Nico nodded, not saying a word. Anne didn’t, either, as she led him away from the streets and to a nature park, which was much less developed than the city parks. An hour later, they were as far away from that park as possible and trekking deeper, his senses on alert. A cloud hung over her as she closed in on herself, and he knew she was prepping herself for the final moment. He gave her the space she needed but walked close as every minute noise had him bracing for a trap, an ambush—
“There.”
She stopped and jerked her chin. He noted the thick circle of trees revealing nothing, then trailed after her as she led him inside. What he assumed would be just more trees and clearings turned out to be a cave, where they walked blindly until sunlight returned. He looked back, caught off guard when he found that they had entered through a hole, and now…
Nico’s breath caught in his throat when he absorbed the hidden forest the cave led to, where the trees were greener and lusher than usual. But there were bald spots where they didn’t grow. Slipping in gave him the sight of more bald spots, where the charred wooden pieces and old signs of life became more visible. She stilled at the first look. Then Anne kept moving with purpose, and he followed suit, securing the place before returning to where she was.
“Anne?”
“The ashes were swept away by the wind or swallowed by the soil,” she mumbled, taking in the grounds. “The burned pieces…no one moved them.”
There were a few huts that didn’t burn completely, so they went inside one. Here, Anne trembled until he had to soothe her back, then slide her into a comforting hug.
“This was the clan leader’s hut. He insisted on keeping it equal for everyone.”
“He sounds like a nice man.”
“He was to us. I wasn’t close to him, but I knew he would have done anything for us.” A pause. “The other hut…it was ours. My family’s.”
“Do you want to go inside?”
She shook her head. “There’s nothing there. I checked once after…after.”
True to her word, the hut was just the exterior walls holding up while the inside was empty. There were more huts like that, poles and columns remaining, some intact floors giving a peek of the tiles they had splurged on. A doll burned off its lower half blew under his feet, the eyes made of buttons and the hair stitched meticulously. They returned to the clan leader’s hut, where a chest managed to salvage pictures inside.
Anne clung on to one. He peered over her shoulder and felt a punch in his gut at the glimpse of a toothy smile and green eyes so similar to Anne’s. The man in the picture had the body of a warrior and shared the same smile as the little girl. They looked happy.
“I took this picture,” she whispered. “It was after we went out to watch the movies. Ava’s first time.”
Knowing about her past and being confronted with it—that she once had a family and was far from the loner he had met—jarred him, but he felt sorrow over her loss.
“She’s beautiful.”
“Yes, she was.”
Silence.
“It hurts for a shifter to lose their mate,” he said. “Physical pain. Emotional pain. Did you…?”
Her thumb caressed the picture once more before she returned it to the chest along with the other. Half-expecting her to take them all, she surprised him when she closed the chest and stepped back.
“I grieved for him. I loved him. He wasn’t my mate. Our beasts didn’t call out to each other, but my human form loved him. It didn’t matter. I still felt pain.”
“I can imagine.”
“When you said we could come here, the nightmares stopped, but my days were hell. The only times I didn’t think about what I would find and how I would feel when I got here was when I was talking to you…when I remembered you were beside me. And then we got here, and I couldn’t be more surprised.”
“Why?”
She exhaled hard. “It hurts like hell. But it’s no longer the kind of heartbreaking pain that paralyzes me and tears me inside out. It’s more…a passing pain. An understanding of what I lost and knowing I survived it. The guilt’s still overwhelming, but my will to survive is stronger.” A pause. “Isn’t it terrible? That I can still feel like this after everything?”
“It’s not terrible. It’s human—and at the end of the day, a part of us is still human. People can undergo the worst things and still move on. It doesn’t make them evil. It just makes them—”
“Human. It doesn’t change the fact that I killed them.”
“And it doesn’t change the fact that it was a mistake. You didn’t murder them with your hands. You just trusted the wrong guy.”
“It’s still the same. Betrayal. His betrayal and my betrayal to my people.”