“Oh, Cammie,” Margot breathed, stepping forward to enfold Camille’s crumbling form in her arms. “I know it hurts. I know.”
Though Margot was much smaller than she was, her embrace managed to feel all-encompassing. She stroked Camille’s dirty, briny hair back from her face and murmured soft assurances as she slowly guided her toward the bathroom.
“Let’s get you comfortable, okay? I’ll run you a bath and—”
Through her tears, Camille managed to gasp out, “N-no baths, please.”
Margot didn’t miss a step as they passed through the doorway and into the marble and chrome temple that was her master bathroom. “No baths. A nice hot shower, then, and after we’ll get some food into you.”
“No baths,” she blubbered again. “Ihatebaths.”
Margot smoothed her hand up and down Camille’s spine. “Shh, it’s okay. I’ll start the shower now, Cammie.”
She couldn’t bear to take another bath, perhaps ever. Just the thought sent ripples of remembered pain across her skin.
Her stomach turned.It’s too late to go back now even if I wanted to.
She’d touched him, breathed him in, kissed him, spent hours pressed up against him in bed. There was no way she could escape the pull now.
Did she want to?
Camille’s thoughts were a tangle, each one overlapping and knotting with the next until she couldn’t tell one apart from the other. While she cried, she couldn’t rightly tell exactly what she cried for.
Was it for herself? For the fear and adrenaline drop that had only begun to hit her? Was it for the near loss of her consort? Did she cry for the guilt she felt for what may be her pivotal role in wrecking the future of his pack?
The more she tried to follow each thread, the more tangled they became and the more tears flowed. She was a sobbing mess by the time Margot gently helped her out of her ruined clothes and guided her into the glass walled shower.
While Margot used the wall panel to set the right temperature, Camille huddled under the spray, her arms clasped around her middle. Despite the fact that her side had been healed, she swore she could still feel the claw marks. That pain, at least, might fade.
She wasn’t sure the confusion and guilt would be so easily banished.
ChapterTwenty-Six
Hours later,Camille sat on her living room couch alone. Theodore and Margot had reluctantly departed a short time before, claiming the need to visit a certain cougar shifter, though it took more than a few assurances on her part that she would be fine in their absence to get them to actually leave.
Theodore was dead-set on bringing her back to the Tower, but Camille refused. Even when she felt so very brittle, she knew that she would not be staying anywhere except in her coyote’s den.
After her meltdown in the shower, where Margot had quietly let her bawl until the tears dried up, Camille felt marginally better. Notgood,certainly, but settled. The tears had drained a deep well of guilt she had filled over the course of years,decades,in both drops and tidal waves. Now she felt… lighter.
You made your choice,she heard her mother say, her voice echoing from memory.Now act on it.
Whatever else Marian was, she never shied away from the consequences of her actions. There was a certain honor in that — even if those actions usually harmed those around her.
Camille did not want to be someone who regretted her choices. She did not want to be a woman who merely lamented fate and never faced it head-on.
She’d chosen to make a mess of her life, just as she’d chosen Viktor the instant before that bolt hit his shoulder.
Now she had to figure out how to go forward.
First, she packed an overnight bag. In went her clothing, her favorite heels, and her toiletries. The rest of her things could be brought to the den at a later date. Next, she called Viktor.
He sounded hoarse when he answered, “Cam?”
Her breath hitched. “I’m ready to come home. I’ll take a car and be there in a couple hours, okay?”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Viktor sounded like relief had knocked the wind out of him. “I’ll come pick you up. I don’t want you traveling across the city by yourself right now.”
“But the pack—”
