Coyote's Mate (44 page)

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

Anya managed to find the strength to follow her bodyguards into the secluded gardens of the spa and to the sheltered privacy of the grotto they had reserved under a false identity.

Her papa was there, her cousins and the two nervous doctors.

“Anya.” Her papa moved swiftly for her, his craggy features twisting into a distressed frown, his blue eyes filling with concern as he pulled her to him. “My baby girl. You are ill.”

He kept his Russian accent out of stubbornness, she knew. Her father could sound as American as one born to it, yet he refused to.

A shock of dark red hair fell over his brow as his large hand cupped the back of her head and held her to his chest.

“Papa.” She held tight to him. It had been months since she had been able to see him.

His steady strength bolstered her, his courage and bravery. So many years he had worked with her, subtly telling her how to rescue her friends, pointing out weaknesses, strengths in his force, teaching her to see more than just people, but also resources and courage.

He had been her rock after her mother’s death. He had been her hero until Del-Rey, and even now, he was the man she knew would soothe all her hurts if possible.

“Little girl.” So Russian, his voice was a whisper of her childhood. “Look at you, so pale and ill.

It is good, huh, that I bring your friends.”

She pushed away from him, unable to bear his touch for long. Ashley was there to steady her as she turned to Dr. Alexi Chernov, and his niece, Katya Sobolova. They were young, protégés of Alexi’s grandfather, and so damned intelligent they were scary.

“Katya.” Anya reached for her friend’s hands.

Katya wasn’t much older than Anya; she was barely thirty. Her clear, unlined expression was tight with worry though, as her too perceptive topaz eyes went over Anya’s face.

“Anya, I agree with your papa, you are not well,” she said haltingly, a frown marring her brow.

“I’ll be fine soon,” Anya promised her. “Alpha Gunnar is on his way to this meeting. Asylum is being granted to you and your uncle but under very strict rules. You’ll have little freedom.”

Alexi shook his head. His brown hair was longer than it had been in the lab facilities, his green eyes worried. “We have no freedom now, Anya. We run in fear of our lives. The Coyote Breeds were our lives, not just our research. To work with them again . . .” He shrugged philosophically.

“From what your papa says, we will have more freedoms than we did with the Council, yes?”

“Well, you won’t die for stepping outside for that cigar you like so much,” Anya promised him.

“Though you might have company.”

Alexi’s eyes crinkled in humor. With his and Katya’s arrival in the facilities and their eventual control of it, conditions had changed drastically. They had made Anya’s job of aiding the rescue much easier.

“Sit, Anya,” her father encouraged her. “Your cousins, they are waiting for your Alpha Gunnar.

Why are you ill, child? You are never ill.”

“The inoculations we gave her as a child should have made her immune to nearly every virus known to humans,” Katya stated, watching her carefully.

“I was inoculated?” Anya blinked back at her. “With what?”

“We all were,” Katya confirmed. “Alexi and I developed the immunizations before coming to the labs. We finished them there. The Breeds are immune to all viruses known. We used that inoculation on ourselves as well as you, your family and Sofia. There was no danger involved.

We’d been lab testing on certain animals for years. But it has allowed us never to grow ill. Even your papa has not known illness. You should be well.”

Anya shook her head. She would get to that later. She turned to Ashley. “Has Emma made that call?” God, she needed Del-Rey.

“We dropped her off before coming here, Coya, remember?” Ashley reminded her gently.

She remembered. She swallowed tightly and focused on her father and her friends again. “You’ll be taken out under armed escort.”

“You will go with us,” Katya said with an edge of fear. “Won’t you?”

Anya shook her head and turned to her father. “You and the cousins must leave now, Papa, before Del-Rey arrives.”

“Why, will he shoot my leg again?” Petrov Kobrin asked with a snort. “I will not leave you while you are ill, Anya. I will return with you or these Breeds you protect will learn a father’s anger. I will stay until you are well.”

“We have a Feline Breed arriving, advance scout,” Sharone told them. “He’s coming armed.”

Anya nodded and forced back a cry. Del-Rey had allowed an advance scout rather than coming himself.

“Coya.” Fear laced Ashley’s voice a second before there was a rustle of greenery, a scuffle, and suddenly, they were surrounded.

She stared at the weapons trained on her father’s head, and Ashley’s. The Feline Breed stepped into the grotto.

“Douglas,” Anya whispered.

The junior-grade soldier that hadn’t yet made enforcer. He was young, younger than Anya.

Close-cropped dark hair, brown eyes. He was dressed in an enforcer uniform though. A Wolf Breed Enforcer uniform.

He smiled, displaying his canines as he lifted the butt of his weapon and brought it down hard on the back of Ashley’s head.

“Ashley,” Anya cried out as she moved to kneel beside the girl.

“Come here, bitch.” Hard fingers wrapped round her wrist and through the blinding pain she saw the blow delivered to her father next.

Where was Sharone? Anya looked around desperately, feeling dazed, confused. Sharone should be here. Instead, she saw only city council members and the Feline.

Seven humans and one Breed and leading the pack was the mayor, Timothy Raines.

“I hear you’re breeding,” he sneered as two others tied the doctors’ hands and placed gags over their mouths. “I was just going to kill you. I think I’ll give you to those nasty Coyotes that have offered us a damned fortune a piece for a Breed mate. Only mates can breed, right?”

Breed? He thought she was pregnant?

She shook her head. “Someone lied to you.”

He chuckled. “I don’t think so. But we’ll get what we wanted anyway. Your fucking kind out of our county. We break the Coyotes’ backs, then Haven will fall. That’s the only thing saving them right now. Bastards. The alliance will never stand when a Wolf Breed is seen escorting the Coyote’s mate out of this spa just before she disappears forever. We’ll win. You’ll lose.”

Sharone and Emma. Where were they? Where was Del-Rey? A sense of vertigo gripped Anya as she swayed.

“The bitch is sick,” one of them cursed. “She could be contagious.”

“Get her, Douglas. Let’s find your damned Coyotes and get our payment.”

The fingers that wrapped around her arm were like a manacle of agony, needles driving into her flesh. She went to her knees with a scream, and she swore hell opened up and loosed demons that howled in fury.

“Coya, come with me. Now.”

Jax. She lifted her head to stare at the Coyote dragging her across the ground, his expression tormented as he lifted her, carried her as fire flashed around her.

“Coya, you’re safe,” he growled.

“Papa ...”

“Cavalier has your father and the doctors. Move. We have to move.” He pushed her through the snow-shrouded evergreens that surrounded the next grotto, dragging her through them, pulling her from the sound of gunfire.

“Ashley ...”

“Taken care of dammit,” he growled. “Hurry, Coya. If you get so much as a scratch, the alpha is taking my throat out. Do you want that?”

He steadied her as she tried to crawl, handicapped by the broken wrist and her own weakness.

“Clear,” he snapped, his arm wrapping around her waist. “Let’s go. We have enforcers just ahead waiting on you.”

He rose, and before they could move, they found themselves facing what Anya knew were not the good Coyotes. She swore she could smell them. A stink like blood and death as they smiled coldly.

“Well, it’s the princely whelp,” one of them sneered. “Move away from her.”

Jax pushed her behind him instead. Anya stumbled against the fence before gripping the back of his coat.

“Let him go,” she cried out. “Leave him alone.”

She couldn’t let Jax be hurt. For whatever reason, the young Breed was more important to Del-Rey than the others. He made Del-Rey laugh. She couldn’t let that be taken from him.

She pushed to the side, sidling away, knowing the Coyotes would follow her. She could hear the shouts, the roars and howls of rage now filling the gardens.

“Coya, no.” Jax held his hand out, trying to push her back. “Dammit, Del-Rey will take my fucking throat out.”

“If there’s a throat left to take out.” The Coyote lifted his weapon. “Good-bye, little prince.”

Anya jumped, pushing at Jax as the shot fired and she felt the flames that suddenly enveloped her body.

Jax screamed out to her. Howls of rage filled her mind as she felt herself go to her knees and the ice inside her seemed to fill her veins.

“Anya!” She heard Del-Rey scream as she looked up.

The two council Coyotes were on the ground, bloody, dead. Del-Rey threw himself to her, sliding in beside her on his knees, his hands reaching for her as she looked down, down, to her side and the blood soaking her shirt.

“Del-Rey?” She blinked back at him, crying, desperate when she saw the pure, startled horror that filled his face. “Smile for me,” she whispered as the lethargy began to sweep over her. “One more time, smile for me.”

Del-Rey caught her. His head tipped back as agony poured from his throat in a vicious, horrible howl. He shook with the grief, the rage as he picked her up, barely aware of Jax screaming out for doctors. Barely aware of anything but the smell of his mate’s blood.

Howls joined his, Coyote howls, ripping through the gardens, echoing through the mountains as he stumbled to his feet, holding her to his chest, and searched desperately for the doctor that had come with them.

“Armani!” he screamed out as he rushed inside the spa.

She was here. They had left her in the protection of the building.

“Del-Rey.” The doctor was there, rushing to his side. “Heli-jet is in the street, hurry.”

By her side were the two Coyote doctors. They were jabbering about inoculations, blood loss and fevers as he jumped into the jet.

“Lay her here.” A carrier was stretched out at his feet. “We have to get her to Medic. I have to stop the bleeding.”

Her shirt was ripped open and Del-Rey felt the fear that tore through him.

“Move, Ghost.” Alexi Chernov pushed him to the side. “Let me in there. Blood clotting should go fast,” he snapped to Armani as Del-Rey fell back. “The inoculations saved our lives when the Council nearly caught up with us. The boost to immunity has resulted in surprising little extras.”

“The blood flow isn’t as hard as it should be. We don’t know if the bullet hit an organ. Did it go out the back . . . ?”

The three doctors were shouting at one another as they surrounded her. The heli-jet lifted off, banked and shot through the sky to Haven as Del-Rey wiped his face with shaking hands and found tears on his cheeks.

His mate, his heart. She was bleeding, wounded. Her flesh was like fire to touch, her lips nearly blue. As Brim’s had once been. So cold.

He edged around until he was at her head, bent and laid his lips at her brow. “I love you, Coya,”

he whispered. “Live for me, baby. Live for me. Because I can’t live without you.”

He stayed like that. He could warm her no other way. He held her head steady, his lips pressed to her forehead, and told himself it was the dampness of sweat that dripped to her brow rather than his tears.

Nikki Armani stood back in the surgical room of the medical facility in Haven and watched Chernov and Sobolova work steadily to stabilized Anya Kobrin.

Del-Rey sat by her side, his arm stretched out, a transfusion of his blood moving slowly from his strong wrist to his mate’s. His head rested beside hers, and sometimes, she swore she heard the big, rough Coyote praying.

Jonas, Wolfe, Callan, Hope, Dash Sinclair, his mate and daughter waited in the observation room, watching silently, their expressions somber.

“The hormonal fluctuations are too severe,” Katya Sobolova stated. “You can’t give such hormones during the fever. We need to counteract them.”