Coyote's Mate

CHAPTER 20

Del-Rey checked on Anya after she left their rooms. A frown pulled at his brows when he learned she was in the kitchen area. Striding through the base, he moved past the community room and into the kitchen.

With only the sound of movement and four women working in silence, the damned place was eerie. There was an air of heaviness, tension, a subtle scent of pain and anger and an underlying chill that he couldn’t put his finger on.

Anya lifted her head from the bowls and ingredients she was working on. Her eyes were dark, and perhaps there were shadows under them.

“There are cold cuts in the fridge if you need a sandwich,” she told him. “I’ll have egg and assorted meat biscuits in an hour if you’d like to wait.”

“You don’t have kitchen duty.” He hardened his voice.

“No one has kitchen duty.” She shrugged. “Cleanup is a far cry from making certain there’s actually food on base and certain items ready to eat when your teams get hungry, Del-Rey. There are well over sixty soldiers here at last count with several dozen more coming. Someone has to make certain supplies are kept up with.”

“Add it to the duties with rotation,” he ordered her.

He watched her pour milk into a huge bowl of flour and begin working it in. Her head was lowered, her expression calm and composed, when he knew she was anything but.

“Doesn’t work that way.” She shook her head.

“Then make it work,” he bit out. “We have things to discuss that require both our attention, not you standing elbows deep in a bowl of flour.”

She looked up at the clock on the wall. “You can table your discussions for two hours,” she decided. “Pencil me into your schedule after that and let me know what time to meet you where.”

“So we’re scheduling in fucking now?” he snarled, ignoring the other women.

Her head jerked up, a flicker of pain crossing her face. “If that’s the discussion, then I guess that’s what we’re doing.”

He felt almost helpless. He remembered that feeling clearly from his youth. So clearly it punched into his brain and left a growl rumbling in his throat. With a steel cage surrounding him, he had watched, so many times, as his brothers and sisters were murdered before his eyes. Coyote Breeds that were considered flawed, because they had mercy, because they reached out to one another. Children no more than babies that cried for attention or for food when there was none left. Cut down before his eyes. And if he tried to fight, if he tried to save them, then others died as well. They hadn’t been kind enough to go ahead and kill him and put him out of his misery.

They beat him. Lashed him with a whip. Hooked electrodes to him after chaining him to the wall, and tortured him with the electricity they flayed his body with.

He was an example to the others the same as the killings were. They meant to break him, to destroy that mercy he had inside him and prove that a Breed had no soul, honor or principles.

They had failed. But in some ways, they had won as well.

“Excuse me, Alpha.” Ashley moved around him as she stepped from the small closet that held countless cooking implements.

He glanced down at her, saw her shorter nails and frowned.

“Didn’t I just send you to the damned salon?” he growled.

Her eyes widened. “I had dishes last night. A few popped off.”

“What do you mean you had dishes?”

She fidgeted in front of him and looked to Anya.

“It was Ashley’s turn to load the dishwasher and clean the pots and pans,” Anya answered.

“I have a fucking rotation for kitchen duty.” His voice was harsh, primal, causing the three female Coyotes to flinch.

Anya shrugged. “When I checked the closet, the dishes hadn’t been cleaned well. They’re soldiers, Del-Rey. Men. They don’t understand rinsing first, nor do they understand cleaning.

Sharone, Emma and Ashley spent hours in here fixing it. Your rotation isn’t working.” Her head lifted. “Unless the Felines are doing it. They seem to have a clue. But I imagine Alpha Lyons wouldn’t be pleased if we used the Feline Breeds for kitchen duty only.”

She dumped her flour mess on the counter and began working it into a ball. A huge ball. He glared at her.

“You are not a servant,” he snapped. “This is not where you belong.”

She paused, stared at the dough and lifted her head. Her gaze was shuttered, but God, what he felt coming from her. Emotions were almost locked inside her, giving him only the smallest hint of the roiling, overwhelming anger, fear and need that twisted in her dark blue eyes.

“I’m busy, Del-Rey,” she finally said. “Schedule a time and I’ll be there. Until then, let me finish if you don’t mind. Or is this something else I need your permission to complete?”

Fury slapped him. He could feel it building inside him. The need rose inside him to force her submission, to carry her back to their rooms and fuck her until she didn’t have the energy to defy him. And another part, a saner part, the human part, paused as he sensed more than the animal wanted to see.

He turned on his heel and left the room. They would fight this out later. Once his orders were implemented, she wouldn’t find herself in that kitchen cooking for the whole damned base again.

He’d be damned if she would. She wasn’t the fucking cook. She was his mate. His coya. She could oversee until hell froze over, but it wasn’t her job to do the actual work.

He slammed his office door closed, stalked to his desk and sat down. He looked around the office. Dust was accumulating. Files were stacked here and there haphazardly. It hadn’t been like this when he’d arrived. His office had been immaculate. The scent of his mate had filled it.

He ran his fingers through his hair and blew out a hard, rough breath as Brim’s knock sounded at the door. He knew his second-in-command’s knock and the anger behind it.

“What?” he snarled out.

The door opened.

Military straight and perfect, Brim moved into the room. His gaze was icy, his manner stiff.

“What kind of stick has been shoved up your ass?” He bared his teeth at the other man.

Brim handed over an e-pad. “I need your signature.”

Del-Rey jerked the pad out of his hand, glanced at it, then felt a haze of red wash over him at the memo awaiting his approval.

Re: Official notification of reversion of duties from Anya Kobrin to Alpha Delgado. Status coya, revoked. Status mate, revoked. All due authority hereby revoked.

He stared up at the other man. “What the fuck is this?”

“By order of separation she only held her title if you didn’t rescind it.”

“I still haven’t rescinded it,” he informed Brim, his tone guttural. “What the fuck is this?”

“You should have read the separation agreement more fully perhaps,” Brim stated. “Anya posted the memo this morning to Lupina Gunnar and Prima Lyons as well as to their alphas. A decision that the mating ceremony tentatively scheduled for spring was being canceled. She lost her title when that memo went out. Word of it is already filtering through Base. She’s no longer coya and therefore your pack leaders need a directive from you.”

The memo was a directive all right. It rescinded all powers that Anya had previously held to command in his absence. It also directed her status to below those pack leaders, rather than above them as she had once held.

He stared at it.

“If she’s officially my coya, I paint a target on her back for any Coyote that has managed to fool us, or betrays us in the future. They’ll strike at her first.”

Brim shrugged. “That isn’t my call, Alpha. All I need is the order signed so Base runs properly.

Military structure must be adhered to.”

Del-Rey’s jaw clenched.

Before Del-Rey could control the impulse, he picked up the e-pad and threw it. A vicious, savage swing of his arm, and it shattered against the stone wall to his side.

Brim stared at the destruction before turning his gaze back to Del-Rey. “A copy was sent to your PDA. You can sign it from there. If you’ll excuse me now.” He nodded to Del-Rey with all due military respect.

Perfect, smooth, coordinated.

Del-Rey was out of his chair before Brim could stride across the room. In the next second he had his second-in-command against the wall, his arm braced across Brim’s throat as a snarl echoed from his throat.

“What is your fucking problem?” He stared into Brim’s eyes and saw nothing but that cool, emotionless facade.

“I wasn’t aware I had one.” And he wasn’t fighting.

Brim wasn’t a man that allowed even his alpha to throw him against a wall. But there he was, relaxed, cool. Del-Rey felt as though a volcano was ready to explode inside his own head.

“Erase that fucking memo,” Del-Rey bit out.

He could imagine Anya’s pain if she saw it, once she read it. He could almost feel the loss he knew would burrow inside her.

“I can’t do that, Alpha,” Brim stated. “This is a military base, and the rules have to be adhered to; otherwise, our men are going to become confused and uncertain. They’ll choose sides. Her people against your people. We can’t allow that.”

Del-Rey released him slowly. “Delete that fucking memo or I’ll do it for you,” he commanded.

Brim shrugged. “It’s already gone out to your pack leaders. Protocol demanded it be sent. Just as it’s gone out to the Wolf and Feline pack leaders. You’re showing weakness in refusing to send it out yourself. As alpha, you can’t afford to show that weakness at this time. A separation of packs could destroy us, Alpha. The alliance will go to hell and we’ll be left fighting in the jungles for meals again. That wasn’t as much fun as we pretended it was, I don’t believe.”

“Get out of my office,” Del-Rey ordered him coldly. “Now.”

He turned his back on Brim, listened until the other man walked to the door. Brim paused then and Del-Rey tensed further, knowing he wouldn’t like the other man’s parting shot.

“I’m your brother.”

Del-Rey flinched at the reminder.

“We lost our sisters in that hellhole. We lost brothers. Do you know, Del-Rey, until I received that memo this morning, I actually resented you for refusing to acknowledge that tie between us.” There was amusement in his voice.

Del-Rey turned back to him slowly.

Brim shrugged at the glare he directed to him. “I’ve decided it really wasn’t personal. Nor was it the fear for your brothers’ lives that caused you to deny those few of us still living.”

“And you decided this based on what?” Del-Rey could feel the fury building inside him, tearing through him.

Brim’s lips twisted into a cold smile. “You’ve just rejected your coya, Alpha Leader. Any man that could do that doesn’t have a soul. He doesn’t have brothers, nor does he have sisters. I think I’ll simply count myself lucky you have enough honor that you didn’t drown those of your bloodline while we were still pups.”

With that, Brim opened the door and left the room, closing it slowly behind him, a second before Del-Rey’s snarl of fury echoed through the room.

Fuck them. Fuck them all. He had a soul. A soul that cringed in horror at the memories, a soul that writhed and bled at the bottom of his guts at the thought of everything he had lost over the years. A soul that wept for everything he couldn’t have.

Because having meant losing. And God help them all if he lost his coya.

Anya sat down at her computer hours later, weariness tugging at her as she pulled up the keyboard and activated the hologram monitor.

One email. Private and encrypted.

She pulled it up, noted the date and time of the meeting, confirmed, and then deleted it. She covered her face with her hands as she rested her elbows on the desk and forced back her tears, as well as the need beginning to burn inside her.

She’d received her copy of Brim’s memo that morning before going to the kitchen. She felt as lost now as she had then. She felt as though spring had been canceled. As though the warmth she had so looked forward to had been snatched away from her forever.

“Coya?” Her office door opened and Sharone, Emma and Ashley stepped inside.

Anya swallowed tightly as she lowered her hands and stared at the women who were the same as sisters to her. They had been reassigned by their pack leaders. She had received that particular memo as she moved from the kitchen back to her rooms.

“Don’t,” she whispered, shaking her head. “You can’t use that title any longer, Sharone.”

“You have to do something,” Sharone demanded fiercely. “Do you think a lack of title is going to save your life? He can’t be as insane as to believe that.”

Anya shook her head. “You’ve been reassigned. You still have your scheduled off hours by my request. We’ll have our last girls’ day out in one week. We’ll make a party of it,” she told them.

“Dr. Armani and hopefully Lupina Gunnar will be joining us as well. Be prepared for that.”

Sharone’s eyes widened as the meaning behind Anya’s words became clear.

Ashley slouched against a wall while Emma sat on the couch, her head down as she stared at the floor of the small office.

“And after that?” Sharone asked. “We can’t leave you undefended. Anya, the Breeds that came out of Russia with us are incensed. They’re muttering about leaving the alliance the alphas have built. This is the worst insult he could have dealt you.”

Anya shook her head. No, the worst insult he had dealt her was when he convinced her to come to him, charming her, seducing her with his lies. She was his coya. She was his life. She reaffirmed that he had a soul.

“Coya,” Ashley whispered, her voice heavy. “What he’s done is wrong.”

Anya held her hand up slowly. “Please. Tell the others it’s my wish they remain with the alliance.

They pledged their loyalty to Del-Rey under certain rules. That I be his coya wasn’t one of those rules. They can’t afford to break their word in this world, Sharone.” She shook her head and had to swallow back her tears. “Please. Report to your pack leaders as they asked. I’ll be fine here.”

Ashley moved. She jerked the door open and slammed it closed with a strength that had Anya flinching. Emma rose from her seat and left more slowly, her hands shoved in the pockets of her jeans as Sharone stared back at Anya with a pain-laden expression.

“Tell him,” Sharone said softly. “If you’re harmed, he’s made enemies, Anya. More than he could ever imagine.”

Sharone turned and left the room as Anya felt her breath hitch. She was going to miss them. They were more than friends, and they had always been together. Since she was a little girl and had first found the cells where the five Coyote females were being held.

She, the princess of the Chernov facilities even at age five, had twisted the scientists and doctors around her little finger until the girls she wanted to play with were given partial freedom. They had then formed a bond that had never been broken.

They had never been separated, until now.

“Anya?”

She stiffened at the sound of Del-Rey’s voice at her side. She turned her head, staring at him, seeing the heaviness in his expression, a heaviness reflected in her heart.

“You would have hurt me less had you used that knife you held at my throat in Russia,” she said, breathing out roughly.

“I’m a Coyote,” he said, his voice low. “The most hated and feared of the Breeds, across the world. My coya will live in constant danger. If the world perceives that she is no more than my lover, if the other Breeds perceive that she holds only my body, then she’s safe. If I make a mistake and allow a traitor into our midst here at Base, then you’re safer.”

“Will our children be safer?” she asked.

“Kiowa’s wife hasn’t yet conceived,” he stated. “She doesn’t use the hormone for conception either. We have time to work this out.”

It seemed he had already worked it out.

“I didn’t ask for explanations.” She rose to her feet and disconnected the computer.

There had been no emails, no Breeds asking for advice or assistance. None of the often dozens of requests that filled her inbox. There had been a single email, nothing more.

Just that easily she had been wiped away.

“Anya.” As she moved around her desk, he stopped her, moving to her, his body pressing against hers. “You are every part of my soul. I can’t risk you.”

Keeping her back to him, she closed her eyes at the pain in his voice, at the pain that vibrated through her own soul.

“I understand that,” she finally whispered, and perhaps a part of her did understand. “I’m your lover, nothing more.”

“Only in others’ eyes.” His hands slid around her. “What’s between us is between us, Anya.

You’re my mate. My coya. No matter what the world sees.”

But she wasn’t his coya. That power, that privilege, had been taken from her. She was his bedmate. In the eyes of the world, and now in his eyes as well. Because the benefits she would have brought to his life as anything more had been stripped from her with a single memo.

She was crying inside as his lips pressed against her neck. Crying as the familiar need began to burn low in her stomach, began to curl through her body and rage through her nerve endings.

And still she couldn’t deny him.

As his fingers lifted the hem of her shirt, drawing it over her head, she couldn’t deny him the touch he sought. When he turned her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers, she couldn’t deny him the kiss she needed herself. The taste of him, that little bit to hold on to. A part of himself he couldn’t steal from her, simply because nature demanded that he take satisfaction from her alone.

Her arms twined around his neck; emotion seared her insides. This man was her life; every ounce of her belonged to him, no matter how much it hurt. She had realized that in the past two days.

He owned her. She, who had sworn she would never be owned, was owned by this man, this Breed.

“God yes,” he growled as she softened against him. “Hold me, Anya. Hold me close, baby.”

His flesh seemed to warm against her, hers heated beneath his touch. She pushed her shoes from her feet as he released her jeans and drew them over her hips.

She grew hungrier for his kiss, desperate for this connection. The one thing that couldn’t be stolen from her, that couldn’t be taken.

She was sinking beneath the waves of pleasure as he pulled back and turned her, pressed her along the desk until her fingers were curling against the broad forearm he laid beneath her head.

He surrounded her. Not like that first time, when he had just been behind her. As he bent her over now, he surrounded her. His lips were at her neck, licking, biting, sending flash flares of heat surging between her thighs as she felt the crest of his cock tuck against her.

“I need you.” He nipped at her neck. “I need you until I can’t breathe for the need. Until I’m dying inside for you.”

Her chest tightened, ached at the emotion in his voice, the torment that filled them both now, bound them, held them together.

One hand gripped her hip as he turned her head to him, took her lips and worked the thick length of his cock inside her. Slow, steady strokes filled her flesh. He stretched her, burned her until she was gasping against his lips, her legs parting farther, her lips and tongue moving against his in a kiss that bound her spirit to him.

“So sweet. So giving,” he groaned into their kiss before taking her lips in a hungry exploration that mimicked the firm, delving strokes of his cock.

He stroked nerve endings so sensitive from the pulses of pre-cum that she burned for him. He touched her, inside and out, he held her to him, his hips bunching, moving, grinding into her as the spiraling sensations of need began to tear through the last barriers of control she possessed.

The last barriers against the emotions twisting inside her.

“Hold me, Anya.” He tore his lips from hers, embracing her fiercely as he made the male demand.

His cock dug inside her, deep, burrowing thrusts that had her gasping, pleading for release. Her muscles clenched around him, spasmed, milked him as she felt herself climbing higher, always higher. She burned in his arms like wildfire and couldn’t halt the destructive force of it within her mind.

It tore aside any chance to remain aloof, from the man or from the pleasure. Both wrapped around her, spurred her own hungers.

She pressed back, opened herself and screamed out his name as she felt his lips, his tongue, the scrape of his teeth against the mark he had left on her flesh.

Shudders worked through her body. Her nipples ached as the lace of her bra rasped them; her clit was burning, throbbing mindlessly for release as he pounded into her from behind.

Shaking from the need, she gripped his arm as she felt his other hand move between her thighs, as though he sensed, as though he knew this position alone wasn’t going to afford her the relief she needed there.

“Love me again, Anya.” His head pressed against her shoulder. “Please, baby. Love me, just one more time.”

His palm covered the hard bud and ground against it. Quaking tremors of response began to build inside her. Warmth surrounded her now, every part of her. It moved inside her, heated the cold spots and eased the agony that resonated through her soul.

She loved him. She loved him until nothing else mattered, until she was lost inside him and she knew she would never fully escape.

“Love me,” he whispered again.

The pleasure built inside her until it was a whirlwind. Until it raced through her blood, centered at her clit, in her vagina. Until she was exploding with a force that lifted her to her tiptoes and had her teeth biting into his arm as he sank into the bend of her shoulder, his tongue lashing at the mating mark as she felt him swell inside her.

Agonizing throbs of pleasure tore through her. Perspiration dampened both of them, and between them rioting flames of release seared across their nerve endings.

She was shaking in his arms. Shudders that seemed to go to the bone trembled through her as she felt the deep jets of his semen pulsing inside her. Filling her. Completing her until she knew that living without him wasn’t possible. Existing without him wasn’t going to happen.

Anya heard herself whimper as he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed long, long minutes later. He finished undressing her, undressed himself, then moved over her.

“I need you again.”

He was still erect, still hard.

Her thighs parted as she felt him move inside her, working slowly into the swollen tissue as they both cried out at the pleasure of it.

“Sweet Anya,” he groaned as he filled her.

Dely-Rey had never known pleasure as sweet, as rich as fucking her. Sliding his cock inside her, feeling her pussy clench and tighten around him, those convulsive, sucking little motions destroying his control.

The scent of sweet female cream and male lust filled the air as his lips feathered over her lips, then moved to her tight, hard nipples.

She arched to him as he sucked first one, then the other of the hard tips into his mouth. He drew on the tight tips, feeling her nails digging into his shoulders, her legs wrapping around his hips.

This was what he needed from her. All of her. All of her centered right here, in his bed, taking him, needing him. Loving him.

Sweet God, he was losing himself in her and he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t hold it back. He needed more and more, until he shafted into her with hard, hungry thrusts. Until he felt her exploding, heard her screaming his name as he locked inside her again, spilling his release and growling her name like a demented animal that could find sanity nowhere else but in this woman’s arms.

He had hurt her, wounded her pride, he knew that. Her safety was more important. His peace of mind was more secure knowing the risk of being his coya was no longer something he needed to fear.

Instead, he had only to fear that strange, quiet place inside her that he could feel growing darker.

The animal knew it was there. Knew its mate was holding back, holding on. And it, as well as the man, demanded all of her.

He would have all of her. Or he would never survive it.