Finally, Logan turned back to Mateo. “Let the fun begin.”
* * *
When it was overand Elena learned who killed her father, she rose from the bed and walked toward the door. Mateo sat with his chin against his chest. He panted heavily as blood from Logan’s bites trickled down his neck.
Mateo had resisted those bites, and he’d paid for it with a ton of pain. Sweat drenched his entire body, and his clothes cleaved to his thin frame as tiny whimpers issued from him. Logan wiped the man’s blood away from his mouth. Despite the power Mateo’s blood should have given him, he felt sick.
Logan didn’t hate himself for what he’d done; he would do it again, but he wasn’t proud of it and never would be. Was he any better than a Savage right now?
He wanted to say yes, but he wasn’t so sure. He removed a water bottle from one of the bags on the floor, unscrewed the cap, and used it to rinse the taste of Mateo’s blood from his mouth.
Elena opened the door and stepped into the night. In the distance, the sky was brightening toward day and the stars were fading. But even the beauty of the fading night and waking day couldn’t erase the awfulness of what she’d witnessed.
She never should have stayed in that room, but she couldn’t have walked away. She owed it to her father to uncover his killers, and she had. Some of the men he’d trusted the most had banded together to plot against him.
They disliked being a part of the Alliance. They didn’t want things to change. And because of that, they slaughtered her father.
In many ways, that was so much worse than what she witnessed. In other ways, nothing could be worse.
Tears welled in her eyes as she walked, and she had no idea where she was going. She simply couldn’t stay in that room, with those traitors and the vampire who’d tortured the answers from the man who set it all in motion.
A man who was, at one time, supposed to be her husband. And she didn’t kid herself into thinking things would have been different if she had married him. He still would have turned on her father. All Mateo coveted was power, and she was nothing more than a way to solidify it for him.
Still, she felt sick.
Had she really been starting to consider the vampire a decent creature? Logan had been ruthless in his interrogation and torture. She hadn’t seen any pleasure on his face as he went about his work, but he had to have enjoyed drinking from Mateo.
How could he not have?
Mateo was a hunter, after all. His blood was powerful, and Logan was a creature who thirsted for blood.
And who wasshe? She’d sat there and watched all of it. She hadn’t enjoyed it, but she hadn’t felt sorry for Mateo either, not even when he sobbingly begged Logan to stop.
She’d never considered herself cruel, and she still didn’t, but the cold indifference that settled over her as she watched them was something she’d never experienced before.
Who am I?
She told herself it was necessary, that Mateo deserved it, and both were true, but what did it say about her that she didn’t regret what happened?
She was almost to the motel office when the thud of footsteps coming toward her sounded against the walkway. The steps were nimble enough a human might not have detected them, but she did.
When she glanced over her shoulder, Logan was only twenty feet away. He slowed when their eyes met.
Logan’s heart ached as he gazed at Elena. Tears glistened in her black eyes, and the distraught look on her face tore at his heart. Her distress had sharpened her lemon sent on the air.
He should have insisted she leave the room. He never should have let her watch or continued while she was there. What had he been thinking?
He knew what he’d been thinking. Mateo had to pay for what he’d done to her, and not just slapping her. The man had shattered her family and nearly killed her; the bastard should suffer, and Logan would make him.
He’d also wanted to giveheranswers with some sort of peace of mind. He’d given her those answers, but at what cost?
She only saw him as a monster again; he could see the truth of that in her eyes.
Chapter Twenty
“Where are you going?”he asked with a far steadier voice than he’d believed the emotions battering him would allow.
“I don’t know. I just can’t stay there.”
