothing but long for that bond, that connection that he would never know with another woman.
Jonas breathed out heavily. "Hell, Styx." He rubbed wearily at the back of his neck. "I hate losing you as an Enforcer, and I know you, if she betrays the Breeds, then being exiled would kill you."
It would kill a part of him, he admitted. The fury he would feel at his mate would likely destroy them both, but she was his. He had to believe in the innate justice he sensed within her.
"Give me the six weeks I require, Jonas," he demanded. "I believe once Storme sees us as we are, versus what she's seen and what she's been taught, then she'll give us the research. If we force it from her, she will never forgive the Breeds, and she could become an enemy none of us can control."
"I'd hate to have to kill her, Styx." Jonas's voice hardened at the thought of Storme becoming an enemy.
"That's not a duty that would fall to your shoulders," Styx reminded him.
It was a duty Styx would have to carry out.
"Do you think I would allow that?" Jonas came slowly to his feet, his hands flat on the desk as he glared back at Styx. "I would not allow that any more than I would allow Dash to kill that precious child, Cassie, that we all had a hand in raising. Fuck Breed Law in that instance, Styx. Have no doubt, no fear, that measures are already in place to have this taken care of if Storme decides to betray us, or if the Council manages to take Cassie with no hope of rescuing her. I won't allow that."