In the end, Diane had become far more adept at it than either of them had imagined she would.
“Are they the reason you followed your uncle into war?” he asked her finally.
“Their enemies took care of that,” she stated, her voice hardening as she glanced up at him. “They attacked children, Lawe. They came after us like a plague and refused to give up for years. As though they would tell children any secrets they had kept from their superiors over the years.”
“If they manage to capture you again, and kill you without the information they’re looking for, do you think they would then go after Rachel and Amber?” he asked her.
Diane wanted to roll her eyes. He obviously believed he was making a point. It was a point she had no intention to acknowledge. He never lost an opportunity, never allowed a relaxed moment to be preserved.
“Ignoring me isn’t going to solve the problem facing us,” he finally warned her as Diane fought to keep from clenching her teeth.
“I’m not trying to ignore you,” she assured him as she finished reassembling the small, handheld, laser-powered personal defense weapon she usually carried strapped to her thigh.
She was lying through her teeth and he knew it. He didn’t need to smell it.
“Do you think I’m going to allow you to continue this search, Diane? To risk you against a rogue we know so little about, as well as whatever assassins have been sent out to eliminate Brandenmore’s research projects? If they’re even still alive.” It was the wrong way to go about it, and Lawe knew it, but he was damned if he could figure out a better alternative.
She laughed at him, though the sound carried no amusement. What it did carry was disillusionment and a sense of pain. He could feel her pain as though it were his own. And for the first time in his life, Lawe ached for more than his own inability to be anything or anyone other than what his past had shaped him into.
“Do I act as though I need your permission to do anything?” she asked as she repacked the weapon and turned back to him, disdain reflected clearly in her gaze. “Really, Lawe, I’m a big girl now. I don’t need your permission to stay out after dark.”
Technically, she was right since she reported directly to Jonas.
“I’m quite certain Rachel was smart enough to warn you about the effects of mating heat,” he stated instead of tying and gagging her as he wanted to and forcing her back to Sanctuary. “You can’t just return to the same life as before. It doesn’t work that way.”
He couldn’t let her continue this mission either. She wasn’t just facing a rabid Breed in what was suspected to be the throes of a medically induced feral fever but also a team of Council-loyal Coyote soldiers searching for the same prey. And if the Breeds who once fought with her were right, she was also dealing with a traitor within her own ranks.
None would hesitate to kill her if she dared to attempt to interfere with their acquisition of the Bengal Breed Judd, Fawn Corrigan, or Honor Roberts. And they knew she was doing just that, as was evidenced by the attempt on her life before she slipped away from him in D.C. And if they didn’t kill her, the Council scientists would surely love to get their hands on a female experiencing mating heat.
“I can damned near do anything I want to do, Lawe.” Getting to her feet, she packed away the cleaning materials before storing them in her ammo bag and securing it firmly.
She kept her back to him, which was something else he hated. Diane was fairly skilled at lying with her lips and keeping the scent of it covered, but she hadn’t yet perfected lying with her eyes.
It was the only way he would have of detecting her emotions for now.
While she was able to hide certain emotions and their scents, she couldn’t use it as a reliable shield against Breeds for long. Especially not from Lawe.
“Any Coyote who detects the scent of your heat will make it his job to kidnap you and turn you over to the Council and their scientists,” he argued. “That’s not a pleasant place to be, nor is it a pleasant way to die.”
He was restraining himself and the effort to do so was about to snap his back teeth as he clenched them so tight his jaws ached. If he were human, he had no doubt they would have already been ground to the gums.
He had never clenched his teeth so often or as tightly as he did whenever he and Diane faced off in a disagreement, which was pretty much every time they came in contact.
“You should have stayed in D.C. rather than following me,” she told him as she lifted one of her duffel bags to the bed.
Disillusionment covered her. As though there had been some glimmer of hope that he would allow her to continue? The sad part was he had tried. Hell, he was still trying, yet all he saw each time he tried to formulate a plan to allow her to complete the mission, was her blood. Her screams. Her death.
Pulling down the heavy tab of the zipper, she opened the luggage and began packing the few items she had used the night before into the bulging interior. It was evident she had no intention of listening to him.
Which only left Lawe with that idea of tying and gagging her.
“Don’t push me like this, Diane.” Anger had the mating heat boiling inside him. Strong emotion, especially anger, had the effect of intensifying the rush of the sexual hormones and sending them surging through the body. “You won’t win.”
At that point, she did turn and face him, her gaze clashing with his as he got a glimpse of the burning emotions she was still keeping tightly reined.
He was amazed at her ability to do so. The deep brown of her eyes held a darker, almost burgundy tint. Rage had to be eating her alive for her eyes to have turned such a startling color. Yet not so much as a hint of the scent drifted to him.
“What will you do to force me to obey you, Lawe?” Her head tilted to the side as he watched her visibly struggle to keep the emotions reined in. “Will you beat me? Tie and gag me before dragging me back to Sanctuary? Because those are your only options.”
“I would never harm you,” he managed, fighting the urge to snarl in outrage. His fingers tensed, the desire to clench them almost overwhelming as he faced her and the suspicion in her gaze. “And you know I would never strike you.”
“Then that leaves tying and gagging me.” Her hip cocked, a delicate hand resting on it, and the scent of her fury finally drifted to him for the briefest second.
It was viciously hot, nearly searing him and making him want to take a step back from it as the edge of pain slapped his senses. God, what emotions did she hold back on a normal basis for such intensity of feelings to slip past her careful control?
The animal side of him flinched at the thought that he could be the one hurting her. That his need to protect her, to ensure her life could possibly have created such a well of agony.
“Those are your only options,” she stated. “Because I refuse to return to Sanctuary to be kept locked away like a favored pet.”
A favored pet?
Lawe felt his jaw bunch and his dick jerk with an imperative demand as she confronted him. He would fuck her into exhaustion if it weren’t for the fact he’d be doing the same to himself. Throughout the night she had proven she was more than a match for his sexuality, and his hunger.
Just as she was more than able to keep up with him in other ways.
“Better a favored pet than a mate tortured to death. Do you know what the Council scientists, Brandenmore’s research monsters or even the government’s so-called Breed geneticists would do if they got their hands on you? Do you have any idea of their preferred means of learning how mating heat changes the body? How horrifying a vivisection is? What it would do to me to be forced to watch such a thing happen to you?” he questioned, hearing the harshness, the guttural quality of his own voice. “And you. Could you bear to hear my screams as they dissect me alive? Perhaps more than once? Over and over again? Because, baby, I would sure as hell scream. Even the strongest of us eventually break when they lay the knife to our guts.”