Authors: Lora Leigh
“I will contact you before you’re transferred,” he told her firmly. “The rescue will take place before then, I promise you this. It’s time for you to trust me, Anya.”
She glared back at him in confusion. “But I do trust you. I’ve always trusted you and you’ve always dragged your heels. I’m starting to worry now.”
“No worrying, little one.” He reached out before he could stop himself and touched her cheek with the tips of his fingers.
It flared then. That connection, that something he had felt growing over the years. And she felt it as well. He watched her lashes lower, watched her lips become fuller, more sensual. A flush filled her cheeks, and the arousal that filled her young body each time they met flared to full, heated life.
He was a Breed. He could smell her dampness, the rush of her sweet juices filling her pussy, her body preparing for him.
She wasn’t a child any longer. She was twenty-two years old, old enough. Mature enough, he prayed, because he was still a Breed and still a hard man. It was a bad combination when lust was eating at his insides.
When she tugged her teeth over her lower lip, his teeth ached to nip it. When her tongue dampened it, he nearly groaned at the erection that filled his jeans.
“Tell your people to be waiting,” he warned her. “I’ll contact you and we’ll arrange the date and time. Agreed?”
She nodded slowly. “And you’ll not harm my family?” she asked him again. “They don’t believe in what is going on here, Del-Rey. This is their job. They’re military. They are following their orders, just as your men do. Promise me, you won’t harm them.”
“I’ve sworn this, Anya.” He let the backs of his fingers smooth over her silken cheek. “My men know which of the forces are your family. We will know where they will be at the time of the attack. It’s going to be fine. I promise you.”
And he was lying to her. Her father and cousins were soldiers, but they could have taken the responsibility that Anya had taken on her own young shoulders. They could have aided the Breeds a thousand times over, but they hadn’t. They had followed orders.
All attempts would be made not to kill them, but they would suffer for allowing this young woman to take the risks she had taken to do the job she was doing.
“Trust me,” he whispered again.
The scent of her arousal intensified at the soft croon of his voice. The need that filled her eyes made him ache in regret.
“I trust you.” A smile trembled at her lips. “I’ll always trust you, Del-Rey.”
Sadly, he knew that statement would soon be retracted. Anya knew fierce loyalty, but she also knew how to hate. She was a woman whose passions would always run deep, no matter which way they ran. And before much longer, she would know only hatred for the man she stared at with such longing now.
Regret. It seared inside him. An emotion he had never felt in his life, and it wasn’t one he liked feeling.
CHAPTER 1
Anya was where she was supposed to be, but things weren’t going as they had been planned.
Nothing had gone as planned. When she returned to the labs that evening, within hours the attack came.
There was no warning. There was no call. Security alarms were blaring, cell doors were opening, as safeguards were overrode and locks on the weapons rooms deactivated.
She pushed the scientists behind a secure, hidden wall she had found the month before. They hadn’t been here long enough evidently to know all the secrets of the labs. Dr. Chernov had replaced the aging scientists ten years before and brought his protégée, Sobolova, a much younger female scientist, along with him.
“Don’t leave. Don’t move,” she ordered them. “Stay here until you hear only silence.”
Pale, shaking in shock, the two scientists did as they were told, huddling in the little room as Anya slid the secured door closed and rushed to the exits that led to the cold, desolate land aboveground.
“Anya, get out of here.” Sofia Ivanova, one of the administrative assistants, gripped her arm and dragged her down another hall. “Go that way.” She pointed to the stairs. “They’re free. I’ll cover you.”
Cover her? Anya stared behind her as doctors raced from labs with weapons drawn. They were firing on personnel? Shock rushed through her, tore through her mind. She knew those men and women. Knew them well. And they were firing on the personnel attempting to escape?
“Run, damn you!” Sofia pushed her to the exit. “Get out of here before I have to shoot you.”
Anya ran. As she ran, fury fed the fear and the shock coursing through her adrenaline-laced mind. This was the exact plan she had given Del-Rey for the rescue. Had he not trusted her? He had attacked only hours after her return, giving her no time to ensure her father and cousins weren’t here.
No, it had to be something else, she decided in desperation as she raced up the stairs. She gripped an older woman’s arm, one of the secretaries, and pushed her ahead of her.
“Hurry, Marie,” Anya urged the other woman as she sobbed and nearly fell. “We must hurry.”
Other personnel were racing past them as Anya grabbed Marie’s arm and all but dragged her up the steps. Marie had children, grandchildren. A husband that was ill. She was needed. And besides, she always brought the Breeds cookies. She was kind and gentle.
The door was broken from its hinges above, lying on its side as security forces were waving personnel through, urging them to hurry, to rush. Masks covered the guards’ faces to protect them from the cold. It was bitterly cold outside, and Marie had no jacket, no coat to wear.
“Run for the barracks,” she told the other woman. “It will be warm there and safer. We’ll hide there.”
She ran into the cold, aware of the gunfire, the yelling voices, the clash of forces. Then she was only aware of the hard arm that wrapped around her waist, jerked her against a broad chest, and the knife that lay at her throat.
She could feel the cold blade pressing into her throat, pinching the flesh, within a breath of actually cutting her skin.
“Kobrin, I have your daughter.”
Loud, echoing through the valley, she knew that voice, knew the growl that sounded in it and felt the sob that tore from her throat.
Betrayal. He had betrayed her.
Agony tore through her with such pain she could only gasp at the reality of it.
The sound of gunfire faded away. Personnel were no longer rushing through the doors. She could hear them at the entrance though, feel the tension that thickened the air.
Del-Rey. She felt the first tear fall. Oh God, she had trusted him. She had trusted him so much.
“We’re lowering our weapons,” her father called out. “Take the Breeds. Go. We’ll not stand in your way, but let Anya go.”
She stared back at her father’s pale face, her cousins moving with him. All three of her cousins were on duty tonight. Her friends were here, those who would have helped her had she asked, but she hadn’t.
A shot fired out and her first cousin fell, gripping his leg and screaming out in pain. Two more shots in rapid succession and the other two were left writhing on the ground.
“Stop it!” she screamed, her hands clawing at the arm wrapped around her waist. “No. No. Don’t do this.”
Fury and pain gripped her. She stared back at her father miserably, sobbing with the shame of what she had done.
“Transport’s landing in sixty seconds, Boss.” That was the one Del-Rey called Brim. Sometimes he had called him Brimstone.
They had all betrayed her. The small team of men she had become friends with, that she had trusted, that she had trusted her father and her cousins’ lives to.
“How can you do this?” she sobbed. “Damn you, how can you do this?”
“Anya, be still, child,” her father cried out. “Remember your control, daughter. Your cousins live.”
“For now,” Del-Rey called back in a lazy drawl. “Tell me, Kobrin, you’ve been here since the first Breed was created, did you ever think to aid them?”
“They live,” her father called back. “I have killed none. This was not a slaughterhouse.”
Del-Rey chuckled behind her. “I think I will take your daughter with me, Kobrin. Insurance, I believe. You will not notify your Russian air force, you will notify no one of what has happened here for six hours. Or she will die. Are we understood?”
“Leave her here,” her father called out desperately. “I swear to you no one will follow you.”
Del-Rey laughed. “No, they won’t follow me. I have the prize of the Genetics Council’s young protégées. Your daughter, Kobrin. Don’t make me kill her.”
Another shot fired and her father stumbled, falling as Anya screamed out for him. Her hands reached out, her fingers curling as she was lifted off her feet, and the sound of a heli-jet arriving could be heard.
She screamed out for her father, clawed and slapped at the arm securing her. She kicked, she cursed, and she sobbed.
Rage ate inside her as the betrayal that filled her burned into her mind. He had lied. From the first moment he had lied, and she would never forgive him.
“Move out!” Del-Rey ordered as he raced into the back of the transport behind the other men that converged on the huge black craft. “Cavalier, get this bastard off the ground.”
Cavalier. She had arranged his transport the year before. How many others were here? How many of those she had trusted had betrayed her?
“Stop fighting me, Anya.” Del-Rey held her in place as he settled onto the metal bench, holding her secure, and the transport lifted off.
She couldn’t see outside it. She had lost sight of her father. Lost sight of her family.
“You bastard!” she screamed, struggling harder as her fists struck back at his face. “You son of a bitch. You fucking bastard. How could you? How could you?”
“How could they?” he snarled, jerking her around to face him, his black eyes blazing in fury as his lips drew back from his lethal canines. “How dare they leave a child to arrange this? How dare they endanger you as they have? They have a bullet in their legs rather than their heads.
They should be fucking thankful.”
She slapped his face. Her hand slammed into his cheek with enough force to burn her palm before she slapped him again. Furious, enraged screams were strangled in her throat as he jerked her arms to her side, holding her in place as a growl tore from his throat.
Then his lips pressed into hers. She tried to scream again, but he stole the opportunity to push his tongue past her lips. Spice filled her mouth. She swallowed and sobbed into the kiss, because it was good. Because his lips stroked over hers as she had always imagined they would. Because he tasted like warmth and passion, and because he had lied to her. He had betrayed her. And now he was stealing her mind.
She was still sobbing as his head lifted and his arms locked her to his chest. His hand covered her head, holding her against him as her fists clenched and beat at his shoulders.
She hated him. She hated him. Oh God, she hated him. And she loved him. And she felt as though her soul had been shredded. Her Coyote warrior had betrayed her. He had lied, over and over again, betrayed every vow he had made to her. He had stolen her innocence before he ever kissed her, and she wondered if she could ever forgive him for that.
Del-Rey stared over her head at the Coyotes that now joined him. Breeds, their gazes flat and hard as they watched him. They were a threat—he could smell it in the air; his men could feel it as they surrounded him.
“Mine,” he told them all, his voice cold, commanding. “This woman is mine.”
The five female Coyotes stared back at him. They were the most dangerous, he thought, especially the oldest, Sharone.
Her gaze flicked to Anya’s sobbing form.
“You were wrong,” she told him flatly. “You should have left her family alone.”
“They put her in danger. They are lucky they live.”
“No, my friend.” She shook her head. “You will be lucky if you live. You betrayed her, and she won’t forget it. She won’t forgive it. We see the wisdom of what you did. The retribution we all felt was needed. But we stayed our hand, because she’s ours as well.” She indicated the Breeds that had come out of the underground facilities. “And what you have done this night, she will make certain you pay for.”
Tender Anya? She would rage, she might hate for a while, but he had left her family alive. He would make her understand.
“Stay out of my way,” he told her, and he meant all of them. “You swore loyalty to me and to my packs. Not to this girl. Where she’s concerned, you will not interfere.”
“Then you will ensure she is not harmed, in any way,” Sharone told him fiercely. “We follow you, Alpha, but that one”—she nodded to Anya—“that one is one of us. Mistreat her, and you mistreat us all. Remember that.”
Mistreat her? He had no intentions of mistreating her. Loving her perhaps. Easing her from her anger, definitely. Fucking her until they were both screaming with the pleasure, that was a given.
She would forgive him. He would ensure it. After all, he hadn’t killed her father or her cousins.
They lived. They would merely hurt. A lot. And it was pain they deserved. Much more than they had received.
He smoothed his hand over Anya’s loose hair. Without the braid, it hung well past her shoulders.
He cupped the back of her head to him and leaned his own against the wall of the transport.
He was aware of his own men watching him, questioning his decision. They had questioned the wisdom of it when he first told them what he planned. He sent half his men six months ago to Colorado to secretly secure the caverns that overlooked Haven, the Wolf Breed compound. They were preparing things there for his arrival. Arriving in secrecy was paramount though. That meant ditching the transport and going in in small groups. That was easily handled.
Anya might not be as easily controlled, just as he was finding his own response to her was by far less easy to handle than he had imagined.
His head lowered again, his lips touching hers. His tongue was burning for the taste of her.
Desperate for another of those hot, passionate kisses, the feel of her mouth sucking at him, drawing the tightness from his tongue.