Meanwhile, people came and went, walking past them as though they weren't there. It was a little unnerving that that no one seemed concerned about a woman being tossed about or kidnapped. They did however seem putout with the fact that their group wouldn't move and they were forced to alter their path and walk around them.

"You got distracted," Kale mimicked with obvious disgust.

"Izzy texted me and-"

The name Izzy was barely out of Chris' mouth when the scowling jacka.s.s to her right and Ephraim were both on Chris, trying to tear the cellphone out of his hand.

"Let go, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Kale snapped, trying to wrestle the phone out of Chris' hand while his father simply reached down, pinched the back of Chris' hand, which earned a yelp from Chris before he was forced to release the phone. Ephraim pressed his finger to the screen seconds before he typed something.

"She's fine, you insensitive b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" Chris snapped, shaking off his hand as he got to his feet with a glare aimed at the men focused on his phone and stumbled past her to take up Kale's abandoned spot.

Both men sighed heavily with obvious relief as Ephraim tossed the phone back to Chris. "Just a reminder to pick up some fudge from that shop that she likes," Ephraim muttered, rubbing his hands down his face.

"Which I would have told you if you hadn't attacked me, you betraying b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Chris practically snarled as he continued to shake off his hand with a wince as he shifted his legs.

"I thought you told her not to text you unless it's an emergency," Ephraim grumbled as he gestured for Christofer, who was still oddly quiet throughout this whole exchange, to precede them inside the large, and obviously, upscale building.

"I did," Chris gritted out, keeping stride with Christofer as they headed inside.

"She's pregnant," Danni said dryly. "To her, fudge is an emergency."

Ephraim chuckled as he pulled up the rear alongside Kale, who was once again glaring at her. How did she know this? Because while everyone else was chatting away and Christofer was voluntarily walking them to their doom, she was struggling to get free. She kicked, shoved, pinched and squirmed, but nothing worked. He'd barely even grunted when she'd kneed him in the chest when she'd tried to climb over his shoulder to take a chance with a pavement dive.

"Let me go, Christofer!" she said, squirming wildly in his arms, but other than tighten his hold around her, he didn't seem to react at all.

Fed up, Cloe decided to take a chance that someone, anyone, might actually give a d.a.m.n in this city. "Somebody, please help me! They're kidnapping me!" she shouted as Christofer stepped inside the opulent building and the gold encased gla.s.s door closed behind her with a whoosh.

"Scream all you want," Kale said, smiling smugly as he gestured to the men and women moving all around them and making her frown when she realized that they all wore various forms of black combat clothing much like that of her captors. "It won't do you any good, not in a Sentinel compound."

Chapter 25.

"You son of a b.i.t.c.h!" Cloe snapped as he stepped inside the large penthouse.

Without a word, and because he needed some s.p.a.ce to clear his head, he put her down, dropping her beautiful a.s.s on the leather love seat as he pa.s.sed by it. He kept walking until he found himself standing inches away from the floor to ceiling windows overlooking Central Park. Other than releasing a little surprised squeal that teased a small twitch from his lips, she didn't say anything about the rude way he'd handled her.

He knew that he should have pulled her away from the group and tried to explain things to her, at least of what he knew, but he just.....he just couldn't. Too much s.h.i.t had happened in the last couple of days and he wasn't handling it very well. To be honest, he'd rather be anywhere but here. He should be accompanying his sister's body back to Germany and seeing that she had a proper burial in the family cemetery, but instead he was here in New York making sure that the woman whose life he'd ruined was tucked away somewhere safe.

G.o.dd.a.m.n Marta for leaving him like this, he inwardly raged, grinding his teeth together as he forced his hands to stay by his sides when all he wanted to do was to pull out that d.a.m.n letter again. She'd f.u.c.king lied to him. She'd known that she was dying for a G.o.dd.a.m.n year and she'd never said a word to him. She'd f.u.c.king played him, telling him that she had a serious female problem that needed frequent treatment. It was the only way she'd been able to convince him to drop her off at the doctor's office and leave her there until she called to be picked up after her appointment.

He never should have left her there, but he'd wanted to respect her request for privacy. She'd been humiliated enough in that f.u.c.king lab and he hadn't wanted to take away what little self-respect she had left so he'd left her at the medical office and drove off far enough away so that he wouldn't be able to overhear what was discussed during her appointment. If he had known that she'd been diagnosed with cancer he never would have left her.

Never.

She had no business leaving him the way that she had, taking her own life and saying goodbye to him in a f.u.c.king letter! He'd deserved to know what was going on, deserved to be there to hold her hand and tell her how much he loved her, but most of all he deserved a f.u.c.king chance to try to save her! He would have taken her to every expert that he could find and made them fix her.

She'd left him too soon. He hadn't been ready to say goodbye to her, not when he knew that they should have had several more years together. He would never forgive her for doing this to him, G.o.dd.a.m.n her for leaving him like this and G.o.dd.a.m.n her for doing this to Cloe. It made him sick knowing that Marta had purposely brought an innocent woman into this mess. She'd put Cloe's life in danger, and for what? So that he wouldn't have to worry about being alone for a few more decades?

Marta thought she was giving him someone to care about and love when all she ended up giving him was another responsibility. He might not have been ready to say goodbye to Marta, but he'd been prepared for it. He'd been prepared to learn how to live on his own, to have no one to worry about, to finally explore the world around him, and to figure out how he was going to manage to live forever without losing his G.o.dd.a.m.n mind. Now it seemed that he couldn't even do that, because he was already losing his G.o.dd.a.m.n mind.

He had a mate........

A f.u.c.king mate that he didn't want and who sure as h.e.l.l didn't want him, but none of that mattered, because she was his now and he'd be d.a.m.ned if he failed one more woman in his life.

"Why haven't you tried to run yet?" Ephraim asked as he moved to join him in front of the large window.

"Why do you care?" Christofer asked, staring out the window at what other people would probably call a breathtaking view, but he barely noticed it, lost in his thoughts the way that he was.

"I'm just curious," Ephraim admitted.

"Were you expecting a fight?" Christofer asked, already having noted that this little misfit group had been heavily armed when they'd come to retrieve him.

They'd probably expected him to fight them tooth and nail and if it hadn't been for Cloe, he would have done just that. Throw in the fact that they hadn't resorted to bulls.h.i.tting them, threats of violence, and he didn't count Ephraim being forced to shoot him in the back of the head to protect his son, and the fact that they seemed genuinely concerned about Cloe's safety and he didn't see a reason to fight them.

Not yet anyway.

Once he knew that Cloe was going to be okay and he'd figured out how to keep her safe that was a different story altogether. He didn't need or want their protection. From what they'd told him, he knew that Masters, demons and shifters were searching for others like him, hoping to use them to make an army or whatever the f.u.c.k they were after. He didn't care what they did, as long as they left him alone.

He didn't want any part of their war, wasn't interested in getting involved, but he did appreciate the heads up about what was going on. He'd be more careful from now on, use a different name, wouldn't stay in one area for too long, not again. Not that there was a reason for him to stay anywhere now. Not with Marta gone, he thought as he felt his eyes begin to shift. With a simple thought he made his eyes return to their normal blue, refusing to clue this group in on just how badly he was hurting right now.

He'd learned long ago that his eyes gave away too much, let the doctors know just how badly they hurt him, p.i.s.sed him off and frightened him. It had taken some time, but he'd eventually learned how to control the shift in his eyes and teeth. They might have been able to make him wish for death, but he'd refused to let them know just how helpless and terrified he'd really been.

"I still am," Ephraim admitted, not really sounding all that worried about it and probably for good reason.

The man was just like him, a Pyte. He couldn't even begin to describe his reaction to finding out that there were others like him. All these years he'd thought that he was a freak of nature, a mistake, but he wasn't. There were more of them out there, a product of a vampire and a human woman in most cases. Unfortunately, it had also confirmed what the doctors had claimed all those years ago.

Marta wasn't his sister.

At least not by blood. Not that he really cared, because the little girl he'd gone through h.e.l.l with, raised, protected and loved would always be his sister. He didn't give a d.a.m.n what anyone said, Marta had been his baby sister and he would always love her and miss her. Learning that his father hadn't really been his father, however, had d.a.m.n near killed him.

He'd loved his father more than anything. More than that, he'd respected the man for his kind heart and his dedication to his family. When he'd been a child, he'd always hoped that he'd grow up to be a man just like his father, but now he knew that was impossible. The man that he'd thought was his father had simply been the man who'd taken over the responsibility and care of raising the child that his wife had left behind.

Christofer wondered if the man that he'd been raised to think of as his father had known the truth. If he had, he'd never showed it. He'd treated Christofer like his son, accepting him for who he was and never expecting or demanding anything more. His father had given his life to protect him and he would not dishonor him by thinking of him as anything less than his father.

"Is that why you brought us here?" Christofer asked, forcing his mind away from things that he'd rather not dwell on right now.

"To this compound?" Ephraim asked, shaking his head. "No, we didn't bring the two of you here because we were expecting a fight."

"Then why are we here?" Christofer demanded, turning to face the man that seemed to hold all the answers.

"That's what I'd like to know," Cloe announced, apparently giving up on trying to "glare" her way to freedom as she joined them, making d.a.m.n sure to put some s.p.a.ce between them.

A few days ago, that little action would have seriously p.i.s.sed him off, but today......

Today, it sounded like a good plan.

"Why don't we have a seat?" Ephraim suggested, gesturing back towards the sitting area where the rest of her captors now reclined, obviously waiting to get this over with. Well, all but one. Kale, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d that she'd already decided that she didn't like, was leaning back against the kitchen island, looking bored as he played with his iPhone.

She pretended not to notice when Christofer turned his back on her, pretended that it didn't hurt or feel like he was abandoning her when she needed him to help her get through this. She hated needing him this badly. He'd attacked her, changed her into this monster and here she was, hurt because he wanted nothing to do with her. She was pathetic, but she wasn't going to beg him for anything. Instead, she forced herself to focus on Ephraim. He was the clear leader of the group, which meant that he was her best bet to get out of here.

"Are you going to let me go afterwards?" she demanded, not really sure that she could handle anything more right now.

Ephraim shot her a sympathetic smile as he said, "No, I'm afraid that's not an option. At least not yet."

"That's the only option that I'm giving you," Cloe snapped back, the shades of red sharpening as her fangs shot down through her gums, cluing her into the fact that her eye color and fangs were tied in with her emotions. It was something that she was definitely going to have to work on if she didn't want anyone to figure out that she was a- "Don't worry about your eyes and your fangs right now," Ephraim cut in with a sympathetic tone. "You'll learn how to control those with time."

"I wasn't worried," she snapped, lying her terrified a.s.s off.

"If I promise to answer all of your questions first, will you hear me out?" Ephraim asked, gesturing for her once again to go have a seat.

"What if after I hear you out, I still want to leave? What then?" she asked, wondering just how hard it would be to get past those security panels attached to the elevator doors and the fire escape she'd spotted at the other end of the small hallway when Christofer, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, had carried her inside.

"I tell you what," Ephraim said, glancing over his shoulder at the quickly darkening sky before looking back at her, "if you still want to leave after everything's been explained to you, then I'll let you go."

She stilled as she considered him, obviously suspicious of this sudden turnaround. "I hear you out and you'll let me go? Just like that?" she asked, narrowing her eyes on him, looking for a sign that he was lying.

He met her gaze head-on as he nodded. "You have my word."

Nodding, she turned around and headed for the leather chair closest to the door, making her intentions clear from the start. She'd listen to him and then she was leaving, and she didn't care what she had to do to make that happen.

"Ow! Ow! Ow! Stop that!"

f.u.c.king Pytes, Kale thought with disgust.

He watched Caine and Chris force Cloe's hand beneath the stream of cold water while Danni did her best to hold Cloe near the sink when she clearly wanted to bolt away from Ephraim and that d.a.m.n bag of blood that he was trying to get her to drink. Letting Ephraim take the lead on this one had been a mistake, one he wouldn't be making again, he decided, sighing heavily as he shut off his iPhone and shoved it in his back pocket.

Not that he could fault Ephraim with the way he'd handled retrieving the Pyte, he couldn't. He'd gotten everyone in and handled a situation that you couldn't pay him to touch. He didn't do emotional bulls.h.i.t, didn't have time for it, so when they'd realized that one of the heartbeats in the house was slowing down and who it belonged to, he'd been more than happy to leave it up to Ephraim to deal with.

It had given him the distraction that he'd needed to see what was going on in the bas.e.m.e.nt. He'd have to admit that he hadn't expected to find a vampire, one of the Sentinel's blood deliverers, switching out a bag of blood for the unconscious woman lying on the bed. He sure as h.e.l.l hadn't expected to find a freshly turned Pyte on his first retrieval mission for the Council.

He'd come for one Pyte and had instead discovered two. While Chris had been playing twenty questions with the vampire and checking to make sure that the woman was okay, Kale had stood by the bed, gun in hand while he'd struggled against the urge to kill her before the turn was final. He'd had a chance to rid the world of one of them, he'd been tempted, oh so f.u.c.king tempted to take it.

If Chris hadn't stepped in his way and picked the woman up, he would have killed her. If it had been anyone else who had taken up the responsibility of protecting her, he would have killed them just to get to her and kill her before it was too late, but Chris was untouchable for a reason.

Izzy.

She loved her mate, adored the annoying b.a.s.t.a.r.d so when Kale was on patrol with Chris or on a mission, he made d.a.m.n sure to return the b.a.s.t.a.r.d to Izzy without so much as a scratch on him. So, for Izzy, he hadn't gone through Chris to get to the woman. The fact that he'd doubled his pay without lifting a finger should have comforted him, but it didn't.

He had no problem wrangling in the Pytes that were already in existence, especially if it meant making sure that they were kept out of Masters' hands, but he had a real f.u.c.king problem with creating new Pytes. If it was up to him, he'd rid the world of every last one of them, but since it wasn't up to him or evenly remotely possible, he'd settle for making a few bucks by delivering them to the Council....

As long as the Council didn't try to build its own army that is.

If they ever tried that bulls.h.i.t, Kale would make every last Sentinel pay for unleashing that horror on the world. But, for now he was going to content himself with being paid to hunt Pytes, retrieve them and deliver them to the Council. This way he would know how many of them there were, where they were and of course, bring him that much closer to his goal.

At least he didn't have to worry about these two Pytes creating any little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds that he'd eventually have to put down before they hit their immortality, he mused, shaking his head in disgust at Ephraim's attempts to explain their world to this woman. He really should have saved the whole "we heal from everything" part of the speech until the end. Even Kale knew what the woman was going to do as soon as Ephraim had made that little announcement.

Sure enough, as soon as Ephraim had finished explaining how Pytes could heal from absolutely everything, and he would know, the seriously p.i.s.sed off, but curious, woman had stormed into the kitchen to find out for herself. He'd known exactly what she was planning when she'd eyed that large butcher knife and he could have easily stopped her, but....well, he really hadn't cared enough to try.

"Lying b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Cloe yelled, struggling to get away from Ephraim, who was still trying to get her to drink some blood.

He probably should have explained that Pytes only heal quickly if they'd fed recently or drank blood after they were injured. Otherwise it could take a while for their injuries to heal. Since this woman had only been turned a few days ago and refused to drink blood, she didn't have enough blood stored away to handle even a tiny scratch never mind that huge gash on her palm.

"Get the h.e.l.l away from me, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Cloe snapped at Ephraim as she continued to struggle to get away. The trio, who were only f.u.c.king this up more, were trying to slow the bleeding down before Cloe could slip into bloodl.u.s.t from blood loss and they had to deal with more bulls.h.i.t.

A small chime brought his attention back to his phone and the job that was waiting for him. He didn't have time for this bulls.h.i.t. He had a job waiting for him and he needed to get going. He looked over at the Pyte who should be handling this and sighed.

The b.a.s.t.a.r.d sat on the loveseat, looking bored. Christofer's focus was on the floor to ceiling gla.s.s window and his eyes were a calm crystal blue instead of the fiery red that he'd expected. Kale was curious how the Pyte managed to control that reaction, looking as though he didn't give a rat's a.s.s that his mate was being manhandled by three other men, but he knew the truth. The Pyte was just barely holding himself back. The scent of fury poured off him in waves. His heart was pounding against his chest even as he appeared relaxed, bored.

Interesting.....

Curious to see if he could break through that facade, and admittedly a little bored himself, Kale walked over to the small group, keeping his attention on the Pyte in front of him, reached out and with the very tip of his finger. He'd barely touched Cloe's arm when he suddenly found himself soaring through the air courtesy of a seriously p.i.s.sed off Pyte.

Chapter 26.

"Get him off me!"

"Man the f.u.c.k up!" Chris snapped as he tried to pull Christofer off Kale and failed, judging by the way he was suddenly sent flying through the large room.

"Grab his legs!" Ephraim ordered Caine as he moved to grab Christofer by the arms and- Went flying across the room to join Chris, who was just getting to his feet before stumbling and falling back on his a.s.s next to his father. With a muttered, "Should just let him tear the shifter apart," Caine grabbed Christofer by the legs and yanked him back and- Landed on top of Chris and Ephraim with a pained grunt just as the two of them struggled to get back to their feet. Sighing heavily, Danni moved to make an attempt to pull Christofer off Kale, but all three men on the floor yelled, "No!" in unison.

Sighing in disgust, Danni walked past Christofer and Kale, and picked up the bag of blood that Ephraim had dropped in order to rush to Kale's aid. With another roll of her eyes and a muttered, "pathetic," she walked past the trio still struggling to get to their feet, plopped down on the couch and tossed the bag of blood on the coffee table.

"f.u.c.king h.e.l.l!" Kale groaned as he shoved Christofer back in order to gain some ground, but within seconds Christofer was back on top of him, beating the s.h.i.t out of him.

"Is he in bloodl.u.s.t?" Chris asked, panting heavily as he shoved Caine off his legs and finally managed to get to his feet.

"Don't you ever f.u.c.king touch her again!" Christofer snapped, laying punch after punch on Kale's face and chest as Kale returned the favor, punching Christofer, landing several nasty blows that had Cloe wincing and wondering what she should be doing. Then she remembered that she was supposed to be standing there, bleeding all over the kitchen because the b.a.s.t.a.r.d just getting to his feet had lied.

"Does that answer your question?" Ephraim asked, groaning as he stretched his back, a loud crack accompanying the action.

"He's coherent," Chris said, sounding impressed as he gestured for his father and Caine to get back in there.

With a snort, Caine stumbled past them and headed to the fridge to grab two bags of blood before returning to the living room section of the large open s.p.a.ce. He tossed Ephraim a bag as he joined Danni on the couch. Ephraim watched the fight for a good minute while he drank the blood, at which time Cloe had to force herself to look away before she got sick. Not because the sight of him drinking blood disgusted her, but because her stomach actually growled viciously at the sight.