Authors: Lora Leigh
She was hurting now, but later, later she would understand, he promised himself. He would find the words to explain it. He’d find a way to make her understand. She had to understand, because her safety was more important to him than a misunderstanding.
He had seen with the first attempt on her life in the mountains that he was going to have to put his foot down. He had to be responsible for keeping her by his side, keeping her safe and well.
Nothing else mattered.
Del-Rey awoke the next morning as Anya eased out of his arms and left the bed. He waited, listened, inhaled her scent and still detected no arousal, no need for his touch.
He restrained his concern. Coyotes were different, he told himself again. It could simply be a cycle of rest that the hormones were allowing her, nothing more.
He lifted his lashes enough to watch her pick up the dirty clothes he had left on the floor the night before. Her expression was calm, composed. Okay, she should be all right. The vivid scent of pain wasn’t overpowering his senses. Perhaps it had simply been hormones.
He waited, listened as she took the dirty clothes to the bathroom. Perhaps he’d join her in the shower.
Dresser drawers opened as she collected clean clothes, then he heard the door to her office open, close. Lock. She was using the shower in the other room and had ensured he wouldn’t be following her without her knowledge.
Hell. He didn’t like this. This distance that suddenly seemed to separate them, this feeling that made him cold and irritable, made him wonder what the hell he was doing where his mate was concerned.
Son of a bitch, he’d rather he use in a fistfight than face her this morning, because God only knew what he would do if he saw that pain in her eyes again. He just might end up crying for her.
Hope Bainesmith Gunnar stared at the message in her inbox. The email was surprising, saddening.
Lupina Gunnar. Prima Lyons. It has been decided that there is no need for the official ceremony
of status. Anya Kobrin, mate to Alpha Delgado.
So much in such a simple email. So much pain and such a loss of dreams. Hope knew this ceremony was one Anya had looked forward to since accepting her place at Del-Rey’s side, but this decision was perhaps not surprising after the discussion she’d had with Dr. Armani first thing that morning.
Hope wasn’t surprised either when the satellite phone she had laid on her desk rang. Caller ID
showed Merinus’s number.
“You got the email,” Hope sighed as she answered.
“Tell me it’s a joke,” Merinus said quietly. “Even Callan was hopeful that this ceremony would take place soon and cement Anya’s position. Without it, her standing among Del-Rey’s people will be weakened. Their respect for her will erode.”
Hope shook her head. “I’m afraid it’s not a joke.”
“Have Wolfe talk to him,” Merinus urged. “This ceremony is too important, Hope.”
Hope thought about that, she considered it. She sighed. “This is something he’ll have to see for himself, and it’s a fight Anya has to face alone. We can support her if she needs us, Merinus, but there’s little else we can do.”
“Damned stubborn Coyote,” Merinus cursed. “Pain in the ass.”
“For both of us,” Hope said quietly. “Hopefully I can get to the base and talk to her soon. I’ll let you know what I learn.”
Merinus sighed. “I’ll call her soon. That email broke my heart. She needs time I think before talking to me.”
Hope nodded. “I’ll give her a day or so. Until then, we’ll pray.”
“And pray,” Merinus stated. “Poor Anya.”
Poor Anya.
Poor Del-Rey.
Because Hope knew this was going to cause more trouble for the alpha than he could have considered. The mating for an alpha was one thing; acceptance by the men who followed him was another, as she and Wolfe had both learned. For some reason the wedding ceremony that meant so much in the human world meant just as much in Breed society, perhaps more so, especially for an alpha.
If an alpha didn’t accept his mate, then his men wouldn’t accept her either. The past eight months, the order of separation and Anya’s refusal to accept her alpha hadn’t seemed to faze the Coyote soldiers. They had accepted her despite that. Because they had believed the decision was out of Del-Rey’s hands. Once this was learned, Anya’s position at Base would erode, and the problems she faced wouldn’t be easy.
Not for Anya. And most definitely not for Del-Rey.
Hope emailed the only other person she could think of that could help with this particular problem. The one man that might have enough sway to convince his alpha of the error of his ways.
His brother.
Brim.
Brim stared at the email, at the forwarded text plus the lupina’s message, and felt a curl of anger unfold within him. Son of a bitch. Maybe this time they would fight after all.
CHAPTER 20
Del-Rey checked on Anya after she left their rooms. A frown pulled at his brows when he learned she was in the kitchen area. Striding through the base, he moved past the community room and into the kitchen.
With only the sound of movement and four women working in silence, the damned place was eerie. There was an air of heaviness, tension, a subtle scent of pain and anger and an underlying chill that he couldn’t put his finger on.
Anya lifted her head from the bowls and ingredients she was working on. Her eyes were dark, and perhaps there were shadows under them.
“There are cold cuts in the fridge if you need a sandwich,” she told him. “I’ll have egg and assorted meat biscuits in an hour if you’d like to wait.”
“You don’t have kitchen duty.” He hardened his voice.
“No one has kitchen duty.” She shrugged. “Cleanup is a far cry from making certain there’s actually food on base and certain items ready to eat when your teams get hungry, Del-Rey. There are well over sixty soldiers here at last count with several dozen more coming. Someone has to make certain supplies are kept up with.”
“Add it to the duties with rotation,” he ordered her.
He watched her pour milk into a huge bowl of flour and begin working it in. Her head was lowered, her expression calm and composed, when he knew she was anything but.
“Doesn’t work that way.” She shook her head.
“Then make it work,” he bit out. “We have things to discuss that require both our attention, not you standing elbows deep in a bowl of flour.”
She looked up at the clock on the wall. “You can table your discussions for two hours,” she decided. “Pencil me into your schedule after that and let me know what time to meet you where.”
“So we’re scheduling in fucking now?” he snarled, ignoring the other women.
Her head jerked up, a flicker of pain crossing her face. “If that’s the discussion, then I guess that’s what we’re doing.”
He felt almost helpless. He remembered that feeling clearly from his youth. So clearly it punched into his brain and left a growl rumbling in his throat. With a steel cage surrounding him, he had watched, so many times, as his brothers and sisters were murdered before his eyes. Coyote Breeds that were considered flawed, because they had mercy, because they reached out to one another. Children no more than babies that cried for attention or for food when there was none left. Cut down before his eyes. And if he tried to fight, if he tried to save them, then others died as well. They hadn’t been kind enough to go ahead and kill him and put him out of his misery.
They beat him. Lashed him with a whip. Hooked electrodes to him after chaining him to the wall, and tortured him with the electricity they flayed his body with.
He was an example to the others the same as the killings were. They meant to break him, to destroy that mercy he had inside him and prove that a Breed had no soul, honor or principles.
They had failed. But in some ways, they had won as well.
“Excuse me, Alpha.” Ashley moved around him as she stepped from the small closet that held countless cooking implements.
He glanced down at her, saw her shorter nails and frowned.
“Didn’t I just send you to the damned salon?” he growled.
Her eyes widened. “I had dishes last night. A few popped off.”
“What do you mean you had dishes?”
She fidgeted in front of him and looked to Anya.
“It was Ashley’s turn to load the dishwasher and clean the pots and pans,” Anya answered.
“I have a fucking rotation for kitchen duty.” His voice was harsh, primal, causing the three female Coyotes to flinch.
Anya shrugged. “When I checked the closet, the dishes hadn’t been cleaned well. They’re soldiers, Del-Rey. Men. They don’t understand rinsing first, nor do they understand cleaning.
Sharone, Emma and Ashley spent hours in here fixing it. Your rotation isn’t working.” Her head lifted. “Unless the Felines are doing it. They seem to have a clue. But I imagine Alpha Lyons wouldn’t be pleased if we used the Feline Breeds for kitchen duty only.”
She dumped her flour mess on the counter and began working it into a ball. A huge ball. He glared at her.
“You are not a servant,” he snapped. “This is not where you belong.”
She paused, stared at the dough and lifted her head. Her gaze was shuttered, but God, what he felt coming from her. Emotions were almost locked inside her, giving him only the smallest hint of the roiling, overwhelming anger, fear and need that twisted in her dark blue eyes.
“I’m busy, Del-Rey,” she finally said. “Schedule a time and I’ll be there. Until then, let me finish if you don’t mind. Or is this something else I need your permission to complete?”
Fury slapped him. He could feel it building inside him. The need rose inside him to force her submission, to carry her back to their rooms and fuck her until she didn’t have the energy to defy him. And another part, a saner part, the human part, paused as he sensed more than the animal wanted to see.
He turned on his heel and left the room. They would fight this out later. Once his orders were implemented, she wouldn’t find herself in that kitchen cooking for the whole damned base again.
He’d be damned if she would. She wasn’t the fucking cook. She was his mate. His coya. She could oversee until hell froze over, but it wasn’t her job to do the actual work.
He slammed his office door closed, stalked to his desk and sat down. He looked around the office. Dust was accumulating. Files were stacked here and there haphazardly. It hadn’t been like this when he’d arrived. His office had been immaculate. The scent of his mate had filled it.
He ran his fingers through his hair and blew out a hard, rough breath as Brim’s knock sounded at the door. He knew his second-in-command’s knock and the anger behind it.
“What?” he snarled out.
The door opened.
Military straight and perfect, Brim moved into the room. His gaze was icy, his manner stiff.
“What kind of stick has been shoved up your ass?” He bared his teeth at the other man.
Brim handed over an e-pad. “I need your signature.”
Del-Rey jerked the pad out of his hand, glanced at it, then felt a haze of red wash over him at the memo awaiting his approval.
Re: Official notification of reversion of duties from Anya Kobrin to Alpha Delgado. Status coya,
revoked. Status mate, revoked. All due authority hereby revoked.
He stared up at the other man. “What the fuck is this?”
“By order of separation she only held her title if you didn’t rescind it.”
“I still haven’t rescinded it,” he informed Brim, his tone guttural. “What the fuck is this?”
“You should have read the separation agreement more fully perhaps,” Brim stated. “Anya posted the memo this morning to Lupina Gunnar and Prima Lyons as well as to their alphas. A decision that the mating ceremony tentatively scheduled for spring was being canceled. She lost her title when that memo went out. Word of it is already filtering through Base. She’s no longer coya and therefore your pack leaders need a directive from you.”
The memo was a directive all right. It rescinded all powers that Anya had previously held to command in his absence. It also directed her status to below those pack leaders, rather than above them as she had once held.
He stared at it.
“If she’s officially my coya, I paint a target on her back for any Coyote that has managed to fool us, or betrays us in the future. They’ll strike at her first.”
Brim shrugged. “That isn’t my call, Alpha. All I need is the order signed so Base runs properly.
Military structure must be adhered to.”
Del-Rey’s jaw clenched.
Before Del-Rey could control the impulse, he picked up the e-pad and threw it. A vicious, savage swing of his arm, and it shattered against the stone wall to his side.
Brim stared at the destruction before turning his gaze back to Del-Rey. “A copy was sent to your PDA. You can sign it from there. If you’ll excuse me now.” He nodded to Del-Rey with all due military respect.
Perfect, smooth, coordinated.
Del-Rey was out of his chair before Brim could stride across the room. In the next second he had his second-in-command against the wall, his arm braced across Brim’s throat as a snarl echoed from his throat.
“What is your fucking problem?” He stared into Brim’s eyes and saw nothing but that cool, emotionless facade.
“I wasn’t aware I had one.” And he wasn’t fighting.
Brim wasn’t a man that allowed even his alpha to throw him against a wall. But there he was, relaxed, cool. Del-Rey felt as though a volcano was ready to explode inside his own head.
“Erase that fucking memo,” Del-Rey bit out.
He could imagine Anya’s pain if she saw it, once she read it. He could almost feel the loss he knew would burrow inside her.
“I can’t do that, Alpha,” Brim stated. “This is a military base, and the rules have to be adhered to; otherwise, our men are going to become confused and uncertain. They’ll choose sides. Her people against your people. We can’t allow that.”
Del-Rey released him slowly. “Delete that fucking memo or I’ll do it for you,” he commanded.
Brim shrugged. “It’s already gone out to your pack leaders. Protocol demanded it be sent. Just as it’s gone out to the Wolf and Feline pack leaders. You’re showing weakness in refusing to send it out yourself. As alpha, you can’t afford to show that weakness at this time. A separation of packs could destroy us, Alpha. The alliance will go to hell and we’ll be left fighting in the jungles for meals again. That wasn’t as much fun as we pretended it was, I don’t believe.”