Emma lifted her hand and touched her coya’s face then. Her friend. Her protector. “One day, you will smile again,” she promised.
The curve of Anya’s lips was sad, almost broken. “I hope you’re right. So.” She breathed in roughly, breaking Emma’s heart as she gathered her courage around her. “Shall we pony up, my friends?”
Satin Belle stared at the little human who fought to pull herself to her feet, despite her exhaustion. She inhaled slowly, made certain her senses weren’t lying to her, then made another call to her alpha.
“Yes?” Gunnar came online as Satin moved into the other room.
“The coya is breeding,” Satin said softly. “I advise against this. We should meet with teams, get her to Haven and take care of this ourselves.”
Gunnar was silent for long moments. “What’s her status?”
“Feverish, weak, extremely pale. I can scent conception, Alpha. I don’t know how her bodyguards are missing it, and it’s sapping her fast. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Teams three, eight and ten are converging on your location. Has she told you where she’s meeting the doctors?”
“Not yet. I’ll contact you when we have it and move in then. We can’t wait much longer, she’s going to collapse . . .” She paused.
“Satin?” Wolfe’s voice snapped into the link.
Satin moved to the door, stepped into the main room and cursed at the sight of her two Wolf Breed enforcers unconscious on the floor.
“Son of a bitch,” she cursed. “They’ve flown. My girls are down, I repeat, my girls are down and the others have flown the coop. Get those teams in here now.”
“I knew better than to trust those bitches,” Ashley snarled as she helped Anya sit up in her seat, holding her upright as Sharone maneuvered the car they had stolen the night before from its hidden parking place. “Damn them.”
Anya tried to shake awareness into her head. Something was wrong, she could feel it. She needed Del-Rey. She was so cold her teeth were nearly chattering. She was off balance, feverish.
She couldn’t believe what they overheard. That Wolfe and Hope would betray her. That the Wolf enforcers she had been sent to would be ready to turn her over to security teams so quickly.
Armani was going to be pissed off.
“Something’s wrong with her.” Emma worried. “She’s getting too weak.”
“We’re going to meet with damned Coyote doctors,” Sharone cursed. “They’ll know what’s wrong.”
Anya hoped they did. She felt off balance, dazed. She needed Del-Rey’s touch, but the sexual intensity of the mating heat was missing. She could feel herself inside, crying out for him.
“Call him,” she whispered.
“What?” Ashley’s voice was frantic. “Anya, you have to sit up. You can’t be sick. Tell me what’s wrong.”
She forced her eyes to open. “Call my mate. Call him, Ashley.”
Her eyes widened in distress. “Coya, I don’t have a link,” she whispered. “We didn’t bring links.”
She shook her head. “When we reach the spa, take me to my papa and call my mate. I need my mate. Now.”
“We need to find Del-Rey,” Sharone insisted. “The meeting is only an hour away; we’ll have just enough time to get in place.”
“There are Breeds scouring the city,” Emma hissed. “Let me out. I’ll find a team and radio Del-Rey. What’s wrong with her?”
Anya could feel fear skating over her now. She shuddered, shook with it. She needed his touch desperately. She felt as though she were going to die without it.
She inhaled roughly. “The spa,” she said again. God, she could surely make it that far. “Get me there. Call from there. I need Del-Rey.”
“We’re nearing the spa, Coya,” Sharone answered, worry thickening her voice. “We’ll call him from there, I swear it.”
Del-Rey lost control at Satin’s message. His mate was pregnant and she was without him. She was ill, feverish, reacting with the same symptoms as a Coyote Breed with a life-threatening wound.
“Find her.” He turned on Brim. “Find her now.”
Brim was staring around the street they were on, his expression intense, furious.
“She would go somewhere she thought was safe,” Brim muttered. “A place she could feel comfortable and protected in without her security force.”
“Where?” Del-Rey snarled.
“The spa.” They turned on Jax where he sat in the backseat with Cavalier.
“What?”
Jax swallowed tightly. “Her security force could only surround the spa. They couldn’t go in.
Women only. Out back is a huge garden area. Secluded little places for lunches and stuff, all kinds of evergreens and sheltered grottos. They went there a lot. All-day trips.”
“Edge of town.” Brim hit the gas. “That fucking spa. We had a dozen reports from the team leaders of her security force concerning their inability to adequately protect her there.”
“She’s a fucking woman. Women like spas,” Del-Rey snarled. “I had it on the list to disapprove when Wolfe called laughing at me and asking about flowers for my funeral. They like to be girly.
They can’t be girly with a man hovering over them.” He repeated Wolfe’s words.
“Get there,” Del-Rey ordered. “Get there now. Those city council members managed to slip past the two men we had on them. My fucking neck is itching, Brim.”
“Alpha, this is Communications,” a voice barked at his ear. “Sofia has the identity of our problem but lost sight of it. Subject of interest is missing. Estimated flight at an hour and a half.
Sofia is trying to track but we fear he’s headed to your location. I’m sorry, Alpha, we lost him in the confusion here.”
Fuck. Fuck. Sofia had finally found the spy in Base, only to have him slip free. Enduring the pain her presence brought to Anya had been bad enough. Sofia was brash, angry that Anya had refused him eight months before, but she had been his only chance to identify that leak. She had played the disgruntled and rebuffed lover, when nothing had been further from the truth. She had played it too far. And now Anya was paying the price.
“Find them,” he growled. “Find them now.”
He looked at Brim, fear eroding his control further. “The city council’s going after her. They know where the meeting is; they won’t bother kidnapping her—they’ll kill her.”
The vehicle’s speed increased as Brim cursed.
Del-Rey clenched his fingers around the weapon he carried and clenched his teeth in rage. He’d known there was a leak in Base. The attack on Anya that night in the mountains had begun his suspicions. Only a member of the base would have known her schedule, her habits. And only one that worked Communications would have been able to give out the locator codes on the comm links.
He had been betrayed from within. Being careful, cunning, weeding the chaff from the harvest hadn’t worked in this case. He’d chosen the wrong Breed and placed him in the wrong team.
Once again, he’d failed his mate.
He ran his hand over his face, wiped away the sweat and swore he could feel himself bleeding on the inside. Anya was suffering, ill and carrying the child he knew she had ached to give him once she had gone off the hormonal therapy.
As though that child meant more to him than she did. She couldn’t know that nothing meant more to him than she did, because he hadn’t shown her that. He hadn’t proven it with his love.
And now she didn’t trust him enough to have him at her side.
CHAPTER 25