by Lora Leigh
this area. We’ve been tracking her for weeks.”
Bitch. Okay, well, there were only four so-called bitches on base, so it had to be one of them. Anya was betting it was her.
“She doesn’t have her link enabled,” another voice retorted. “I have her channel and the secured line. Nothing’s showing on her or her bodyguards.”
Okay. That meant her. Well golly gee, didn’t she feel so special this week. First her mate returns unannounced and now these yahoos were playing hell with her only downtime.
“We’ve got to strike before that filthy Coyote Delgado returns,” the other voice ordered the others. “Once he’s back, security steps up.”
And just how did they figure that? No, Del-Rey was just less subtle about security. Over the past months, Anya had been hypertense and looking for a fight. She’d let a few areas appear lax, though she had known they weren’t. She’d learned a few lessons from Del-Rey over the years. She tested the strength of Security and Command often. Too bad she wasn’t in Command right now tracking these bastards. Instead, she was stuck out here, almost the hunted rather than the hunter she was training to be. And she couldn’t risk activating her link or the others’ now, not if these men had a way to lock on to their signals.
She stared down at the five men then turned and motioned to Sharone that they needed to back off and get back to Base. At the moment, they were ahead of the men and upwind of any Breed help they might have. Sometimes rogue Coyote Breeds helped the fanatics that still thought they could eradicate the Breeds and steal their freedom.
As long as they stayed upwind and moved quietly, they had a chance. The only weapons they had on them tonight were the knives Sharone and the others used to train Anya. They were sharp, lethal, but they weren’t much protection against a gun.
Moving back silently, though not nearly as silently as her bodyguards, she waited until the voices became more distant before giving the order to move out.
Crouched, they moved as quickly as possibly, which was slower than she knew Sharone and the others could have moved, as they started back up the mountain to the faint animal trail they used to access the area. It was still steep here, though not as steep as the western edge of the mountain. But this particular area was close. Part of the way back was particularly steep. They would be at their most vulnerable then.
“Move,” she hissed. “We need to make speed, Sharone.”
“If they have a rogue Breed with them, then speed is going to get us caught,” Sharone retorted. “Because you’re not quiet enough.”
That was Sharone, blunt and to the point. She didn’t cut slack for anyone.
“Did you smell Breed?” Anya asked as they surrounded her, leading her through the underbrush at the quietest possible speed.
“Doesn’t mean anything,” Emma whispered. “They’ve learned how to disguise their scent. We were taught that in the labs, remember?”
Oh yeah. She remembered that now. They’d found a way to disguise Coyote Breeds’ marker scent. It wasn’t easy, and it was irritating to the Breeds’ senses, but they could do it.
“We need to contact Del-Rey,” Sharone said, voice low. “Ashley, get ahead of us. Run hell for leather and find help. I have a feeling shit’s going to get ugly if those bastards catch us on that trail. We’ll be sitting targets.”
Ashley moved ahead and disappeared. Silently. Damn, Anya wished she could do that. She’d trained for years, even before Del-Rey had kidnapped her, to be quiet like the Coyotes, to race through the night without making a sound, and no matter how hard she tried, she still hadn’t achieved it.
At least Ashley was out of danger. She was the most innocent of all of them, Anya sometimes thought. Their girly little Coyote Breed with her fake nails, polish and hair dye. Her makeup, girly clothes and sexy lingerie. She was what they all wished they could be, Anya also sometimes thought.
“This way, Coya.” Sharone was leading her through a pine thicket, out of sight and edging closer to the trail. “When we start up, we have to move fast. Emma will go ahead of you, I’ll cover the back.”
Anya shook her head, fighting back tears. They would give their lives for her, and that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted them safe, and she was realizing that her own incompetence merely made her a danger to them.
They had reached the base of the trail when they heard a shot ring out from behind them. Anya flipped around, staring into the night with wide eyes.
“They didn’t see us,” Sharone said carefully.
“Ashley,” Anya whispered. “Oh God. Oh God, not Ashley.”
“Snap out of it, Coya.” Sharone’s voice was hard, unemotional. A clear indication that she was flat pissed and worried now. “Get moving. The shot was aimed higher up and to our right. The trail is in shadow, and we should be able to reach the top and belly crawl from there into the thicket of juniper growing to the right. Don’t worry about quiet going up the trail. We’ll have time to get up there before they’re in position to take a shot.”
They hit the trail and pushed their way up. Anya could feel her chest, tight with tears and rage at the thought of Ashley. God help them if she was hurt, because once Del-Rey caught them, and she knew he would, then she would demand justice herself. Her knife across their throats. She wasn’t proficient enough yet that it wouldn’t hurt.
Del-Rey heard the shot, his head jerking in the direction of the sound. He cut through the mountain echo, pinpointed direction and sent six men toward the shot, and six with him to where it was most likely aimed.
They were racing through the darkness, aware that once the first shot was fired, time was of the essence. One shot. Anya had three Coyote guards with her. There wasn’t a chance of getting to her without taking the others out.
He was racing around the top of a particularly steep area of the cliff, using juniper and holly, piñon and pine for cover, when he glimpsed the fallen form.
Fuck. Ashley.
Motioning his men around the perimeter, weapons aimed into the mountain below, he moved for the fallen form. Gripping her shoulder, he pulled her to her back and found her knife nicking his throat as he jerked back.
“Oops. Del.” Her smile flashed in the dark. “Hey, find that fucker shooting at me ’kay? Coya’s coming up the pass now. And turn off those fucking links, they have our codes.”
He flipped off the link and turned to pass the message. How the hell had they gotten the link codes?
“Are you hurt?” He crouched beside her, scanning the darkness, his night vision picking up the movement in the pine below.
“Naw. Broke a nail though,” she hissed. “Good thing they guarantee me for forty-eight hours, because this one is going to have to be fixed. I might have even skinned my cuticle.”
Fuck. He would have gaped at her if he hadn’t scented his coya moving up the trail.
He pushed her to the waiting Breed lying on his belly, and watched as the Breed dragged her into the cover of the boulders to his side.
Lying flat, he motioned the men behind him to do the same as he made his way to the trail. There were areas he could crouch and run, but getting to her was torturous.
“I smell alpha ahead,” Emma announced as Sharone pushed at Anya’s back, forcing her faster up the trail. “He’s close.”
“Get on your stomachs.” Del-Rey’s growl sliced through the night, enraged, echoing with fury and sending relief thundering through Anya.
“Belly,” Sharone reminded her, pushing her down as they started crawling quickly toward his voice.
“Ashley?” Anya hissed into the night. “Did you find her?”
“I found her.” He was suddenly there, gripping her wrists and dragging her over the rise. “Stay down. I’ll pull you.”
“Ashley?” she whispered again, terrified.
“She broke a fucking nail,” he snapped out. “She’s fine until I get my hands on her. Now move.” He pushed her toward the Breeds, who pulled her around the boulder.
Sharone fo
llowed, collapsing against a boulder and breathing out roughly.
“Martin, Jax, Ryan and Cross,” Del-Rey snarled. “Get those four back to Base and lockdown until I contact. Apprise Brim we’re on comm blackout. Shut down all comm until I arrive.”
Nothing was said. Sharone was crouched, pushing Anya ahead of her again as they moved with the four Breeds who surrounded them at Del-Rey’s command. All four had been in the Russian facility. They were hard and well trained, and they knew well how to kill and how to protect.
“The moment we get to Base you turn right back around and go back for your alpha,” Anya hissed.
“Sorry, Coya,” Ryan said miserably. “He didn’t say come back; we don’t go back. We could mess him up being in the field and him not expecting it.”
Anya locked her teeth together as they ran now. Dammit, Ryan was supposed to obey her, not Del-Rey. But it made sense. Okay, that made sense. Del-Rey would know this territory well enough. He had staked it out long before they had arrived here.
She couldn’t help but worry. She knew better than to worry; a few trespassing bastards looking for the Coyote coya, their alpha female, didn’t have a chance against Del-Rey. She knew that. But something inside her insisted on worrying. Aching. And fearing. Because she had seen his eyes. When he made it back to Base, there was going to be hell to pay.
CHAPTER 5
Anya paced Command through the night. She ignored Brim’s firm suggestions that she should retire to bed, glaring at him each time he suggested it, even though she had sent her bodyguards to their rooms hours before.
She chewed at her thumbnail; she growled at the techs when they told her time and again there was no way to pinpoint their alpha’s position without comm going back online, and she wasn’t willing to risk that either.
She ached from head to toe; exhaustion was a bitch she fought tooth and nail, and she railed at herself for not having the same stamina and endurance the Coyote Breeds had. She was supposed to be their coya, their female alpha, and yet she couldn’t manage two days without sleep? They could go for days; she had seen Sharone go for more than a week with barely more than a twenty-minute nap here and there, while Anya had collapsed more than once and slept like the dead.
Daylight was peeking over the mountains as she stood by the silent communications techs and waited. All communications was shut down. Soldiers had been sent to Haven to inform them of status and to secure their own communications. Safeguards would go into effect once Del-Rey and his men returned, but as she had told the communications techs months ago, Del-Rey should have already placed safeguards for just this eventuality.
As they had told her, he was never on base long enough and those safeguards required not just his permission, but also his help.
It hadn’t been stated, but she had seen the look in their eyes. It was because of her that he was never there long enough to fulfill his own duties.
So now she was staring at a silent comm board with no way of knowing if the Breeds in the field were alive or dead. No way of knowing if Del-Rey was safe or wounded. She couldn’t consider anything else.
The two missing soldiers had been brought in an hour after her return, slightly dazed and bleeding from several wounds. Med tech had been forced to send them to Haven as they didn’t have the supplies or the experience to treat them.
They needed their own damned doctors. What if Del-Rey was seriously wounded? Dr. Armani didn’t know enough about Coyote genetics to do more than stitch them up. And sometimes, with the Wolf Breeds, severe wounds caused unexplained infections, fevers, almost rabid behaviors in some cases, if the wounds were bad enough.
If that happened to a Coyote Breed, then they could die. Del-Rey could die.
It had been nearly eight hours since she had returned, she estimated; looking at the clock again, perhaps closer to ten. They had left the caverns late to go on the training exercise, later than usual. Otherwise, those hunters would have managed to slip right up on them. They were usually much farther toward the base of the mountain.
Someone had been watching them. They had known about the exercises. Somehow, security had been penetrated enough that the enemy had nearly blindsided them.
“Pacing the floor and glaring at the comm board isn’t going to make time pass any faster,” Brim told her as he stepped back into the command room carrying coffee. Two cups. God bless his heart. She took one of them.
“That cup was for your communications tech,” he pointed out.
“Comm is down; he can go get his own,” she muttered as she sipped at the caffeine-laced brew. It was rare that she could sneak the real thing past her bodyguards. And they always managed to make her spill it or find a way to steal it.
Several times Ashley had found a way to just spit in it before she smiled back at Anya impishly, knowing damned good and well she wouldn’t be drinking it then.
She caught the smile the communications tech threw Brim before he pushed back his chair and headed into the lounge.
“You can get hyper as hell for all I care.” Brim shrugged. “It’s not going to change anything. He’s going to come in here tearing ass over this one, and it won’t be my ass he’s tearing this time.”
She narrowed her eyes at him over her coffee cup. His thick black hair was cut short, short enough that sometimes it would spike on his head. Light blue eyes regarded her coolly. He always watched her coolly, ever since the first time she had seen him. Nothing seemed to touch Brim. He never worried, he never got in a hurry, he never got excited. He just wisecracked and glided through life.
“He has no reason to tear anyone’s ass here,” she finally retorted. “It’s not our fault those bastards found a way to access our comm codes.”
“You think that’s why he’s going to be pissed?” He let his lips quirk as though in amusement. None of that amusement showed in his eyes though. “Coya, you were out there with comm links deactivated, and without apprising Command you were outside the caverns. He’s going to tear the asses of every soldier that saw you slip out and didn’t report it. Then he’s going to strip your bodyguards to the bone. Ashley’s going to cry those pretty alligator tears for him and probably get off easiest. Emma and Sharone are going to take it like the soldiers they were trained to be, and that’s just going to piss him off more because he hates it when they go all stoic soldier on him. Then by the time he works his way to you . . .” Amusement might have touched his eyes at this point. “Well, let’s just say, he’ll probably have his most fun where you’re concerned. He’s been rather upset over that separation order, you know. Maybe you should start planning that official acceptance ceremony. You’ll need it once the two of you come up for air.”
He was laughing at her. As though a wedding ceremony would do anything more than assure the Breeds of all species that Del-Rey had accepted her as his mate and their female alpha. She could refuse him, as Hope had explained, but if he refused her, then she could become fair game when it came to the more savage qualities that were a part of the Breeds’ genetics. Respect came in many forms. An alpha leader earned it. A human female could only marry into it in Breed society.
“The poor baby,” she expressed mockingly. “Really, Brim, why don’t you just go ahead and have a laugh over it? I’m sure we’d all love to join in. Later maybe.”
He chuckled then. “Ashley’s rubbing off on you. Or are you the one that taught her all that girly crap?”
Her nostrils flared as she turned away from him and sipped at the coffee. Neither Ashley, Sharone nor Emma was here to steal this cup from her; she was going to enjoy it.
Where the hell was Del-Rey anyway?
“Do you think everything’s okay?” She turned back to Brim worriedly. “If he was hurt, we would know, wouldn’t we?”
He looked at her in surprise. “He’s not hurt, Coya.”
“How do you know?” She followed him when he turned away from her and picked up the e-pad he’d been filing reports on earlier.
His gaze moved back
to her. “If the alpha was hurt, a comm link would have been activated with an emergency distress well away from him. We would have received it, and every soldier on base and in Haven would have streamed over that mountain like killer ants. Satisfied?”
She breathed in roughly and stared up at him in regret. “You don’t like me, do you, Brim?”
Surprise flickered in his eyes then.
“Why would you think that? You’re my coya, same as Del-Rey is my alpha. It’s against the rules to dislike you.”
Was there amusement in his eyes? No, she must have been mistaken, but it was obvious he had no intention of playing fair this morning. He and Del-Rey were too much alike for that.
“Thank you,” she whispered before turning away and pacing back to the lounge, where she sat down on the long couch that sat inside the glass-enclosed room.
The caverns were inordinately quiet for this time of the morning. The Coyotes seemed to walk on tiptoes through the area as they moved about their duties. Teams hadn’t been called out, but that didn’t mean teams weren’t ready to go. Every soldier on base was armed to the teeth and ready to move if needed. They were dressed in their plain military uniforms, the ones with the Wolf Breed insignia on the shoulder.
They needed their own insignia. It would promote a feeling of pride in their own endeavors. They were too often mistaken for Wolves, and she knew they often remarked on it.
There was a deliberate laziness about the men that had originated with Del-Rey, one that had been picked up by the others. After all, as Del-Rey often stated, if they were perfect, they’d be Wolves.
She finished the coffee slowly as she waited. When the cup was empty, she set it on the table and paced the room, her hands shoved into the pockets of the comfortable cotton pants she’d changed into after showering the night before. A long T-shirt fell to her thighs and her bra was irritating the crap out of her.
She paced the room several times before throwing herself into the corner of the couch and glaring into the command room again.
Brim was sitting in her chair. That was her chair when he and Del-Rey were off base. Unfortunately the order of separation gave him command of that chair while Del-Rey was on base, rather than allowing her to retain it. Brim should have been second-in-command to her with Del-Rey gone. Or out there protecting his alpha’s superior, arrogant butt.
She leaned her elbows on her knees before pushing her fingers through her hair in frustration.
Okay, so they weren’t going to be able to slip out and play their games anymore. At least, not without backup. She could handle that. She was so used to Base and communications being secured that she had deemed the threat acceptable. She had nearly made a deadly mistake, and that mistake weighed heavily on her shoulders.
Sharone, Emma and Ashley weren’t just bodyguards. They were her dearest friends. She had been raised with them; she thought sometimes they were the sisters her parents had never given her.
She rolled her shoulders, which ached from exhaustion, then shivered against the chill filling her. She felt chilled all the time, and she had grown colder still after Del-Rey hadn’t returned within an hour of her. How long did it take anyway to catch five bastards looking to kill? One of the Coyote snipers could have taken care of them easily.
Breathing out in irritation, she curled up in the corner of the couch and dragged the little blanket that rested over the back of it over her. She was too cold. And too worried. If he was hurt, it would be her fault. And it wasn’t fair, she thought with an edge of self-pity. If anyone got to hurt him, it should be her. Not strangers that didn’t know him.
The problem was, she thought, she didn’t want to hurt him. She was too worried to consider hurting him. She just wanted him home.
Once again, Del-Rey was forced to follow his mate’s scent through the caverns to find her. With comm down, there was no calling Brim to locate his once again missing mate, and that was pissing him off.
He checked her room first, but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t with her bodyguards and she wasn’t in the community or rec rooms. She wasn’t in the kitchen, or if she had been there, she was gone now. He thought perhaps he caught the scent of her there.
Finally he stalked into Command and faced Brim.
“Where is she?” he asked the other man as he slouched in the chair that sat at the back and to the side of the room.
Brim glanced up from the reports he was filing on his e-pad, with a quizzical look on his face. “You’ve lost her again?”
The unemotional expression, the chill in his voice warned Del-Rey that he and his second-in-command just might be coming to yet another disagreement where Del-Rey’s mate was concerned.
It was becoming a common, ongoing fight between them.
“Don’t fuck with me, Brim,” he growled as the other man laid the e-pad to the side of the command chair and stared up at him.
Glaring down at Brim rarely fazed him. There were few things that did. The bastard. Del-Rey often wondered if his friend challenged him for leadership of the packs, which one of them would come out the winner. Or if either of them would. They knew each other too well, faults and all.
“It’s a little early to be chewing her ass,” Brim finally answered. “She paced the command room most of the night worrying after your worthless hide. Let her sleep.” His response was voiced in a low tone that carried no farther than the two of them, but the deliberate insult had the animal inside Del-Rey rising along with his temper.
“She’s not in her rooms sleeping, Lieutenant,” Del-Rey told him, his tone warning. “Now, I’ll ask you one more time, where is she?”
Anger flashed in Brim’s gaze. “She’s safe. Let her sleep awhile longer.” He had reached his hand out for the e-pad again, when Del-Rey gave a low, savage growl.
Brim’s jaw clenched. “She drank coffee not too long ago. You know what that does to her; Sharone has already reported it. A confrontation at this moment isn’t what she needs. She needs to sleep.”
Del-Rey stared back at him, unblinking.
“You let her drink coffee?” Del-Rey bit out. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
Brim’s jaw clenched as his light blue eyes flashed in anger.
“Well, I wasn’t willing to spit in it like Ashley does,” he retorted mockingly. “Somehow that just seemed rather rude to me.”
As though Brim cared about rude.
“She’s not supposed to have coffee,” Del-Rey snarled. “She’s like the damned Energizer bunny from hell and you know it. She’s irritable and confrontational and threatens to kill anyone that gets in her way. Usually me the minute she sees me again.”
Mating heat and caffeine did not mix well at all. Unless the male mate in question was into a little BDSM and a whole lot into a defiant, challenging mate.
“She can’t eat chocolate, she can’t drink coffee, she can’t see her family, she can’t take a fucking walk at night.” Brim moved from his chair and glared back at Del-Rey then, the unemotional facade falling away. “You take everything from a woman that once had freedom and control and expect to play these asinine games with her that you’ve developed to get her back into your bed and then you wonder why she doesn’t inform you of what she’s doing whenever she’s doing it. Hell, Del-Rey, it’s a wonder she hasn’t shot you.”