Aidan chuckled, as he tried to shift in his chair, but the silver infused titanium chains that Kale had used to secure him to the chair wouldn’t allow him so much as a centimeter of space. “This is over a human? A bitch?” Aidan asked, chuckling darkly. “Oh, you dumb f**k,” he said, shaking his head in wonder, “you’re going to start a war over a bitch.”

“There’s not going to be a war,” he said absently as he picked up his backpack and riffled through it only to curse vividly when he realized that the little sugar addict had stolen his bag of little white powdered donuts that he’d been craving all morning. “There’s definitely going to be a spanking,” he muttered darkly when he realized that she’d also stolen his bag of Hershey Kisses.

“If you don’t release me right now there will definitely be a war, mutt!”

“Only if someone bitches,” Kale pointed out, making a mental note to raid Izzy’s stash once he got back to the mansion.

“They will,” Aidan said firmly, which was sad.

Kale didn’t bother looking up from his backpack as he chuckled. “And who do you think hired me?”

“They can’t do that!”

“No,” Kale said, grabbing a pack of Twinkies and sitting back, not wanting to miss a single moment, “they can’t touch you, but they can arrange to have you wiped from the face of the earth.”

“They’d have to face my Pack!” Aidan snarled with that same cocky grin that Kale was really going to enjoy wiping off his face.

“No, they wouldn’t,” Kale’s contact said as he walked into the room with his Pack filing in after him.

“Brock,” Aidan bit out, his eyes shifting silver as he spotted his Beta and his Pack.

“Aidan,” Brock said, tilting his head in acknowledgement to his former Alpha as he approached Kale and handed him a duffle bag.

“You little son of a bitch!” Aidan snarled, struggling to get free of his chains, but he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

“Before we begin,” Kale said, bringing back the Alpha’s attention to him as he pulled out a serrated knife. “I’d like to clear a few things up.”

“Such as?” Brock asked, gesturing to the rest of his Pack to form a circle around them.

“The search for Cloe ends now. She’s under my protection,” he began, sending the Beta a look that promised all sorts of pain if he was ever crossed.

Brock nodded. “We have no plans on continuing the claim on behalf of the Pack.”

“She’s mine!” Aidan snarled viciously, his eyes flashing silver.

“Her child is also under my protection,” he said, shifting his gaze back to Aidan.

Aidan laughed cruelly. “She can’t have children.”

Kale smiled, a cold smile. “Her mate changed her. She’s a Pyte now and with her change, her ability to have children returned. She is now expecting her first son.”

“I’ll kill him!” Aidan shouted, snarling as he struggled to shift, but the silver in the chains wouldn’t allow it.

“No,” Kale simply said as he reached over and slit Aidan’s throat from ear to ear, “you won’t.”

It wouldn’t kill him, but it would release enough blood for Brock to steal the Alpha position away from Aidan. “You need to release the claim on the girl,” he reminded Brock as he grabbed his bags and headed for the door.

“Consider it done,” Brock said, dropping to his knees in front of Aidan, who couldn’t do much more than gurgle and glare as his Beta leaned in and stole his birthright.

Chapter 59

Two Weeks Later……..

“Shouldn’t you be in the infirmary?” Christofer asked, glancing up in time to see Izzy, pale with a pinched expression, sit down on the couch next to him as she swiped the video game controller out of Caine’s hands.

“Shouldn’t you be groveling to your mate?” Izzy snapped back, the contractions that she’d been hiding from Chris obviously making her a tad bit bitchy.

“You’re not going to be able to hide this from him for much longer,” he decided to point out as he returned his attention back to his sketchpad since he wasn’t in the mood to discuss his hormonal mate or the fact that he’d ended up spending three hours comforting Cloe this morning after she’d watched a Huggies commercial.

“You’re only going to make this worse by hiding it from him,” Caine pointed out, sounding bored, but he knew that the Pyte was miserable.

About a week ago Danni had gone to her room to lie down and she hadn’t gotten up since. She kept giving her mate bullshit excuses, that she was tired, reading or just getting some much needed R & R, but they all knew the truth, could scent it now that it had reached her skin.

The cancer was kicking her ass.

The Council was going nuts looking for a cure, but so far, nothing was working. The demon blood stopped helping and so had Caine’s blood. Nothing was helping her, absolutely nothing. Caine hadn’t left the house since his mate took to their bed. He spent most of his time glowering at everyone and everything when he wasn’t trying to convince Danni to eat or try to get up.

She refused to do anything but lie there and soon she probably wouldn’t even be able to do that without crying. The cancer was already making her weak, frail and from what he’d heard from the woman muttering at the video game next to him, she was losing weight. They were quickly running out of options to save her and it probably wouldn’t be long before waking her up would be impossible.

“Hey, little man, give me your controller,” Caine said, drawing his attention to the boy lounging on the couch, his attention focused on the large flat screen television as he battled it out against Izzy’s character.

“Nope,” Marc said, letting the word pop out of his mouth as he blindly reached for the bowl of caramel popcorn by his side.

Instead of snatching the controller out of the boy’s hand, Caine smiled fondly at the boy before he returned his attention to Izzy and reached for the-

“Ow!”

“Don’t interrupt me when I’m in the zone,” Izzy said, her forehead glistening with sweat as she bit her bottom lip, her muscles tensed as she kept her focus locked on the game.

Christofer sighed heavily as he looked back down at the drawing that he was working on. “Another one?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Izzy said, lying her little ass off.

“Uh huh,” he said, adding some shading to the drawing, knowing that it wouldn’t be long until Chris came looking for his mate and realized that she was in labor.

“You really should be in the infirmary,” Marc pointed out around a large handful of popcorn.

“You’re just trying to get me to stop playing!” Izzy snapped.

“Well, you are holding back the mission,” Marc said, earning a chuckle from him and Caine and a pleased smile from Izzy as she focused her attention back on the game. He’d come a long way in the last two weeks, which probably had something to do with his father stringing him up and hanging him in the foyer until he’d promised to cut the shit and start acting like a kid again.

“How did you hide it from Cloe?” Caine asked, making another grab for the remote control only to pull back his hand with a curse and a scowl.