Lawe's Justice - Lora Leigh [129]
God, how could he survive?
He drew in a deep, hard breath.
“She’s hurting,” he growled. “I can feel it all the way over here.”
Turning, he took a moment to glare at the mercenary before turning back to watch Diane with a surge of pride, and pure terror.”
“Of course she’s hurting, you dumb fucker,” Thor rasped, his voice low and filled with pain of a far different sort. “She’s out there alone. She’s been hurting since the minute she left the hotel in D.C. without her mate backing her. She’s a warrior, Justice, not some pansy-assed wannabe. You’re not just her fucking mate—be her partner and you won’t smell her soul shredding in half.”
Lawe’s head jerked around, his teeth snapping dangerously at the Swede before turning to watch his mate once again.
She was incredible.
Standing straight and tall, one hand propped on a cocked hip, her fingers tapping against it lazily as she held that damned laser weapon on the man she had fought with since the day her uncle had brought her into the group.
This was the mercenary Commander Diane—not the Diane her friends and family knew—as the Breeds closest to Jonas, his mate, and Lawe knew her. This was the Huntress. The woman known for her skill at tracking down those she was hired to find, rescuing them and bringing them back safe and sound.
And she had been doing so for more than seven years.
She had only taken official command of the group five years before, but in the two years before her uncle’s death, she had been commanding her own missions and making the group more money than they had ever imagined possible.
Confident, self-assured and in her element but for the emotional pain raging through her like flames whipping through her soul.
She needed him.
It wasn’t a sexual hunger. It wasn’t the mating heat and it wasn’t the need to quench the flames of mating heat. It was his mate’s need for a partner. For her partner.
He’d promised to stand by her, to give her the space she needed to conduct her mission. Jonas and Callan had given her one week to accomplish her goal. Yet, he’d still hovered near her, going over her plans with a fine-tooth comb. And, he knew, making her feel that he had no faith in her abilities.
What had ever made him believe his mate—the incredibly vital fighting spirit she possessed—would ever accept such management after the years she had put into learning how to do what she was so damned good at doing?
He’d failed her again.
He dropped his head for a moment, pulling in hard, desperate breaths as the animal paced, raged, his genetics clawing at his senses as he fought the need to protect her. The need to stand before her, to snarl in warning at the bastards she believed were a threat.
There was only one threat really facing her.
Dog, Mutt, Mongrel and Loki weren’t mercenary Coyotes only recently separated from the Council, as Malcolm believed. They weren’t the bloodthirsty, rabid animals willing to help him turn his commander over to the Genetics Council.
They were Jonas’s double agents. His eyes and ears into the Council so to speak. They were still soldiers, or so the Council believed, just in a different capacity now than they had been before.
Still, even knowing the danger was minimized, he had to forcibly hold himself back, to throttle the snarls and roars of rage that rose inside him.
Her sense of confusion and disillusionment was driving a spike of bitter rage through his brain and straight into his soul.
“You won’t back her,” Thor growled, and for a moment, just for the briefest second, it was almost an animal’s rasp. “You refuse to allow her to be who she is, what she is. She’s a fucking warrior, Lawe. You don’t bury that, you encourage it. You train it, sharpen it, you fucking hone it until she fits your hand like the finest steel and slices twice as deep. She’s your fucking mate. She’s your partner. She’s the finest fucking weapon God ever created and gifted to a man. She stands by your side, Lawe. You stand by her side, or you lose the very things you love about her.