Lora Leigh

Breeds -25

An Inconvenient Mate

So many dreams and so many years waiting in painful anticipation.

So many pieces of a heart broken, so many nights spent watching the darkness, wondering where you were.

I was here, and I was searching, always knowing somewhere, you waited.

So many times I fought back tears, felt incomplete and feared you weren’t there.

So many nights I howled into the darkness, incomplete and searching.

I would have lost hope, I would have lost faith, then your smile lit my world.

Your lips touched mine.

For the first time in such a long, lonely life, I touched love.

You held my heart in your hands.

I felt its warmth, its power and its promise.

So many times I only dreamed you were there.

Then the dream came true . . .

Chapter One

So many dreams and so many years waiting in painful anticipation.

WINDOW ROCK, ARIZONA

She couldn’t keep her eyes off him.

Isabelle Martinez watched the male across the bar as he lifted the frosted bottle of beer and drank. He placed the mouth of the bottle at his parted lips, tilted his head back and seemed to relish the cold bite of the liquid.

The strong column of his throat worked lazily before he lowered the bottle, allowing his gaze to sweep the room. As though he hadn’t been watching every movement possible in the small bar before and while he’d taken that drink.

Shaggy blond hair fell to his broad shoulders while the formfitting black of the uniform he wore shifted over his muscles with each move.

Mission uniform, that was what they called it, she thought in fascination. The black material wasn’t skintight, it was simply formfitting, and it set him apart as exactly what he was—a lethal weapon. A creature no man nor beast should be stupid enough to confront.

“I double-dare you,” her sister whispered at her ear.

Chelsea simply had no idea what she was doing.

“Not going to work, Chel.” Liza, her best friend, laughed from across the table. “She doesn’t have the guts to go for it. I told you, Holden drained the courage right out of her.”

The mention of Holden Mayhew had a dark, sickening feeling slicing through her and sent an icy chill down her spine. His gaze slid past hers, then sliced back, his eyes locking with hers for a second that seemed to last a lifetime as he motioned the bartender almost absentmindedly.

Isabella licked her lips nervously, and his eyes were on the action like a cat on a mouse.

A coyote on a rabbit.

Predatory.

Narrowed and dark. Were his eyes black or a blue so dark that the distance made them appear black? From where she sat and the shadows cast from the distance between them they could have been any color from dark brown to blue. One thing was certain, they were intent and gleaming with interest as they met hers.

He held her gaze now, though, as he lifted the ice-filled glass the bartender set at his side and brought it to his lips.

His eyes, narrowed and focused, remained locked with hers, mesmerizing her, holding her as no other man ever had.

Oh sweet Lord.

She could feel her breathing escalate, lust clawing at her senses as his lips touched the rim of the glass and he sipped the liquid before returning the glass to the bar.

Whiskey?

Of course.

The bartender topped off the drink, no doubt hoping for one of the tips it was rumored Breeds were prone to give.

It was one of the finest brands, and her favorite.

“Couldn’t you just eat him up,” Chelsea murmured at her side. And she could. One slow, luscious lick at a time.

“Come on, Isa.” Liza breathed out in awe. “It’s not like you can get a disease from him. Or get pregnant. Remember, their wives have to actually take those pills to get pregnant.”

Isabelle didn’t bother glancing over at her friend.

The documentaries they had watched over the years on Breeds were very enlightening. That, combined with every article they could get their hands on as well as every gossip rag Chelsea dragged into the apartment. Those stories, along with her father and grandfather’s stories of missing members of the Nation over the decades, filled her head.

She had never been as fascinated by other Breeds as she was with this one, though. And he was so obviously one of the baddest of the bad.

A Coyote Breed. The news story released days ago about the restructuring of the Breed communities had shown the Coyote Breeds’ new uniforms and identification.

The white curved fang on the left shoulder of the lightweight mission jacket, the new designation patch of the Coyote Breeds, showed clearly through the dim light of the bar. He would be carrying a picture ID and, if he were with the Bureau of Breed Affairs, an official badge and ID.

But she would have known he was a Breed without the uniform or the identification. They were easily picked out in a crowd. They were the most perfectly engineered creatures on the face of the earth and reflected the most perfect genetics that scientists could envision putting together to create a rough male beauty that seemed almost painful to look at.

The perfect height, the perfect strength and health. Perfect teeth, savage features for the males, classic beauty for the females—just perfectly, exquisitely dangerous.

A hell of a combination for a woman who now feared strength and danger.

“She’s not talking to us,” Liza pointed out, the smile obvious in the tone of her voice.

“’Cause he’s watching her,” Chelsea gasped in sudden surprise. “Oh my God, watch him stare at her. He’s, like, fascinated with her, Liza. Do you think she’s finally found a man she won’t say ‘no’ to?”

Isabelle dropped her gaze and closed her eyes for a quick moment, hoping to still the racing of her heart and the sudden knowledge that her friends, and possibly others, were watching now. That silent, hungry exchange shouldn’t be shared. She didn’t want others to see it. She didn’t want it remarked upon, or gossiped about. It seemed too deep, too intimate to spoil it in such a way.

There were few places a Breed could go where he or she wasn’t watched. Watched, judged, criticized and often feared. Just as their lovers, wives or even their friends were hated, reviled and insulted. She didn’t care if she was judged, or how she was judged, but that look, it was too special to risk, even here in one of the few places Breeds had found any acceptance.

The people of the Navajo Nation accepted them, did what they could to protect them and stood behind them when political or social reform was needed to ensure their safety and their survival.

It was one of the few places they could also trace their roots. Too many of the missing sons and daughters of the Navajo Nation had been taken by the Genetics Council for Breed research, and many of those families were desperate to claim the last ties to what they had lost.

Drawn irresistibly back to him, Isabelle lifted her eyes once again to find the Breed’s gaze supposedly drawn to her left of her. As though he were watching the entrance.

He seemed bored. Waiting with impatient patience, she thought, almost smiling at the contradiction. She knew he was watching her; she could feel his touch like a ghostly caress against her face. A sensation of warmth and sensual hunger washed through her.

His fingers gripped the glass again as he brought the drink to his lips and sipped. And though his gaze was to her side, she knew he could see exactly where she was and every move she made. Just as he no doubt knew she couldn’t keep her eyes off him.

“You are such a wuss.” Chelsea leaned close and whispered in her ear, her voice amused and challenging.

“Meaning?” Isabelle lifted her own drink, the same expensive whiskey the Breed had ordered.

“Meaning, go talk to him, dimwit,” Chelsea hissed, suddenly somber. “Come on, Isa, this could be the answer to your prayers. Holden wouldn’t dare come around you if he knew a Breed was interested in you. Not now and not later.”

Holden. God, she didn’t want to think about Holden.

She had fought to put that night behind her, to eradicate the fear from her life and from her nightmares. It was impossible, though. That night had become so imprinted on her brain that she couldn’t seem to shake the memories.

And she sincerely doubted anything or anyone would change Holden’s mind short of a bullet. Perhaps even death itself. He wouldn’t allow anyone, man or Breed, to stand between him and anything or anyone he decided he wanted. And he had decided not only did he want Isabelle, but he would have her. Whether she wanted him or not.

A shudder raced up her spine at the thought.

At the same time, the Breed’s gaze was suddenly locked with hers once again, unblinking, his dark eyes glittering dangerously. He watched her intently, his nostrils flared, his whole demeanor appearing on guard, as though he perceived some threat.

Isabelle could feel her mouth drying, nervous excitement and a hint of fear lacing the arousal she couldn’t seem to help.

She wished she knew more about the Breeds. Knew more about their strengths, or even their weaknesses. Amazingly, facts were sketchy, though the rumors were incredibly numerous.

Could he really smell her arousal?

Could he smell fear?

Did she care?

She licked her lips again. She had always held back where men were concerned, always refused to make the first move. She was still a virgin, determined to wait for the one man who would make the waiting worth it. In this case, the Breed she couldn’t resist. She had a feeling this Breed wouldn’t make that first move, though. Not with her. There was something in the air between them that assured her he would never allow her to hide from the fact that he was what she wanted. She would be woman enough to give an invitation that neither he nor anyone watching could mistake. If she wanted him, she would have to be woman enough to prove it.

Was she woman enough?

A part of her was screaming, “Hell yes,” while another part was screaming, “No way in hell.”

While her head and her heart were arguing over whether or not she was brave enough, the woman took up the challenge and went for it. She stood from her chair.

“Umm, this isn’t good, Chelsea, maybe we should leave,” she heard Liza mutter, an edge of something that may have been fear sharpening her voice. She ignored the other girl’s comment and instead began moving across the room.

She felt drawn by him.

Mesmerized by that dark gaze and becoming a person she didn’t wholly recognize. The woman she had always fantasized about being.

Independent. Free. A woman facing the most dangerous adventure of her life. One that could leave her either eternally whole, or forever heartbroken.

She had always told her father she would know the second she met the man she wanted to give her heart to. That knowing him would never be the problem.

Holding him would be another story.

And Isabelle knew that several of her friends had thought they could hold on to one of the rapturously, sexually experienced males science had created, only to end up with a broken heart.

Having a future with a Breed wouldn’t be the easiest job a woman could take on. Or the easiest challenge. Falling in love with one could be termed the height of idiocy. In that second, Isabelle knew her heart was now on the line as well. If she hadn’t already lost it. Not that she had ever believed in love at first sight before. She wasn’t certain she believed in it now. But she knew a part of her would grieve for a lifetime when this Breed walked out of her life.

“Isabelle,” Chelsea hissed behind her. “Sweetie, I think we better go.”

Isabelle ignored her. Her sister didn’t seem panicked, just worried. Worried was okay.

She felt as though she were gliding across the bar, held by his gaze, so fascinated, so intent on the man watching her that she could barely breathe.

She was instinct. She was living every fantasy she had ever had in that moment. Stepping to him, her gaze still captured, her senses narrowed to this one moment, Isabelle reach for the broad, masculine fingers that held the glass.

She didn’t take the glass from him.

Using her fingers, she urged the glass to her lips and he complied easily. Tucking the edge of it at her lips, he lifted it slowly until the icy liquid was touching her tongue, burning across her senses as she took a slow, sensual drink of the fiery liquor.

As he pulled back, she licked her lips slowly, realizing he had placed the exact spot his own lips had touched to hers.

“You’re living dangerously,” he murmured as her heart raced out of control, barreled into her chest then broke off to rush through her senses and overwhelm them.

“Prove it.”

Oh hell. No. She hadn’t said that. She really hadn’t.

Hadn’t someone said something about never, ever daring a Breed, especially a Coyote?

His lips quirked, an edge of smile filling eyes such a dark, dark blue they were nearly black.

“I can prove it.” Pure confidence filled his voice.

This time, she lifted the glass from his hand, brought it to her lips and finished the drink before handing it back to him.

His fingers covered hers as he took it, a flame leaping in his gaze as pure, sexual awareness seemed to fill the night.

“Confident, aren’t you?” she whispered playfully as a tingle of excitement rushed through her system.

“Very,” he agreed. “And I would so enjoy playing with you.”

A game? She’d never played sensual, flirtatious games. She’d never dared a Breed, and she’d never, at any time, challenged man or Breed to seduce her.

“We’re playing, then?” she asked softly.

“You could say I’m hunting,” he murmured seductively. “The sweetest, softest little morsel I believe I’ve ever scented in my life. You could become an addiction.”

Her heart tripped, speeded up and began racing in excitement.

“Do I get a head start?”

Eek. Where had that come from?

His head tilted to the side, his eyes squinting just a bit at the corners, as though he wanted to smile. “Do you plan to use it?”

“Of course.” She was going to run clear to the other end of the state just to escape the memory of her daring.

What was that expression that came over his face? It almost softened. His eyes gleamed and seemed to fill with something she would have called fondness at any other time.

“Are you sure you want a head start?” His voice dropped, sexual, heated, it stroked over her senses with an intimacy she hadn’t expected.

“It would be wise. Just to make certain I know what I’m doing, mind you.” She had no idea what the hell she was doing, and that was a fact.

His hand rose, his fingertip tucking beneath the hair that had fallen over her shoulder to find her exposed collarbone as he leaned closer, his lips at her ear. “When I find you, I’m going to undress you, then spread you out and lick all the lush, sweet cream I can smell flowing from your pussy. When I’ve drowned my senses in the taste of you, I’m going to fuck you with my tongue, lick more of you, then listen to your screams as you come.”

She was going to melt right there in the floor. Isabelle swore her knees nearly gave out on her as sensual weakness flooded them. She had to tighten her thighs against the sudden nip of sensation in her clit. The swollen, sensitive bud throbbed with need, pulsing with a need so strong she wasn’t certain she could deny it.

“I’m going to bite your chest.” She sighed, then winced at the lack of explicit description.

But that was what she wanted.

She wanted to bite his chest.

His hand was suddenly clamped on her hip, long, strong fingers curving over the denim of her jeans as she felt his body tense, his breathing becoming deeper and harder.

“Are you sure you want that head start?” His lips lowered to nip her ear.

Then he licked the edge of her ear, exciting the sensitive nerve endings beneath the flesh.

A shudder raced through her, blistering hot, nearly catapulting her straight out of her senses and into an unprecedented orgasm.

Her thighs tightened as she fought to hold it back. Or give in to it? She wasn’t certain which.

“I don’t know,” she murmured. “Maybe you’re not good enough at this game to catch me if I take it?” Hell no, she didn’t want a head start, but this was fun. It was the most fun she had ever had, the kind of fun she had dreamed of having with a man.

And in a moment’s hindsight, she realized she wanted him to chase her. She wanted this game more than she could have ever imagined wanting anything like it.

He tensed again, a little growl rumbling between them, at once exciting her even as it sent a flash of trepidation racing up her spine.

She could see the hunger in his gaze, feel it radiating from his big body. The strength of it confused her, as did the answering force that surged through her own body.

“When I catch you, I will fuck you,” he promised her, his voice rumbling at her ear before he pulled back to stare into her eyes. “All night, all day. Possibly all week.” Pulling away from him was practically impossible, and forcing herself to walk away took all the willpower she could muster. Because she didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay there with him, wanted to rub against him and feel the sensual heat and power that she sensed was so much a part of him. She forced herself to move though. Forced herself to draw her gaze away from him and turn back to the table she, Chelsea and Liza shared. They had moved though. They were waiting on her at the exit, which was even better. Leaving was the best option, it would give him a reason to try to find her. If she remained in the bar, it would be rather anti-climatic. And she certainly didn’t want that.

Chapter Two

So many pieces of a heart broken, so many nights spent watching the darkness, wondering where you were.

Some nightmares refused to go away, even amid the most sensual, most erotic event of her life, the deepest terror she had ever known insisted on intruding.

And she wouldn’t have known, wouldn’t have realized the monster that haunted her dreams was even there if Chelsea and Liza hadn’t rushed her so quickly from the bar.

Holden Mayhew was in the bar, and he had witnessed her flagrant teasing of the Coyote Breed. The one who had given her a head start. A chance to be certain this was what she wanted.

And she wanted him with every fiber of her being.

So much that her body was incredibly sensitive, her nerve endings still pulsing with the need for touch. For his kiss. For every sensual promise he had made to her in the dimly lit bar.

His fingers stroking against her flesh, his lips, the nip of his teeth. The feel of his hard body against hers.

And she longed, ached, burned for him to take her.

Perhaps she should have refused the head start, but the anticipation of being chased, of being a sensual prey, had been more than she could deny herself.

Isabelle stared at one of the fragrant candles flickering around the room, eliminating the hotel smell and bringing a sense of calm to her ragged nerves. It did nothing to ease the pulse and throb of an arousal that was becoming almost overwhelming. As a matter of fact, the soft, sensual scent that infused the wax might have made it worse.

But even the anticipation of the Breed and the pleasure that could overtake her couldn’t eliminate the fear rising inside her now.

Someone had called Holden and told him she was there. Someone who didn’t care that she wanted nothing to do with him. Hell, he didn’t care that she wanted nothing to do with him. He was there, and once again, he was stalking her.

The flicker of light from the candles her grandmother had made for her held her attention again. The gift from her grandmother just hours before her uncle had called her to the hotel had surprised Isabelle. The scents of them were even more surprising.

Lavender, sandalwood and a darker, elusive scent that reminded her of dark sexuality and the Breed she had walked away from earlier.

The candles themselves weren’t surprising. Her grandmother was always creating distinctive scents with individuals and their emotions or troubles in mind. That underlying scent of sexuality was surprising, though. She just wished she could put her finger on exactly what it was.

“What are you going to do, Isabelle?” It was rare her sister called her by her full name, as everyone else did. Chelsea usually used the shortened version of Isa, despite the fact that Isabelle didn’t care much for the nickname.

“How long was he there?” Isabelle whispered as she watched the door. She could sense the nervousness raging through the other two as Isabelle felt fear tugging at her.

“He came in just before you walked over to the Breed,” Chelsea said quietly.

“I should have told you the instant I saw his brother Harlen on his cell phone,” Chelsea sighed. “I should have done more than just suggest we leave.”

Well, that answered the question of who could have called Holden.

She distantly remembered Chelsea saying something about leaving, had recognized the concern in her sister’s voice at the time, but she had ignored it. Nothing had mattered but the Breed and connecting with him. Nothing and no one else had mattered. Her fascination with him was something so unusual for her that she had thought the concern her sister had felt had been because of her actions, not the man who had entered minutes later.

“And he saw me?” she whispered.

“He didn’t take his eyes off you until you left the bar with us,” Chelsea told her, anger beginning to tighten her voice. “The bastard. You should tell Dad, Isabelle. You can’t let him keep doing this.”

“This” being the steady harassment and stalking of her. He refused to accept the fact that Isabelle hated him.

Pushing her fingers through the long strands of her hair, Isabelle rose from the chair she had thrown herself in moments earlier and paced to the other side of the room.

She didn’t need this. She didn’t want to face it. She had hoped she could escape the nightmare Holden Mayhew had begun in her life, but it seemed he was determined to make certain she never escaped it.

Or him.

For a moment the surge of terror and fury she had felt that night raced through her again. The feel of his hands, painful in their cruel insistence, holding her down. The sound of his voice as he sneered down at her, determined to take what she was unwilling to give him. The ease with which he had torn her clothes from her was humiliating. The knowledge that he had nearly carried through with his intent to molest her was as terrifying as it was enraging.

She couldn’t forget the fact that he had almost raped her. He had almost taken from her the one thing she had wanted to save for the man she would one day give her heart to. The gift she knew she had been so ready to give to an unknown Breed tonight.

Her virginity.

He hadn’t completed the rape, but the terror was now such a part of her that she was shocked she had escaped the memory of it for those few minutes she had dared the undarable. A Coyote Breed.

“I say go back downstairs and bring that big, badassed Breed back to your bed. They may not be forever material, but he looked damned interested, Isabelle. He might take care of this little problem for you too, if you asked him. Hell, from what I know about Breeds, all you would have to do is tell him about it. He would take care of it,” Liza suggested, her gray eyes filled with anger.

Isabelle shook her head as she paced to the window. Silent, still, she stared out at the dark landscape that surrounded the back of the hotel, five stories down. In her reflection she could see the pale, drawn features of her own face, and she hated it.

God, she wished she had killed him when she had the chance. She wished she had simply pushed Liza aside and pulled the trigger. There was a chance she could have escaped jail. She had been bruised, bloody, naked. It would have been so easy to prove the attempted rape.

If she had been strong enough to pull the trigger. If she weren’t so terrified her father would pull the trigger after the fact, then she would go ahead and file charges against him. There was no way he could get out of it. Chelsea and Liza both had been there, and they were all employees and kin to members of the Navajo Nation Council.

If she had filed charges, or had the courage to do it now, then she wouldn’t be reliving the nightmare on the night she should be enjoying the daring, sensual game a Coyote Breed had begun with her.

How long had she waited to meet that one man who would make her willing to give herself at a moment’s notice? The fact that he was a Breed hadn’t really surprised her. She’d known for years that the men she had met before him didn’t have whatever it was the sensual side of her was searching for. The feminine, female part that demanded so much more from a lover than those who had presented themselves so far.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t waited, watched, searched for the man who would awaken her sensuality.

She had traveled the world with her father on his quests for information about his missing sister. She had met heads of state, politicians, ambassadors, geeks and physical laborers in her short stint as her uncle’s personal assistant just after he’d been voted in as chief of the Navajo Nation.

She had dated, she had kissed, she had let herself be wined and dined, and that elusive hunger she had known had to be waiting inside her had never shown itself. That restless, waiting impatience had always followed her, had always been a part of her, until tonight. Tonight, when her gaze met a Breed and she had dared to tease him. That restlessness had eased. For a few moments, it hadn’t even existed.

And now, she was terrified of the consequences of reaching out for what she wanted.

Lifting her hand, she rubbed at the small spot on her ear that the Breed had nipped. She could feel the imprint of his teeth, a heated reminder of that gentle bite, a brand against her flesh.

She didn’t even know his name.

She hadn’t even paid attention to the gold ID designation tag on the left of his very broad chest.

Breeds didn’t display their names as other military, law enforcement or agency operatives did. They carried a number, hiding their identity to the casual observer.

Not that the number would have done her much good if she was searching for his identity. The only way to learn who owned the designation number was to contact the Bureau of Breed Affairs and jump through hoops, kiss ass and hope Jonas Wyatt was in a good mood the day the request hit his desk, though she had heard Wyatt was never in that good a mood. There were rumors he would even deny senators, Breed contributors and law enforcement officials that information.

“Isabelle, you’re not listening,” Chelsea chided her as she kept her back to them. “Come on, that Breed looked capable of protecting an army. You wouldn’t even have to sleep with him to convince him to do something about Holden.”

The fact that her sister made such a suggestion was a testament of how worried she was over the situation Isabelle was in.

“I don’t want a protector,” she said softly, turning to the only two women who knew the fears that plagued her. “I don’t want a man in my bed because of Holden, Chelsea. I want a lover. I want more than a shield. I don’t want to be afraid of what’s going to happen when Holden finds out, or if he sees us together. I want to enjoy it while I have it so I can hold on to the memories when it’s over. This will be my first time, Chelsea, I wanted it to be special. Is that so much to ask?”

Because few things lasted forever. Her mother had taught her that when she had died in an accident the morning Isabelle turned seven, just hours before the birthday party she and Isabelle had planned so meticiously.

“I think Holden knows better than to confront a Breed. But that doesn’t mean it would make the Breed any less than your lover, sweetie,” Liza assured her. “Hell, Isabelle, it’s just that I can’t think of anyone who would confront a Breed over one of their lovers. I hear they’re rabid about them. And they’re even worse where their wives, or mates as they call them, are concerned.”

More than one non-Breed male had learned the idiocy of challenging a Breed over the woman he was with, whether he was sleeping with her or not. Breed males were said to be so intensly protective of women and children that even abusive husbands and fathers had felt the brunt of their displeasure. When it came to lovers and wives, though, they were fiercely territorial where other men or Breeds were concerned.

But despite what Liza believed, if she went searching for him, if she ended the teasing game she had so wanted to play, then it would also change the fact that he wouldn’t be in her bed just for the pleasure they would share. It would be for the protection she may need. And that would completely alter every memory she could hold of any time they spent together.

Which meant that, until she had dealt with the Holden situation, having the Breed in her bed might not be the wisest decision.

“It doesn’t matter,” Isabelle sighed roughly. “Just let it go. Whatever Uncle Ray needed us here for, we’ll finish then go home. I should have known better than to tease a Breed anyway.”

“And boy, did you tease him,” Chelsea said in awe. “Oh my God, Isa. I’ve never seen you like that around a man. I thought the two of you were going to catch fire and burn the place down. You were hot as hell for each other.”

Liza shook her head, a mocking smile curling her lips. “Think what you want to, my friend, but that Breed so will not let you get away. Before your uncle is finished with these meeting with the Breeds, you’re going to be fucked six ways from Sunday and begging for mercy.”

She would settle for once on Friday and the memories she could hold on to after it was over.

Isabelle rubbed at her ear again. She was still hot as hell for him, and growing hotter by the second. She wished she could have stayed in the bar. She wished she could have danced with him when the band returned. She wished she’d had the courage to give him her room number.

“Having him would be a very bad idea,” she sighed. “I shouldn’t have gone to him. Hell, I don’t even know his name.”

“His name is Malachi,” Liza suddenly announced. “While you were sharing his drink, I asked the two Breeds at the next table who he was. The big dark one was more than happy to supply his name.”

Isabelle’s brows rose. That was unusual for enforcers. They rarely gave information unless they had no other choice.

“Yeah, the blue-eyed one was scowling and said something about damned Coyote hormones and the heat. Only God knows what that means, because it wasn’t hot in there. The other one, though, the darker one, his name was Stygian. He was just amused, and I swear to God I think I heard him give a wolf growl when you took that glass from his friend and finished his drink. I rather doubt he’s a feline,” she said musingly, as though more than a little interested.

Chelsea and Liza were watching her as though they hadn’t yet figured out what had possessed her.

She didn’t know herself what had possessed her.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she groaned as she rubbed at her ear, wishing she could rub away the warmth that reminded her of his touch. “I still can’t believe I did that.”

“And as terrified as you are of Holden, I still can’t believe you didn’t see him come into the bar.” Chelsea was shaking head in confusion.

Her sister was no more confused than Isabelle was herself. That simply wasn’t like her. She didn’t come on to strange men, and she sure as hell never dared a Breed of any species. They were simply too unknown, and their temperaments too uncertain. Virgins should know better, she told herself in exasperation. They were so sexually experienced it should be considered illegal. Hell, it probably was illegal. They were lethal in more ways than one, but they would be hell on a woman’s heart.

She knew plenty of them, and she was friends with several Breed females, but they weren’t best buds. Just as the male Breeds she knew had never been lovers.

This Coyote, though, she would have loved to give herself to. Over and over again.

And she would have loved continuing the game tonight. They had friends in the hotel; she could have found out where his room was. Perhaps slipped something beneath his door. Dared him to find her, then gotten herself another room.

She would have had so much fun, and if that playful glitter in his eyes was any indication, her Coyote would have played with her. He would have broken all the rules. He would have laughed at her indignation. But she would have had so much fun.

If it weren’t for Holden and his unpredictable behavior.

“Look, Holden doesn’t know we’re staying here at the hotel. He’s expecting us to be heading home,” Liza pointed out. “Malachi and his friends certainly are in this hotel. I checked with my friend, Mary, at registration. Malachi Morgan, Rule Breaker and Stygian Black are here as a Breed delegation to meet with your uncle.” She frowned, her gracefully arched dark blond brows lowering in concern. “Do you know what it’s about?”

Isabelle shook her head rather than lying outright to her friends. As her uncle’s assistant, she knew she had to be careful about divulging too much confidential information. And there were things Isabelle knew that even her sister was unaware of.

She knew why her father, uncle and grandfather thought they were there, though she wasn’t aware of the details.

Her uncle, the chief of the Nation; her father, one of the Nation’s legal representatives; and grandfather, the Nation’s medicine man had been discussing a rogue Breed and the search for him that the Bureau of Breed Affairs was conducting.

Isabelle had heard her grandfather’s fears that the Breeds weren’t telling the whole truth regarding why the delegation from the Bureau of Breed Affairs was there.

They feared it had something to do with the kid the Breeds suspected the Navajo Nation Council and the Martinez family had been hiding for more than a decade.

Isabelle didn’t know if her family knew where they were or not. She knew though, that someone in the Council was behind the disappearance of Breed children who needed to cease to exist for their own safety. It only made sense they would do the same for any human child that had been a part of Breed research. All she knew was that there had been a teenage boy and young girl who had been found by her father years ago who had disappeared from the house later. Six Navajo dressed in denim, their faces decorated with war paint, their dark eyes fierce and intent, had taken the three away, and Isabelle had never seen them again. She had never told Chelsea or Liza about them. A short time later, Isabelle had heard her father and uncle talking about another girl. One her father had brought in after the other two, but she hadn’t been able to hear the details, and she hadn’t seen the girl. She wouldn’t have known about any of it if she hadn’t been such a nosy, sneaky kid, as her older brother, Lincoln, liked to accuse her of.

It wasn’t the first time the Navajo Nation and the Martinez family had interfered in the Genetics Council’s plans, or any of their counterparts’. The Breeds were a part of the Nation and its people. They were the sons and daughters of many of their missing that were taken by the Council. Too many of them carried their genetics to ever turn any of them away. And Isabelle knew that the three kids they had hid all those years ago had been taken from either the Council or one of their counterparts. They were part of the research, and the Martinez family and the Navajo Nation would kill to protect them.

“The meeting is tomorrow,” Isabelle told them both while maintaining the secrets the others were unaware of. “It begins at ten. I know Dad wants to refuse their request to search for this rogue Breed because he doesn’t trust their reasons for it, while Gramps and Uncle Ray are hesitant to deny them.”

“Maybe Ashley knows what’s going on,” Liza mused as she mentioned the Coyote female who was a regular visitor from the combined Wolf and Coyote Breed community of Haven, Colorado. “She’s in town this week. She called last week to see if I wanted to go to the spa with her while she was here.”

Blond as well, though artificially colored, enhanced and streaked, Liza was known to spend an excessive amount of time at the spa in town pampering her hair, nails and glowing, soft skin.

To a point, both Isabelle and Chelsea were regular customers at the spa, but Liza and Ashley spent far more time pampering themselves than either of them did.

“I’m not nearly as worried about this as I am my sister. What are you going to do about this, Isabelle?” Chelsea asked as both she and Liza stared back at her in concern. “If I know Holden, he won’t just leave you alone. He’s going to keep coming at you until he catches you off guard again. And when he does, he’ll make certain he hurts you. We both know he will.”

For some reason, Holden Mayhew had it in his head that she belonged to him. It had taken only a single date for Isabelle to realize he was a man that wouldn’t take no for an answer. The second date, an attempt to reason with him, had proven her right.

“I don’t know, Chelsea.” Shoving her hands into the pockets of her jeans, she was drawn back to the window.

“You could tell Uncle Ray,” she suggested.

It wasn’t the first time her sister, or God forbid, her brother, Linc, had made that suggestion.

“Or your father,” Liza pointed out with a hint of mockery.

They all knew if she told her father, then Terran Martinez would likely attempt to kill Holden himself. And that was something she didn’t want to have to face. There was always the chance Holden would harm her father or catch her brother unaware and hurt him. Or the chance that her father or brother would kill Holden and be willing to face prison to do so. Protecting her and Chelsea was all they seemed to think about at times. As though the haunting specter of Morningstar Martinez’s kidnapping and disappearance more than thirty years before somehow threatened Isabelle and Chelsea as well.

“I wish the two of you didn’t know about it.” Isabel sighed.

“That would be hard to accomplish,” Chelsea drawled. “If we hadn’t shown up, sis, that night would have had a far different ending for you.”

She would have been raped.

It had been Chelsea who had bashed Holden over the head with a lamp and Liza who had pulled the rifle on him that her father had given her when she moved into the apartment with Isabelle and Chelsea.

Naked, reeling from the attack, Isabelle had jerked the gun from Liza, cocked it and would have killed him herself if Chelsea hadn’t stepped between the gun and Holden. It had given him a chance to run out before she could put the rest of the female population out of any more misery that he could deliver.

She would have shot his balls off.

“A far different ending for him if you had just stayed out from in front of that gun,” she stated though she didn’t turn back to them. “I should have just killed him before you had a chance to step between us.”

There were nights she wished she hadn’t allowed her sister to stop her. Nights that she had lay frightened, listening to his truck as it rumbled up their street. Her bedroom was at the front of the house, the other two at the back. Her sister and Liza never knew about the nights Holden tormented her, and she didn’t want them to know.

If he had just let it go. If he had just left her alone. But since that night he refused to give her any peace. He was stalking her, his determination to rape her becoming an obsession she knew she was going to have to deal with soon.

“You should tell your uncle at least,” Liza told her as Isabelle watched her reflection in the window.

Her friend rose from her chair and collected her purse from the floor. Dressed in jeans as well and a stylish cami, the other woman drew the straps of her purse over her bare shoulder before saying, “I have to get to bed if I’m going to be up in time to be in the conference room in the morning. Think about it, Isabelle. That, or find a man, or a Breed, that Holden won’t fuck with. Otherwise, you’re going to end in far more trouble than Chelsea and I saved you from that night. It’s pretty clear Holden’s fucked up in the head, and men like that won’t let you rest until one of you is dead.”

That was Liza. She didn’t hold much back. And though she might appear cool, or unfeeling, Isabelle knew differently. Her friend rarely let herself show emotion. She had lost her family when she was no more than a teenager and she often had nightmares over it.

“Yeah, I have to head to bed too.” Chelsea sighed as she looked around the room. “But I’m staying right here unless tall, blond and Breedy shows up.”

Stubborn determination tightened Chelsea’s normally pouty lips as she stared back at her sister, silently daring her to try to make her leave.

Isabelle turned back to both women. “What would I do without the two of you?” Tears flooded her eyes though she forced them back rather than letting them fall.

Liza had been their best friend for years. Though Chelsea was younger, Isabelle had never denied her sister the chance to tag along with them, and because of that, she had become part of the bonds of friendship that tied them together. Their friendship was set in stone, and their concern for each other was always there.

“You would be miserable, lonely and probably living by yourself with a house full of cats instead of two crazy women,” Liza grunted as she headed for the connecting door. “Now, get some sleep. I’ll leave the door open. If you need me, just scream.”

She moved to the connecting room as Isabelle turned to her sister. “You could just do the same.” She all but laughed at her sister’s mutinous expression. “You’re not tall, blond and Breedy, so I’m not sharing my bed with you.”

“And you’d share it with him?” Her sister rolled her eyes. “You might have been all hot and bothered with him, but you forget, Isabelle, I’m your sister. You’re not going to give it up to him any more than you’ve given yourself to any other man. But you’re right. I can just leave the door open.” She moved to the connecting door on the opposite side of the room. “Get some sleep, sis. I’ll see you in the morning.”

In the morning.

Isabelle turned back to the window and stared out at the desert landscape once again. Lifting her hand, she laid it against the window and pressed her forehead into the glass.

How many times over the years had she done just this? Stared into the night and wondered why she was so restless, wondered what she was searching for? Whom she was searching for?

Moving her arms to cross them over her breasts, she rubbed at her upper arms and tried to chase the chill from her flesh.

She felt hot and cold, nervous and yet so weary she couldn’t seem to hold her eyes open. But closing her eyes just brought to mind the sensual threat Malachi had made. That he would fuck her all night long. All day long. Possibly all week long.

Her vagina clenched at the memory of his voice, his gaze, the way his body seemed to wrap protectively around her. The thought of having him wrap himself around her like that after fucking her into exhaustion had her body aching for the sensation of it.

Yes, she wanted him in her bed. She wanted him between her thighs. But strangely, God, she didn’t even know him, but she wanted him in her life. She wanted to share that part of herself that she had never shared before.

Her heart.

While she had stood within his embrace, she had felt warm, protected and secure. She had felt as though nothing or no one could touch her, could harm her. And that was a very dangerous feeling for her to have.

Because she knew better now.

She knew better, and the monster that haunted those fears refused to let her go.

* * *

“Her name is Isabelle Martinez. She’s my cousin, you mangy, fucking Coyote,” Rule growled as he stared at the information on the e-pad he held. “Twenty-five years old, the daughter of Terran Martinez and Ellen Johnson Martinez. Her mother, Ellen, is deceased. She’s the personal assistant to the chief of the Navajo Nation, Ray Martinez, and she’ll be present at the meeting in the morning.”

Malachi heard the edge of concern and anger in Rule Breaker’s voice. Didn’t it just figure. His mate was this bastard’s first cousin. Just his luck. He rubbed at the back of his neck, irritation tightening his muscles as he fought back the need to find her.

Now.

Son of a bitch.

“She’s your cousin, yet, to my knowledge, you and Lawe have never declared your genetic ties with the Navajo Nation,” Malachi pointed out. “If you had, then it would have popped up on the cross-reference I did on my way out here. What makes you think you can claim the tie whenever it suits you to do so, while keeping it a secret at any other time?”

He watched the commander coolly, wondering at the difficulty the other Breed intended to give him where Isabelle was concerned. Where his mate was concerned.

His entire body tightened at the thought, his eyes narrowing back at the commander. “She’s mine,” he stated, attempting to keep the confrontation out of his tone. “Don’t get between us, Rule.”

“I’m not the one you have to worry about and we don’t have time for this anyway.” Rule speared him with a hard look. “My point is that you’re integral to this negotiation, Malachi. I can’t afford to have your attention divided.”

Malachi arched his brows. “Sorry to inconvenience you, commander. I’ll be sure to delay it just for you.”

Rule grunted at the sarcasm. “Inconvenience is exactly what it is. Can’t you just stay the hell away from her for a while? Surely it’s not painful yet? Hell, you didn’t even kiss her yet. It can’t be that bad.”

Malachi stared back at him in disbelief, just as Stygian and Ashley were doing.

“Wow, that’s raw, Rule,” Ashley murmured as she lounged back in the chair she had plopped into earlier. “Do you think maybe we should schedule mating, like you schedule training sessions and stuff? That way, it wouldn’t disturb your schedule near so much.”

“I can only wish it were so easy,” Rule grunted as though unaware she had just sliced at his attitude with the sharp edge of her tongue.

“Her room number,” Malachi stated rather than objecting or challenging the other Breed.

Rule glared back at him. “If you go to her tonight, you know what’s going to happen. Give me a break here, Coyote. At least wait until we’ve found the bastard slicing Council and research scientists to shreds. Just if you don’t mind.”

Malachi lifted his brow. “Evidently I do mind. Do I have to call downstairs and give my security clearance to get her room number? I will if you don’t turn it over in the next three seconds.”

He wasn’t going to argue, growl or challenge. He didn’t need the commander to get what he wanted. It would have simply been easier.

Rule watched him, his blue eyes icy, no doubt looking for a sign of weakness. Rule might be the commander on this mission, but he had no authority over any Breed when it came to mating heat.

The commander had changed over the past month too, Malachi thought. A change that had begun even before his twin had begun carrying the mating scent and drawing back from active status. Even though Lawe hadn’t claimed his mate, he had still shown his awareness of her by taking himself out of active mission status.

Rule Breaker and Lawe Justice had always fought together, even in the labs they had been created and trained in. They had covered each other’s backs, taken bullets for each other and made certain each was protected while ensuring each mission went off in synchronized perfection.

Had the commander changed because his other biological half was no longer there to cover him? It seemed rather hard to believe, especially considering the fact that at times they had fought separately over the past few years and performed with the same stone cold precision as they did together. Anything was possible, but Malachi didn’t consider this one probable.

“Five forty-two,” Rule growled. “She’s just across the fucking hall from you. Now, will you at least consider my request that you wait twenty-four hours? Mating heat and negotiations with your mate’s uncle doesn’t go hand in hand, Malachi.”

“The candle room.” Ashley’s tone echoed with interest now as she sat up in her chair, ignoring the rest of Rule’s statement.

“Damn,” Stygian growled. “I don’t know what scent she was using when we came up the hall, but it was so damned sexy I think even I was aroused.”

“The one she used later was just as good. I don’t know where she got those candles, but the coya would seriously love the person who made them. They smelled like heaven last night. I swear, the scent of lavender had me sleeping like a baby,” Ashley sighed.

And that was nothing less than the truth. The scent of those candles had taken out the stale, acrid scent of too many strangers tracking after one another in the hotel. It was a hotel scent, one all hotels carried and all Breeds found unpleasant. But the candles’ scent later in the night had been relaxing, a soothing blend that had eased Malachi as well, just as the earlier one had been so evocative of sex and seduction that it had intensified his arousal. He should have known the scent was coming from his mate’s room. He should have realized she hadn’t run far.

“Hey Mal-baby, make sure you find out where she got them,” Ashley pleaded prettily. “So I can get some for the coya.”

Ashley’s coya, who was Malachi’s as well, was the much loved, in some cases revered, female alpha of the Coyote packs.

“We need all our senses alert for this meeting.” Rule sighed, casting Malachi another hard glare. “Lawe will be arriving within days, and when he does, our mission here will begin in earnest. Mating her now will only endanger her.”

Malachi felt something shift inside him. A dark edge of primal denial raising its head with a shift in the calm he normally kept himself centered with.

“She’s already in danger.” He knew it. Had sensed it. But it had only been after her friend had whispered something to her and her gaze suddenly raked the room with a flash of terror in the cobalt blue depths.

“You don’t know that, Malachi.” Despite his denial, Rule tensed further, his tone becoming darker.

“Something frightened her, sent a particular scent of fear rising from her,” Malachi stated as he straightened from the wall he had been leaning against, angry tension making him restless. “A fear I’ve only scented after our women were raped in the labs.”

The three Breeds he faced came to instant attention then.

A low growl rumbled in Stygian’s throat. Ashley’s gray eyes narrowed, her hand dropping to the knife sheathed to her thigh as she rose slowly to her feet, but it was Rule’s reaction that, despite the genetic tie to Isabelle, still surprised him.

His lips flattened, nostrils flaring as he flexed his fingers against the arms of the fine leather chair he sat in. Rage flashed in his ice blue eyes, burning like a cold flame before Rule managed to quickly bank the emotion.

The battle for control was short, but obviously difficult. Turning his head slowly, the commander flashed Ashley a look as the corner of his lip lifted, flashing a wicked sharp canine as a rumbled snarl vibrated in his chest.

“I have the room two doors down from her,” Ashley stated, her gaze savage as she gave Rule a sharp nod. “Emma is two doors the other way. Trust me, no one will harm her while she’s in her room.”

Malachi and Stygian were both across from her.

And Rule expected him to stay away from her?

His mate?

His mate who carried the scent of fear and of a woman’s soul scarred in one of the worst ways possible?

Did he have the strength? Malachi knew there was no way he could stay away from her for more than a few hours. The hunger for her was throbbing, not just in his cock, but in his chest. The protective fury that had begun building the second he had seen that terror on her face was hardening inside him.

She belonged to him. Her life was now tied to his and vice versa. Her health, her happiness, her pleasure, was now his responsibility. And if Malachi knew one thing, it was how to fulfill his responsibilities.

“Her sister, Chelsea, is in the room connecting to hers, and her friend, Liza, in the one on the other side of her.” Rule returned to the e-pad, pulling up information as he spoke before lifting his gaze to Ashley once more. “I want a report on her and her friends by morning, and I want to know by God what it is she fears.”

“And the other information you wanted me to gather?” Ashley asked.

The information on four young women, two of which could possibly be the two women the Breeds had been searching so desperately for.

“It can wait,” Rule decided. “It’s waited for twelve years now, it can wait another day to begin the search. Lawe should be here within the next two nights and we expect our suspect to arrive tonight, if he’s not already here. At the latest, he’ll arrive either just ahead or behind Lawe and Diane. I rather doubt we’re going to have time to complete our mission as well as his before he arrives.”

Their mission was to receive acceptance by the Navajo Council chief and it’s head advisor to conduct the search for a Breed that had been systematically killing scientists and researchers attached to the Genetics Council and to a pharmaceutical research company tied to Breed testing and research.

Ashley nodded firmly. “It shouldn’t take more than a few hours to get the information on them. They’re well known enough they shouldn’t be able to hide much of their lives.”

But Malachi was already ahead of her. He didn’t play one-up by informing Rule he had this covered. Let the commander play first cousin, he would turn down no help in protecting his mate.

But neither would he ever depend upon others to protect her either.

“The meetings should end about noon tomorrow.” Rule lifted his gaze to Malachi now. “Just in time for Lawe and Diane’s arrival two days from now. Protect her, learn what danger stalks her. But mating her before Lawe arrives is out of the question, Malachi.” The order in his tone was clear. “After that, I can ensure both your protection and have another team in to cover your duties. Until then, for all our sakes, for your mate’s sake, we need to make the mission priority.”

Malachi nodded sharply. He didn’t argue. He wasn’t one to stand and debate or rage, and he sure as hell wasn’t above lying if the situation called for it. He was, after all, a Coyote Breed. They took the path of least resistance whenever possible. Fighting and raging when they could achieve their objectives in a more efficient manner didn’t seem logical. And Malachi in particular had always felt it best to move around an obstacle rather than punching his way through it.

He ignored Rule’s suspicious look. Rule wasn’t a stupid man, and he’d known Malachi long enough to know that it wouldn’t matter the order given where his mate was concerned, Malachi would do as he felt best.

The commander had this night, and this night only, and he had it only because Malachi had promised his mate a sensual little game. A game he was certain she had no idea of the rules. A game that neither of them would lose, because once he caught her, the pleasure would change both their lives.

And they would both win.

Chapter Three

I was here, and I was searching, always knowing somewhere, you waited.

Wait. Why in the hell had he given in to Rule’s request and in to that so-called “head start” his mate had played for?

Dumb ass. His alpha had always said Malachi’s sense of fair play was overrated. The next morning he was beginning to believe him.

The horniness was killing him.

All he could think about was the woman. His mate.

He was supposed to be thinking about his job, not fucking her until they both collapsed in exhaustion.

He was giving her the game though.

A sensual little note beneath her door last night, written himself. “My bed was cold without you to share it. I found you love, are you certain you need more time. MM”

Would it be enough to satisfy her? If not, there was always the small gold charm he had arranged to have delivered to her. That of a single curved tooth, to match the emblem on the side of his mission suit as well as his enforcer uniform. A token of his knowledge of what she was to him. His mate. Though he knew she wouldn’t realize that until he actually had her beneath him.

Pacing the room, his dick throbbing, his tongue swollen, Malachi struggled to keep his attention on the live video feed from the conference room. The human participants were unaware of the eyes that watched and were attempting to dissect every move and every word.

It was all he could do to keep his eyes off the woman, though.

Off his mate.

She was exquisite.

So exquisitely not perfect that she had every dream he had ever dreamed of what his mate would be paling in comparison.

Breed females were perfect in every way. They were created to be just that, perfect. To mesmerize men, to lower their enemies’ guard and heighten their senses. They were created to ensure the males they focused their attention on became willing sexual slaves to their beauty and to their sexual prowess.

Isabelle Martinez was such a polar opposite to what was supposed to be his perfect match that he could only feel a surge of immeasurable pride.

He had spent the night immersed in learning all he could about the woman he knew was his mate. He should have been researching those Rule was meeting with, but he’d been unable to get past Isabelle. Or the fact that he had found his mate in this place, at this time. As Rule said, a very inconvenient mating.

His inconvenient little mate.

He grinned at the thought.

A touch so simple as the nip to her ear had cemented what he had known before she had even walked across the room. An exchange so minimal as to be nonexistent in the sharing of a drink, and the glands beneath his tongue had begun swelling with mating hormone almost immediately. The spicy taste in his mouth, the surge of lust that tightened his dick and had his body aching for her, was wearing on his self-control.

But he had known as his eyes met hers across the room, as he’d sensed a hunger that matched his own, rising inside her, what she would be to him.

Her promise to bite his chest had that particular part of his anatomy aching to feel her sharp little teeth.

And he wasn’t joking. Once he got his hands on her, he was going to fuck her for a week. Night and day. He was going to keep his cock buried so tight and so deep inside her that even the thought of releasing her would have her crying out in denial.

He’d elected to watch the meeting via live feed rather than being at the meeting. There was no way he could have kept his hands off her. No way he would have lasted through the meeting. He would have dragged her out of there within minutes and not long afterwards, she would have been screaming his name in pleasure.

That wouldn’t exactly inspire her family to give the Breeds the permission they needed to conduct a search on Navajo Nation property.

“She’s pretty.”

He’d heard Ashley enter the room, but she was at his side before he’d realized she had the time to get there.

“Thank you,” he murmured, feeling that surge of pride again.

She was pretty. So very very fucking pretty.

The compliment might have seemed lacking, but Malachi found no fault with it. The last thing he wanted was perfection or true beauty.

Pretty, though, pretty was warm and compassionate. It was filled with mercy, and with gentleness. Just as his mate was filled with it.

Everything he’d learned about her assured him that his initial perception of her was right on the money.

“She has a loyal sister and a good friend in Liza as well,” Ashley assured him. “Neither of them were needed after the meeting started. I just had lunch with them, and neither of them are willing to discuss that scent of fear she carries. They refuse to betray her.”

“But they admit she has reason to fear?” he asked her.

Ashley shrugged.

Malachi caught the movement from the corner of his eyes before turning his full attention to her.

“Let’s say, I know the reason is there,” she told him as he glared down at her. “They’re clamming up each time I mention it, but even I can sense it, just as Stygian admits to scenting it before she left the table the night before and moved across the room to you. It was just for a second, though. As though the thought of something had frightened her.”

He turned back to the screen that displayed the conference in the meeting room which was being held on the secured twenty-fifth floor that their rooms were on as well.

Isabelle sat calmly at her uncle’s side as Rule argued for permission for the Bureau of Breed Affairs to conduct an official search on Navajo land and asked for the cooperation of the Navajo Nation Council in finding the rogue Breed that Rule stated they suspected was in the area.

The truth was, they knew he was headed there, if he hadn’t already arrived. A bloodthirsty murderous Breed who had sliced a path of death and horror through the few remaining research scientists who had worked for the drug manufacturer Phillip Brandenmore before his death.

“It’s hard to promise cooperation, Commander Breaker, when we have no idea who or what this Breed is that you search for, or his genetic ties to the Nation. You’ve also shown no proof of his crimes and are unwilling to give us full disclosure of why you believe he’s here. He must have a reason for being in our territory at this time. Added to that, you have no way of identifying this rogue Breed. It’s like asking Russia to let you into their secret service files because a murderer used a knife specific to the USSR.” Ray Martinez watched Rule closely, as though already suspecting the deception Rule was practicing.

And how could they suspect it if they didn’t something to hide?

“Just as it’s difficult for us to make the request, because we don’t have the information you’re requesting, Councilman Martinez. And I assure you, the rogue we’re after has had far more time to devise ways of killing his intended victims and avoiding us, unless we find a link back to him.” Rule sighed as he stared across the table at the chief of the Navajo Nation. “I’m not asking for more than I’m willing to give, sirs. We’ll keep you informed every step of the way, but we need the freedom to conduct our investigation before he kills again. And he has every intention of killing again.”

“Who does he intend to kill? We have no Council scientists or researchers here. We have no one in the Nation who could be a target to such a man.” Orin Martinez, the Navajo spirit advisor, spoke up, his gaze a endless deep dark blue as he glanced toward the eye of the camera supposedly recording the meetings.

For the briefest moment, Malachi had a sense that this particular human was well aware of any strange electronics around him, before focusing his attention back to the Navajo leader.

Tall, broad, his graying black hair straight and long where it was tied back at his nape, Ray Martinez was a confident, powerful man for his age of sixty-five.

He was in his second four-year term as chief of the Navajo Nation, and through the six years he had guided the Nation so far, he had kept the promises he had made to solidify the Nation and ensure its prosperity.

The Nation was gaining a powerful presence in the White House as well with the Navajo senator elected into office during the last term. Jobs were coming into the counties the Navajo controlled and more native small businesses were being incorporated. Added to the lower rate of unemployment, and Ray Martinez had ensured his mark in the history books.

“And what freedom do you believe you’ll need in this investigation?” Ray crossed his arms over the fine white shirt he wore and leaned back in the comfortable chair he’d taken at the head of the conference table.

Now, this was where Rule was likely to get into a hell of a lot of trouble if he wasn’t careful.

Not that Rule was never not careful. He simply sometimes forgot that tact and politeness were essential when dealing with such men.

“We’ll need access to your Nation files to ascertain the possibility that our rogue could have formed any alliances with any of your people based on their familial ties, DNA and genetic connections as well as possible political affiliations or agendas. We don’t know what he looks like, but we have the genetic and DNA profile used in his creation as well a working knowledge of the groups he’s infiltrated over the past year. Several of which I know your people have access to as well. Our need for confidentiality requires we keep the genetic typing confidential for the time being, but the moment we’re able, I promise we’ll ensure you have that information as well.”

How did a man stand in front of his uncle and deceive so easily? Malachi wondered. Which was exactly what Rule was doing. Standing before this man as though they shared no blood and lying straight to his face.

“He’s good,” Ashley murmured as she crossed her arms loosely over her breasts as she crossed one knee over the other and watched. “We should have made popcorn for this one.” Instead, she popped the gum she was chewing.

Ashley and her love for bubble gum were almost legendary.

“There are times he’s too good,” Malachi commented as his attention moved back to the mate he’d agreed to delay taking. He was drawn to her like a moth to a flame, unable to keep his eyes from her and willing to drown in the fires he knew would burn between them.

Waiting to take her was a bargain he had regretted the moment he’d made it. Unfortunately, he had seen the wisdom in Rule’s request. Had he mated her, there would have been no way she would have made that meeting. And there would have been no way to convince her uncle that she wasn’t ill if the mating began as heated and fierce as he knew it would.

Hell, it was already driving him damned crazy and all he had done was drink from the glass she had drank from and nipped her cute little ear. He’d wanted to mark her. The urge had been nearly overwhelming to go ahead and sink his teeth in the base of her neck, where it curved into her shoulder.

He would have licked the little wound, but the hormone that had began swelling in the glands beneath his tongue would have already begun taking the pain from the bite. It would have entered her system at the point of the bite and made the need to have each other impossible to deny.

It was already impossible to deny. If she were there in the room with him, he would have already had her stripped, fucked and knotted.

His cock throbbed in his jeans. Thick and heavy, the iron hard flesh demanded the presence of his mate, demanded that he take her, mark her, brand her as his, no matter the obstacles.

“Damn, get your mating hormones under control there, Mal,” Ashley grimaced as she glanced back at him. “All that male lust and testosterone are about to poison me.”

“You’re not tied to that chair, Ash,” he grouched right back at her. “You can leave anytime.”

“Yeah, if I didn’t want to watch Rule weave a little bit of his magic. I just don’t want to drown in the smell of your raging hard-on while I’m doing it,” she snorted, her gaze flicking over him again before she turned back to the monitors.

The raging hard-on was about to kill him. He swore his dick had never been so hard as it had been since Isabelle had guided his hand, the glass clasped between his fingers, to allow her to sip from his drink.

Her eyes had been sultry, filled with feminine heat and hunger. He had sworn he’d seen a woman dying to taste the pleasure he could bring her, in that look. A pleasure Malachi knew would send them both racing to complete oblivion.

He forced his attention back to the monitor, forced himself to attempt to decode the expressions of the Navajo Council members as Rule attempted to convince them to give him what he wanted without restraint.

It wasn’t working well at the moment because these were men who had something to hide. Something they feared the Breeds learning.

The argument raged between Ray Martinez and Rule. The chief refused to listen, just as Rule refused to give up.

“Young man, you seem to have a problem accepting the word ‘no.’” Ray stared back at Rule implacably as the Breed lowered his brows and met his gaze.

Why the three Martinez men hadn’t yet figured out their DNA ran strong and deep in the commander, Malachi didn’t know. The resemblance to the Martinez family was damned strong, but the pure stubbornness and refusal to accept denial was identical.

“There is no disrespect meant to you or to the people of the Navajo Nation, sir,” Rule assured him as he stared back at him from where on the other end of the conference table. He appeared at ease, relaxed and confident while the Martinez males were becoming irritated and weren’t bothering to hide it. “The situation is simply too delicate and of too much importance not to make you aware of every aspect of the consequences if this rogue isn’t found.”

Ray grunted at that. “You say you have a rogue, yet you have no name, no identification, nor do you have, according to you, any idea who this rogue is, or exactly where he could be hiding on Navajo land. All you have is a genetic profile, that you refuse to share with the Council, or without our own genetic experts. Yet you expect me to give you unprecedented entrance into the records of our people and their ancestors in your search? Am I missing anything?”

“That about sums it up, sir.”

Malachi frowned at the screen, his attention held by the chief of the Navajo Nation and a subtle look of secretive knowledge that suddenly flashed between him and his father.

The look was so subtle he almost missed it. If he hadn’t been watching for it, hadn’t kept his gaze locked on him rather than Rule as he spoke, then he would have missed it.

Malachi sat down in the chair facing the three screens and began to watch them. Forcing himself to ignore his mate, which was one of the hardest things he had ever done, he concentrated instead on the three Martinez men. Ray and Terran Martinez, the two brothers, were careful not to look at each other at all. But Ray was unable to keep from glancing at his father, Orin, the Nation’s medicine man and spiritual advisor. And the look they exchanged, despite the brevity of it, was filled with concern.

His hard-on was still there. The hunger for his mate was still there. But the training for exactly what he was doing was rising to the fore. He was a collaborative interrogator. At least, that was what they called him at the labs.

There were the interrogators, who questioned suspects and persons of interest. Then there were the interrogation collaborators, trained to watch the interrogation process and pick up lies, anomalies and clues.

Public relations meant more than just speaking to the public or preparing speeches to reduce the threat of propaganda against the Breeds, or to minimize it or better yet, spin their own version of lies. It was watching, gauging expressions and atmospheres and separating the lies from the truth. It was catching the small, subtle looks and shifts of muscles bunching beneath clothing designed to hide such reactions.

Malachi’s specialty was public relations and propaganda warfare among Breeds. A vital area of warfare within the many Breed labs that had once existed. After all, someone had to know how to keep the packs and prides and various personalities at one another’s throats rather than giving them the chance to collaborate and escape.

It had been his and his trainers’ jobs to filter through the information that came in from many different sources within and outside the labs, and use it to sabotage escape or rescue attempts, as well as gathering intel concerning knowledge of the Breeds.

It was a gift he was created to have, and one he excelled at. That gift had also helped him and his trainers to plant the intel in the right places to ensure that groups that would be sympathetic to the Breeds would learn of them and stage their rescues.

Protected in Russia, far enough away from the mainstream of the other labs within the Genetics Council network, Malachi, two other Coyotes and their trainers had pushed along the rumors and intel that had helped investigative reporters learn of the Breeds. That information, begun even before Malachi’s creation, had eventually led the right people to the right information and had ensured the world learned of the horrors they suffered.

Three generations had gone into quietly ensuring the survival of the Breeds. There had been no way to do this quickly. There had been no way of ensuring public opinion would sway to the side of the Breeds unless that information came with the truth of the horrors they had lived through.

“You are asking more than our people would be willing to give you. Genetic and DNA profiles are strictly confidential. Would you give out your enforcers’ identifications so easily, Commander?”

“To you, I would.” Rule nodded with an air of sincerity.

“Bullshit,” Ashley muttered. “He’d gnaw off his own arm first.”

Malachi grunted at the comment as he kept his attention on the monitors.

“It’s the only way we have of identifying who this Breed could be searching for,” Rule stated quietly. “Perhaps the only way of finding him. I believe he’ll seek out those he considers ‘relatives.’ He may even enlist their help.”

The chief shook his head “no,” which was no more than Rule had expected, Malachi knew. The elaborate deception the Breeds were a part of in this meeting could backfire on them, if the information they had was wrong.

Malachi didn’t believe it was, though. Gideon was searching for the Bengal male and two human girls, one of them being Christine Roberts. Her own mother had revealed that her daughter had mentioned a friend named Terran who was willing to help her. And only Terran Martinez would have given a damn at the time.

He had been in the area at the same time the Roberts girl had come up missing. Just as he was suspected to be aware when the bengal Judd and the human girl Fawn had been rescued.

Unfortunately, in the two days they had been in Window Rock, they had found nothing. Not even a hint that Gideon or the Bengal Breed Judd and the two young women who had escaped further research were in the area. He glanced from the chief and the spiritual advisor back to his mate, Isabelle.

She was watching the proceedings with a blank expression, neither eyes nor face showing emotion. Every time the Breed commander spoke, she made a note. She never looked at her uncle, her grandfather, Orin, or her father, Terran.

She was watching Commander Breaker closely with that bland expression. Each time he petitioned for allowances in the investigation and was turned down, she watched him very closely.

What was she looking for?

“She’s as good as you are,” Ashley commented as he kept his gaze on the screen. “She hasn’t shown so much as a hint of emotion or knowledge. I wonder what her scent is at the moment.”

“Hmmm.” His mate.

Pride enveloped him. Whatever her position was with her uncle, she was obviously very very good at it.

Sitting next to Terran Martinez was Isabelle’s friend Liza. As Terran’s legal assistant she made certain the files he needed were always available, and she began doing it with an efficient ease.

She seemed no more than reasonably concerned about the subject, and unaware of whatever secrets the Martinez men were hiding.

“What are they hiding?” Ashley wondered aloud. “Shouldn’t they know by now that we’ll figure out they’re lying, Malachi? I mean really, what’s the point?”

Malachi didn’t comment. He didn’t take his attention from the meeting or those attending it. Ray Martinez would have been far better off to have simply omitted the genetic typing from the registry they kept, if they felt it would endanger them, and allowed the Breeds to go through the rest. That would have allayed suspicion. This way, they were only cementing it, despite their protestations of the people’s right to genetic privacy.

Whatever it was, they were protesting in vain, Malachi knew. Rule Breaker and Lawe Justice hadn’t achieved their ranks by giving up easily.

Keeping his mate out of harm’s way would be easy enough, though. If she knew anything, she would have betrayed herself, as the chief and his advisor had earlier. She had her suspicions, that was obvious, but her reaction hadn’t been enough that he felt the need to appraise Rule of it. There was no sense dragging her into the battles that were beginning to be formed.

She was safe. And tonight, she would be his. He would make damned sure she wasn’t dragged into it any further than her suspicions had already placed her.

He had waited on her for far too long. He had dreamed of her far too many nights to risk losing her because of a matter the two parties should have been cooperating on.

He had ached too deeply for her. Always knowing she awaited him, always knowing she was out there somewhere, perhaps even as lost within the darkness as he was. Looking into the stars and wondering when the loneliness would end.

As he stood outside her room at dawn, inhaling the scent of the candles and finding her unique scent within it, he’d felt something in his chest tighten painfully. Because that scent of fear was still there. Whether it be nightmares or memories, there was something his mate feared. That fear was something he had to take out of her life. He simply would not allow it to be a part of her life any longer.

She was his now, just as he was hers.

And tonight, he would ensure that nothing, or no one, ever had the chance to destroy it.

Chapter Four

So many times I fought back tears, felt incomplete and feared you weren’t there.

Her uncle and her grandfather feared that the Breeds had finally arrived to track down the three individuals they had been hiding for more than a decade. Isabelle knew very little about the events that summer. She had been only a child herself and still dealing with the death of her mother and Chelsea’s antics.

Isabelle had barely been thirteen. Her mother had been dead for six years, but the loss of the gentle, loving woman she had been had devastated Isabelle and Chelsea for years. In ways, they still hadn’t recovered from the loss.

Their father had dealt with it by disappearing more often, searching almost continually for the sister who had been lost when he’d been a child himself.

He hadn’t found the sister or proof of her death—what he’d found instead had been a teenage boy and a young girl. Several months later another young girl had shown up and then disappeared within hours.

It had been so long ago that Isabelle couldn’t even remember what they had looked like. They had been at her home for only a matter of hours in the deepest part of the night. Isabelle had only seen their faces for moments. Pale, suspicious, resigned faces. As though they had made their peace with the world and whatever fate awaited them. The part of the night that had always found Isabelle awake and staring into the darkness had also been the time of night that others prowled the darkness. Others who came for the children took them away and ensured they were never seen or heard from again.

She had stared into the darkness after leaving Malachi the night before until she had found herself nodding off to sleep by the wide windowsill.

The night had always called to her, even as a child. Pulling her from sleep, it seemed the darkness whispered on each breeze that slid past her home, and on those currents of air she swore she felt the haunting cries of the coyotes singing through the air.

Was Malachi the reason she had always felt an affinity to those wild, often hated creatures?

The People knew the coyote, though. They knew him for the prankster he was, for the deceiver, but they also knew him for the vital part of the night that he commanded.

He wasn’t all bad. He was equal parts human and supernatural being with all the faults and fallacies that came with them. At least, in legend.

Her lips quirked as she left the meeting, leaving the players in the game being conducted to deal with one another on their own. She had done her part. She had watched Commander Rule Breaker each time he pushed for what he wanted and each time he was denied. And each time she had written the same opinion.

He had expected it.

He had known her uncle and her grandfather wouldn’t relent in turning over the genetic identifications of each of the registered human and Breed members of the Navajo Nation.

Genetic typing had begun when the Breeds had first made themselves known thirteen, nearly fourteen years before. When the Navajo Council had realized the number of their missing daughters who had been kidnapped to aid in the creation of the species, they had immediately set out to ensure they could identify which of the emerging Breeds were their own.

The Navajo weren’t the only Native Americans to have contributed, though. The members of the scattered tribes spread across the United States had sent in blood, genetic identification and all the details that went with it. Just in case. Just in case Breed blood could save a chief or a medicine man, a child or a warrior or a mother. Just in case a daughter returned and children born of her stolen eggs, or a child born of her body, came searching for her.

In case the daughter didn’t return, and the grandchildren did.

Isabelle knew that was her grandfather’s dream. That one day something of the daughter he had lost would return to the Nation seeking the blood ties the Martinez family and the Navajo Nation represented.

As Ashley had done, along with her sister, Emma.

They had come searching, and had found a family they hadn’t known existed for them. Small though they were, and as hidden as Ashley and Emma could keep them, still, the ties were there.

And Isabelle was finding a tie of her own, she thought as she returned to her room to change clothes.

Malachi.

He hadn’t been at the meeting, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been thinking about it.

He was all she could really think about.

Her ear still tingled with the memory of the nip and that tiny lick to the slight wound.

The rest of her body was heated, had been heated and refused to cool down.

Even the quick, cool shower she forced herself to have didn’t help. As she used the soft, suds-filled cloth between her thighs, she swore it was more frustrating than trying to masturbate.

Each time the silky suds and the soft pile of the cloth raked over her clitoris, it was like being pierced with a hunger so heated she could barely stand it. It made the shower quicker, though, for the fact that she didn’t attempt to masturbate.

Rinsing her hair and body quickly, she stepped from the shower and hurriedly prepared for the evening.

She dressed in a loose, silky maxi dress, the casual outfit falling to the floor at her sandals and giving her a feeling of intense, sensual femininity.

The brush of the cool, slick material against her hardened nipples was almost an unbearable caress. The feel of her bra had chafed the tender points until removing it had been imperative.

The long length of her raven black hair fell below her shoulders in long, soft waves after she blow-dried it. Her blue eyes, almost a cobalt, looked brighter, more intense than she remembered them being before.

Her complexion looked clearer, her cheeks flushed, her lips looked almost kiss swollen. Leaning in closer to the mirror, Isabelle stared at her reflection with a slight frown. She didn’t even need makeup as she usually did. How strange was that?

This was what arousal did to a woman? Anticipation?

She could handle this. Her gaze fell to the small charm she had placed on a gold chain and put around her neck.

A curved fang, the symbol of the Coyote Breeds that he had left for her. Lifting her hand, she brushed her fingers against the fang as the need for his touch raced through her system.

Transferring a few necessary items to a small leather purse that matched her sandals, Isabelle found pulled the small note Malachi had pushed beneath her door that morning. The roses were in her bedroom next to the bed. A smile touched her lips at the thought of the Breed. She hadn’t expected him to find her so easy. Liza’s friend in registration had swore no one had asked for the room number, but Isabelle knew they would have other ways of finding that information.

Shivering at the thought of him being able to find her so easily, and wondering if he would find her again this evening, Isabelle left her room once again and headed for the elevators at the center of the hotel wing.

She had promised Chelsea and Liza she would meet them at the bar before dinner for a drink. The same bar she had met Malachi in the night before. The same one in which she feared Holden might be watching for her. The one she prayed Malachi would be waiting for her.

But if Holden were there, her sister and Liza would have called long before now.

She had no intentions of staying with them for long. She intended instead to find that damned sexy Coyote if he wasn’t waiting in the bar. If he didn’t take her soon, she just might go up in flames waiting for him.

She swore she was going to eat him up from head to toe and every point in between when he got his hands on her. Once he was naked, she would paint his body with her tongue and taste every inch of his flesh.

Then . . .

Her mouth watered.

Then, she would move between his thighs and lick every inch of his cock. She wanted to do everything to him that she had ever dreamed of doing to a lover. She wanted to take his cock into her mouth and suckle it hungrily. She wanted to taste the essence of him and feel his body tense with the need for release. She wanted him so desperately it was a true, physical hunger.

She would swirl her tongue over the head and feel it throb as she sucked it into her mouth.

Her thighs clenched, the feel of her juices once again dampening her panties and causing her to bite her lip. She really didn’t want to have to change panties again. She swore she saturated them as she sat in that meeting thinking about him.

It had been all she could do to keep her mind on what was being said and keeping the notes her uncle asked her to keep. Her perceptions of Rule Breaker’s answers and whether or not she thought he was lying at important points of the conversation. In her opinion, he was lying in most of them.

When she had first arrived at the meeting, she had been disappointed that Malachi wasn’t there, but, if he had been—she clenched her thighs again as her clit throbbed with the need to be touched.

Perhaps she should go change panties again.

Frowning slightly as she heard the elevator bell ping its descent, she was ready to turn and head back to her room. She was swinging around on one foot, her intent clear.

Changing her panties, because thinking about giving tall, blond and Breedy a blow job had her seriously wet.

The elevator doors slid soundlessly open.

She saw him from the corner of her eye. She could almost swear she felt him.

Poised to run, almost in the turn, nearly pushing off, and instead, she swung back around, straightened and stepped into the elevator as though she had never, not even for a second, considered not doing so.

Turning, her back pressing against the side of the cubicle, she stared across the short distance into eyes that gleamed almost black, the color was so blue. In those eyes, she read his challenge. Was her head start over? Because he had clearly found her, and there was no doubt he was ready to reward her taking the elevator rather than running.

Reaching back, her fingers curled over the side rail, holding tight, holding back.

She heard someone curse, a low, furious sound. But it wasn’t Malachi. His lips weren’t moving. He was staring back at her, becoming as locked within the air of sensuality swirling around them as she was.

Her glaze flicked to his lips once more.

She wanted to kiss him. Just one kiss. Just a taste of that sensually full lower lip, a flick of her tongue against his.

Would she be satisfied with it?

Never. But it would ease the ache in her lips. Maybe.

The elevator felt as though it were moving in slow motion. She felt as though she were moving in slow motion.

She tried to keep her fingers locked around the side bar, tried to hold herself back.

There was no holding back from him.

Isabelle swore she could feel him urging her to him. His gaze was intense, a swirl of navy blue, an erotic storm brewing around them.

They weren’t there alone, but they could have been. They may as well have been. As far as Isabelle was concerned, Rule Breaker and Stygian Black didn’t even exist.

Her tongue slipped out, licking over her lips as the sudden vision of her going to her knees in front of him flashed across her mind.

Her gaze flicked to the front of the black mission-style pants he wore. They were formfitting, though not tight. Still, the bulge beneath them was unmistakable.

She swallowed tight. And it was large.

Her eyes came back to his. She forced them up, because she may wish she were there with him alone, but she knew she wasn’t.

Someone cleared his throat as she inhaled slowly, fighting for control. The taller, darker Breed blew out a rough breath. Neither Malachi nor Isabelle glanced toward him.

Her eyes moved to his hands. He was gripping the rail behind him, across from her. His knuckles white from the force of his grip.

The elevator came to a stop, the doors slid opened and a couple started in, stared at the Breeds and backed out. The doors slid closed again.

“Back up,” Malachi said. It was a rough, rasping sound as Stygian obviously pushed the right button. The elevator started up.

Malachi reached out then, pushed a button himself and Isabelle heard Rule growl his name. A real, male feline sound of irritation. The commander wasn’t happy.

Isabelle and Malachi both ignored him. The elevator stopped again.

“Do you really want to stay?” Malachi asked the two men without looking at them as the doors slid open again and no one moved.

No one except Isabelle.

Releasing the rail, she stepped across the distance separating them. She felt as though she were being drawn to him, pulled to him by some unseen force. His gaze held hers, his lashes lowering to half mast.

She was only distantly aware of the other two exiting the elevator. All that mattered to her was that they were gone. She didn’t have to hold herself back. She didn’t have to force herself not to touch him, taste him, kiss him.

She wanted that kiss. The kiss she had dreamed of. A kiss she had been certain she would never feel.

Moving to him, her hands braced against his chest, she went on tiptoe, but without his help, if he hadn’t lowered his head, it wouldn’t have happened.

Her hands slid to his shoulders, one against his neck as she felt the warmth of his breath against her lips.

“I caught you,” he whispered.

Her lips parted as his touched, moved with his words.

“Or I caught you.”

Suddenly, it didn’t matter who caught whom, or if there was a head start, time to think or even a need for thought. His lips covered hers as his arms slid around her, pulling her closer, lifting her to him.

The taste of ambrosia filled her senses. It had to be ambrosia. The elixir of the gods. It had to be something not quite natural, because the taste of his kiss went to her head like a drug. Like a pleasure she couldn’t deny herself because she had waited far too long for it.

For Malachi.

His fingers cupped the back of her neck, tilting her head back as his lips slanted over hers, parted them, and pure heat swept through her senses. His tongue slipped past her lip, swept over hers and tempted her, teased her to catch it.

She nipped it.

He growled.

Strong fingers slid into her hair, gripped and held her head in place as he turned her, lifted her with his other arm and braced her against the side of the elevator.

His tongue swept past her lips again and stroked against hers.

And she nipped again.

Exhilaration surged through her. Adrenaline surged through her veins as his fingers moved from her hair, cupped her jaw and his kiss became firmer, more dominating, demanding.

He wasn’t asking permission. There was nothing exploratory about the claiming, nothing introductory. He was taking her with his kiss, with his tongue, and she knew what he wanted.

What she was aching for.

Her lips closed around his tongue, sucked with delicate greed as it pumped between her lips and the most unique taste, subtle and hot, filled her senses.

She couldn’t define it. She couldn’t describe it.

She wanted more.

A growl filled the air, a moan whispering around it as the kiss suddenly became hotter, hungrier. The arousal that had been brewing inside her became a firestorm, racing through her, tightening inside her.

This was hers. He was hers.

She’d known it the moment her eyes met his in the bar the night before, and she knew it now with his lips covering hers, his tongue pumping in her mouth and his hands pulling at her dress.

“Hell! Malachi. Honey. You have a room. Use it!”

Isabelle blinked as he pulled back from her. Flushing, she gazed around his shoulder to the elevator entrance.

Ashley stood, leaning against the elevator frame, holding the doors back. Fingers tucked into the snug pockets of her jeans, her blond hair falling over one shoulder, her eyes wide as she stared back at them.

Then her gaze slipped down and her brows arched. “Nice sandals there, Belle, but I think they should be on the floor, not wrapped around Malachi’s hips while you’re in the elevator.”

Around his hips?

Yep, they were around his hips.

He lowered her slowly. As her feet touched the floor, his arm went around her back and he all but picked her up and carried her from the cubicle.

“Nighty night,” Ashley called out as Malachi slid the electronic key quickly through the lock on his room, then pulled her inside.

His room was across from hers.

It was only a distant thought and it sure as hell didn’t matter. Because he was holding her again, pulling her to him, his lips moving over hers and spilling the taste of pure desire to her senses.

“I warned you.” Isabelle had only a second to understand the words that rasped from his lips before he was pulling the dress from her. “You’re mine now, Isabelle. Mine.”

As he jerked it up her legs, she might have heard a seam split and she really didn’t give a damn because she was all but naked in his arms and he was picking her up and bearing her across the room to the bed.

“You made promises,” she whispered as he laid her back then straightened before her.

“I made promises,” he agreed. “And I promise you, mate, I intend to follow through on every damned one of them. All day. All night. Possibly all fucking week.”

Chapter Five

So many nights I howled into the darkness, incomplete and searching.

Malachi stared down at the woman he knew he’d awaited all his life. The hours he’d spent pulling up every scrap of information he could find on her only confirmed the fact that nature had indeed given him a mate that suited him perfectly.

A small smile shaped her pouty lips, the sensual curve beguiling and filled with promise.

“Are you going to undress, Coyote Man?” she whispered, the husky need in her voice causing the steel-hard length of his cock to throb almost painfully.

Lowering his hands to the belt of his jeans, he would have unbuckled it, but Isabelle chose that moment to move. She lifted herself to her knees, her smaller hands covering his then pushing them aside.

Watching her loosen his belt, her graceful fingers releasing the latch then moving to the metal tabs of his mission pants, nearly broke his control.

His fingers curled as he fought to hold back, to keep from touching her. If he touched her, there was no way in hell he could hold back. He’d take her. He’d have her and there would be no stopping it.

That wasn’t what he wanted for her this first time.

Her first time.

His entire body clenched as she released his pants. Gripping the hem of his black shirt, he stripped it off, tossing it aside as Isabelle pushed the waist of his pants down and released the engorged length of his dick.

Male Coyotes weren’t like felines, who were sexually endowed more along the lines of their human counterparts. Wolves and Coyotes were another story. The width was unusually thick, and when they orgasmed with their mates, two to three inches at the middle point of the shaft would thicken even more, locking them inside their mates.

“Oh. My. God,” she whispered, her fingers trailing down the length, sending pulses of pure electric pleasure shooting straight to his balls.

“It’s okay. I promise,” he muttered roughly, pulling back only long enough to quickly unlace and pull off his boots and pants. Naked, the glands beneath his tongue swollen and aching as the mating hormone filled his mouth, Malachi found himself so desperate for her he could barely stand to breathe.

“I’ll never take it.” She sounded dazed as the scent of her trepidation filled the air with a subtle edge of innocence. But she came back to him, her fingers reaching for him once again, drawn to his hunger as he was to hers.

“All you have to do is want me,” he promised. “That’s all, Isabelle.”

He wasn’t going to explain it, he couldn’t.

He knew what would happen.

His alpha, Del-Rey, had explained it to the pack just after his mating with the coya, Anya.

“Malachi.” She swallowed tightly again, glancing up at him as her silken fingers trailed down it once again. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.” And that confused her. He could see her confusion, he could feel it.

He wanted nothing more than to ease it. Later. He would ease the confusion and her fears later. Right now, the feel of her touch was too incredible to pull away from.

He reached for her. He cupped the back of her head as her fingers curled around the shaft of his cock. Not all the way, of course, her hand was too small, but enough to hold her steady as her tongue licked experimentally around the crown of his dick.

God, he wanted to fuck her mouth. He wanted to watch those pretty pouty lips enclose the head of his cock as he thrust shallowly in and out.

He exerted just the slightest amount of pressure.

“Take it, baby,” he groaned. “Open your lips for me. I want to feel my dick in your mouth.”

The hunger for it was about to make him mad. The need to feel her sucking the sensitive crest of his cock had his entire body tightening to the breaking point.

Her lips parted. Rubbing them over the engorged tip of his hardened flesh had his pulse rocketing, his heart rate slamming. His fingers buried in her hair, tightened and held her still. Her gaze lifted to his.

There was no fear there. There was excitement, an edge of confusion. There were emotions that filled his senses and he was also filled with the knowledge that he had waited for this his entire life. For this woman.

For her touch.

Then her lips enclosed the tip of his cock, and slowly, so very slowly slid down until the entire head was enclosed in suckling, wet heat.

A growl tore from his lips. He tried to hold it back. He wanted to hold it back. There were times that the presence of the animal was something he preferred to hide. When making love to pure, sweet innocence, hiding it was imperative.

But rather than feeling or scenting her fear, he smelled her excitement. Pure, sweet, sensual excitement that flared so hot, so brilliant he swore it was sinking into his pores.

The hormones spilled from his tongue as he swallowed, his gaze narrowed on her, his hands holding her head as he moved against her. Watching. Watching her lips stretch around his cock, tightening on him, stroking with her tongue, lashing against it and stimulating nerve endings that sent his senses racing.

She was pushing him to a brink he’d never known before. Each pull of her lips, each flutter of her tongue against the underside of his dick, had the glands in his tongue swelling further, tighter.

The hormone was flooding his system, intoxicating him. And he wanted her just as intoxicated. Just as bound to him as he was to her.

He pulled back, ignoring her attempts to hold him, to tighten her lips on the overly sensitive head of his cock.

Cupping her face in his hands, Malachi bent to her, his lips covering hers, his tongue pressing between them, pushing against hers, demanding, desperate.

Her lips tightened on his tongue, the hormone spilling into her, pumping from the glands as he took control of the kiss once again.

Licking, stroking, pleasure and hunger merged to spin them both into a furiously heated, blazing pleasure that gripped their senses and tore aside any trepidation, any confusion she may have felt. Any hesitancy he may have had.

As the imperative need to fill her with the mating heat eased, the need to satisfy the heat with pleasure filled every fiber of his being.

Laying her back, Malachi let his lips roam down her neck to the full curves of her breasts as she arched to him. His thumbs raked over the tips, watched them tighten and swell harder as a soft moan of pleasure left her kiss-swollen lips.

His mate.

She was lifting to him, arching against him, needing and hungry for his touch.

And he wanted nothing more than to give it to her.

Isabelle had known. She should have known. Where there was smoke, there was fire, her father had always said. The tabloids were filled with the stories of a mating addiction. A heat that human women couldn’t resist. One that bound the Breed male to her. One that created an endless, sensual feast for the couple.

That knowledge was a distant thought, a realization she couldn’t hold on to as Isabelle felt Malachi’s lips surround the tight, puckered tip of her breast.

She stared down at him, dazed, the pleasure she had felt before, with no more than the briefest caress, rising, becoming deeper, becoming something more binding.

The feel of his hot, sucking mouth tugging at her nipple was almost a pleasure-pain. Heat bloomed in the tender tip, radiated outward and rushed to her pussy, where her clit throbbed with violent demand.

His tongue rubbed against the sensitive point, then with quick, hard little licks flicked over it, lashing at it as a surge of pleasure and excitement sent fingers of electric sensation through her, clenching her womb and spilling her juices between her thighs.

She was so wet. So hot. She could feel the slick proof of her need for him as it slickened her thighs and swelled the folds of her pussy in anticipation.

Moving from one breast to the other, his lips played in exacting detail at the tight little bud. He sucked and licked, flicked at it with his tongue, and with whatever addictive quality she had tasted in his kiss, he sensitized her nipples further.

She had felt the swollen glands beneath his tongue as she suckled at it for those few brief seconds. She had tasted his kiss, redolent of a fire in winter with the spice of a summer rainstorm thrown in it.

Her fingers tightened in his hair as he released the tip, only to spread his kisses down her torso as his hands stroked to her thighs and parted them slowly.

Against the outside of her leg, Isabelle could feel the thick, heavy width of his cock and almost felt the fear that wanted to rise inside her. But there was no place for inhibitions as his fingers trailed higher, slid through the slick essence of her hunger then brushed against the curls that hid the swollen flesh from him.

His lips moved to her hipbone, then to the other before kisses were scattered to the sensitive mound of her pussy. His fingers tucked against the slit as she arched closer to him, desperate now to feel his kiss, his touch, on every portion of her body.

“Malachi,” she moaned, the dark, sexual tone of her voice almost shocking her.

His fingers eased down the narrow crease between the folds of her pussy to find the hidden entrance where her juices pooled with silken heat.

His finger rotated as he moved lower, lying between her thighs, his breath whispering over the swollen bud of her clit.

That tiny caress, like a heated breeze blowing over the too sensitive bundle of nerves. Isabelle found herself jerking in reaction, her hands slapping against the mattress to curl into the blankets beneath her.

His head lowered.

Isabelle watched, entranced, as his tongue peeked out and licked over the tiny pleasure point with devastating results.

“Oh God, Malachi,” she cried out, her knees bending and lifting, her legs parting farther as he drew her clit into his mouth and began suckling with quiet, hungry greed.

She had never done this before. She had never lain so open, knees bent and thighs spread, and given any other man permission to touch her intimately.

The fingers rubbing gently at the entrance to her vagina began pushing inside her.

His lips and tongue were torturing her clit with pleasure, and as Malachi begin to push his fingers inside her, she felt herself unraveling.

Two large fingers pushed in, twisting lightly, scissoring and stretching her open. She felt them rasp against the tender inner nerve endings and send impulses of pure pleasure racing through her.

Every cell vibrated with the rush of sensation. Isabelle could feel the sensations coalescing, tightening, threatening to implode inside her as he began thrusting his fingers shallowly into the snug opening.

She could feel the pressure on the fragile shield of her virginity as his fingers began stretching it, weakening it.

“Malachi,” she moaned again as one hand slid beneath her rear, arching her higher to his lips and to the finger penetrating her sex. “It’s so good. It feels so good.” She couldn’t keep it in. She needed him too much. Needed every touch possible with every fiber of her being.

He sucked her clit deeper into his mouth, his tongue rubbing against it now as the thrusting fingers began to move inside her with more demand, sending lightning-fast forks of sensation to tear through her womb, her clit and her pussy.

“Fuck me!” She cried the words out, desperation laced with demand, but she had no idea where they’d come from. “Oh God, Malachi, I need you. I swear I’ve needed you all my life.”

A growl rumbled against her pussy.

Her pussy tightened on the invading fingers as they slid free of her, then Malachi’s head was lowering, his hands lifting her closer . . .

His tongue pushed inside the dripping, juice-saturated entrance of her pussy.

Like an erotic fire, his tongue so hot, so wickedly hungry, Malachi began to lick and stroke, fucking her with rapid, hard movements as Isabelle felt her body tightening, felt it bordering on mindlessness. A sudden, soul-deep implosion sent a cry racing past her lips as her orgasm convulsed her womb and had her screaming out in delirious ecstasy.

Isabelle couldn’t stop the shudders or the hard, racking spasming of her muscles as the sensations seemed to go on and on.

Malachi rose between her thighs then in a hard surge. As he moved over her, Isabelle felt the head of his cock tuck between the folds of her pussy. There, just pressed against her entrance, his cock throbbed and she felt a hard, hot pulse of what had to be pre-cum spurting inside her.

But pre-cum didn’t spurt.

Her eyes opened. Staring back at him, Isabelle felt it again, then felt a tingling rush of sensation that began invading the delicate tissue.

She had been horny for him before. She had been on the verge of mindless masturbation the night before, even after she learned that no matter how she tried, she couldn’t find release.

But now . . . this . . .

This wasn’t simply arousal.

As another heated spurt shot inside the swollen opening, Isabelle felt new sensations beginning to bloom in the flesh it touched.

She would have melted to the floor if she hadn’t already been lying down.

Pleasure increased a hundredfold, and as his erection began to fill her, to stretch the tender tissue to an almost unbearable tightness, Isabelle knew with utter certainty what the fluid was.

The heated spurts weren’t pre-cum, at least not entirely. Whatever it was, it allowed even the tightest flesh to accept this incredible stretch and penetration, and to find the most incredible pleasure possible in his possession of her.

Isabelle held her breath as she felt his muscles bunch and gather. He paused for a second, his gaze locking with hers.

“Just watch me,” he whispered, his tone rougher than ever before. “Just watch me, baby.”

He would have never attempted this at any other time. Malachi had never taken a virgin. He had never touched a woman who wasn’t well experienced and aware of what she was getting.

But his mate. Sweet, pretty Isabelle had no idea.

Moving over her, one hand gripping her hip, Malachi felt another hard spurt of the hormone-rich preseminal fluid as it filled her, no doubt triggered by the snugness of her pussy.

Rocking back, he let her juices ease his way, let himself become accustomed to her before he took her virginity. Before he taught her exactly how different Breed males were from their human cousins.

She was a virgin, he reminded himself as he pulled back again, his whole body on fire from holding back, from the slow stretching of the virgin shield inside her to accommodate a painless possession.

God, it wasn’t going to happen.

A growl, a groan of pure frustrated hunger passed his lips as he felt his hips push forward with too much force, with uncontrolled haste.

The width of his cock pushed past the thin membrane and surged only a few inches inside her.

Tight, tight muscles clamped down on his dick, flexed and rippled over the head as his teeth clenched and he felt like howling. Because he knew there wasn’t a chance in hell he could hold back now.

Isabelle arched with a cry as she felt both the tearing of her virginity and a pleasure that tore through her, wrapped around her senses and tightened around her body with incredible bliss.

Her sensitive inner tissue was clamped on the intruder penetrating it, the engorged head throbbing furiously as she felt another hard, heated spurt of the fluid erupting inside her.

Her muscles tightened further as the nerve endings came alive with excitement. Forcing her eyes open, she stared up at him now, watching the savage planes of his face as his expression twisted with remorse.

“So good.” She had to force the words out as sensation wracked her inner flesh once again. “Oh God, Malachi, it’s so good.”

His hands tightened on her hips, his lips came down on hers, and as he drew back, Isabelle knew he had finally given in to the need tearing through them both.

His hips began to move. His tongue pumped into her mouth as his cock began pumping between her thighs, shafting the delicate inner tissue of her cunt as it began flexing, clenching, fighting to hold him inside her.

Wrapping her legs around his hips, Isabelle tilted her hips higher, angling her body to his as she fought to separate pleasure and pain, and failed.

It was like being lost in a maelstrom of exotic, erotic sensation. Thunder and lightning crashed and clashed inside her body. Fingers of rapid-fire sensation, hot and extreme, raced through her, wrapped around her clit, shuddered through her womb.

Every stroke inside the depths of her body sent her flying higher as the taste of winter fire and summer storm intoxicated her further. Made her hungrier. Made the intensity of the sensations something to crave rather than to fear.

But no addictive kiss would have been needed, she knew. Nothing outside the touch, the taste of the man was needed. Because he was what she had watched the night for, and she knew it.

Tearing his mouth from hers, he growled again as he buried his lips against the curve of her neck. His hips were moving faster, the race to release suddenly consuming them both, tightening through them.

Isabelle cried out his name, begged for it, demanded it. Her vagina was clenching convulsively, her womb tightening as her clit burned and throbbed with each rasp of his pelvis against it.

Each stroke fueled the sensual fires already burning out of control. Her nails dug into his shoulders as she felt his teeth raking against the sensitive flesh between neck and shoulder. The skin tingled at the feel of the canines against them, at the sensation of his tongue spreading that heated hunger over it. He fucked her with male greed and a sensual intent to pleasure her. As he pumped furiously inside her, the width should have been agonizing with each thrust, and it was—an agony of pleasure. The sensations were torturous, the rising ecstasy rioting through her until she felt her body begin to explode from the inside out.

It was like being immersed in a cloud of pure rapture. As though ecstasy itself had enfolded her, covering every inch and every cell, consuming her.

She screamed. She heard herself scream.

His teeth bit into her neck with a sharp burst of painful pleasure. Then, with a final thrust, she felt his release as it began overtaking him as well.

The first hard spurt of semen as his cock throbbed and seemed to swell further. Then more. More.

Her eyes opened as strangled cries of another release escaped her throat. That swelling, in the most sensitive part of her pussy, stretching the convulsively tight muscles and throbbing against nerve endings that otherwise would have never known stimulation.

The stretching seemed never-ending until he was locked inside her, so tight she knew neither of them could escape.

The blast of his semen jerked his body.

His tongue lashed at the wound at her neck.

And Isabelle knew, deep, deep inside, she knew, life would never even have the chance to be the same again.

Chapter Six

I would have lost hope, I would have lost faith.

Isabelle lay against Malachi’s chest, her hand rubbing over the broad planes, feeling the presence of the pelt-like hairs that grew there.

Breeds seemed to have no body hair, and in a sense, it was true. What they had instead was a superfine hair, almost invisible to the naked eye.

It didn’t even feel like hair, but more like a finer, softer fur than his animal cousins possessed.

It was warm to the touch, heated by his body and his tough, muscular flesh. His chest was powerful, incredibly broad, and beneath her palm she could feel his heart beating in a slow, steady rhythm that comforted her, even when nothing should have been able to comfort her.

His arm was wrapped around her back as he held her to his chest, keeping her warm despite the chill that wanted to overtake her.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, his lips moving against the top of her head as his fingers stroked her shoulder.

“You didn’t hurt me.” And he hadn’t.

The pleasure had been so incredible that she was still reeling from it, still trying to find her bearings as her mind fought to make sense of it.

Once the thick, heavy swelling in his cock had receded, allowing him to pull free of her, Malachi had risen from the bed, collected a warm damp cloth from the bathroom and a dry towel and proceeded to clean her gently.

She had blushed furiously. Hell, she was blushing now just thinking about how he had cleaned her thoroughly, even separating the folds of her sex and running the cloth gently through the narrow slit.

“I was created to kill,” he suddenly said. “We all were. We were Breeds. Not animal, not human. When the rescuers liberated us, when Alpha Lyons declared our presence to the world, we learned that though God hadn’t created us, He had still gifted us.”

Isabelle sat up and stared down at him somberly, watching the heavy sadness in his dark blue eyes as he stared up at her.

Lifting his hand, he brushed the backs of his fingers against the side of her cheek before lowering them to her hip and curling them over it. As though he needed some small connection to her, no matter how slight.

“How did He gift you?” she asked quietly.

“He gave us our mates.” It was an answer she didn’t expect. “As far as we’ve learned in the past thirteen years, there’s only one mate for us. Created just for us. Emotionally, biologically, physically. We have a mate waiting for us somewhere in the world, we have only to find her.”

A frown pulled at her brows. “That seems awful iffy,” she said. “What if you don’t find your mate?”

He shrugged at that. “Then I would imagine we exist within that same vacuum we were created in. Alone. Knowing we can’t have children no matter how strong the desire most of us have for them. Only mates, it seems, can conceive. Only mates can ease the soul, help heal the wounds and battle the nightmares most of us endured to just survive in the labs. Now, we watch, we search, and though many of us deny it, we long for that mate, Isabelle. For that one thing in the world that was meant to be ours, that proves that though we were not born, we were at least adopted by a force greater than man.”

Isabelle dropped her gaze to her hands as they lay in her lap, studying her linked fingers as she felt her chest tighten.

His voice resonated with such dark memories.

“Coyotes were created to kill their cousins,” he continued. “The Felines and the Wolves, we were to be their jailors. Our genetics were carefully chosen to allow us to lie, to cheat, to torture and to know no remorse or guilt.”

She lifted her gaze once again. His expression was hewn from marble, savage with its planes and angles, the high cheekbones, the sharp angle of his jaw. He could have been a warrior from ages past rather than a creation of technology and of evil.

“Are you trying to tell me something, Malachi?” she asked.

His lips quirked with an edge of amusement. “I’ve searched for you for what seems like eternity, Isabelle. The night your gaze touched mine in that bar, I swore I felt you in my soul. Did you feel it? Did you feel something move inside you that you couldn’t explain? Something that, at first, you wanted only to run from?”

She licked her lips nervously. “Yes.” She wasn’t going to lie to him. “I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t.”

“And if you had suspected then, what happened in this bed earlier, would you have still run to me, rather than away from me?”

“You think I found it distasteful?” she asked him curiously. “Malachi, I was begging, scratching and pleading. Those are not signs of distaste.”

“Nor are they signs of acceptance,” he pointed out.

She could only shake her head as she looked around the room and tried to get a bearing on what she was feeling.

“I understand what you felt,” she finally said as she brought her gaze back to him. “I felt as though I had known you forever the second I met you. As though I could introduce you to my family and my world, and rather than becoming lost in the craziness, you would conquer it instead.”

Something that had never happened before. Most of her interested male friends had run screaming the moment they were introduced to her family and saw the craziness.

“But?” His lips quirked again, that little hint of mocking amusement and arrogance making him appear so very sexy.

“I didn’t say but.” She sighed. “I don’t know, Malachi. I didn’t imagine this happening.” She waved her hand to the bed, indicating the “mating” that had occurred. “I don’t know what you want from me, or what I’m supposed to want from you. Breeds aren’t said to have long-term relationships, so I really wasn’t thinking past morning.”

He grunted at that. “You lie, even to yourself,” he told her. “I saw it in your eyes, Isabelle. When morning came, you wouldn’t have wanted me to leave any more than I could have gotten up and left you.”

Was he right? Hell, of course he was right. It wasn’t as though she knew what to do with him now either, but Isabelle knew she had wanted a chance with him.

“Whether or not I’m lying isn’t the point anyway,” she told him. “This mating thing is the point, Malachi, and I’m not certain it’s something I’m ready for.”

But she could still taste his kiss, and she still longed for more of that vibrant spice and the hot taste of it. There was nothing that could have prepared her for this. Nothing or no one could have told her that this would happen, and she would believe it.

“I’ve always been a creature of the darkness, Isabelle,” he sighed then. “Not a part of either world that I was created from. I’ve waited for you, knowing that part of you was out there, and longing for you with every fiber of my being. But I know that you haven’t.”

But she had. She watched the night regularly. She had searched for him. She had known he was out there but she’d had no way of knowing who he was, or where he was. And now, she had no clue how to handle the situation she was in.

“How does it work?” she finally asked. “Are the tabloid stories true?”

“In some part.” He nodded sharply. “They’re stories we’ve leaked to the press ourselves. A propaganda war, if you want to call it that. To accustom the public to the knowledge before they learn it’s the truth. We’ll only be able to hide it for a short while longer now. This is the only way we have of lessening the threat mating heat could mean to the couples as well as those who haven’t yet found their mates.”

“Because of the fear. Because man doesn’t want to accept what’s different from him. Even when he believes he created it.” She looked down at her fingers again, only to find his covering them as she did so.

“Isabelle, this battle is one you’re only just coming into. Don’t begin looking for trouble this quickly, love, because I promise you, it will show up soon enough on its own.” He drew her to him, dragging her over his chest, though she did very little to resist him.

She should resist him. She’d just experienced something that should have been quite traumatic. After all, by time he had finished releasing his pleasure inside her, he’d bitten her, knotted her, snarled, growled and declared “mine,” as though saying it made it so.

The problem was that when he’d declared “mine,” she had felt an answering demand inside her own heart.

“What are you doing to me, Malachi?” she whispered as he turned, sprawling her beneath him as he came over her in a surge of strength and latent power.

“I’ve been crazy since meeting you,” he rasped as he pulled the sheet away from her naked body. “Completely insane, Isabelle.”

A graceful brow arched as her eyes suddenly lit with an inner amusement. “I would guess you were already crazy, Malachi, because I haven’t seen a whole lot to suggest otherwise.”

Malachi lifted his brow. “Baby, you haven’t had time to draw that opinion. Once you get to know me, you’ll realize I’m actually hardcore certifiable. It’s a Breed thing.”

“Being certifiable?” she questioned. “After meeting Ashley, I’m beginning to think that rather than a Breed thing, it’s more a Coyote thing. I just hope it’s not too contagious.”

She was teasing him. Had anyone bothered to tease him before, she wondered as he stared back at her with that reserved, cool expression.

She wouldn’t let it bother her, she promised herself. If he intended to stick around, then he may as well learn. She, Chelsea and Liza were always joking with one another, sometimes playing pranks and always having fun. She wasn’t about to give it up.

“You make me want to laugh,” he groaned suddenly. “And if I drop my guard enough for that, what will I do if you decide to try to fight the mating?”

“So it can be reversed?” Already she was craving his kiss with a strength that had her mouth watering and her body tingling. Like someone needing their next drug fix, she needed his kiss.

She needed him.

“There’s no reversal.” Cupping the back of her head, he pulled her down for his kiss, needing it, needing her.

His tongue wasn’t swollen, the mating taste was only barely present to his senses, but still, the need to kiss her, to bind her now with pleasure, was an overriding impulse.

Catching her lips with his, he rubbed against the soft, pouty curves and tasted the warmth of them. It was a kiss of natural heat, the same passion and hunger that had flared between them when their eyes connected in the bar.

His tongue slipped past her lips, mated with hers, rubbed at it, felt the silken softness and the measure of the woman as she accepted him with soft innocence.

It wasn’t mating heat. It was just a man and a woman, that was all. Surrounded by warmth, by the attraction and the flaring emotion that happened only once in a lifetime. When one man and one woman fated to be together, came together.

That moment had happened in the bar when their eyes met. When their lives had merged and destiny had given them that one and only chance.

One chance. One moment out of time and Malachi refused to lose it.

She was his mate.

Letting her go wasn’t an option.

Holding her, ensuring her safety, her protection and, God, loving her. Those were his only options.

Easing back, he stared into the soft depths of her cobalt eyes and whispered, “For the first time in such a long, lonely life, I touched love.” Trailing his hand from the back of her head where he’d held her to him, he let his palm cup the fragile line of her jaw as his thumb brushed over her kiss-swollen lips. “You’re my mate, Isabelle. Frightening you is the last thing I want to do, but Breeds, like the animals we’re created from, heed our instincts, unlike man. Every instinct that makes up the creature I am knows what you are to me. Courting you isn’t an option. Wooing you isn’t in the equation because nature won’t allow the humanity inside us to chance losing that one moment, that single chance we have to claim what is ours. Or to allow our mates the opportunity to fear or to doubt and to turn away. That’s all mating heat is, baby. That’s all nature meant for it to be. Everything else is optional, but staying together, learning our way and learning what true love, what soul mates, were meant to be isn’t a choice any longer. It’s now a part of everything we are. It’s like death and taxes. Inescapable.”

She swallowed tightly. “Breeds don’t pay taxes.”

Trust her to have to point out the one flaw in the ages-old saying.

His lips quirked in amusement. Nature was indeed the perfect matchmaker, because this woman would be more than a challenge. She would keep him on his toes. There wouldn’t be a chance to be the lazy, shiftless Coyote that all of his Breed pretended to be.

“Breeds don’t pay taxes,” he agreed. “We have mates to keep us in line instead.”

Her head settled on his chest, her cheek against his heart as Malachi let his hand smooth from her shoulder to the middle of her back.

“It’s not going to be that easy, Malachi,” she whispered. “You know it’s not.”

He knew it wouldn’t be. “What is the old saying?” he asked softly. “Nothing worth having is easy? If it were easy, baby, would it be as important?”

He found a curl of hair that trailed over her shoulder and caught it between his thumb and finger. Rubbing it, experiencing the softness of it, he stared up at the ceiling as he inhaled slowly.

“No, it won’t be easy.” The scent he caught assured him of that. There was very little time left. “We need to get dressed, baby.”

She levered up and stared down at him. He could smell the trepidation, the edge of nervousness rising inside her. “Why?”

“We’re about to have company.” Moving from the bed, Malachi gathered her clothing, handed it to her then collected his own.

Rule was leading the pack, so to speak. He could smell his commander’s anger, just as he could smell the anger of the men with him.

“What’s going on, Malachi?” Nervousness was edging into fear as she pulled her dress over her head and allowed the silken length to fall to her feet.

Hell, they hadn’t had enough time, not enough to combat what he sensed was coming, he feared.

“Commander Breaker, your father, uncle and grandfather are coming up the hall,” he told her. “The commander is trying to delay them. Breaker never moves that slow, which means they’re not heading to a meeting. They’re coming here.”

He glanced at the bed, and on the sheets he saw the proof of the innocence he had taken not long before.

“Great,” Isabelle muttered. “Just what I need. How did any of them even know where I was?”

Exactly. Neither Breaker nor Stygian would have informed the three men of Isabelle’s whereabouts, and her sister and friend wouldn’t have known. At least not for certain.

A hard knock at the door signaled the arrival of the group.

“How did you know they were coming?” she hissed as a startled flinch had her jerking toward the door.

“I could smell them,” he sighed. “The commander is pissed and your family more so.”

Striding to the door, he gripped the knob and opened it slowly, placing himself in the small opening he made.

“Can I help you, Commander?” he asked Rule, though his gaze met that of her father, Terran Martinez.

“The Martinez family is here to collect the girl,” Rule stated coldly. “Produce her, Malachi.”

The order grated on the independence and pride that Malachi knew he had a surfeit of. He pulled his gaze slowly from the father and met his commander’s. “They can see her, but no one is collecting her.”

“The hell we’re not.” Terran Martinez was clearly furious. “I’ll be taking my daughter home, Coyote, whether you like it or not.”

Hell, this wasn’t the footing he’d wanted to begin his life with Isabelle on.

He could feel her moving toward him.

“I feel I should inform you, Commander Breaker, Isabelle Martinez will not be leaving this room. To allow anyone to force her to leave will be breaking Breed law.”

He had no idea how much these men may or may not know about mating heat. There were times the people of the Nation knew more than anyone wanted them to know. He was informing his commander subtly that Isabelle was now his mate, and therefore under every Breed’s protection. Including Rule’s.

“Mr. Martinez,” Rule said softly. “As I told you, this meeting will be held with civility, and the only way Ms. Martinez will go anywhere is if it’s her wish.”

Isabelle stepped to her mate’s side. “Dad?” Confusion and hurt laced her voice as Malachi allowed her only a sliver of room to face the men confronting him from the hall. “What’s going on?”

“Get out here, Isabelle.” Stone-faced and furious, Terran Martinez spoke in a tone that had Malachi’s hackles immediately rising and a growl rumbling in his throat.

Isabelle laid her hand on his arm, a move that was immediately noticed by all five men as they stood in the hall.

“Perhaps it would be best if we discussed this in the room,” Rule suggested calmly, if mockingly. “You never know when or where a damned journalist is hiding.”

And he was right, Malachi knew he was right, but he was loath to have the fury of the Martinez family invading the scent of his mate’s pleasure that filled the room.

“Malachi,” Commander Breaker growled in a reminder that the walls didn’t just have ears, but could have eyes as well.

Turning his head slowly, he looked at Isabelle. He could smell her confusion, her fear and her hurt. The three scents were an affront to the protective instincts that raged inside him for her.

“Malachi, it’s my family,” she said softly. “I won’t turn them away.”

She didn’t say she couldn’t turn them away, she said she wouldn’t. Restraining a sigh, he stepped back and steeled himself. Because he had a very bad feeling that this first test of the world against the union he had dreamed of could very well steal the dream from his desperate, greedy grasp.

Chapter Seven

Then your smile lit my world.

Isabelle couldn’t understand why her family was standing in the middle of Malachi’s room, their too perceptive gazes raking over the barely made bed she and Malachi had just left.

“Dad?” She stared back at her father in confusion. “What’s going on here?”

Terran Martinez was younger than his brother, Ray, the chief of the Navajo Nation. Both men strongly resembled Orin Martinez, though, their father and medicine man of the Nation.

Her father crossed his arms over his broad chest, the dark denim shirt he wore straining over his biceps. “What are you doing here?” he asked, his tone dark with the anger she could read in his eyes.

“Terran, I warn you.” Her grandfather spoke up. “Don’t allow your anger to cloud your judgment. You can see before you the truth of this situation. Don’t shame her when no shame is needed.”

“No one will be shaming her,” Malachi informed them all, while Isabelle felt like just stalking out and leaving all of them to fight among themselves. All but Malachi. She would have to take him with her, of course.

“Do you know the man you’re consorting with?” Terran snapped at her then, shocking her with the lash of anger in his voice. “Did you even take a moment to pull up what little research exists on him?”

“Why would I?” Cocking her hip and propping her hands on each side, she confronted her father now. “Nothing else we read about the Breeds on the Internet has been the truth. Why would I believe whatever I read on one individual?”

And it was the truth. The propaganda that had been placed on the Internet had been proven false over and over again.

Her father’s lips flattened in disapproval, as if he was disappointed that she hadn’t done it anyway.

“He murdered his own,” Terran snapped furiously. “Ask him which lab he was created in, daughter. Ask him if he wasn’t there when your Aunt Morningstar was murdered.”

Isabelle swung around to Malachi. But it wasn’t he who responded.

“Malachi wasn’t in those labs.” It was Commander Breaker who spoke instead, his tone heavy, almost too soft to make out.

Her father had obviously heard him, though. “And how can you be so certain?” he demanded, disbelief clear in his expression. “You of all people should know how easily those records could be manipulated.”

Rule’s expression only darkened. “I know he wasn’t there, Terran. Malachi was created in Russia, far away from the labs your sister was in.”

The tension that began filling the room was strangling. Isabelle could feel Malachi all but holding his breath, holding in whatever he knew, or whatever he would say.

“And how the hell do you think you can be so sure of that?” Terran sneered. “And why would I believe you over someone I’ve known for most of his life?”

Who?

Isabelle stared at her father in surprise. Who could have told him anything and known what they were talking about?

“I was reported to have been created in that base because there was no one left alive but Breeds to deny it,” Malachi stated softly. “But I wasn’t there. And even if I had been, nothing could have changed the outcome of her fate, Mr. Martinez. Nothing could and no one could have saved her that night.”

The disappearance and death of his sister had haunted her father, she knew. So much so that he made certain he knew where his daughters were, at least their general vicinity, every second of the day.

“Even the dirty Coyote that reported the escape attempt another Breed was initiating to get her out of there?” Terran snapped back at him. “That Breed was you, Malachi Morgan. You were there, and you reported the attempt.”

“And I told you he wasn’t there,” Rule injected again.

“And you’re lying for him.”

Isabelle was shocked to hear her father raise his voice, to lose the calm that was always such a constant and steady part of him.

“Dad, please, don’t do this.” Isabelle stepped forward, shock and pain filling her at the fury in her father’s face. “I don’t know what Malachi did in those labs, but whatever he did, it was to survive. And I don’t believe he would have ever deliberately brought danger to an innocent.”

It didn’t matter that his gaze had swung to her, narrow-eyed and strong, as he stepped to her. She may not know the particulars of the circumstances or the story behind his escape or anyone else’s. What she did know was the man who held her in his arms and the fact that he couldn’t have, wouldn’t have, participated in her aunt’s death. Not in any way.

“Isabelle, if you’ve ever trusted me, come with me now.” Her father turned to her, the eyes she had grown up staring into whenever she’d needed answers, whenever she was frightened or confused, and that gaze was demanding she obey him. That she follow him. That she turn her back on the man she had already begun accepting into her heart.

“I trust you with my life, Dad,” she whispered painfully. “But I need you to trust me. Trust me to know the man I’ve fallen in love with.”

That was all she asked of him. Just for now, for this moment, trust her and allow her to make her own decisions. She couldn’t bear being controlled, being forced, without a choice. Neither Malachi nor Commander Breaker was doing that.

Malachi stood close behind her, not touching her, trying not to influence her. The commander had his back to her, but her father was glaring at her.

“Terran, watch what you say,” her uncle Ray advised him as it became obvious that her father’s anger was only growing.

She stared from her uncle to her grandfather then back to her father. They were obviously there only to ensure her father didn’t make a mistake he couldn’t take back.

“What does he intend to say, Uncle Ray?” she asked softly as she felt her throat tighten with tears. “What do you intend to do, Dad, when I tell you that I won’t walk away from Malachi without proof that he’s done something vile? A mistake I can forgive. Anything he was forced to do in those labs I would have to forgive. It would break my heart that he were forced to be something he wasn’t. That he carried the nightmares of it. But I wouldn’t turn my back on him.”

“Even if he killed your aunt?” her father yelled back at her, causing her to flinch. “You would forgive him for it?”

She was going to cry. Isabelle could feel the tears coming. She could feel her chest tightening, her lips trembling with the need to spill her tears, her pain.

“Even if he were forced to do that,” she whispered. “I’ve never lied to you, Dad. I won’t start now. I’m not saying it wouldn’t break me in half. That I wouldn’t live every day of my life knowing the unbearable weight of it, but what happened in those labs I won’t hold against him.”

“Then I dis—”

“No!” her grandfather yelled behind him as another voice broke over him.

Her father had been only a single word from disowning her.

“I was in that lab.” Commander Breaker stepped forward and spoke as Isabelle’s eyes began to widen in horror of what her father was about to say.

Her father swung around to the Breed. “What did you say?”

“I was there,” Breaker growled. “I was created there. I was trained there. And I knew your sister. I swear to you, Mr. Martinez, on the soul I hold as my dearest possession. I swear to you, Malachi wasn’t there. And I know he wasn’t there, because I was.”

Her father seemed to shrink before her eyes. His shoulders slumped, horrified remorse filling his gaze as he turned to Isabelle. He stepped back slowly, shaking his head in disbelief as his gaze swung back to the commander.

“I don’t believe you,” he whispered. “And you have nothing that will prove it.”

To that, the commander growled with primal, deepening anger.

“I have blood.”

“And what the hell will that prove?” Her father threw his hands up in a gesture of fury. “How will your blood prove anything?”

“It will prove I’m the son of Morningstar Martinez,” he snapped back at him. “And as you know, those bastards never, ever separated the male Breeds from their birth mothers. They used them. Tested us for compassion and sympathy with them,” he snarled with animalistic rage now. “My blood will prove it, Mr. Martinez, and then as far as your daughter should be concerned, you should get fucked. Because a man that would turn his back on a daughter is no man. He’s even less than the godforsaken bastards that created the Breeds.”

“Enough.”

Isabelle watched her grandfather through her tears, his lined, weary expression making him appear a decade older than his actual age.

“It is time to speak of this without this most precious child present. The sins and the nightmares of the past are for those of us who have faced the monsters in the world. Not those who we fight to protect from them.”

Her breathing hitched as her grandfather stood staring back at her with all the gentleness and love he had always given her.

Malachi’s arm went around her. As though he couldn’t bear the physical separation between them any longer.

Her grandfather nodded as though in approval of the move.

“Take care of the gift I give you my consent to accept,” her grandfather stated then. “What you have been blessed with, no man can tear from your grasp. Be foolish enough to turn from her love, though, and I will see you as no more than the sniveling child who knows only to blame others for his misfortunes.”

“Thank you, sir,” Malachi stated softly. “And I know well the gift I’ve been given.”

Her grandfather turned away. As he did, her uncle nodded to her gently before following. It was her father who hesitated.

“I love you, no matter your choices or what you do,” he finally said roughly. “But no matter the man or the Breed, ones with honor would never stand by calmly while one more innocent and undeserving died in agony.” He glanced to Malachi as he spoke.

“And I don’t believe that, Dad,” she whispered. “Sometimes, to protect others you love, you have no choice but to put on a brave face and hide your horror or your pain to ensure the protection of others. I watched the documentaries. I watched the Senate hearings that are retelevised year after year, and I heard the stories of the horrors they faced. Every Breed who survived those labs, made it out alive and swore vengeance against their creators and tormentors are worthy of every second chance they can be given. If needed.” She glanced up at Malachi, certainty flowing through her as his gaze met hers. Turning back to her father, she stated, “Malachi doesn’t need forgiveness. He wasn’t there. If he had been, he would have told me before anyone else had a chance.” She was certain of it.

With tears glittering in his eyes, her father raked his fingers through the military short gray and black hair as he turned away.

“Who told you Malachi was there, Dad?”

He paused. Keeping his back to her, he shook his head and Isabelle swore she could feel the weariness that slumped his shoulders.

“I have the right to know. It’s my life they were attempting to destroy along with the negotiations between the Nation and the Breeds.”

“I gave my word, Isabelle.” He sighed, his voice husky. “I won’t break it.”

And he wouldn’t. No matter the cost.

“The next time it happens, if you have to give your word to retain the secrecy of their identity, then don’t bring the suspicions to me where Malachi’s concerned,” she informed him, her heart heavy. “Because I won’t hear them. Whoever is attempting to destroy these negotiations would destroy me, Malachi and my family without a thought. I don’t want to hear anything else they have to say.”

She had made a choice and Isabelle knew it. In that moment she’d chosen Malachi over suspicion, rumor or hints of wrongdoing whether they were real or imagined.

She had chosen him over everyone else in her life.

She may not know every act he had committed or every experience he had ever known, but she knew the soul of the man she had given her heart to. And she knew that soul was one that deserved her love.

That soul was the mate to hers.

Chapter Eight

Your lips touched mine.

He couldn’t bear to feel her pain.

As the room emptied and the door snicked closed quietly behind Rule, Malachi turned his mate to his chest and held her there.

For the first time in his life he didn’t just sense the pain, or scent it. He could feel it with every fiber of his being. It wrapped around his heart, his soul, and squeezed with a merciless grip.

“What’s going on?” she whispered against his chest as she felt his hands smoothing down the silken material of her dress to her hips and back to just below her shoulders. There, his fingers tangled in the long waves of her hair, twisting them around to pull her head back.

“I don’t know what’s going on, baby,” he told her, keeping his voice low, the pain emanating from her still too strong for his comfort.

It made the animal inside him rage, desperate to take the pain away and replace it with something more. Something more intimate. Something that would resonate with pleasure rather than pain.

Lowering his head, he let his lips settle over hers. Gently. The glands beneath his tongue were swelling in response to the emotions rising inside him, just as they had since the moment he had laid eyes on her.

Flicking his tongue against her lips, parting them, he let his lips fuse with hers before parting them farther and finding her tongue with his.

As though the taste of the mating heat was as much an addiction for her as the taste of her kiss was becoming for him, she immediately drew the taste of him into her. For lush, impossibly ecstatic seconds her lips captured his tongue and drew the heat from it.

Pulling back from her, his lips slanted over hers, rubbed against them, parted them with his, and they shared the taste. Mating heat fused them together, but Malachi knew where the heat came from: from the hearts of two souls that had searched the night.

Pulling the dress from her, he could only groan in anticipation and rising hunger as she released his pants.

There were no boots to take off this time—he’d met his visitors in bare feet, just as she had. It took only seconds to strip the pants from his legs and lift her to him, but the bed wasn’t an option. As he palmed her breasts and took her kiss again, his thumbs flicked at her pebble hard nipples, rasping over them as he backed her the few feet to the couch and felt the primal instincts that rose inside him crashing through his control.

She was his mate. The need to take her, to mark her, to indelibly imprint himself on her was tearing through his senses like wildfire.

Though she had stood beside him and defended the accusations brought against him earlier, still, there had been an instinctive hesitation. The need of the daughter to give in to the father, to obey and accept the protection she had known all her life.

That hesitancy had terrified him. For the briefest second Malachi had felt pure, gut-wrenching fear, certain he would have to fight for her and chance destroying them both in the effort.

That streak of pride and independence had held her to him, for the moment. Now, God help him, the animal inside him was tearing loose now and asserting its determination to tie her irrevocably to him.

“Malachi,” she whispered on a desperate sigh, her nails biting into his bare shoulders as he backed her to the couch before allowing his lips to trail to the sensitive column of her neck.

The ripple of response raced up her spine, sending the scent of summer heat to fill his senses. The smell of her passion, her sweet, soft, feminine lust, was the most intoxicating scent. He could live on it. He could survive the rest of his life with no other scent in his head.

The growl that rumbled in his chest surprised him. It was more animalistic than normal. It came from deeper inside him, from the depths of his diaphragm to vibrate in his throat, and sent a shiver chasing up Isabelle’s back.

That response heralded the heated scent of her pussy and signaled the rush of her slick juices as her body prepared for him.

His cock, already engorged and throbbing in hunger, pulsed with a demand he’d never known before. He could feel the mating fluid building in the shaft as his balls tightened in a pleasure-pain that had that damned growl rumbling again. It was uncontrollable. It was primal and heralded a rush of hunger that stripped him to the depths of his being and to the animal that resided there.

Isabelle could feel the need rising like a storm inside her and racing through her bloodstream like a drug determined to overtake her. It wasn’t just determined. It was definitely overtaking her. Washing through her body with a wave of heat as Malachi’s lips blazed a path of fire down her neck.

Once he reached the small, sensitive wound he’d made earlier, his tongue brushing across it, Isabelle swore she nearly climaxed. A rush of sensation tore through the mark as a hungry kiss was applied to it before his lips began nipping and kissing their way to her breasts.

Her nipples were tight, hard with excitement. As she arched to him, Isabelle felt the brush of the fine hairs of his chest against them, the rasping pleasure dragging a whimpering moan from her chest.

She couldn’t get enough of him. Not enough of his kiss, his touch, or the incredible pleasure that seemed to invade every cell of her body.

“I can’t wait.” The sound of his voice was part animal, part human. An equal mix of who and what he was and from where he had come.

“No one asked you to wait,” she cried out as his hand moved between her thighs, his fingers finding the moisture that lay on her thighs and following it to the swollen folds of her cunt.

Parting the saturated flesh, he found the clenched, sensitive entrance, rimmed it then, and with a dominant, exciting thrust, filled the snug channel with two powerful fingers.

Isabelle went to her tiptoes, her cry muffled against his chest as her flesh clenched involuntarily, becoming tighter and rippling around his fingers.

“Malachi.” She cried out his name as his lips found the tight, hardened peak of a nipple. Arching closer to him, she cried out again as he began to suckle the tip with strong, heated draws of his mouth.

Whatever the incredible taste that flowed from the glands beneath his tongue, the presence of it on his tongue now increased the sensitivity of her nipple. It hardened further, becoming so tight and peaked that the pleasure-pain of it had her nails curling against the flesh of Malachi’s shoulders.

Her hips moved, writhed as she worked her pussy on his fingers, her clit rasping against the pad of his hand as he curved it against her.

Her juices were flowing over his fingers, saturating them as she whimpered with the rising desperation to climax.

She was close. She could feel it building, burning in the pit of her womb, the release she was reaching for so desperately tightening through her.

“Not like this.” The words rasped from his lips as he straightened, his fingers immediately pulling free of the heated clasp of her pussy.

“No. Malachi, please . . .”

He nipped her shoulder. As a gasp of pleasure tore from her lips, he pulled back once again before gripping her shoulders, turning her around quickly and pushing her to the couch.

“On your knees,” he growled as he pushed her down.

Catching her weight on her elbows against the high, thick pad of the armrest, she felt him coming behind her, over her.

Covering her like a warm, sensual blanket, a sexual creature intent on possession, Malachi braced his hand next to her elbow as he positioned the width of his cock at the entrance to her sex.

Immediately the heavy spurt of sexual fluid erupted against her entrance, heating her further. The flesh there became more sensitive, clenching tightly even as it stretched easier beneath the penetrating width of his cock.

Another spurt of slickening fluid invaded her, increasing the sensitivity, the pleasure that whipped through her senses. She could barely breathe. The stretching impalement of his flesh inside hers was like a whirlwind of sensations so intense, so brilliant she could only writhe in response. She pressed back, feeling her vagina milking the heavy width, drawing it deeper inside her as he worked his hips against her with strong, shallow thrusts.

“You’re mine.” With his lips at her ear, he made the declaration in that rasping animalistic tone that only increased her arousal.

“You’re . . . oh my God, Malachi.” Her back arched as he thrust inside her deeper, harder, sending spasms of sensation to throb through her pussy and echo to the swollen bud of her clit.

She was panting for air, tiny cries spilling from her lips until she wailed in pleasure as he pushed to the hilt inside her with a final thrust and a last spurt of the preseminal fluid that seemed to help the ability of her sex to take the incredibly wide cock that filled her to overflowing.

“You’re mine!” she cried out, making her declaration match his. “Just the same, Malachi.”

She was sobbing with the pleasure and couldn’t seem to stop it. Pinned as she was, her hips arched to him, her cheek against the side of the armrest, she felt the violently sensitive nerve endings come alive inside her as he began to move.

He fucked her with hard, heavy strokes. Burying himself full-length inside her, Malachi had no hesitation, no doubts while impaling her with animal-like force, one hand gripping a hip, the other sliding over her as he braced his elbow against hers.

His fingers clasped hers. In a gesture as old as time and as intimate as a kiss.

“There, baby, fuck me back,” he groaned as she worked her hips back on the width of his cock. “Milk me inside. Let me feel that sweet pussy take me, Isabelle.”

The explicit words spoken at her ear had her body jumping with pleasure. She couldn’t remain unaffected, nor could she stop moving, even if she tried. Nothing mattered but the tightening spirals of sensation beginning to tug at the nerve endings in her pussy and throbbing in her clit.

Behind her, Malachi was thrusting rhythmically, with each penetration pushing into her to the hilt as she cried out, writhed and thrust back on the heavy stalk of flesh.

She was dying beneath the onslaught of pleasure. There was no way she could survive it, she told herself, even as she rushed headlong into the burning release awaiting her.

When it hit, it enveloped her in white hot flames. Shards of bliss began ripping through her senses, and when he buried himself one last time and that first spurt of release began jetting inside her, she felt the incredible presence of the additional thickening in his cock as it stretched her farther.

Locked inside her, his release spurting to the very mouth of her womb as each heavy throb of his cock extended her release, Isabelle felt all the world disintegrate. All but the part of existence that she and Malachi inhabited. That was all that existed, all that sustained them.

And within that world, within the fiery haze of pleasure, pain and swirling intensity, nothing mattered as much as the beat of his heart against her back, his teeth locked at the flesh between shoulder and neck, and the man as bound to her as she knew she was now bound to him.

Nothing mattered but the bonds that she knew would hold them together and the hunger that would never abate.

And when all was said and done, the most important part was being his mate.

Chapter Nine

For the first time in such a long, lonely life, I touched love.

No Breed or human had ever claimed that Nature in all her glory didn’t like to amuse herself with the children she was in charge of overseeing.

They were her amusement as well as her responsibility and she took both seriously, Malachi thought as he held his mate against his chest the next morning.

A warm, comforting weight, her head pillowed over his heart, one small hand resting at his side as the soft weight of her breasts pressed against him.

Sleeping with a woman had never been a comfortable experience. In the early days of the Breed liberations it was common for Breeds to be betrayed by their lovers. Council soldiers found it much easier to take the Breeds when they were distracted by a lover in the midst of intercourse. To a lesser extent it wasn’t uncommon for it to happen now.

Sleeping with Isabelle was another story. He’d slept the deepest sleep he’d ever known in his life as he held her in his arms. Not that he’d slept unaware. The animal part of him never seemed to relax its guard.

He was aware of every move outside the door, but on a much more different level than before. The only time his sleep had been disturbed had been if a presence had paused too close to the door for the animal’s comfort. And that had only happened a few times.

Now, awake, he watched the sun rise outside the narrow slit of the windows and hesitated to leave the warm weight of his mate.

But, he had a meeting. Getting out of it wasn’t an option.

He wanted to know who had called Isabelle’s father and who had attempted to force her family to convince her to leave his embrace. To use something as traumatic as the loss of her aunt and the tragic event of her death against Isabelle’s father.

The only way to learn the answer to that question was the meeting Rule had arranged with her family. Terran, Ray and Orin Martinez had come to his room, intent on saving Isabelle from the monster who had supposedly allowed her aunt to suffer a horrendous death.

Did Morningstar’s family even know how she had died? That, like many of the mates of the captive Breeds, she had been mercilessly dissected while still living? No anesthesia, nothing to dull the inhuman cruelty of the lethally sharp scalpel, she had been laid open and each of the internal changes mating forced on her carefully notated.

There were few who had survived that particular research practice. And never had a female mate survived it, human or otherwise.

Placing a gentle kiss to the top of Isabelle’s head, Malachi pushed himself from the warmth of her body and left the bed, his lips quirking at the discontent in her drowsy little moan.

She didn’t like losing his warmth any more than he liked being forced to attend this meeting rather than remaining with her. But, the means the unknown messenger had used to hurt his mate was unacceptable. He needed to know who to punish for the pain that had resulted in his Isabelle fighting back tears.

“Where are you sneaking off to?” Drowsy amusement filled her voice as he glanced back at her.

Rolling to her back, Isabelle watched him with cobalt blue eyes and a decidedly appreciative gleam in her eyes.

“I have a meeting,” he told her, finding it excessively hard to turn away from her and continue to the shower. “It shouldn’t take long though.”

“Oh yeah? How long?” She stretched invitingly beneath the sheet as he turned to her from the bathroom doorway.

The sight of lush feminine curves barely shrouded by the expensive sheets and pouty, kiss-swollen lips were a temptation no mortal man should be forced to ignore.

His cock was steel-hard and throbbing, his balls tight and desperate for release.

He may just have to choke the answers he needed out of her father to ensure he returned to her quickly.

If only it were that easy.

Tightening his jaw against the sensual demand that he return to her, Malachi forced himself through the bathroom doorway instead.

But, he caught that smile that tugged at her lips. The adorable, sensual little curve that assured him she had very fond memories of the night they had just spent in each other’s arms.

And, not all of it had been sexual.

She had told him of her aunt’s disappearance, before her birth, and the guilt her father had always felt that he hadn’t been with her.

He’d not gone to school that day because he had wanted to go tracking. He and several of his friends had slipped off to track a lone wolf that had been plaguing several of the ranches. His sister had known he wasn’t at school, she had thought he didn’t feel well. But, he had always felt that if he had been with her, perhaps she wouldn’t have been taken.

Terran could have assured him that nothing could have kept her from being taken. Once the Council chose a breeder, they were known to go to impossibly insane lengths to acquire her.

The genetic research that had gone into each Breed had been exacting. The research that went into both the DNA required from the female, as well as the genetic information from the animal breed, was exhaustive.

The Council’s requirements for each were high, but for the breeder, they preferred those women born with what they called the earth based gifts.

Native American, Romanian, Irish and Scots, and any bloodline suspected to carry psychic gifts. For some reason, those genetics, when combined with the predators chosen, had created the strongest, most powerful Breeds.

Rule Breaker and Lawe Justice were two such examples. Though no one was entirely certain what the brothers’ greatest strengths were. One thing was for sure though—there was no doubt that the genetics that went into each Breed hadn’t just made them better fighters, but better manipulators and leaders as well.

As a commander, Rule excelled where he had been restless and therefore rather testy as an enforcer.

His brother on the other hand was a strategist unlike any Malachi had come up against, other than Jonas Wyatt.

Dressed and ready to face the family she was unaware had returned to the hotel, Malachi stepped back to the bedroom and watched her as she lay dozing in the bed.

She had cried when she had told him of her mother’s death on her seventh birthday. Holding her had been all he could do to ease the pain she had felt that long ago summer.

She had related some of her adventures. Her trips to England and to Rome, to Greece and to Japan. He knew about her first puppy, the kitty that had run away when Isabelle was ten, the changes in her brother, Linclon, after he had returned from the army wounded several years ago and the trials and tribulations of her younger sister, Chelsea.

He knew Liza was her dearest friend, and he knew when she mentioned the fact that they lived together, there had been a hint of carefully hidden pain and fear.

Though Isabelle didn’t want to return to the house, not once had she asked him to protect her nor had she revealed the reason for that fear.

If Terran Martinez and his family didn’t have the answers he needed today, then he would confront both Chelsea and Liza. They were already wary of him, though clearly not frightened. He had a feeling both girls would be willing to talk, especially once he explained the hazards to every living human involved in the cover-up should someone strike out at his mate.

Dressing in a gray silk suit, white fine cotton shirt and blue and gray striped tie, Malachi slipped his feet into expensive leather shoes and returned to the bedroom.

Isabelle was still dozing. Her eyes were closed, her senses relaxed. Sleep almost had her again.

Moving to the bed, he kissed the top of her head gently before straightening and leaving the room.

The sooner he completed the meeting, the sooner he could return to his mate and learn more of the details of her life, the little quirks that made her unique and enjoy the sense of humor that never failed to draw a smile from his lips.

Leaving the room he checked the door quickly before stepping across the hall to the room that had once been Isabelle’s and was now Ashley and Emma Truing’s.

On each side, Isabelle’s sister Chelsea and her friend Liza were still registered. The two girls had come to the room the night before after Isabelle had called them. They had been as outraged over the lies that had been told to Isabelle’s father as Isabelle was.

Turning up the hall he moved quickly to the small meeting room the hotel had set up for the Breed visit. Rule had sent a text earlier that the Martinez family was on their way for the meeting. However, the chief had warned him that Terran had no intentions of revealing the identity of the individual who had called.

Perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps he wouldn’t. But Malachi would make damned certain he knew the risks to his daughter and the consequences should Isabelle be hurt because of his refusal to speak.

Sliding the key card into the lock, Malachi stepped into the room, then came to a slow, wary stop. The Martinez men weren’t the only ones who were awaiting him.

Rule stood to the side of the room watching silently as Isabelle’s friend Liza dried her tears and Chelsea hung her head, staring at the floor somberly.

There was more going on here than whatever information Terran was hiding.

“Mr. Morgan.” Terran rose to his feet, his expression more heavily lined than it had been the evening before, his dark eyes filled with sorrow. “I hope you will pardon my transgressions yesterday. I beg your forgiveness as I will be pleading with my daughter for hers after this meeting.”

Malachi lifted a brow curiously as he glanced over at Rule. The other Breed shrugged with a discomforted shift of his shoulders. The formal politeness of the apology and the pain that flowed from Terran was thick enough to cause Malachi’s hackles to rise.

“Chelsea?” He looked over at the younger girl. “Is everything okay, little sister?”

Her shoulders jerked, her breathing hitched as a sob nearly escaped. Placing her hand over her lips as she lifted the other in a gesture to stop, she turned her back on him.

Malachi could smell the tears.

The evening before, he’d noticed both girls had acted oddly after Isabelle had told them what her family had done. Her father’s anger seemed to have especially upset both girls.

“Everything’s obviously not okay,” Liza spoke up at that point, her red-rimmed eyes full of not just pain, but anger as she turned back to Malachi. “Isabelle is like a sister to me, Malachi. She’s the best friend I have in this world. And when she told us last night what happened, I had a feeling I knew exactly who had done it, and I was right.”

His gaze flicked to Terran. The other man looked grief- stricken, and filled with rage. He turned back to Liza.

“Are you going to tell me who it was?” he asked, his eyes narrowing on her.

Her lips trembled for a brief second before she steadied them, lifted her chin and said, “The man who attacked her in her own home and nearly raped her. If Chelsea and I hadn’t come home when we did, he would have raped her in her own living room.”

Tears spilled from the girl’s eyes again, but she continued bravely. “My dad had given me a gun. I pulled it from the closet and hit him in the back of the head with it. It gave her time to get away from him. When she jerked it from me, Chelsea and I kept her from filling his ass with buckshot. We should have let her do it. But all I could imagine was him suing the three of us and getting away with it.”

It had been known to happen. Which was neither here nor there. It didn’t matter in the end. Once he had the identity of the man, the three women wouldn’t have to worry about being sued, they would only have to worry about what color to wear to his funeral. Black for grief, though he doubted they would choose such a respectable, somber color for the event. Perhaps red, he thought, for the blood the son of a bitch was going to shed.

“Liza, I want that name.”

“You’ll kill him,” Chelsea cried out as she swung around to face him. “Then Isabelle will be pissed with us. And God forbid you be arrested for it, because she would kill us. You don’t know what she’s like when she’s pissed, Malachi.”

“Obviously, courageous and daring,” he stated with no small amount of pride. “But, I prefer she not have to be courageous and daring again with this particular individual, and there’s no doubt he won’t attempt it again.” He glanced to Terran. “It’s the same man that called you?”

“She’s my daughter,” Terran rasped. “I’ll take vengeance.”

“God save me from all this familial guilt and self- punishment,” he snapped, growing more furious by the moment. “I’ll have his name and I’ll have it now. If I don’t, I promise the two of you I’ll take Isabelle as far as possible from this place and you’ll be lucky if she can convince me to visit once every five years.” He turned to her father. “And if that’s the case, then you can forget knowing any grandchildren she’ll have because my faith in your ability to tell us anything that could endanger that child would be nil. Now one of you had better fucking open your mouths.” His voice rose with the last words, his anger beginning to slip past the calm he always forced upon himself.

Chelsea and Liza stared back at him in shock.

“Holden Mayhew.” Terran gave him the name he wanted. “He’s the manager . . .”

“Of the Tri-Bar Ranch bordering yours.” Malachi nodded as his fists clenched, his body tightening with rage.

The man had fists like anvils. Not that he was any match for a Breed, but for a woman as delicate and fragile as Isabelle, it would have been like being mauled by a grizzly.

“I’ll take care of it . . .” A piercing phone alarm began emanating from both Rule and Malachi’s phones.

Malachi’s eyes widened as he jerked it from his belt activated the display.

“He has her, Mal.” Emma’s face was already swelling while blood oozed from her nose and split lips. “Ashley’s down . . . Ash . . .” The phone fell.

Malachi was racing for the door the second the words made sense and running the short distance down the hall. He was aware of Rule behind him, shouting orders and pulling in the team being kept on a lower floor. The Martinez family was running behind, the father on the phone now, shouting orders as well as they all raced to Malachi’s room.

Stygian was slamming from the door further up the hall as Malachi made the turn down the wing where his, Ashley and Emma’s rooms were and skidded to a halt at the opened door of his room.

Ashley was down. Valiant, primpy, girly Ashley with her artificially colored locks, her fake nails and girlish innocence. The pride of the coyote packs, and everyone’s little sister.

Emma was beside her, weak, but still valiantly trying to stem the blood pouring from her sister’s chest wound as she sobbed with heartbroken fear.

“Ash . . . Ash please . . . Please don’t leave me, Ash . . .” she was crying, her voice weak, dazed and in shock as Malachi and Rule slid to their knees beside her.

“She won’t wake up, Mal,” Emma whispered, turning her face to him as Rule quickly began assessing the wound and Stygian raced to them with a med-kit.

What the phone display hadn’t shown was the other side of Emma’s head. Her hair was coated with blood, dripping with it as she stared back at him with eyes nearly black with shock.

“We have her, Emma.” Gripping the coyote female’s shoulders he quickly ran his gaze over her as the room began to fill with Breeds. “Where is Isabelle, Emma? Did you see where he took her?” He was screaming at her. Panic and terror were clawing at his guts with razor-sharp talons.

Emma shook her head, obviously trying to fight off the dizzying weakness of her wounds. “He smells like motor oil,” she whispered haltingly. “Isa cried for Ashley, but he hit her because she knocked the gun out of his hand. It’s under the bed. He hit me first, took out Ashley then grabbed Isabelle. Isa took your shirt.” She lifted her gaze to him again. “She’s only wearing your shirt.”

“Let’s move.” Malachi was on his feet, his gaze slicing to the tracker Rule had brought with them.

Braden Arness was one of the best they had, and the woman at his side, his mate, a Navajo empath that could find a fucking needle in a haystack.

Braden grabbed Malachi’s shoulders, but he was expecting it. He stood still, the animal inside him snarling for action as the Breed inhaled the scent just beneath his ear and again at his lower neck.

It was there that the mating scent was strongest during the first stages of the mating heat. It was from there that Braden would have the scent of Malachi’s mate, as well as the scent the shirt would carry.

Releasing him, Braden turned but his mate, Megan, was already hurrying for the door. “I told you something wasn’t right,” she reminded her mate furiously as they headed from the door. “I knew the pain I felt was tied to this. God, Braden, I should have looked further.”

“We’ll find her,” Braden promised. “It’s okay, honey, we’ll find her.”

And Malachi could only pray the tracker was right, because God help him if he lost his mate. Still, the howl that tore from his throat and echoed through the corridors of the hotel was haunting, filled with rage and grief. A coyote’s mate was in danger. God help the bastard responsible because now death was his only option.

Chapter Ten

You held my heart in your hands.

I felt its warmth, its power, and its promise.

“Holden, don’t do this, please.” Fear crawled up Isabelle’s back as she fought the sickening pain caused by the grip he had on her wrists as he dragged her down the stairs with him.

She couldn’t believe this was happening. She couldn’t believe he would have lost his mind to the point that he thought he could shoot one of the few coyote Breed females, and kidnap her and get away with it.

“You’re hurting me, Holden,” she cried as the dagger-like sensations stabbed at her wrists at every point that his flesh touched hers.

“Do you really think I give a fuck, you stupid little whore?” he screamed furiously as he dragged her down another flight of stairs. “You and those fucking bitches up there have just about ruined everything. All you had to do was be your usual stuck-up bitch self and stayed there alone after that Breed left. That was all you had to do.”

He gave another hard jerk at her wrists as though in retaliation for the perceived slight.

The harsh tug as she made that first, stumbling step to a landing caused Isabelle to lose her balance and twist her ankle. She went down hard, fighting to catch herself to lessen the chances of serious injury.

Holden refused to release her wrists as she went down. The lack of support and her inability to hold herself up had her falling down the next step, her hip colliding against the edge painfully.

“Fuck! Keep it up bitch and I’ll leave you to bleed out like I did that whore Breed.”

Isabelle screamed out in pain as he yanked at her wrists at the same time his fingers buried in her hair and used the thick length to jerk her up.

“He’ll kill you!” she screamed out at him, the pain and the humiliation enraging her. “Malachi will kill you, Holden. You know he will. You stupid bastard, you just possibly killed one of the most loved Breed females in the world. There’s no way they’ll let you live.”

She kicked at him, sobbing at the pain as he threw her against the wall before tossing her behind him once again.

“Fuck you, bitch,” he sneered. “He’s not going to kill anyone. He’ll be too busy chasing after you and the rest of them will follow suit. And I’ll be far far away.”

“You can’t run far enough.” She resisted, pulling her weight back and fighting his hold every inch of the way. “You can’t find a hole deep enough to hide in,” she spat in his face. “You’re a dead man walking.”

Ashley wasn’t dead. She had seen the other girl moving, watched her eyes open as Holden dragged her from Malachi’s room to the stairwell in the next wing.

Emma would have contacted Malachi immediately. She wouldn’t have waited. God, she had to be conscious enough to have contacted Malachi.

Where was he?

She stared behind her, looked up, fighting to catch a glimpse of him, to catch a glimpse of anyone that could report the abduction.

“You’re going to make me a hell of a lot of money, bitch.” He laughed at her attempt to break free, the pain shooting through her wrists making her weak.

Dazed from the confusing effect of his touch on her wrists, and the earlier blow to her head that he had used to keep her from escaping the room as Emma and Ashley rushed in, Isabelle found it more difficult to focus by the second.

“You won’t get to spend a penny of it.” She stumbled on the next landing again, crying out brokenly as her knee connected with the unyielding metal beneath her.

“Son of a bitch, what’s your fucking problem!”

The blow to the side of her head was humiliating. Not really hard enough to be disabling, just enough to rattle her senses and draw another hoarse cry from her lips.

Holden laughed, though the sound was filled with mockery and fury.

“If you had just been smart enough not to fight me that night,” he snapped. “All you had to do was lie there and take it like a good little girl and everything would have been fine, Isabelle. I’d have married your stupid little ass, given you a kid or two and life would have been good. I’d have you, your daddy’s ranch, and the respect I deserve. But you had to go fuck a Breed, didn’t you?”

“I would have died before I would have done anything but killed you,” she screamed furiously as the pain became excruciating. “I should have killed you while I had the chance.”

“But you didn’t, did you Isabelle? You let that puke-faced little sister of yours stop you. That was your second mistake.” He was up in her face, nose to nose, his rough features twisted into a monstrous mask of anger. “The first was denying me.”

A heavy, merciless hand gripped her jaw, pushing her head against the wall as he seemed to be trying to push it through the cement.

“Why are you doing this?” Isabelle cried out as he released her jaw.

The next second an openhanded slap knocked her to the side. The grip he still maintained on her wrists was the only thing that kept her from tumbling down the steps as she lost her balance.

She was weak, the pain rushing through her was worse than it should have been. Far worse. But he wouldn’t let go of her. He kept touching her, and for some reason just his touch was like a thousand blades cutting into her flesh.

“Hurts doesn’t it?” he rasped as he began dragging her down the steps again. “They were right about that. It hurts bad enough you can’t even fight me.”

They, who the hell was “they”?

Isabelle shook her head as she fought to make sense of what he was saying.

“What did you do to me?” She could barely breathe, the pain was building so much.

“I didn’t do it, stupid,” he bit out in disgust. “You did it to yourself when you let that dirty coyote knot you. If I’d known you like fucking dogs, slut, I would have brought mine over for a visit.”

Isabelle shook her head, let herself fall against the wall and dragged back on his hold again as she tried trip them both.

He laughed at her efforts.

“Maybe if you’re a good girl the men waiting for you outside will let me fuck you before they start experimenting on you. Like I didn’t know who the hell they were,” he snorted. “Only Council scientists pay that kind of money for a Breed’s fuck, and they only pay that much for a special kind of fuck.” He threw a tight, cold smile over his shoulder. “A mate. Are you his mate, sugar?”

Malachi would kill him.

Holden wouldn’t make it out of the hotel . . .

The thought was heralded by a howl that seemed to echo through the stairwell, sharp and piercing, filled with rage and the promise of retribution.

Malachi was pissed now.

Isabelle collapsed on the step as Holden paused. “I told you,” she breathed out weakly. “He’s not going to let you leave this hotel with me. Let me go, it will give you a head start. It’s the only chance you have.”

“Move your ass.” He jerked at her wrists again, his hold tightening as he tried to move faster down the stairs while Isabelle fought to slow him down.

It seemed to go on forever, but she knew with every step and every level, she knew they were getting closer to the ground floor.

“How did you know?” she whispered painfully as the weight came down too heavy on her ankle and she nearly fell again. “How did anyone know that I was his mate?”

He rounded on her, pushing her back into the wall, his hand wrapped around her throat as he glared down at her. “I would have worshipped you,” he sneered in her face. “I would have given you anything you wanted, but you fucked that Breed instead. Fucked him and let him knot you like a fucking animal.”

“How did you know?” she asked again, fighting to center her thoughts. There was no way she was going to get out of this if she didn’t find a way to fight past the mind-numbing pain that rolled through her in debilitating waves.

“Stupid,” he muttered, his voice lowering to disgust again. “Mating heat has a scent. They still have some Breeds who know their place and they’re always searching for that scent. Malachi Morgan just so happened to have gotten careless with his mate. And now, she’s gone bye bye,” he laughed as he dragged her back to her feet.

“I don’t think so.”

Isabelle looked over Holden’s shoulder as he froze.

The voice was unfamiliar, lazy, almost amused.

Holden jerked around, his hand going to his belt for the weapon Isabelle had managed to knock out of his hand as he shot Ashley. He hadn’t been able to retrieve it.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

Laughter echoed through the stairwell as Isabelle stared down at the strange sight in bemusement.

He had to be a Breed. A tiger Breed of some sort if the two stripes extending parallel across his face were any indication.

“Did you lose your gun, little man?” the stranger drawled as he reach behind his back and drew his own out. “That’s okay, I have mine.”

Holden’s jaw clenched. His fingers wrapped in her hair and as he began to turn to throw Isabelle down the stairs, a shot rang out.

Blood splattered.

Isabelle stood carefully still, her hands now free and pressed flat against the wall as she let her gaze travel to where Holden was sprawled out on the steps at her feet.

His blue eyes were sightless, lifeless as he stared up in blank horror. The side of his head looked as though it had been peeled back, exposing raw meat and the bare white covering of his skull.

He had never been handsome, Isabelle thought, but he looked better dead than alive.

“You okay?”

Her head jerked around.

Somehow, she must have slid down the wall because the stranger was hunkered in front of her as the sound of voices, loud and enraged could be heard above as the pounding of feet moved down the stairs.

Her eyes dropped to the weapon that dangled casually from his fingers as he rested his wrist on his bent knee.

“Are you going to kill me?” She lifted her gaze again and met the emerald brilliance of his. There was an almost feverish glow to them, as though he were ill and in pain.

“No, I’m not going to kill you,” he said gently, the look in his gaze filled with sadness.

The voices were getting closer. She swore she could hear her name being screamed from above.

“Malachi’s coming,” she told him, though she wasn’t certain if it were a warning.

“Yes, he’s coming.” He nodded, his gaze somber. “When he’s come down from the adrenaline rush, tell him I said our debt is clear now. He saved my life, I saved his mate.”

“You tell him.”

“Isabelle!” Malachi was screaming her name.

As the stranger jumped back, Malachi vaulted over the side of the upper steps as Emma, Rule and Stygian raced down the steps.

He came to a crouch, a vicious snarl tearing past his throat as he faced the other man, his body braced protectively in front of her.

“Easy there, old boy,” the stranger murmured as Malachi growled low in his throat. “Let’s not go feral, hmm?”

“What the hell are you doing here, Gideon?” Malachi snarled furiously.

Gideon. Dark blond hair striped with the prettiest golden brown streaks. It wasn’t colored, it was natural. Emerald green eyes glittered with pain and sadness, but his stance was relaxed, his weapon held down.

Malachi’s gaze dropped to Holden’s body then, sprawled to the side, half his head blown away.

Gideon chuckled. “He thought he was going to sell her to a team of Council soldiers that guessed she was your mate.” Gideon shrugged. “They caught the scent of her last night as they passed your room. You should start using candles when in public, it hides your scent.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Malachi snapped as he tried to figure out whose team Gideon was on. When he had disappeared just after leaving the group Malachi had been a part of, rumor had been that he was pure Council. But, he hadn’t been seen again and until now, Malachi hadn’t known if he was alive or dead.

“You do that,” Gideon nodded. “Until then, pass a message along for me, would you?”

“What message?” Gideon always had a reason for everything he did and an agenda that only he understood.

“Tell Lawe Justice this one was for you alone, not Breeds as a whole or because I’m getting soft or weak. I owe you, even more than this could repay.” He nodded to Isabelle.

Malachi had never felt that Gideon owed him shit, but he was more than willing to accept the debt now.

“What does Lawe have to do with this?” Malachi snapped.

“Because, Gideon’s the Breed we’re searching for, Malachi,” Rule answered for him. “We didn’t want you dragged in the middle, so we didn’t inform you of that fact.”

Gideon’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t know they were searching for me?”

“I didn’t know,” Malachi agreed. “But it doesn’t change anything, Gideon. I took a vow to the Bureau. I won’t break it.”

“And I don’t expect you to.” Gideon nodded. “But after this, Malachi, take your woman from this place. Take her and leave, otherwise, both of you will get drawn in the middle of this battle. And it’s a battle I intend to win.”

“Gideon.” Malachi tried to stop him from running.

Before Malachi could do more than say his name, the other Breed was gone. Just that fast he vaulted over the side of the stairs, made the jump to six landings below, a feat even Malachi wouldn’t have wanted to try, and he was gone.

That didn’t mean Rule wasn’t trying like hell to catch him.

He and Stygian were down the stairs and running hard and fast, but if Malachi knew the other Breed, and he did, then he wouldn’t be caught. Not this time. Not until Gideon was ready.

With the danger to his mate disappearing Malachi twisted around quickly and caught her against his chest. He may have been confronting Gideon, but every sense he possessed had been locked on his mate.

There had been no scent of internal bleeding. She was in pain, but not the kind of pain that indicated broken bones. She had been mauled, frightened and hurt, but she was safe.

“Never again,” he whispered at her ear as he held her as close to his chest as he dared. “Never again, Isabelle.”

“Damned right. Next time, I’ll have my own gun.” Then she pushed back enough to stare up at him, her lips trembling as tears welled in her eyes and flowed to her cheeks. “Ashley?” she whispered.

Malachi reach up and touched her cheek. “We don’t know yet. The helijet was lifting off from outside town as we headed out of the room.” He nodded to Emma as she sat on the step silently, her expression hard and distant. “We’ll know something soon though.”

“He came in on us.” She shook her head in confusion. “I don’t know how he got the room key. Ashley and Emma were talking about the spa. We are laughing at Em because she won’t get her hair highlighted, then he was just there. He had the door unlocked and he shot Ashley as she jumped for him.”

She bit her lip, the memory of it obviously so painful that her tears were falling faster now.

“Come on.” Lifting her in his arms he cradled her against his chest as Emma stood more slowly, her shoulders slumped, her expression tight with grief.

“She always said she would die young,” Emma whispered roughly, the tears she couldn’t shed rasping in her throat. “The little bitch. Now, she’s going to make the coya cry and Del-Rey is going to get all arrogant and protective, and I . . .” She broke off as a sob escaped. “I won’t know how to survive without Ashley,” she whispered before turning to run back up the stairs.

Malachi followed more slowly.

Emma was young, and many of the things she had scented or sensed she had no idea what they meant. Malachi did. Ashley was alive, and she was fighting to stay that way, that was all they could ask for.

His arms tightened around his mate as she settled her head on his chest and wrapped her arms tight around his neck.

“Who is Gideon?” she asked, refusing to let herself believe that anything could possibly happen to take Ashley out of their world. She was too vital, too much a part of the lives of those she loved, and those who loved her.

“A part of the past,” he answered her softly, and Isabelle had a feeling the past was where Gideon probably should have stayed.

“Then why is he here now?”

To that, Malachi grimaced. “To open old wounds,” he said with an edge of regret. “That’s the only reason he’s here, Isabelle. That’s the only reason any of us came here. To open old wounds.”

She laid her head back on his chest as Emma opened the stairwell door to the floor their rooms were on.

“We’ll stay in your room,” he told her as the other girl headed for the door of the room Isabelle had stayed in her first night.

Carrying her in, he didn’t lay her on the bed, he didn’t sit her in a chair alone. As Emma closed the door behind them rather than joining them, Malachi sank into one of the chairs, holding her close, his face buried against her neck.

“I would have died without you,” he suddenly whispered, the muscles of his arms contracting as he fought not to hold her too close. As he fought to not pull her into his skin, to drag her straight down to the depths of his soul.

“Don’t say that.” Holding on to him, Isabelle knew it was true, just as she knew she would give her life for him, she knew without him, her life would lose hope.

It had only been days since her eyes had met his across that bar. Less than forty-eight hours, yet just as her grandfather had once warned her, when she found her true love she would know it in an instant, and she would face death to hold on to it.

She was holding on tight.

“Don’t leave me,” she needed him. She needed his touch, his kiss, but more than anything, she needed the knowledge that nothing, no one could reach out to nearly separate them again.

Rising to his feet and stepping to the bed Malachi laid her down gently before stretching out beside her and taking her in his arms in again.

Simply to hold her.

“Our doctors were already flying in for our tests, so they’re likely already with Ashley,” he told her as she lay as close to him as clothes would allow. “The mating heat was different with us than with others, and our scientists have been working desperately to figure out what causes it and how to ease it.”

Isabelle shook her head. “I don’t want to know.” And she didn’t. Staring up at him, feeling the warmth of him, allowing herself to believe that she was really here with him, that she was really in his arms rather than facing the fate Holden would have sent her to. “I don’t want to know, Malachi. I waited for you. All these years I watched and I waited, knowing, somehow, that what we would have would be different. That it would be worth the lonely nights and the fears that I had missed you somewhere.” She gave a brief shake of her head. “I don’t want to lose that.”

What had drawn them together, the mating heat, as they called it. Was it really so different, so unique from what it was with those who didn’t have Breed genetics? Or was it merely an amplified form that took out the process of waiting, denying, or turning away out of fear as many people did? As technology seemed to advance, so did the fears and the roadblocks that stood against love.

“I don’t want to lose a second of what we are, Malachi,” she told him as his head lowered, as his lips touched hers. “Not even a second.”

Epilogue

So many times I only dreamed you were there.

Then the dream came true . . .

The coyote pack alpha, Del-Rey Delgado, and his coya Anya stood still and silent in the hospital waiting room. Joining them were more than thirty coyote Breeds as they ensured a heavy, protective barrier was kept between the couple and the toddler the alpha carried. A blond-haired, brown-eyed version of him in miniature form.

The coya had finally dried her tears, but her face was pale, her eyes red-rimmed. Every Breed in the waiting room pulsed with rage and helpless fury. There was no one to strike out at. No one to kill for their coya’s pain and for the unpardonable sin of daring to silence Ashley Truing’s laughter, her quick smile, or the hope she represented for every coyote Breed living who dared to oppose the Council. She was their best and their brightest, in many ways. She always walked where angels feared to tread, swearing that she wanted to live life rather than fight it.

Del-Rey looked around the room to take stock of the number that had joined them so far. They were still arriving, flying in from all over the world to be there just in case they were needed.

Surprisingly, his second-in-command, Brim, was there as well. Standing alone and silent in the corner of the room, his arms crossed over his chest, a scowl settled in deep on his expression. He felt responsible, Del-Rey guessed. Brim always took more upon himself than he should, especially where the girls were concerned.

“When Ashley was two, she developed a fever the doctors couldn’t seem to bring down,” Anya whispered as she stood beside him. Sitting on the couch next to her, Emma stared at the floor. “Do you remember that fever, Emma?”

Emma nodded.

“She came out of it, didn’t she? When everyone said she wouldn’t. She’s a fighter. Ashley wants to live, she wants to shop and do her nails and her hair. She loves it.”

Emma’s head jerked up. “No, she enjoys it,” her voice rasped. “She loves you, and the alpha, and me and Sharone and Marcy and Kate. But she’s convinced she’ll die young and the world won’t miss one insignificant Coyote Breed.” Emma’s shoulders shook with silent sobs once more as Anya turned to Del-Rey, a free arm wrapping around her to drag her against him.

The air of grief that hung over the waiting room was a silent testament to the love they all had for the too tiny, too fragile young woman who acted as though she were made of titanium rather than flesh and bone.

Looking over Anya’s head to his brother, his second-in-command once again, Del-Rey watched as Brim lifted his head to stare at the ceiling, blinking quickly before lowering it to stare at the floor once again.

Ashley was everyone’s kid sister, and Brim took that responsibility seriously. He teased, chided and often shook his head over the girl’s antics, but it was invariably Brim that convinced Del-Rey to give Ashley her spa days when she was being punished for endangering herself, or to ease up on her and let her have a new pair of shoes when she forgot to complete some chore in the Citadel, the lone tower of a mountain overlooking Haven that the coyote Breeds controlled.

And now, it was Brim bearing the brunt of the guilt for allowing her to travel to Window Rock when she pleaded so prettily to visit friends there.

It wasn’t as though she would be the lone Breed there. Felines and Wolf Breeds had established minor bases there at the invitation of the Navajo Nation once their genetic ties were revealed. It wasn’t as safe as The Citadel, Haven or Sanctuary, but it was safer than other locations she could have requested to go to.

Brim had approved the trip, and now Ashley lay fighting for her life because of her friendship and attempts to protect the niece of the Navajo chief.

Shifting the weight of his son on his shoulder, Del-Rey handed him over to his guardian, Sharone, as a newcomer entered.

“Del-Rey.” Dane Vanderale, heir to the Vanderale Legacy and the first known naturally conceived Breed hybrid stepped to him.

“Dane.” They didn’t shake hands, rather as the two men reach out, they gripped each others’ forearms in camaraderie.

“Is there anything we can do?” The Johannesburg accent was thicker than normal, a clear sign that Dane was furious.

Del-Rey shook his head heavily. “The man that did this is dead. I can think of nothing else that could be done unless you’re a miracle worker and you can wave your hand over that wound and fix it.”

Dane gripped his shoulder. “How about a far lesser gift. My men tracked down the two soldiers who were there to take Malachi’s mate. They hadn’t reported the mating yet, and they’ll be endangering no other mate.”

The savage gleam that flashed in his green eyes assured Del-Rey that those soldiers weren’t wasting valuable oxygen any longer either.

“Did you identify them?” Del-Rey asked.

Dane grimaced at the question, his voice lowering. “They were coyote, Del. Council held. They had never been a part of Citadel.”

That was a small comfort at best.

Wiping his hands over his face he turned to his mate.

Anya was there, her arms going around his waist as he pulled her to his side.

In that moment, Doctors Katya Sobolov and Nikki Armani stepped into the waiting area. More than thirty Breeds turned to them, automatically shifting and parting to allow their alpha and his coya to meet them.

“Doctors.” Del-Rey nodded grimly.

“She’s still alive,” Katya stated, her expression drawn and exhausted after the hours spent in surgery.

“But?” Del-Rey injected. He swore he could feel it coming.

Katya looked away from a moment, obviously battling her emotions as the scent of grief touched his senses and clenched his chest.

“But, the next twenty-four hours will be the most difficult for her,” she said somberly. “For all her bravado and strength, Ashley is too delicate for such a severe wound. She lost a lot of blood, Del-Rey.” Her voice became an emotional rasp. “The bullet was difficult to extract, and it did a lot of damage going in.” Her breathing hitched.

“Katya, your emotions,” Nikki reminded her coolly before turning to the wolf Breed alpha that had flown in with them. “Wolfe, Katya needs something hot and sweet to drink. She’s tired.”

Wolfe, with his mate, Hope, moved to the young doctor, leading her from the waiting room gently as Nikki turned to the coyotes.

“I’ve seen many of you survive worse wounds,” she stated, her voice resonating with strength and hope. “I’ve seen much, much weaker women survive worse. Right now, her survival depends upon her and her will to live. And I know Ashley, trust me, she does not want her sisters spending the slush fund her alpha set aside for their nails and clothes.”

There was a general round of husky chuckles until Brim pushed through the crowd and left the waiting area. The mood turned grim once again.

“I don’t want to risk transferring her to Haven or the Citadel until tomorrow morning. At that time, I’ll need a medi-jet loaded with this equipment and waiting on the hospital’s flight pad.” She handed Del-Rey her list. “Contact Haven and your people at the Citadel. There are some supplies that only the Citadel has that we’ll need for transport.”

Ashley wasn’t just going to shake this off, that was the message the doctor was giving them.

Del-Rey took the list before handing it to the coyote administrator next to him. “Take care of it.”

The Breed nodded briskly before moving off.

“Katya’s emotions break after surgery,” Nikki sighed. “She’s pure hell in that operating room. As cool and precise as any surgeon I’ve ever laid my eyes on. But she breaks while she’s cleaning up. I’ve never seen her break like this though.”

“She grew up with Ashley,” Del-Rey sighed. “Sometimes, it’s hard to believe they’re so close in age.”

Nikki nodded in agreement. “I believe she’s going to make it, Del-Rey,” she told him softly. “She’s a fighter and she’s stubborn as hell. That’s all she needs.”

It was the only hope she could offer them.

Del-Rey turned to the coyotes gathered behind him. “We take her home in the morning,” he announced. “Until then, any Breed that lashes out, becomes involved in a physical or verbal altercation with any human or other Breed, or in any way detracts from Ashley’s protection or our ability to protect her, will answer to me. Is that clear?”

Coyote Breeds could often be more hotheaded than the other species who were taught patience and logic over physical recklessness.

“It’s clear, Del.” One of the team alphas nodded firmly. “And if anyone needs reminding, then team alphas will take care of it.”

Pride surged through Del-Rey. This was a vast improvement on months past when he’d been forced to have several enforcers cool their heels in a human jail cell for starting a bar fight. The coyotes were growing, adapting, they were maturing, and the proof of it was in the face of every coyote Breed there.

“You have a hell of a pack, Del-Rey,” Dane’s voice echoed with the respect Del-Rey and his men had fought to attain. “If you need anything, anything at all.” Dane’s look became more intent, somber. “The Vanderales are here for you. Welcome to the family.”

This time, it was a handshake, and one Del-Rey hadn’t been expecting. Not that he showed it. Inclining his head with calm acceptance, his handshake was firm, confident.

Vanderale’s acceptance was the final hurdle to ensuring the survival of his people. Vanderale Enterprises “gifted” Haven and Sanctuary with all their military toys and were essential contacts to many of the military security contracts that were lining the wolf and feline Breed coffers. Del-Rey was eager to join the family, to gain for his people what the wolf and feline Breeds were kind enough to share with the coyotes. They wanted their own.

Breathing in deeply he turned and let his gaze flicker to the far hall and the wing he knew they were keeping Ashley in. Brim was with her, and that was the best protection she could have, but Del-Rey ached to see the young woman he had come to call “sister.”

Turning to where Malachi and his mate sat on one of the far couches, Del-Rey made his way to them. Sadly, the scent of heat was, for the moment, cool. Isabelle’s bruising and injuries had been such that it didn’t endanger her life, but it had endangered Malachi’s ability to enjoy his mate until she healed. But the coyote seemed content to take care of her. Like all male Breed mates, his devotion to her was clearly apparent.

Breeds didn’t throw away what human men took for granted. Their mates were everything to them, and Malachi was no different.

They rose to their feet.

“I’m sorry, Del-Rey,” Isabelle whispered, the proof of the tears she had been shedding showing in her red-rimmed eyes. “None of us expected Holden to do something like this.”

Del-Rey shook his head. “No fault lies at your feet,” he swore to her. He glanced at Isabelle and the exhaustion and bruises on her face. “Take your mate to the hotel, Malachi, so she can rest. There’s nothing more that can be done here. We’ll head home first thing in the morning.”

“I’ll take you up on that, Alpha Delgado,” Malachi stated. “And once we’ve arrived at the Citadel, we need to talk. There’s far more interesting information here than any of us imagined.”

Del-Rey’s brow lifted. More information? And from the sounds of it, something that didn’t want to wait.

“Tomorrow evening,” Del-Rey promised them. “Until then, get some sleep.”

As they moved away Del-Rey sat down on a nearby couch and watched as his men began filtering from the waiting room, moving to find their hotels, a meal or a drink. He only prayed they managed to stay out of trouble.

He added that prayer to another. The prayer that Ashley was soon her bright and vivacious self again. Because if anything happened to her, Del-Rey feared that the war between Breeds and the remaining Council would only heat up further. Ashley was well loved by all the packs and prides, considered a little sister, a sometimes irritant, and represented all their dreams of a future. Because Ashley laughed. She played. She pulled pranks. But even more, Ashley reminded them all of what they wanted their children to be.

Full of fun and full of life.

Losing her could very well tip the balance and change the silent war with the Council to one that the world would clearly see in the color of blood.

And that was something none of them could afford.

TWO DAYS LATER

Malachi let his lips coast over the bruising of his mate’s face as she lay before him, naked, aroused. The past two days had been free of the mating heat, the injuries sustained to her body evidently severe enough that it had ameliorated the effects of the heat.

The glands beneath his tongue hadn’t swelled, the hormone absent until he’d awakened minutes earlier. Now, they were fully swollen, his cock engorged and throbbing, hunger pounding through his system and carrying with it the heightened hunger that affected Breeds and their mates during mating heat.

He wasn’t the only one affected. His mate was moving against him, her thighs clasping one of his, the wet heat of her pussy rubbing against it. The swollen bud of her clit was a heated little rasp against his thigh as her sharp little nails bit into his shoulders.

His lips roamed along her jaw then to her lips, teasing them both with the need for the taste of the passion burning between them.

“You’re killing me,” she whispered, arching to him, her hard little nipples burning into his chest as he brushed his lips over hers.

“I’ve missed you, mate.”

The hormone hadn’t tormented them, but his need for her had still been there, keeping him semi-aroused and all too aware of her naked body against him each night.

He brushed his lips against hers again, groaning as she nipped at them, daring him to take her kiss as she needed. Slanting his head he took a hungry taste of her, still holding back, returning for another as she moaned beneath him, her nails rasping down his back.

The pinprick of sensation was his undoing. Added to the hunger raging brutally between them Malachi parted his lips against hers, parting hers, his tongue forging inside as she took it with a hungry little feminine growl of her own.

Isabelle whimpered at the pleasure, twisting against him, the rasp of her nipples against his chest adding to the burning hunger attacking the rest of her body.

Clamping her lips around his tongue as it thrust in and out of her mouth, she fought for every taste of the mating hormone spilling from his tongue. That unique, subtle, addictive quality of the mating heat pushing the hunger pounding through her that much higher.

She needed him.

“Now,” she cried out as he pulled back to steal of the roughened, hungry kisses to her lips only before he turned his head to taste her jaw, to rasp his teeth against her neck. “Don’t wait, Malachi. I need you.”

He needed her just as desperately.

Isabelle spread her thighs as he moved, eagerly clasping his hips with her knees as he settled between them, the heavy width of his cock pressing between the swollen folds of her pussy.

The first, hard spurt of the pre-seminal fluid heated the entrance, the muscles flexing, milking against the overly wide crest as it began to push inside her.

The second spurt preceded the first, shallow thrust that buried the crest inside the burning depths of her sex. Pulling back, pushing inside once again, another spurt eased the natural, clenching tightness of her muscles further inside.

Each spurt of fluid was followed by a deeper thrust, a sensual pleasure-pain that had her crying out, arching closer as she ached for more, ached to feel his plunging inside her, taking her with the hungry desperation burning through both of them.

Coming over her, the fingers of one hand clenched on her hip as he gave a heavy groan and surged in to the hilt. That first deep, exciting full thrust unlocked the control he’d been carefully keeping.

His lips buried in the curve of her neck as he began moving, thrusting powerfully inside her, taking her to the base of his cock with every dip of his hips as Isabelle opened her thighs wider to take him even deeper. Her knees gripped his hips, her hips angling higher, cries escaping her throat as she felt pleasure rising fast and hard. There was no holding it back. There was no stopping this first, hungry need burning through them.

It felt as though it had been forever since she’d taken him. A lifetime since he had been able to hold her as she needed. Her orgasm rose, pushing higher through her senses, flooding them both with the sensations racing through them.

His thrusts became harder, faster. Each stroke rasping and caressing nerve endings so violently sensitive there was no way she could have held back longer.

Their release rushed over them. Like a firestorm out of control and exploding to consume everything in its wake. Ecstasy was a blaze that filled her mind, her senses, exploding through every cell of her body as she felt the first hard spurt of his release and the heavy swelling that stretched her, burned her and sent the catastrophic surge of pure rapture tearing through her.

With his teeth locked at the base of her neck Malachi shuddered with each spurt of his own release. The pulse of semen was another caress, another explosion burning through her.

As it eased, they were left exhausted, their breathing harsh in the dim silence of the room as Isabelle heard her own, tiny whimpers escaping her throat at each renewed pulse of incredible sensation caused by the swelling that throbbed against once hidden nerve endings.

Could she live without this, without him?

She’d waited too long, watched the nights for too many years, and dreamed too deeply of having that something, that emotion so unknown that her restlessness had tormented her.

She didn’t want to live without him now.

Drowsy, ready to slip back into sleep, Isabelle moaned in loss as she felt the swelling recede and heard Malachi’s pleasured groan as he slipped from her and collapsed to the bed beside her.

He pulled her against him, the warmth of his body shielding her, wrapping around her as she sighed at the perfect ending to the hunger that had flared so bright and hot. His hand smoothed along her shoulder, pushing back the damp ends of her hair as he kissed her temple gently.

“Del-Rey called while you were sleeping,” he said, his voice still darker, deeper from the release they had just shared.

“Ashley?” Fear suddenly intruded, her gaze lifting to his at the thought of the fight her friend had gone through to simply live.

They had already nearly lost her twice. The wolf and coyote Breed doctors had fought desperately to keep her with them. They had brought her back each time, then sat sobbing with the alpha females of the packs and prides as they crashed from the fear and desperation each battle had wrought.

“She woke a few hours ago,” he told her. “She was asking for you.” He held her still as she started to rise. “Dr. Sobolov asked that we wait till afternoon to come in and see her. She’s still weak and tires easily. Her transfer back to the Citadel has been delayed again. Del-Rey doesn’t want to risk a setback or any complications. He’s waiting until she’s well enough to travel without the machines helping her to live.”

“She’s going to be okay?” she whispered, desperate, the guilt of her friend’s injuries flaying her with a harsh lash.

“She’s going to be okay.” The edge of relief in his voice reassured her now. “Her recovery won’t happen overnight, and as we learned with the feline alpha’s injuries when he took a bullet to the chest over a year ago, it can come with complications as they heal, but she is healing.”

Tears filled her eyes and slipped down her face despite her battle to hold them back. Malachi wiped them away with the edge of his thumb before laying a kiss at the corner of her lips.

“It wasn’t your fault, Isabelle,” he whispered, not for the first time. “None of it was your fault.”

“I should have told someone,” she cried as a sob tore from her. “I should have killed him myself. Something. Anything to have kept this from happening.”

Malachi shook his head. “Some things you can’t stop, baby. Ashley was running fast and hard toward an unlikely end. This way, it was contained and we were close enough to ensure she got the quickest medical care possible. She’s been so damned reckless over the past few months that her alpha has all but chained her to base whenever possible.”

Isabelle’s lips trembled. “She just wants to live, Malachi. She wants to experience so much, and she feels there’s so little time.”

“And she nearly cut that time incredibly short,” he sighed. “Maybe she’ll slow down now. Just a bit.”

Tucking her head against his shoulder he thanked God again that his mate was safe in his arms. Holden Mayhew had nearly taken her. He had nearly lost her to the depraved research the Council still hungered for.

“What now?” Isabelle asked. “Where do we go from here?”

She didn’t want to leave her family, or the Nation, he knew that. And he had no desire to take her from it.

“We already have a presence here, as well as a sub-base.” He shrugged. “I know Jonas has been looking for someone to head it. I’ve put in a request for the job.”

She sat up. Sudden, heated happiness filled his senses at the hope that brightened her eyes.

“We don’t have to leave?”

“Only when necessary,” he promised. “Only if the danger rises. But I have a feeling your family will ensure I have the help I need to protect you.”

He knew they would. She was a treasure to them, just as her sister was, and Malachi had found his own acceptance with them. Family, her father had told him. He was now a part of them.

“I love you, Malachi,” she whispered, bending to him, her hair falling around his face as she brushed her lips over his. “With all my being, I love you.”

“And I love you, Isabelle,” he swore. “You’re my breath of life. Always.”

“Always,” she breathed against his lips. “I love the sound of always, Malachi.”

Always.

The whispered promise of their hunger, their love and the dreams that had filled their lives.

It was always.

Content

Lora Leigh
Breeds -25
An Inconvenient Mate

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue