“Do you think everything’s okay?” She turned back to Brim worriedly. “If he was hurt, we would know, wouldn’t we?”
He looked at her in surprise. “He’s not hurt, Coya.”
“How do you know?” She followed him when he turned away from her and picked up the e-pad he’d been filing reports on earlier.
His gaze moved back to her. “If the alpha was hurt, a comm link would have been activated with an emergency distress well away from him. We would have received it, and every soldier on base and in Haven would have streamed over that mountain like killer ants. Satisfied?”
She breathed in roughly and stared up at him in regret. “You don’t like me, do you, Brim?”
Surprise flickered in his eyes then.
“Why would you think that? You’re my coya, same as Del-Rey is my alpha. It’s against the rules to dislike you.”
Was there amusement in his eyes? No, she must have been mistaken, but it was obvious he had no intention of playing fair this morning. He and Del-Rey were too much alike for that.
“Thank you,” she whispered before turning away and pacing back to the lounge, where she sat down on the long couch that sat inside the glass-enclosed room.
The caverns were inordinately quiet for this time of the morning. The Coyotes seemed to walk on tiptoes through the area as they moved about their duties. Teams hadn’t been called out, but that didn’t mean teams weren’t ready to go. Every soldier on base was armed to the teeth and ready to move if needed. They were dressed in their plain military uniforms, the ones with the Wolf Breed insignia on the shoulder.
They needed their own insignia. It would promote a feeling of pride in their own endeavors. They were too often mistaken for Wolves, and she knew they often remarked on it.
There was a deliberate laziness about the men that had originated with Del-Rey, one that had been picked up by the others. After all, as Del-Rey often stated, if they were perfect, they’d be Wolves.
She finished the coffee slowly as she waited. When the cup was empty, she set it on the table and paced the room, her hands shoved into the pockets of the comfortable cotton pants she’d changed into after showering the night before. A long T-shirt fell to her thighs and her bra was irritating the crap out of her.
She paced the room several times before throwing herself into the corner of the couch and glaring into the command room again.
Brim was sitting in her chair. That was her chair when he and Del-Rey were off base. Unfortunately the order of separation gave him command of that chair while Del-Rey was on base, rather than allowing her to retain it. Brim should have been second-in-command to her with Del-Rey gone. Or out there protecting his alpha’s superior, arrogant butt.
She leaned her elbows on her knees before pushing her fingers through her hair in frustration.
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 f**k 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.