Ashley tilted her head to the side. “Animal or human?”
I glared at her and realized that Xavier and Sofia were doing the exact same thing.
“What?” Ashley shrugged. “We’ve all been skimping on our reserves of human blood. Now, we have to feed it to our enemy’s daughter?”
Ever since several rebels in The Shade blew up the Chilling Chambers, where we stored our reserves of human blood, we’d been living mostly on animal blood – taken from the wildlife of The Shade. We also had reserves of human blood – mostly taken from blood donations by the Naturals, but we made sure to use them sparingly.
“Could you just leave?” I snapped at Ashley.
She ran off and I found Sofia checking on Emilia. “I think she has a lot of broken bones…” Sofia frowned. “Her body doesn’t look right.” She gazed up at me and Xavier. “Can’t we get her somewhere comfortable?”
“You’re seriously considering bringing her onto the island?” I asked Sofia, wondering what she thought about Emilia being back after everything I told her.
“All I know right now is that she obviously needs help and that we’re the only ones capable of giving it to her,” Sofia responded.
I couldn’t help but admire her. At that moment, I knew that I’d just fallen more deeply in love with her. You really are something, Sofia. When she saw Emilia, Sofia didn’t see a threat. She just saw someone broken and in need of mending.
“Okay then,” I finally agreed.
“Where are we going to take her?” Xavier asked.
We all exchanged glances and though my first instinct was to take Emilia to The Cells, I knew that Sofia would object. Someone as wounded as Emilia didn’t belong in a prison cell. She needed to be in a hospital. In The Shade, the closest thing we had to a hospital was either The Catacombs – where Emilia definitely did not belong – or The Sanctuary.
I made a decision right there. With Corrine at The Sanctuary, it’s much safer. At least Corrine can control Emilia in case she tries to do something to harm The Shade.
“Let’s take her to The Sanctuary.”
Chapter 17: Aiden
A pack of cigarettes tied to a lighter with a rubber band landed on my bed in front of me. I looked toward the direction of the prison cell’s bars and found Yuri there. He was smoking a cigarette. I was grateful for the favor and still bothered by the friendship I was forming with a vampire. I couldn’t help it though. I liked Yuri. He was like the son I never had.
“I told you last time that I’d bring you some, didn’t I?” Yuri said smugly, before taking another puff from his cigarette.
“Where did you get these?” I asked him, unable to hide my gratefulness. I was infamous in The Shade for my taste for tobacco.
“Claudia has a bunch of them stacked up in her penthouse,” Yuri told me.
“Have you talked to Sofia about getting me out of here?”
Yuri winced. “Sorry, man. I forgot. It’s been crazy around here. I have been putting a good word or two on your behalf.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Don’t make me regret it, Claremont. I don’t ever want Derek or Sofia to have a reason not to trust me.”
“Thank you.”
“Ingrid is asking to be brought to you…” He paused. “Actually, make that Camilla. She no longer wants to be called Ingrid.”
I made a face as I lit my cigarette and took a puff. “What’s her game now?”
“She says that she wants her family back.”
“Right.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or get angry. How dare she pull that card after everything she put Sofia through…
Yuri looked at me. “If she really is willing to change, would you take her back?”
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to trust Camilla again more than anything, but I couldn’t. Not as long as she was a threat to Sofia. “I think the only way I can ever trust Camilla again is if she gets back into Sofia’s good graces.”
Yuri laughed. “Sucks for Camilla then. Sofia says that the only way she can ever trust Camilla again is if she gets back into your good graces. Seems to me like Camilla is screwed if neither of you are willing to take a chance on her once more…”
“Camilla isn’t Claudia, Yuri…”
“What’s the difference between them?” I remember the day Yuri told me Claudia’s tragic story and how they got back together. I could see why he thought that our story was similar to theirs, but it wasn’t.
Claudia had been a prostitute, just like her mother. She experienced abuse from a cruel man, and was a broken, untrusting creature.
“You know what broke Claudia, Yuri. You understood the depths of her brokenness. You saw why she was broken firsthand. You admit yourself that you contributed to her brokenness when you used her that first night.”
Yuri’s lips twitched at the recollection of the night Claudia was brought to him in a mask and he found out only after sleeping with her that she was the girl he was in love with.
“You can’t fix something if you don’t know what’s broken.” I grimaced at the thought of Camilla never actually letting me in. She never opened up her past to me. She never allowed me to help her heal. I looked up at the vampire I was having a conversation with. “You had to wait hundreds of years before the woman you love came around. I can’t wait that long. I will never become immortal like you. I don’t ever want to be.”
“The way I see it, Aiden.” Yuri smirked knowingly. “You are mortal. You only have this one lifetime, a few decades at best, to be with the woman you love and I think that’s what’s bothering you. You still love Camilla – even if you don’t know what broke her. It doesn’t make a difference whether or not you know the reasons behind why a person is broken, Aiden. We’re all broken. The question is can you still love her and trust her in spite of that brokenness?”
“I did that for a full decade and still, she left. Camilla left me. She left her daughter.”
“Well, I did it for centuries and still, Claudia left. Love doesn’t have to be returned in order for it to be true, Aiden. When she came crawling back, don’t you think I wanted to make her suffer? I wanted to see her cry upon losing me. I wanted to hurt her like she hurt me. But I chose to love her. I made the choice to forgive her and take her back. Part of me is still afraid that she’ll go back to the way she was, but at least I’ll have this moment in time, this period, when I can say that the woman I love shows me that she loves me in return. Don’t miss out on that, Aiden.”