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“Any Coyote who detects the scent of your heat will make it his job to kidnap you and turn you over to the Council and their scientists,” he argued. “That’s not a pleasant place to be, nor is it a pleasant way to die.”
He was restraining himself and the effort to do so was about to snap his back teeth as he clenched them so tight his jaws ached. If he were human, he had no doubt they would have already been ground to the gums.
He had never clenched his teeth so often or as tightly as he did whenever he and Diane faced off in a disagreement, which was pretty much every time they came in contact.
“You should have stayed in D.C. rather than following me,” she told him as she lifted one of her duffel bags to the bed.
Disillusionment covered her. As though there had been some glimmer of hope that he would allow her to continue? The sad part was he had tried. Hell, he was still trying, yet all he saw each time he tried to formulate a plan to allow her to complete the mission, was her blood. Her screams. Her death.
Pulling down the heavy tab of the zipper, she opened the luggage and began packing the few items she had used the night before into the bulging interior. It was evident she had no intention of listening to him.
Which only left Lawe with that idea of tying and gagging her.
“Don’t push me like this, Diane.” Anger had the mating heat boiling inside him. Strong emotion, especially anger, had the effect of intensifying the rush of the sexual hormones and sending them surging through the body. “You won’t win.”
At that point, she did turn and face him, her gaze clashing with his as he got a glimpse of the burning emotions she was still keeping tightly reined.
He was amazed at her ability to do so. The deep brown of her eyes held a darker, almost burgundy tint. Rage had to be eating her alive for her eyes to have turned such a startling color. Yet not so much as a hint of the scent drifted to him.
“What will you do to force me to obey you, Lawe?” Her head tilted to the side as he watched her visibly struggle to keep the emotions reined in. “Will you beat me? Tie and gag me before dragging me back to Sanctuary? Because those are your only options.”
“I would never harm you,” he managed, fighting the urge to snarl in outrage. His fingers tensed, the desire to clench them almost overwhelming as he faced her and the suspicion in her gaze. “And you know I would never strike you.”
“Then that leaves tying and gagging me.” Her hip cocked, a delicate hand resting on it, and the scent of her fury finally drifted to him for the briefest second.
It was viciously hot, nearly searing him and making him want to take a step back from it as the edge of pain slapped his senses. God, what emotions did she hold back on a normal basis for such intensity of feelings to slip past her careful control?
The animal side of him flinched at the thought that he could be the one hurting her. That his need to protect her, to ensure her life could possibly have created such a well of agony.
“Those are your only options,” she stated. “Because I refuse to return to Sanctuary to be kept locked away like a favored pet.”
A favored pet?
Lawe felt his jaw bunch and his dick jerk with an imperative demand as she confronted him. He would fuck her into exhaustion if it weren’t for the fact he’d be doing the same to himself. Throughout the night she had proven she was more than a match for his sexuality, and his hunger.
Just as she was more than able to keep up with him in other ways.
“Better a favored pet than a mate tortured to death. Do you know what the Council scientists, Brandenmore’s research monsters or even the government’s so-called Breed geneticists would do if they got their hands on you? Do you have any idea of their preferred means of learning how mating heat changes the body? How horrifying a vivisection is? What it would do to me to be forced to watch such a thing happen to you?” he questioned, hearing the harshness, the guttural quality of his own voice. “And you. Could you bear to hear my screams as they dissect me alive? Perhaps more than once? Over and over again? Because, baby, I would sure as hell scream. Even the strongest of us eventually break when they lay the knife to our guts.”
Diane wanted to turn from him. She wanted to hide the painful, horrifying knowledge that she was very well aware of what any scientist would do to either of them now.
“I’ve seen it.” Agony raged in his eyes as he crossed to her, his fingers curling around her arm as he pulled her to him. “I watched, Diane. Forced to pretend disinterest. Forced to show no fucking reaction.” Animalistic, filled with horror, his voice rasped with the words. “I watched as they first cut into the Coyote commander who made the mistake of mating one of the breeders in the lab where Rule and I were confined. Then, I watched as they cut into his mate. My mother. The woman Rule and I fought to find freedom for since we were barely old enough to realize we were captives. I couldn’t roar in rage. I couldn’t beg them to cease, because if I did”—his expression was filled with tormented memories, dragging a muffled sob from her lips—“if I did, then three others in that lab would have died. It could have been Rule. Or the young Cheetah female they kept separated from us. Or another of the young that Morningstar Martinez reached out to in their dreams.”
Her lips parted in surprise. “In their dreams?”
Lawe released her slowly and stepped back. Pushing his fingers through his hair he drew in a hard, painful breath. “In our dreams. As far back as we could remember. Morningstar came to the children she was fertilized with in vitro. She rocked them. She sang to them. She painted pictures of the place she called home, the family she was certain was searching for her, and all the joys she had known as a child.”
Diane watched, silently, feeling the tears that would have fallen if she hadn’t had so many years of practice holding them back.
“Her life was a living nightmare, yet she brought us joy whenever she could. And because the Coyote commander found joy in her and mated her, they died in the most horrifying way possible.”
He had seen the nightmares he feared she would face. It was no wonder he was so determined to lock her away in cotton batting. If only she could survive it.
He and his brother, Rule, had been forced to watch, as though uncaring, forced to watch as though unconcerned as their mother was murdered in just such a way.
“It would kill me.” She knew she lost the battle to hide the emotions tearing her apart inside when Lawe’s head jerked back, his nostrils flaring as he drew in her scent. “To know I was the cause of such a fate for you, Lawe. It would destroy any part of my soul that was left at the second I faced death.”
Yes, she hurt. She had nightmares about the lives she knew the Breeds had endured. The very thought of what they had gone through was often more than she could bear contemplating at length.
