"She wasn't reporting to you, she was snitching." God, there were times it was like dealing with children.
The door closed as Ely left the room, leaving Rachel and Jonas facing each other across the room now.
"Snitching is childish," Jonas rebutted. "Her report was logical, concise and to the point. There were no embellishments."
"I didn't say she was lying."
"He insulted you." Jonas straightened from the desk. "Not once, but repeatedly."
"And I insulted him back, not once, but repeatedly," she assured him. "It's over."
Jonas stared back at her, still fighting the same sense of amazement he had felt when Ely had come to him to describe the argument, not just between Leo and Elizabeth, but between Leo and Rachel.
This was his mate, and possibly the only person he knew who had gone up against the Leo, nose to nose, and called him on his own arrogance and manipulations. She had described the Breed to a T. He was impossible. A gamesman, and so certain he could bring Jonas to heel.
He'd been certain of it since the day he had stepped into that hospital where Callan Lyons had nearly died the year before.
There were so many of them. Breeds who hadn't had the chances others had because they weren't the children of Leo and Elizabeth.
Elizabeth hadn't deserved Jonas's disregard, and that was the conclusion Jonas had come to as the sun had risen that morning. But Leo, well, the Leo deserved far worse simply for attempting to use Rachel and Amber in his battle against Jonas.
"You held your own very well." Jonas turned and walked to the other side of Callan's desk. From there, he stared down at the computer monitor that still showed the deserted lab. "And though I appreciated Ely's report, I had already caught the tail end of it anyway."
He turned the monitor to face her. "Just so you know, when I kill the bastard, it won't be because of anything Ely said. It will be because of what I saw for myself."
What he had seen had filled him with pride. His mate, so proud, her temper flashing in her green eyes, her face flushed as she stood up to one of the strongest males of the Breed species.
And though he had seen something after she left, in both his father as well as his mother, that he hadn't expected, the fact that both of them in some way had been manipulating him didn't sit well with him. By the very fact of her silence, his mother had been playing the same game as Leo.
Bringing Jonas to heel.
Jonas wasn't a dog, and he didn't take commands so well.
Rachel lifted her gaze from the monitor and stared back at him, her gaze tinged with sorrow now. "He does love you, Jonas," she whispered. "Just as she does."
His lips quirked. "It isn't love, Rachel, because they have no idea of the man I am, nor do they respect the man they see. They regret. They ache for what could be but isn't. They hurt for what might never be, but it's not love such as what you feel for Amber, or even as they feel for Dane. Regret can hurt just as deeply as disappointment, sweetheart."
What was she supposed to say to that? She couldn't defend the Vanderales, because in her eyes, they were in the wrong. But a part of her knew Elizabeth loved her child, whether that child had come from her body or been created in a lab.
They left the office and collected Erin and Amber before heading back to the cabin. Amber was fast asleep and placed gently in her crib by Rachel. Jonas gave Erin her orders for the next day before sending the Breed female back to the barracks.
Kissing Amber gently on her forehead, Rachel covered the baby and quietly left the room. Closing the bedroom door, she stood for a moment and stared at Jonas as he gazed into the fire.
As though there were answers in the flames, she thought. He frowned into the newly lit fire with a concentration that hinted at the dilemma roiling through him.
"A mother's love is all-consuming and complete," she stated quietly as he lifted his head. "A father's love is often veiled in the appearance of disappointment, or exacting expectations. It isn't regret, disappointment or whatever else you want to see it as. It's a parent's love, and a parent that even now, despite the veil of civilization, still doesn't know how to handle or to show the emotions that fill him."
His lips quirked. "God made woman to help him come up with excuses for man."
"He made woman to love man," she retorted.
"Yeah, probably because he knew nothing else would," he snorted.
She wasn't going to argue it. Rachel shook her head with a slight smile, watching as he moved slowly toward her now.
There was a new purpose in him, a hunger that had less to do with lust and more to do with pure, confusing emotion.
Like the Leo, Jonas wasn't always certain of the emotions he felt or what to do with them. These men, Breeds, they loved their women and children with a dedication that bordered the extreme at times, but when it came to loving anyone else, they became contradictory masses of complete denial.