War of Hearts(32)

She was silent as she walked calmly at his side into the elevator. He watched her in his peripheral vision. Thea observed everything about their surroundings. At first, he thought it was because she was plotting but when they walked into the hotel room, he began to think otherwise.

Her steps slowed as she took in the room and her fingertips whispered across one of the luxurious twin beds. There was something vulnerable in her expression as she turned to him.

“This is nice.” Her eyes darted away and she sat slowly down on the bed she’d touched. She looked uncomfortable.

She’d known poverty for a long time.

Remembering the shitty apartment in Budapest and the hostel where he’d found her in Wroc?aw, Conall felt a pang of some unknown feeling in his chest. Then, as he watched her smooth her hand over the bedding, her movements unconsciously graceful, he felt something else stir inside him.

Pity for the hellion was the last thing he needed.

She’d broken his goddamn neck, for Christ’s sake.

She was a murderer.

And as she’d so eloquently put it, she was his sister’s blood donor. Nothing else.

“You’re acting as if you’ve never seen a nice room before and we both know that’s not true. You must have been living in the lap of luxury as Ashforth’s ward.”

Her head whipped toward him and he saw outrage flicker in her dark eyes before she banked it. Whatever she’d momentarily wanted to say, she stifled the urge and stared at him.

It was unnerving.

Even more so since he felt a prickle of guilt he did not understand.

Eventually, she turned to the window, gazing at the dark world outside, her delicate profile at odds with the strength contained within her. “Since it looks like you’re going to be sticking around, you should know those vampires were hired to capture me. I’m guessing by the same person who hired the humans who attacked us.”

This unknown hunter was a concern. Conall nodded and sat down on the other twin, hungry and weary. He didn’t want to be in Prague. He wanted to wake up to the sounds of a loch lapping at the shore, to the sight of the sky reflected in the tranquil waters.

Instead of to a bustling city and an enigmatic Thea Quinn.

On that thought, Conall realized he wouldn’t be sleeping tonight.

She might murder him in his sleep.

“Ashforth is looking into it,” he said, rubbing a hand over his tired eyes. “Whoever it is, he must have alerted local contacts to your possible arrival. Your energy, your scent, make you an easily identifiable target to supernaturals.”

“Lucky me.” She shot him a wry look. “So, what now?”

“I take you back to Scotland and we try to evade this mystery man until Ashforth gets to the bottom of it. Once we’re in Scotland, you’re his problem, not mine.”

“How do you know I won’t kill you?” she asked.

“I dinnae.”

“I don’t want to kill you, Conall.”

He bristled at the sound of his name on her lips. “You’ll never get the chance, lass.”

There was silence between them until her belly grumbled. When he raised an eyebrow at her, she smirked. “Does my internment come with room service?”

Sighing, he got up off the bed and searched for a menu. Finding one, he handed it to her. “Pick something.”

She browsed it and he watched an attractive flush crest her cheeks. “Anything?”

“Aye, anything.”

Something like anticipation filled her expression. Conall ignored the appealing sound of the smile in her voice as she said, “I’ll have the filet.”

He ordered them both steak and immediately regretted it when the food arrived. Thea took her time over the meat, seeming to savor every second. As he watched her, it became harder to quiet the doubts in the back of his mind. Doubts, that if he were honest with himself, had been there from the beginning.

If Thea had the gift to make anyone believe whatever she wanted, if she was as strong as Conall knew she was, as fast, as goddamn powerful, then why was she living in poverty?

And why did the vampires in that theater get the better of her unless she’d been trying not to kill anyone?

Just as she’d broken his neck instead of killing him.

Why was she biding her time with him now? Why let him bring her to the hotel when she could have fought him in the theater?

Was it about owing him?

Or was there more to her story than Ashforth was telling?

Conall dragged his gaze away from her. The image of Callie’s face as they said goodbye floated across his mind’s eye, heavy with the hope and faith that he could find the cure to save her life.

Thea was Ashforth’s problem. She’d murdered his family. She deserved his revenge.

And Callie deserved a chance at life.

That was all that mattered.

His doubts be fucking damned.

“If you think you can change my mind, think again,” he told her abruptly as she finished her meal.

Her cognac eyes bored into his with so much soul, he had to fight a war inside himself. Conall wasn’t sure if the side of his conscience that was winning was the selfish or the righteous.

“I need your blood to save my sister. She’s dying from a lycanthropic disease called apogee. And I’d take on an army to protect her. Nothing else matters to me. Do you understand?”