by Lora Leigh
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.
“Wow. You walked out on the alpha,” Ashley said and whistled behind her. “No one walks on the alpha, Coya.”
Anya rolled her eyes. No one argued with the alpha. No one sassed the alpha. No one disobeyed the alpha’s orders. The list was almost never ending and never failed to send Anya’s nerves into chaos. She wasn’t the alpha’s puppet and she wasn’t going to pretend to be one.
“Maybe he’ll get mad enough to finish loading the dishwasher,” she bit out.
Sharone laughed. “Wanna bet?”
“Ten bucks he doesn’t,” Anya shot back.
“Ten bucks he does and the kitchen sparkles when he’s done. Alpha doesn’t like messes unless he makes them.”
Well hell, she had nothing to worry about then, because she was the biggest mess there.
She wasn’t much better by evening. Adrenaline was racing through her system and Dr. Armani wasn’t being helpful. Natural arousal her ass. There was nothing natural about her reaction to Del-Rey, and no one was going to convince her otherwise.
She waited until darkness fell to check the kitchen and turn over the ten bucks to Sharone, then she and the three other girls slipped out into the night.
The guards on duty were used to her slipping out; they didn’t even blink. As usual, when Del-Rey was on base, there was a strangely relaxed atmosphere. She’d slipped into the base a few times while he was there, when she had forgotten something she needed. She had noticed the difference. There was more of an air of camaraderie, a warmth that was lacking when he was on a mission. It made her feel curiously lonely, and aware that the Coyote home wasn’t complete when their alpha was gone. Their coya just wasn’t a fitting replacement.
Del-Rey stared around the kitchen and at the younger soldiers that had completed cleaning up the mess that had been made.
“How long has your coya had kitchen duty?” he asked one of them, strangely enough one of the men from his own group, not the group that came from the Russian facility.
The young Breed shrugged, glanced at his feet, then lifted his gaze to Del-Rey. “Whenever you aren’t here, Alpha,” he finally admitted.
“This is the reason I have the request for kitchen staff, in bold, in my coya’s list of requirements?” he asked the Breed.
“It’s not just me, Del-Rey,” the Coyote Breed breathed out roughly. “Sometimes we just forget to do things.
You know how we are. If we were perfect, we’d be Wolves, right?”
His own words thrown back at him. He growled in warning. The Breed cleared his throat and stepped back, but there was a glimmer of amusement in his eyes.
“Make a roster for kitchen duty,” he told the other man. “Put the Felines in first.”
He almost chuckled at the idea. Damn, he could see those Felines having fits already.
The Coyote Breed whistled soundlessly. “Alpha Lyons will protest.”
Del-Rey shrugged. “So, I’ll just protest right back the next time he puts our Coyote team on babysitting duty. Last time they were out, they had to make mud pies with the babies.”
“Yeah, but we liked that,” the soldier laughed. “Man, those Feline kids know how to pitch a mud ball.”
“Yeah, but Alpha Lyons protested,” Del-Rey reminded him. “So now his Felines can start off kitchen duty.”
They both chuckled as Del-Rey made his way from the kitchen and went searching for his coya. He found her scent in Command, in laundry. He found her scent in the new barracks being built within one of the caverns, and he found her scent in her bedroom. It was strongest there. The scent of feminine heat and delicious female.
Damn, why hadn’t he taken the time to go down on her when he had her in his bed? To run his tongue between the luscious folds of her pussy and lap at her like candy? He’d kicked himself a dozen times a day for missing out on that.
He found her scent in damned near every area of the base, but he didn’t find Anya. Activating the communications link, he clicked into Brim’s channel and waited while it beeped.
“I’m in Command, what’s up?” Brim answered him.
“Everything okay?”
“We picked up hunters on the eastern side of Base. We have a team heading out to cover them,” Brim answered.
“Pull in security monitors; see if you can find Anya.”
“Manage to lose her already?” There was a chuckle in Brim’s voice.
“Laugh at me later,” Del-Rey grunted. “For now, find her before I have to kick your ass.”
“I’ll let you know when we’ve cornered your coya, then,” Brim promised.
The line disconnected as Del-Rey propped his hands on his hips and frowned at the disappearance. Dammit, one woman shouldn’t be so hard to keep up with. There were security monitors through every area of the damned caverns.
He flipped to the general channel. “This is Alpha Delgado, report on coya whereabouts ASAP.”
He could just imagine Brim’s laughter over that one. Not to mention his coya’s irritation if she found out.
He strode from her bedroom and headed back through the tunnels toward the community room as his link beeped.
“Yeah?”
“Del-Rey, it’s Thomas, I have entrance duty tonight. Your coya and her three bodyguards exited Base twenty minutes ago on their way to their evening training session.”
His teeth clenched. He disconnected as the link from Brim beeped at his ear.
“She left Base twenty minutes ago and headed to the east.” Brim’s voice wasn’t easygoing now. “Those hunters we were tracking disappeared from sight and the team I sent to track them can’t be reached. We have a possible penetration into Base territory.”
“I want team three at the entrance now,” Del-Rey yelled as he began running for the entrance. “Fully armed and in gear. Have someone get my gear as well. Get the heli-jet revved and ready to move, and I want team six moving in as backup. And get on those fucking heat sensors we put out there. I want Anya found and I want her found now!”
He raced through the tunnels as he switched to the general channel and listened to the reports coming through. The two-man team sent out to track the hunters wasn’t answering; that meant they were down. His mate was out there with three bodyguards and God only knew what tracking her.
“Teams three and six waiting,” Cavalier reported into the communications link as Del-Rey raced through the community room.
The cavern was empty now; all soldiers were moving to assigned duties and preparing to move out.
He rounded the curve to the entrance to the exit tunnel as the twelve men there turned to him expectantly.
“Team three, get your asses out there, I’ll catch up ahead of six. Finding your coya is priority. Team six will provide backup and another team is heading out to locate the missing team.”
He jerked the mission jacket out of Cavalier’s hands and shrugged it on quickly, checking the pockets for extra ammo, knife and backup weapons. As the first team moved out, he was strapping a handgun to his thigh before grabbing the PDW submachine gun from Cavalier and clipping it to the jacket. The lightweight personal defense weapon was loaded, safety off and ready to fire.
“Move out,” he ordered as he pressed the secured line on the link and waited for Brim to target his identifying signal. A minute beep signaled that Brim had him, and he moved out.
He caught the faint hint of her scent as soon as he moved into the scrub and pine rising around the base entrance. The eastern edge of the mountain cliffs they called home was less steep, covered in pine, oak and a variety of foliage. The western edge overlooking Haven was pretty much sheer cliffs.
He caught up with team three within seconds, motioned them into a new direction and headed east. The same direction where his mate’s scent lingered.
It was subtle and light, and would be harder for the others to detect as it blended so well with his own scent. Mating made the female scent harder to track unless she was aroused or ovulating. Her body adapted, her scent changing to match the mating hormones and the male’s scent rather than her own.
Camouflage maybe. A natural protection of some sort. Nature was weird as hell where the Breeds were concerned, so who the hell knew. All he knew right now was he was the only person that could track his mate effectively and danger was stalking her.
“We’re in trouble,” Sharone whispered as they lay flat on the ground, knives gripped in their hands, watching as the five figures moved below them, their voices carrying up to them easily.
“The bitch is here,” one of the men hissed. “She goes out damned near every night to