“In a fight, Kitten, sometimes it comes down to conditioning. I know that sounds simple, but whoever is in shape is sometimes the one left standing. So we’re going to start training camp today. We’ll run, work on the bags, kicking, punching, crunches, push-ups and the medicine ball. I want you shooting a gun every day and I’ve got a couple of practice knives we can use. You get hit with one, it raises a hell of a welt and you know you would have gotten cut.”

“Sounds fun,” she said, and took another sip of coffee.

His eyes narrowed on her face. “This isn’t a game we’re playing with Cordeau.”

“I’m not complaining. I was already training,” she pointed out. “It’s just that, well, I can’t see me besting Rafe at hand-to-hand combat.”

Eli frowned. She’d grown up with Rafe being the sole authority around her. Everyone was afraid of the man. Everyone. Especially Catarina. To her, Cordeau was the ultimate, invincible monster. Eli hunted monsters, both human and shifter. He’d been doing it a long while, and the other shifters he knew had been doing it even longer.

“He isn’t invincible, Cat. He’s dangerous, but he isn’t invincible. I’ve met quite a few men—and rogues—just like him. I’m still alive and they’re not. I put the humans in cages if I can and the shifter into the ground because we can’t afford a rogue loose on the world.”

She dropped one hand under the table where he could see her anxiously rubbing her thigh with her palm. “I know you’re all macho, Eli. I can even tell you know how to fight. But he’s not right. He isn’t. I never really wanted to look too closely because he’s all I had, but there’s something not right about him.”

He knew what she meant. Rafe Cordeau was a sociopath, and it made it all the worse that he was a shifter. His leopard craved the hunt for humans and Cordeau gave that to him. He enjoyed the power of life and death over those around him. He couldn’t imagine what it had been like for a young girl to grow up in Cordeau’s house. Or the courage it had taken for her to leave.

“I’m truly sorry the bastards gave him your location, Cat. I didn’t agree with the decision, but still, I was a part of it.”

She shrugged. “I was too comfortable there. In the end I would have stayed too long, and I would have made a mistake. That’s the worst part, figuring out when you have to make the move, after all the time and effort you put into a new life.”