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.”