Lying flat, he motioned the men behind him to do the same as he made his way to the trail. There were areas he could crouch and run, but getting to her was torturous.
“I smell alpha ahead,” Emma announced as Sharone pushed at Anya’s back, forcing her faster up the trail. “He’s close.”
“Get on your stomachs.” Del-Rey’s growl sliced through the night, enraged, echoing with fury and sending relief thundering through Anya.
“Belly,” Sharone reminded her, pushing her down as they started crawling quickly toward his voice.
“Ashley?” Anya hissed into the night. “Did you find her?”
“I found her.” He was suddenly there, gripping her wrists and dragging her over the rise. “Stay down. I’ll pull you.”
“Ashley?” she whispered again, terrified.
“She broke a fucking nail,” he snapped out. “She’s fine until I get my hands on her. Now move.” He pushed her toward the Breeds, who pulled her around the boulder.
Sharone fo
llowed, collapsing against a boulder and breathing out roughly.
“Martin, Jax, Ryan and Cross,” Del-Rey snarled. “Get those four back to Base and lockdown until I contact. Apprise Brim we’re on comm blackout. Shut down all comm until I arrive.”
Nothing was said. Sharone was crouched, pushing Anya ahead of her again as they moved with the four Breeds who surrounded them at Del-Rey’s command. All four had been in the Russian facility. They were hard and well trained, and they knew well how to kill and how to protect.
“The moment we get to Base you turn right back around and go back for your alpha,” Anya hissed.
“Sorry, Coya,” Ryan said miserably. “He didn’t say come back; we don’t go back. We could mess him up being in the field and him not expecting it.”
Anya locked her teeth together as they ran now. Dammit, Ryan was supposed to obey her, not Del-Rey. But it made sense. Okay, that made sense. Del-Rey would know this territory well enough. He had staked it out long before they had arrived here.
She couldn’t help but worry. She knew better than to worry; a few trespassing bastards looking for the Coyote coya, their alpha female, didn’t have a chance against Del-Rey. She knew that. But something inside her insisted on worrying. Aching. And fearing. Because she had seen his eyes. When he made it back to Base, there was going to be hell to pay.
CHAPTER 5
Anya paced Command through the night. She ignored Brim’s firm suggestions that she should retire to bed, glaring at him each time he suggested it, even though she had sent her bodyguards to their rooms hours before.
She chewed at her thumbnail; she growled at the techs when they told her time and again there was no way to pinpoint their alpha’s position without comm going back online, and she wasn’t willing to risk that either.
She ached from head to toe; exhaustion was a bitch she fought tooth and nail, and she railed at herself for not having the same stamina and endurance the Coyote Breeds had. She was supposed to be their coya, their female alpha, and yet she couldn’t manage two days without sleep? They could go for days; she had seen Sharone go for more than a week with barely more than a twenty-minute nap here and there, while Anya had collapsed more than once and slept like the dead.
Daylight was peeking over the mountains as she stood by the silent communications techs and waited. All communications was shut down. Soldiers had been sent to Haven to inform them of status and to secure their own communications. Safeguards would go into effect once Del-Rey and his men returned, but as she had told the communications techs months ago, Del-Rey should have already placed safeguards for just this eventuality.
As they had told her, he was never on base long enough and those safeguards required not just his permission, but also his help.
It hadn’t been stated, but she had seen the look in their eyes. It was because of her that he was never there long enough to fulfill his own duties.
So now she was staring at a silent comm board with no way of knowing if the Breeds in the field were alive or dead. No way of knowing if Del-Rey was safe or wounded. She couldn’t consider anything else.
The two missing soldiers had been brought in an hour after her return, slightly dazed and bleeding from several wounds. Med tech had been forced to send them to Haven as they didn’t have the supplies or the experience to treat them.
They needed their own damned doctors. What if Del-Rey was seriously wounded? Dr. Armani didn’t know enough about Coyote genetics to do more than stitch them up. And sometimes, with the Wolf Breeds, severe wounds caused unexplained infections, fevers, almost rabid behaviors in some cases, if the wounds were bad enough.
If that happened to a Coyote Breed, then they could die. Del-Rey could die.
It had been nearly eight hours since she had returned, she estimated; looking at the clock again, perhaps closer to ten. They had left the caverns late to go on the training exercise, later than usual. Otherwise, those hunters would have managed to slip right up on them. They were usually much farther toward the base of the mountain.
Someone had been watching them. They had known about the exercises. Somehow, security had been penetrated enough that the enemy had nearly blindsided them.
“Pacing the floor and glaring at the comm board isn’t going to make time pass any faster,” Brim told her as he stepped back into the command room carrying coffee. Two cups. God bless his heart. She took one of them.