He turned the corner to the medical facility to see the doctors were already there, shouting questions, directing Dog to a gurney placed just inside the room.
“She’s not moving,” he growled, laying her gently on the bed. “Do something. She’s not moving.”
His hand stroked her face and he swore it was on the verge of trembling.
“You have to move, Dog.” Sobolova ordered him firmly.
“She’s not fucking moving.” Rage filled the vicious snarl that left his lips as they pulled back from his canines and he glared down at the Coyote specialist.
“Dog, you have to let them get to her. They can’t help her if you don’t move,” Dash snapped, pushing him back, fully expecting the powerful Coyote to attempt to take his throat out. Any touch other than a mate’s could cause extreme reaction in some male Breeds.
Styx and three of the Wolf Breed alphas who followed him from Colorado moved to restrain the Coyote, knowing the enraged scent pouring from Dog would result in an explosion of violence.
And it nearly did. Dog tensed, his arms bunching, the scent of the Coyote strengthening with unusual sharpness as the steel gray eyes that met Dash’s flashed to a near black.
As their gazes met, the animal rose inside the other Dog with such unusual strength, Dash paused. He watched the Coyote’s gaze flicker, felt the battle waging inside him, before the black receded to gray and the animal slowly retreated, leaving the Breed tense but no longer in a killing fury.
“Let me go.” That voice, though; Dash had heard a similar sound once or twice, though that Breed had been feline, not Coyote.
And the Breed he’d heard it from was unlike any other he’d ever met.
“What are you?” Dash kept his voice low, nearly soundless. “What the fuck are you?”
But he had feeling he knew.
“Her mate.” His head jerked in Cassie’s direction as the gray of his eyes darkened, then lightened again. “Her fucking mate.”
Dog jerked away from him, his gaze moving to Cassie again as Dash watched, and his expression tightened. Then his jaw bunched before he turned and stalked from the examination room, leaving Dash to stare after him in shock.
• • •
Control. Never had it been so difficult to maintain, to leash the animal clawing at him. As he fought the rising fury he was aware of the ever-sharpening strength of his eye sight, his sense of smell. So much so that when he slammed out of the lobby doors, leaving a crack in the reinforced glass, he knew exactly where Mutt and Mongrel awaited him as well as the scent trail of Cassie’s attackers.
Breeds and humans alike scattered out of his way, their wary looks and instinctive awareness of danger rising at the sight of him.
His eyes would be black, the color threatening to bleed into the whites surrounding the pupil. His muscles were harder, his flesh tight, absorbing nuances of the air itself as the fine, nearly invisible hairs covering his covering his body lifted, picking up the most subtle shifts in the air. Power infused him, filling him in ever increasing waves, pushing at his mind, his flesh, clawing at his senses as the creature threatened to push past the human consciousness and take control.
He was aware of Mutt and Mongrel moving to his side, following silently, wariness filling them as he followed the scent trail the two Wolf Breeds had left as they’d run.
Wolf. They were Breeds he’d often seen about the Bureau. They were known for their loyalty to the Breed cause and their strength. They were Breeds who would be sworn to Cassie’s protection. Instead, they’d become her enemy, a threat he couldn’t allow to remain living. They had struck his mate, harmed her, they could have killed her. The strength of those blows would have taken the life of a human, and they wouldn’t have cared if their attack had taken her life.
“Dog, man pull back,” Mongrel muttered as they entered the corridor between the Bureau headquarters and the Enforcer apartments., separated by the parking areas. “You’re going to give yourself away. That’s only going to risk your mate.”
Nothing mattered but his mate. Protecting her, surrounding her with his strength. Nothing mattered but ensuring the danger didn’t touch her, that nothing, not human nor Breed harmed her.
Without Cassie, he was nothing. His very existence was without meaning.
The creature acknowledged that as did the Breed. If his secrets were discovered then it could ensure her death.
He felt that knowledge, felt the enraged animal pull back just enough to avoid detection while still maintaining the power that hummed through his body.
“You can’t kill them, Dog,” Mutt warned him from his other side. “You’ll risk your mate if they can enact Breed Law on you.”
A growl tore from him throat, savage and enraged. Instantly, the Breeds at his side tensed further. He couldn’t kill them? They attacked his mate. All bets were off as far as he was concerned.
As they pushed into the lobby of the Enforcer apartments he came to a stop, glaring at the elevators as they opened and half a dozen Coyote and Wolf Enforcers stepped out, flanking the two he’d come for himself. Leading them was Jonas Wyatt.
The silver mercury of the Lion Breeds eyes attested to the strength of the Primal he possessed and how close to the surface it walked. The Primal, the third force of Breed genetics. The human and animal genetics combining with such force that it became an animal all its own.