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Okay, so they weren’t going to be able to slip out and play their games anymore. At least, not without backup. She could handle that. She was so used to Base and communications being secured that she had deemed the threat acceptable. She had nearly made a deadly mistake, and that mistake weighed heavily on her shoulders.
Sharone, Emma and Ashley weren’t just bodyguards. They were her dearest friends. She had been raised with them; she thought sometimes they were the sisters her parents had never given her.
She rolled her shoulders, which ached from exhaustion, then shivered against the chill filling her. She felt chilled all the time, and she had grown colder still after Del-Rey hadn’t returned within an hour of her. How long did it take anyway to catch five bastards looking to kill? One of the Coyote snipers could have taken care of them easily.
Breathing out in irritation, she curled up in the corner of the couch and dragged the little blanket that rested over the back of it over her. She was too cold. And too worried. If he was hurt, it would be her fault. And it wasn’t fair, she thought with an edge of self-pity. If anyone got to hurt him, it should be her. Not strangers that didn’t know him.
The problem was, she thought, she didn’t want to hurt him. She was too worried to consider hurting him. She just wanted him home.
Once again, Del-Rey was forced to follow his mate’s scent through the caverns to find her. With comm down, there was no calling Brim to locate his once again missing mate, and that was pissing him off.
He checked her room first, but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t with her bodyguards and she wasn’t in the community or rec rooms. She wasn’t in the kitchen, or if she had been there, she was gone now. He thought perhaps he caught the scent of her there.
Finally he stalked into Command and faced Brim.
“Where is she?” he asked the other man as he slouched in the chair that sat at the back and to the side of the room.
Brim glanced up from the reports he was filing on his e-pad, with a quizzical look on his face. “You’ve lost her again?”
The unemotional expression, the chill in his voice warned Del-Rey that he and his second-in-command just might be coming to yet another disagreement where Del-Rey’s mate was concerned.
It was becoming a common, ongoing fight between them.
“Don’t fuck with me, Brim,” he growled as the other man laid the e-pad to the side of the command chair and stared up at him.
Glaring down at Brim rarely fazed him. There were few things that did. The bastard. Del-Rey often wondered if his friend challenged him for leadership of the packs, which one of them would come out the winner. Or if either of them would. They knew each other too well, faults and all.
“It’s a little early to be chewing her ass,” Brim finally answered. “She paced the command room most of the night worrying after your worthless hide. Let her sleep.” His response was voiced in a low tone that carried no farther than the two of them, but the deliberate insult had the animal inside Del-Rey rising along with his temper.
“She’s not in her rooms sleeping, Lieutenant,” Del-Rey told him, his tone warning. “Now, I’ll ask you one more time, where is she?”
Anger flashed in Brim’s gaze. “She’s safe. Let her sleep awhile longer.” He had reached his hand out for the e-pad again, when Del-Rey gave a low, savage growl.
Brim’s jaw clenched. “She drank coffee not too long ago. You know what that does to her; Sharone has already reported it. A confrontation at this moment isn’t what she needs. She needs to sleep.”
Del-Rey stared back at him, unblinking.
“You let her drink coffee?” Del-Rey bit out. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
Brim’s jaw clenched as his light blue eyes flashed in anger.
“Well, I wasn’t willing to spit in it like Ashley does,” he retorted mockingly. “Somehow that just seemed rather rude to me.”
As though Brim cared about rude.
“She’s not supposed to have coffee,” Del-Rey snarled. “She’s like the damned Energizer bunny from hell and you know it. She’s irritable and confrontational and threatens to kill anyone that gets in her way. Usually me the minute she sees me again.”
Mating heat and caffeine did not mix well at all. Unless the male mate in question was into a little BDSM and a whole lot into a defiant, challenging mate.
“She can’t eat chocolate, she can’t drink coffee, she can’t see her family, she can’t take a fucking walk at night.” Brim moved from his chair and glared back at Del-Rey then, the unemotional facade falling away. “You take everything from a woman that once had freedom and control and expect to play these asinine games with her that you’ve developed to get her back into your bed and then you wonder why she doesn’t inform you of what she’s doing whenever she’s doing it. Hell, Del-Rey, it’s a wonder she hasn’t shot you.”
“And a wonder you haven’t loaned her the gun,” Del-Rey sneered. “I’m getting sick of battling you over her. You’re not her brother.”
Brim’s lips quirked. “I think she rather needs a brother. Perhaps I’ll petition the tribunal for adoption. Someone needs to see beyond their own wants where this woman is concerned.”
If it wasn’t for the fact that Del-Rey was damned certain Brim was seriously brotherly rather than in lust with Anya, then he would have taken him out years ago. They had been fighting over Anya since she first showed up in that damned bar, and the confrontations had only grown more frequent over the past eight months.
“I’m losing patience with this, Brim,” he warned him.
