He turned to Nikki, staring back at her as though he could will her to give him the truth.
She shook her head, her somber expression giving him more to worry about than to find comfort in.
“You’re making a mistake,” she sighed. “But, with Breed males, I’ve learned, all you can do is let them beat their head against a wall. When it hurts enough or the blood gets thick enough, they stop.” She shrugged.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you’re just as hardheaded as the rest of them.” She glanced to the door then. “She’s not as easy to manipulate as you think she is. And manipulating her is only going to hurt you worse. There.” She threw him a bright smile. “The advice was free. Do you need anything while you’re here? A shot of common sense perhaps?”
He clenched his teeth before turning on his heel, stalking from the examination room and moving to catch up with his coya.
She strode, shoulders straight, head high, pride draping her like an exquisite cloak as she moved through the underground steel-and-reinforced-concrete corridors to the ground level.
There was no dust here as there was at Base. It was brightly lit, functional, yet still there were areas of greenery built into the walls with growth lights. A small, miniature orange tree grew in one hallway; the controlled atmospheric settings around it kept it healthy and in its natural growth cycle.
Vines grew along one wall. There were glassed-in sunrooms with a complicated system of mirrors that opened along a wide tunnel to allow the sun’s rays inside. Unlike the mountain facility that housed the communications that the labs were networked into, Dr. Armani’s medical facility was warm, friendly. He could understand why Anya would want to visit. There were many things here that Base lacked.
But this wasn’t a military facility, he told himself. Coyotes didn’t care about a little dust and dirt, a few inconveniences. They had the bar, the kitchen, the television. Del-Rey had his mate.
His mate was human.
He nearly paused. When other Coyotes mated, their mates would in all probability be human as well. He pushed through the exit doors just behind Anya and her security detail, his frown darkening.
Dammit, he didn’t trust humans. He trusted Anya and Armani and that was pretty much the extent of it. He was wary even with the lupina, Hope, and the Felines’ prima, Merinus.
He didn’t like humans and he didn’t want them in his base. Except his coya.
Yeah, that was going to go over well.
Fuck!
He could feel it working through him now, the way that woman messed with his mind, made him think, made him want to give her anything and everything she desired.
He’d cross the bridge of the human mate problem when he had to, he decided. Until then, he was faced with another, very intriguing problem: figuring out exactly what his mate was up to. Because he had no doubt she was up to something.
Anya moved into the bedroom ahead of Del-Rey as he opened the door and stood back for her to enter. Sharone, Emma and Ashley had been completely silent during the heli-jet ride back to Base. They had sat across from Anya and Del-Rey, and stared over his shoulder like good little military-trained Coyote soldiers.
Del-Rey hadn’t been happy about it; she could tell. If she hadn’t been so upset, she would have been amused.
She heard the door close behind her as she pulled the jacket he had forced on her off her shoulders and laid it over the chair at the side of the room, before turning to face him. She rubbed at the chill in her arms and fought to ignore the need for his touch.
She didn’t want the chaos that came from his touch right now; she needed to think, to plan. So much was happening, and so many things she had envisioned happening weren’t going to happen. And it hurt.
“What was so important that you had to talk to Armani as a snowstorm was brewing?” he finally growled as he pulled the comm link in his ear free and tossed it to the table at the side of the large bed.
“Evidently, something important.” She shrugged. “Girl stuff.”
She forced her arms down, forced herself to stop trying to rub the warmth into them once again. She’d been cold before; she was certain she would be again before it was all said and done.
“Would you like to tell me what you were doing in Armani’s office?” he asked her. “Or should I begin questioning your bodyguards?”
Her brows lifted as she forced a smile to her lips. “I asked them to schedule an appointment for me, Del-Rey. I’m certain they’ll be more than happy to tell you this themselves.”
There was no lie there. A careful manipulation of the facts, nothing more.
He crossed his arms over his wrinkled shirt. He looked good scruffy, she had to admit. And he did look fine in that tux the night of the party. Del-Rey was a man that could pull off any look he wanted to, even the harried, irritated male.
He finally breathed out roughly as he stared at her, his gaze caressing her from head to toe. “I can smell your hurt,” he said softly. “I can feel it. I’m sorry, Anya.”
She waited, but nothing more came.
“But not sorry enough to change your mind,” she said painfully.
His expression was heavy; his black eyes raged with emotions that she didn’t know how to interpret.
“Fine.” She shrugged. “What about our marriage ceremony? Or mating ceremony? We need to schedule that.”
She was going to crawl into a hole and strangle on the pain. She watched his expression shift, become closed. She believed it was the worst rejection she had ever faced.
“You’re not officially making me your coya,” she stated hoarsely.
Sofia’s words haunted her now. That it wasn’t official. That Anya was living in a dreamworld, and somehow the other woman had known it.
“Anya, the ceremony doesn’t matter.” He pushed his fingers through his hair as he glared at her. “You’re my mate. That makes you my coya. Period. It can’t get any more official than the mating.”
She stared back at him, forcing herself not to cry, not to scream in rage and agony.
Finally she nodded slowly. “Thank you for sparing me the preparations for the celebration that comes later. I’ll answer Lupina Gunnar and Prima Lyons’s inquiries into that in the morning and let them know that they needn’t prepare for it.”
Humiliation sang through her bloodstream. She wasn’t going to cry, she promised herself. She was too tired to cry, too hurt to want to do anything but curl into a miserable ball of shame.