Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 146530 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 733(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146530 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 733(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
The truth was, Jonas was afraid to face Camellia. He’d all but told her to leave while she could when they’d first contacted Ryland. When she’d been brave enough to stay, he’d shown her the worst in him deliberately. Why had he done that? He wanted her. The longer he was with her, the more he knew she was right for him. So, what was he doing deliberately pushing her away from him? He knew she’d have to know the worst, but not immediately.
The raging testosterone in him from so many mixes of predators kept the heat banding in front of his eyes and the need for violence coursing through his body. The pathways from his brain to his nerves spread the demand as if not his life but his teammate’s lives and Camellia’s life were at stake. His mind looped over and over, determined to tell him to take out the last threat—the one he knew was the worst.
Crawley was hiding something. He’d come there to take Lily and Daniel. He would have sent information back to his troops to allow them to murder every other man, woman and child in the two compounds. And there was Camellia. She was close. Beautiful Camellia with her deadly traps. If Crawley discovered that Camellia had set the traps for his men and him, he would do anything to retaliate against her.
Jonas knew men like Crawley. They never stopped once they decided on a course. He might pretend he was cooperating, but he was already thinking of a way to avenge his friends. Like Jonas, he felt responsible for them. That threat had to be eliminated, no matter what Ryland and Kaden had commanded.
The threatening growls rumbled in his chest, but he kept them to himself. He wanted Crawley to give him any excuse at all to challenge him. At the same time, he kept a distance between himself and his teammates, knowing from experience that even his friends could trigger the terrible need for violence raging in his system. If they didn’t need him to help keep a watchful eye on Crawley, he would have run up and down the mountain paths in order to try to drain off some of the worst of the need to kill.
Every neuron in his body felt inflamed, pushed in the wrong direction as if his blood had reversed itself and spread through his body like a disease rather than something good. Now that he’d had a taste of what good with Camellia felt like, the adrenaline and hostility of the predators in his system seemed so much worse. The inflammation triggered more need for violence, a reaction that started in his brain—at least he thought it did.
He’d studied aggression in animals to see if he could better combat it, but so far, nothing worked but staying away from others. Running. Physical motion. Fighting. But when he fought, that just fed the level of aggression, and he couldn’t bring it under control. He had to channel the terrible rages combined with cunning into another outlet in order to keep from harming anyone. He would leave his team and go off to scout on his own. That was always the safest choice.
Jonas felt her first, a movement along those star-patterned cells, the neurons that spread out to send messages along every pathway. She stroked caresses over the inflamed nerve endings, settling them in the correct direction with a delicate touch.
His breath hissed out of his lungs, a long slow burn of awareness. Now, the fierce violent rage in him mixed with other much more potent chemicals that added to his hyperalertness. He saw every detail of Crawley as he moved ahead of them. He was a great distance away, with Jeff and Kyle between them, running interference, but it didn’t matter.
Jonas watched with the eyes of an eagle, noting the fluid way Crawley moved. He wasn’t in the least defeated. He was thinking every minute, taking stock of their surroundings, sizing up Jeff, the man closest to him, trying not to appear as if he was doing so. Jonas paid attention to Crawley’s hands, the way his arms swung free and loose as he walked, but his hands curled into fists, and then he’d open his fingers, spreading them wide, flexing them. He seemed to keep the same pace, but he increased it just a little bit every few miles. Jonas knew what he was doing. He thought, because they were the first men Whitney had experimented on, that meant they would be out of shape.
No one quite understood that by using the term “screwed up,” the phrase didn’t mean the soldiers in Team One weren’t as intelligent or didn’t have the same training. It meant Whitney hadn’t yet known what he was doing. He left brains wide open without filters. He gave them too many animal and reptile traits without realizing what would happen. He just threw everything together, believing more was better. He had enhanced their physical abilities as well as their psychic ones without telling them what was in them or what to expect, leaving them to discover, over time, what would come out. When they had no idea, they weren’t prepared when a trait abruptly manifested.