I could see the tide had turned and Celeste was going to start to blame herself now.
“Sweetheart, this isn’t your fault. It’s no one’s fault, really. It’s some, fucked-up twist of Fate. A lesson we needed to learn, a fire we had to walk through. I don’t know. But the only thing I need to know is if you’ll still love us when this is all settled?”
I stared at her, hoping, praying that these past few days hadn’t changed her mind about us.
She gasped for air as though she’d been holding her breath.
“Of course, I still love you! Loving you all has never been a problem, but after I heard Tayte say what he said, I felt so betrayed! So hurt. I couldn’t believe that after everything we’d been through…”
She stopped, gasping for air again and that’s when I grabbed her hands and made her look at me.
“That’s exactly where you should have stopped, turned around, and demanded an answer from Tayte. And if not from him, then me or Sam. You can’t just run away at the first hurdle, Celeste. That’s not what this relationship is about. There’s three of us to check on, and you can’t run because one of us pisses you off. That’s not fair to anyone.”
Celeste nodded and gulped.
I grabbed a glass of water and handed it to her.
“Yes. I know.”
“Good. Because we adore you. Every single, tiny part of you.”
She nodded and swallowed some more water.
I sighed, utterly exhausted.
I hadn’t slept properly in two days, and I couldn’t even reach out to my daughter because there was blood on my hands.
Quite literally.
“Excuse me while I go wash up a bit in your bathroom.”
I opened the door and ran the sink, wiping at my face, my hands, my arms.
“What happened with the bears? You didn’t tell me.”
I ducked my face under the water and washed away the grime of the morning.
Then I patted myself dry with one of those small, white hospital towels, then threw it on the floor.
Sorry to that staff member who had to launder that one.
“Um…” I walked back into the room to watch Celeste swaddling up the ba
by, then holding her while she slept. “I don’t know, completely. We were winning when I left. But I wanted to get Tayte to the hospital, so we’ll have to wait to find out from one of the other Alphas. Hopefully there weren’t many casualties on our side.”
She nodded, then put the baby into the crib at her side.
“Okay, but will they still be after us? Is Trevor…”
“Oh, no.” I kept forgetting she wasn’t there. “We killed Trevor. He’s gone. And a lot of the male shifters, too.”
Celeste’s eyes went wide again and her skin turned even more pale.
“Well, that’s… great. I suppose.”
“Are you okay?”
I understood that she’d be feeling a combination of happiness and sorrow. After all, they were her family for a very long time.