Chapter 88: War is Never Won

~ TARKYN ~

The remembered images and smells overwhelmed him immediately, sucking Tarkyn back to that time in his life. He dropped his head to the back of his forearms, clasped in front of him over his knees. Everything in him worked every day to keep these things buried, to push them from conscious thought. But with his teeth gritted, he forced himself to dredge them up instead.

The pile of bodies that had been stacked near the prison during the War of the Wolves—faces that he knew, swollen and grotesquely discolored. And the stench…

Zev grunted.

Flash after flash of grieving families—mothers who collapsed at the news that their mate, or child had been killed, children's eyes filled with fear when their parents didn't return from a day at war. Lovers waiting on the edge of the city for the soldier's return after the confrontation with the humans, their eyes swimming with love and hope… only to slowly go dark.