Next, she sent out a call to the alpha wolf. He got that one immediately. The last was to the pair of Great Gray owls. She was very familiar with them and he felt her affection for them. She called them by name, Blue and Gray.
“Do you still feel a threat, Camellia?”
She nodded. “It’s still very vague, as if far off. I thought it was you.”
He gave her a small smile. “And I thought it was you.” He looked around him. “This place was unexpected. Your security system is amazing. I’m still not certain what you hooked into to make it work.”
She tilted her head to one side, and her dark hair fell like gleaming silk, catching his eye. “You really don’t know, do you?”
Jonas shook his head, watching the way that sliver of a moon played through her hair, turning sections of it into a waterfall of black silk.
“And yet you were able to tap into the networks and use them to your advantage. You hid yourself in plain sight.”
He shrugged. “I’ve always been able to do that. My friends sometimes call me Smoke because I disappear. Completely. They don’t know how.”
“Do you know how you do it?” There was curiosity in her voice.
Jonas had the feeling she knew exactly how he was able to disappear, but he didn’t want to get too far off the subject if the two weren’t tied together. He needed to know about the security network she was using. He had women and children to protect from Whitney and the well-funded faction in the government that relentlessly kept coming after them, and what she’d set up here to hide herself in plain sight and defend her territory would go a long way toward protecting his people.
“I don’t, but I’d like to learn.”
She sat back in her chair, the blue in her eyes cooling to a color somewhere between silver and blue steel. “The Middlemist Red Camellia, of course. That’s how you disappear as well. You’re a phantom, just as Red is. A ghost, Jonas, at will. That was why the plant was slated to be stamped out. Red will defend itself vigorously, which is exactly what it did in the early days. Red’s history is every bit as brutal as ours.”
Jonas frowned, rubbing his left temple with the pads of his fingers. How could a plant have anything to do with her security network? Or the fact that he could disappear at will? She wasn’t making sense. “I don’t understand.”
“You know that Dr.Whitney was obsessed with growing exotic flowers, right? He keeps greenhouses at the various laboratories he frequents. When he isn’t present to tend to his plants himself, hehires specialists to look after them. If any plant dies, he kills the person that let it happen. He’s ruthless when it comes to his flowers. If there is one thing he loves above all else on this planet, it’s his exotics.”
He nodded his head for her to continue.
Camellia tapped her fingers on her thigh. A strange habit for someone who didn’t strike him as a nervous person. She had to be weighing how much she was going to tell him. He couldn’t blame her. He was a stranger to her and yet he wasn’t. They didn’t feel like strangers. They felt as if they belonged. That was probably the biggest hurdle he had to overcome with her. Nothing real happened this fast.
It occurred to him that if she was leery, he should be doubly so. He had his team, women and children to protect after all.
“You must feel threats before they manifest, right? You know things when you’re out with your team on a mission, no matter where you are.”
How could she know that? He narrowed his eyes, focusing completely on her, watching every small movement, missing nothing. The entire situation with her was strange, even to a man used to constantly encountering weird shit.
She was right that he felt threats to the team when no one else could. They all had built-in radar when it came to feeling danger. The animal genetics embedded in their code gave them all kinds of abilities to know when an enemy was near, yet Jonas had the ability in spades. He always detected potential threats far in advance of the others. The team had come to rely on his early warning system.
Ryland had asked Jonas once how he did it, and when he said he didn’t know, he knew Ryland thought he was lying. That he’d dodged the question because no one wanted their talent documented for fear it would somehow fall into Whitney’s hands. Butthe truth was, Jonasdidn’tknow how he did most of the shit he could do.
So how did this woman, whom he’d just met, know about the capabilities he’d never discussed with anyone?
Camellia laughed softly, shocking him. “Now you don’t trust me. Just a minute ago, you were trying to convince me that because we’re so connected, I had no reason not to trust you, but I can feel the waves of your suspicion rippling through my veins. No, you’re not giving anything away on your face, you don’t need to for me to read you. Just the way you can feel my emotions, I can feel yours.”
“This is bullshit, Camellia.” He didn’t like what he didn’t understand. “Just come out with it and tell me what’s happening to me.”
Camellia leaned toward him, her eyes pure blue, all cat, those dark lashes longer than he’d first thought. “It’s the mycelium running beneath the ground. You’re connected to that wherever you are. Whitney made certain of it, just like he did with me. That’s one of the many reasons we’re so connected. It’s how you were able to get into the garden. You were welcomed in. The garden thought you belonged. You do know what mycelium is. I know you do. You’ve studied plants. Mushrooms. How it’s all connected.”
He couldn’t stop his instinctive revulsion, an aggressive refusal that exploded through his entire being. He wouldnothave fungus inside him on top of everything else. He was like some modern-day Frankenstein, a freakish monster, created by Whitney and programmed to kill. The perfect killing machine. Jonas rubbed his temples. Hehadkilled. Many, many times. And now this. Fungus. Disgust permeated his mind. Abhorrence. What the fuck was this shit going to make him do?
Jonas became aware of the stillness first. There, in the garden, it was as if even the breeze had ceased. Seconds ago, he’d felt connected to Camellia on a molecular level, but suddenly she wasgone, no longer in his mind. That song running through his veins had fallen silent. He searched for the connection, studying her averted face as he did so. She was looking out into the garden, her attention seemingly riveted on one of the exotics growing a few feet from the narrow path leading to her home.
The Middlemist Red blossoms framed the porch, but now they appeared to be simply normal plants, very large roselike bushes rather than something much more. He was suddenly completely alone when before, since entering the garden, he’d been saturated with awareness and vitality. His blood had buzzed with life, sparking with energy and an ever-flowing feed of sensory information. His body, his mind, forming countless connections to his surroundings, bright hot splashes of light, now completely burned out.
He took a deep breath. Whatever Whitney had done to him, he had done to Camellia first. She had been experimented on long before Jonas was. And by his instinctive revulsion over discovering yet another piece of his monstrous makeup, Jonas had broadcast a violent rejection not only of what Whitney had done to him but of Camellia herself. Everything about her. Who she was. What she was. At a basic level, he’d made her aware he was repulsed by what she was.
Jonas groaned inwardly. He’d just made a major blunder. He hadn’t been thinking in terms of Camellia. How could he explain to a woman who had endured years of Whitney’s experiments what it had been like for him those first years after he and his teammates had received Whitney’s “enhancements”? The discoveries and the accidental deaths? The self-loathing when innocent people you’d sworn to protect paid the price because you had no idea of the power you wielded or how to control it? He hadn’t marshaled his thoughts. He hadn’t considered he would have to, but he should have. His response had been a knee-jerk reaction.
