“I win, we walk away,” she demanded as she kept her eyes on Malcolm.
Dog’s smile was clearly anticipatory, but he nodded easily. “Whip his ass and you walk. He whips yours—you run. How’s that?”
Diane gave a sharp, firm nod as she smiled at Malcolm. “It’s a bet.”
CHAPTER 17
He was dying!
Lawe could feel the fury burning inside him like a plague wasting away at his body cell by cell as he watched and listened to the Coyotes flirting with his mate.
The only thing saving him, saving them, was the fact that there was no scent of lust swirling from them. Still, his fists were clenched, his lips curled back from the sharp canines at the sides of his mouth, and the growl that would have rumbled in his chest was only barely held back. It was all he could do to hold back a roar of pure feline rage.
“Hey, Lion-o, would you mind letting up the pressure just a little bit here?”
The hoarse, pain-filled request had him lifting his hand completely from Thor’s chest and flicking his fingers to the Breed Enforcer behind them, indicated he should apply pressure to the knife wound Thor had taken.
Lawe moved to rise. He had every intention of rushing to his mate’s side, to protect her flank. To share in the triumph he knew she would experience once Malcolm was taken care of.
Then, Lawe decided, he’d make certain the bastard died.
“What did I tell you?” Thor’s fingers were suddenly clamped around Lawe’s forearm, restraining him before he could surge from their shadowed shelter of heavy pine and rush to the conflict unfolding too far away for him to help his mate if she needed him.
God, how could he survive?
He drew in a deep, hard breath.
“She’s hurting,” he growled. “I can feel it all the way over here.”
Turning, he took a moment to glare at the mercenary before turning back to watch Diane with a surge of pride, and pure terror.”
“Of course she’s hurting, you dumb f**ker,” Thor rasped, his voice low and filled with pain of a far different sort. “She’s out there alone. She’s been hurting since the minute she left the hotel in D.C. without her mate backing her. She’s a warrior, Justice, not some pansy-assed wannabe. You’re not just her f**king mate—be her partner and you won’t smell her soul shredding in half.”
Lawe’s head jerked around, his teeth snapping dangerously at the Swede before turning to watch his mate once again.
She was incredible.
Standing straight and tall, one hand propped on a cocked hip, her fingers tapping against it lazily as she held that damned laser weapon on the man she had fought with since the day her uncle had brought her into the group.
This was the mercenary Commander Diane—not the Diane her friends and family knew—as the Breeds closest to Jonas, his mate, and Lawe knew her. This was the Huntress. The woman known for her skill at tracking down those she was hired to find, rescuing them and bringing them back safe and sound.
And she had been doing so for more than seven years.
She had only taken official command of the group five years before, but in the two years before her uncle’s death, she had been commanding her own missions and making the group more money than they had ever imagined possible.
Confident, self-assured and in her element but for the emotional pain raging through her like flames whipping through her soul.
She needed him.
It wasn’t a sexual hunger. It wasn’t the mating heat and it wasn’t the need to quench the flames of mating heat. It was his mate’s need for a partner. For her partner.
He’d promised to stand by her, to give her the space she needed to conduct her mission. Jonas and Callan had given her one week to accomplish her goal. Yet, he’d still hovered near her, going over her plans with a fine-tooth comb. And, he knew, making her feel that he had no faith in her abilities.
What had ever made him believe his mate—the incredibly vital fighting spirit she possessed—would ever accept such management after the years she had put into learning how to do what she was so damned good at doing?
He’d failed her again.
He dropped his head for a moment, pulling in hard, desperate breaths as the animal paced, raged, his genetics clawing at his senses as he fought the need to protect her. The need to stand before her, to snarl in warning at the bastards she believed were a threat.