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 damn sure to put some space between them.

A few days ago, that little action would have seriously pissed 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 bastard 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 ass 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 bastard, 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!”

Fucking 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 damn 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 bullshit, 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 basement. 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 hell 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**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 bastard so when Kale was on patrol with Chris or on a mission, he made damn sure to return the bastard 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**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 bullshit, 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.