Authors: Lora Leigh
You die, your father dies, and any friends or family that I ferret out as yours will die as well. Do you believe me?”
She licked her lips and nodded. “I would expect it. But I won’t betray you.”
He nodded abruptly. “My men will escort you out of the city. Return to your home and await contact.”
“Soon?” she asked as she rose slowly from her chair. “Please, soon. So far, the girls aren’t mistreated, mostly because my father ensures it. But, they’re getting older,” she whispered. “The three oldest are already over eighteen. He won’t be able to protect them for much longer.”
“Then you better be persuasive with your father and your friends,” he growled. “Because I don’t jump through rings and risk myself and my men as easily as you seem to think I should. Female Coyotes are worth some risk. The men there willing to do what they must for freedom are worth the risk. But never doubt you have spies there, and I’ll know who they are before I come in. And I’ll know, lovely Anya, if you are friend or foe. Make sure you stay on the friend side of the equation. I don’t care about killing a female if she betrays me.”
She stared back at him, then her chin lifted in determination and feminine arrogance. Hell, this one should have been a Breed herself. She was that daring. That courageous.
“If one of those girls dies before you make your decision,” she whispered, voice trembling, “then you are the one that better be careful, Del-Rey whoever the hell you are. I might be a child in your eyes, but I’d make a very bad enemy.”
She was threatening him? He wanted to laugh in surprise at her sheer daring. Instead, he merely chuckled, rapped the wall and waited for Brim to step inside.
“Get her out of here quickly and quietly,” he ordered the other man. “Return her to the train station. She’s going back to her nice, safe little home.”
Brim gave the girl a hard look before nodding and standing back to allow her to leave the room.
She moved past him, then turned and stared back at Del-Rey.
“You should smile,” she told him softly, surprising him yet again. “I bet you’re really cute when you smile.”
He held the smile back until she left, then shook his head as a grin shaped his lips. The little imp.
He was going to have a bit of trouble on his hands with this one, he could see. And a bit of a challenge.
TWO YEARS LATER
“This is insanity.” Anya jumped from the chair in the back of yet another dirty room and faced the man that entered the room. “You have to move faster than this.”
Del-Rey. Dark blond hair grew to his shoulders, black eyes so deep that at times they reflected the faintest hint of blue.
A darker blond brow arched at her outburst as he watched her coolly. He watched her the same as he had two years before, when she’d met him the first time. The half dozen times she’d seen him since had changed nothing in how he treated her.
But something in her had changed. She dreamed of him too often. Thought of him too often.
“I told you this doesn’t happen quickly,” he warned her. “Those labs are not exactly easily accessible, darlin’. We’re doing our best. And if your Coyote friend is as smart as I suspect she is, then she knew the wait would be a long one.”
“Breeds are being rescued all over the world,” she argued fiercely. “Labs just as secure have been penetrated.”
“And many, many lives have been lost,” he warned her. “For the moment, your labs are safe from the killings that are everyday business with the other Breeds. They don’t kill Coyotes unless they begin to show mercy. So far, those in your group are too young to be in much danger.”
“They are already starting to transfer the older ones.” Her fists clenched at her side at the memory of the group that had gone out over a month ago. “We can’t continue to wait like this.”
“Six were transferred, and once they cleared Russian borders, they were extracted. Three died for warning their guards that they were being rescued as we made the attempt.” He lifted the camcorder from the desk and switched it on before setting it in front of her. “I believe you knew them.”
Shock, betrayal. Anya’s eyes widened as she stared at the recording. Three of the Coyotes that she and Sharone had protected countless times had betrayed the others as the rescue group moved in. They had turned weapons on their fellow Breeds. Their eyes hard, they spouted Council bullshit in cold voices.
“The other three are alive and safe at the moment,” he promised her when the video finished.
“Get the girls out like that.” She jerked her gaze back to his in desperation. “I can arrange their transfers.”
He shook his head. “Aren’t you leaving something out, little Anya?”
He surprised her with the question.
“What do you mean?”
“Your father had those girls assigned to you as protective detail. I believe you’ve received an offer from the Genetics Council itself to head an office that would coordinate the admistrative and security duties involved in keeping their organization more secretive.”
She frowned. She had received such an offer, but how had he known?
“Doctors Chernov and Sobolova have requested that I stay assigned to the current lab until I’m twenty-two.” She let a smile tug at her lips. “They offered proof to the GC that I’m not nearly as proficient in the new programs as they had hoped I would be.”
It was deliberate, of course. Her father had warned her such an offer might arrive, and Anya had made certain she began to appear to be lagging in certain areas.
“Indeed,” he drawled. She suspected there was a wealth of mockery in that single word. But this man was often mocking, and always hard. But, sometimes, she saw amusement, perhaps a hint of softening.
“Indeed.” She rolled her eyes. “Which is totally beside the point, I could arrange for the girls be transferred. It would be simple enough.”
“No.” His voice was hard. Firm. “Here are three pictures. Do you know these men?”
She frowned down at the photos and pointed to one. “This is Aleski Dornovo, he’s a Breed trainer, ex-Russian Elite hit squad. He was sort of black ops for many years.” She tapped the next one. “Graco, he’s one of the older Breeds at the lab. Very quiet. Colder than the others. This is Cavalier. He’s dead on the inside,” she said sadly. “He came from another lab just ahead of the rescues. I heard it was a brutal lab to be in.”
“And yours isn’t?” he asked her.
She shook her head slowly and lifted her eyes to him, feeling the pain that filled her at the thought of what the Breeds suffered. “No. Doctors Chernov and Sobolova believe that loyalty begins with loyalty. They begin training with rewards for proper behavior. They refuse to conduct experiments on the Breeds they created, citing that it would begin a breakdown in that loyalty. They’re very high ranking within their fields. The Council rarely refuses them whatever they ask. They kill as example only.” She felt the tears that edged at her eyes. “But still, they kill.”
“You’re too softhearted,” he scoffed. “Death happens every day. “This man,” he tapped Cavalier’s picture, “watch him closely.”
“Is he an enemy?” She stared up at him, feeling her heart clench. She liked Cavalier. She never talked to him, she wasn’t allowed around the male Coyotes, but there was something haunted and sad in his eyes.
“Enemy or friend, I haven’t decided yet. Have Sharone watch him closely. She interacts with the male Breeds more than you’re allowed. Correct?”
“Correct,” she said heavily. “You’re not coming for them yet, are you?”
“Not yet,” he told her. “We’re going to weed out the chaff before we come in for the harvest.
There’s no other way to do this, Anya. Not and maintain your safety as well as the female Breeds you’re trying so hard to protect.”
Sharone had warned her that to do this right, it would take him years. She hadn’t believed it. She did now.
“Graco is certainly a spy,” he warned her then. “We have proof of it. Have him transferred if you can do so without suspicion.”
She nodded. “Father and the scientists make that decision. They normally follow Father’s recommendations though.”
Her father was head of security and training, and he listened to her opinion, he valued it. The fact that she was betraying him haunted her often. The fear that he could pay with his life for her actions was a constant.
“You won’t kill my father?” she asked him again. She asked him each time they met, to be certain. “You won’t hurt him?”
“Your father won’t die,” he promised her. “I promised you I wouldn’t harm your family, Anya.”
She inhaled heavily. “I’ll make certain Graco is transferred. I’ll get word to you when it’s arranged.”
“Be brave, Anya.” He surprised her with the words, with the deepening of his voice. “Nothing worth having comes quickly.”
She nodded bleakly. “Freedom is worth fighting for,” she whispered. “It’s worth dying for.”
Her friends weren’t animals. The Coyotes created in the labs she worked and lived within were created to follow orders, to be cold, to be hard, but Anya had seen so much more in them over the years. She prayed she would soon see them free.
FOUR YEARS LATER
Del-Rey stared at the young woman standing on the other side of the table as he and his lieutenants studied the diagrams she had brought with her. Electrical lines, water pipes, tunnel access beneath the labs, security weaknesses—she had brought everything they would need. But one crucial key was missing, and he dared not tell her that.
An ace.
Every great mission needed an ace. That one card that he knew would trump all opposition—that trump was Anya herself. Her father was head of security and training. Two cousins were team leaders in security. Various relatives worked within the labs. She was the baby of the family, cherished by father and cousins, and by the Coyotes that remained in the labs, she was seen as their greatest treasure.
They would die for her, die with her or die trying to save her. It wouldn’t matter to them. If she said,
Walk through hell for me
, then those men and five women within that damned lab would head to the bowels of the earth with a smile.
There were twenty left. When they came out, they would join the forty men he had already amassed over the years. All Coyote males, hardened and cold as death. They had only their honor, which they had been taught had been bred out of them, and the principles that brought them together.
His men outnumbered those inside, but he was betting when he took the ace, the Breeds in those labs would cheer. There wasn’t a one that was comfortable with leaving her behind.
But he knew the cost to the young woman that had become an integral part of his life over the past six years. She had weeded out the chaff, made certain nothing but loyal Breeds remained.
She had done her part. He had agreed to her terms, and he was going to break the deal before it even began and she wouldn’t even know it before it was too late.
“Father and my cousins Ivan and Donan will have their teams here.” She pointed out the general areas that the security teams believed were weak. “They aren’t aware of the tunnels that lead from the labs to this cave.” She pointed out the cave. “I asked Father if the scientists didn’t have secure access underground and he said no. There is no other access. But I found the tunnel myself and followed it.”
And she was damned proud of herself. Hell, he was proud of her, even though his guts cramped at the thought of what could have happened if she had been caught.
“We have to do this soon,” she told him. “Enough of your excuses, we have only months and the Council will be moving me to St. Petersburg for admin training there in the offices of the Federation Secret Forces. If that happens, then all these years have been wasted.”
“And when it happens, what then?” he asked her. “What happens to the humans who worked within your labs?”
“Father will take care of me,” she told him confidently. “He’s already attempting to have the decision reversed, along with the scientists there. If the Breeds there escape, then the security forces will be reassigned. They will find the fault that will be programmed into their new security system and believe that my trainer overlooked my obvious incompetence to make himself appear brighter for having a protégée. I’ve seen what they do when this happens. They drop both trainer and protégée, who are then lucky to work in the factories.”
“A factory suits you then?” he asked her curiously.
Her smile, impish and teasing, curled at her lips. “I will talk Father into going to America then.
It’s much warmer than Siberia.”
This was true enough, and she would indeed be taken to America. Though her father would not be traveling along with her. Del-Rey would be though. He had plans. Plans he had already set into motion, and Anya figured into many of them. Once this rescue was carried off, they would go to Colorado, petition the Wolf Breeds for an alliance and join the Breed society.
It wouldn’t be easy to convince the Wolves to allow an alliance, but he had proof of their work over the past years. Ten years living in the shadows, being no more than ghosts, free yet chained by the bonds of being forced to hide who and what they were from everyone.
“I’ll contact you soon,” he said.
He was lying to her, and not for the first time. For six long years, he had lied to this beautiful woman-child. He had watched her grow from a gangly teenager filled with fire and a thirst for her friends’ freedom. He had watched her plot, plan and implement his orders from a distance.
She was a fucking genius in administration and personnel. Intuitive, she could take a look at a group and damned near size them up instantly. She’d already done it with his men, and he had to grit his teeth when she informed him several of his men were too damned lazy. Hell, they were Coyotes, they needed a few faults or they’d be fucking Wolves.
There was something about her though, something he could never put his finger on, that drew him. Even when she was too young to be amused by or drawn to him, still, she had drawn him.
“I don’t want to be contacted soon, Del-Rey,” she informed him fiercely. “I’m only months from my birthday. This can’t be put off any longer.”