She sent him a genuine smile. “I know the word ‘fungus’ can sound off-putting. I don’t remember how I reacted, because I was used to all the strange experiments he performed on us. I didn’t seem to have any repercussions at the time. I was told to report anything new to him, and I honestly didn’t have anything to report. The mycelium connection is extremely subtle, and Whitney didn’t tell me what to look for. He never did.”
Jonas leaned toward her, his eyes going completely gold, utterly focused on her. She had leopard in her, and she recognized the cat instantly, but he had gone still, become the hunter as he absorbed the information. He was the predator. He couldn’t help it. That side of him was dominant. She tried not to react, not to feel uneasy. He wasn’t deliberately intimidating her, but she imagined any recipient of that stare would feel threatened.
“I was out on a mission when I first became aware, most likely the way you did, that danger was closing in on me,” she told him. “It was still a great distance away, so I knew the signal hadn’t come from any of the animal enhancements Whitney had given me. When I returned from the mission, I filtered through everything I knew for certain he had put inside me. When he told me ‘fungi,’ I looked up everything I could about mycelium and how it worked. Then I studied our brains and our nervous systems and how they worked together just in case. I had always been interested in plants, so I had already been studying and researching everything I could on the communication between them. I was extremely careful not to veer off course of what I was already working on, although I kept notes for myself off the computers and eventually was able to look up what I wanted.”
Jonas nodded his head. “That was smart, Camellia. Was Whitney aware at all of what you were doing?”
“We couldn’t use a computer without his knowledge. His techs always informed him of what we did on the Internet. I’m certain he knew, but I had researched since before I was in my teens on plants and mushrooms. My interest wasn’t anything new. I didn’t feel any hint of a connection with the mycelium network until my late teens. Whitney had already given up asking me. When it first happened, I wasn’t positive it was the mycelium network, but I have to admit, I had the opposite reaction as you when I discovered it. I was very excited. I thought if I could find a way to tap into it and communicate with it, I could not only send and receive messages from it and through it, but I could maybe develop a few of my own weapons.”
The moment the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to recall them. She even put her fingers over her mouth. She knew better than to be so loose-lipped. It was just that she hadn’t had anyone to talk to since she’d been with her sisters, and even then, they’d had to be so careful. In spite of the fact that she’d broken her connection with Jonas and she no longer even knew how to trust anyone, she wanted to trust him. She wanted to talk to him, openly, honestly. To share what she’d learned with someone like her.
For years she’d had only Middlemist Red as company. Now here Jonas was. Not just another living, breathing human being, but the one person she’d been genetically altered to find irresistible. She stifled a groan and tried to marshal both her wayward tongue and wayward thoughts, as well as build her defenses. Being close to Jonas was so difficult.
“How does the connection work?” Jonas asked. “Would you explain that to me?”
She was grateful he hadn’t asked about what weapons she might be developing. She knew that slip hadn’t escaped him, but he’d given her a pass, most likely knowing she would clam up if he pursued the subject.
“Fungi share more than half their DNA with humans. Did you know that? Mushrooms actually inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Quite a few of our most successful antibiotics were made possible due to shared pathogens. Fungi don’t rot from bacteria.”
Jonas flashed a brief smile that didn’t quite make more of a glint in his golden eyes. “Good to know. So we’re resistant to disease. That’s what you’re telling me, right?”
Her smile was wider than his. “I’m hoping that’s what it means. All those neurons in our bodies are quite like the mycelium, a network delivering messages to our bodies to do what we want them to do, right? They use both chemical and electrical means to do so. Remember I told you that the average human shares more than half their DNA with fungi? You and I share more, so we’re able to connect with an enormous underground system that already exists.”
“That system is used to keep a forest healthy.” He made it a statement but didn’t sound as certain, as if he were pulling up knowledge from some time ago.
“Yes. The mycelium spreads out underground and acts as an extremely efficient communication system. The fungi send chemical, electrical and hormonal signals. Not only do they communicate beneath the ground, but they send pheromones and scent signals.”
For no reason, she found herself blushing. Those eyes on her seemed even more intense. He clearly understood the consequences of what she was telling him. It wasn’t only the genetic pairing that caused their instant and very powerful physical attraction; the mycelium network they were both a part of had contributed as well. Camellia knew there was also a third influence at work, and it was a big one.
“Camellia, I would have looked at you with or without Whitney’s manipulations or any mycelium-produced pheromones. I came into the garden and got so close I was practically on top of you. I couldn’t see you and I couldn’t smell you. For pheromones to work on someone, it requires them to be able to scent you. I didn’t. And I assure you, I have an acute sense of smell. Maybe it’s true that the connections gave us an extra boost, but the attraction was there between us naturally, no matter what.”
Middlemist Red saw to it that Camellia hadn’t put out a fragrance to give her away when she went into phantom mode. Camellia didn’t know why Red hadn’t protected Jonas from her in the same way. He had also been in phantom mode. She had been unable to see him, but she’d caught the faint scent of those trees, one for certain not in her garden.
“The moment I actually saw you, my first thought was, ‘She’s the one you’ve been waiting for. The one you didn’t think existed.’ I don’t know why that thought slipped into my mind, but it did. There were no pheromones involved, and it wasn’t just the genetic pairing. I’d been in your garden and saw and felt the security network you set up, and I was in awe of your capabilities.” He pushed his fingers through his hair. “You didn’t have a team around you. You’d done it yourself. I knew you had. You were a force to be reckoned with.”
There was open admiration in his voice. He couldn’t fake that. A knot the size of her fist formed in her stomach, low and aching, responding to the blatant honesty in him. The way he made himself vulnerable. He might be a dominant male with aggressive, violent tendencies when it came to battle, but there was also something intrinsically honest, even noble about him. He possessed a core of decency and honor that all of Whitney’s scheming and experiments hadn’t tarnished. She couldn’t help but react to that in him.