TWO

Anya was where she was supposed to be, but things weren’t going as they had been planned. 

Nothing had gone as planned. When she returned to the labs that evening, within hours the attack came. 

There was no warning. There was no call. Security alarms were blaring, cell doors were opening, as safeguards were overrode and locks on the weapons rooms deactivated. 

She pushed the scientists behind a secure, hidden wall she had found the month before. They hadn’t been here long enough evidently to know all the secrets of the labs. Dr. Chernov had replaced the aging scientists ten years before and brought his protégée, Sobolova, a much younger female scientist, along with him. 

“Don’t leave. Don’t move,” she ordered them. “Stay here until you hear only silence.” 

Pale, shaking in shock, the two scientists did as they were told, huddling in the little room as Anya slid the secured door closed and rushed to the exits that led to the cold, desolate land aboveground. 

“Anya, get out of here.” Sofia Ivanova, one of the administrative assistants, gripped her arm and dragged her down another hall. “Go that way.” She pointed to the stairs. “They’re free. I’ll cover you.” 

Cover her? Anya stared behind her as doctors raced from labs with weapons drawn. They were firing on personnel? Shock rushed through her, tore through her mind. She knew those men and women. Knew them well. And they were firing on the personnel attempting to escape? 

“Run, damn you!” Sofia pushed her to the exit. “Get out of here before I have to shoot you.” 

Anya ran. As she ran, fury fed the fear and the shock coursing through her adrenaline-laced mind. This was the exact plan she had given Del-Rey for the rescue. Had he not trusted her? He had attacked only hours after her return, giving her no time to ensure her father and cousins weren’t here. 

No, it had to be something else, she decided in desperation as she raced up the stairs. She gripped an older woman’s arm, one of the secretaries, and pushed her ahead of her. 

“Hurry, Marie,” Anya urged the other woman as she sobbed and nearly fell. “We must hurry.” 

Other personnel were racing past them as Anya grabbed Marie’s arm and all but dragged her up the steps. Marie had children, grandchildren. A husband that was ill. She was needed. And besides, she always brought the Breeds cookies. She was kind and gentle. 

The door was broken from its hinges above, lying on its side as security forces were waving personnel through, urging them to hurry, to rush. Masks covered the guards’ faces to protect them from the cold. It was bitterly cold outside, and Marie had no jacket, no coat to wear. 

“Run for the barracks,” she told the other woman. “It will be warm there and safer. We’ll hide there.” 

She ran into the cold, aware of the gunfire, the yelling voices, the clash of forces. Then she was only aware of the hard arm that wrapped around her waist, jerked her against a broad chest, and the knife that lay at her throat. 

She could feel the cold blade pressing into her throat, pinching the flesh, within a breath of actually cutting her skin. 

“Kobrin, I have your daughter.” 

Loud, echoing through the valley, she knew that voice, knew the growl that sounded in it and felt the sob that tore from her throat. 

Betrayal. He had betrayed her. 

Agony tore through her with such pain she could only gasp at the reality of it. 

The sound of gunfire faded away. Personnel were no longer rushing through the doors. She could hear them at the entrance though, feel the tension that thickened the air. 

Del-Rey. She felt the first tear fall. Oh God, she had trusted him. She had trusted him so much. 

“We’re lowering our weapons,” her father called out. “Take the Breeds. Go. We’ll not stand in your way, but let Anya go.” 

She stared back at her father’s pale face, her cousins moving with him. All three of her cousins were on duty tonight. Her friends were here, those who would have helped her had she asked, but she hadn’t. 

A shot fired out and her first cousin fell, gripping his leg and screaming out in pain. Two more shots in rapid succession and the other two were left writhing on the ground. 

“Stop it!” she screamed, her hands clawing at the arm wrapped around her waist. “No. No. Don’t do this.” 

Fury and pain gripped her. She stared back at her father miserably, sobbing with the shame of what she had done. 

“Transport’s landing in sixty seconds, Boss.” That was the one Del-Rey called Brim. Sometimes he had called him Brimstone. 

They had all betrayed her. The small team of men she had become friends with, that she had trusted, that she had trusted her father and her cousins’ lives to. 

“How can you do this?” she sobbed. “Damn you, how can you do this?” 

“Anya, be still, child,” her father cried out. “Remember your control, daughter. Your cousins live.” 

“For now,” Del-Rey called back in a lazy drawl. “Tell me, Kobrin, you’ve been here since the first Breed was created, did you ever think to aid them?” 

“They live,” her father called back. “I have killed none. This was not a slaughterhouse.” 

Del-Rey chuckled behind her. “I think I will take your daughter with me, Kobrin. Insurance, I believe. You will not notify your Russian air force, you will notify no one of what has happened here for six hours. Or she will die. Are we understood?” 

“Leave her here,” her father called out desperately. “I swear to you no one will follow you.” 

Del-Rey laughed. “No, they won’t follow me. I have the prize of the Genetics Council’s young protégées. Your daughter, Kobrin. Don’t make me kill her.” 

Another shot fired and her father stumbled, falling as Anya screamed out for him. Her hands reached out, her fingers curling as she was lifted off her feet, and the sound of a heli-jet arriving could be heard. 

She screamed out for her father, clawed and slapped at the arm securing her. She kicked, she cursed, and she sobbed. 

Rage ate inside her as the betrayal that filled her burned into her mind. He had lied. From the first moment he had lied, and she would never forgive him. 

“Move out!” Del-Rey ordered as he raced into the back of the transport behind the other men that converged on the huge black craft. “Cavalier, get this bastard off the ground.” 

Cavalier. She had arranged his transport the year before. How many others were here? How many of those she had trusted had betrayed her? 

“Stop fighting me, Anya.” Del-Rey held her in place as he settled onto the metal bench, holding her secure, and the transport lifted off. 

She couldn’t see outside it. She had lost sight of her father. Lost sight of her family. 

“You bastard!” she screamed, struggling harder as her fists struck back at his face. “You son of a bitch. You fucking bastard. How could you? How could you?” 

“How could they?” he snarled, jerking her around to face him, his black eyes blazing in fury as his lips drew back from his lethal canines. “How dare they leave a child to arrange this? How dare they endanger you as they have? They have a bullet in their legs rather than their heads. 

They should be fucking thankful.” 

She slapped his face. Her hand slammed into his cheek with enough force to burn her palm before she slapped him again. Furious, enraged screams were strangled in her throat as he jerked her arms to her side, holding her in place as a growl tore from his throat. 

Then his lips pressed into hers. She tried to scream again, but he stole the opportunity to push his tongue past her lips. Spice filled her mouth. She swallowed and sobbed into the kiss, because it was good. Because his lips stroked over hers as she had always imagined they would. Because he tasted like warmth and passion, and because he had lied to her. He had betrayed her. And now he was stealing her mind. 

She was still sobbing as his head lifted and his arms locked her to his chest. His hand covered her head, holding her against him as her fists clenched and beat at his shoulders. 

She hated him. She hated him. Oh God, she hated him. And she loved him. And she felt as though her soul had been shredded. Her Coyote warrior had betrayed her. He had lied, over and over again, betrayed every vow he had made to her. He had stolen her innocence before he ever kissed her, and she wondered if she could ever forgive him for that. 

Del-Rey stared over her head at the Coyotes that now joined him. Breeds, their gazes flat and hard as they watched him. They were a threat—he could smell it in the air; his men could feel it as they surrounded him. 

“Mine,” he told them all, his voice cold, commanding. “This woman is mine.” 

The five female Coyotes stared back at him. They were the most dangerous, he thought, especially the oldest, Sharone. 

Her gaze flicked to Anya’s sobbing form. 

“You were wrong,” she told him flatly. “You should have left her family alone.” 

“They put her in danger. They are lucky they live.” 

“No, my friend.” She shook her head. “You will be lucky if you live. You betrayed her, and she won’t forget it. She won’t forgive it. We see the wisdom of what you did. The retribution we all felt was needed. But we stayed our hand, because she’s ours as well.” She indicated the Breeds that had come out of the underground facilities. “And what you have done this night, she will make certain you pay for.” 

Tender Anya? She would rage, she might hate for a while, but he had left her family alive. He would make her understand. 

“Stay out of my way,” he told her, and he meant all of them. “You swore loyalty to me and to my packs. Not to this girl. Where she’s concerned, you will not interfere.” 

“Then you will ensure she is not harmed, in any way,” Sharone told him fiercely. “We follow you, Alpha, but that one”—she nodded to Anya—“that one is one of us. Mistreat her, and you mistreat us all. Remember that.” 

Mistreat her? He had no intentions of mistreating her. Loving her perhaps. Easing her from her anger, definitely. Fucking her until they were both screaming with the pleasure, that was a given. 

She would forgive him. He would ensure it. After all, he hadn’t killed her father or her cousins. 

They lived. They would merely hurt. A lot. And it was pain they deserved. Much more than they had received. 

He smoothed his hand over Anya’s loose hair. Without the braid, it hung well past her shoulders. 

He cupped the back of her head to him and leaned his own against the wall of the transport. 

He was aware of his own men watching him, questioning his decision. They had questioned the wisdom of it when he first told them what he planned. He sent half his men six months ago to Colorado to secretly secure the caverns that overlooked Haven, the Wolf Breed compound. They were preparing things there for his arrival. Arriving in secrecy was paramount though. That meant ditching the transport and going in in small groups. That was easily handled. 

Anya might not be as easily controlled, just as he was finding his own response to her was by far less easy to handle than he had imagined. 

His head lowered again, his lips touching hers. His tongue was burning for the taste of her. 

Desperate for another of those hot, passionate kisses, the feel of her mouth sucking at him, drawing the tightness from his tongue. 

He was aware of the eyes that watched, yet he couldn’t draw back. 

“They should have protected you better, little one,” he whispered against her lush lips. “They well deserved my vengeance.” 

Her lashes lifted. Her eyes were dark with misery, with pain as an exhausted sob tore from her throat. 

“You betrayed me. You lied to me,” she cried. “I’ll never trust you again, Del-Rey. I can never trust you.” 

He stole the words. He couldn’t bear to hear them, couldn’t bear the pain or the anger in her eyes or her voice. He took her kiss. Her lips parted for him helplessly. He could feel her fighting the need, felt her giving into it even as she cried out in surrender. And even as he kissed her, he realized there was something not quite as it had once been within him. A hunger, a need, a driving inferno of lust building inside him that made no sense, that defied description. 

He needed this woman to survive it though. And Del-Rey always ensured he had what he needed to survive. He blamed it on the Coyote side of his genetics. Blood will tell and so, evidently, will DNA. At least in some part. Maybe he should blame it on the human side, he thought wearily. 

Anya might have accepted that easier. 

THREE DAYS LATER

Three days. She burned. Flames licked over her flesh. Fury, confusion, betrayal and pain ate at her mind while the most horrible arousal she could have ever imagined ate at her body. 

It had to be the taste of his kiss, she thought. She was craving it. It was killing her, the need for that kiss. And he kept forcing it on her, as though she actually wanted his kiss now. 

She paced the bedroom of the cabin she was locked in, dressed in the soft cotton pants and T-shirt Sharone had brought her earlier. 

She had begged Sharone to help her escape. She had it all worked out. All she had to do was get to a town and contact the embassy; they would take care of everything. They would contact her father, and she could go home. She could forget Del-Rey Delgado ever existed. 

And Sharone had been going for it. Anya had seen it in her eyes until Del-Rey had stepped into the room, furious, and pulled Sharone from it. 

Now she was alone. Alone to think, to worry. God, her father was lying in the snow bleeding, her cousins with him. Her cousins had family, children—who would support them now? Times weren’t good in Russia right now; the economy was weak all over. They would lose their homes. 

They would be in the cold. Her father. 

She sniffed. Who would bring him his vodka when he was tired and worn from trying to manipulate the Council scientists and members? Who would bandage his leg? 

The tears were flowing from her eyes again. She should have more control than this. Her father had berated her for her loss of control. But that was something he did. She had red hair, he told her often, like her mother. And her mother had learned that holding her temper always helped herself and others more than losing it did. 

She couldn’t control her emotions now. She hadn’t been able to since those shots had been fired. 

Since Del-Rey had kissed her. Since her world had exploded around her. Since something had exploded within her. 

She pressed her hands into her stomach. Her abdomen rippled and she could feel the pulse of dampness between her thighs. Her nipples were so sensitive the rasp of the T-shirt was torture. 

Her clitoris was engorged and aching. Even when she had touched herself, she had never been this aroused. 

What had he done to her? He had to have done something to her. There was no other explanation. 

She paced the room, she cursed. She would rage and then she would cry. She reviled Del-Rey Delgado. “Of the king” her ass. There was nothing kingly about that bastard. 

“What did you do to me?” she screamed, picking up one of the few objects still in the bedroom, a wooden bowl, and throwing it at the door. 

It didn’t shatter. It hit the door with a resounding bang and then fell to the carpet as she collapsed on the end of the bed, curling into herself, moaning at the need rippling through her. 

Her eyes closed, and she swore she tasted his kiss, felt his hands on her flesh. One touch, she told herself. She could allow one touch, just to still the demand raging through her body. Maybe one more kiss. 

“No!” she gritted out between her teeth. Not even one touch. One touch would lead to another and she would be begging. God help her if he ever kissed her. She wouldn’t survive it. 

And she didn’t want that liar’s kisses. Lies. Six years of lies. Promises he had broken one right after the other. She would be warned before the rescue. She would have time to make certain her father and cousins were safe. She would have time to ensure that personnel were able to get out safely rather than being murdered in the stampede to escape. 

She had seen those doctors wielding automatic rifles and turning them on the innocent administration personnel and lab techs trying to escape. 

She hoped the doctors were dead. She hoped they were roasting in hell. Unlike Del-Rey. Oh, she didn’t want him dead. She wanted him alive. Alive and well so she could kill him herself. 

She whimpered as another punch of sensation slammed into her stomach, her vagina, her clitoris. 

It was like a racking blow of electricity being shoved inside her. It sizzled and burned and left her gasping in need as the bedroom door opened. 

She rolled to her feet, stumbling, staring at the man watching her with those devil’s black eyes. 

“What did you do to me?” Her fists clenched at her side. 

“I don’t know.” He shook his head wearily. “Whatever it is, I did it to myself as well.” 

“You bastard!” There was nothing left to throw at him. She had thrown everything she could find over the past three days and the final object, that damned bowl, now lay at his feet. “You’re lying. Just like you lied to me all these years, you’re lying to me now.” 

“No, Anya.” 

The sound of her name on his lips was too much. She snarled, her fingers clawed as she jumped for him. She was going to claw his lying eyes out of his face. She was going to make him hurt the same as he was making her hurt. 

He caught her hands an inch from his face. 

“Stop this, Anya, it isn’t helping.” 

“Do you think I don’t know that?” she cried out, struggling against him, mind and body torn apart by conflicting emotions and needs. “You betrayed me, Del-Rey. You lied.” 

“I know, baby.” He held her hands with one of his, the other touching her cheek, his thumb moving over her lips. “We’ll deal with that, I promise. But I need your kiss. Now.” 

“No,” she moaned, a long, drawn-out sob of need and despair as she pressed her cheek into his palm, bit his thumb. 

Oh God, he tasted good. So good. Her tongue licked over the pad and her lashes fluttered. 

“One more kiss,” he growled. “Then we’ll figure this out. I promise.” 

“One more kiss,” she gasped. “One more.” 

She was reaching for him, needing him. Her lips opened beneath his, accepting his tongue and that taste she craved so desperately. She sucked it into her mouth and heard his groan of pleasure. 

She arched into his arms and begged silently for more. 

One more kiss wasn’t enough. She needed him to touch her. So bad. So bad that she gripped his hand and shoved it under her shirt. Then her hands were burrowing beneath his shirt, touching hot, hard flesh as she felt his hand cup the swollen mound of her breast. 

Oh that was good. His thumb raked over her nipple and it was even better. He lifted her into his arms, and a second later she was stretching back on the bed as he whipped the shirt over her head. 

Her hands buried in his hair as his lips covered her nipple. She tore at his shirt until he lifted his head, ripped it off and moved to her other nipple. 

His skin covered hard, corded muscle. It flexed beneath her palms, her nails, as she felt his hands pushing at the cotton pants she wore. 

It was desperate. She could feel the enraged lust traveling between them, as though electricity connected them, one feeding from the other until she was burning inside and she knew she wasn’t going to get enough of him. She needed more of him. 

A second later she found herself flipped to her stomach. Her fingers curled into the blankets as she opened her eyes and stared in dazed confusion at the bed. Her hips were jerked up. Calloused fingers ran through the sensitive folds between her thighs, and she was wet. So slick and wet and hot. And it felt so delicious she stretched into the caress. 

“Tell me you want me,” he growled behind her. 

“I want you.” She sobbed the answer into the bed, tears falling from her eyes again as she felt him behind her. “I want you.” 

Broad, hot, the crest of his cock tucked between the wet folds. 

Not like this. She pressed her head into the bed. Not like this, where she couldn’t hold on to him, where she couldn’t find a sense of control or focus. 

Why like this? 

He pressed inside and she went crazy from the pleasure. Her back arched at the stretching heat, a cry falling from her lips, part protest, part hunger. 

She felt a pulse of heated fluid filling her, burning her further. She felt her sex flex and ripple and draw him in. With each heated spurt she became more sensitive, hungrier, needier. 

She should tell him she was a virgin. She should tell him she hadn’t done this before. 

A scream ripped from her throat as he tunneled inside in three hard strokes. Every inch. And he was so thick, invading her, stretching her, tearing through her virginity without the pain she had expected, but with more impact than she could have imagined. 

Her thighs parted more, her hips tilted back farther and he was rising over her, his powerful arms braced beside her head as he began thrusting into her. His lips were at her shoulder. Sharp little kisses, heated and fierce just below her neck. 

She was filled with him. She could feel every heavy vein in his cock, every pulse of blood through it, and it was killing her. She needed more, wanted more. 

And he was giving her more. Surging inside her as she felt her body tighten. The muscles wrapped around his erection tightened, her clit throbbed, pulsed, and then everything inside her exploded in a cataclysm of light and color that had her screaming his name. 

She shuddered through her orgasm, jerking beneath him as he continued to thrust hard and fast, gaining speed, pushing into her as she felt more of those pulses of heated fluid. 

A second later, she heard him snarl, and felt something shocking. Something she knew couldn’t be natural. This couldn’t be real. His cock was swelling in one place. Getting larger, separating her farther as she felt his semen began to spurt inside her. 

Animal genetics, she thought distantly. He was locking inside her. Held tight and sure inside the heavy muscles of her vagina, he suddenly snarled with animalistic fervor and she felt his teeth pierce her upper shoulder. 

She should be screaming in pain. She was screaming in pleasure. Another, harder orgasm ripped through her, shook her, wrenched her senses from her and left her lost. She was so lost, with nothing, no one to hold on to. Thrown into a pleasure so violent, so brutal, she wondered if she could survive it. 

Behind her, Del-Rey was growling. His teeth still gripped her flesh, his cock still locked inside her. She sobbed out his name. She wanted to beg him to hold her, but the last shreds of her pride held her back. 

He had taken her like this, impersonally, and he had to have done it for a reason. She didn’t matter. The same reason he had shot her family, the same reason he had lied to her for so many years. Because Anya Kobrin, and the fragile love that had been building inside her for him, didn’t matter. 

Which left her alone, at the mercy of a man that she now knew had no mercy. 

He had made a grave tactical error and Del-Rey knew it. The anger that had festered inside him over the years had overlooked the intense, all-abiding loyalty Anya felt for her family and friends. Del-Rey was a man who believed in retribution. He had been such a man all his life, until he sat here now, staring into the darkness of his own soul, and realized he had wounded a treasure he hadn’t known he’d held. 

He had known from the moment he met her that he was going to betray her. It was the way of the world. He couldn’t fully trust. He never gave complete control or complete trust to another person, outside of Brim. Just as he had known that retribution would be dealt to the guards’ 

leaders, as he had always dealt it. He had always killed before. He’d pulled his punches because of Anya. He hadn’t killed, he had only wounded. Her father and her cousins would know they had been dealt with fairly. They were men of war. War had different rules than the fairy tales young women such as Anya lived within. 

She was sleeping. Finally. Del-Rey sat in the chair beside her bed, dressed, his head in his hands as his elbows rested on his knees. He had sat down there the minute he could withdraw from her, as soon as the knot that had been swollen in his cock had receded enough for him to pull away from her. He had jerked his jeans back to his hips and sat. To keep from falling to the floor. 

And he had remained there as she silently folded herself onto her side, tugged the blanket over her shoulders and cried silently until she went to sleep. 

She hadn’t sobbed again. She hadn’t cursed him or railed at him. She had retreated into herself, and he had no idea how to pull her back. 

He lowered his hands and stared at them. Large hands. The hands of a warrior. A killer. These hands had held her beneath him. His teeth had held her in place. His cock had knotted hard and deep inside her. 

He had never done that. In his entire sexual life, he had never done that to a woman. Why this woman? 

He rose to his feet and fixed his jeans before jerking his T-shirt on. He could hear Brim, his second-in-command moving up the steps to the second-floor bedroom. Del-Rey opened the door as the other man reached it. 

Concerned light blue eyes stared back at him. 

“Vehicles are here,” Brim reported. “Those women downstairs are pissed off though. Watch your back.” 

He didn’t blame them. Hell, someone should shoot him. 

“Have you contacted Haven?” 

“Messages have gone out; no answer,” Brim reported before inhaling with narrowed eyes. 

“Something isn’t right here, Del-Rey. You took the girl?” 

Del-Rey growled. Anya was none of his business. 

Brim shook his head. “Her scent has changed, shifted, and yours as well. Something whacked is going on here.” 

That was the understatement of the century. He looked back at Anya. 

“Get ready to move out,” he told his second-in-command. “Have them send Haven another message. I need their doctor. Now. This can’t happen again, Brim. I don’t know what the hell happened in here, but it can’t happen again.” 

He closed the door and moved back to the bed. 

“Anya.” He whispered her name and she flinched. 

Was it so horrendous, his touch? The greatest pleasure he had known in his life, and now she flinched from him. 

“Get dressed. The vehicles are here and we’re moving out. Now. I don’t think you want to risk any attempt I would make to try to dress you myself.” 

He tried to make her angry. It didn’t work. She pushed the blankets from her as though the exhaustion that gripped her was painful. He watched as she found her clothes and went to the bathroom, closing the door behind her. 

He didn’t hear her sobbing, didn’t hear her crying. But he could smell her, and what he scented clawed at his chest. Somehow, he had managed to douse that fiery flame that was so much a part of her. At this moment, his Anya smelled of defeat. And Del-Rey felt it. For the first time in his life, he knew the taste of defeat.