She’d had an insurance policy of sorts and Jonas had been in the mood to bargain, as she’d guessed he would be. After all, the injection Phillip Brandenmore had given his daughter was now public knowledge thanks to files Brandenmore had hidden before Jonas had managed to kidnap him. Some of those files, the authorities had found before Jonas could get to them.
“Did she remember anything more than she stated in her initial report about his visit?” Lawe asked as he glanced to the next page and slowly stiffened.
Jonas nodded, his gaze knowing as he ignored the commander’s reaction to what he had read while bringing it out into the open instead. “Diane Broen and her team are due back tonight with their report. They’ve questioned the female tech and completed an investigation into the Roberts girl’s disappearance twelve years ago—just after the other two escaped termination. There’s no doubt she ran away from her parents’ home. We’re simply uncertain why, where she would have gone, or how she disappeared so easily. From Brandenmore’s files, and based on their friendship in the labs, Gideon suspects that the three were together somewhere. He simply doesn’t know where. Diane’s been investigating her possible whereabouts for the past three months. I believe she knows where the three are located and that she’s withheld the information for some reason until she arrives here.”
Lawe’s head lifted slowly at Jonas’s admission that he had sent Diane Broen and her team into the line of fire. For years, the Breeds and her enemies had only known the female mercenary as Diana. The huntress. It was a cover even her sister had perpetuated when needed. Commanding four human males and, one at a time, two Breeds, she had hunted rogue Coyote Breeds as well as Council soldiers, trainers, scientists and backers.
In truth, her name was Diane Broen, Lawe’s mate. The woman Jonas had sent out in search of what was becoming one of the most dangerous rogue Breeds and the three research victims that could bring the full fury of the remaining Council down on Diane’s head.
Jonas had expected a reaction from Lawe, but the sight of the anger flaming in those normally icy, almost violet, blue eyes was surprising.
It was extremely rare to see Lawe pissed off. It was even rarer to see him pissed off over a woman.
Lawe was completely ignoring the fact that Jonas believed Diane may have the information they needed, of course. Nothing mattered at this moment; no one mattered but his mate. Whether he had completed that mating or not.
“Sending her was the wrong choice,” Lawe stated, his voice rumbling with savage undercurrents.
The underlying challenge in that tone had Jonas’s brows arching and he tensed at the deliberate questioning of his decision.
He refused to allow himself to react, at least for the moment. For Lawe. He forced himself to exercise restraint rather than immediate retaliation as he would have with any other Breed.
Lawe was being groomed to take the assistant director’s chair, which allowed him to voice more of an opinion than most would have. It allowed him privileges Jonas would have never given another Enforcer or alpha leader, Breed or human.
Jonas had no need for a “yes” man, but he was damned if he’d be challenged much further over this particular decision. Or any decision regarding the search for the three research victims. Victims who could help find answers to the changes his tiny daughter was experiencing. Changes that made no sense and that so far couldn’t be reversed or explained.
Especially considering the fact he was being challenged over the woman who had undertaken that search. The woman Lawe refused to claim. The mate he refused to mark, or to take. The mate he was attempting to cage and restrain as one would a pet. A decision Jonas highly disagreed with and one he would block at every chance.
“And why is that?” Jonas asked as he closed the file, restraining the need to flex his claws in warning.
Lawe didn’t hesitate to answer him either.
“The mission was too dangerous. Dealing with the various forces also searching for the girl has turned it into a bloodbath waiting to happen. I don’t want her in the middle of it and neither should you, considering she’s your mate’s sister.”
“Mate her, make it official, and get it over with, then you can deal with the situation yourself,” Jonas growled as he felt the prick of the “claws” threatening to stretch free. “Otherwise, as long as she’s making her men available to cover for the Enforcers we currently have out on assignments, I intend to use them.”
And Lawe couldn’t enforce any wish he had where Diane was concerned until he had fully mated her, marked her and ensured the mating bond between them.
More to the point, until she officially accepted the mating, Lawe had no rights where she or her safety was concerned. It was an amendment to Breed Law that had been unanimously voted in after a female mate had denied the Breed who marked her, because of her perception of his lack of honesty and his treatment of her.
Lawe stared back at Jonas for long moments, the animal genetics he carried burning inside him in the need to challenge the Bureau director.
There was also the damning knowledge that he had no right to that challenge.
He should have known Jonas was aware that mating heat was brewing between himself and Diane. The blood tests would have revealed the potential for it the moment they were conducted. But even more, Jonas would have detected that she carried Lawe’s scent the moment Jonas met her.
A scent her body had refused to relinquish since the night he had aided in her rescue from a Syrian jail cell sixteen months before.