He didn’t mention her happiness. Strangely, the fact that it was forgotten had the power to pierce her heart.
He didn’t give her a chance to reply. She couldn’t have replied anyway, because she was too shocked, too uncertain about the implications of what he had just told her and the emotion he hadn’t mentioned.
To a Breed, nothing was more important than the battle for safety, the battle to ensure that the Breeds, as a people, survived.
So much so that all unmated Breeds vowed an oath to protect, even at the cost of their own lives, all mates, male or female, until they too found their own unique biological, chemical and pheromonal match.
Unmated Breeds composed the majority of the Breeds’ fighting force. Once mated, they pulled back to operations rather than active status, or to the protective and security ranks of either the Feline Breed base of Sanctuary, the Wolf Breed base of Haven or the nearby, newly created Coyote stronghold of Citadel.
It was information she had to process, and Diane knew as she watched Lawe gathering her clothes together before he gathered his that now she had no choice but to face the decisions she had been running from.
The choice of accepting Lawe as her mate, and in doing so also accepting the loss of her freedom, or she could deny them both and eventually, sooner rather than later, perhaps be the cause of both their deaths.
*CHAPTER 12*
“How do you know Thor isn’t the traitor in your ranks?” Lawe asked as she lay sprawled against his naked chest, exhausted, limp and drowsy as the sun rose bright and warm the next morning.
“Because I know.” She yawned, wondering if she had time for a nap.
They’d had breakfast earlier, then they’d had each other for a bit of early dessert. She was at least two days behind schedule and rather than rushing to pack and leave, she was instead considering a late morning nap. If only Lawe had been kind and had not begun questioning her.
“How did he find you, baby?” he asked. “You didn’t tell him you were leaving. You didn’t tell anyone.”
“He followed Gideon, remember?” She wished he would just drop it. Defending Thor wasn’t on her agenda. She needed a nap, then possibly dinner before she hit the road with two grouchy, territorial, overprotective men.
“That’s not an answer.” And it was obvious he wasn’t going to drop it.
“He offers to carry my gear.”
Well, that shut him up. Maybe she should have tried that explanation sooner.
As the silence continued she allowed herself to settle closer into sleep.
“He does what?”
Well, it shut him up for a minute anyway.
Exhaling in resignation Diane forced herself to sit up and stare down at him as she pulled the sheet over her breasts. “I said, Thor offers to carry my gear.”
“And that proves his innocence how?” he asked as though the answer couldn’t possibly make sense.
Pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around them, she stared back at him directly. “A man doesn’t offer to carry a woman’s gear if he sees her as a soldier.” She was aware of the disgust that lay heavy in her tone. “Thor follows me because I can strategize and cover the bases while he and the others do the grunt work. He gets to do the accounting he loves, watch his bank account grow and take a vacation once a year. He’s not going to risk that.”
“Diane, you may have to explain this a bit further.” He cleared his throat carefully as Diane hid a smile. “Someone on your team is betraying you. They’ve put your ass on the chopping block and they all enjoy the same benefits.”
“But not all of them will take a bullet for a woman they don’t know or risk their lives to slip into an enemy village to leave food on a widow’s doorstep. The last of his rations, I might add.” She shook her head at the thought of it. “And no one but Thor deliberately ensures he’s literally covering my back on every mission we take. He sets himself up to take a bullet for me, just as he did with the teenager we rescued last year, that bloated old CEO we extracted when he was stuck in a country he shouldn’t have been in, or the teenage boy kidnapped the year before last while on vacation with his parents in Jordan. The others have never done that, but Thor does.”
“You put too much faith in him.” He shook his head at her explanation. “Just like that damned Gideon. What made you think you could pull him in?”
Lawe watched her lips quirk in amusement. “Gideon took out all but Thor. He shot Brick, Aaron and Malcolm. He was taking the players he suspected off the field. He obviously didn’t suspect Thor. Or you.” She ticked the reasons off with her fingers. “He left not just a warning of the traitor in my group, but also the location where he suspected Honor Roberts, Judd and Fawn Corrigan to be. He also led me in the direction of several contacts in Argentina that were able to verify the information as well as add to it, possibly giving me a few clues once I get there, where to start looking for her.”
He grunted at that, but the explanation made more sense than he wanted to admit.
“What makes you think he wants to talk?”
“He didn’t shoot me.” She shrugged. “And he’s been following me since I was in Argentina. That’s the reason it’s taken me so long to make it to Window Rock. I wanted to know what he wanted.”
“So you just laid yourself out like a fucking piece of raw meat to an animal?” he charged, his expression incredulous. Diane doubted anyone had seen incredulity in Lawe’s expression in his life.
“If he wanted me dead, then he would have killed me in Argentina,” she assured him caustically. “Give me a little credit, Lawe. I’m not exactly stupid. If I were, you would have already had to help me.”
So even he had to agree she wasn’t an idiot, because she was obviously still alive.
“Diane.” He wiped his hand over his face.
Diane laughed aloud at the reaction. It would have been endearing if not for the fact that it showed a complete lack of faith in her abilities to do her job and to protect herself.
“Diane, he’s a male Breed suspected to have been forced into feral fever,” he growled. “If even half of what I know is true, then we are well aware of the fact that he’s not completely sane, at the very least. Whatever his agenda is, he has no intention of helping anyone except himself to whatever goal he has in mind.”
“And, of course, I couldn’t possibly be intelligent enough to use him as well,” she pointed out reasonably.
“That wasn’t what I meant,” he snapped back at her. “Gideon is a master strategist, Diane. You’ll think you’re pulling him in until he has his bullet buried in your brain or his scalpel peeling your flesh from your body. It’s a little late to consider the error of your beliefs then.”
It was enough to make a woman want to gnash her teeth in irritation. Hell, she was grinding hers. His arrogance just pissed her off.
“Whatever you want to believe.” It hurt more than words could ever describe that he hadn’t extended the same faith to her that he would have extended to any other Breed who may have given him the same explanation. Or any other man period. Gideon thought he was playing her, she was aware of that. She had her own plan as well.
He hadn’t given her the possible location of Brandenmore’s former victims for nothing. He knew where they were, or where they might be, what he wouldn’t know, despite the time he had spent in the labs with them, is what they looked like now. Twelve years was a lot of time. The girls would be twenty-four or twenty-five. Judd would be in his thirties. Maturity could have, and most likely had, drastically changed their looks.