She picked up the secured landline at the side of her bed and stabbed her finger into the button to connect to Command.
“Yes, Coya?” Brim was still there.
“Is comm up?” She was breathing hard, heavy. She felt on the verge of panic. On the verge of rushing back to him and demanding he give her that damned kiss.
“Not yet. We’re still awaiting Del-Rey and Jonas Wyatt from the Bureau of Breed Affairs to go over the diagnostics on the electronics that were found with the hunters. Is anything wrong?”
“I need to see Armani,” she bit out. “Now.”
Silence filled the line for long moments.
“Are you unwell?” His voice was calm, cool. Typical Brim.
“I . . . I’m having an odd reaction to the hormonal therapy.” She swallowed tightly. “Is there any way to contact her?”
He was silent again. Longer this time.
“I can have a team waiting to take you to Haven as soon as I talk to Del-Rey and receive verification to do so. Would you like me to contact him?”
Contact Del-Rey? Her eyes swung to her still-closed door as she swallowed tightly. “No. No.”
She shook her head; she was losing her mind. “Forget it.”
She disconnected the line before punching in Sharone’s number.
“Yes, Coya?” Sharone answered warily.
“Get one of the soldiers,” she ordered her. “I need a message out to Armani that I need to see her.
Quickly.”
“I can’t,” Sharone answered her regretfully. “Brim contacted me earlier. I can’t take any orders from you that involve anything outside Base, without going through the alpha first.”
Anya turned slowly as the door opened and Del-Rey stood naked, aroused, in the doorway.
“Need to see Armani?” He lifted a brow in amusement.
“Let me know when you’re ready, I’ll take you there myself. I’d like to discuss a few issues concerning your mating heat with her.”
Anya hung up the phone and gaped at him.
Oh Lord. His erection was huge, heavily veined, the crown flared and damp, and the sight of it had her entire body weakening for precious seconds. She had to force strength into her legs. Had to force herself to straighten and jerk her gaze from his cock to his face. And the bastard was smirking.
Standing there, all hard and bronzed flesh, a cock that made her mouth water, and those sexy lips tilted into a half smile. She felt her sex grow more heated, her juices gathering between her thighs.
“It’s none of your business,” she informed him through gritted teeth. “And you do not need to talk to Armani about my body.”
“Of course I do,” he told her, his tone mildly curious. “It’s obvious you need further hormonal treatments to control the mating heat. You were flowing over me like honey on a comb, Anya. I have a few things I have to do first, but I’ll be ready in three hours. Meet me in the community room.”
He stepped back and slammed the door closed as she picked up the wood paperweight on her desk and hurled it at his head.
It bounced off the door, and she knew, knew, she heard his laughter echoing from the other room.
Be ready her ass. She wasn’t going anywhere with that snide, smirking, too damned sexy for her own good Coyote.
Damn him. Let him go by himself.
She pushed her hands into her hair with a snarl of outrage before dragging them through the strands. And it felt too much like that damned dream that wasn’t a dream. Del-Rey’s fingers in her hair, tugging at it, sending sharp, burning little sensations of pleasure racing through her.
She shivered at the remembrance. Oh man, she was in so much trouble here. He was right, she needed to see Armani, because the heat was building again and she had a feeling she couldn’t control it this time.
It had changed. It was insidious, growing by small measures, burning inside her when she least expected it and leaving her aching for his touch, even though she knew the culmination of that touch was cold, lonely emptiness.
She sat down on her bed and breathed out with a small, strangled groan. She so didn’t need this right now. Of all things she didn’t need, it was the mating heat returning.
An hour after Del-Rey had heard the paperweight strike his mate’s door, he was sitting in his office beside Command and staring across his desk at the three Coyote females his packs had adopted.
He’d darkened the windows as they stepped inside, ensuring that his little mate couldn’t wander into Command and see him talking to her bodyguards.
Sharone Bryce stood tallest, military straight as she stared at the wall above his head, her expression composed. She hadn’t even shifted during the minutes she had stood there. Her dark brunette hair was pulled back into a fussy little braid that worked its way down her head. French braid, he thought he’d heard it called. Her hazel green eyes were cool, but he could detect the flicker of wariness in them.
Emma Truing was standing similarly. Still and straight, her lighter brown hair cut short and framing her pretty face. There was the slightest crook to her nose where it had been broken in her teens. Her lips were firm, her gray eyes steady.
Ashley Truing was a whole other ball game. Del-Rey liked to tease her that she was a true Coyote: lazy, shiftless, too charming for her own damned good, cunning as hell and filled with fun.
She was a genius. A stone-cold killer standing before him with lightened hair, nearly blond, her gray eyes twinkling back at him, though he knew they could fill with crocodile tears at any moment. And she wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that she was chewing gum between those perfect teeth of hers. She wasn’t standing straight; one hip was cocked and she was on the edge of looking bored.
“Okay already, chew my ass out. I told you I have to get my nails fixed today. And there’s this shoe party that Young Leaders of America or some bullshit is throwing. I’m gonna be late, Alpha.” She pouted back at him. “Come on, we weren’t totally bad. Right? We got her to you.”
He’d known Ashley would break first. Emma winced. Sharone closed her eyes for a brief, irritated second. He would have chuckled if the lives of his mate and these three women weren’t so important to him.
“And if you hadn’t gotten her to me, Ashley?” he asked, a warning growl in his throat. “If the four of you had died on that mountain, what then?”
Her eyes widened. “They didn’t have a prayer,” she scoffed.
“Come on, Alpha, I knew you’d be looking for her the minute we left on ‘no comm.’ I figured you’d catch up with us sooner than you did. I mean, come on, you’re totally hot for her. She’s not going to be out of your sight that long when you don’t know precisely where she is.”
Cunning, manipulative, charming and too intuitive—because she was fucking right.
“That’s not the point.” He leaned forward in his chair. “What would have happened if that bullet had struck you at the top of that trail and left you dead?”
She stared back at him blankly. “Umm. The coya would cry. I’d be dead. And if that had happened, I would hope you would dress me really fine and give me one of those cool funerals, you know? Like real people have. And roses.”
She was utterly serious. Like real people. His chest clenched at the words, as though in her soul she believed she wasn’t ‘real people’.
“Coyotes would have gone to war,” he stated clearly, powerfully. “None of those hunters would have escaped. I let them go, all but one last night, Ashley, to track where they went. Had you, your sister or Sharone died on that mountain, nearly a hundred Coyote soldiers would have broken Breed Law and descended on Advert with the full fury of killing rage.”
She blinked back at him. “Why?” She looked to Emma and Sharone’s surprised faces. “We’re just Coyotes, Alpha. We were born to die.” She flashed him that fucking fearless smile that tied his guts into knots.