Authors: Lora Leigh
“You could be playing a dangerous game with your coya, Del-Rey,” Brim informed him. “If she walks, the people she brought out of Russia may walk with her.”
Del-Rey shook his head. “They’re Coyotes; they know a winning side when they see it. I’ll win, Brim.”
“Overconfidence, my friend?” Brim asked him. Only Brim could have gotten away with that question.
“Desperation,” Del-Rey growled. “Just wait, Brim. When you’ve gone nearly a year with a hard-on that threatens your sanity, then you question me about overconfidence.”
Anya turned to Sharone, staring at her silently for long moments after her friend and bodyguard relayed Brim’s message.
“He asked me to do what?” she finally asked quietly.
“Call together his pack leaders to Command; he’ll be meeting with them on his arrival.” Sharone cleared her throat. “He refuses to wait the extra time you requested to return to Haven.”
Anya crossed her arms over the light gray sweater she wore as she tapped her foot irritably against the stone floor of the community room. Around her, off-duty soldiers slouched and watched the huge television screen mounted on the wall or snacked on whatever they had managed to put together for dinner.
It was going to take her days just to figure out what the hell had happened to the supplies in the kitchen area. Either they were eating more, or someone was saving back supplies again.
She’d had that problem in the first months. The soldiers would slip food from the kitchen—it didn’t matter what it was—and hide it, just in case they began running low. She suspected it was the younger Coyotes. Food wasn’t exactly plentiful in the facility they had been created and trained within. They couldn’t get used to the fact that this was no longer the case.
She breathed out heavily as her bodyguard fought to hide a smirk.
“Let that smile free and I won’t fix dessert for a month,” Anya warned her.
Several growls turned on Sharone. Male Coyotes who had been shamelessly eavesdropping.
Sharone rolled her eyes. “They’re worse than that damned Styx when it comes to their sweets.”
“Remember that.”
“I don’t know.” Sharone shrugged. “Rumor from Sanctuary is that Del-Rey has told Jonas to take a flying leap. He’s returning to Base for good.”
Base. She was tired of hearing it called Base. It wasn’t the damned base. It was home. Just as Haven was home to the Wolves and Sanctuary was home to the Felines. Yet Coyotes called home
Base
. Like
soldiers
rather than men.
“He wouldn’t dare.” Anya tossed Sharone an irritated look before turning and heading to the exit tunnel that led to her quarters. “Contact the team leaders and let them know to be waiting on their alpha in Command. Get Emma and Ashley back here, tell them playtime in town is over.
Their alpha has returned.”
She didn’t question why she was following his orders. She should have contacted him herself and told
him
to take a flying leap. But if she did that, then it would affect the team leaders and the soldiers under them. That was uncalled for. Her personal battle with Del-Rey shouldn’t affect the men, and too few women, who worked within the caves and caverns the Coyotes had taken over.
She listened as Sharone relayed her orders. She couldn’t leave yet; there was still too much to do and she hadn’t been given warning. If she left without preparation, then the place was a mess when she returned, sometimes weeks after Del-Rey arrived.
She ignored the leap of excitement building within her though, the little ember of warmth that burned low in her stomach at the thought of seeing him again. If she didn’t ignore it, then she was forced to remember everything that was sure to piss her off. To hurt her.
She hadn’t quite gotten over the hurt yet. Her father and cousins had healed without complications. They were back to full strength; the flesh wounds they had received had healed nicely. But Anya’s heart hadn’t quite healed, and she knew it. She still woke in the middle of the night crying out for him, and she still remembered the feeling of complete isolation as the pleasure of their sexual encounter eased away.
She had been cold. So cold clear to her soul that sometimes she wondered if she would ever be warm again. At the time, she had known she wouldn’t. And she would never forget his answer to the Breed tribunal when Cassandra Sinclair had asked him if he loved his mate.
Had he actually suggested he could learn to love her? As if she wanted him to learn anything.
She stomped into her personal quarters, casting a glare at the door that led to Del-Rey’s. She had started to move her rooms, until the pack alphas had come to her, refusing to allow it as per Del-Rey’s orders.
Everything was Del-Rey’s orders. At least everything he could get away with. She still hadn’t seen her father, despite his transfer to the United States. He and her cousins and their families now lived in California, having been slipped from Russia by a combined Wolf and Feline Breed mission.
Because she was now Del-Rey’s mate, her family represented a threat to her welfare if they remained where the Council could easily reach them.
She was coya of the Coyote packs. Second-in-command when Del-Rey and his lieutenants were off playing heroes. When he was back, she had always been moved to Haven, where she paced and worried and knew all the hard work she had done at the base was being ruined by Del-Rey.
Coyotes had a tendency to be a little deliberately lazy. Not so much on the job. They could be counted on to do their jobs. But keeping the kitchen in order, the community room free of debris and the reports flowing smoothly weren’t always as easy to ensure. Because Del-Rey let them slack off.
Sharone piped up. “Maybe we’ll have an official ceremony soon. With the alpha back, he could decide it’s time to seduce his coya. You know you can’t get out of officially accepting your title much longer. Whether you sleep with that bad-assed Coyote or not, that ceremony is serious shit.
Even the soldiers that came out of Russia with us are looking forward to it.”
The ceremony. That’s all she heard about was that damned ceremony. It was a wedding, pure and simple. But for some reason it held much more significance to the Breed community than it did to some humans.
“I’d be satisfied if he’d just learn how to clean the dirty clothes out of his quarters while I’m gone,” Anya snorted. “The man excels at deliberate messiness.”
“At least he excels,” Sharone laughed.
“This isn’t going to work,” she stated, swinging around to stare back at Sharone as she closed the door behind her. “I haven’t managed to straighten out the messes he left me last month when he returned. I can’t leave yet.”
Sharone’s hazel green eyes gleamed with amusement. “You’re going to stay while the alpha is in residence? Oh, Coya, very brave,” she drawled. “And here you’re a day late on hormone therapy injections? Guess you should have gone to see the doc yesterday, huh?”
There was another problem. That Wolf Breed quack was starting to get on her nerves. There was something wrong with her, she didn’t care what Dr. Armani said. The dreams were coming back.
Bright, sensation-ridden dreams of sex. The kind of sex where Del-Rey wrapped around her, whispered all the lies women liked to hear and left her aching for release. It had to be the mating heat. Armani had to be wrong about her hormone levels, there was no other option.
“Contact Armani and tell her I’ll be in first thing in the morning.” Anya worried her lower lip as she thought. “Maybe I can convince her to up the dosage a bit with Del-Rey here.” She looked at Sharone questioningly. “If that worked, then I wouldn’t have to leave every time he got a wild hair up his butt and decided to come back.”
“Del-Rey? Get a wild hair up his butt?” Sharone snorted. “No body hair, remember?”
That was Sharone, mocking and sarcastic.
“Don’t pick on me, Sharone,” she ordered her. “This situation is bad enough with Del-Rey returning as it is.”
Her emotions were ready to overload. Excitement. Anticipation. She was tired of hiding from something that wasn’t her fault. This mating heat crap was kind of under control. The mating heat hormone levels were steady. She had periods of arousal, but Armani kept arguing they were normal. Baloney. What she was feeling was not normal. It couldn’t be. Otherwise, it meant she was actually missing that wisecracking, lying, mangy Coyote and she refused to do that.
“So, should Emma and Ashley get the cabin in Haven prepared?” Sharone asked.
Anya grit her teeth and stared back at the other woman in fierce determination. “I don’t think so.
Let’s see how long he can actually stay with the coya in-house so to speak,” she bit out. “A hundred says he’s gone in a month.”
Sharone laughed. “A hundred says you’re knotted again within the week.”
They shook on it. Anya had no doubt in her mind who was going to win.
CHAPTER 4
He had changed.
The next afternoon Anya walked into the open community room, a large cavern that housed the recreational area of the base, and stopped.
She stared at the man lounging in a recliner on the far side, his pack alphas similarly relaxed, beers in their hands as they talked.
Del-Rey looked happy. There was a grin playing about his lips, his dark face was creased in amusement, his devil’s black eyes filled with mirth as one of the pack alphas talked.
His dark blond hair was shorter. It had once fallen to his shoulders, the long, coarse strands thick and healthy. It was now cut a bit above the shoulder and it was shaggier than it had been before, as though he’d cut it himself.
One jean-clad leg was stretched out, the other bent. His wrist rested on his knee and he held his beer loosely. The shirt he wore buttoned up the front was wrinkled, clean but not exactly neat.
In his opinion though, if it were neat, he would be a Wolf rather than a Coyote. She snorted silently at the thought as she let her gaze caress him again.
He was just as gorgeous as ever. Not pretty-boy gorgeous, but rough and rugged. Strong features defined his face; arched brows, a high forehead. His entire body was a golden bronze, as though perpetually tanned. His lips were sensual, the lower lip just a bit too lush for a woman’s peace of mind perhaps. The full curve tempted the imagination, made her remember what his kiss had felt like.
Hot. Destructive. Hungry.
At that moment his head jerked around, his gaze meeting hers. As though he had felt her eyes on him, felt the caress that her hands itched to give in the middle of the night.
She swallowed tightly as he watched her, his hand moving as he brought the bottle of beer to his lips and tilted it back. Her breathing became deeper, harder. Sweet mercy, she was going to break out in a sweat.
“Call that damned quack Armani and tell her to get her crap together,” she ordered Sharone.
“Really,” Sharone muttered. “Damn, Anya, you’re getting hot.”
“Shut up.” Anya threw her a hard glare before stalking through the community room and heading into the kitchen.
Okay, the alpha leader was in residence, he could damn well approve kitchen help now. She needed a cook, assistants and a cleanup crew. And she didn’t want Breeds. Breeds were military trained; it was part of their genetics, part of their training. Breed soldiers did not make good cooks, or neat cooks.
She stepped into the kitchen and automatically started rinsing dishes and loading the dishwasher as Sharone, Emma and Ashley began putting other items away.
“I wasn’t created to clean a kitchen,” Ashley informed all of them as she flipped her cosmetically enhanced blond hair over her shoulder and looked at her nails. “I’m not washing skillets.”
“You get the first stack,” Anya informed her. “I’ll take the second.”
“You’re so kidding,” Ashley laughed.
Anya turned back to the younger Breed girl. She and Emma might be twins, but they were worlds apart.
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” she asked the other girl coolly.
“You’re just doing that because I got my nails done yesterday and you were stuck here.” Ashley pouted. “That’s so not fair, Coya.”
“I’ll give you a list of not fair later,” Anya told her.
“Oh boy,” Ashley hissed. “Alpha coming.”
Anya stiffened. She was put out with Dr. Armani, herself and the fact that the first thing she did on seeing him was crave the warmth she knew his body held.
Not just his warmth. His touch. She wanted to be tucked into his arms, and it was the one thing she knew he truly didn’t want.
She swore she felt him step into the room. The temperature in the large kitchen area shot up drastically, burrowed beneath her flesh and left her flushed.
“Coming to clean up your mess?” she asked as though she saw him every day rather than just twice in the past eight months.
He paused and looked around the room, his brows drawn into a frown. “I didn’t make the mess.”
“Neither did I,” she informed him sweetly as she shoved a plate into the machine. “Someone did though.”
He looked around at Sharone, Ashley and Emma as they made themselves very busy. Too busy actually. They usually balked at kitchen duty.
“How did this happen?” he finally asked her.
Anya straightened slowly and glared at him. “Do you ever read my reports?”
“With diligence and exacting attention,” he drawled. “What does this have to do with your reports?”
He leaned against the door frame, watching her curiously as she straightened and fought to control her temper. Damn him, she’d never had a problem controlling her temper before she met him.
“I’ll tell you what.” She smiled tightly. “Clean up the kitchen, then go read one of my reports with a bit more exacting attention than you read them before and see if you can’t figure it out.”
With that, she shoved the dishwasher closed and stomped to the opposite entrance, which led to a narrow tunnel running behind the community room.
Her bodyguards were moving quickly behind her, as though they bothered to follow her every step in Base. She was so safe here it was enough to offend her need for adventure. It did offend that need.