Lora Leigh - Coyote's Mate

“They live,” her father called back. “I have killed none. This was not a slaughterhouse.”

Del-Rey chuckled behind her. “I think I will take your daughter with me, Kobrin. Insurance, I believe. You will not notify your Russian air force, you will notify no one of what has happened here for six hours. Or she will die. Are we understood?”

“Leave her here,” her father called out desperately. “I swear to you no one will follow you.”

Del-Rey laughed. “No, they won’t follow me. I have the prize of the Genetics Council’s young protégées. Your daughter, Kobrin. Don’t make me kill her.”

Another shot fired and her father stumbled, falling as Anya screamed out for him. Her hands reached out, her fingers curling as she was lifted off her feet, and the sound of a heli-jet arriving could be heard.

She screamed out for her father, clawed and slapped at the arm securing her. She kicked, she cursed, and she sobbed.

Rage ate inside her as the betrayal that filled her burned into her mind. He had lied. From the first moment he had lied, and she would never forgive him.

“Move out!” Del-Rey ordered as he raced into the back of the transport behind the other men that converged on the huge black craft. “Cavalier, get this bastard off the ground.”

Cavalier. She had arranged his transport the year before. How many others were here? How many of those she had trusted had betrayed her?

“Stop fighting me, Anya.” Del-Rey held her in place as he settled onto the metal bench, holding her secure, and the transport lifted off.

She couldn’t see outside it. She had lost sight of her father. Lost sight of her family.

“You bastard!” she screamed, struggling harder as her fists struck back at his face. “You son of a bitch. You fucking bastard. How could you? How could you?”

“How could they?” he snarled, jerking her around to face him, his black eyes blazing in fury as his lips drew back from his lethal canines. “How dare they leave a child to arrange this? How dare they endanger you as they have? They have a bullet in their legs rather than their heads.

They should be fucking thankful.”

She slapped his face. Her hand slammed into his cheek with enough force to burn her palm before she slapped him again. Furious, enraged screams were strangled in her throat as he jerked her arms to her side, holding her in place as a growl tore from his throat.

Then his lips pressed into hers. She tried to scream again, but he stole the opportunity to push his tongue past her lips. Spice filled her mouth. She swallowed and sobbed into the kiss, because it was good. Because his lips stroked over hers as she had always imagined they would. Because he tasted like warmth and passion, and because he had lied to her. He had betrayed her. And now he was stealing her mind.

She was still sobbing as his head lifted and his arms locked her to his chest. His hand covered her head, holding her against him as her fists clenched and beat at his shoulders.

She hated him. She hated him. Oh God, she hated him. And she loved him. And she felt as though her soul had been shredded. Her Coyote warrior had betrayed her. He had lied, over and over again, betrayed every vow he had made to her. He had stolen her innocence before he ever kissed her, and she wondered if she could ever forgive him for that.

Del-Rey stared over her head at the Coyotes that now joined him. Breeds, their gazes flat and hard as they watched him. They were a threat—he could smell it in the air; his men could feel it as they surrounded him.

“Mine,” he told them all, his voice cold, commanding. “This woman is mine.”

The five female Coyotes stared back at him. They were the most dangerous, he thought, especially the oldest, Sharone.

Her gaze flicked to Anya’s sobbing form.

“You were wrong,” she told him flatly. “You should have left her family alone.”

“They put her in danger. They are lucky they live.”

“No, my friend.” She shook her head. “You will be lucky if you live. You betrayed her, and she won’t forget it. She won’t forgive it. We see the wisdom of what you did. The retribution we all felt was needed. But we stayed our hand, because she’s ours as well.” She indicated the Breeds that had come out of the underground facilities. “And what you have done this night, she will make certain you pay for.”

Tender Anya? She would rage, she might hate for a while, but he had left her family alive. He would make her understand.

“Stay out of my way,” he told her, and he meant all of them. “You swore loyalty to me and to my packs. Not to this girl. Where she’s concerned, you will not interfere.”

“Then you will ensure she is not harmed, in any way,” Sharone told him fiercely. “We follow you, Alpha, but that one”—she nodded to Anya—“that one is one of us. Mistreat her, and you mistreat us all. Remember that.”

Mistreat her? He had no intentions of mistreating her. Loving her perhaps. Easing her from her anger, definitely. Fucking her until they were both screaming with the pleasure, that was a given.

She would forgive him. He would ensure it. After all, he hadn’t killed her father or her cousins.

They lived. They would merely hurt. A lot. And it was pain they deserved. Much more than they had received.

He smoothed his hand over Anya’s loose hair. Without the braid, it hung well past her shoulders.

He cupped the back of her head to him and leaned his own against the wall of the transport.

He was aware of his own men watching him, questioning his decision. They had questioned the wisdom of it when he first told them what he planned. He sent half his men six months ago to Colorado to secretly secure the caverns that overlooked Haven, the Wolf Breed compound. They were preparing things there for his arrival. Arriving in secrecy was paramount though. That meant ditching the transport and going in in small groups. That was easily handled.

Anya might not be as easily controlled, just as he was finding his own response to her was by far less easy to handle than he had imagined.

His head lowered again, his lips touching hers. His tongue was burning for the taste of her.

Desperate for another of those hot, passionate kisses, the feel of her mouth sucking at him, drawing the tightness from his tongue.

He was aware of the eyes that watched, yet he couldn’t draw back.

“They should have protected you better, little one,” he whispered against her lush lips. “They well deserved my vengeance.”

Her lashes lifted. Her eyes were dark with misery, with pain as an exhausted sob tore from her throat.

“You betrayed me. You lied to me,” she cried. “I’ll never trust you again, Del-Rey. I can never trust you.”

He stole the words. He couldn’t bear to hear them, couldn’t bear the pain or the anger in her eyes or her voice. He took her kiss. Her lips parted for him helplessly. He could feel her fighting the need, felt her giving into it even as she cried out in surrender. And even as he kissed her, he realized there was something not quite as it had once been within him. A hunger, a need, a driving inferno of lust building inside him that made no sense, that defied description.

He needed this woman to survive it though. And Del-Rey always ensured he had what he needed to survive. He blamed it on the Coyote side of his genetics. Blood will tell and so, evidently, will DNA. At least in some part. Maybe he should blame it on the human side, he thought wearily.

Anya might have accepted that easier.

THREE DAYS LATER

Three days. She burned. Flames licked over her flesh. Fury, confusion, betrayal and pain ate at her mind while the most horrible arousal she could have ever imagined ate at her body.