Navarro's Promise

CHAPTER 6

He lied to her.

Lying on the gurney of the examination room, Mica kept her eyes closed, her arm thrown over her face despite the additional pain the position caused.

Perhaps it was just that time of the month due to arrive early, or the shock and fear of the past few days. She wasn’t a weepy woman, but tears were falling from her eyes like a faucet that insisted on dripping.

Except this was silent. It was a misery she couldn’t contain and she didn’t understand why.

It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been lied to by someone she loved before. Hell, Cassie was always lying to her over something, or simply not telling her. A lie of omission was no better though. Her parents had lied to her countless times over the years when they had been forced to run for Haven as though the hounds of hell were after them. Of course, that was usually exactly what had been after them. But rather than telling the truth, so many times her parents had assured her they were just long overdue for a visit.

Jonas had lied to her, Wolfe and Callan had lied to her, each time Cassie had been harmed in the past. Those times, Mica had missed the calls Cassie made on a regular basis and had called the two Breed leaders.

To be told Cassie was busy, but she fine.

Studying for exams, she’ll call later.

The excuses had been varied, but still they had been lies.

And now Navarro had lied to her.

People lied every day, she knew that. She wasn’t a child to agonize and blame her problems on the lies she was told. It was an accepted part of life. Everyone told little white lies, black lies, and all the shades in between. She had even been guilty of it herself.

It was the specific lie that had punched her in the gut though and left her struggling for balance in more ways than the pain from Brandenmore’s attack, the shock or the fear of the past two days.

That lie. The statement that his senses were as recessed as his genetics, if his genetics were even recessed, was the one tormenting her, because she had been herself around him. She had believed she didn’t have to hide her emotions, her fears or her arousal, from him. She had thought she could simply be a woman in ways she hadn’t been able to before.

Regular men had no place in her life; besides the fact she hadn’t found one she really liked, the danger associated with her friendships was always something she worried over. After all, Breeds were stronger, tougher, and Council Breeds were merciless and vindictive. If they decided to target her, then a normal man wouldn’t have a chance against them.

Just as he wouldn’t have when she was attacked two nights before. Someone she cared about would have died, and where would that have left her?

Besides, no one else fascinated her as Navarro did.

And now she was crying over a mistake she should have known better than to make in the first place, and trying to hide it from him, when she knew it was impossible.

The sound of water running disrupted her thoughts for a moment. Dr. Morrey washing her hands, no doubt.

Mica had caught a glimpse of her from the gurney when Navarro first laid her on the table more than an hour earlier.

The doctor’s hair was pulled up into the bun Mica remembered it always being styled in, though that mass seemed much thicker than before. Much thicker. From the appearance of it, the doctor’s hair would likely fall nearly to the curve of her butt now.

Her brown gaze was more distant, her face thinner and appearing sharper than it had years ago.

She was still a beautiful woman, and still very young, but if you looked deep into her eyes, a person would swear she was much older than she actually was.

Long seconds later the water stopped and the sound of a heavy weight slapping against metal had Mica flinching.

She lowered her arm and glared up at Navarro as the doctor banged around the examination room. She knew Ely, and she knew the confrontation in the hall had upset not just her, but also Jonas, immeasurably.

“You have no idea of the depth of pain you just caused, have you?” Mica asked Navarro, keeping her voice low, but her anger no less forceful.

She hated Breed male arrogance and superiority. They were always so damned certain they were right, that they had all the answers and knew the questions before they were even asked. It was so damned irritating that there were times Mica wondered how Cassie had escaped those irritating habits.

His gaze sharpened on her. “Are you in too much pain to be challenging me at the moment?”

Mica may have been in pain, terrified out of her mind and certain she was drawing her last breath, but she had glimpsed Jonas’s face when Brandenmore’s death was mentioned. The memory of his expression would haunt her, and it gave her the strength now to do much more than confront Navarro.

When Phillip Brandenmore died, Jonas’s hope for learning what his daughter had been injected with would die as well. That had to be hell, never knowing, always fearing from one day to the next that he could lose the child he and his wife Rachel loved so dearly, and had risked so much to save.

“That child means everything to them, Navarro,” she reminded him, incensed that he could be so cool. “As long as Brandenmore is alive, then there’s a chance. You can’t even let them have that without trying to destroy it, can you?”

Mica could hear the doctor working in the background, but she couldn’t see her. All she could see was Navarro and the blazing fury burning in his black eyes as she had never seen it before in any other Breed’s.

The Breed least likely to feel more than lust, she thought in disbelief. Had she truly once believed that?

“Do you think the fact that it hurts makes it any less the truth?” Furious, rife with the promise of violence, his tone had a dangerous sharp edge of sarcasm now. “Do you think Jonas isn’t well aware of that? Or that I should simply stand back and allow him to risk your life, or the lives of anyone else who gets in that bastard’s path?”

“And that of course is all that should matter, isn’t it?” Mica snapped back. “For God’s sake, Navarro, there is such a thing as holding out for that last, great hope. And you’re a fine one to let just such a high principle have your back up now, when you lied to me in the worst possible way last night.”

“And don’t all Breeds know the value of that last, great hope?” Heavy mockery filled his voice. “We lived it daily in those fucking labs, Mica. Tell me, did that last, great hope ever give a damn about us then?”

The pain and the cynicism in that single question had Mica’s heart constricting in the knowledge of what the Breeds had suffered there. She knew it, she understood their nightmares, she’d lived with the knowledge of the horror they’d suffered. But still, that was no excuse for his actions, or his threats.

“That doesn’t give you the right to ever make such a threat.” Knowing that pain, and those nightmares, didn’t mean he could make her understand why he had lashed out at Jonas as he had. “You and I both know you’ll never lay a hand on Phillip Brandenmore unless you simply have no other choice.”

“Oh, there you are wrong.” He lowered his head, his palms braced on the gurney as he came over her, his lips pulling back from his teeth in a furious snarl. “Trust me, Mica, if you trust nothing else. If I see him but one more time outside the cell he’s to be locked within, without a full team of Breed guards restraining him, then yes, I will kill him, before he has the chance to harm anyone else. Especially a woman. And most especially.” He leaned closer. “My woman.”

His woman?

“Your woman?” Mica was incensed. Livid. The sheer arrogance in the words, the dominance and utter, contemptible confidence he displayed raked over her pride like nails on a chalkboard. “Not in this lifetime, Wolf,” she sneered back at him. “The last I checked, you weren’t spilling a mating hormone, and I wasn’t on my knees begging for your cock, and Dr. Morrey wasn’t being forced to create that vile concoction of hormones for me. Three strikes, Breed. You’re out of the running to ever claim me.”

For a second. One dangerous, heart-stopping second, the image of Mica on her knees, lips parted and swollen, face flushed as he sank his dick inside the sweet depths of her mouth nearly shattered his control.

He almost reached for her.

His fingers curled into fists as he felt his chest tighten with another of those rumbling little growls he wasn’t used to displaying.

Hard, thick, so fully engorged and throbbing in desperation, his cock ached to fuck her lips, to slide in slow and easy, filling her mouth and stretching her lips erotically.

“Navarro!” It was Ely’s voice that brought him back from the brink.

The hard, cold command in her voice was pure steel. This room, for examination and testing, was her territory. It was where she ruled. The cavernous underground area was separated by partitions rather than walls, and imprinted with an indelible, invisible mark that made her demand all but impossible to ignore.

“Stand down, Wolf,” she ordered firmly. “Jonas, Callan and Kane are awaiting in control room C, where your pack leader is demanding your presence on vid call immediately.”

He straightened slowly. She was backing the imperious demand of right of territory with a summons by his pack leader. Again, almost impossible to ignore. But he’d ignored his responsibilities to Wolfe before for this woman lying before him; he could well do it again.

And he would have. It would have been so easy to lean into her, to steal her kiss and force her submission with the pleasure that would wrap around them both and hold them in place with bonds of sheer heated eroticism.

He could have done it so easily, if he weren’t staring into her eyes. If he hadn’t seen the distress that went beyond anger and physical pain in the incredible depths of her golden green eyes. Like lace, the green surrounded a ring of golden brown, weaving in and out and creating such a unique color she all but mesmerized him when he stared into her eyes.

Instead, he straightened. Slowly.

“I’ll be back, Dr. Morrey,” he promised her, shocking himself with the hoarseness of his tone. “When I am, you have tests to run.”

Ely didn’t speak.

He turned his head slowly, staring at her as she stood across the room, shoulders straight, her long dark brown hair pulled back into an intricate braided bun, defining the sharp Feline features of her face and the exotic dark brown eyes.

She was a Lioness ready to defend her charge, and he couldn’t blame her. He was certain he wasn’t giving the most confidence-inspiring impression at the moment.

She nodded sharply though, her gaze moving to the entrance to the lab as the secured doors slid open.

“Navarro, are you really going to make me look bad by refusing to accompany me down the hall, man?” Lawe Justice stepped into the exam room, and the fact that he seemed uncertain was almost amusing.

“How could I make you look any worse than you make yourself look, Lawe?” Navarro asked conversationally as the other Breed stepped closer.

Head tilted, his long black hair free around the defined, sculpted planes of his face, Lawe looked as though he’d already been in more than one fight that morning.

Ah yes, Phillip Brandenmore.

Lawe’s cheek was scraped with smears of blood on one side of his face, the other one was sporting what was sure to be a beautiful black eye come morning.

Lawe grimaced at the question. “Actually, it probably wouldn’t be too damned hard,” he grunted. “Come on, man, Wolfe is ready to murder because we’re not producing you. He thinks we’ve gone and massacred one of his favorite enforcers. He and Jonas are presently exchanging insults, which is normal for anyone who talks to Jonas except his mate, but Wolfe has already accused him of having locked you up or buried the body where it couldn’t be found. Let’s go make a nice little appearance if you don’t mind?”

Navarro could hear the exasperation in the other Breed’s voice and didn’t blame him a bit for it. Politics was alive and well, it seemed. It was just adopting a new member in the form of Lawe perhaps?

More and more Jonas seemed to be sending Lawe into the thick of conflicts and expecting him to actually work miracles.

“It’s a good thing for you Dr. Morrey has her own intractable presence,” Navarro informed him before nodding back to the doctor.

He turned back to Mica. “I’ll see you later.”

“Not if I see you first,” she muttered. “I’m calling Dad. I’m going home. He can have an army transport here in no time flat—”

He turned on her so quickly it was shocking. His expression dangerous, the warning in his black eyes almost frightening.

“Do you really want to push me?” There was that growl.

Her eyes widened. She, along with every Breed at Haven, was well aware that Navarro hardly ever growled. Until now.

She gazed back at him suspiciously, uncertain of the strength of determination in the sound. Exactly how far could he be pushed?

Arguing with her would serve no purpose, Navarro decided. Mica being stubborn meant, no matter man or Breed, active measures had to be taken immediately. Besides, he had to get the hell away from her. He couldn’t get the image of her sucking his dick out of his mind. Each time he turned to her, it was there, and the hunger for it was only growing.

The pure, melting need to have those silken, pouty lips opening over the engorged crest of his cock was becoming overwhelming at this point.

“Let’s go,” he ordered Lawe gruffly as he turned away from her, hoping—hell he was praying—she didn’t make the mistake of attempting to leave Sanctuary.

Not until he was certain that her trip to Haven—and she would be going to Haven—would be safe.

Striding past the other Breed, he ignored Lawe’s smirk and strode to the entrance. The door slid open with a soft hiss, allowing him to leave despite the fact that the last thing he wanted to do was leave her.

“If I didn’t know better, I would swear you’d mated her,” Lawe commented as he followed him out and the door closed behind them.

“No kidding.” Irritated and thrown off balance, he stared straight ahead as he headed for the vid-conference room on the other side of the underground facility.

“No mating scent,” Lawe pointed out thoughtfully. “The two of you were aroused, but not to the point of insanity.” Amusement laced his voice then. “Damn, seeing you now though, if you were mated, I’d be taking a vacation on the opposite side of the world. You’re going to be a mite hard to get along with, aren’t you?”

Navarro came to a slow stop before turning to stare at the other man.

“Weren’t we trained to be quiet, and unobtrusive?” he asked the other man with grave deliberation.

Lawe’s lips twitched. “Sure we were. Doesn’t mean we have to allow those bastards the pleasure of thinking they succeeded though. Right?”

Navarro grunted in response. “Contact Ely, tell her I’ll be back in the labs once we’re finished here.”

“You haven’t mated her, Navarro.” There was no amusement now, only the blunt truth. A truth that oddly enough had the power to piss him the fuck off.

“Mating heat is nothing but a contradiction and an anomaly with each pairing,” he reminded Lawe, jaw clenching as he fought against the need to attempt to disprove the very truth the other Breed had stated. “You can’t say that definitively at this time.”

Lawe shook his head as he propped one hand against the holstered weapon at his side and seemed to contemplate what Navarro realized was a rather weak, desperate argument.

“Hell, I don’t have time for this.” Turning his back on the Breed, Navarro stalked down the steel-lined corridor, that damned unfamiliar rumble brewing in his chest again.

How many times had he heard that sound from other Breeds and commented mockingly that they were being “drama Breeds”? And now, he could more fully appreciate the almost helpless frustration in being unable to control the sound.

Lawe, Styx and even Wolfe had commented that they envied many of his recessed traits, especially that one. The animalistic responses in the form of the growls and, at odd times, the agonized howls that echoed around Haven hadn’t been something Navarro envied the other Breeds for though.

He’d enjoyed his recessed status. He wasn’t certain how to feel now that he could sense the animal rising inside him. Now that he could hear it.

The question was, if it hadn’t made its appearance because of mating heat, then what exactly was it, and why had it only make itself known now that he was with Mica?

Mica stared at the ceiling of the examination room as Dr. Morrey, Ely as she and Cassie had always called her, finished her examination.

“Are your breasts tender or sensitive?” Ely asked as she stood back and stared down at her curiously.

“Only when that damned Wolf is around,” she muttered.

She must have managed to catch Ely by surprise, because she could have sworn the doctor’s lips twitched with the beginning of a smile.

“I should have the blood and saliva tests completed soon.” Ely frowned. “I don’t expect a mating though.” She inhaled slowly. “There’s no scent of it, and no signs of it.”

“Don’t look so disappointed,” Mica chided her in relief. “Can you just imagine being mated to that Breed? He’d make me crazy, Ely.”

“They all make all of us crazy,” Ely assured her with a tentative smile. “But they’re just men, Mica. You should realize that by now. Or do you, like others, still believe that Breeds are all animals?”

“Give me a break, Ely.” She almost laughed at the comment. “After all these years do you actually believe I would even consider such a thing?”

It was utterly laughable. She’d practically lived at Haven since the day it had become the Wolf Breed settlement. Before that, she’d spent more time at Sanctuary than she spent at home some years.

Her father had helped Cassie’s father, Dash Sinclair, in many of the rescues of the more hidden labs that had created and imprisoned the Breeds.

“I don’t know, Mica. You’re twenty-five and you’ve never so much as gone to dinner with one of the male Breeds. Despite the invitations you’ve received since you moved from your father’s home.” Ely shrugged briefly, her expression less trusting than it had been before her life was threatened nearly a year before.

“So I’m automatically subconsciously prejudiced against the Breeds, and Breed males in particular?” Well, this was the last thing she had expected from the doctor. One who had known her almost as long as she had known Cassie.

“You’re attractive, heterosexual, and you date human males often. It was a natural conclusion to draw.” Ely wasn’t defending herself, but neither was she backing down.

“Yeah well, most men aren’t as arrogant as Breed males, and I don’t care much for being ordered around. Breeds like ordering people around, Ely, as you very well know. And think about this one.” She eased up on the gurney, swinging her legs over the side gingerly as irritation flared within her. “There are plenty of men in the military who have asked me out and I turn them down as well. Are you going to accuse me of being prejudiced against the military now?”

Ely’s chin lifted. There was that Breed arrogance in the other woman. Her nostrils flared as her expression became detached, her normally warm brown eyes emotionally remote.

“Perhaps Jonas’s research into your sexuality was faulty. Are you homosexual?” Then her eyes twitched as though on the verge of widening at some horrifying thought. “Are you and Cassie involved sexually rather than simply friends?”

Mica just stared back at Ely, uncertain whether she should be angry or amused.

“Ask Cassie.” Mica slid gingerly from the gurney and headed to the bathroom, where she had stored her clothing before donning the paper gown she had been given earlier to wear during the examination.

“Wolf Breeds are possessive, even when they aren’t in mating heat,” Ely warned her, following behind her slowly until Mica stepped into the dressing room. “Having any lover, even another woman, would be unacceptable to him.”

Mica rolled her eyes as she felt the instinctive distancing of her emotions. The subconscious knowledge that she was talking to a Breed with a heightened sense of smell. One created and trained for the science and the medicine she practiced. Mica was aware of the instinctive drawing back and the suppression of her emotions, which would make their scent much more subtle and harder to detect.

Cassie swore that the only time she could be certain of what Mica was feeling was when she slept, when those walls she’d built up over the years were thinner. Not dropped, but not as secure as they were while she was awake.

“Mica, ignoring me doesn’t alter the situation.” Ely’s voice hardened as Mica pulled her clothes on slowly, trying to ignore the pain in her ribs and the tenderness of her muscles as she dressed.

She should have known better than to come down here with Navarro. She should have known better than to come to Ely for the examination period. There was a reason she had always gone to her own human doctor. Because she didn’t have to worry about this incessant nosiness the Feline Breeds seemed to possess in much higher levels than Wolves. And Wolves were too damned nosy as far as she was concerned.

Still, she ignored Ely and finished dressing, wondering if there was any way to slip out of the dressing room and bypass the doctor completely.

Had she moved away from the door? Mica was almost too wary to open the door and check. There would be no playing it off if by chance Ely was still standing at the door. What excuse could she give her for simply peeking out and then closing the door firmly once again if she was still out there?

There wasn’t one.

She inhaled slowly before releasing the breath and opening the door.

Ely wasn’t standing there.

She was across the examination area that had been sectioned off, at one of the machines she used for whatever tests she ran. Vials and bottles of liquids sat at her elbow as she worked while she was recording something on a clipboard.

Ely’s head lifted, her expression thoughtful as Mica closed the dressing room door behind her.

“I’ll just be going now.” A bright smile and a wave over her shoulder toward the door, Mica indicated her intentions with breezy unconcern as she headed for the exit, intending to escape as quickly as possible.

“Not without an escort.” Ely’s tone was calm and unconcerned as Mica gripped the handle and tried to pull the door open quickly.

Smothering a curse and a twinge of pain, she turned back to stare across the room at the doctor’s back.

“I’m quite certain Phillip Brandenmore is contained now,” she said with little hope that it would do her any good.

“I’m sure he is, but those are Jonas’s orders, and I tend to try to follow them now.” The doctor’s voice was carefully calm, almost too controlled.

At times like this, Mica would have loved to have all those Breed senses without actually being a Breed.

“I sent my assistant to the examination room next door to collect blood, saliva and semen samples from Navarro when he’s finished with the vid-call from his alpha. I can have Lawe and Rule escort you up to the main house if you like. But just as a warning, unlike previous visits, you’ll be confined to the house unless a team can accompany you outside.”

Of course she would be. It didn’t matter that she had practically been raised at Sanctuary. The recent betrayals by their own kind had damaged the trust they had even in one another, let alone a human they had practically helped raise.

“Lawe and Rule will work fine,” she agreed.

Whatever it took to get the hell out of the examination room and away from Ely’s too perceptive gaze and probing questions.

Mica watched as Ely lifted her hand to her ear, her fingers obviously activating the communications earbud.

“Lawe, Ms. Toler is requesting an escort to her rooms if you’re still available,” Ely said. “I’m certain that won’t be a problem, but if it is, then he can come to me,” she stated a few moments later. She listened, then said, “I’ll let her know.” She turned her attention to Mica. “Two minutes.”

Okay, she might make it two more minutes.

“Lawe seems concerned that Navarro will be upset that you’ve left.” Ely crossed her arms over her breasts as she leaned against the counter and stared back at her.

Maybe she wouldn’t make it two more minutes before she became completely pissed off with the lot of them.

“Then Navarro can take it up with me,” Mica fumed. “He’s not my mate and no one sure as hell made him my boss.”

Ely tried to suppress the wince that tugged at her face, Mica could tell she tried damned hard, but Mica caught it.

“What is with the lot of you?” Mica threw her hands up in exasperation before propping them on her hips and confronting Ely directly. “If he were Jonas, I could understand your reluctance to challenge him over anything. Hell, I could even understand with Callan, Wolfe or the Coyote pack leader, Del-Rey. But Navarro? He’s just an enforcer, Dr. Morrey. You’re acting as though he’s a pack leader or something.”

“He was once.”

Mica wasn’t surprised, and that was really troubling. The fact that she wasn’t surprised, that Ely hadn’t shocked her, should have worried her.

“He obviously still has the attitude, but not the title, but why are you so intimidated? He doesn’t have the power without the title.”

Ely’s lips did twitch then. “Is that what you believe, Mica? That all it takes is the title? Do you believe the Breeds follow blindly?”

She stared back at the scientists silently.

“Mica, to follow a pack leader, a Breed has to have much more than a title. It’s the strength, the ability to lead and the strength to lead properly. You may not see it, but I’m damned sure you’ve sensed it. And other Breeds feel it. As though the acknowledgment of such strength is coded into our DNA.” A rueful smile tugged at her lips. “Some things are simply inherent, perhaps?”

Breed head games, she hated them.

“And some things are simply male, but, I’m not going to stand here and argue Breed points with you. I have to do that enough with Cassie when she’s deliberating Breed Law and forming arguments for it.”

Cassie was like a super genius when forming the legal parameters and arguments for Breed Law. But she still insisted on someone to debate her arguments with, and she never failed to insist on Mica to play devil’s advocate.

“Be intimidated, Mica,” the Breed doctor warned her confidently. “He’s not a typical enforcer any more than he’s a typical Breed. Don’t make the mistake of believing you can control him as easily as you control Cassie.”

A start of surprise jerked through her and she frowned, her lips parting to question the doctor indignantly regarding her statement.

She had never even attempted to control Cassie, and she wouldn’t have succeeded if she had. No one controlled Cassie, even her parents.

“Fine, whatever.” She gave a hard shrug and saved the anger for later.

She’d been doing that for years. Saving the anger for later. For when there were no damned Breeds around to smell it, become nosy of it and begin suspecting her of betrayal.

She didn’t blame them for their paranoia. They’d been betrayed by friends, by those they called family, and by those they trusted their lives to. She simply didn’t want to give them a reason to suspect, or a reason to bar her from Haven or Sanctuary and her parents from the safety the two Breed communities provided.

Her family was aligned with the Breeds; they would never be completely safe. Her parents were even discussing selling their ranch and moving into Haven to ensure the family’s safety as her father grew older.

She couldn’t endanger that. She wouldn’t allow herself to endanger it. But if she weren’t very very careful with Navarro, then that was exactly what she would do.