“You don’t think I’m beautiful?” I teased. I looked up into his eyes and saw them softening. He knew what I was doing and was clever enough not to take the bait.
Matias shook his head, his anger completely faded away and smiled down at me before turning me so I fit under his left arm and began walking down the hall. He knew where I stood with him and with Xander, and that even if someone flirted with me, which I wasn’t certain Alec was doing, I was completely content with the mates I had, which included the prospect of bringing Ronan into the mix. No one else. Honestly, I didn’t think I could handle any more than that, not that I’d ever considered it. Man, what would I do with three mates? My head spun at the thought.
I shook my head and decided to talk to Matias about something else.
“You weren’t there when I woke up,” I then said as we turned the corner toward the living room.
Matias sighed. “I’m sorry, little one. I meant to be back before you rose.”
“What were you doing?” I asked and looked up at him.
Several seconds of silence passed before he answered. It was as if he was trying to decide what to tell me.
“I was following a lead on the detention facility, but it was a dead end.”
I stopped walking, which made him stop too.
“You went by yourself?”
“No. A few of the other vampires in the group went with me. Camille was our transportation. I needed to do something to redeem myself, so Amos sent us to try and find it but there was no trace of it, nothing that would lead us to its new location.”
So that explained the deserted mansion when I woke up. I looked around and finally saw a few supes milling around, doing one thing or another in the predawn morning. A vampire named Nigel clapped Matias on the shoulder as he walked by and Tonya, another vampire, nodded at him as she filled up a glass of blood.
“You don’t have anything to redeem. Not to me and not to yourself either. She was going to die regardless. Do I wish that one of us was to do it? Of course, but the deed is done.”
“How are you not angry and disappointed in me?”
“Because it wasn’t your fault.”
I stared into his silvery eyes and expressed how truthful my words were. It wasn’t his fault. He needed to let it go, for his own sanity if nothing else.
“Why didn’t you tell me what you were up to last night so I could go with you?” I asked.
“You needed to rest and I didn’t want to worry you over something that would be more than easy for our kind to handle alone. As it turns out, there was nothing to find, not even a single trace.”
I mulled over what Matias had just told me as he extracted his arm from around my shoulders and went to fill up a couple more glasses of blood for us. The fact that he, a vampire, along with other vampires couldn’t find even a speck of a clue that even told them that the detention facility even existed, spoke volumes. What would we do next?
Chapter Eleven
The rest of the morning until breakfast passed by slowly as I did chores around the mansion. The residents woke up slowly for a change, giving me plenty of time to think, which was exactly what I didn’t want to do.
I didn’t want to think about Ronan and the disappearing detention facility, I didn’t want to wonder about where my father was in the dreamscape when I woke up two days before, and I definitely didn’t want to turn over in my head what Ainsley and the other prisoners had gone through. But that was exactly what I did. It was all I could do.
Matias tried to keep my mind off of it all by chatting away, but I could tell he was out of his element, even if he was a personable sort of vampire. I loved that he tried. Xander even noticed I was stuck in my head when he came down to breakfast, but didn’t call me out on it. He knew I wasn’t shutting anybody out. If they asked, I would have told them what I was thinking, just as I did the night before. So he tried to take my mind off of it all too, without much success.
He and Xander both tried all through breakfast, but once the meal was over, they both kissed me sweetly and reluctantly said their goodbyes as they went off to do their duties for the day.
“I thought they’d never leave,” Camille whispered into my ear from behind before plopping down in the chair Xan had just left. Both men turned when they heard her not-so-quiet words and rolled their eyes before turning back around and walking away. “Man, they do look good when they walk away, don’t they?” She then grinned and her eyebrows jumped playfully.
Soleil didn’t like that Camille just admired my mates out loud and wanted out to show the caster just how much, but I pushed her back down and lightly chuckled. I knew Camille was just trying to get a reaction, good or bad. I mean, she wasn’t lying, but she didn’t have a death wish. At least, I didn’t think she did.
“So, what are we up to today, oh chosen one?” she then asked, her eyes twinkling with humor.
My small smile fell and I looked out toward the dining room door then back to her.
