Her throat convulsed around a jagged shard of glass, as if the tears she locked away had crystallized and shattered inside her. Speaking was almost impossible, and yet she managed to whisper, “How did you figure it all out?”
“I decided that, if my life was already over, then the last thing I wanted was to go out friendless and alone. I wanted to know what it was like to trust someone, just once.” Margot stepped into the room. Her feet, bare except for the thin, shadowy tights she wore, whispered against the plush carpet as she came to stand in front of Camille.
Margot’s eyes flickered from one spot on her face to another, as if she was reading some message only she could see.
“I know it isn’t easy, but letting someone else take a little bit of the weight of that despair for a moment can change everything.” She touched Camille’s arm, gentle but firm enough to feel it through the layers of her ruined clothing. “Let me take a little of the weight for you, Cammie. Just for a minute.”
Gods, I’m falling apart.
Camille could feel her walls crumbling, letting loose a torrent of pain and anxiety and guilt that threatened to break her bones, drown her, and sweep her body out into an endless, churning despair.
Her chin wobbled and she watched, horrified, as Margot’s unusual eyes watered with sympathy. In a ragged voice, she asked, “Why would you do that? We don’t even really know each other.”
Margot was quiet for a moment. Finally, she answered, “Because sometimes it’s easier to let a stranger into your darkest moment than someone you love.”
The words hit her like an m-lev. Camille couldn’t bear the idea of Theodore witnessing her meltdown, knowing he would only seek ways to fix it, and she knew she couldn’t stay with Viktor and watch it torture him, either.
But if she was honest with herself, she would admit that she didn’t really want to be alone, either.
She’d been alone for far longer than the months since her mother died. Making sure that her brother could live his life how he pleased meant putting herself between him and Marian — effectively isolating herself from both the rest of the family and the outside world. The unintended side effect of her mother’s scheming was making their branch of the family pariahs. Until Camille grew into adulthood, very few wanted to risk their young by associating them with the woman who boldly declared her hatred for the Solbourne family.
Even Linnea, who grew up on the estate with her, had never been allowed to publicly appear alongside Camille until she was an adult.
For a handful of golden years, Viktor had been her only real connection, her only companion. She’d felt that connection again so briefly. It was like a soft rain on a parched and broken field.
And now that taste of cool, sweet water only left her wanting more. For just a moment she wasn’t afraid of the future. She didn’t think of politics or her promise to her mother. She thought only of her consort and the joy that rushed through her veins when he looked at her like he couldn’t imagine a life without her.
Now… now I don’t know what I’m going to do.
The shock of almost losing Viktor, of watching Margot hold his life in her capable hands on that beach, and then the horror of discovering that their relationship might put the future of his pack at risk, finally set in. Grief and guilt meshed with the acute terror, gathering like a twisting cyclone in her mind.
“I don’t want to ruin this for him,” she gasped. “But if I don’t— if I can’t— I’ll end up just like her. And I won’t— I won’t have him.” Camille’s breath hitched once, twice, before the dam broke.
“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. “I hate baths.”
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.
Chapter Twenty-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. Not good, 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.