“Why?” Deliberately, her lips tight, she asked the one question he truly didn’t want to answer.
Hell.
His scent was already on her.
Shit! How did that happen?
Mating heat. It was impossible to hide from a Breed’s senses. Every Breed who came in contact with her would scent it and be warned by it.
Even he hadn’t detected it before he entered the room, but as Alpha Wolfe Gunnar, the Wolf Breed Alpha who had silently been awaiting their arrival, glanced between the two of them, his nostrils flaring, Stygian knew exactly what they were scenting.
“I hate Breeds!” she snarled.
God, just what he needed. The fury burning inside her was like throwing coal on a fire. It made the heat hotter, made it burn brighter, longer. And added to that now, was a resentment he couldn’t really blame her for.
Wolfe turned to Stygian, a quirk tugging at his lips.
“I have a feeling she doesn’t really hate Breeds,” he murmured in amusement.
And did his mate take to that comment easily?
“I used to like you.” She crossed her arms beneath her br**sts, cocked her hip and glared at the Alpha. “Where’s your wife, anyway? And why the hell did she let you out alone?”
Wolfe chuckled at the insult and gave his head a little shake.
“Liza?” Stygian drew her attention back to him before she could actually offend his Alpha. Which was exactly what she was considering. “What are you going to do once you walk out of here? Many of the Council’s Coyotes are indistinguishable from humans except by other Breeds. You’ll never know who they are. You’ll never know when they’ll strike. When they take you, they’ll use you to drain your father dry. He’ll lie. He’ll cheat. He’ll steal. He’ll do whatever it takes—give them whatever information they ask for, whatever he might think they want—to make them stop hurting you. And they will hurt you.”
Seeing the terror that flashed in her eyes was almost more than he could bear.
Dragging in a hard, deep breath, his gaze locked with hers, forcing himself to see and to feel the pain clenching at her.
She was his mate. From this moment on, his acceptance of who and what she was to him would determine the love that would continue to grow between them.
He could damage her fragile female pride now, and watch the embers of love he had glimpsed heating between them wither to nothing; or he could slowly build those flames into the inferno that would see them through the decades to come. But now this moment, and how he handled it, would either stoke the embers or damage the fire forever.
Near immortality could be hell, he imagined, tied to a woman whose hatred stemmed from her mate’s refusal to respect and to honor her.
“Why?” There were no tears, only stoicism and a sense of reluctant resignation. “Tell me why they want me.”
She knew she couldn’t fight the protection, but as far as that was concerned, she didn’t have to accept it gracefully.
Or gratefully.
“It’s not you they want,” he promised her, his gaze sliding to Terran before returning to his mate’s. “As we told you, they want Honor Roberts, Fawn Corrigan and the two Bengal Breeds who were part of one of the most immoral experiments known to have been conducted in the history of Breed genetics. Like us, they followed Gideon, one of those Bengals. Here to Window Rock. They won’t leave until they’ve captured them, or we have them under Breed protection, as there is no evidence to be found that they’re dead.” He glanced at Terran Martinez.
The Navajo’s legal representative working to block the Breeds’ request to access the Navajo Genetic Database never outright lied to the Breeds, but the hint of deception was always there.
“This has nothing to do with me.” Liza clenched her teeth over the words, the anger and hurt clearly sensed by all the Breeds there.
Especially by Stygian.
“You, Claire and Chelsea now have everything to do with this, Liza.” Terran breathed out roughly, accepting the truth himself when before, he had fought it. “I’m sorry. If there was something I could do to stop this—”
She gave a hard shake of her head, obviously refusing to argue with Terran for some reason. “I understand.”
But did she?
Stygian could see her face, her eyes.
Understanding wasn’t there.
But neither was resentment. At least, not toward Terran.
“If we had the information we needed, if we had the genetic profiles in the database that matched Gideon’s, then we could find him. Find him, and we’ll find the others,” Stygian informed her. “Find them all, Liza, and this all goes away.”
The scent of Terran’s anger was unmistakable, just as the scent of Liza’s rejection of the solution swirled through the room. The energy tightened his chest.
She agreed with Terran’s decision.
Son of a bitch. She was agreeing to give in, to end this fight for her independence rather than see the Navajo open that Genetic Database to the Breeds. What the hell did those records hold that caused the Navajo to be so frightened?
He hadn’t met a single member of the Navajo Council or citizen of Window Rock who didn’t feel the same way. Every member in a position to aid the Breeds’ cause would die before giving up the information. Even for a cause as worthy as Amber’s.
“We have a message out to every member who has donated to the Genetic Database,” Terran stated roughly, “requesting any member willing to release their genetic information come forward. None have. Until the Breed in question makes that request, the database cannot be opened to match the profile.”
And only the requesting Breed could receive the information.
They could have made the idea work if they had known of a single Breed born of Gideon’s dam. Unfortunately, to their knowledge, those littermates had all been destroyed long ago.
The suspicion that Gideon would take refuge with blood relations was high. He would know the Breeds would encounter a roadblock in tracking him through bloodlines, just as Gideon would know Jonas would use every means possible to do just that.
Liza’s lips parted in an irate, feminine grimace that was uniquely charming and yet filled with such emotional distress that it was all Stygian could do to hold back a snarl of fury.
Now he knew exactly why Breeds were so damned irritable when their mates were.
“I want to go home.” She inhaled wearily, and suddenly, Stygian could feel the exhaustion pulling at her.