Primal Desire (Heart of the Huntress #6) - Terry Spear Page 0,39

taken her home.” Atreides paused. “Put him on the phone."

"Yes, sir."

"This is Daniel Townsend. Who am I speaking to?" The hunter sounded arrogant and pissed off!

"Atreides. I find it odd that you would kick your sister out of the club after she looked like she'd been hurt, and you realized her car wasn't even there so she had no safe way to transport herself back home, yet you did nothing for her. What did you think would become of her?"

"A vampire like you would take advantage of her?"

Atreides hadn't changed his opinion of the hunter. He was still an ass. "Take care of her, you mean, when your own kind won't watch her back. She's here with us, under our protection for now."

"Put her on the phone."

"Since you ask so nicely"—Atreides didn't want to make a worse situation out of this than it already was—"here she is."

"You have some nerve hassling the vampires who protected me when you didn't give a damn about me. I was injured! And they took me in. So get lost. I don't need your 'help,'" Selena said, putting the phone on speaker, to Atreides’s surprise.

"You know what Mom and Dad would say about this?"

"They've already said enough. Besides, do you know where Rosa is?" Selena glanced at Rosa who arched a brow.

"Off with a hunter friend, I imagine, like usual."

"That's who I was looking for, if you even gave a damn about that. Family is supposed to mean something. Family is supposed to take care of family, but that doesn't work in your book." Selena was angry and Atreides was glad she was letting it all out and not trying to hide how she felt. With a sibling treating her like a pariah, it had to hurt.

"I can't believe you're putting all the blame on me." Either Daniel just didn't get it, or he was in denial that he'd done anything wrong.

"Did you know Cliff plans to kill me?"

Daniel didn't say anything. Which bothered Atreides. Did he know or not?

"Well, he does. So just think on that. You have a hit out on your own sister for doing what was right and it's coming from your own hunter friends."

"I'll look into it, but you can't stay with a vampire." Daniel acted like he was still fully in charge of the situation, like he was her second dad, and she would have to do what he expected of her or else. Atreides hoped she didn't cave.

"Why? Will it hurt my reputation?" She scoffed. "And what do you care about it anyway?"

"You're my sister."

"You should have thought of that when you threw me out of the club and didn't make sure I got home all right. Atreides not only wanted to make sure I got home safely, he realized I didn't have any hunters to watch my back and wouldn't leave me alone." Good. Selena was standing her ground.

“I’ll…I’ll be in touch.” Daniel hung up on her.

"I'm so sorry," Rosa said to Selena. "Hearing more of the story, I am really angry with Daniel."

"I was carrying a sword," Selena conceded.

"But you'd been injured, and you didn't have your car to leave it in. You couldn't have just parked the sword outside the club. I would have taken you out of the hunter club and talked to you and learned what had happened, and then I would have called Mom and Dad and taken you home to stay with them. I never would have thrown you out of the club and made you fend for yourself like that. I'm glad Atreides and his friends protected you when your own family should have. For that, I'll forever be grateful. But you shouldn't have felt you couldn't give out your name or solicited our parents' help either. You could have died!" Rosa said.

Finally, the gravity of the situation was sinking in!

It didn’t take long before Daniel called back. “I’m helping you to find the hunters and turn them over to the League for disposition.”

Atreides was really surprised, but glad her brother was finally willing to help them out. He still felt Daniel needed to make amends to Selena. Still, it was better if more of the hunters sided with them in this effort than if they did it alone. As long as the word didn't reach the hunters' ears who were killing the vampiresses. Then what? They would lay low until everyone got complacent again?

He explained the plan to Daniel and the others who volunteered to help and then it