Christofer held himself still as he waited for the shifter to mention the baby, but he never did. Instead, the shifter shook his head menacingly, his focus on the woods. “Not fucking happening,” the shifter growled as he took a step towards the woods.
“What’s not happening?” Christofer asked, moving to block him and wincing as his broken ribs rubbed against his lungs, threatening to slice them open.
“The Pyte won’t be reaching his immortality,” the shifter sneered. “My Pack won’t allow it.”
The meaning behind the shifter’s words hit him as he stumbled to the side, a breathless laugh leaving him as he felt the familiar stirring inside his head. He sent up a silent prayer for his mate and the boy, hoping like hell that they were back at the mansion and out of his reach as he let go.
Chapter 56
“Shhhhh, stay calm,” Cloe whispered, keeping her eyes locked on the bloody back of the man crouched down in front of them.
“I’m trying,” Marc whispered as she reached back and took his hand in hers as she pushed back, making damn sure that he wasn’t going to get another chance to push past her and put himself in front of her again. She swore that if he tried to do that again, that she’d put him over her knee and spank the shit out of him.
“He’s going to hurt you,” Marc said, trying to step past her again, but a firm squeeze had him keeping his butt where it belonged.
“No, he’s not,” she said as she debated telling Marc to keep running towards the mansion, but she wasn’t sure if Christofer would chase after the boy or not.
Since he’d snarled at the boy when he’d stepped in front of her the last time, she couldn’t be sure of anything at the moment. She knew that Christofer would rather die than hurt a child, but in this state….
She wasn’t exactly sure what Christofer would do if Marc took off running and she didn’t want to find out.
A vicious snarl drew her attention back to Christofer as he tensed, every blood coated muscle in his back bulging as he prepared himself to face whoever they heard running towards them. A few seconds later she nearly sagged with relief when she caught the sweet scent of Sentinel blood until she realized something very important, Christofer had also caught the scent. He growled viciously as he shifted his weight forward, preparing for an attack.
“Christofer,” she said, licking her lips anxiously, praying that she could talk some sense into him before this turned into a bloodbath. “I think we’re okay now.”
“Mine!” he snarled, shifting as he searched for the new threat that was coming their way.
“I-I think that’s my brother,” Marc said, squeezing her hand as he shifted behind her and she knew, just knew, that if she gave him a chance that he’d try to make a run for it to stop Chris from coming too close, but she wasn’t giving him that chance.
“Don’t move, Marc,” she whispered, moving back to make sure that Marc wasn’t going anywhere. “Chris can take care of himself. He’ll be fine.”
“No! Please, just let me go to my brother!” Marc said, frantically trying to pull his hand free.
“Marc, he’ll be-”
“You stay where you are, Marc,” Chris suddenly said as he came into sight, about twenty feet away to their right. He immediately stilled when he caught sight of Christofer.
“Don’t move,” Ephraim said softly, coming into sight fifteen feet away and to their left.
“Shit,” Caine said, stopping right beside Ephraim as he took in the scene before him. “What the hell happened?”
“Shifter…..attacked…..,” Christofer answered, taking everyone by surprise. “Scented my mate, my child and the boy,” he answered in a low growl that sent chills down her spine.
“A shifter attacked you?” Chris asked, looking as surprised as the other two men. “How the hell did he get in town?”
“It was black,” Marc told them, once again trying to move past her, but she wasn’t having that.
“Where?” Ephraim demanded, his eyes shifting red.
“It was waiting for us on the road,” she said, swallowing nervously as she watched Caine’s eyes shift as well and wondered if she was about to have two more Pytes going into bloodlust.
“Caine, can you hunt the shifter down and-”
“Dead,” Christofer bit out in a guttural tone as he slowly stood up and faced the three men.
“Were there any others?” Chris asked, looking past Christofer to make sure that they were okay.
“Two men….armed……smelled like the beast,” Christofer answered.
“An Alpha and two shifters,” Caine surmised, looking thoughtful as he leaned back against the tree.
“I take it they’re dead as well?” Chris asked, and after a slight pause, started walking in their direction.
When Christofer growled in warning, Chris continued towards them, “No worries, big guy, I just want to make sure that my brother is okay,” and to her utter surprise, Christofer let him by.
“Are you okay, little man?” Ephraim asked his son, stepping past Christofer with a nod.
“I’m fine,” Marc said firmly as she released his hand, but he refused to let hers go. “But Cloe is sick.”
Before the last word was out of his mouth, Christofer was standing in front of her, cupping her face gently in his hands as he looked her over. His red eyes searched every inch of her, looking for an injury that wasn’t there. When he dropped one of his hands away from her face and pressed it against her stomach, she fell a little more in love with him even as she struggled to not flinch away from him.
“The baby’s fine,” she said, her breath catching as it finally started to hit her.
She was pregnant.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, her lips curling into a watery smile as her eyes teared up. “Oh my God!”
“Cloe?” Ephraim said, sounding worried as he moved to her side, but all she could say was, “Oh my God,” as she placed her hand over Christofer’s where a baby was growing, their baby, a baby that she was told would never be possible.
“Cloe, are you sure that you’re okay?” Chris asked, sounding worried.
She opened her mouth to tell him that everything was fine, when she suddenly found herself racing for the nearest bush and cursing Christofer to hell and back for not stopping her from having that second burger.
*-*-*-*
“Where are you going?” Cloe asked sleepily as she tried to force her eyes open, but after the day that she’d had she was too exhausted to do much more than to give him a sleepy smile as he leaned down and kissed her softly.
“Go back to sleep, mein Schatz. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he lied to her, indulging himself in one last kiss before he forced himself to step back when all he wanted to do was pull his clothes off, climb in bed beside her and make love to her one last time.
“Hurry back,” Cloe said with that same smile that she’d been wearing since she’d realized that they were really having a baby, the same one that felt like a kick to his gut every time he saw it.
They were having a baby and he wasn’t ready.
His father might not have expected him to have a family of his own one day, but he’d taught him what it meant to be a man nevertheless. His father had taught him that the first thing a man needed to do was to keep his family safe and that’s exactly what he was about to do.
He’d planned on staying here, getting trained and learning as much as he could about the piece of shit hunting his mate, but now he didn’t have time, not with a baby on the way and not after what happened this afternoon.
Not after they’d found her.
His first instinct had been to grab Cloe and get her the hell out of here, but then he’d caught Marc’s fear and he knew that there would be no more running. Not for him. Leaving wouldn’t change anything, they’d still be hunted and the Williams would still be in danger because they’d led the piece of shit to them. He needed to take care of this problem before it got any worse.
He started to
head for the bedroom door, but the sound of the other men waiting in the hallway for him had him turning around and heading for the window. With one last look at Cloe, he opened the window, climbed out and dropped, landing on the ground forty feet below with a soft whoosh. He started to walk away when Chris stepped out from behind a tree with CJ in his arms, greedily suckling on a bottle.
“Going somewhere?” Chris drawled as he leaned down and kissed the tip of CJ’s nose, earning a cute little giggle from the smiling baby.
Christofer stared at the little boy in Chris’ arms as he nodded, more determined than ever to put an end to this nightmare. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said, moving to walk away when Ephraim and Caine stepped in front of him, looking oddly determined.
“Do you really think that going off on your own to take care of this piece of shit is going to change anything?” Ephraim asked, getting in his face.
“It will put an end to this,” he bit out, moving to step past him only to have Caine move in front of him, cutting him off.
“It will start a war,” Caine promised.
“According to you, we’re already at war,” Christofer pointed out, in no mood for more of this bullshit, not with that piece of shit somewhere out there, still breathing.
“Yes, we are,” Ephraim agreed firmly. “But if you go back there now and kill him, you will be starting another war, one where every shifter on earth will be honor-bound to hunt you and your family for eternity. They will go after your children, do unspeakable things to your mate, all because of some fucked up code that more than half of them disagree with.”
“Every shifter will turn its back on us, demons will follow and soon the Sentinels will lose every ally that they have, turning this war into a massacre,” Caine added.
“But before that happens, they’ll wipe out that little town that you came from, attack the Sentinel compound that we hid you in and then come here and to punish everyone that you’ve ever known and make sure that you don’t have any allies left,” Chris said, drawing his attention back to that baby in his arms.
He didn’t give a flying fuck about anyone in their old town, but Marta had. She’d had many friends there, had loved that little town and would be devastated to find out that the only home that she’d ever known was destroyed. As for the rest of it, he couldn’t stomach the idea of putting women and children in harm’s way and they must have known that, which would explain why Chris was out here with CJ in his arms while they did their best to convince him to sit back like some coward and let the piece of shit that had ruined Cloe’s life live.
“What are you suggesting?” he bit out, turning his attention back to Ephraim and Caine. “That we sit on our asses and wait for them? I’ve made that mistake before,” he said, shaking his head as memories of the SS storming his childhood home replayed in his mind. “I won’t make it again.”
“We’re not suggesting that,” Caine said.
“Then what exactly are you suggesting?” he demanded again.
“We’re not about to let anyone attack our home or hurt anyone in our family, Christofer, and that includes you and Cloe, but we can’t do anything until he makes the first move,” Ephraim started to explain.
“They attacked today!” he snarled, getting in the other man’s face, but Ephraim didn’t back down.
“That was just a shifter trying to gain leverage over whoever marked her, nothing more,” Caine said, shaking his head as though the attempted attack today was no big deal when it had left him scared out of his mind.
“It’s only a matter of time before her marker finds us and when he does, we’ll be ready,” Ephraim said, placing his hand on Christofer’s shoulder. “All of us.”
“This isn’t your war,” he reminded them, resisting the urge to shrug off the other man’s hand.
“You’re one of us, Christofer. That makes this our war.”
“I can’t ask you to put yourself at risk for us,” he ground out, the need to take care of his own problems too well ingrained to ignore at this point.
“And we can’t just stand by and let you handle this on your own, not with a child involved now,” Ephraim said, giving his shoulder a reassuring squeeze before dropping his hand away, but not before Christofer caught sight of what he’d been hiding behind that gauze for the past few weeks.
Frowning, he looked over his shoulder and spotted the same tattoo on Chris’ wrist. He opened his mouth to ask about the symbol when he realized that he’d truly fucked up.
“You…..bastard!” Cloe snarled, shoving Ephraim and Caine apart as she stepped past them, her red eyes locked on him as she pulled her fist back and let it fly seconds before she followed it up with a knee to his balls.
Chapter 57
“We shouldn’t be watching this,” Izzy said, her eyes locked on the large flat screen monitor as she blindly reached into the bowl for another peanut butter cup.
“Then look away,” he said, taking a large bite out of the fudge brownie that Chris had delivered earlier for Izzy to make up for the stolen fudge.
“I can’t,” she admitted whispering almost as though she was in a trance as they watched Cloe pull back her foot and-
Fuck, even he winced on the Pyte’s behalf as she made contact with his balls before Ephraim and Caine could pull her away. Trying to sneak out on a pregnant Pyte while her hormones were out of control to do something stupid was a bad fucking move. He still cringed when he thought about the hormonal rages that Madison went through while she’d carried the twins.
“Maybe you should help them,” Izzy suggested, grabbing another handful of peanut butter cups as he stole her glass of chocolate milk and finished it off.
“But then we’d miss all the good parts,” he pointed out, looking around the large office for another drink.
“Chris re-stocked the fridge this morning,” Izzy murmured, shoving another handful of peanut butter cups in her mouth even as she cringed when Cloe managed to break free and go for Christofer’s balls once again.
He pushed his chair back and leaned down, opening the mini fridge that Chris had installed a few months ago when it became obvious that Izzy wasn’t able to handle the short walk to the refrigerator by the door, and pulled out two bottles of water. He handed one to Izzy as he looked up just in time to see Christofer tackle his mate to the ground when she went for his balls again.
“How long do you think they’ll hunt them?” Izzy asked just as his phone went off.
With a reluctant sigh, he looked away from the monitor and looked down at his phone. “Probably not for long,” he said, replying to the text with a counteroffer that was quickly accepted.
“Where are you going?” Izzy asked, still watching the monitor as he stood up.
“I have to take this job,” he said, leaning over to press a kiss against her head and place his hand over her stomach where his godchildren slept. “I’ll be back before the babies start popping out.”
“Bring me back fudge?” she asked, absently as she cringed at whatever was happening on the monitor.
He didn’t bother making her any promises that he couldn’t keep and they both knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep a promise about fudge.
*-*-*-*
“You bastard!”
“Calm down, mein Schatz,” he said, trying not to vomit when sharp pain shot through his balls, making him wish that he’d been born a eunuch.
“You don’t get to call me that ever again!” she snarled, trying to get free so that she could go for his balls again.
“Can we talk about this?” he asked, the effort costing him as the pain shot through the tip of his cock and as much as he’d love to bitch about the abuse to his poor balls and cock, he couldn’t. He’d more than had this one coming to him.
“Talk?” she repeated, laughing bitterly as she struggled to break free. “You want to talk? Now?”
“Yes!” he hissed, his stomach rolling as he struggled not to pass out.
“It’s a little t
oo late for that, asshole!”
“We’re going to leave you two to handle this,” Ephraim said, gesturing for the other men to leave.
“Cowards,” he muttered, keeping his eyes locked on the furious woman beneath him as the other three men made their escape.
“Damn straight,” Chris said, walking past them.
“Get off me, Christofer!”
“Are you going to take another shot at my balls?” he asked, even as he loosened his hold on her.
“No,” she bit out, shaking her head firmly and as much as he wanted to believe her, he didn’t, but he still rolled off her anyway, terrified that he was hurting the baby by keeping her pinned to the ground.