She was scheming. He had known Anya long enough to know when her brain was turning over a problem and working it out in a manner he was certain to disagree with.
“I have my own contacts.” She shrugged as she pulled his shirt from the floor and pushed her arms through the sleeves.
Why it gave him a surge of satisfaction to see her wrapping his clothing around her much smaller frame, he couldn’t say.
“You’ll not be making contacts, Anya,” he told her firmly. “I won’t have you risking your life in that manner. If there are any doctors left, then they aren’t ones we could trust anyway.”
“What about Dr. Armani?” She propped her hands on her hips as she stared at him, the light of battle waging in her eyes. “She’s human and she’s dedicated her life to the Breeds she cares for. What about the doctors that work under her? They could be in the general public, probably making a hell of a lot more money than they are here. But they’re here, and they’re loyal.”
“What about the two assistants—Breeds, Anya—who betrayed Sanctuary?” he asked her. “They drugged Dr. Morrey, nearly killed her, and were attempting to sell the secret of mating heat to a pharmaceutical and research facility that likely even now has doctors and scientists experimenting on Breeds to create a drug that controls us. Or, God forbid, something that can be used on humans. What about them?”
“What about Coyotes who have a code of honor?” she asked then. “Who have a soul when they were created to have none? What about them, Del-Rey?”
He frowned, knowing she was talking about his packs, but her point eluded him.
“What about them?”
“Others took a chance on you. There are good doctors, good scientists who have escaped the Council, who know the Coyote physiology and would give their eyeteeth to learn as much as they could within normal confines. To treat them, to heal them, and to protect their strengths and weaknesses. You find them, you choose the ones you have the best chance of trusting, and you use them. Keep up the way we’re going here at Base, and eventually, we’re going to lose our people because Dr. Armani can’t treat them properly.”
“Or we’ll lose them because we’re betrayed by the very people we’ve brought in to treat us,” he bit out. “That’s not acceptable to me, Anya. Dr. Armani will figure this out in time.”
“If Nikki lives to be three hundred, she won’t figure out the Wolves, let along the Coyotes,” she argued back. “I have the contacts, Del-Rey. I can find acceptable candidates.”
“No.”
She gaped back at him. His expression had shifted from lazy satisfaction to full, dominant refusal.
“What do you mean ‘no’? This isn’t a no equation. It’s something we have no choice but to consider.”
“I’ve made it a no equation,” he informed her arrogantly. “The risks are unacceptable.”
“We need to discuss this, Del-Rey,” she told him carefully. “You can’t just brush the subject aside with an arrogant little refusal.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve done,” he told her as he turned and headed to the showers. “This isn’t up for debate, and it isn’t arguable. I won’t take that risk with my men or with you. Armani will learn enough.”
“And if we have children?” She threw out a question that had been haunting her. “Will a doctor that knows nothing about your unique genetics be good enough to treat our child if he’s wounded or sick? Will ‘good enough’ be enough for you then?”
He gave her a shuttered look before turning and jerking clean clothes from a dresser and striding into the shower room without an answer.
Anya bit off a curse, staring at the doorway and trying to figure this one out. She had seen over the months the complications that could arise in Haven, just with the Wolves and their unique DNA. Fevers from nowhere that Dr. Armani had to track down and find a way to treat. Wounds that were simple and should have been easily fixed that suddenly the Wolf genetics fought against. It was a crapshoot, Armani had told her, and the additional pressure of treating the Coyotes, a species just different enough to change all the rules, was driving the doctor to long hours and less and less sleep.
It couldn’t continue.
But it seemed that getting Del-Rey to understand the problems they were facing wasn’t going to be easy either.
CHAPTER 18
“You asked to see me, Coya?” Brim stepped into Anya’s office, formerly her bedroom, three days later, his expression bland, his blue gray gaze quizzical.
Anya stood to the side of her desk and watched the Breed move with lethal grace into the room. Anyone daring to challenge this man could be in for a world of hurt, and she knew it.
She considered the best way to approach the problem she was facing.
“I’d like to apologize, Coya,” he suddenly said.
Anya blinked back at him in surprise.
“For what?”
“You could have told Del-Rey that I had allowed Sofia into his room while he was healing. We would have fought. Fighting the alpha isn’t always wise.” His lips quirked as though amused by some thought.
She inhaled slowly. “Crying to Del-Rey would have accomplished very little in a meaningful way,” she finally said. “This is something you and I need to discuss.”
Arrogance was a natural part of him, and Anya was smart enough, intuitive enough, to know that, coya or not, she wouldn’t be ordering him to do anything.
“I agree.” Brim nodded. “It’s nothing you have to worry about happening again. I promise you.”
She tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes on him. “Why did it happen to begin with?”
His lips quirked. “Something or someone needed to piss you off enough to take what was yours. I convinced Del-Rey to give her asylum to achieve that end.”
Surprise, surprise. Another Coyote Breed manipulating her. She was going to get pissed off over this soon.
“Brim, I would hate to ever have to consider you my enemy,” she finally said quietly, staring back at him with somber determination. “But manipulate me again, in any matter, and that’s the path we’ll take. Do we understand each other?”
A hint of surprise filled his eyes. “You’re not going to throw anything at me then?”