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No.
Her daughter was the most important thing here, not Tristan. Tristan had shown her over and over that he couldn't just leave well enough alone. He had believed her when she said that she could paralyze his entire pack. He didn’t know she had an artifact. He thought she was using magic or a curse. She’d seen it in his eyes.
She’d felt his fear.
Shit. She actually had to have a fairly significant connection with him to be able to feel his fear for his pack.
Her windpipe closed off. She felt like she was suffocating as panic wound its way through her lungs. She couldn’t get any air at all.
She knew she wouldn't die. She’d figured out what anxiety attacks were, way back when she’d first left her pack. They didn’t kill humans, so they wouldn’t kill her. But they really sucked, and they left her exhausted and wrung out for hours.
It had been so long since she’d had to worry about having one.
“Mommy. What’s wrong?” Arabella asked.
Oh hell. Her daughter was alarmed. Violet had never suffered panic like this before, not in front of her daughter, so it had to be startling to Arabella.
She waved her hand. “I’m fine,” she managed to gasp. “I was running, and it caught up with me.”
She grabbed Arabella and gave her a big kiss.
Arabella studied her for a moment. She was an observant child, but she’d also never had any real fear in her life, thank God, so she had no reason to doubt her mother. She seemed satisfied with the explanation and took off, shouting at her friends to wait on her.
Violet sagged to the ground. That’s where Linden found her. “Hey. What’s going on?”
“I did it.”
“You did what?” Linden asked.
It dawned on her that she hadn’t bothered to tell her pack what she planned to do. She’d just grabbed the artifact and run. And what she’d done impacted them as well.
“As you know, I felt Tristan here. He was close. Really close. So I grabbed a bag and took the artifact with me.”
“Oh no. You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“Violet!” Linden yelled.
“I know!”
“Do you? You used a powerful dark artifact on your own kind. On the father of your –”
“Shh!” She put her hand in front of Linden’s mouth. “Don’t say it!”
“Okay. Calm down. But I can’t believe you just did that. Aren’t you afraid he’ll retaliate?”
“No.” She wasn’t. Had she taken advantage of his good nature? And his feelings for her? Yes. She had. She’d done that, and she wasn’t proud of it, but it had been necessary.
