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She shook her head. “Too concerned for your people,” she sighed. “This isn’t a blame game, Del-Rey. We survived, right? Jax, Brim, the girls? Everyone?”
“Several wounded, none of our people are dead, though seven city council members and one traitorous Feline Breed were killed.” He shook his head at that. “Douglas was hand-picked by me. He wasn’t even drugged; he just hated Coyotes. Nothing mattered but that hatred.”
She barely knew who Douglas was. He had stayed out of sight for the most part. Now she knew why.
“You have a lot to explain to me, don’t you?”
“Quite a bit.” He grinned as a soft knock sounded on the door. “Ashley is refusing to let me pay for her nails until she sees you. Sharone is still glaring at me, and Emma is playing with her knives every time she sees me or Jax. I think you should reassure them.”
“That ceremony.” She stopped him. “Why?”
“Because I love you,” he said simply. “You’re my coya, Anya. I won’t deny that any longer. Denying it was killing both of us, and driving a wedge between our people. And I will remind you, I sent out a memo to that effect before you left Base.” He frowned down at her. “Not because you were hurt or because of our child. Because you’re mine, and I no longer deny what is mine.”
With that he rose, opened the door and let in her girls.
They eased into the room. Their faces were bruised, Emma was limping a bit.
“Em? What happened?”
“Stupid Wolf tripped me when I tried to rush to you,” she snarled, her gray eyes flashing. “Bastard wrenched my ankle and held me down until the shooting stopped.”
“Son of a bitch sheriff slipped up on me while I was trying to sneak into the shrubs and blow that fucker Douglas’s head off,” Sharone snapped. “Knocked me out cold as hell about the same time Douglas caught Ashley by surprise.” A tray was set on the bed beside Anya, the scent of food beneath the metal dish covers making her mouth water.
“Milk,” Ashley growled. “Doc says you need the calcium for that little hell-raiser you’ve conceived. Geez, Anya, don’t you know about birth control? Do you know what a kid of his is going to be like?” She jerked her head to Del-Rey as he leaned against the wall and watched the Coyote girl show with something akin to male horror. “Hell, he probably doesn’t know how to breed girls either.”
Del-Rey winced and lifted his gaze to the ceiling as though he were praying.
She ate and listened to the girls fill her in. Between bites of chicken soup, baked potato and perfectly grilled steak with icy cold milk, she slipped looks at her mate. He listened and watched with complete male fascination and fear as they talked.
“Well, at least that arrogant pup Jax knows his place,” Ashley finally bit out. “I should have kept his earlobe as a trophy.”
Anya almost lost a drink of milk at that one. Del-Rey winced again.
“And on top of it all, they bring in those two totally uptight doctors from Russia. Katya refuses to go to the spa with us, and Alexi is just as stick-up-his-ass as he ever was,” Emma inserted.
“Yeah, but man, Petrov is as damned cute as he ever was. Forty-two looks good on him, Anya,” Sharone all but purred.
Anya winced. Sharone had a thing for her father that Anya had just never understood.
“I’ll shoot you if you sleep with my dad,” Anya warned her.
Sharone only laughed, her eyes twinkling in a way that made Anya throw Del-Rey a desperate look. Since when the hell did he let her father in Haven? Why? Why now? She was not listening to any more of Sharone’s perverted fantasies about her father. It so was not going to happen. Anya had suffered enough after Del-Rey had shot her father. Sharone had mooned over him for months.
She finished her meal, her eyes growing heavy as the girls argued over ceremony colors and shoes. She found herself drifting off, thinking of the white dress she had her heart set on, walking down the aisle on her father’s arm. Her cousins and their families there.
She felt warm. Liquid warm and excessively happy. For the first time in so long, the daydreams returned. Seducing her Ghost. Loving him. Touching him. Sharing things with him she had always longed to share. Sunrise and sunset. A caramel apple. The fights, the yelling, the loving. And wasn’t there something about sex that Wolf and Coyote Breeds just loved?
She opened her eyes and stared at him, imagining it, feeling a tingle of warmth where she knew she shouldn’t. Something so wicked, so forbidden.
Her gaze slipped to his thighs as the girls’ chattering finally stopped. Would he, when she was well? she wondered.
Would it be safe?
“Girls, time to go.” His voice was husky, rough now as he moved from the wall. “Ashley, get the tray please.”
“Oh man, there they go getting all hot and bothered,” Ashley said and pouted. “I’m going to tell Armani on them. She’ll rein his ass in.”
“It’s not his ass that’s the problem,” Emma snickered as they moved from the bed.
