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The life of Navarro’s woman.
That thought would have shocked him ten minutes earlier. Now there was no time for shock, there was no thought of it. There was only the imperative, overwhelming need to save her.
“I hear that animal behind us,” Brandenmore chuckled at her ear. “Navarro Blaine. The liar. The deceiver. Do you know”—he caressed her neck again before wrapping his fingers around it once more—“he was created to have no Breed scent. His genetics erased to the deepest level, but for that sense of smell.” His fingers tightened. “Hearing.” Further. “Sight.” He hissed the words at her ear. “Created to identify and to assassinate any Breed, recessed or hiding. He thought he could outsmart me. That he could defeat me. I helped create him. He can’t escape me.”
Mica tensed, her breathing ragged as Josiah stepped in front of him.
Navarro was losing the last of the chains that tethered his self-control, that held back the rage rising through him with a force he could no longer control.
“Kita will never forgive you, Brandenmore. Is that what you want?” Jonas warned as though he really cared, as Navarro felt the animal rip free.
“She won’t forgive me anyway—”
Brandenmore’s fingers tightened, but the sound of Mica’s whimper of fear and pain was overshadowed by the enraged snarl that suddenly echoed through the hall.
Josiah was thrown against the wall with a force that stole the air from his lungs and left him collapsing against the floor, wheezing with the agony tearing through his diaphragm as Jonas and Callan rushed for him. They didn’t move to stop Navarro; it was too late.
In the space it had taken to make those few steps to the fallen Breed, Brandenmore was screaming in his own agony, his wrists in Navarro’s grip as Navarro moved them slowly, slowly from Mica’s flesh and took the man to his knees.
Brandenmore was screaming, the sound of his pain like a symphony of vengeance echoing through Navarro’s ears as Breeds rushed through the hall. Lawe Justice, Lion Breed, one of two that were called Jonas’s right hand, rushed for Mica as she stumbled.
“No!” The sound was primal, animalistic. Navarro threw Brandenmore, slinging him with a strength that broke the monster’s wrist with a snap and a howl of agony as he crashed into Lawe and Navarro caught Mica as she went to her knees.
She was breathing.
She was weak, fear still pounding through her, reaction and shock leaving her dazed, confused as she fought to get a bearing on what had happened and the fact that she was no longer in danger.
“I will give my last breath to keep you from harm,” he whispered at her ear as he cradled her against his chest and lifted her from the floor. “Did I not promise you this, Amaya?”
Holding her close against his chest, he watched as Jonas, Lawe and Rule struggled to hold the feral Phillip Brandenmore under control until the physician’s assistant, Cameron Lucian, could inject him with the sedative created especially for the unique imbalance destroying the man’s mind.
Once, Navarro had felt a measure of sympathy for him. Now, his gaze flickering to the woman he held in his arms, watching as she massaged the reddened, scraped flesh of her neck, he felt nothing but a killing fury.
His gaze lifted to Jonas.
“Better to let me kill him now.” Hoarse, brutally dark, his voice held the promise of violence. “You’ll save us both the trouble of my having to expend resources to do it later.”
He didn’t make promises he wouldn’t give his life to keep. He would kill Brandenmore if that damned drug he injected into himself didn’t kill him first.
A Breed hormonal concoction Brandenmore had created to cure the cancer killing him and to stop the aging of his decrepit body.
Instead, he’d created a serum that was slowly rotting his mind, destroying him, and would very soon, Navarro had heard, kill him.
“Don’t make that mistake, Navarro,” Jonas warned him. “He’s too important to allow that to happen.”
A furious snarl of denial snapped through Navarro’s teeth. “If the bastard were going to give you the secret to the serum he injected into your child, then he would have already,” he retorted. “His mind is so gone now I doubt he remembers what he took, only what he still wants.”
“Take that step, and I’ll have to kill you,” Jonas promised, and like Navarro, he didn’t make promises he didn’t intend to follow through with. “That man holds my daughter’s very life in his hands.” A grimace pulled at Jonas’s features, then, as pain seemed to explode from him, he pulled it back. The sense of the emotions raging through Jonas sent a chill racing up Navarro’s spine. “Attempt to hasten his destruction, and you will be the one that dies.”
With an imperious flick of his fingers, Jonas had Brandenmore dragged, weak and incoherent now, back toward whichever cell he was being confined within.
“Let him get loose again,” Navarro growled in deadly earnest, “I promise you, I’ll be waiting.”
Turning, he strode quickly to the turn in the hall, opposite the direction Bradenmore was being dragged, and headed toward the silent, pale Dr. Elyiana Morrey as she watched the scene.
“Take her to the examination room.” Her soft, compassionate voice held an edge of weariness, and wariness. “I have to check on Phillip . . .”
“No.” Navarro stepped in front of her before she could pass him and commit the ultimate sin of daring to make that bastard more comfortable as Mica fought to breathe, the scent of her physical pain ripping across his senses. “Mica needs you more. As do I.”
