Morningstar had literally birthed a pack, four offspring, before her body had suddenly become infertile.
Or it had been, before Elder.
Before her Coyote ra**st had mated her and caused her death.
That desperation to set her and her young free, to have her, no matter the cost, had been the cause of her death as well as her mate’s.
Rule knew he couldn’t let that happen to any woman he mated. If he mated, if he let himself weaken that far, then it would be far too easy to take Gypsy from him.
She wasn’t a fighter.
She wasn’t a Breed.
She was resourceful, smart. She’d spied for the Unknown for nine years without ever being identified until Jonas put his too-intelligent mind to work on finding one of their contacts.
But she wasn’t trained to survive.
And she couldn’t be his mate.
His dick slowly lost its desperate stiffness as he stared down at it, frowning in confusion, wondering what the f**k his body was doing.
What crazy shit was happening to him and how the hell was he supposed to fix it?
It couldn’t have been the mating barb. He wouldn’t be losing the hard-on if he were even close to the beginning stages of Mating Heat. It wasn’t possible from what he’d heard.
So it couldn’t be a mating, he thought desperately. It had to just be one of those damned anomalies Breeds came in contact with damned near every day of their lives.
They weren’t human and they weren’t animal, and their bodies weren’t normal. That made some interesting reactions sometimes.
That had to be what had happened this time.
A smothered grunt of amused irritation left his lips as he began thinking hard. Jerking a towel from the towel rack, he fought to come up with a reasonable explanation for what was no doubt going to be a furious lover once he left the bathroom.
Had he really told her he’d drive her home after he washed up?
He ran the towel quickly over his hair, shook the remaining water out of it and drew in a quick, hard breath. There was no such thing as a reasonable explanation, but maybe a partial truth would work. She made him feel a pleasure that no other woman had ever made him feel, and it simply shocked the hell out of him.
That was the truth, and he thought maybe Gypsy could sense the truth sometimes. A certain expression, the way her eyes darkened when he held something back from her, or when he hadn’t exactly told her the truth.
It was a suspicion he couldn’t prove yet.
Snapping the towel into the bathtub, he exhaled roughly and opened the door, stepping back into the bedroom.
“Gypsy, baby, I’m sor—” He looked around the empty room.
Before he could stop it, an enraged snarl erupted from him, an animal’s fury pounding through his veins with such suddenness that it was shocking.
The man he was became the secondary part of his senses. The animal jumped forward, suddenly free, suddenly enraged, though not at the woman. No, the animal was enraged at the man and clawing beneath his flesh as he tore free of the inner restraints.
Because of the man, his mate had run.
Before Rule could stop the impulse, his hand slashed out, claw marks raked across the wall, the shock of seeing that primal, impossible sight snapping inside him.
Claws?
His fingers, blood smeared, the tips of strong, lethally sharp claws extending from the tips—
Another snarl tore from him, nearly a roar as animal instincts clashed with human ones and nearly overwhelmed him once again.