Dammit, she was on base because he’d forced her here. No doubt the minute lockdown was reversed she’d run just as fast back to her cabin at Haven now that he was too weak to stop her. Her and those female Coyotes that followed her like faithful little puppies.
So where was she and why wasn’t she here waiting for him until then? He closed his eyes tiredly, aching at the loneliness that suddenly wrapped around him.
He remembered the impulse he had nearly given into to steal one last kiss before he jumped from the limo. If he had, he might not have been able to tear himself away.
Touching her was like a drug. Hell, it pumped a drug straight into his system, if one wanted to consider the mating hormone. She kept him hard and ready for her. She stayed in his thoughts, and lingered around him like a dream he couldn’t escape. One he didn’t want to escape unless he escaped in her arms.
Damn, he should have stolen that last kiss, he thought.
“You’re not going to believe this.”
His eyes opened as Brim stalked into the room, his expression a mask of disbelief but not of danger.
“Bet me,” Del-Rey said and yawned.
Brim moved to the monitor on the wall, picked up the remote and flipped it on.
“Security recordings,” he announced. “Watch this.”
Del-Rey leveled himself up and watched. And watched. A sense of triumph, of satisfaction, sizzled within him at the knowledge that the coya had taken her place.
From the moment she was rushed into Base, she took over like a little general. He could see her in the circle of Breeds, their backs turned to her as she quickly shed her dress and dressed in jeans.
She handled Communications and Security as though she had been born to it. Which, in essence, perhaps she had been. Her father had been a whiz at the labs. Rumor was, Petrov Kobrin as well as his deceased wife were geniuses in their field. One of the reasons Del-Rey had planned their escape so exactingly. And still he had been surprised that so many of them had escaped. Petrov almost had a sixth sense for escape attempts.
As he watched, he saw echoes of her father, saw the intelligence in her eyes, the composed features and the confidence she had seemed to have lost in the weeks after he kidnapped her.
She wasn’t a woman-child any longer. She was a full-grown woman and taking her place. Her voice snapped and Coyote Breeds came to attention. She didn’t harass or harangue; rather, her tone was filled with command.
That added to the fact that she was the coya, the alpha in charge when he was away, and she had done what even Brim had been unable to do—instilled a sense of discipline in them while he was away.
She wasn’t bitchy, she wasn’t confrontational; she was confident, assured. She knew what the hell was needed and she was putting it into effect.
And it made him hard. He was as stiff as a board, and he could feel the fever working inside him, the need that crashed into his system and came close to stealing his breath as he watched her. Those brilliant eyes cool and focused, her expression composed, an aura of command settling on her shoulders as it had in those labs when she ran the administration wing like a young general.
“Son of a bitch,” Del-Rey muttered.
“She knows Sofia’s here too. She has her barred from Command, Security and proprietary areas.”
Del-Rey lifted his head with a sense of foreboding.
“She knows Sofia was given asylum?”
“She knows.”
Did she throw her out? Had Emma or Ashley killed Sofia?
Admittedly, the woman he had once considered a friend was becoming an irritant with her determination to get back into his bed.
“Hell.” He leaned his head back on the pillows and stared up at the ceiling. “Where is Anya now?”
Hopefully far away from him, because if he saw her, if he smelled her, he was going to f**k her. It was that simple.
“Looks like she’s in Communications at the moment.” Something in Brim’s voice warned him.
Del-Rey lifted his head again.
“She seems to have several of your pack leaders in attendance over that issue we’ve trying to resolve with team participation.” Amusement filled his tone. “Our teams, one and two, are working like the good little puppies they are. The rest, it would appear, are being shifted and sorted as any good little general would shift and sort them. So, you going to go play with her?”
Del-Rey snorted. “I’m going to sleep. Let her play. She’s damned good at it while I’m on mission. Maybe I’ll get some rest this time.”
If she was running Base as he knew she could, then he could tell Jonas to shove mission status, and Del-Rey and Brim could take their place in training the Coyote Breed soldiers more effectively and getting them into enforcer status.
That was a priority he had left the other pack leaders in charge of. Unfortunately, they weren’t as well trained themselves as they could have been. They were killers, not investigators or interrogators. Making that switch wasn’t as easy as it could have been if Del-Rey and Brim had been on base to train them.
“She has a junior soldier working up a proposal to slip into city hall and collect the purses and articles left there as well as to investigate any items missing and conduct covert searches of leading city council members’ homes to detect if they have said missing articles. According to the memo just sent to me, the soldier expects to have a full proposal prepared by tomorrow afternoon.”
Del-Rey blinked up at the ceiling.
“Did you consider that angle?” he asked Brim then.
“I’m sure one of us would have soon,” Brim answered laconically.
Del-Rey wasn’t so certain.
He sighed as weariness pulled at him and his healing body demanded sleep.
“Get everything together. We’ll go over what she’s done in the past hours and see how it’s affecting Base in general. I want a full report from all pack leaders, and I want Sofia’s input on that intel that came in last night concerning the drugs we’re trying to track. Tell her to be prepared to give her report. Once I’m prepared, then I’ll see about facing my mate.”
He had no intention of being ill-prepared when they came face-to-face once again. He wanted her in his bed, and he wanted the upper hand with her. That wasn’t going to happen if he didn’t have his shit together.
If her feelings were hurt, he’d have to fix that.
Added to dealing with a mate he realized he truly didn’t know, he was also faced with the fact that, for some reason, she had been targeted at that attack tonight. It hadn’t been just any female. Carlen, the Wolf Breed soldier, had gone for Anya, just as the bartender had. The entire event had been a stage for a planned execution. And Del-Rey wanted to know why. Then he wanted to know by whom, because he wanted to know whose throat to rip out.