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She had had a Coyote stalking her, playing with her, assuring her that her father was dead when he hadn’t been.
Once again that fear was tearing through her sense.
Navarro. Why hadn’t he made a move yet? Why wasn’t he saving her?
“I’m the monster,” he whispered at her ear, his fingers straightening until they were wrapped around her neck too snugly for comfort.
Her eyes closed for a moment, the labored breathing finally taking its toll as she felt herself weakening.
She was clawing at his fingers, but they didn’t loosen.
“You’re hurting her, Phillip,” Jonas repeated, his voice too calm as she began to struggle, desperate to escape now.
“I want to hurt you,” he snarled at her ear.
There were too many sounds. Jonas was suddenly snarling, a snap of fury behind Phillip, Callan’s voice suddenly entering the fray as a sharp command. “Mica, stop fighting. If he kills you, his niece Kita will never forgive him.”
Kita? Kita wasn’t here. Mica had only met Brandenmore’s niece once; she was the same niece he had tried to kill when he learned she had mated with a Breed last month.
Behind her, Phillip tensed again, but his hold loosened. His fingers unclenched just enough for her to take a deep breath, to prepare herself.
And then all hell seemed to break loose.
Navarro struggled with the order Jonas gave to hold back, to wait. He could sense the insanity inside Phillip Brandenmore, the demented animal born of the Breed serum he’d injected himself with, clawing with feral rage as all semblance of his humanity crashed beneath the wave of fury.
The hunger for blood, for death and vengeance was a dark oil scent, putrid and abrasive to the senses. And it was focused entirely on Mica.
Her pain and fear reached out to Navarro, tendrils of them wrapping around his senses like a scream born of desperation.
Where the wisps of hunger and emotion born of evolving love had warmed and aroused him, this sensation tore across his senses and seemed to awaken the animal slumbering inside him to full, enraged consciousness.
It came to awareness with a suddenness he couldn’t have predicted and damn sure hadn’t expected. Clawing talons of fury raked across his senses as a furious snarl pulled his lips back from his teeth and had him crouching, preparing to spring.
He would have only one opportunity. If he failed, God forbid, if he didn’t take the monster down with that first try, then Mica would pay the cost.
“Stand down!” Jonas snapped, and a distant, almost human part of Navarro recognized and fully ignored the order.
Jonas Wyatt commanded the loyalty of the man, not whatever entity was roused to full,
furious life inside him now.
It was similar to what raged inside Phillip Brandenmore, except the animal snarling inside Navarro was a natural part of his genetics, of what made him who and what he was at his core.
A Wolf Breed.
Beside him, he could feel Josiah tensing as well, signaling to Jonas that he would hold Navarro back. There would be no holding him back and they both knew it. They were wasting their time in the attempt.
Josiah might try. And he might find his blood spilling for the effort to keep Navarro from the woman.
Navarro felt her weakening. The scent of her tears shredded the finely weaved bonds that had always held the animal within him in a deep, peaceful slumber.
It hadn’t meant to awaken.
It gave its strength and its senses, but not its awareness. The calculated, finely honed instincts that were raging inside Navarro now were different, unusual. They were the animal awakening with a sudden, ravenous hunger for blood.
His lips drew back from his teeth. He felt it. A rumbling sound of fury, low and intense, and it was coming from him when it never had before. Rising from the pit of his stomach, building in his chest, and emitting a low-level sound of such fury that he would have been surprised if he weren’t so focused on the sight of Brandenmore’s fingers wrapped around Mica’s throat.
“I could kill her, Jonas,” Brandenmore said placidly, his tone so calm he could have been discussing the weather rather the life of an innocent woman.
