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All amused knowledge and irritation aside, he knew what they’d learned in the Andes, knew what he’d read in the files that had been stolen from the labs during the rescues. And he knew that the signs of mating heat from then to now were far different.
“Mating heat is changing,” Ely finally revealed, her lips thinning as a hint of fear flashed in her dark brown eyes. “It’s becoming very unreliable in its symptoms and progression, as well as its reactions from couple to couple. I don’t know what we’re looking at anymore, Navarro.”
He could hear the hint of weariness, a fear for the future, and a sense of failure in her words.
“Have you managed to decode any of the files we sent from Haven?” In those files were years of research
the Council scientists had done on mating heat at the Omega lab. The Omega Research Project had been a fully funded, closely watched project researching the mating heat phenomena that the scientists had been unable to grasp.
The aging delay, the higher human immunity and the strengthening of both body and senses of the human mate had fascinated the scientists, and pushed them to greater heights of depravity and pain than Navarro had seen before, or since. But what had especially fascinated them had been the rare times that they’d seen diseases disappear after a mating. The most notable, and the one that had infuriated the Council the most, had been the young scientist that had escaped with her Coyote mate. The scientist had been diagnosed with terminal cancer just weeks before. The members of the Genetics Council had been desperate to find them and to learn what drove the mating heat, as well as the anomalies that went with it.
“Bits and pieces. We’ve decoded nothing significant from them, but the files Storme Montague gave us are also giving us nightmares.” Ely recorded the readings on blood pressure, heart rate and whatever the hell the electrodes were on his flesh for.
She was trying to avoid the memory of whatever those files had revealed. He’d seen it in Styx Mackenzie several weeks before, when Navarro had come to Sanctuary before heading to New York, just as he’d seen it in both Jonas’s and Callan’s gazes.
There was something in those files that had left a portal of dark fury raging in each of them, and Navarro knew exactly what it was: Breed mating heat research and the mated couples who had been tortured so severely, so horrendously, that even though they couldn’t hear them, every Breed in those labs had sensed them, and raged inside for them.
Navarro stared across the room, ignoring Ely and the quiet assistant working with her as he once again pushed back those memories. He’d been a part of those labs. He’d sensed more than just their rage, their pain. He’d sensed that soul-deep darkness of an inner insanity that came with being unable to stop the destruction of their mate.
“Jenny, could you put a rush on those tests for me?” Ely asked, her tone more reserved as she spoke to the assistant. Suspicious. Ely would never be able to drop her suspicion of anyone who worked with her now.
How she had found the courage to choose another assistant after what the two the year before had attempted to do to her, he wasn’t certain. They had nearly killed her, secretly drugged her, forced her to unwittingly do things she would have never done otherwise and nearly destroyed her mind.
She was stronger than he was. She had a new assistant; Navarro had yet to settle in one place, or to make more of a commitment than it took to remain at the Bureau of Breed Affairs as an enforcer.
He stayed on the move, never really making friends, never allowing himself to acquire anything permanent. It was better that way. It kept the memories at bay, as well as the knowledge that he had failed the most important task of his life.
He’d once been a pack leader. More than a dozen Wolf Breeds and a few Coyote Breed trainers who had secretly turned against the scientists at the Omega lab had been a part of his pack.
He had worked tirelessly, commanded with confidence and strength, and in the end, he had lost the two most valuable members of his pack. He’d lost the very ones he and his pack had fought so hard to protect. He’d lost the couple that had secretly mated beneath the scientist’s noses, and their unborn child.
It was a failure he was unable to forgive himself for, and something he’d been unable to forget.
“Perhaps you could give us a bit of your time to help decode some of the files while you’re stuck here,” Ely finally suggested as the last of the electrodes were removed. “You knew those scientists better than anyone, as well as their codes.”
“No one knew those bastards, and their codes are a bitch. I’ve been studying some of them for years and I still can’t make sense of them.” Moving from the gurney, Navarro jerked his shirt from the end of the steel medical bed and pulled it on with restrained violence.
He could see Ely from the corner of his eye, her head tilting curiously to the side as she watched him.
“You’re not as calm as you’ve always been. You seem moody, on the edge of violence, and restless. Those aren’t Wolf Breed traits.”
“They’re human traits. I was created to be human, remember?” But the growl brewing in his chest was far from human. “Look, Ely, I’m ready to get the hell out of here—”
“And find Mica?”
He stared back at her silently.
“Her father and Dash are very close friends, aren’t they, Navarro? They’re loyal to each other. If you mate her, if he learns you’ve touched her, Dash Sinclair won’t be pleased.”
“Mike Toler might not understand, but Dash is well aware that nothing can change mating heat. Besides, I don’t live my life to suit Dash Sinclair, or his friends.”
“Would you live it to suit Mica Toler?” A questioning slant tilted her brows.
Navarro buttoned the shirt slowly before loosening his jeans, tucking the shirt in and neatly refastening the denim material. When he was finished, the fine cotton shirt and well-worn denim felt as comfortable against his flesh as the silk he’d worn at other times.
“What’s your point, Ely?” he finally asked, knowing she wouldn’t let it go, she wouldn’t stop harping at him until she got whatever warning was itching her ass out of her system.
“Human’s aren’t the only ones who rely on a system of politics,” she finally stated. “We have our own system of hierarchies, loyalties and understandings. Do you truly want to risk Dash Sinclair’s displeasure for a woman that is not your mate? He wouldn’t understand you touching her for any other reason but a mating.”
