She was honestly surprised with herself that she was even up and walking around. It wouldn’t last much longer. She was well aware of that. There was going to be a moment when her body just gave out on her and she wouldn’t be able to keep going.

Hopefully, they found a place to bathe before that happened.

As luck would have it, they did. It was maybe two and a half or three miles from where they had gotten attacked. Russel was the first to spot it and once he did, he ran full out for the shallow and small pond. He left Lola behind, a look of jealousy that he still had so much energy in him on her face. She tried to hurry her own pace but by that point, she was so tired out, she couldn’t manage it. Once she got the water’s edge, she plunged in. The shock of how cold the water was woke her up a lot and within minutes, she was shivering.

“Soap!” she called out, her teeth chattering.

Russel looked over at her, right in the middle of scrubbing at his own body with the bar of soap he’d pulled out of his sack. He walked to her and handed it over without a fight even though he was in a much worse state.

“Here,” he said. “Do you need any help getting clean?”

She looked at him, her brow furrowed in irritation and splashed water at him.

“Not a good time for that,” she said.

“What are you talking about? I’m just trying to make sure you get clean quickly so you can get out of here. You’re shivering,” Russel said, his voice full of feigned indignation. “What did you think I meant?”

“You know what,” she said, splashing him again with one hand and scrubbing herself almost raw with the other.

“You need to get your mind out of those dark, filthy places young lady.” He splashed her back playfully.

Things devolved from there into an almost all-out water fight. It felt stupid, in retrospect, to do that when they were both so exhausted and the water was so cold but it also helped a lot too. It gave the both of them a moment in time when all the worries and overwhelming fear they’d lived through disappeared. A moment to just themselves where they didn’t have to think about all the horrible things they’d been through both together and separately.

After a time, the moment came to an end, as all things must do. They emerged from the pond looking refreshed almost and as clean as they possibly could get without an actual bath. The one they had shared in Wrexon had been the last one and Russel actually dreamed of sharing another one in his family’s castle palace once they got there. He still wasn’t sure how he was going to address the whole Lola situation but he had something going for him that he thought might work. His father had never actually met Lola and didn’t know what she looked like. He could just lie and say she was someone else. Ordinarily, with a werewolf’s acute sense of hearing, they could pick up on the elevated heart rates of people when they tell a lie. But growing up in the castle, he got really good at lying so it was possible for him to get away with that.

Lola, however, had not trained herself to lie to a werewolf. Not only that, but there was the slight problem that if he asked her to lie about who she was, she would ask why. And then he would have to tell her that his appearance in Gloucester had not been a coincidence. That he had really been there to kill her on orders from his father, the one they were now going to for sanctuary. It was a horrible situation to be put in and he wasn’t even sure why he had lied to her for so long anyway. He had, after all, just spent the last few weeks doing everything he could to keep her safe and alive. She would have to believe him that he still wouldn’t let anyone hurt her.

Right?

He wasn’t so sure. Lola had been through massive trauma. Physically. Emotionally. Even mentally. There was just no way to tell for sure how she would react when she learned the truth. So, the best course of action would be to press onward and not tell her.

What could go wrong with that?