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It was the only way to rein in the animal searching for her, the one intent on throwing him back into mating heat.
It was mating heat, or lose her.
He’d seen it in Callan, Jonas, and Dane Vanderale’s gazes. They’d actually considered Josiah’s suggestion that he should be banned from her. No doubt they were discussing it now.
Like hell.
There wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to allow it.
Pulling the sat phone free of the holster at his hip, against his better judgment, he put a call through to Dash Sinclair.
It was the height of idiocy and he knew it, but he was damned if he knew who else to talk to at this point. He had no idea what was left.
“Navarro,” Dash answered the call quickly. “Talk to me.”
There was a wealth of suggestion in his voice, a controlled command from a man, a Breed, who had known nothing but command for most of his life.
“She’s mine!” There was no other way to put it. “If they try to ban me from her, there will be a war.”
Silence filled the line.
“I know from Dr. Armani that the mating heat has disappeared,” Dash said. “Your genetics are making you crazy. It feels as though there’s something beneath your flesh threatening to break free. As though those genetics are creating an animal inside you that’s fighting to be free.” He paused, and Navarro remained silent, waiting until Dash continued. “Why do you think I asked if you had mated her, Navarro? Why do you think you’ve been watched so closely around her?”
“You could have told me.”
“And have you hoping for a mating that might never happen?” he asked. “Just because I mated didn’t mean you would. It doesn’t mean any other recessed Breed will. I had hoped you’d come to me once you experienced the first symptoms.”
Navarro grunted at that. “Who knew? I kissed her the night of the attack against Haven and there was nothing.”
Frustration roughened his voice. “There was nothing, Dash. I assumed she was safe.”
“Safe?”
Navarro grimaced again. “Hell. Yeah. Safe. I won’t say I haven’t wanted her, we both know I have. Bad. But I tried to keep her out of mating heat. I came in slow, Dash. Touches here and there, a kiss to the cheek. A kiss to the lips only. I tried to keep this from happening.”
“And I warned you, you couldn’t expect normal mating symptoms as a recessed Breed, Navarro,” Dash growled with an edge of anger.
“You didn’t say to expect no symptoms at all,” Navarro snarled.
The primal rasp had him stilling instantly, the loss of control a warning so deeply ingrained he couldn’t ignore it.
“Do you want to lose her, Navarro? Is it what you want, to have the one thing you could call your own taken from you?”
“And if nature is taking that out of my hands?” He felt as though he were numb from the inside out. The mocking laugh was more a grim sound of disapproval than anything resembling amusement.
“She’s loved you since she was sixteen years old,” Dash stated. “We’ve all sensed it, Navarro, we’ve all known it. All but you. You’ve ignored it, just as she ignored it every time you came around. Letting her go won’t change what’s going to happen, or what has already happened. You’re changing, just as she is. Your genetics are becoming active rather than recessed, and denying it, or fighting it, will only end up hurting both of you in the end.”
“It happened to you.” It had to have. There was no way the other man could have known all this if it hadn’t.
“It happened,” Dash admitted. “And it had the potential to steal my mate from me. I felt, at the time, that I could make the choice, Navarro. I could be unencumbered; I could accept what my heart was longing for, what my soul needed to survive, or I could let that part of me die forever. Are you willing to lose the only person that could mean anything to you?”
“The question is, am I willing to destroy her?” he asked.
He definitely wasn’t willing to stand here arguing it, not when he could smell Josiah nearing, sense the other Breed going to Mica.
As though the bastard could take his place.
A growl definitely rumbled in his chest this time. A low, dangerous sound that would have shocked him, would have had him pulling back in a desperate attempt to rein in the animal he could feel surging forward.
