Without Regret (Pyte/Sentinel #2)(63)

“No,” she said, shaking her head. She was not going anywhere with him and she damn well was not going to leave this pool until she came up with a decent escape plan.

“Exactly how long do you think you’ll be able to stay in there, Izzy? It’s barely forty degrees outside and the pool has to be at least twenty degrees colder. It’s going to make it really hard for you to keep treading water and you know damn well the weight from your clothes is going to bring you down. So why don’t you save us both a lot time and bullshit and get the f**k over here!”

“I’ll stay in here for as long as I damn well please!” she snapped back, sick and tired of being yelled at and bossed around.

“If you don’t get out of there right now I swear to god I will spank your ass!”

“No!” she yelled even as she anxiously looked for a way out. She knew once she climbed out of the pool she was going to have to make a run for it and right now she really didn’t think that was possible. She was beyond exhausted, her arms and legs were getting tired, she was freezing and unfortunately Chris was right about her clothes. They were making it really hard to stay afloat. She just wanted to find some place warm, curl up and go to sleep.

Chris clenched and unclenched his hands as he glared down at her. “Have you ever heard of a man named Kale Quinn?” he asked through clenched teeth.

“No,” she answered slowly, having a bad feeling that she wasn’t going to like whatever he was about to tell her.

“He is over nine hundred years old,” he said, causing her eyebrows to arch and her mouth to drop. “Most importantly he’s an Alpha who has not shifted to his beast form in centuries. Do you have any idea how much power that takes not to shift?”

“N-no,” she answered numbly. She had absolutely no idea about anything because no one would answer her damn questions!

“He’s a mercenary, Izzy, and he’ll do any job for the right price and right now that job is locating you and I can’t let him find you here, Izzy. There’s no way in hell I can let this war come to my door.”

She was just about to remind him that he was the one who was keeping her here when he said something that floored her.

“Please,” he said, holding out his hand to her. “I can’t put any of my family through that, Izzy. Madison’s pregnant and my grandmother, brother and sister are completely vulnerable and if they find Marc,” he said, his voice breaking on his little brother’s name. He sucked in a harsh breath before he continued. “I just can’t let that happen, Izzy. We need to leave.”

She was already swimming towards him, more frightened at the moment for his family than for herself, which was saying a lot because right now she was scared out of her mind.

Chapter 21

“I’m going with you,” Ephraim said, reaching for his emergency pack.

He really didn’t have time for this shit. “I’ve got this, Dad.”

“Bullshit.”

“Wow, your faith in me is so overwhelming that I may cry,” he said flatly as he added two more fake ID’s and an envelope of money to his pack.

“This has nothing to do with having faith in you and everything to do with the fact that you have Kale Quinn on your ass!” Ephraim snapped, his eyes flashed red and Chris knew his father was scared out of his mind for him.

Not that he could blame the man, because right now he was f**king terrified that Kale Quinn was going to find a trail that would lead him straight to his family. He needed to move his ass and bring the man’s attention the hell away from his family, New Hampshire, hell, the whole east coast. He did not want a f**king Alpha known for doing anything and everything to complete a job coming within a hundred miles of his family.

Everyone in their world knew that if Kale Quinn was after you, you were as good as found. There was nothing and no one that would come between Kale Quinn and his mark, which was the reason why no one flinched at his insane asking price. Hell, he knew for a fact that the Council had tried to hire the man more than once over the last few centuries, but he refused to work for Sentinels. It hadn’t mattered that the Council had supposedly offered to double his fee, Quinn turned them down flat.

While it wasn’t surprising that a shifter, even a mercenary, refused to aid the Sentinels in any way it sure as hell was a disappointment. Having a man with Quinn’s determination and skill working for them would have made hunting down dangerous packs and nests easier and saved a lot of human lives. As much as Chris would like to add a man with Quinn’s skills to the mix he couldn’t blame the man for refusing. Any shifter, demon, or vampire that aided the Sentinels in any way was seen as the enemy in their world and for a shifter without a pack, even for a man like Quinn that was a dangerous move.

“This is a simple job, Dad. I’m going to bring Izzy to Eric. Then Eric is going to have her transferred to one of the island compounds. It will be a quick job, one that doesn’t need the two of us,” he said, lying to his father and hating himself for it, but he needed to make sure that Quinn came running and he knew of only one way to do that.

He was going to use his mate as bait to pull the attention the hell away from his family and bring this shit to an end. If she survived this he would hand her over to Eric, but if she didn’t survive he would learn to live with the loss. As long as his family was okay he could handle anything.