“What the hell are you doing?”
Come on, ice. Come on.“Trying to keep warm.”
Something glared and clanked in one of her fists. It took my sore eyes a second to make out what it was: a heavy chain. That would help her sink nicely.
I hopped harder and faster, a bunny on LSD.
What sounded like faraway cannon fire roiled around us. The lake was awakening.
Camilla grinned, maniac that she was. “You’re impatient.”
To be rid of you.
My rubber sole landed on a particularly slick spot, and I lost my balance, smacking down so hard I heard a crack. I figured it was my tailbone since the ice beneath my smarting ass held.
I could feel the roused water beneath me. Could feel its lapping tongue and liquid entrails. If only it could split open and swallow Camilla. I fixed my gaze on her cleated boots, wishing hard for each step to be her last. Soon, she was standing over me, her helmet casting my face in shadow.
I licked my split-lip. “What are you planning to do with that chain?”
“Why . . . secure us, so that if we go down, we go down together.”
Although I could no longer see her eyes through the mirrored visor, I could feel their malevolence. “We don’t need to go down at all. We can stay up.”
She grabbed the links between my handcuffs and hauled me to my feet. “Your fate rests in Liam’s hands, Nikki, not in mine.” She looped the chain around my waist twice, then spun me so that my back was to her front, and proceeded to wrap it around her waist before securing the ends with a heavy metal padlock. “He lets me shoot him, and you and I live. He fights me. And we both die.”
Heat billowed off Camilla’s body, warming mine. At least, I wouldn’t freeze to death.
Unless the ice cracked.
Then I’d freeze.
Andquite possibly die.
I tried conjuring up my wolf again. Failed. So I conjured up the next greatest weapon I possessed: my notorious optimism.
Camilla was too close to turn me inside out with her shotgun, and the ice was really very thick.
“I’m not dying today.” I said this out loud, not so much for Camilla’s sake, but for mine.
Her helmet pressed uncomfortably into the back of my skull. “Then I guess I’m not either.”
Even though there was nothing romantic or magical about my connection to Camilla, I finally understood why Liam was so against being bound to another.
Because this was how he perceived mating bonds.
Two bodies shackled together for better or for worse.
Chapter 60
Time became elastic as I stood pressed against Camilla with the song of the wind on my skin, the caress of the sun on my numb cheeks, and the slap of the water against my eardrums.
Minutes passed. Some stretched into full hours; others snapped like mere seconds.
I spent each one analyzing how to use our proximity to Liam’s advantage.
“Finally,” she whispered, her breath pluming out and dangling like a cloud in front of my face.
A single heartbeat, that was neither mine nor Camilla’s, stirred the air.
