Jeff nodded. “Don’t want to lose you any more than Jonas does. He might think you’re the love of his life, but we know you are.”
“Even though I can kick his ass?”
Jonas loved the amusement in her voice. That was his Camellia, her moods mercurial. Passionate. One minute hot with temper, the next full-on laughter. That was coming, he could feel it.
“He often needs his ass kicked,” Jeff admitted.
Jonas’s protest was lost before he could voice it. Camellia burst out laughing, the sound contagious. Beautiful. Impossible to resist.
A wolf howled in the distance. An owl screeched as if it missed its prey. That was their warning system, and they all sobered in an instant. It was time for the fog to start rolling in across the mountain. They would have to leave the safety of the garden. Jonas really hated taking Camellia with him, but at the same time, he knew she was right. If he didn’t, his attention would be divided. He wouldn’t stop worrying that he’d made the wrong decision.
She wrapped her hand around the thickest branch of the largest Middlemist Red Camellia shrub and stood there for a long moment, head bowed. Jonas went to her, both hands fitting on either side of hers, caging her in, opening his mind to hers.
At once, he felt the expansion of Camellia’s reach across the forest. It wasn’t confined to the garden and the plants there. She had tapped into the trees and brush, the flowers and shrubs, fern, fungi and even moss. All of those plants were connected through the underground network and the ruler of them—Red.
Camellia was very accepting and accepted. Nothing in the forest network questioned her presence because she was no threat tothem. Jonas buried his mind in hers. Once connected to her, their shared Middlemist Red properties allowed the neurons in their bodies to sync up so that he could see the way the nutrients moved from her to him and him to her—shared so all their nerve endings lit up as the process took place.
The liquid energy from Camellia was an interesting deep shade of pink, not red but a brilliant pink, while his was a dark purple. The two distinct streams of nutrients moved together, flowing in the proper direction because for once, he wasn’t raging. They moved together in harmony, stretching beyond the human body to find the veins of the mycelium beneath the ground.
I need warmth from the surface to cool rapidly and one hundred percent humidity to be achieved. The skies are clear tonight, and there is little to no wind. Red will have to have the plants help with that. I can’t do it. They have to.
Jonas remained silent. Camellia was confident she would receive help from the plants. They were her army. She had talked about weapons she’d developed. He should have asked more questions. He’d been thrown by the idea of floras as intelligent beings capable of protecting themselves. He hadn’t conceived that a plant might be just as capable of feeling emotions such as rage at betrayal or feeling loyalty, which Red clearly had in abundance for Camellia.
Camellia leaned her body into his, lifting her face toward him. He didn’t hesitate. Jonas took her mouth, his tongue tasting hers and then pushing deep, looking for the fire between them. It rose fast and hot, a scorching burn that refused to smolder but leapt into flames immediately. Both let go of the branch they held and wrapped their arms around each other. Jonas pulled her in tight against his body while he kissed her.
She fit so easily with him. He inhaled, drawing her into his lungs as he lifted his head. He found it so interesting that the majority of the time, it was impossible to catch her scent, especiallysince he had such an acute sense of smell. She sometimes exuded a subtle fragrance, but not when she was about to go into the field. When it was time for battle, her scent completely disappeared, just like now.
I can’t find your scent at all. Is that Red protecting you?
She nodded slowly, her blue eyes looking up at him.That’s one of the many things that help us disappear. You can’t be tracked through scent either. Haven’t you noticed?
He had been told by his team that even those with acute senses of smell couldn’t detect him at times. Yeah, he’d wondered, but he certainly hadn’t suspected a plant protecting him.
The four of them left the garden together. As they did, Jonas made certain to remove all traces that might lead Abrams’s scouts to Camellia’s garden. As he did so, grass and dirt pushed up behind where they walked. Little tendrils of fog began to rise along the trail and snake among the trees.
A wolf howled, this one sounding a little closer than before. Somewhere in the distance, another answered the call and then a third. A good minute passed. A fourth howled. Once they got on the main trail, Camellia and the three GhostWalkers began to run in single file, Jonas in front, Jeff bringing up the rear. The four waited nearly five minutes as they ran just in case the sentries had more information to deliver.
You’ll want to let Logan’s men know that there are four scouts heading their way. Three coming together although spread out. The fourth is hanging back,Camellia reported to the others.They’re running. We’re running. They’re about an hour from us.
That puts them about two hours from Logan’s men,Jeff calculated.
Jonas was well aware they only had an hour before they would be sneaking past the enemy scouts. He tried not to notice that the fog was nowhere near what it needed to be. Darkness had fallen, but there was enough of a moon to reveal any tracks on the groundto an enhanced scout. It was only a matter of time before they could see things the teams didn’t want them seeing. Jonas wasn’t worried for Kyle, Jeff, Camellia or himself, but he didn’t know the capabilities of the two men Team Two had sent to keep the enemy’s forward scouts from reaching the compound.
He had met the two men, of course. Antonio Martinez was a man who tended to stay in the shadows, much like Jonas did. You rarely noticed him, if ever. No one spoke of him or drew attention to him.
Wait. Who?Camellia’s voice was pure accusation. Her running faltered and she stepped off the trail, halting, both hands on her thighs, head down.Antonio Martinez?
The moment she stopped moving, they all froze. Jonas couldn’t help the flash of hurt at her first feeling of betrayal. He stopped himself from reacting. Of course her mind would go there first. Antonio had been a guard at one of the laboratories she had been imprisoned in. He’d been there with Kane Cannon, a member of Team Three. Both men had been assigned when Whitney was still in good standing with a number of power brokers in Washington.
“You know him?” Kyle asked.
“He was a guard at one of the facilities where I was a prisoner.” Camellia kept her head down as if she were trying to catch her breath from running.
Jonas knew she wasn’t having any trouble breathing. She was clearing her mind, pushing aside the first conclusion her brain had instinctively jumped to, which was that Jonas had betrayed her and was possibly selling her out to Whitney or to the government. She knew him. Believed in him. She was in his mind. Jonas kept his mouth shut and his thoughts ruthlessly corralled. He had to let her work it out, even if the time it took her to do it felt slow to him. She struggled with trust. He couldn’t blame her for that.
He had grown up in a loving environment. His heart hadn’tbeen battered and scarred by one betrayal after another. Just watching the way his team had handled her arrival gave him a little insight into what her life had been like. She was used to it. She’d been expecting betrayal and mistrust, and she’d been right. He had thought his endorsement of her would be enough, but it hadn’t been. That had shocked him. It had been an insult. He tried not to allow her reaction to Antonio’s name feel insulting to him.
Finally, Camellia lifted her head, her eyes so intensely blue they looked like two bruised cornflowers pressed into her face. “I’m sorry, honey. For a minute, all I could think about was Whitney’s torture camps. At the facility Antonio guarded, Whitney was conducting all kinds of experiments. He tortured us under the pretense of learning what would break a soldier. He kept inserting more and more horrific genetic materials into us. At the same time, he would tell us he was enhancing our psychic abilities. Already some of the girls were far past their ability to cope without filters.”
