“This is why we were never friends, Dane,” Dog reminded him with that ever-present mockery. “Hell, this is why I just stayed the f**k away from you. You cause havoc no matter where you go.”
Of course he did, that was his job, Dane thought as his gaze narrowed on a flash of long auburn hair and a particular turn of the head.
When the female turned back to him, the face was wrong, the slender body too soft, without the play of well-honed feminine muscles beneath her flesh.
Would he ever stop searching for her, he wondered a bit somberly. Each time he was even near the area he would watch, wait, certain at some point that he would catch a glimpse of her.
Yet he never did.
He prayed he never would.
Letting her go had been the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. Allowing her to have the mate she longed for, the life she had dreamed of, had shattered his heart even though her happiness was all he’d ever asked for.
Sadly, he’d forgotten to include himself in the wish.
He breathed in slowly, heavily.
“We were never friends because we truly never knew each other,” he retorted to the Breed’s earlier statement. “Father was smart enough to ensure that one of us was always gone whenever the other was there.”
The Coyote had come to the compound ragged, filthy and suffering from dehydration and juvenile primal fever. Dane had been in London at the time overseeing several of the Leo’s properties, but he’d heard of the bedraggled Coyote youth, more wild than trained, who had gone in search of the fabled compound of the first Leo at the tender age of six.
“Leo’s going to have both of us killed if he finds out about this one, Dane,” Dog assured him.
Dane shook his head. “He’ll regret it. He’ll hate the need for the deception, but he’s as aware as we are that the child would have died without the assurance we gave Gideon of protection if he would aid the child. We never specified how he was to do so.”
Dog grunted at that.
“What now?”
“Now, we wait,” Dane informed him, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned against the rough stone of the outer wall and continued to watch the guests of the hotel arrive and depart.
“You do that a lot,” Dog observed.
“What? Wait?” Dane grinned.
He did rather do that a lot.
“No, tense whenever you see a particular color and style of hair,” Dog pointed out just as Dane tensed further, cursing silently as the black military-reinforced SUV pulled slowly beneath the hotel awning.
Several Breeds sat in the front; behind them, he knew the small family.
He waited, hungry for the sight of her. Watching as first Lance Jacobs stepped from the SUV before lifting the toddler into his arms, then helping his mate, his treasured wife, from the vehicle.
Jacobs made her a good mate, though, he admitted. And that boy, he was a combination of both. The child who had finally tamed Death. Auburn hair, a little long and a bit shaggy. Loose jeans and a blue T-shirt. He looked like his father, thankfully, though the boy had his mother’s eyes.
Then she stepped out.
God help him, how beautiful she had become over the past years. Still regally graceful, as exquisitely beautiful and more dangerous and . . . His throat tightened, his chest aching at the sight of her rounded tummy beneath the pretty gold silk blouse she wore with her jeans.
Pregnant.
Once again, she was with child, and just as before, it gave her a glow to her features that made her incandescent. Made his chest swell with such emotion that once again he wondered if hybrid Breeds had the ability to find their mates, or if the natural age retardation once they reached adulthood also signaled that they, like their human counterparts, risked losing the very hearts that could come to mean so much to them?
Just as he had lost this heart.
“Harmony Lancaster,” Dog murmured. “Son of a bitch, what’s she doing here?”
“Amber,” Dane whispered as he felt his stomach pitch with the pleasure of hearing her laughter. “She became very close to Amber the last time she and her family were in Sanctuary.”