by Lora Leigh
“I’d rather fight,” Liza whispered behind her.
Diane nodded slowly. “Do you have a weapon?”
“A knife, that’s all I have.” Regret filled the other girl’s voice.
Diane drew in a hard, deep breath. “Don’t let them take you. It would be far better to use that knife on yourself than to be captured by them. Once they come for me, run for the hotel. Breeds will be looking for me. They’ll take care of you.”
“I’m surprised, Ms. Broen,” the sandy-haired mocking Coyote drawled then. “I’ve heard of your mate. I’m shocked he’s not at your side facing us with that prick-assed attitude of his. Or did he do as he always swore he would and run the other way the minute he realized he was mated?”
“He was only delayed a bit,” she assured him.
“More like expecting her to be the good girl and stay in their bed rather than heading out to save this little bitch.” Malcolm waved his gun in Liza’s direction. “How did you know we were coming for her, Diane?”
She hadn’t.
Diane stepped back, bringing herself closer to the other girl in an effort to protect her; she took a deep breath and prepared herself.
They didn’t have a chance. Malcolm had taken out Thor and that left no one to watch her back. She had one shot, and not enough time to power the weapon again for another kill shot.
She didn’t have to kill.
With an imperceptible movement of her thumb against the mechanism Diane lowered the power from kill to wound and from wound to disable.
She could get off eight shots, and if she aimed at their kneecaps, she might have a chance.
And so would Liza.
“Poor Malcolm,” she drawled with an edge of laughter as she looked back at him, the only plan she could come up with flashing through her memory.
He scowled as the Coyote with the cigar chuckled wickedly. “Sounds like a challenge to me, little man.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Malcolm snapped. “No one asked you.”
Lawe would have missed her by now surely. It had been over an hour. He knew her and he knew her well. Just as she knew him. She had been pushing him, challenging him, now all she had to do was stay alive long enough—
“No one had to ask me.” The Coyote gave another low, amused laugh. “She’s cute as hell, Malcolm.”
“And she can kick Malcolm’s ass to hell and back,” Diane assured them all. Glancing at the Coyote, clearly the dominant alpha, she shot him a mocking sneer. “He knew he would have to face me.” She nodded at Malcolm. “He didn’t come for the girl, he came for me.”
The Coyote turned his head to Malcolm. “That true, Malcolm?”
Malcolm’s lips thinned angrily. “Two birds with one stone, right? She got her uncle, his second-in-command, killed so she and that bastard Thor could take over the team. I told you I wanted blood.”
“That wasn’t the mission,” he was reminded.
Diane chuckled. “Four coyotes.” She sighed. “For little ole me? That scared of me, Malcolm?”
His jaw bunched, his hands clenching the weapon.
“If you want me, come fight me,” she suggested with a laugh. “I dare you.”
Every Coyote there perked up.
“A thousand on the girl,” the leader murmured.
“Shut the fuck up, Dog,” Malcolm raged furiously.
“I got your thousand on the prick there. He has muscle where she doesn’t.” Loki took the bet before turning to the other two. “Mutt, Mongrel? You two in?”
“Thousand on the girl.” Gray Eyes took him up on it.
“Thousand on the prick.” The last one accepted the bet.
Malcolm was shaking with fury.
Diane smiled in anticipation.
“Knives or fists?” she asked, knowing his strengths as well as his weaknesses.
“You fucking whore,” he snarled.
“Take the challenge or walk away,” Dog snapped. “We won’t take her without the fight.”
God love a Coyote’s heart and his love of a challenge or a good bet.
“I win, we walk away,” she demanded as she kept her eyes on Malcolm.
Dog’s smile was clearly anticipatory, but he nodded easily. “Whip his ass and you walk. He whips yours—you run. How’s that?”
Diane gave a sharp, firm nod as she smiled at Malcolm. “It’s a bet.”
•CHAPTER 17•
He was dying!
Lawe could feel the fury burning inside him like a plague wasting away at his body cell by cell as he watched and listened to the Coyotes flirting with his mate.
The only thing saving him, saving them, was the fact that there was no scent of lust swirling from them. Still, his fists were clenched, his lips curled back from the sharp canines at the sides of his mouth, and the growl that would have rumbled in his chest was only barely held back. It was all he could do to hold back a roar of pure feline rage.
“Hey, Lion-o, would you mind letting up the pressure just a little bit here?”
The hoarse, pain-filled request had him lifting his hand completely from Thor’s chest and flicking his fingers to the Breed Enforcer behind them, indicated he should apply pressure to the knife wound Thor had taken.
Lawe moved to rise. He had every intention of rushing to his mate’s side, to protect her flank. To share in the triumph he knew she would experience once Malcolm was taken care of.
Then, Lawe decided, he’d make certain the bastard died.
“What did I tell you?” Thor’s fingers were suddenly clamped around Lawe’s forearm, restraining him before he could surge from their shadowed shelter of heavy pine and rush to the conflict unfolding too far away for him to help his mate if she needed him.
God, how could he survive?
He drew in a deep, hard breath.
“She’s hurting,” he growled. “I can feel it all the way over here.”
Turning, he took a moment to glare at the mercenary before turning back to watch Diane with a surge of pride, and pure terror.”
“Of course she’s hurting, you dumb fucker,” Thor rasped, his voice low and filled with pain of a far different sort. “She’s out there alone. She’s been hurting since the minute she left the hotel in D.C. without her mate backing her. She’s a warrior, Justice, not some pansy-assed wannabe. You’re not just her fucking mate—be her partner and you won’t smell her soul shredding in half.”
Lawe’s head jerked around, his teeth snapping dangerously at the Swede before turning to watch his mate once again.
She was incredible.
Standing straight and tall, one hand propped on a cocked hip, her fingers tapping against it lazily as she held that damned laser weapon on the man she had fought with since the day her uncle had brought her into the group.
This was the mercenary Commander Diane—not the Diane her friends and family knew—as the Breeds closest to Jonas, his mate, and Lawe knew her. This was the Huntress. The woman known for her skill at tracking down those she was hired to find, rescuing them and bringing them back safe and sound.
And she had been doing so for more than seven years.
She had only taken official command of the group five years before, but in the two years before her uncle’s death, she had been commanding her own missions and making the group more money than they had ever imagined possible.
Confident, self-assured and in her element but for the emotional pain raging through her like flames whipping through her soul.
She needed him.
It wasn’t a sexual hunger. It wasn’t the mating heat and it wasn’t the need to quench the flames of mating heat. It was his mate’s need for a partner. For her partner.
He’d promised to stand by her, to give her the space she needed to conduct her mission. Jonas and Callan had given her one week to accomplish her goal. Yet, he’d still hovered near her, going over her plans with a fine-tooth comb. And, he knew, making her feel that he had no faith in her abilities.
What had ever made
him believe his mate—the incredibly vital fighting spirit she possessed—would ever accept such management after the years she had put into learning how to do what she was so damned good at doing?
He’d failed her again.
He dropped his head for a moment, pulling in hard, desperate breaths as the animal paced, raged, his genetics clawing at his senses as he fought the need to protect her. The need to stand before her, to snarl in warning at the bastards she believed were a threat.
There was only one threat really facing her.
Dog, Mutt, Mongrel and Loki weren’t mercenary Coyotes only recently separated from the Council, as Malcolm believed. They weren’t the bloodthirsty, rabid animals willing to help him turn his commander over to the Genetics Council.
They were Jonas’s double agents. His eyes and ears into the Council so to speak. They were still soldiers, or so the Council believed, just in a different capacity now than they had been before.
Still, even knowing the danger was minimized, he had to forcibly hold himself back, to throttle the snarls and roars of rage that rose inside him.
Her sense of confusion and disillusionment was driving a spike of bitter rage through his brain and straight into his soul.
“You won’t back her,” Thor growled, and for a moment, just for the briefest second, it was almost an animal’s rasp. “You refuse to allow her to be who she is, what she is. She’s a fucking warrior, Lawe. You don’t bury that, you encourage it. You train it, sharpen it, you fucking hone it until she fits your hand like the finest steel and slices twice as deep. She’s your fucking mate. She’s your partner. She’s the finest fucking weapon God ever created and gifted to a man. She stands by your side, Lawe. You stand by her side, or you lose the very things you love about her.”
His head flipped around as he glared at the mercenary, the anger churning inside him with boiling pain. “Shut the fuck up!”
He moved to rise, only to feel the second hand that clamped on his arm.
His head swung to the other side to see his brother, his grip lighter than Thor’s, his expression, though sympathetic, firm.
“I could mate her,” Rule said softly, his gaze dark, and for the first time Lawe felt the pain his brother kept locked so deep inside. “We’re brothers. I would take the mate who longs to fight and allow her to be the warrior she is as I stand by her side. I’ll give you my mate,” he whispered. “Gentle. Soft. A woman who doesn’t even know how to make a fist, let alone how to hold a gun. Protect mine, Lawe, and I’ll protect yours. We’ll have what we need without involving our souls as our mother did.”
His brother’s mate? He stared at Rule in complete disbelief. When had his brother mated and where was the delicate, subtle scent of the woman his animal genetics had claimed?
It was a question he would deal with later. One he would attempt to make sense of once he’d made sense of his own confusion and conflicting needs.
The need to possess the warrior while setting her free. The need to hold the woman, to protect her and shelter her as only her mate could shelter her.
Lawe gave a hard jerk of his head before turning back to the scene before him.
“Let me go.” The growl was harsh; the animal was free and it wouldn’t be held back any longer. “Now.”
Slowly, reluctantly, Thor and Rule released him.
“Rule, on my six,” Lawe ordered him. “Take my mate’s back. Braden, Megan, you have Liza.”
“If she doesn’t fight him, Lawe—”
“She’ll fight him,” the animal swore. “It’s her battle unless someone makes the mistake of interfering. Then they die. Malachi, Josiah, move in behind Dog’s team. I trust no one, not even Jonas’s favorite pets where my mate is concerned. Now move out.”
Moving through the shadows, sliding with animal grace and stealth, he made his way with his brother covering his back, to where his mate ached, where she wept inside for the man, for the mate she believed could never see her as a partner. The mate who would never see the spirit and the fierce, finely honed weapon Thor knew her to be.
It wasn’t the man’s decision this time. For the second time the animal rose inside him and took control. And what the man learned in that second filled him with disbelief.
The first time, it had been to mark the woman it had feared would dare to walk away forever. The woman the animal had sensed was so very close to denying the man.
This time, the animal had had enough of the man’s struggle, of his need to protect versus his need for a partner.
What the hell would he do with a woman who baked cookies, sewed costumes for the neighborhood children? A woman whose idea of danger was a drive through the city?
That wasn’t the woman he needed.
Assistant director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs wasn’t the job he needed.
He was a warrior, just as his mate was a warrior. The warrior would be damned if it would allow anyone, anything to take that from her, especially the man who loved her with all his soul. With all the dreams, all the passion, and all the fear that resided inside him.
As he approached the group silently, his brother moving in close, sharing his strength and his senses with him, Lawe found himself reaching out to her.