Lawe's Justice - Lora Leigh [97]
She turned her head away, blinking. Damn, she was blinking back tears?
“Tears,” he whispered, amazed. “I never wanted you to have reason to shed tears or to feel the helplessness that rages through me when you do.” To know she hurt enough to cry made him crazy. It made all the animal genetics that raged inside him threaten to overtake him once again.
“You can’t hold back life, Lawe,” she stated, the frustration eating at her, and raking at the control Lawe was fighting to hold on to as he sensed it.
“I know I can’t hold back life,” he agreed as he pulled his hand back rather than tightening his hold on her. “I don’t want to hold back your life. I want to fucking share it. Damn it, Diane, I just want to ensure that nothing takes us from the other. We’re mates. If you die, then I may as well die with you. And if I die . . .” He shook his head, the other side of mating suddenly clearer to him than it had ever been. “If I’m gone, then you’ll be always alone. Always, Diane. Always suffering that loss because you’ll be unable to bear to have another man touch you. You would be completely vulnerable. You and any children we may have unless you’re in Sanctuary. Unless you’re protected and you understand that need for protection.”
Watching her face, watching the pain that flashed in her eyes, and the fear, he suddenly wondered if those Breeds who were still unaware of the true depth of it, would allow it to begin if they knew the truth. He knew that fear. The fear of being enclosed, of being imprisoned. She was terrified he would find a way to cage her, and Lawe couldn’t swear to her that the day wouldn’t come when it would have to be done.
Lowering his head he pressed his forehead against her temple, inhaling the scent of her. The mating heat, a spicy, fruity scent, a combination of him and her, a merging of who they were.
That was the mating scent. It was what mating did. It merged two beings, it merged their scents, and sometimes, when needed, it merged their dreams along with their hearts and souls.
“You are more than a soldier,” he promised her as he let his lips brush against her hair, as he inhaled the scent of both of them merging. “You are more than a mate, more than just a woman, a sister or an aunt. You can’t fight this fight alone, Diane, and that’s what you’re trying to do. Nor can you fight against rogue Breeds who can smell you coming a mile away. Or Council Coyotes who can smell your scent and know it for what it is. And if you’re taken because of it, if you’re taken, you become the same as the other mates the Council has captured. You become a science experiment.” Screams echoed in his head now. “Vivisected, screaming, begging and dying as they compare your organs, compare the changes to them, against those they’ve murdered in the same way before you.”
Pulling back, he stared into her tormented gaze and wanted to roar out his rage and his pain at what he saw there.
A woman fighting not just her hunger but all the dreams and all the needs she had never had to deny herself before. Dreams and needs he was asking—no, demanding—she give up. She was more than just a soldier, she was his mate. She was the woman he’d always dreamed of having and the one whose sheer bravery terrified him.
“Lawe.” She touched him. Her palm against his jaw, her fingers against his cheek. “Sanctuary is attacked at least once a year. I know of two attempts against the community during the social events Callan and Merinus are forced to throw throughout the year. Snipers have been caught twice attempting to get into position and Callan was nearly killed at an event thrown by a Breed supporter. Sanctuary isn’t safe either. And each time it was attacked, each time a Breed, a mate or any