“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 f**ked 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 f**k 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.