“Yes,” Elena answered.
“I don’t think Mateo believed you when you said you got away from us,” Asher said.
“Neither do I,” Logan said. “Which means there could be more of them waiting somewhere nearby.”
“I have to go out there,” Elena said.
Chapter Fifteen
Logan openedhis mouth to tell her no, but the word lodged in his throat. They were here for this very reason, but the idea of sending her out there did not sit well with him now that the time was here.
His compulsion to keep her protected wasn’t something he was unfamiliar with; he was a protector. It was what he was born to do and what he’d trained for, but he’d never felt the protective instinct this fiercely before. The idea of her going out there had the demon coiling like a serpent about to strike.
Like most hunters, the transition hadn’t been easy for him. But unlike Kadence, Simone, and Nathan, who were changed by their mates, he didn’t have a mate to guide him through the transition. And he didn’t have one to help him maintain control once the change ended.
There were many nights and many times since he became a vampire when it had taken everything he had not to go on a killing spree. The scent of blood was as tantalizing to him as the scent of chocolate was to a human.
When he was still human, he was a chocolate fiend to the point where he kept bags of Milky Ways and Snickers stashed around his room. Every night, after a hunt, he would return home and reward himself for surviving by eating enough chocolate to make himself sick and watching B-horror movies on TV.
Since becoming a vampire, he’d often go home from the hunt and gorge on blood as he sought to satiate the demon clamoring for more blood, more violence, and more death.
After talking with Declan, he’d learned his new appetite for death and blood was something pureblooded vampires experienced. His hunter blood had made him more like a purebred than a normally turned vamp. Knowing that didn’t make it any easier for him to deal with his incessant urges.
A couple of times, he’d tried to eat chocolate again while watching a movie, but it only succeeded in making him angrier. The simple things he once took so much pleasure in weren’t enjoyable to him anymore.
It had nearly sent him into a frenzy, and when he recalled it, it still made his blood boil. He missed those cheesy old horror flicks and chocolate bars.
“Do you see your mother?” Asher asked.
“No. But there’s still room for her in one of the cars,” Elena said.
“Or he didn’t bring her,” Logan said.
Elena buried her panic over the possibility. Her mother had to be here; if she wasn’t, then all hope was lost. She’d have no choice but to go back with Mateo.
“Fuck,” she hissed.
It took everything she had not to slam her fist into the glass, but then she would give away her location. Her mind spun as she tried to figure out what to do. If her mother was in that car, and she didn’t go out there, Mateo might leave with her.
But if she wasn’t in the car, Elena was giving herself over to Mateo and getting nothing in return. For all she knew, this douche canoe had already killed her mother, and that was why he wouldn’t let them talk.
It was then she realized how much she believed Mateo was the one who murdered her father. The certainty of it settled in her stomach and burnt into her chest like a lump of red, smoldering coal. And she had no doubt he would destroy her mother if it helped solidify his power.
“If he has my mother out there and I don’t go out, he’ll leave with her,” Elena said.
“If he doesn’t have her out there, he’ll leave withyou,” Logan said.
When Elena glanced at him over her shoulder, she was alarmed to discover his eyes were that unnerving, white-blue color again. They weren’t the red of the vampires, but he looked far more demon than man when his eyes were that color.
If she didn’t know the good that resided in him, she’d run screaming out the door and into the arms of her enemy, but he’d saved their lives and stayed to protect her. However, there wasn’t anything they could do here.
If he killed any of the hunters, he would turn Savage. And if Asher killed any hunters, it would destroy him, as neither of them could live with taking out their kind.
“I don’t have a choice, and you know it,” she said.
“There’s always a choice,” Logan insisted.
“Well, if you can come up with another one, then please tell me.”
