Authors: Lora Leigh
He was racing around the top of a particularly steep area of the cliff, using juniper and holly, piñon and pine for cover, when he glimpsed the fallen form.
Fuck. Ashley.
Motioning his men around the perimeter, weapons aimed into the mountain below, he moved for the fallen form. Gripping her shoulder, he pulled her to her back and found her knife nicking his throat as he jerked back.
“Oops. Del.” Her smile flashed in the dark. “Hey, find that fucker shooting at me ’kay? Coya’s coming up the pass now. And turn off those fucking links, they have our codes.”
He flipped off the link and turned to pass the message. How the hell had they gotten the link codes?
“Are you hurt?” He crouched beside her, scanning the darkness, his night vision picking up the movement in the pine below.
“Naw. Broke a nail though,” she hissed. “Good thing they guarantee me for forty-eight hours, because this one is going to have to be fixed. I might have even skinned my cuticle.”
Fuck. He would have gaped at her if he hadn’t scented his coya moving up the trail.
He pushed her to the waiting Breed lying on his belly, and watched as the Breed dragged her into the cover of the boulders to his side.
Lying flat, he motioned the men behind him to do the same as he made his way to the trail. There were areas he could crouch and run, but getting to her was torturous.
“I smell alpha ahead,” Emma announced as Sharone pushed at Anya’s back, forcing her faster up the trail. “He’s close.”
“Get on your stomachs.” Del-Rey’s growl sliced through the night, enraged, echoing with fury and sending relief thundering through Anya.
“Belly,” Sharone reminded her, pushing her down as they started crawling quickly toward his voice.
“Ashley?” Anya hissed into the night. “Did you find her?”
“I found her.” He was suddenly there, gripping her wrists and dragging her over the rise. “Stay down. I’ll pull you.”
“Ashley?” she whispered again, terrified.
“She broke a fucking nail,” he snapped out. “She’s fine until I get my hands on her. Now move.”
He pushed her toward the Breeds, who pulled her around the boulder.
Sharone followed, collapsing against a boulder and breathing out roughly.
“Martin, Jax, Ryan and Cross,” Del-Rey snarled. “Get those four back to Base and lockdown until I contact. Apprise Brim we’re on comm blackout. Shut down all comm until I arrive.”
Nothing was said. Sharone was crouched, pushing Anya ahead of her again as they moved with the four Breeds who surrounded them at Del-Rey’s command. All four had been in the Russian facility. They were hard and well trained, and they knew well how to kill and how to protect.
“The moment we get to Base you turn right back around and go back for your alpha,” Anya hissed.
“Sorry, Coya,” Ryan said miserably. “He didn’t say come back; we don’t go back. We could mess him up being in the field and him not expecting it.”
Anya locked her teeth together as they ran now. Dammit, Ryan was supposed to obey her, not Del-Rey. But it made sense. Okay, that made sense. Del-Rey would know this territory well enough. He had staked it out long before they had arrived here.
She couldn’t help but worry. She knew better than to worry; a few trespassing bastards looking for the Coyote coya, their alpha female, didn’t have a chance against Del-Rey. She knew that.
But something inside her insisted on worrying. Aching. And fearing. Because she had seen his eyes. When he made it back to Base, there was going to be hell to pay.
CHAPTER 5
Anya paced Command through the night. She ignored Brim’s firm suggestions that she should retire to bed, glaring at him each time he suggested it, even though she had sent her bodyguards to their rooms hours before.
She chewed at her thumbnail; she growled at the techs when they told her time and again there was no way to pinpoint their alpha’s position without comm going back online, and she wasn’t willing to risk that either.
She ached from head to toe; exhaustion was a bitch she fought tooth and nail, and she railed at herself for not having the same stamina and endurance the Coyote Breeds had. She was supposed to be their coya, their female alpha, and yet she couldn’t manage two days without sleep? They could go for days; she had seen Sharone go for more than a week with barely more than a twenty-minute nap here and there, while Anya had collapsed more than once and slept like the dead.
Daylight was peeking over the mountains as she stood by the silent communications techs and waited. All communications was shut down. Soldiers had been sent to Haven to inform them of status and to secure their own communications. Safeguards would go into effect once Del-Rey and his men returned, but as she had told the communications techs months ago, Del-Rey should have already placed safeguards for just this eventuality.
As they had told her, he was never on base long enough and those safeguards required not just his permission, but also his help.
It hadn’t been stated, but she had seen the look in their eyes. It was because of her that he was never there long enough to fulfill his own duties.
So now she was staring at a silent comm board with no way of knowing if the Breeds in the field were alive or dead. No way of knowing if Del-Rey was safe or wounded. She couldn’t consider anything else.
The two missing soldiers had been brought in an hour after her return, slightly dazed and bleeding from several wounds. Med tech had been forced to send them to Haven as they didn’t have the supplies or the experience to treat them.
They needed their own damned doctors. What if Del-Rey was seriously wounded? Dr. Armani didn’t know enough about Coyote genetics to do more than stitch them up. And sometimes, with the Wolf Breeds, severe wounds caused unexplained infections, fevers, almost rabid behaviors in some cases, if the wounds were bad enough.
If that happened to a Coyote Breed, then they could die. Del-Rey could die.
It had been nearly eight hours since she had returned, she estimated; looking at the clock again, perhaps closer to ten. They had left the caverns late to go on the training exercise, later than usual. Otherwise, those hunters would have managed to slip right up on them. They were usually much farther toward the base of the mountain.
Someone had been watching them. They had known about the exercises. Somehow, security had been penetrated enough that the enemy had nearly blindsided them.
“Pacing the floor and glaring at the comm board isn’t going to make time pass any faster,” Brim told her as he stepped back into the command room carrying coffee. Two cups. God bless his heart. She took one of them.
“That cup was for your communications tech,” he pointed out.
“Comm is down; he can go get his own,” she muttered as she sipped at the caffeine-laced brew.
It was rare that she could sneak the real thing past her bodyguards. And they always managed to make her spill it or find a way to steal it.
Several times Ashley had found a way to just spit in it before she smiled back at Anya impishly, knowing damned good and well she wouldn’t be drinking it then.
She caught the smile the communications tech threw Brim before he pushed back his chair and headed into the lounge.
“You can get hyper as hell for all I care.” Brim shrugged. “It’s not going to change anything.
He’s going to come in here tearing ass over this one, and it won’t be my ass he’s tearing this time.”
She narrowed her eyes at him over her coffee cup. His thick black hair was cut short, short enough that sometimes it would spike on his head. Light blue eyes regarded her coolly. He always watched her coolly, ever since the first time she had seen him. Nothing seemed to touch Brim. He never worried, he never got in a hurry, he never got excited. He just wisecracked and glided through life.
“He has no reason to tear anyone’s ass here,” she finally retorted. “It’s not our fault those bastards found a way to access our comm codes.”
“You think that’s why he’s going to be pissed?” He let his lips quirk as though in amusement.
None of that amusement showed in his eyes though. “Coya, you were out there with comm links deactivated, and without apprising Command you were outside the caverns. He’s going to tear the asses of every soldier that saw you slip out and didn’t report it. Then he’s going to strip your bodyguards to the bone. Ashley’s going to cry those pretty alligator tears for him and probably get off easiest. Emma and Sharone are going to take it like the soldiers they were trained to be, and that’s just going to piss him off more because he hates it when they go all stoic soldier on him. Then by the time he works his way to you . . .” Amusement might have touched his eyes at this point. “Well, let’s just say, he’ll probably have his most fun where you’re concerned. He’s been rather upset over that separation order, you know. Maybe you should start planning that official acceptance ceremony. You’ll need it once the two of you come up for air.”
He was laughing at her. As though a wedding ceremony would do anything more than assure the Breeds of all species that Del-Rey had accepted her as his mate and their female alpha. She could refuse him, as Hope had explained, but if he refused her, then she could become fair game when it came to the more savage qualities that were a part of the Breeds’ genetics. Respect came in many forms. An alpha leader earned it. A human female could only marry into it in Breed society.
“The poor baby,” she expressed mockingly. “Really, Brim, why don’t you just go ahead and have a laugh over it? I’m sure we’d all love to join in. Later maybe.”
He chuckled then. “Ashley’s rubbing off on you. Or are you the one that taught her all that girly crap?”
Her nostrils flared as she turned away from him and sipped at the coffee. Neither Ashley, Sharone nor Emma was here to steal this cup from her; she was going to enjoy it.
Where the hell was Del-Rey anyway?
“Do you think everything’s okay?” She turned back to Brim worriedly. “If he was hurt, we would know, wouldn’t we?”
He looked at her in surprise. “He’s not hurt, Coya.”
“How do you know?” She followed him when he turned away from her and picked up the e-pad he’d been filing reports on earlier.
His gaze moved back to her. “If the alpha was hurt, a comm link would have been activated with an emergency distress well away from him. We would have received it, and every soldier on base and in Haven would have streamed over that mountain like killer ants. Satisfied?”
She breathed in roughly and stared up at him in regret. “You don’t like me, do you, Brim?”
Surprise flickered in his eyes then.
“Why would you think that? You’re my coya, same as Del-Rey is my alpha. It’s against the rules to dislike you.”
Was there amusement in his eyes? No, she must have been mistaken, but it was obvious he had no intention of playing fair this morning. He and Del-Rey were too much alike for that.
“Thank you,” she whispered before turning away and pacing back to the lounge, where she sat down on the long couch that sat inside the glass-enclosed room.
The caverns were inordinately quiet for this time of the morning. The Coyotes seemed to walk on tiptoes through the area as they moved about their duties. Teams hadn’t been called out, but that didn’t mean teams weren’t ready to go. Every soldier on base was armed to the teeth and ready to move if needed. They were dressed in their plain military uniforms, the ones with the Wolf Breed insignia on the shoulder.
They needed their own insignia. It would promote a feeling of pride in their own endeavors.
They were too often mistaken for Wolves, and she knew they often remarked on it.
There was a deliberate laziness about the men that had originated with Del-Rey, one that had been picked up by the others. After all, as Del-Rey often stated, if they were perfect, they’d be Wolves.
She finished the coffee slowly as she waited. When the cup was empty, she set it on the table and paced the room, her hands shoved into the pockets of the comfortable cotton pants she’d changed into after showering the night before. A long T-shirt fell to her thighs and her bra was irritating the crap out of her.
She paced the room several times before throwing herself into the corner of the couch and glaring into the command room again.
Brim was sitting in her chair. That was her chair when he and Del-Rey were off base.
Unfortunately the order of separation gave him command of that chair while Del-Rey was on base, rather than allowing her to retain it. Brim should have been second-in-command to her with Del-Rey gone. Or out there protecting his alpha’s superior, arrogant butt.
She leaned her elbows on her knees before pushing her fingers through her hair in frustration.
Okay, so they weren’t going to be able to slip out and play their games anymore. At least, not without backup. She could handle that. She was so used to Base and communications being secured that she had deemed the threat acceptable. She had nearly made a deadly mistake, and that mistake weighed heavily on her shoulders.
Sharone, Emma and Ashley weren’t just bodyguards. They were her dearest friends. She had been raised with them; she thought sometimes they were the sisters her parents had never given her.
She rolled her shoulders, which ached from exhaustion, then shivered against the chill filling her.
She felt chilled all the time, and she had grown colder still after Del-Rey hadn’t returned within an hour of her. How long did it take anyway to catch five bastards looking to kill? One of the Coyote snipers could have taken care of them easily.
Breathing out in irritation, she curled up in the corner of the couch and dragged the little blanket that rested over the back of it over her. She was too cold. And too worried. If he was hurt, it would be her fault. And it wasn’t fair, she thought with an edge of self-pity. If anyone got to hurt him, it should be her. Not strangers that didn’t know him.
The problem was, she thought, she didn’t want to hurt him. She was too worried to consider hurting him. She just wanted him home.
Once again, Del-Rey was forced to follow his mate’s scent through the caverns to find her. With comm down, there was no calling Brim to locate his once again missing mate, and that was pissing him off.