“But you slew her, ma petite.”

I kept nodding. “Yes.”

“And from the stories that everyone told when you got back, if you hadn’t had Domino at the end, the Mother of All Darkness might have won instead,” Micah said.

I blinked and looked at him. I remembered reaching out in the fight, when I was drowning in the darkness that was her, and finding Domino’s hand to hold, his power of white and black tiger completely the power I needed.

“She meant to use you both like pawns, but you turned yourself into a queen, and made Domino your knight, and destroyed her.”

The Mother of All Darkness had been the night given form, and she had done her best to take me over and make me into a meat puppet for her spirit to inhabit. When that hadn’t worked, she’d tried to get me pregnant by one of the cat lycanthropes that she could control. She’d been willing to wait until the baby grew old enough and then she’d have moved in, but none of it had worked out. Hired assassins had blown up her last body with modern bombs and fire, and that cleanses everything, even her, but her spirit escaped and left her shell behind. How do you kill something that is untouchable, just floating from body to body? By making it stay in one place long enough, inside one person long enough, to kill it. I hadn’t done it on purpose, but she had wanted me so badly that I’d been bait enough to make her linger.

She had tried to pour thousands of years of darkness into me, and in the end I had used the vampire powers I’d gained, partly through her meddling, to drink her down. It was like drowning in a night-black sea, but instead of fighting to breathe the air I’d let myself sink and bet that I could drink the ocean faster than it could drown me. I was losing when Domino’s hand had reached into that darkness and grabbed me, given me his energy to help tip the balance. Domino and Ethan, who had been the newest weretiger of all, had carried every genetic line that had belonged to the tiger clans, and it had been enough to save me and help destroy the Mother of All Darkness.

“Domino without Ethan wouldn’t have been enough; it took both of them with their mixed heritage to save me,” I said.

“Oui, if Ethan had not held the bloodlines of red, gold, and blue tiger clans, then the white and black of Domino would not have been enough, but the point stands, ma petite. You had the power of the tiger clans at that moment, that singular moment that the tigers had been prophesying about for over two thousand years.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m supposed to save everybody from the great bad thing, because I’m the Queen of Tigers.”

“But it worked exactly as the prophecy predicted, ma petite; without the weretigers you could not have prevailed, and without you to harness their power they could not have killed their dark nemesis.”

I’d have argued with the term dark nemesis, but it was too damned accurate. If the Mother of All Darkness and Vittorio hadn’t forced us together, I’d be worse than dead now. I’d be trapped inside my own body, watching her use it to do terrible things. She had been a necromancer like me, but a thousand times more powerful. She could have raised an army of the walking dead to do her bidding. I wondered if she could have done what I had seen on the FBI tapes. Could Marmee Noir have put someone’s soul back in their zombie corpse? I didn’t think so; I was almost certain that required voodoo, which she hadn’t known, but I wouldn’t have put anything past her. Thinking about the case steadied me, helped me remember who I was, what I was, and that I was no one’s victim. I had survived, and they were dead; if anyone was anyone’s victim, they were mine.

“Fuck them,” I said, forcefully.

Micah smiled at me. “That’s our girl.”

“Indeed she is,” Jean-Claude said. He leaned in and laid a gentle kiss against my hair.

I nodded, but this time it was just a nod, not that endless, helpless gesture. I wrapped my arms around their waists, which made them wrap their own arms around each other so they could both hold me together. I pressed my face into Jean-Claude’s chest and Micah’s shoulder. Jean-Claude was still bare-chested, his smooth skin soft against my face. Micah’s T-shirt was soft, but not as soft and warm as his skin would be. I almost told him to take off the shirt so I could touch more of his skin, and just thinking it helped me feel more like myself again. I wasn’t gone, or changed, by the evil that had touched me. I was still in here, still me, and that meant sex was good, not bad. I felt bad that I’d pushed Domino and Crispin away for something that wasn’t their fault. I wasn’t sure I would ever feel closer to them, but I could at least acknowledge what I’d been doing and maybe why.

I’d thought I had too many people in my life, but maybe I had too much trauma attached to too many people. It sounded like almost the same thing, but it didn’t feel the same. Leaving people out because you didn’t feel that spark was one thing, but doing it because you blamed them for being with you when you all got mind-raped just seemed like punishing the victims. I tried really hard not to do that.

“Do I owe them an apology, or do I just keep moving?” I asked.

One of the men smoothed my hair, but it was Micah who asked, “Who?”

“Domino and Crispin.”

“I do not believe so,” Jean-Claude said.

I rose back enough from them to look up into his face. “Why not?”

“Because there is not enough of you to go around now, ma petite. I would not be willing to cut more of your time away to offer to them.”

“I asked if I should apologize, not sleep with them more.”

He smiled. “Ma petite, it is you; sex often goes with an apology.”

Micah gave a half shrug, and his expression showed he agreed.

I frowned at them both.

“Truth is truth, ma petite.”

“But you’re encouraging me to put more time into Cynric.”

“No,” Micah said, “we’re not, just acknowledging what’s already happening, that’s all.”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

He glanced at Jean-Claude.

“What? What’s that look?” I pulled away from them both. The anger flared immediately, hot and ready. I felt better, more myself, because anger had been one of my primary emotions for years. Sometimes when you’re under stress you revert back to old habits, even the ones that you broke, because they weren’t good for you, or your life.

“Did you notice that you talked about apologizing to Domino and Crispin, but not Cynric?” Micah asked.

I stood there furious with him, hands in fists at my side, my shoulders tensed and ready to fight, but I forced myself to think back over what I’d said. My shoulders loosened first, and then my fingers, so that I wasn’t standing there as if the next thing I wanted was to hit someone.

“Well, shit,” I said softly.

They just waited for me to think it all the way through.

I sighed, and wrapped my arms around myself, because I was suddenly cold standing there in my blue bra and panties. “Why didn’t I talk about apologizing to Cynric?”

“That might be a therapy question,” Micah said.

“Yeah, I guess it is. Shit.” I hugged myself, starting to shiver.

Micah came to hug me, wrapping his warmth around me, but I stayed tight in his arms holding myself. “I need to get dressed and head in to work.”