There had been plenty of death, and too many cubs had been robbed of their parents. They didn’t need to perpetuate the cycle of violence and loss.
Besides, he’d already lost an eye, three fingers, and suffered severe nerve damage in one leg that would take years of regular healer visits to fix. That and the Aucilla pack’s hefty tribute payment for the damage done seemed like enough punishment.
He would be shipped back to his pack, worse for wear but alive, for them to deal with as they saw fit. It was more than he deserved, perhaps, but they stood by their choice even when Theodore snarled about it. They were building a better future. What better place to start than their own lives?
What better tenet to stand by than mercy?
But it wasn’t the thought of Damon that troubled her consort. The melancholy settled over him after he checked in with Lana about how she was handling her father’s death. Camille had quietly left him to it, knowing that it was a private thing between the two of them, and returned half an hour later to find Viktor quiet.
Sidling up behind him, she pressed her cheek to his bite and asked, “My love, why do you look so sad? This is the night before your big triumph. Shouldn’t we be celebrating?”
Viktor pulled her around to tuck her into his side. His skin was hot, several degrees warmer than her own, and littered with the tiny scars of a life lived to the fullest. She had only just begun to memorize their constellations. Camille couldn’t wait for the day when she could close her eyes and map them unerringly with her fingertips.
Viktor tilted his head to press a kiss to her temple. “I am happy. I’m just— I’m also sad to say goodbye to this place. More than I thought I’d be.”
“We’ll be back.”
Viktor’s smile was bittersweet. “I know, but it won’t be the same. This is saying goodbye to the place that helped raise me.”
Camille stared at his profile. He was so beautiful it made her want to cup him in her palms and keep him close forever. Every time she looked at him, she saw that moment he nearly slipped from her grasp and only wished she could hold on tighter, more fiercely, until even the memory of terror faded into nothing.
“I didn’t really say goodbye to the estate,” she told him. “I loved the land, but…”
Looking away from the window, he murmured, “You said goodbye to your mom, though. That was enough.”
And she didn’t care enough about the house, tainted by memories as it was, to feel what Viktor did. There would always be a pang of nostalgia when she thought of the dusty, sandy soil of the vineyard and the verdant hills that sprawled around it, dappled with twisted oak trees, but she didn’t cry when she left.
Camille could feel how wrenching it was for him to leave his home behind.
“All my memories are here,” he continued, husky with feeling. “I was born here. My mom died here. I became an alpha here.” Viktor looked at her with eyes of liquid gold — coyote and man grieving for the past. “I found a family with the Solbournes and my pack here. I met you here. This is where every good and terrible memory lives.”
Gently, she reminded him, “We’ll make new memories in our new home, Vik.”
His smile was painfully sad. “I know and I’m excited for that. But it doesn’t mean I can’t grieve for what we’re leaving behind.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Viktor sucked in a deep breath and pulled her closer. His eyes wandered back to the window as she pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. In a choked voice, he confessed, “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight, sweetheart. Thinking of the land empty right now— it hurts too much.”
Cupping his jaw, Camille gently turned his head until he was looking at her. “Let’s go, then.”
“What?”
“Let’s go spend the night there.”
Viktor looked startled, then torn, when he said, “We leave tomorrow morning, Cam, and the weres plan to start moving in at dawn.”
“We’ll be gone before then.” Stepping back, she trailed her fingers down his arm until she found his hand. With a tug toward the apartment door, she cajoled, “Come on, Alpha Hamilton, let’s go for a run around the lake. Remember how you used to promise me we’d do that someday? Now’s our last chance.”
His throat worked around a hard swallow. “You’re sure? I know you’re tired from all the planning—”
Shoving her feet into her black running shoes, left by the door when they came home, she cast him a look over her shoulder. “I want what you promised, thank you very much. I’m your mate. Aren’t I supposed to be treated to nice things?”
Viktor’s voice was full of tenderness when he muttered, “Brat.”
Camille passed him his shoes with a wink. “Your brat.”
Walking into the dark woods surrounding Lake Merced on the cool summer night was not quite eerie, but it was… heavy — as if the trees and the water and the tracks worn down by paws and feet over a generation knew they were leaving.
In the light of day it hadn’t felt so real.
In the dark, it was impossible to escape the profound sense of emptiness that echoed across the territory. There was no background hum of magic from the individual wards around the dens. No thrum of life from the packmates who called the land home. The air was still and quiet without the howls and yips of coyotes stalking one another in the night.
Even the breeze felt somehow melancholic when it slid through her hair.
They stood in the clearing that had once been their pack’s meeting place. The huge firepit that sat at its center had been disassembled; its stones carefully packed and shipped to their new home with Benny. Where there were once well-loved picnic tables, there were simply impressions in the grass. At the far end of the clearing, a small building that had housed their nursery school and a community center stood silent and watchful, waiting for its new occupants. The pack had voted unanimously to leave it for the incoming pack.
Camille watched Viktor walk up to the filled in circle where the fire pit once sat. He crouched, the muscles of his bare back flexing, and pressed his palm against the freshly turned earth.
The moon was new and the sky was clear. No fog obscured the stars, nor bounced back the light of the city to illuminate her consort’s form. But she was an elf, and she did not need it to see him — to feel the bittersweet ache of separation that raked his soul.
A fine sheen of sweat cooled her skin as the breeze blew in off of the water. The faint hint of salt touched her tongue, conjuring memories of their trips to the ocean, of the taste of his skin.
Their run took them around the entirety of the tiny territory and back through the hidden arteries of the trails. They wound around thick, gnarled tree trunks and through spiky reeds. They brushed the treeline where the sandy cliffs gave way to the glittering beach, and they wandered back, circling the impressions each den left in the soil as a final goodbye.
The meeting area was their final stop, and where she knew Viktor would bury a piece of his heart.
Camille joined him at the fire pit. Disregarding how the silty, ash-strewn dirt would ruin her expensive athletic leggings, she dropped onto the ground beside him and brushed her fingertips over the edge of the circle.