Bear was in full attack mode, the beast in him seeing red. He let that rage well up and consume him, filling him with the pure enhanced strength, adrenaline and aggression of the polar bear. Nothing could save the puny man killing his friend. Nothing. He was on Jonas fast. The distance was short, and he could run up to twenty-five miles an hour if he needed to for a brief period of time.
Jonas dropped Hound’s body as if it were nothing but trash and whirled around to face Bear, his entire demeanor changing. Where before, he had appeared to resemble a leopard, his skin even appearing to take on a mottled leopard-like camouflage, now he seemed bigger, his skin darker, his eyes pitiless. It didn’t matter. One blow from Bear would tear that fucker in half. One swipe of his fist. That was all it would take. Bear roared a challenge.
To Bear’s astonishment, Jonas answered his challenge with a roar of his own, sounding so much like a grizzly it nearly stopped Bear midrush. The two slammed together, their bodies barreling into one another, fists flying as they grappled like two large bears in a dominance fight.
Bear expected to break bones with his enormous strength. He’d broken men’s spines with one punch of his fist driving right through a body, but he didn’t land a single blow on Jonas. The man was just too fast, freakishly fast, even for an enhanced. When Jonas smashed one of his fists into Bear’s ribs, he felt the bones cave like sticks, leaving him gasping for air.
The two men circled one another, each assessing the other. Bear had always ended a fight fast with any opponent. He won with his sheer brute strength. Jonas never gave him an opening. Never took his eyes off him. He appeared to be an experienced fighter, battle-scarred and more than willing to kill. He wasn’t enraged, he was methodical. Calculating.
Submit. Damn it, Bear, he’s going to kill you.
Never once had Crawley used that tone of desperation. He’d always had complete confidence in Bear’s enormous strength. Bear knew instinctively his beast would never surrender, nor would this enemy accept or trust it. The three of them had already betrayed their word.
He’ll kill me anyway. We didn’t do what he said.Bear knew just by that admission that he was telling Crawley he couldn’t win.
There was a brief silence.Maneuver the son of a bitch closer to me. You have to be clever about it, Bear. Use your brain. Don’t let the beast take over. We’re in this together. I’m not letting him have you. I think he’s alone. So far, no one else has shown up to help him out.
Bear didn’t think Jonas needed much help. He inched closer, and Jonas didn’t back up like any other fighter might do. He glided to the side, mirroring Bear’s footwork. That was when Bear realized the forest around them had fallen completely silent.
You hear that, Crawley? No birds. No rodents. Or reptiles. Everything in the forest is afraid of him.
Or they’re afraid of you, Bear,Crawley hastened to say.
Bear knew better because, for the first time since he’d been enhanced, he was scared. He could secretly admit it. He was facing a killing machine. Cold. Calculating. Cunning. Highly intelligent, trained and very experienced. He wasn’t just scared; he was terrified. He had to go on the offensive before he couldn’t think, only react. That would be a very bad place to be.
He rushed his enemy again, and Jonas gave no quarter, comingat him toe to toe, as if they were more bears than men. They swung punches, the force behind each individual blow enormous. He didn’t dare take a hit from one of Jonas’s massive fists, not when the man could punch with the force of a freight train. The most he could do was to try to follow Crawley’s advice. Maybe with the two of them, they’d have a chance to bring the bastard down.
It wasn’t easy to slip the punches, and Bear was an experienced fighter. Time slowed down, even though he knew it was only seconds that passed. He dodged and weaved and kept trying to use his superior size to push Jonas into moving back toward Crawley one step at a time. Just one small step. Maybe two. He was feeling desperate. Jonas was lightning fast, feinting one way and then striking another.
The kick came out of nowhere. The blow was savage because Bear wasn’t expecting it. He’d been concentrating on those fists with that blurring speed and power enough to break him in two. Jonas didn’t need his hands when he had a kick like that—far, far more brutal than anything his fist could have delivered—and there was no doubt the fist would have broken his spine. Bear felt bones shatter. One lung collapsed instantly while the other began a slow crumpling. Every organ in his body turned to jelly, cells ripped apart by that jarring, vicious kick that destroyed him.
Jonas stepped back and just stood watching him with eyes that were ice cold and utterly detached. A rifle spat out a warning shot and then another. As Bear collapsed, slowly falling to his knees, he tried to find Crawley, sending up a little prayer the man hadn’t been shot trying to get to him. Everything had happened so fast.
Crawley stood frozen several yards away, his hands locked behind his head, a stricken look on his face. Bear fell forward, his eyes, nose and mouth suddenly buried in a thick layer of leaves and dirt. Sounds dimmed. Receded altogether. The world went black.
10
Jonas trudged along the path, allowing Jeff and Kyle to stay between Crawley and him as they continued down the mountain toward their homes. He was connected to Camellia on three levels—through Whitney’s pairing, the mycelium underground network, which was very powerful and allowed them to share feelings very easily, and another network, one even more powerful. He suspected it was the Middlemist Red Camellia.
He tried to puzzle out how that would work. Those nerve endings. He saw her work on Kyle and take away his pain. He’d thought it was the mycelium running underground and through them, but he knew it was so much more. They were bound on a molecular level, through nerve endings and even in their brains.
He deliberately hadn’t disconnected from either of the two networks that connected them together when he became his true self. Telling Camellia was different than showing her the effects of the various predatory animals and reptiles Whitney had thought it would be a good idea to shove into him. Whitney had blended andmixed those violent traits until he had the most aggressive male he could possibly come up with. He had purposely enhanced an already dominant personality into something Jonas had to fight night and day.
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 tochallenge 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.
