Rule Breaker(115)

            “Goddamned nosy-assed Breeds,” Rule growled, refusing to back down. “Get the fuck out of my business.”

            “He ran his little mate off,” Dane drawled, though he kept a wary eye on Rule now. “In tears. I scented them even as she rushed from the lobby earlier. Newly mated, hurting and frightened. Shamed.” He turned to Lawe. “Sorry, Justice, but that jacket of yours that you placed over her shoulders did nothing to dilute the scent of the Breed that marked her.”

            “There’s no fucking mark,” Rule snarled.

            Dane gave a mocking little sneer, but it was Lawe’s reaction that held Rule. His brother frowned back at him as though disappointed.

            “I didn’t mark her.” Rule shook his head. “I would know if I bit her, dammit.”

            “You did something,” Lawe assured him then, and Rule knew if there was one thing his brother wouldn’t do, he would never lie to him. “It was weak, Rule, but the mating scent was there. And the Breed who drove her home reported that the scent only grew stronger after she left. Whatever you did, she’s in Mating Heat.”

            She would be in pain.

            He hadn’t fully satisfied her. Not enough to still the fires that would begin burning in her.

            He rubbed his tongue against his teeth to still that faint irritation—

            And he froze.

            The glands weren’t swollen, they weren’t really sensitive, yet it was there. A faint taste of sweet heat he couldn’t quite identify. An unfamiliar sensitivity.

            He shook his head sharply.

            What the fuck was going on?

            “He doesn’t believe he marked his little mate when she was no more than a child,” Dane drawled then, directing the comment to Jonas.

            Rule watched as Jonas’s gaze flicked to Dane before he shook his head warily, warning the hybrid from saying more. The truth was in the director’s eyes, though, as they met Rule’s once again.

            “I didn’t touch her,” Rule snapped as he turned on Dane again. “What the fuck kind of monster do you take me for? To suggest I’d touch a child in such a way?”

            Surprise flickered in the icy green eyes. “I don’t believe you mated her. I said you marked her. You found a way to have your scent placed on her, and it stuck. Just as nature intended it to.”

            “The hell—”

            “You gave the female enforcer present there your shirt to put on her as we pulled those Coyotes off her body. You collected her blanket and handed it to the enforcer who brought it in to her,” Jonas broke in. “He’s not lying, Rule. Even I sensed your claim on her that night.”

            Rule shook his head in confusion. “I only saw her for a moment.”

            They all turned to him then.

            “When?” It was Lawe who asked the question roughly. “You were never in the cavern other than those first moments.”

            “The hell I wasn’t,” Rule snarled back. “I was there long enough that the scent of her pain was like an insult to my senses. It was my weapon that fired, along with Jonas’s, and killed Grody. I saw what they were going to do to her. Do you think I stayed out of the cavern? That I’m not intelligent enough to know how to direct cleanup and keep my eye on what the hell is going on as well?”

            He’d shot before he’d even processed what was going on.

            That huge fucking Coyote had been between a child’s thighs as she screamed for her brother. Those jagged, wrenching screams of rage and pain had been more than the animal inside him could allow. Two others held her down while two more waited behind their leader to have their turn with her.