ain.”
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.
“This isn’t personal, Diane.” Lawe’s expression was tormented as he watched her, and he probably did sense how much his lack of faith hurt.
“Fine, Lawe.” She was too tired to argue with him, too disillusioned to attempt to justify or explain her own intentions. “I need to pack . . .”
“I’d prefer to wait to leave, Diane.”
She turned back to him slowly, suspic
ion rising inside her. “Why?
His lips thinned. “I sent Rule and Malachi to Window Rock to request permission from the Navajo Council to conduct the search for a rogue Breed in their territory,” he revealed. “That doesn’t happen overnight.”
How stupid did he believe she was?
“Bullshit, Lawe,” she said wearily. “You sent a team to Window Rock to find Gideon or to lay a trap, didn’t you?”
“No, I did not.” Anger tightened his expression as he came out of the bed, his blue eyes icy as he pushed himself from the bed. “I did exactly as I said I did. I sent a team into Window Rock when I realized where you were headed and what you were doing.”
“When I told you where I was headed you sent a team ahead of us to capture Gideon,” she accused him knowingly. Hell, she wasn’t even surprised. “Is that what this is going to be, Lawe? A series of games you play to keep me one step behind you and always under your thumb?”
She should be angry. She should be raging. But, surprisingly, she was more amused. Too amused to really be hurt, though she was certain that would come soon. The very fact that he thought he had to notify the Navajo Nation Council astounded her.
“Had I thought I wouldn’t irreparably damage the mating relationship I want to build with you, then that’s exactly what I would have done,” he snapped back at her. “Instead, I’m trying to clear the way for you. It wasn’t that hard to trace the calls on your sat phone to the reservation. Especially after you made your reservations with the Navajo Suites just before I arrived here. You didn’t have to tell me where you were going, I knew. How you had tracked the Roberts girl to this area was what I was unaware of.”
“And that was all you did—you just tracked my phone?” She was highly suspicious.
“That’s all I did.” There went the hand over the face again.
“And you thought you would achieve what by waylaying me here?” Pulling her jeans and shirt from the floor, Diane dressed quickly, aware of the feeling of being at a distinct disadvantage with him by standing before him naked. “How did delaying me benefit you, Lawe?”
It was hard to attempt to make him see that she was more than able to complete her mission, hell, to get him to even give her the chance to prove she could complete it, without the feeling of vulnerability that being naked gave her. Besides, he was still hard, his cock still very interested in a little mating sex.
It was impossible to deny her own renewed interest in the sexual pleasure found in his arms as well. Fortunately, the interest was tempered, the mating heat sated for now, leaving only the natural desire they shared between them, which was strong enough without adding a hormonal, pheromonal, biological and whatever else it was reaction to each other.
“I wasn’t trying to achieve anything, Diane.” He sighed as he pulled his pants over his hips and zipped them casually. “I was trying to give us a bit of time together as Rule cleared the way for our investigation in the area. The Breeds count the Navajo as one of our greatest proponents and supporters. We can’t do anything to jeopardize that. Conducting a secret investigation in their territory could only piss them off and I’m not enough of an optimist to think we can do it and get away with it.”
“And I don’t need your damned help,” she told him. “I already had permission to be in the territory from the Bureau’s base office in the Nation. That’s all I needed.”
The base office was manned by three Breeds and a member of the Navajo Nation Law Enforcement. “As long as I had permission from base, I was fine.”
“Base can’t give you permission to investigate Breeds or Genetics,” he gritted out.
“No, they can give me permission to investigate other areas though. Areas such as the peaceful resolution of the casino conflict outside Window Rock. For God’s sake, Lawe, didn’t you even consider the fact that I had laid my own fucking ground work? Once I was here, I could have used that to explain to anyone and everyone I spoke to. And then I could fall back on it to explain how I may have stumbled upon the identities of the girls. I’m good like that.” Frustration roughened and colored her voice as complete disbelief flooded her senses. “You took the confrontational route, I took the effective one. One of the differences between me and you.”
Here they went again, arguing over whether or not she knew how to do her job. She had known eventually he would go behind her back and when he did, she had known it would be in a way that would completely drive her crazy.
At this point, there wasn’t even any sense in getting angry. Pulling her own hair out was an option though. Or his.
She wasn’t arguing over it any longer. She was tired of pointing it out, tired of begging him to give her a chance to prove it. She didn’t have to prove a damned thing, she had already proven it with five years of command and the fact that she had survived this world since before she had graduated high school.
“I’m heading to Window Rock,” she informed him as she tucked her shirt into the band of her jeans before sitting down to pull on her socks. “You can stay or you can go, I really don’t give a damn which.”
She could feel his gaze narrowing on her as she pushed the last few items into her bag and zipped it with a furious jerk of her wrist.
“Diane, we’re a government agency of sorts,” he stated with obvious forced patience. “We don’t just waltz in on their land and begin conducting an investigation, especially against a Breed that could possibly carry the genetics of one of their own. Even Jonas doesn’t fuck with the Navajo Nation, for good reason.”
“And it could have nothing to do with the fact that you’re desperate to make certain I’m wrapped in cotton batting and protected from a fresh breeze,” she retorted.
“You make it sound as though the bastard hadn’t just finished taking potshots at you and your men last week,” Lawe bit out angrily. “I was there, I know what was going on¸ Diane, and that bastard could have killed you as easily as he wounded your men. There’s more on his agenda than giving you a helping hand.”
Duh. No kidding. This wasn’t her moron week, no matter what he wanted to think.
She shrugged again as she continued to gather her things together. There was no point in staying any longer, just as there was no point in attempting to convince him that she was trained well enough, that she was intelligent enough to do what had to be done.
“Would you listen to me.” He grabbed her arm as she turned to move her bags to the door. “You don’t have to do this.”
Diane stared back at him, seeing the worry in his gaze but also seeing the fact that her future would be as bleak as hell if she gave him what he wanted, if she left with him and returned to the safety of Sanctuary.
“I do have to do this, Lawe,” she stated softly, the growing anger dropping away in the face of his concern and the conflicting emotions she could see darkening his gaze. “I don’t have to do it for you or even for myself. It’s for Honor Roberts. It’s for Fawn and for Judd and the other Breeds that were tortured in those labs. I’m doing this, Lawe, because no one else cared enough or knew enough to protect them when they needed it. I do this for my niece.” Tears filled her eyes at the thought of Amber. “For the consequences she may pay for Breed research after that bastard injected her. I do it for what they did to you, to the others and for what they’ll continue to do. God, Lawe, I do this because it’s who I am.”
Lawe stared into her eyes, saw the conviction there, saw the woman she knew herself to be as well as the woman he knew she could be. “You only see the warrior you are, Diane.” He sighed, feeling as weary as she had sounded moments ago. “You don’t see the rest of you, but I sense her. I hope you find her, before you destroy both of us.”
Mating heat was so much more than a sexual hunger that brought a couple together. Lawe knew it for the emotional abyss it could be as well as the thriving, beautiful relationship it could become.
Staring into her eyes, he tried, God knew he tried with everything inside him, to still the dominance that was so much a p
art of him. To tell her what he felt and know it wouldn’t give her the encouragement he was certain she would get from it.
He’d felt her hurt, knew what he’d done to hurt her and he hated himself for it.
Without a thought he’d attempted to wound her self-confidence just as he’d attempted to weaken her belief in herself.
He’d done it without thinking, without a moment’s hesitation, and she’d seen right through him. He’d seen it in her eyes, in her expression. She’d known even before he had what he was up to. And she deserved so much more.