Lawe's Justice

*CHAPTER 17*

He was dying!

Lawe could feel the fury burning inside him like a plague wasting away at his body cell by cell as he watched and listened to the Coyotes flirting with his mate.

The only thing saving him, saving them, was the fact that there was no scent of lust swirling from them. Still, his fists were clenched, his lips curled back from the sharp canines at the sides of his mouth, and the growl that would have rumbled in his chest was only barely held back. It was all he could do to hold back a roar of pure feline rage.

“Hey, Lion-o, would you mind letting up the pressure just a little bit here?”

The hoarse, pain-filled request had him lifting his hand completely from Thor’s chest and flicking his fingers to the Breed Enforcer behind them, indicated he should apply pressure to the knife wound Thor had taken.

Lawe moved to rise. He had every intention of rushing to his mate’s side, to protect her flank. To share in the triumph he knew she would experience once Malcolm was taken care of.

Then, Lawe decided, he’d make certain the bastard died.

“What did I tell you?” Thor’s fingers were suddenly clamped around Lawe’s forearm, restraining him before he could surge from their shadowed shelter of heavy pine and rush to the conflict unfolding too far away for him to help his mate if she needed him.

God, how could he survive?

He drew in a deep, hard breath.

“She’s hurting,” he growled. “I can feel it all the way over here.”

Turning, he took a moment to glare at the mercenary before turning back to watch Diane with a surge of pride, and pure terror.”

“Of course she’s hurting, you dumb fucker,” Thor rasped, his voice low and filled with pain of a far different sort. “She’s out there alone. She’s been hurting since the minute she left the hotel in D.C. without her mate backing her. She’s a warrior, Justice, not some pansy-assed wannabe. You’re not just her fucking mate—be her partner and you won’t smell her soul shredding in half.”

Lawe’s head jerked around, his teeth snapping dangerously at the Swede before turning to watch his mate once again.

She was incredible.

Standing straight and tall, one hand propped on a cocked hip, her fingers tapping against it lazily as she held that damned laser weapon on the man she had fought with since the day her uncle had brought her into the group.

This was the mercenary Commander Diane—not the Diane her friends and family knew—as the Breeds closest to Jonas, his mate, and Lawe knew her. This was the Huntress. The woman known for her skill at tracking down those she was hired to find, rescuing them and bringing them back safe and sound.

And she had been doing so for more than seven years.

She had only taken official command of the group five years before, but in the two years before her uncle’s death, she had been commanding her own missions and making the group more money than they had ever imagined possible.

Confident, self-assured and in her element but for the emotional pain raging through her like flames whipping through her soul.

She needed him.

It wasn’t a sexual hunger. It wasn’t the mating heat and it wasn’t the need to quench the flames of mating heat. It was his mate’s need for a partner. For her partner.

He’d promised to stand by her, to give her the space she needed to conduct her mission. Jonas and Callan had given her one week to accomplish her goal. Yet, he’d still hovered near her, going over her plans with a fine-tooth comb. And, he knew, making her feel that he had no faith in her abilities.

What had ever made him believe his mate—the incredibly vital fighting spirit she possessed—would ever accept such management after the years she had put into learning how to do what she was so damned good at doing?

He’d failed her again.

He dropped his head for a moment, pulling in hard, desperate breaths as the animal paced, raged, his genetics clawing at his senses as he fought the need to protect her. The need to stand before her, to snarl in warning at the bastards she believed were a threat.

There was only one threat really facing her.

Dog, Mutt, Mongrel and Loki weren’t mercenary Coyotes only recently separated from the Council, as Malcolm believed. They weren’t the bloodthirsty, rabid animals willing to help him turn his commander over to the Genetics Council.

They were Jonas’s double agents. His eyes and ears into the Council so to speak. They were still soldiers, or so the Council believed, just in a different capacity now than they had been before.

Still, even knowing the danger was minimized, he had to forcibly hold himself back, to throttle the snarls and roars of rage that rose inside him.

Her sense of confusion and disillusionment was driving a spike of bitter rage through his brain and straight into his soul.

“You won’t back her,” Thor growled, and for a moment, just for the briefest second, it was almost an animal’s rasp. “You refuse to allow her to be who she is, what she is. She’s a fucking warrior, Lawe. You don’t bury that, you encourage it. You train it, sharpen it, you fucking hone it until she fits your hand like the finest steel and slices twice as deep. She’s your fucking mate. She’s your partner. She’s the finest fucking weapon God ever created and gifted to a man. She stands by your side, Lawe. You stand by her side, or you lose the very things you love about her.”

His head flipped around as he glared at the mercenary, the anger churning inside him with boiling pain. “Shut the fuck up!”

He moved to rise, only to feel the second hand that clamped on his arm.

His head swung to the other side to see his brother, his grip lighter than Thor’s, his expression, though sympathetic, firm.

“I could mate her,” Rule said softly, his gaze dark, and for the first time Lawe felt the pain his brother kept locked so deep inside. “We’re brothers. I would take the mate who longs to fight and allow her to be the warrior she is as I stand by her side. I’ll give you my mate,” he whispered. “Gentle. Soft. A woman who doesn’t even know how to make a fist, let alone how to hold a gun. Protect mine, Lawe, and I’ll protect yours. We’ll have what we need without involving our souls as our mother did.”

His brother’s mate? He stared at Rule in complete disbelief. When had his brother mated and where was the delicate, subtle scent of the woman his animal genetics had claimed?

It was a question he would deal with later. One he would attempt to make sense of once he’d made sense of his own confusion and conflicting needs.

The need to possess the warrior while setting her free. The need to hold the woman, to protect her and shelter her as only her mate could shelter her.

Lawe gave a hard jerk of his head before turning back to the scene before him.

“Let me go.” The growl was harsh; the animal was free and it wouldn’t be held back any longer. “Now.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Thor and Rule released him.

“Rule, on my six,” Lawe ordered him. “Take my mate’s back. Braden, Megan, you have Liza.”

“If she doesn’t fight him, Lawe—”

“She’ll fight him,” the animal swore. “It’s her battle unless someone makes the mistake of interfering. Then they die. Malachi, Josiah, move in behind Dog’s team. I trust no one, not even Jonas’s favorite pets where my mate is concerned. Now move out.”

Moving through the shadows, sliding with animal grace and stealth, he made his way with his brother covering his back, to where his mate ached, where she wept inside for the man, for the mate she believed could never see her as a partner. The mate who would never see the spirit and the fierce, finely honed weapon Thor knew her to be.

It wasn’t the man’s decision this time. For the second time the animal rose inside him and took control. And what the man learned in that second filled him with disbelief.

The first time, it had been to mark the woman it had feared would dare to walk away forever. The woman the animal had sensed was so very close to denying the man.

This time, the animal had had enough of the man’s struggle, of his need to protect versus his need for a partner.

What the hell would he do with a woman who baked cookies, sewed costumes for the neighborhood children? A woman whose idea of danger was a drive through the city?

That wasn’t the woman he needed.

Assistant director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs wasn’t the job he needed.

He was a warrior, just as his mate was a warrior. The warrior would be damned if it would allow anyone, anything to take that from her, especially the man who loved her with all his soul. With all the dreams, all the passion, and all the fear that resided inside him.

As he approached the group silently, his brother moving in close, sharing his strength and his senses with him, Lawe found himself reaching out to her.

There were gifts he shared with his twin. The Breed born less than a minute after he had been. This was why Rule would make the perfect assistant director. The same reason Jonas had felt Lawe would. Rule’s ability to focus with his twin, to share the range of his senses, a range that went off the charts. Lawe was suddenly faster, stronger, his hearing more acute, his eyesight sharper, his sense of smell so brilliantly sharp he could detect individuals from miles away.

He knew the Coyote teams were slipping through the desert, silent, moving with stealthy precision to take from Dog’s team the prize they sought.

Lawe Justice’s mate. Perhaps only one of two mates capable of conceiving twins.

He sensed that. Felt it.

That complete focus identified, marked and memorized each scent that filled a ten-mile radius around him; it detected every sound from the scurry of a mouse to a whisper of passion from countless couples to the soft disturbance of air from the Coyote commander in the desert directing his men to move faster. Every picture his eyes touched, every taste that came in with each breath was suddenly amplified.

The danger was real now. There were two dozen enemy Coyotes and human soldiers determined to take his mate. To take the woman who would one day bear a child, or perhaps twins, to a Breed that shared a psychic bond with his own twin.

“Stay at her back.” The order was no more than a breath of sound, but it was one he knew his brother clearly heard. “If she conceives—”

“She conceives a tool that could be used against all of us, just as my mate will,” he confirmed.

He knew why they were created. The scientists had been amazingly explicit in detail just hours before they were each given their first woman.

They were the beginning of a unique experiment, one that the scientists believed had failed.

In the equation of mating, they hadn’t taken into account mating heat, which they had believed to be feral fever, and the fact that conception could never be forced where Breeds and their mates were concerned. They had believed Breeds couldn’t reproduce, and that even crossbreeding with humans would fail.

Until the first signs of mating heat had begun showing up and the vivisections had revealed the changes both Breed and mate experienced. Internally, both mates experienced a wide range of anomalies.

A heart that beat faster. Adrenaline laced with an unknown hormone capable of throwing their females into ovulation. And in certain cases, by Breeds who were part of a twin set, the animal genetics determined if that ovulation would produce one hybrid, or if the first stage twins would be created.

Moving to the shadows of the edge of the pines, Lawe stepped into the clearing, ignoring Malcolm’s shock and wrapping around him his mate’s sudden surge of adrenaline-fused excitement, which speared through her.

He and Rule moved to her as Braden and Megan stepped from the opposite direction and surrounded Liza before pulling her back.

“Well, look who’s joining the party, boys,” Dog drawled. “Looks like the bet’s off.”

“The hell it is.” Lawe moved in, just slightly behind his mate’s right shoulder. “You have my thousand. My mate will kick his ass.” He laid his palm on the butt of his weapon, a laser-guided, laser-powered bullet-loaded Breed weapon. “And we’re going to do it without weapons, aren’t we, Malcolm?” He nodded to Dog.

The Coyote stepped forward with a triumphant grin and collected various weapons from a stunned Malcolm.

“Mate,” Lawe murmured, the animal still dominant but now merging with the man fully to create the Breed he was always meant to be for his mate.

He was aware of Rule flinching, of his animal suddenly surging free of its restraints and doing the same. He hadn’t anticipated that, but perhaps, like him, his brother needed that push to claim everything that was meant to belong to him.

“Lawe,” Diane whispered, her gaze slicing to him.

“We have a dozen Coyotes and humans moving in. They’re perhaps twenty minutes away and fully armed,” he told her. “You have seventeen minutes to take care of this little matter.” Turning his gaze down to her he let a grin tilt his lips. “Show me what you’ve got, Mate.”

Diane felt her lips tremble for the slightest second as hope rose inside her. Her heart was racing, excitement and pure anticipation infusing the strength and training she put a lifetime into.

“What do I get in return?” she murmured as she released the utility belt, never taking her eyes from Malcolm.

“More than you’ve likely bargained for,” he assured her as he felt a rush of sudden joy infuse him. “But you have to win this little bet for me first.”

“No problem,” she assured him, her gaze sliding to him with a hint of sensuality, a subtle little flirt that had his cock twitching in excitement as she turned back to the traitor who had failed more than once in his attempt to kill her.

“You betrayed me, Malcolm.” She loosened the belt and holster at her hips. “What made you think you were smart enough to get away with it?”

She could feel Lawe’s concern, she could feel his love and the unfamiliar, confusing demands of the primal strength and determination of the animal she could glimpse in his gaze.

He wasn’t comfortable with it.

He would always fear for her, but if he didn’t, then the love wouldn’t be as strong as she knew it was between them.

“Unfortunately, you survived,” he sneered. “You weren’t supposed to. You got Padric killed. He was ten times the soldier you were, and then you ran your fucking uncle off before I could kill him. Bitch, how do you like knowing he’s hiding from you?”

“He’s dead.” she said with a sigh. “He never would have hid from me. He wouldn’t have deserted me, Malcolm.”

“He did worse than desert you.” He laughed. “He deserted you for a Council scientist,” he screamed. “For a dirty fucking monster maker instead of killing her as he was hired to do.”

She would never convince him that her uncle hadn’t deserted her, or that he wasn’t hiding with the Council scientist he had been hired to find just before he was killed in that warehouse. And she didn’t care.

“I’ll kick his ass for you if he ever shows himself. How’s that?” she promised.

“Kick his ass and let’s roll, baby,” Lawe murmured. “Dog is friendly and was here to collect intel for Jonas before deserting the Council completely. But the dozen moving in on us are heavily armed and gunning for us. I’d like to be gone before they get much closer.”

She paused, her gaze going to Dog and the cigar he was giving her a toothy grin around. Lifting his arm, he tipped two fingers to his forehead in greeting.

“I should have known.” Loosening her muscles she stepped closer to Malcolm. “You never did inspire loyalty, Malcolm. I should have known you hadn’t done so now.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Lawe reminded her as his head bent to bestow a kiss to her forehead, a loving tribute of confidence, love and his belief in the self-confidence he could sense surging through her.

“Fifteen minutes.” She nodded then turned back to Malcolm.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh look, he’s stripped his shirt,” she stated mockingly. “God love his heart, does he really think it’s going to be that easy?”

He thought the sight of his muscles intimidated. That the flex and ripple beneath his flesh had the power to make mere mortals flinch.

Diane didn’t flinch. She didn’t leer.

She scratched at the back of her head with a sigh. “So, Malcolm darling, are we gonna rumble?”

He flexed his shoulders. “Come on, whore, let me kick your ass.”

Lawe snarled, but Diane was riding a high that held no fear of her mate’s interference, and no fear of his inability to allow her to finish the fight.

Fifteen minutes.

“This will only take ten,” she promised.

“Just make sure you save enough energy to enjoy your punishment for slipping out on me again, mate,” he suggested. “I may understand, but I’ll ensure it will never happen again.”

Pausing, her gaze raked over him, from head, to the proof of his erection beneath the jeans he wore, to the military ankle boots he wore and up again. “Have no fear, mate.” Her smile was cocky, feminine, and assured. “I’ll save plenty of energy for all the punishment you can dish out.”

“This fucking lovey-dovey bullshit is getting on my nerves, bitch,” Malcolm snarled. “Get your ass over here and let me show that unnatural son of a bitch how fucking weak his mate is. Then my friends can collect all your asses and haul you in.”

Diane grinned as they began circling each other. She’d kicked Malcolm’s ass before. It wasn’t easy. He was a dirty gutter fighter, but she knew his weaknesses. She wasn’t certain, though, how Lawe was going to react when Malcolm managed to actually pierce one of her weaknesses.

Straight off.

He jumped for her, his fist colliding with a glancing blow across her cheek and knocking her off her feet.

A violent feline snarl echoed around the clearing.

Diane didn’t bother to come to her feet. Instead, she caught herself on her shoulders, swept her legs out and knocked Malcolm off his.

Fifteen minutes or less. She didn’t have time to play fair. Not that she would have bothered anyway, but she might have drawn it out a bit, just for the humiliation Malcolm would have suffered.

As he went down, she was up. Her steel-toed boot, reinforced to add to her strength buried itself in his side before she jumped back, rounding an openhanded caress to the ground where she swept up a handful of desert sand.

Malcolm came easily to his feet, though blood smeared his side now and he favored it instinctively.

Moving in close enough to direct the sand straight to his eyes, Diane came back, her leg swinging out and up to slam the steel-toed boot straight into his jaw.

She heard it crack as he went down again.

This time when he came up, he caught her short, his fist slamming into the back of her knee and driving her to the ground as she twisted around.

She wasn’t fast enough.

Before she could stop him Diane found herself pinned to the ground, blood easing from the deep slice on her lip as she felt the side of her face burning from the blow to it. She could feel the discomfort, the searing rejection of his touch lancing through her body. Rather than weakening it, it pissed her off.

She had to smile despite the slicing pain to her lip.

“Oh, you’ve been practicing,” she sneered. “Too bad you’re still a slow fucker with an ego that’s going to get you killed. What do you think is going to happen when those buddies of yours show up, and I’m not here. Dog’s not here. Just you, all alone without the prize you promised to deliver.”

“Then they’ll come after you.” He swung out in triumph as Diane tried to duck and move in.

Her foot swung out, collided with his balls but not fast enough to avoid the fist that slammed into her cheek.

“Fuck!” she cursed as Lawe roared in rage. “He’s going to fucking kill you before I get a chance.”

Racing the few steps to where he’d fallen to his knees, Diane threw another hard kick, this time with the flat of her foot to the side of his head.

Hard.

She put all her strength into it. Using the well-toned muscles of her thighs as her uncle had taught her and putting all her power into it, she kicked with the single driving hope that it would take his head off.

It didn’t.

Instead, it slammed it back, throwing him to his back and forcing a hard groan from his lips as he lost consciousness.

As she knew he would.

Her uncle had worked with her for months in secrecy to teach her how to take care of Malcolm specifically. He’d been a hardheaded bastard who hadn’t wanted to listen to orders on the occasions she’d pulled in contracts for the team.

That was the deal. Her uncle would give command to the team member who procured the contract if that individual wanted the experience in command.

Diane had.

Thor hadn’t, but he was always more than willing to give her his contracts and play second-in-command. As though he had always known what was coming.

Breathing harshly, her body aching painfully, she watched as Dog hurried over to Malcolm and checked his pulse with cool efficiency.

“He’s gonna be out for a while,” he reported, lifting his gaze to Diane. “Want me to finish this for you?” he asked with a subtle hint of anticipation.

She glared back at him. “If I wanted him dead, I would have killed him myself.”

His brows lifted. “Ever killed a man?” he asked softly, gently, as though he believed she were too gentle or perhaps too weak.

She stared back at him in disgust. “Do you want the list?”

“Bullets don’t count.” He rose to his feet, watching her with that mocking smile of his.

“Do knives?” she asked softly. “Hands? I can break his neck as easily as you can, never doubt it. He simply hasn’t suffered enough.” Her gaze narrowed in determination. It was the only way to stare a Breed down. “And I want him to suffer.”

“He’ll suffer.” Dog nodded. “Because the commander of the Coyote team moving in is a crazy son of a bitch. He’ll make sure he dies for you. And if we don’t get the hell out of here, he’ll attempt to make certain we join the little bastard.”

She shrugged and turned back to her mate.

“You made promises again,” she murmured as he stepped to her, the very air around him pulsing with primal hunger and the need to reassert his dominance.

Over her.

She grinned back at him.

A second later he had one hand buried in her hair, the other wrapped around her back and his lips covering hers.

The kiss was wicked, openmouthed, tongues tangling and the taste of the mating hormone spilling to her system.

Ah God, this was what she wanted too. The pain would go away, the need for his touch would never be sated.

Her fingers fisted in the shirt he wore, her hips tilting up to him as he suddenly lifted her, holding her to him as his tongue pumped deliciously into her mouth and within seconds had her pussy burning for him.

“We have trouble rolling in,” Rule suddenly announced. “Roll out before we’re in a firefight with no backup.”

Between one breath and the next, Lawe released her. His hand gripped hers as they began to run for the cover of pines and the safety of the Breed-enforced hotel on the other side.

Megan and Braden had already left with Liza and were headed back across the golf course in one of the fully loaded Desert Dragoons used for military desert operations.

Passing him and heading to where Thor was being helped from the trees by Josiah, two other Dragoons sped toward Lawe, Diane, and the group following them. Jonas drove the vehicle, with a Breed manning the powerful laser-powered weapon mounted to the roll bars. Behind him the second Dragoon bounced over the rolling landscape with Dane Vanderale at the wheel, his partner, Rye Desalvo manning the weapon mounted to that one. The calvary was riding in and if the expressions on their faces were anything to go by, then they were anticipating a hell of a fight.

This was Lawe’s area of expertise. He loved the firefights, Diane loved the investigations, the rescues. There was no rescuing needed here. And it wasn’t that she didn’t get a hell of an adrenaline rush from the firefights. It wasn’t as though she wasn’t aware she would be involved in far too many where Lawe was concerned.

But in this case, he would be in danger if he was forced to worry about her in this instance. He’d given her the investigation, the fight, the chance to prove herself, and she knew it wasn’t over yet. Honor Roberts was still out there, and Liza Johnson had yet to be questioned. Gently.

But her part in this particular battle was over; she would wait and see what the war brought.

Turning to him, she threw her arms around his neck and smacked a joyful kiss to his lips.

“Get yourself wounded and there will be hell to pay, Mate,” she warned him.

Surprise filled his eyes, but the anticipation that brightened them was something she was familiar with. Something she knew herself. The anticipation of the job he loved.

Justice.

It was what he had taken his name for, and it was a part of him.

She was his mate, but the adrenaline was his mistress just as it was her admirer.

“I love you.” He touched her cheek before turning to the Breed Diane hadn’t seen until he jumped from the Dragoon that bounced to a stop before them. “Tarek, take care of my mate.”

“As though she were my own,” Tarek promised.

Tarek Jordan, mated himself and out of active status, but still part of the support teams when he was available. “Let’s move out.” He give a quick nod to Diane before they moved out quickly, racing across the golf course to the safety of the hotel.

Worry was a part of leaving him behind, but she knew he’d never be able to do his job if she were at his side during a firefight. A battle with a dozen Coyotes and human soldiers was far different than allowing her to fight Malcolm, and Diane knew it.

She glanced over her shoulder to see the dust of the vehicles racing to meet the oncoming Council soldiers as another Dragoon raced toward them from the hotel.

“Here’s our ride,” Tarek shouted as Thor was first loaded in.

Reaching the vehicle themselves Diane jumped in the open side, taking one last look at the disappearing dust as Lawe and Dane’s Dragoons disappeared over the rise, and four others raced from the trails that cut through the pines to meet them.

Reinforcements. Dane and Jonas hadn’t taken chances. There were enough Enforcers joining them, along with Dog’s teams, to ensure victory.

And when he returned—

When he returned, it would be to the mate willing to give all of herself to the Breed who had finally set her free.