Authors: Lora Leigh
Which meant she belonged to him and everything he was. Even more, he belonged to her in the same way.
“Jonas showed me your file,” Hope admitted then. “Our director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs is amazingly efficient. That file listed your IQ as pretty much off the charts. Notes in the files state that anything you ‘want’ to learn, you excel at quickly and I’ve seen that. You’ve taken your place as the coya of your pack in a matter of months. You knew inside you couldn’t escape it, Anya. You didn’t want to escape it, or Del-Rey. Did you?”
“At the time, I had to.” And she had known that then as she knew it now. “That doesn’t mean I know how to be the woman he needs or that old hurts are easily forgotten,” she whispered.
“Being coya is a far cry from being a Breed’s mate, isn’t it?”
Hope nodded slowly. “Yes, it is. But being a Breed’s mate can quickly become even more important than anything you ever imagined, Anya. His lover. Letting him be the man you love.
It’s growth. Just as you’ve grown in the past eight months. Because you wanted to grow. It was in you to do it, and you did it far quicker than any of us anticipated.”
“You were working me.” She saw it now. Eight months of being worked, slowly, surely.
“Only in the most loving ways. We’re pack, Coya. We stick together and we help our own. It’s the only way we’ll survive in this crazy world we’ve been drawn into,” Hope said softly before her gaze shifted past Anya.
Anya twisted around, watching as Dr. Armani moved from surgery, her dark face creased in a frown as she pulled the mask from her face and found Anya’s gaze.
Anya was on her feet and moving to her, even as Brim stepped between them.
“Status,” Brim snapped.
Anya laid her hand on his arm and moved in front of him. She was aware of his irritation, the tension in his body as he stepped aside.
“Coya, I need a Coyote assistant,” Armani sighed. “Why did they kill all their scientists? We could have used one.”
Because their scientists were mad—not evil, not cruel, but their search for the perfect unfeeling warrior had been relentless. Letting them live hadn’t been an option. The two Anya had hidden were the exception.
“Something’s wrong?” Anya asked carefully.
“He’s already started healing.” Dr. Armani grimaced, shaking her head. “The wound was healing around the bullet, which made it harder to extract. He’ll be conscious within an hour, I predict, and back on his feet within a few days, but the bruising has gone bone-deep. He’s going to be growling for a while.”
“He growls anyway,” Anya stated. “Can I see him?”
“I need to talk to him first,” Brim protested. “He’s going to have questions I need to answer.
He’ll have orders to keep Base moving effectively.”
Anya turned back to him slowly. “I’ll see him first. Base is covered for the moment with all security protocols enacted until further word from Del-Rey, myself or you. You can allow me five minutes before he turns back into the big, bad Coyote.”
“The big, bad Coyote returns the moment he opens his eyes,” Armani snorted. “I do want to keep an eye on him. The branch he landed on nearly punctured vital organs. His Coyote genetics still aren’t familiar enough to me. White blood counts, hormonal levels, shift in the mating hormones.” She shook her head. “Even heart rate and pulse are different from Wolf Breeds. I’m flying in the dark with him.”
“He’ll heal,” Brim challenged her. “He always does.”
Anya nodded at the doors. “I want to see him now.”
“Anya, I need in there first,” Brim countered her again.
“Now, Dr. Armani.” Anya ignored him.
“Mates come first, Brim,” Armani told him. “Come on, Coya, I’ll show you to your mate.” She turned back to her, and they pushed through the surgery room doors. “While you’re here, its time for your hormonal shot. We need to do that before you go in to him. We don’t want to forget it.”
Anya paused. She stared at the doctor as she let herself mentally scan her body and its reactions.
For eight months a part of her had felt almost dead inside. She attributed that to the hormone, and she realized she didn’t want to feel it any longer. She knew what she intended to do; she didn’t need the hormone shot any longer. Del-Rey would ensure she didn’t hurt, because he would ensure she was taken often.
“No more shots,” she said softly as Armani arched her brows.
“You know what will happen,” she told her. “It could happen in phases or it could slam into you, catching you unaware. Be certain, Anya.”
“I’m certain.”
As Anya stepped into the recovery room and stared at Del-Rey stretched out on the white hospital bed, she affirmed that decision. She was ready to take her place, ready to accept what she had once thought she could never accept.
Right now, she had a hard time believing he was hurt in any way.
The sheet covered bandages; the raw scrapes and scratches on his face and upper torso were already healing. Coyotes, her father had once told her, were a sheer work of art. Their genetics were exceptional. They healed faster. They ran faster. They could process information faster and make decisions faster than any other Breed. Then he would shake his head and say, “Too bad they’re still just killers. They could have been a benefit to mankind rather than soulless beings created to kill.”
The scientists, soldiers and trainers that oversaw Breeds didn’t see them as possessing a soul. Not Wolf, Feline nor Coyote. But the Coyotes least of all. For more than a century human scientists had worked to find a way to eradicate what they called the human genetic that promoted a conscience. And they thought they had found that in the Coyotes. The animals were scavengers
—primal, brutal. And for a while it seemed as though the Breeds created from them were as well.
She touched Del-Rey’s arm, amazed at the heat radiating from it. She lifted her gaze to the doctor. “He’s running a fever?”
Dr. Armani shook her head. “Not like you or I would. The heat is part of the healing abilities. I’d be worried if it wasn’t there, though it’s higher than normal. I suspect it has something to do with the off-the-chart mating hormones racing through his blood.”
“Did you give him anything for it?”
“No. He’s already made certain his files were notated. At no time is he to be given hormonal treatments himself. He refuses. But, most male Breeds do.”
“They’d rather suffer?” She remembered the pain herself, the brutal, soul-suffering pain that stole control from the mind and made her a creature of lust and little more.
“It’s different for male Breeds than female mates,” Armani told her. “The females suffer the pain, the need for a hormone that isn’t natural to their body. Like a withdrawal from a narcotic, only worse. Male Breeds are more aggressive, more territorial. The constant lust isn’t as painful, but it has no cycle. Females go into mating heat, then it eases for periods of time, only to return. Rather like ovulation. For the males, that need never goes away. One of the males told me it’s like having a dagger continually stabbed into his balls, the need to release is so imperative.
Masturbation only makes it worse. The scent or taste of another woman’s lust is so distasteful they can’t find release there either.”
“Another person’s touch is excruciating for female mates.” Anya remembered that well. “Is it the same for the male mates?”
“Not to the same extent as it is for the females. No Breed male mate that I know of has ever attempted to have sex away from his mate. Some have waited years. In some the mating heat finally eased. It’s almost as though each mating is individual, Anya. But the physical reactions in the male Breeds aren’t well understood simply because most of them refuse to discuss them or allow tests to control them. The mating heat is their affirmation somehow. A who-and-what-they-are type thing.” She shrugged, as though helpless to explain it.
“It gives me a soul.” Del-Rey’s rough, scratchy voice surprised them both.
Anya looked down at him, realizing she had been stroking his arm.
“You would have to get yourself hurt.” She had to force back a wave of emotion that threatened to overwhelm her. “So much for seducing you tonight, huh?”
Surprise was reflected in his eyes. “If I’d known you had that planned, I would have stayed with the limo.”
“Liar,” she laughed softly.
“Where’s Brim?” he asked then. “I need to make sure Base is secured and on lockdown.”
“Taken care of.”
He exhaled heavily. “I knew I could count on him.”
She pressed her lips together and clenched her teeth at the comment.
“Get a transport ready.” He turned to Armani then. “I’ll be ready to go back to Base in an hour.”
“I hate Breeds,” Armani muttered. “You need to be under observation. It’s the only way I can get any damned information to work on you again later, Del-Rey. You’re not helping me here.”
“I have a base to run,” he told her. “I promise, next wounded soldier, you can have him for a week.”
She snorted at that. “Yeah. Those berserkers? No, thank you.”
Anya stood silently. She ached to touch him again. To push his hair back from his forehead. To wrap her arms around him or something. She ached to do something.
“I need to see Brim,” he told her again. “Could you call him in here?”
Anya swallowed tightly and pushed back the hurt.
The seducer, the man who had kissed her and claimed his worth was tied to her, didn’t need her here. He needed his second-in-command, which is what Anya should have been. She was his coya, automatically second-in-command. Until she had denied the position.
She stepped back slowly. “Sure. I’ll get him.”
Anger surged inside her. Fear. Hurt. She pushed it back and tamped it down. She fought to keep her expression, her emotions, contained so he wouldn’t so much as scent the pain that bloomed inside her.
She had refused the title of coya while he was on base. She had no right, no right to be hurt and angry that he would want to talk to Brim rather than her. He was the alpha leader. There were things he had to do, assurances he needed that Base was operational and secure while he was outside of it and weak. It was those damned animal genetics. That was all it was. Security over emotion. All that good stuff.
She pushed through the doors as Brim straightened from the wall and gave her a piercing look.
“He’s waiting on you.” Her smile was tight. “I’m returning to Base. Please let me know when you return with him. Emma!” Her voice sharpened as she turned to her bodygaurds.
Emma and Ashley both stood watching her strangely.
“I’m heading back to Base.”
She headed for the exit, striding quickly through the corridors and up the incline into the entrance area. She kept her head high, her shoulders straight, and she didn’t cry. She wanted to.
She needed to. But not the first tear fell.
Del-Rey stared at the door, a frown on his face at the subtle, barely discernible scent of feminine anger and pain that lingered behind Anya. Now, that didn’t make sense.
He turned to Dr. Armani. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she was glaring at him.
“I hate Breed males,” she told him, eyes narrowed, feminine outrage filling her gaze.
“What the hell is wrong with every damned woman in the world this month?” he muttered.
“What the hell did I do?”
“You didn’t do a damned thing,” she stated harshly. “Not one damned thing, Alpha Delgado. And that just might be what gets your balls in a wringer and your ass in a sling. And when it happens, I think I want to sell tickets to the event.”
With that, she swept out of the room, passing Brim as he entered. The other man stared at Del-Rey, perplexed. “What the fuck?” He questioned the alpha, “Being your charming self?”
To that he could only shake his head.
What the fuck
just about described it.
CHAPTER 12
The first person Anya saw as she entered the main living area of the base was none other than Sofia. Anya made a mental note to decide she herself hated vodka, period. If the other woman enjoyed it with the same relish, then there wasn’t a chance in hell Anya was drinking another drop of it.
Slouching seductively on one of the stools that sat at a long teak bar, the Russian was sipping vodka and watching with avid eyes as Anya walked into the community room.
Communications and Security had been notified that the alpha would be returning within the hour; preparations were being made for the twenty-four- to seventy-two-hour length of time it would take for his body to completely heal.
“What are you doing back here, Sofia?” Anya asked as she moved to the bar. “Del-Rey said you were a secret contact. Secret contacts don’t show up flashing their pearly whites and interfering on the base.”
Sofia smiled with superior amusement. “He didn’t tell you my cover has been blown? I’d nearly returned to my apartment before the Breeds assigned to my security detected that assassin waiting on me. I’m now a security risk. I was kindly offered protection here.”
No, she hadn’t been told.
Anya extracted the cylindrical link from the pocket of her jeans, attached it to her ear and beeped Security.
“Yes, Coya.” Command came online immediately.
“Sofia Ivanova is banned from Communications, Security and all areas deemed proprietary until further notice from your alpha. Is this clear?”
“Understood, Coya. Order is being coded in as we speak.”
She smiled back at Sofia as the other woman frowned.
“Del-Rey won’t thank you.” She pursed her lips, perturbed. “He considers my opinion to be valued in all areas.”
“Then he will be unconsidering it,” Anya promised her.
Sofia shook her head slowly as a light laugh left her lips. “So confident. I was his lover, you know, several years ago of course, but we’ve remained close.”
Several years. Much longer than Anya had suspected.
“Sofia, you’re wasting your time here,” Anya informed her, determined not to play the shrew.
She was Del-Rey’s mate. They might have trust issues. She might want to rap his head against a wall. But he was hers, just as she was finally accepting that she belonged to him.