She smiled. Tentative, soft. A curve of her lips that blended with the soft scent of .
. . His head tilted as he drew that scent in. It was darker than affection, but nowhere close to the scent of mates that he had known from what others experienced.
But it was a start, a sliver of hope. And he would take what he could get until he had the time to steal her heart fully.
CHAPTER 15
Styx gave Storme a reprieve. A few minutes to pull together the emotions raging through her as she fought the realizations he knew she was coming to.
He was making headway. There came a time in a man's, or a Breed's, life, when he had his own realizations. One of those was the knowledge that pushing Storme further could be more detrimental than simply walking away and allowing her to consider her options.
The first pig he and Navarro had placed in the fire pit had come out more than an hour before. That was the ceremonial roasted pig served to the mated couple's table, where the special guests of the couple sat.
The rest of the pork for the pig roast was ready to come off the spits now. It would be laid on the large banquet tables set up to hold bowls and platters of other contributions to the feast as well.
As he and several of the Enforcers extracted the roasted pork and laid each pig on one of the specially made wooden platters, Styx turned and caught sight of one of the Coyote Breeds currently working outside Haven.
"Marx, good to see you." Styx nodded to the Coyote as he strolled into the banquet area.
Marx Whitman was one of the rougher cut Coyote Breeds. As though the genetics for exceptional good looks and grace had somehow gone awry.
At five feet, eight inches, stocky, with a heavily muscular chest and arms, the quiet, normally antisocial Breed walked slowly to him.
"The Sinclair mating anniversary." Marx looked over the heavily laden tables.
"You can smell that pig roasting all the way to the main gates."
"Aye, the Breeds on duty this evening have already called, bitching. The scent they say is starving them to death."
Marx chuckled at the comment before standing awkwardly for long moments.
"I hear you have a captive," he drawled. "Something about a woman that's leading you a merry little chase."
Styx grinned. "She is at that."
Marx shook his head, his brown eyes filling with amusement as he inhaled slowly. "There's no mating scent, man. What the hell is going on with that?"
Styx lifted his hand to rub at the back of his neck as he gave Marx a confused look. The other man rarely poked his nose into anyone else's business. Hell, when he wasn't on assignment he rarely came down from the mountain the Coyotes used as their home base, unless he had to.
"No one said it was a mating," Styx informed him.
Styx was unwilling to discuss the details or the problems associated with this particular mating.
"True." Marx inclined his head in agreement as he looked around at the food once again.
Most Breeds were difficult to read at the best of times. They learned to control their emotions and therefore their hormonal scents, making it harder to sense if a Breed were lying, telling the truth, or perhaps hungry and needing to join a celebration he wasn't familiar with.
"Are you going back to Haven for a while?" Styx asked as he covered the last roast pig with a large sheet of foil, aware of other Breeds beginning to move into the courtyard.
"For a while," Marx answered absently. "Hey, have you seen Wolfe and Hope around? I wanted to say hello while I was here."
Talking to Marx was never easy. He shifted from one conversation to the next without warning and normally without finishing the previous conversation.
"They're visiting with Dash and Elizabeth," Styx informed him.
Dash didn't normally keep his family in Haven on a full-time basis. Cassie actually spent much of her time in Sanctuary. At the time that Dash had needed Breed help in protecting his new mate and her child, Haven had been a carefully guarded secret.
Sanctuary, the Feline Breed compound, had been fully operational, with the Breeds of all species arriving almost daily from rescues and escapes. Dash had called the Felines, and Cassie had stayed there while Dash and her mother neutralized that first of many threats to the child.