by Carly Fall
constant basis. It was better than the gun to the head he’d gotten when he first met the Warriors,
courtesy of Hudson.
Blake guessed they had run about three miles, and he was just starting to break a sweat.
Nice.
“Did you talk to your guy in Phoenix?” Blake asked.
“Yep.”
“And?”
“And it didn’t go so well.” Noah stopped and put his hands on his hips.
Blake put on the breaks as well. “How come?”
Noah sighed and pushed his sunglasses up his nose. “He wants the CD, and he’s willing
to keep his trap shut on where he got it and not ask any questions. But he wants me to come
down.”
“Why?”
“Two reasons: He’s got some dead people on his hands, and he can’t help but feel like
they’ve all been killed by the same person. All of them were beaten and stabbed. He wants me to
look at the files. He also wants me to go to some stupid function down there that will have
representatives from all the states’ police and sheriff’s offices.”
Blake studied Noah. Obviously, the guy didn’t want to go, but it would be a good
opportunity for Noah to expand his network of police contacts. Blake told him this.
“I know. That’s why I’m going.”
They started the run again.
“And why are you hesitant?” Blake asked after a while.
Noah stopped again. “First, I hate large functions. They usually require a tuxedo, or at the
minimum, a tie. Second, I despise pretending that it’s nice to meet everyone I come in contact
with. Third, I hate being questioned. Why do people think it’s okay to pry into someone’s life?”
Blake couldn’t agree more. On more than one occasion when someone, mainly a woman,
wanted to “get to know him,” there were all sorts of personal questions about his past that he
wasn’t about to cough up the answer.
“Gotta learn to dodge and deflect, man,” Blake said.
Noah nodded. “Yeah, I know. I do a decent job at it, but it doesn’t mean I like it.”
Again, they got back to the running.
Blake noted large clouds on the horizon. It looked like their warm spell was about to be
snapped. Those clouds looked like they carried some nasty weather.
“So what’s the deal with you and Annis?”
Blake lost his footing at the question and stumbled. Quickly, he recovered. “Nothing.
What are you talking about?”
Blake knew that he was circling Annis like a hyena over a dead carcass. Yet, he stopped
before actually approaching the woman sexually, and he didn’t know why. Going over it a
million times did nothing to get him to closer to a conclusion. Annis was gorgeous. They got
along great, and he loved hanging out with her. As far as he was concerned, they were perfectly
matched; they just needed to get down to business.
“Oh, please, Blake. Anyone with half a brain can see that you have a hard-on for Annis.”
Blake didn’t think it was that obvious. “Really? You think so?”
“Well, I didn’t pick up on it. But Abby and the girls sure did. I heard about it from
Abby.”
Those damn observant women.
“So, what’s going on? Abby says it’s like you’re pissing on Annis’s leg to mark her as
yours every time another male walks into the room.”
Blake stopped and put his hands on his knees. “Abby didn’t say that.”
Noah laughed. “You’re right. But it would be funnier than hell if she did. She said you
were very protective of her when Cohen came in the room, like you were possessive of her.”
Well, Abby had that right. Blake was possessive of Annis. As far as he was concerned,
she was his. And frankly, Cohen’s behavior toward Annis was a little frightening. Blake sure
didn’t understand it, and neither did anyone else he had spoken to about it. Well, he had only
spoken to Jovan, who said that Cohen used to be an easy, laid-back guy, but after the death of his
mate, he became quiet, brooding, and seemed to direct all his inner turmoil at Annis. Blake had
told Jovan he should be a shrink with that glimmer of brilliant psychology.
“You ready to turn around?” Blake asked.
Noah nodded. “So what’s the deal with the two of you?”
Blake stared out over the sagebrush. The sun was getting ready to set, and all he could
think about was getting back to the silo so he could be there when Annis’s eyes lit up for the
night. He loved watching the glow start as a pinpoint on her pupil, then morph into the warm and
beautiful glimmering gold orbs.
“Annis is my friend,” Blake said.
“You’re giving me a non-answer, Blake,” Noah said.
“Exactly. Review the conversation we had earlier. Dodge and deflect, man.”
Noah laughed and they started their long trek home.
“When we get back, that will be about eight miles for the day,” Blake said.
“And that, my friend,” Noah said, “means that we deserve some whiskey. And two
helpings of dessert.”
Chapter 16
Annis put her clothes into her suitcase and sighed.
A week had passed, and Noah had handed down the orders that she was to accompany
him, Abby, Jovan, Liberty, and Cohen to Phoenix. There was a function that Noah needed to
attend, and he wanted Warriors around him, as well as Abby.
“Your job is to stick to Abby and Liberty like stink on shit. Got it, Annis?”
Yes, she did. But what she hadn’t understood at first was why Cohen had to be part of the
trip. She really didn’t want to be around him, and she hadn’t spoken but a few sentences to him
since that hot mess in the Great Room.
Apparently, Hudson needed to stay home with Beverly and the baby, as Beverly had
come down with a case of the flu. Faith and Rayner would be joining them on the trip to
Phoenix, but Faith was receiving an award from her Navajo tribe in Flagstaff for her efforts in
bettering the tribe, and Rayner would accompany her. Talin wasn’t in any shape to travel,
preferring to stay close to his computers and interact with others as little as possible.
So that left Jovan and Cohen.
In her opinion, Cohen wasn’t any better off than Talin, except he swung the other way.
While Talin was sad and distant at the loss of his mate, Cohen had become rude, mean, and just
plain awful.
Not that she knew the male that everyone described before her arrival. The male she
knew was not a happy, joking male. He was intense, angry, and . . . devastated at losing his mate.
However, he didn’t need to be flat-out cruel to everyone, especially her.
And why did he say that she enjoyed being raped?
Tears welled in her eyes and her stomach flipped as she thought of the brutality of his
words. Never in her existence had she experienced something so horrible as she did at the hands
of that doctor, and then to have someone say that she enjoyed being defiled? The depth of his
viciousness astounded her. She considered herself pretty tough, but with a few well-placed
words, Cohen had hurt her worse than Hudson’s knife. She wanted to hate Cohen, but she
couldn’t find it within to do so. In fact, she pitied him because he was so absolutely despondent
that he lashed out at others with such ferocity. It would be difficult to be that miserable, and it
was something she couldn’t fathom or understand.
Yes, only a fucktard, as Blake had called him, would say the words Cohen had said.
Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she steeled herself and pushed her thoughts about Cohen
aside. She needed to focus on getting packed and the trip to Phoenix.
There was a light knock at her door. She was expecting Liberty, but usually the female
just marched in without warning.
Opening the door, her breath hitched as Cohen stood in front of her. He said nothing, just
stood there with his arms crossed over his chest, staring at her. Deep circles bruised under his
eyes, and his hair stood on end as if it needed a good wash and a comb. His red T-shirt said,
Don’t Curse, and had seen better days. His jeans loosely hung from his hips.
She adopted the same stance and felt the urge to kick his ass right out from her doorway
and back into the elevator behind him. She felt an overwhelming desire to smile when she
noticed that the bruise on his jaw from where she had hit him had turned an awful yellow color.
After a moment, the stare-down ended when he said, “Can I come in?”
“No, you may not.” There was no way she was going to allow him in her quarters.
Sighing, he pushed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and looked at the floor,
reminding her of a child. “I came to apologize to you,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry I’m such an
ass.”
“Fucktard,” Annis said.
Cohen looked up at her. “Excuse me?”
“You are an absolute fucktard, Cohen. I don’t know who you think you are that you can
talk to people the way you spoke to me, but I would rather have you say nothing at all to me
from now on.”
Cohen nodded and studied his feet again. “You’re right. I have been acting awful,
especially toward you. There’s just so much . . . stuff going on inside me, Annis, and somehow
you end up being the target.”
“What have I done that makes me this so-called target, Cohen? I believe you own me an
explanation, especially with your cruelty of the other night.”
He met her gaze, and she was surprised what she saw there. Gone was the angry
demeanor, and in its place was the hurt and anguish he felt. “You’ve done nothing, Annis.
Nothing. In fact, you are the strongest, bravest, most honorable person I know, and I wish I had
those traits within me, but they were lost a long time ago.”
Shock rendered her momentarily silent.
“Cohen—”
“Please. I can’t talk about it, Annis. I just came down to say I’m sorry, and I promise you
that your secret is safe with me. I won’t speak of it again to you, or anyone else in this house. I
was a rude . . . fucktard.”
Annis felt the wind leave her lungs as if he had punched her in the diaphragm. An
apology was the last thing she expected from this visit. As he turned to the elevator, she stared at
his back. The steel doors parted and Cohen stepped in. He turned, leaned against the back wall
while crossing his arms over his chest again, and looked at her. Their stares locked until the
doors closed.
Annis slowly shut the door to her quarters and leaned against it. It was within her nature
to forgive, and she took a deep breath, letting the anger release from her body.
She had been taught in the SR44 military that anger was a wasted emotion because it took
up so much energy, and she was reminded again of how true that was. She hadn’t realized it at
the time, but when she first started in the military, she held a lot of anger toward her mother and
siblings, and even the father she had never known. Her memories took her back to a training
session where she fought a male, Li, who would, oddly enough, later become her lover. He
defeated her at every turn, and she remembered her anger and frustration getting the best of her.
Later, her trainer had worked with her on how to release the anger from her body.
Presently, as she let the anger ebb, exhaustion came over her, and she decided that she
would skip her workout for the night and turn in early.
Cohen had been awful to her, and she would try to forgive and forget. She would also just
keep her distance from him as best she could so he didn’t have the opportunity to hurt her again.
She didn’t understand why she couldn’t hate him. Instead, she found him pathetic.
Yes, she did pity him. Obviously losing his mate was a terrible burden for him, one that
changed him in many ways, from what she gathered from those who knew him before she
arrived. But SR44 males without a mate usually didn’t act out with so much anger. Either he had
an incredible love with his lovren, or there was something else going on with him, something
that he obviously didn’t feel comfortable sharing with her.
Annis wondered what it would be like to love someone so strongly, that your world was
literally decimated when you found out they were gone.
At one time she had thought she was in love with Li. They had courted for a time and
eventually ended up joining. As time made one wiser, she now realized that she had latched on to
Li in desperation of wanting to be loved, to feel that emotion within her. She never received that
from her family, and she never felt like she belonged anywhere. Li had been kind to her even
though he bested her at training exercises, but it wasn’t long before they both realized they were
not in love, and socially they went their separate ways.
Liberty had made her watch a TV show on Animal Planet. It had been about a female
who took in stray dogs called pit bulls. Humans feared these dogs, but the female on the show
didn’t. It was as if once she cracked their hard exteriors, there was a gentle, sweet animal that
only wished to be loved.
She couldn’t help but feel that Cohen resembled those pit bulls.
Chapter 17
Cohen sat in a booth with Jovan, Talin, and Rayner in Chukars Sports Casino in the
middle of Fernley, Nevada, watching a football game on the screen above the bar. He sipped his
beer and wondered why the three of them had dragged him out this afternoon, as he was leaving
for Phoenix in the morning and had stuff to do.
“Nice play,” Rayner mumbled as he tipped back his Bud.
“Definitely. That dude can run,” Jovan said.
After a moment, Cohen sighed, set down his beer, and sat back in the booth, feeling a
little claustrophobic trapped in the small space with three huge males. Time to get to the purpose
of this little powwow.
“Why are we here?”
Rayner and Jovan exchanged glances, then Talin said, “They told me I needed to get out
of the house.”
Rayner rolled his eyes. “Well, you do, Talin. You’ve become like a troll all hunkered
down in your quarters.”
“I’d like to know why everyone thinks they know what I need,” Talin said, looking
bored, as if he would rather be anywhere in the world except where he was.
“And that’s why I’m here?” Cohen asked. “Because you think you know what’s best for
me as well?”
Rayner shook his head. “No. We’re killing two birds with one stone on this little outing.
We’re getting troll-boy over here out from his cave, and we want to know what’s going on with
you, Cohen. We get it that you’re a twisted mess with the loss of Mia, but you’re being an
absolute cocksuc
ker, especially to Annis.”
“It has to stop, Cohen,” Jovan said.
Cohen exhaled. Should he tell them that he was seeing a ghost of his dead mate whenever
he looked at Annis? And that it pissed him off to epic proportions that he wanted Annis with a
ferocity that both excited and frightened him. That he hated himself for feeling the way he did.
That he hated Mia for always showing up when he looked at Annis. That he hated Annis for
being so damn beautiful and possessing a true Warrior spirit. That his soul twisted and burned
with each day, his whole being in a war of lust, sorrow, and hate. Was he ready to slice himself
from throat to sternum and spill his guts on all of that?
And if he did, what would happen? They couldn’t exactly commit him to a human psych
ward, but they sure as shit could strap him to some pads down in the gym.
Or maybe they could help him get some relief from the raging war brewing within him.
He wouldn’t know until he spilled the beans and laid it all out on the table for his two
friends.
Studying Rayner, he remembered the day he had met him. They had partied together, and
Cohen had convinced Rayner to join the SR44 military. Cohen wondered if Rayner hated him for
it, or blamed him for what had become of their lives. Not that Rayner’s life was all that bad; he
was deeply in love with the fiery, loose cannon—Faith. Although she exasperated him at times,
she was perfect for him, and Cohen hoped that he lived long enough to see their legend come to
fruition of producing a son who would heal the Earth. But what if something better could have
been his on SR44?
The fact of the matter was that if Rayner hadn’t joined the military, if none of them had
been chosen for this special mission, they would all be dead.
Just like Mia.
Would he have been better off spending the time with Mia and dying with her? Or maybe
he would have died in battle when the Miladrids attacked. Who knew?
And that was the thing: every decision that was made switched the path of life. You could
be walking down the trail thinking you were straight on the course, that you were going in the
right direction, that you were where you were supposed to be. Then a decision was made, and a