Chapter Four

Byron gathered a slumberous Kit into his arms and carried her back to his room. A niggling little doubt was in the back of his mind as Kit nestled into his bed next to him. He clamped both arms tightly around her waist and asked, “Stay here?”

“Can’t,” she evaded. “Hungry. Need another bath.”

A vampire’s sleep wasn’t one that could be fought off until he had several centuries behind him. Byron only had one and a handful of years. “I love you,” he said, kissing her roughly.

“I love you,” she said quietly, stroking one small hand down his arm.

Byron listened to her steady heartbeat as sleep caught and held him. He should have made the others watch her. If he ordered them to make sure she stayed—he woke up remembering that was a foolish thought. She had agreed to come back.

Then he froze as he climbed from bed.

No.

She hadn’t.

Of course, he hadn’t told her when she would be going. And now he was thinking he really didn’t want her to go at all.

So the sensible thing to do was—

“The sensible thing? Now? When my bebè is gone he wants to do the sensible thing?” The voice that rolled through the room was one he had not heard in over two decades. Kristof was gone. Dead and gone. Of course, it was unmistakable, the odd blend of Russia and France. “Da, that is much sense you make now. The sensible thing.”

And the voice that followed was also one that belonged to somebody dead. All French elegance and fancy French sex. Byron turned slowly and saw the two very solid, if somewhat, well, ghostly, forms hovering by the door.

“Shit.”

Kris laughed, his head falling back, that familiar joyful laugh that he had passed on to his daughter. “So eloquent, my friend. Da. You have stepped into shit, you have. She say what she mean, my Kit. She will not come back to you.”

“I didn’t send her away!” Byron shouted.

Bella smiled sympathetically. “That is how Katrine sees it, Byron. And if you want her back, then you will have to go to her and bring her back. Now.”

“She needs some time to—”

“Bah,” Kris spat. “Time? For what? To be lonely and miss you? Is that what you would have my bebè do for two years? Is this how you take care? By letting her be lonely? She is your mate. Bella tells me this, long before I died. I try to tell you, when I died. And I tell you now. Go to her now, or you lose her.”

It was then that Byron remembered something he had forgotten. “My Bella is telling me…da, you had best remember that. Kit will want what she wants.”

Kit will want what she wants.

After searching quickly through the room, Byron dropped to sit on the bed, staring at his big rough hands.

Shit.

It would have been nice if Kit’s parents had bothered to tell him where their daughter had gone.

She hadn’t taken the tickets he had purchased for her.

She hadn’t taken the car he had given her when she had come home from college, or anything else he had given her. Just her own things, her own clothes, and her anger. He could still catch her scent in the house as he prowled through it later that night. Ben eyed him warily as he continued to search for Kit via the web. She hadn’t used her credit cards to purchase any tickets, which made it even harder to track her.

She wouldn’t go to France, Byron suspected. She would know he’d come for her eventually and she would not be where she could easily be found or brought back. So she’d either go to ground or go someplace where she would be protected.

And then he felt like pounding the wall with his fist.

She’d already told him where she was going.

The fucking Council.