Mica inhaled slowly, carefully. “Does Jonas know why they were targeted? Does he know why I was targeted?”
Merinus gave a quick shake of her head. “I know he’s working on it. I promise, we’re doing everything we can to figure this out and to get you safely home. But the key word is safely. We’re not certain that even the heli-jet would be a secured means of transportation at the moment. Until we know for certain, it’s not a chance we want to take.”
Mica took another bite of the chocolate cake, sipped at her coffee and simply allowed the information to settle inside her.
She couldn’t leave yet. She was stuck here, which meant the support system she would have counted on at any other time wasn’t available.
Hope, Faith and Charity, and especially Cassie, as aggravating as she was sometimes. They were her friends, her support system. She could have talked to them, and they could have helped her figure out which way to go at this point, with a Breed mate MIA only hours after said mating.
“Does Jonas have any idea how long it will take?” Mica finally asked Merinus.
“I’m sorry, Mica.” Merinus shook her head, her shoulderlength brown hair emphasizing the compassion in her expression. “I do promise you, he’s not the only one working on it. Callan, Kane and Navarro are investigating as well. I’m certain it won’t take them long.”
What was she supposed to say at this point?
She wanted to go home. If it was up to her, she would have gotten in a car and simply driven. She was one woman, and as long as no one saw her leave, then there would be no one to report it to whoever the hell was out there looking for her.
That wasn’t going to happen though, and she knew it. She wouldn’t make it to a vehicle, let alone past the gates of the compound, before Jonas, Navarro, and any number of Breeds who had watched her grow up, would stop her.
“Cassie asked that you call her whenever you have time.” Merinus leaned against the counter and sipped her coffee. “She said to remind you to beware of contentment?” It was obvious Merinus was very curious as well as partly amused.
Mica sipped her coffee.
She was going to strangle Cassie.
The moment she had the chance, she was going to wrap her hands right around her friend’s throat and just start squeezing.
Cassie deserved it.
She was hiding the truth of whatever she had sensed that day from Mica, and Mica knew she was.
“You’re not going to explain the contentment reference?” There was an edge of laughter in Merinus’s tone.
“I might explain it if I understood it myself.” Forking another piece of cake, Mica shot Merinus an irate look. “Do you always understand what Cassie’s talking about?”
“Sometimes.” Merinus didn’t sound as confident as Mica was certain she wanted to. “Does that idea of contentment have anything to do with the repeat mating tests Navarro insisted Ely run this morning?”
Yeah, that was Merinus, right to the point there.
Mica sighed wearily. “According to Cassie, she has no idea what it has to do with. As for the mating tests, Navarro simply wanted to be certain.”
“I see.” Merinus nodded somberly. “And that would have nothing to do with him nearly losing his sanity when Brandenmore escaped confinement and managed to pin you against the wall either? Or how he threatened to kill Brandenmore after he managed to free you from him?”
Merinus was more perceptive than many wanted to admit.
“What do you want to know, Merinus?” Mica asked quietly as she pushed the cake and coffee back.
She could tell when someone was fishing, and at the moment, Merinus was throwing dy***ite in the water.
“Are you his mate, Mica?” she asked.
She wasn’t going to lie to Merinus. Mica had lived her life amid lies, deceptions and double-talk, and she hated it. She could mark her life divided by one event. The years of contentment and safety before the night Cassie Sinclair and her family arrived at her father’s ranch. The years filled with double-talk, lies and danger had been every day thereafter.
She understood, she truly did. There was only so much you could tell most children. But Mica hadn’t been most children, and the resentment had only grown over the years.
“So it would appear.” She shrugged, the attempt to appear casual, unconcerned, took nearly every ounce of control she possessed.
There were times she forgot Merinus wasn’t a Breed herself. She’d been a mate for so long, the mating hormone now so firmly entrenched in her body, that her senses were so much more sharply advanced that she could detect emotions herself, if not scent them.
Although Merinus was by no means a Breed. Yet.
She continued to watch Mica, making her extremely uncomfortable as her dark gaze remained intent.
She wasn’t a Breed, but she was developing the senses of one, which meant she was no longer a person Mica could pretend to be calm around.
“How long have you known?” the Prima asked.
This was no longer the friend who had sheltered Mica along with Cassie when they were kids. She wasn’t the woman that cut Mica’s hair the first time, or the one that taught her to use makeup when she was a teenager, when her own mother refused to so do.
She was now the Prima, the dominant feminine force within Sanctuary, and there wasn’t a Breed male or female within the compound that didn’t inherently recognize her quiet, intuitive strength and power.
Mica glanced at the clock on the microwave. “Oh, two hours maybe?” she answered blithely. “Could be a minute more, could be a minute less. So let’s not get into the whole psychological mishmash that goes with it quite yet, if you don’t mind? I’d like another minute or two to adjust.”