Moving between Rule and Chelsea, he gave in to the imperative demand to go to Chelsea.
He ignored the need to stand between her and the Bureau director, opting to move behind her instead and keep a careful eye on the Breed.
“I’ll grovel if I have to.” Rule kept the growl from his voice, Cullen noticed in amusement. “Or you can accept my apology and the fact that I’ll owe you a hell of a debt and come back to the Bureau; otherwise that tyrant personality Cassie unleashed on me will get on a heli-jet she ordered me to have ready and fly back home. The little wench quit on me. Every Breed I know is going to go nuts on me when they find out I was the Breed who caused her to lose her temper.”
Chelsea stared back at Rule, certain she misunderstood. Cassie wouldn’t have quit. She had just told her and Ashley how important that job was to her. She wouldn’t just walk away.
“Chelsea, I have less than thirty minutes here.” Rule breathed out heavily, shoving his hands in the pockets of his dark slacks and so obviously trying not to glare at her. “I’ll owe you a really huge debt,” he gritted out, his gaze flickering to Cullen as though asking for help.
Cullen could only shrug. He’d damned well love to have that debt owed to him, well aware of the boon Rule was offering.
“Fine,” Chelsea finally muttered. “But you owe two debts. One to me and one to Cullen.”
Outrage snapped in Rule’s expression. “How the hell do I owe him a debt?”
“Because you almost got him fired,” she stated with obvious irritation. “I think that would suck for a mate. And he was starting to get really worried I was serious too.”
Rule wasn’t convinced. “You can’t fire a mate and he knows it.”
“And you’re running out of time,” she pointed out.
A grimace crossed the director’s face, but he gave a short, abrupt nod. “Can we go now?”
Turning to Cullen, she shot him a challenging look before grabbing her pack and moving for the door.
Before Rule could turn away, Cullen gave the Breed a hard warning look. Rule’s acknowledging nod had Cullen breathing out a heavy sigh before stepping to the door and watching his mate leave.
Every Breed instinct he possessed demanded he follow her and keep her in sight. If he tried that, no doubt she’d have something to say about it. Something he was sure he wouldn’t want to hear.
Having an independent mate was going to be the death of him.
She was making him crazy.
Following behind her pickup in his Dragoon that evening, Cullen stared at the back of her head broodingly. Damn, he could shoot Graeme for not warning him that Chelsea was listening in on their conversation the night before.
His brother’s hearing was preternatural; she couldn’t have slipped up on him, and from the look on his brother’s face, Cullen knew she’d not surprised Graeme in the least.
Graeme had let her hear every word, and Cullen still couldn’t figure out why his brother had done so. What did it matter now, the events that happened so many years before. Lauren was dead, the past was dead, and his mating to Chelsea had no bearing on it any more than his feelings on the mating mattered at this point.
She’d misunderstood what she’d heard, though.
There were so many things she didn’t understand, and he wasn’t a man who did explanations easily. Especially explanations where his marriage and his late wife were concerned. And there were so many things she didn’t understand about his feelings for her.
Hell, even he didn’t understand his feelings for her, and he’d had the past four years to try to make sense of it. He’d hired her as his assistant just because the pull she exerted him on him whenever she was around confused the hell out of him. And he couldn’t blame that one on a mating.
Touching his tongue to a canine, he grimaced at the knowledge that it seemed to have dropped lower from his jaw. His gums ached like a son of a bitch, and knowing that those awakened genetics were going to be impossible to hide irritated the hell out of him.
When had it begun?
He frowned, trying to pinpoint exactly when the changes had begun occurring.
Chelsea’s resignation the morning she’d arrived at the house about five weeks ago, he realized. His gums had begun aching just after that. He’d put it down to his habit of gritting his teeth, something else that had begun after her resignation. The cinnamon taste in his mouth at odd times, the unbidden growls that had rumbled in his chest when he was extremely frustrated.
The signs of the awakening genetics had been there, but he’d marked them down to coincidences. After all, it hadn’t been the first time that animalistic rumble had built in his throat. The restless irritation and even the flashes of advanced eyesight, hearing and strength had been common over the years.
And he could connect all those flashes distinctly to instances when Chelsea had been around. The Bengal inside him hadn’t roused until she’d challenged him, though. Until she’d left and refused to return.
He shouldn’t have let her leave the Agency.