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Tess nodded, still trying to come to grips with everything that was happening, all the incredible, disturbing things she was learning about the world she thought she knew. "Dante?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you... for saving my life."
Something dark flashed in his whiskey-colored eyes, softening his harshly handsome features. He came back to her on the bed and tunneled his fingers through the hair at her nape, tipping her face up to his. His kiss was sweet, almost reverent. "Sit tight, angel. I'll be right back."
Elise put her hand against the smooth wall of the corridor and tried to catch her breath. Her other hand was pressed to her stomach, her fingers splayed across the wide red sash of her widow's garb. A heaving roll of nausea weakened her legs, and for a moment she thought she might throw up where she stood. Wherever that might be.
She had fled the compound's tech lab in a state of complete revulsion, appalled by what she had been shown. Now, after running blindly down one length of hallway, then another, she really had no idea where she'd ended up. She only knew that she needed to get away.
She couldn't run far enough away from what she had just seen.
Sterling had warned her that the Order's satellite surveillance images of Camden were graphic, disturbing. Elise had been prepared, she'd thought, but seeing her son and several other Rogues engaged in the wholesale slaughter of a human being had been beyond even her worst imaginings. It was a nightmare that she knew would haunt her for the rest of her living days.
Her spine leaning against the corridor wall, Elise let herself sink slowly to the floor. She couldn't hold back the tears or the ragged sobs that grated in her throat. Guilt was at the root of her anguish, the regret that she hadn't been more careful with Camden. That she had taken for granted that he was too good at heart, too strong, for something so heinous to befall him.
Her son could not be the Bloodlusting monster she saw on that computer screen. He had to be in there somewhere, still retrievable. Still salvagable. Still Camden, her golden, cherished child.
"You all right?" Startled by the deep male voice, Elise flinched, her teary gaze flicking upward. Gem-green eyes stared back at her from within a reckless fall of tawny hair. It was one of the two warriors who'd come to the Darkhaven for Sterling earlier that evening--the coldly imposing one who had caught Elise and held her back when she tried to rush to Sterling's defense.
"Are you hurt?" he asked when she could only look up at him from her humiliating collapse on the corridor floor.
He strode toward her, his expression flat, unreadable. He was half undressed, wearing loose jeans that sagged down indecently on his lean hips and a white shirt that was completely unbuttoned, baring his muscular chest and torso. An astonishing display of dermaglyphs covered him from groin to shoulder, the density and intricacy of the markings leaving no doubt whatsoever that this warrior was first-generation Breed. Which meant he was among the most aggressive and powerful of the vampire race. Gen Ones were few in number; Elise, for her many decades of living in the Darkhavens, had never even seen one before.
"I'm Tegan," he said, and held out his hand to help her up.
The contact seemed too forward to her, even though she could hardly pretend that this male's huge hands hadn't been clamped down on her shoulders and her waist just a few hours before. She'd felt the lingering heat of his touch for a long time after he'd let her go, the outline of his strong fingers seeming burned into her flesh.
She got to her feet on her own power and brushed awkwardly at her wet cheeks. "I am Elise," she said, giving him a polite bow of her head. "I am Sterling's sister by marriage."
"Are you recently widowed?" he asked, his head cocking to the side as that penetrating gaze of his drank in every inch of her.
Elise fidgeted with the long scarlet sash at her waist. "I lost my mate five years ago."
"You still mourn."
"I still love him."
"I'm sorry," he said, his tone level, his face placid. "And I'm sorry about your son too."
Elise looked down, not ready to hear sympathy for Camden when she was still clinging to hope that he might return to her.
"It's not your fault. You didn't drive him to this, and you couldn't have stopped him."
"What?" she murmured, astonished that Tegan could know anything about her guilt, her secret shame. A few Gen Ones were gifted in mind reading, but she hadn't felt him probing her thoughts, and only the weakest humans were penetrable without some notice of psychic invasion. "How could you possibly--"
The answer came to her at once, the explanation for the strange buzzing of her senses when he'd touched her earlier that night, the lingering heat his fingers had left on her skin. He had pined her emotions in that instant. He had stripped her bare without her will.
"I'm sorry," he said. "It's not something I can control."
Elise blinked away her discomfiture. She knew what it was like to be cursed with such an ability. Her own psychic skill had made her a prisoner to the Darkhavens, unable to bear the bombardment of negative human thoughts that assailed her whenever she was among their kind.
But sharing a similar affliction with this warrior didn't make her any more comfortable in his presence. And worry over Camden--the raw misery she felt when she thought about what he was doing out there, swept up in the violence of the Rogues--made her anxious to be alone.
"I should go," she said, more to herself than to Tegan. "I need to... I have to get out of here. I can't be here right now."
"Do you want to go home?"
