“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.”
“And a wonder you haven’t loaned her the gun,” Del-Rey sneered. “I’m getting sick of battling you over her. You’re not her brother.”
Brim’s lips quirked. “I think she rather needs a brother. Perhaps I’ll petition the tribunal for adoption. Someone needs to see beyond their own wants where this woman is concerned.”
If it wasn’t for the fact that Del-Rey was damned certain Brim was seriously brotherly rather than in lust with Anya, then he would have taken him out years ago. They had been fighting over Anya since she first showed up in that damned bar, and the confrontations had only grown more frequent over the past eight months.
“I’m losing patience with this, Brim,” he warned him.
“Try being honest with her then.” Brim crossed his arms over his chest and glared back at Del-Rey. He was possibly the only man in the world who could get away with it. “You should have been honest with her from the beginning.”
“Oh yeah, I should have told a sixteen-year-old virgin I intended to fuck the hell out of her after she grew up, and that I was going to shoot her father and cousins for the hell of it because they allowed her to endanger herself. Now, wouldn’t that have just inspired confidence in me? We’d have really managed to get her and those Breeds she protected out of that underground facility, wouldn’t we, Brim?”
This argument had played out for nearly seven years now. For some reason Brim had all but adopted Anya since the moment he saw her. There was no lust, there was concern. And Brim rarely concerned himself with others besides Del-Rey. They had been fighting together since they were kids. They had been created in the same labs and plotted to escape them since they first understood they were prisoners and expected to kill.
Five, Del-Rey realized. Brim had been five and Del-Rey had been ten when they first began planning. Brim had been fifteen and he twenty, and both were hardened killers, before they’d managed it. That had been nearly sixteen years ago, and until Anya, Brim had never questioned Del-Rey’s plots and schemes.
“You should have warned her before you shot her father about what you had to do.” Brim repeated his years-old refrain. “All you had to do was tell her that if you didn’t do it, it would endanger their lives. She would have understood that. You didn’t have to shell-shock her.”
“Well fuck, let’s just get our little time machine and go back and fix it,” Del-Rey sneered.
Brim grimaced.
“Where the fuck is my mate, Lieutenant?”
Brim sighed. “She’s asleep in the lounge. She just went to sleep less than an hour ago, Del-Rey.
She’s worried herself sick about you while you were out there. She already looks like she hasn’t slept in months. Leave her the hell alone for a while.”
That was it.
Del-Rey’s hand snapped out, wrapped around Brim’s throat and applied just enough pressure to assure the other man he was dead serious now.
Brim’s gaze flickered.
“We haven’t fought since you were fifteen years old and you decided you could take me and the alpha position in my pack. Do you want to try me again?”
Brim stared back at him for long, tense moments before he sighed. “I swore loyalty to you. I won’t go back on it.”
Del-Rey’s gripped slackened. “Don’t get between me and Anya, Brim. I swore when we returned I’d deal more fairly with her. Accept that, and let’s put this behind us.”
“When she accepts it.” Brim shrugged. “Until then, you’re stuck with my shit.”
Del-Rey almost grinned before shaking his head at the mess he had made for himself.
“I’m going to take my coya to her room. You will tell her bodyguards, you will inform every soldier in this base, that any order she gives that would give her access outside this base is to go through me first. Are we understood?”
Brim grimaced. “Wrong move.”
“Are we understood?” he repeated.
“Of course, Alpha Delgado,” Brim finally replied mockingly. “I understand English very well.”
Mocking son of a bitch Coyote, Del-Rey thought fondly.
“We brought back a prisoner,” he told Brim then. “He needs transport to Haven. We haven’t finished the detainment cells here yet and I don’t want to risk him escaping. See if you can find some secure communication with Haven and let them know that we’re bringing him in. Tell them I want to be involved in the interrogation.”
Brim nodded and turned away to do that as Del-Rey moved toward the lounge. The door was closed; the interior was sound-proofed for meetings when needed, that was the reason he hadn’t caught her scent when he stepped into Command.
She was curled into the corner of the couch sleeping. A small blanket was wrapped around her, and she appeared chilled. He wondered if she got as cold as he sometimes did. There were nights the cold went clear to his bones, the need to wrap himself around her warmth eating at his insides.
It wasn’t all sexual. He’d had six years to form the bond he had with this woman, letting it go was impossible.
He should have known when he first realized he was claiming her for his own that games wouldn’t work with her. She was too damned sharp, and too easily hurt by them. She didn’t see the cunning manipulations as he did. She didn’t play those games that other women caught on to so easily. She, quite simply, was just Anya. Unlike any other woman, unlike anything he had known in his entire life.
He moved to the couch and hunkered in front of her, staring into her sleeping face. Hell, she looked sixteen rather than twenty-two. Her looks hadn’t changed much in the years since he had first met her. She still had that innocent curve to her soft lips, that impish tilt to her red gold brows.
She liked to tease, and she liked to play. Sharone had sent video after video of his mate over the months. Catching her in a snowball fight with Ashley, recordings of the three women sparring in the gym as they trained her to fight. She laughed with them. She used to try to laugh with him.
Hell, Brim should have shot him as soon as he realized what Del-Rey was doing. He’d have deserved it.
Moving carefully, he slid his arms beneath her knees and around her back before lifting her against his chest. She’d had coffee; if she woke up, she was going to go ballistic on him. He hoped she slept for a while longer. A whole lot longer, if he was lucky. But she wasn’t sleeping on this couch in the command lounge. She had a bed. Two actually, his and hers. If she needed to sleep, then she could do so in comfort.
As he moved from the lounge, she cuddled closer, her cold little nose burying itself against his neck as a little shiver worked over her.
She was cold. A surge of possessiveness shot through him at the realization. The caverns weren’t cold. They were a comfortable seventy-one degrees almost all year long. If by chance any part of them grew chillier, then there were heating units in place to take care of that.
He held her closer as he moved through the stone- and steel-reinforced tunnels to their quarters.
Her bed had been turned down for her, he knew, the lights left low, but he was damned if he wanted to put her in her own bed.
He wondered if it were possible that she would sleep through him putting her in his bed. He was more than willing to leave her dressed, though he wasn’t as sacrificing where his own clothes were concerned. Tucking her against his naked body would tickle the hell out of him.