“Did I kill anyone?” he asked, not really caring, not after they’d locked Cloe up with him without making sure that they had enough blood so that he could keep her safe.
“No,” Chris answered, his tone curious.
“And we’d love to know how you managed that,” Caine said, regarding him with interest.
“What happened to her?” he asked, not giving a damn about anything else but how she ended up like this.
A heavy pause followed, drawing his attention away from the woman lying helplessly in his arms to the shifter glaring defiantly at him while Chris, Caine and Danni all looked torn between disgust and pity. Without a single word it told him everything that he needed to know.
The shifter needed to die.
“What did you do to her?” he demanded, welcoming the burn as his eyes shifted and his fangs descended.
“This shit can wait until we get home!” Ephraim pointed out firmly from the front of the van, no doubt hoping that he’d let it go for now.
“What needed to be done,” Kale said evenly, meeting his red-eyed glare with a silver-eyed glare of his own.
“Don’t start that shit in here. You’ll hurt her,” Chris warned, closing his eyes and letting his head drop back, looking exhausted.
“And what exactly needed to be done?” he demanded.
“He removed the mark,” Danni explained as she removed the bag of blood from her lips and handed the half empty bag to her mate with a reluctant shake of her head that had her mate’s expression shutting down, but not before Christofer caught the flash of fear in the man’s eyes.
“And how exactly did he do that?” he drawled, shifting his attention back to the shifter who was starting to look bored with the conversation.
“By setting her on fire,” Kale admitted with a shrug that had the other three occupants of the van cursing before he added, “But don’t worry, I shot her in the heart first,” with a wink that had Christofer carefully placing Cloe on the floor.
“I see,” he said, the last coherent words that would leave his mouth for an hour as it turned out.
Chapter 43
“You don’t want to do this,” Danni said, licking her lips nervously as she shot another glance down at her unconscious mate.
Instead of arguing with her, he gestured with the handcuffs in his hand for her to sit back down next to her mate. “I’ve never hurt a woman and I have no plans to start now,” he patiently explained as he waited for her to comply.
“I’m going to tear your fucking head off for this!” the shifter that he’d allowed to live for the moment, growled as he once again yanked at his handcuffs.
Since Christofer knew just how much it would piss the shifter off, he ignored him as he knelt in front of Danni, who looked paler, and handcuffed her right hand to her mate’s. He knew that he was probably going to regret it later, but he left her other hand free.
“We’re trying to help you,” Ephraim said, trying to raise his head, but the effort proved to be too much so he just laid there on a bed of pine needles and groaned.
“Yeah, it feels it,” he said dryly, shooting Cloe a quick glance to make sure that she was still curled up safely a few feet away from what was left of the van.
“We fucked up. I’ll give you that, but we really are trying to help you,” Chris said, releasing a groan of his own as he tried to sit up, but just like his father, he gave up after the first try and settled for falling back on the ground next to his father.
“We don’t need your kind of help,” Christofer said, stepping back to admire his work.
“You need our help more than you know,” Ephraim explained as he tried to roll over onto his side, but since Christofer had cuffed his arms and legs to the men lying helplessly on either side of him, the move proved impossible.
“And why is that?” he absently asked as he walked back to the van lying in a tangled mess on its side and reached in and grabbed one of the coolers that had survived the crash.
He walked back over to the ragtag group of misfits sprawled out on the forest floor in various stages of unconsciousness and placed the cooler down. He grabbed two bags of blood before he sat down on top of the cooler, deciding that it was probably for the best if he overfed before he tried to hike out of here with Cloe in his arms.
“You have no idea what you’re up against,” Danni said, looking pained as she closed her eyes and dropped her head back against the tree.
“Why don’t you explain it to me?” he suggested, glancing down at the bagged blood in his hand with a frown. He was definitely going to regret this later, he told himself as he tossed one of the bags to her.
She didn’t even open her eyes as she said, “I can’t drink that.”
“Why not?” he asked, wondering if the female Pytes had some sort of defect or disorder that he was going to have to watch out for in Cloe.
“I can’t consume human blood anymore,” she said, shifting slightly as she gestured lazily towards her mate. “I need his blood along with demon blood.”
“Then I suggest you feed him,” he said, his upbringing too well ingrained in him to ignore. His father believed that it was a man’s responsibility to take care of the women and children in his care and he’d made damn sure that Christofer believed that as well.
Danni’s eyes flicked open and after a slight hesitation, she reached for the bagged blood with a trembling hand and a murmured, “Thank you.”
“Do all females have this problem?” he asked, standing up so that he could grab another bag and toss it to her.
“No,” Ephraim said with obvious difficulty as he sat up, forcing a whimpering Chris to sit up as well so that he could reach over Caine’s prone body and pick up the other bag of blood.
Before Christofer could tell the asshole to give the blood back to Danni, Ephraim dropped the bag on Caine’s chest and moved to tilt Caine’s head back and force his mouth open while Danni bit into the first bag and then carefully positioned the bag at her mate’s mouth. The move surprised him, as did the fact that this group of misfits genuinely cared about each other. He’d never really belonged anywhere, he thought with just enough self-pity to make him shake his head with disgust as he stuck the bag in his hand to his teeth.
“Danni was turned when she was dying of cancer. Caine didn’t know about the cancer, not that it would have made a difference since he didn’t have enough blood on hand to kill the cancer,” Chris explained for his father as he shifted, careful of his broken arm and leaned back against the tree that Kale was currently attached to. The shifter’s murderous gaze was focused solely on him, so of course he had to make a big show of enjoying the last sip of blood.
“Tear. Your. Fucking. Head. Off,” Kale bit out, emphasizing every word with a vicious growl.
“Good luck with that,” Christofer said with a chuckle, already knowing that he’d come back from that particular injury without a problem.
“You’ll be putting her at risk if you try to do this on your own,” Ephraim said, returning to that broken record that he just wasn’t buying any more.
“The asshole removed her mark,” he reminded them as he toyed with the second bag in his hands, wondering what bullshit they were going to spin for him now.
“Yes,” Ephraim snapped angrily as he shifted his gaze to Kale, who was still glaring his way, “he did.”
“Then she’s all set,” Christofer said, tossing the bag in the air as he looked over his shoulder at the deserted country road behind him, wondering just how long he had before someone showed up.
“The shifter that owned her will be looking for her, now more than ever since word has spread about a shifter’s property being stolen by a Pyte,” Chris explained.
“You never know, he might have lost interest over the years,” Christofer said, knowing damn well that he would never lose interest in the woman that was currently pretending to be asleep.
“The shifter didn’t lose interest,” Kale said, his gaze shifting to Cloe. “He’l
l be coming for her sooner or later.”
“I see,” Christofer murmured absently as he studied the bag in his hands, wondering if it would be best to move Cloe up to Canada for a while until this blew over.
“No, you really don’t,” Kale explained coldly. “With or without that mark, the shifter that claimed her will find her. He will move heaven and hell to get to her and now that every fucking shifter, demon and vampire knows that a marked bitch was stolen, they’ll be after her as well.”
“Then I guess I should make sure that they don’t find us,” he said, having had more than enough of this bullshit.
*-*-*-*
“Are you,” Cloe cleared her throat awkwardly as she struggled to free her hands from the blankets that he’d cocooned her in, “going to put me down anytime soon?” she asked, wrapping her arms around his shoulders with the hopes that it would help stop the jostling motion that was wreaking havoc on her stomach.
“No,” Christofer said, not even bothering to spare her a glance as he jumped onto a boulder, causing her to suck in a surprised breath at the motion only to expel it with a stomach turning grunt a second later when he jumped down and continued running through the woods at a neck breaking speed.
“I’m perfectly capable of running,” she pointed out, not mentioning that she could probably handle running a half mile before she was forced to take a break or pass out.
“No,” he said firmly, forcing her to bite her tongue before she said something that she would regret later.
And right now she had plenty that she wanted to say and do, but she knew that if she opened her mouth right now that she would definitely regret it later. Maybe not in a day, a week, or month, or probably even in a year, but someday she would feel really bad about kicking the shit out of his balls.
Maybe.
“Can we take a break?” she asked, needing a moment to pull herself together so that she could digest what she’d learned.
“No,” he said, not even sparing her a glance as he continued to run at full speed through the densely wooded forest, leaving her to cringe into herself and pull her legs in closer to her body out of fear that they would be snapped off at any second.
“Just for a minute,” she suggested tightly between clenched teeth as her vision went red, from the breakneck speed or the fact that she’d just learned that the monster that had killed her family and attacked her, leaving her for dead, had marked her as his bitch.
Just the thought of that monster out there believing that he owned her made her sick to her stomach. It felt like she was relieving the horror of waking up in the hospital bed days later all over again when the social workers and doctors unloaded everything on her all at once. It was too much to take in and she just…..she just…
“Please put me down, Christofer,” she said softly, her head spinning right along with her stomach.
“No,” he said, somehow managing to pick up speed as he cut through a thick copse of trees.
She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, so close to losing it, but fighting it every inch of the way with everything that she had. She’d cried enough tears because of the monster that had destroyed her life and she refused to shed one more tear because of him. She needed a minute, just one goddamn minute to pull herself together.
“Please,” she said, putting everything that she had into that one word.
“I need to get you somewhere safe,” he said harshly, but he did slow down.
“And how exactly are you planning on keeping me safe?” she asked, feeling hopeless and once again wishing that she could take her medication just so that she could stop feeling this terror and absolute dread that was slowly taking over and leaving her feeling helpless, a feeling that she hated almost as much as the knowledge that she was about to relive the worst nightmare of her life.
She was apparently being hunted down by all the monsters that humans liked to pretend were made up by some Hollywood suit looking to make a buck and she had no idea how to stop them. She didn’t know anything about this world except for the things that she’d picked up in horror movies over the years. How exactly was she supposed to fight off demons, shifters and vampires all hellbent on getting their hands on her?
It wasn’t possible.
They were going to find her and do whatever they had to in order to kidnap her and then….
Then they would hand her over to the bastard that had killed her family. The part of her that had prayed for vengeance over the years and wished that a hundred different things had gone differently that day should be ecstatic that she was finally going to get the chance to pay the bastard back for everything that he’d done to her and her family, but instead she was terrified.
She was afraid of seeing that monster again, of hearing the growls, howls, grunts and the sound of her own flesh being torn apart. She was terrified of experiencing a single second of that kind of pain and terror again, but what scared her most of all, she realized, was being forced to listen as someone else that she cared about was torn apart while she was forced to watch.
She was terrified that they would hurt Christofer.
“Just put me down, Christofer,” she whispered, and this time, he listened.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, sounding concerned as he reluctantly, and carefully, placed her down on her bare feet.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said, shaking her head as if the move would give her strength as she stepped away from him.
Christofer sighed heavily as he reached for her, but she refused to let him touch her, because she knew that it would break her. She needed to do this not only for him, but for herself, because there was no doubt in her mind that watching those monsters hurt him would completely destroy her. She would rather go through that hell by herself for eternity than to see them harm one hair on his head, because….
Because she’d done the one thing that she’d promised herself that she would never do, she realized as she struggled to take her next breath.
She’d fallen in love with the bastard.
Chapter 44
“We need to get going,” he said, fighting for patience that he didn’t have as he looked up and noted that the sun was setting.
They needed to move their asses and put as much space between them and the pissed off group that he’d left chained up as they could before morning. Sooner or later that ragtag group was going to get loose and when they did, they were going to call for reinforcement and weapons. He’d already taken them by surprise once and he doubted that he’d get a second chance.
This time when they came after them, he doubted they’d bother wasting their breath trying to convince them to agree to their bullshit plan. They’d probably just shoot them, chain them up and drag them off somewhere where they wouldn’t have a chance in hell of escaping. He couldn’t let that happen.
They had enough shit on their plates at the moment without having to worry about this group hellbent on “helping” them. He needed to get Cloe somewhere safe and fast. He needed to-
“Get out of here, Christofer,” Cloe said, folding her arms over the blanket wrapped around her chest as she backed away from him and turned her back on him.
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” he pointed out as he reached for her only to have her dart out of his reach and leave him standing there, flexing his hands with the urge to grab her and spank her beautiful ass.
“No,” she said, shaking her head and causing her tangled locks to sway with the movement, “I don’t think you understand.”
“Then make me understand,” he said through gritted teeth, forcing himself to stand there when they should be moving their asses.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said, her spine rigid as she walked away from him. He watched as she stopped by a large oak tree and leaned against it, keeping her back to him as she picked up a leaf and played with it.
“Oh?” he said in a deceptively calm tone as he walked over to where she stood and leaned against the tr
ee next to her. Grinding his jaw, he focused all his attention on the foliage that she apparently found fascinating. “And why is that?”
“It’s time to move on,” she said, sounding bored and a little irritated at having to explain this to him.
“From what exactly?” he asked, reaching down and grabbing a leaf of his own to toy with.
“From everything,” she said with a heavy sigh.
He chuckled without humor as the real meaning of her words sank in. “You mean from me.”
“Yes,” she said after the slightest hesitation as though she was trying to spare his feelings. He appreciated the sentiment, he really did, but he knew that she was lying her beautiful ass off.
If her scent hadn’t clued him in to what she was really up to, then the fact that he’d tried the same bullshit with Marta after their escape definitely did. When they’d reached England he’d tried to leave her at an orphanage, telling her that it was for the best. When that hadn’t worked, he’d told her that he was sick of her and that he didn’t want to be tied down with a little kid.