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Beside him, Kade frowned, jet-black brows furrowing over his wolfy, silver eyes. "You okay?"
"Peachy," Brock muttered, irritated by the public show of concern, even though it was coming from the one warrior who was as tight as a brother to him. And even though the hard stab of Jenna's trauma was shredding him from the inside out, Brock merely shrugged. "No big thing, just par for the course."
"You've been eating that female's pain for almost a week straight,"
Lucan reminded him. "If you need a break--"
Brock hissed a low curse. "Nothing wrong with me that a few hours back out on patrols tonight won't cure."
His gaze strayed to the small panel of clear glass that looked in on the infirmary room. Like all of the Breed, Brock was gifted with an ability unique to himself. His talent for absorbing human pain and suffering had helped keep Jenna comfortable since her ordeal in Alaska, but his skills were just a Band-Aid at best.
Now that she was conscious and able to provide the Order with whatever information they needed about her time with the Ancient and the alien material embedded inside her, Jenna Darrow's problems were her own.
"There's something more you all need to know about the female,"
Brock said as he watched her carefully swing her bare legs over the edge of the bed and stand up. He tried not to notice how the white hospital gown rode halfway up her thighs in the instant before her feet touched the floor.
Instead he focused on how readily she found her balance. After five days of lying flat on her back in an unnatural sleep, her muscles absorbed her weight with only the smallest tremor of instability. "She's stronger than she should be. She can walk without help, and a few minutes ago, when it was just Alex and me in the room with her, Jenna was getting agitated about wanting to see her brother. I went to touch her and calm her down, and she deflected my hand. Tossed me off like no big thing."
Kade's brows rose. "Forgetting the fact that you're Breed and have the reflexes to go along with it, you've also got about a hundred pounds on that female."
"My point exactly." Brock glanced back at Lucan and the others. "I don't think she realized the significance of what she'd done, but there's no mistaking the power she threw at me without really trying."
"Jesus," Lucan whispered tightly, his jaw rigid.
"Her pain is stronger now than it has been before, too," Brock added.
"I don't know what's going on, but everything about her seems to be intensifying now that she's awake."
Lucan's scowl deepened as he glanced at Gideon. "We're certain she's human, and not a Breedmate?"
"Just your basic Homo sapiens stock," the Order's resident genius confirmed. "I asked Alexandra to conduct a visual scan of her friend's skin right after they arrived from Alaska. There was no teardrop-and-crescent-moon birthmark anywhere on Jenna's body. As for blood work and DNA, all of the samples I took came back clear, as well. In fact, I've been running tests every twenty-four hours, and there's been nothing notable. Everything about the woman to this point--aside from the presence of the implant--has been perfectly mundane."
Mundane? Brock barely refrained from scoffing at the inadequate word. Of course, neither Gideon nor any of the other warriors had been present for the head-to-toe body search performed on Jenna upon her arrival at the compound. She'd been racked with pain, drifting in and out of consciousness from the time Brock, Kade, Alex, and the rest of the team who'd joined them in Alaska had made the trip back home to Boston.
Given that he was the only one who could level her out, Brock had been drafted to stay at Jenna's side and keep the situation under control as best as it could be. His role was supposed to have been purely professional, clinical and detached. A specialized tool kept close at hand in case of an emergency.
Yet he'd had a startlingly unprofessional response to the sight of Jenna's unclothed body. It had been five days ago, but he remembered every exposed inch of her ivory skin as though he were looking at it again now, and his pulse kicked at the memory.
He recalled every smooth curve and sloping valley, every little mole, every scar--from the ghost of a c-section incision on her abdomen, to the smattering of healed puncture wounds and lacerations that peppered her torso and forearms, telling him she'd already come through hell and back at least once before.
And he'd been anything but clinical and detached when Jenna lapsed into a sudden convulsion of agony in the moments after Alex had finished searching in vain for a birthmark signifying that her friend was a Breedmate like the other women who lived at the Order's compound. He'd placed his hands on both sides of her neck and drawn the pain away from her, all too aware of how soft and delicate her skin was beneath his fingertips. He fisted his hands at the thought as it rose up on him now.
He didn't need to be thinking about the woman, naked or otherwise.
Except now that he'd gone there, he could think of damned little else. And when she glanced up and caught his gaze through the glass of the little window in the door, an unbidden heat went through him like a flaming arrow.
Desire was bad enough, but it was the odd sense of protectiveness serving as a chaser that really threw him off kilter. The feeling had begun in Alaska, when he and the other warriors first found her. It hadn't faded in the days she'd been at the compound. If anything, the feeling had only gotten stronger, watching her fight and struggle through the strange sleep that had kept her unconscious since she'd come out of her ordeal with the Ancient in Alaska.
Her frank gaze still held his from across the infirmary: cautious, almost suspicious. There was no weakness in her eyes, nor in the slight tilt of her chin. Jenna Darrow was clearly a strong female, despite all she'd been through, and he found himself wishing she'd been a mess of tears and hysteria instead of the cool, in-control woman whose unflinching stare refused to let him go.
She was calm and stoic, as brave as she was beautiful, and it sure as hell wasn't making her less intriguing to him.
"When was the last time you ran blood work and DNA?" Lucan asked, the grave, low-voiced question giving Brock something else to focus on.
Gideon pushed back his shirtsleeve to check his watch. "I drew the last sample about seven hours ago."
Lucan grunted as he pivoted away from the infirmary door. "Run everything again now. If the readings have changed so much as an iota from the last sample, I want to hear about it."
