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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.

Zev hissed, that hope of love hitting him hardest-especially when Tarkyn, remembering his son, showed him a baby, wailing, unattended in a home where both parents had been assassinated during the War of the Wolves.

“War leaves its stain everywhere,” Tarkyn muttered. “Even on the victors.”

Then he took a deep breath and gave himself to his mate-all those nights he’d woken in a cold-sweat, screaming because his dreams had taken him back to the war front-only this time, the humans were winning.

All those evenings he’d been forced to leave the market because even during a meal, even in the company of hundreds of Anima, he couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes on his back. He’d had to patrol, had to make certain that no enemy threatened.

.....

Zev flinched, clearly familiar with that feeling. Tarkyn nodded.

“That doesn’t even cover half of it.” He caught the male’s eyes, made himself hold them despite the pain there, despite the anger. “When you lead your people to war, when every life lost becomes a question about your decisions-when every tear shed might have been avoided if you’d only chosen differently... the what-ifs, the accusations from people who’ve lost... trust me, Zev. You don’t want war. You don’t want to go through it yourself, and you don’t want to put your people through it. I have been through it, and I can tell you this with authority.”

He eased Alpha authority into that statement, watching Zev carefully to see if the male noticed.

But Zev only leaped to his feet and began to walk. “I am not saying I want war,” he snarled, pacing like a caged animal. Which he was, Tarkyn supposed. “But you aren’t the only one with memories to avoid.

Then he turned to face Tarkyn again and their eyes locked. And suddenly Tarkyn was rocked by images sent by Harth, painted in grief and pain and abject terror.

No... no.

As Tarkyn curled his fingers into his hair and fought the urge to snap the connection to stop seeing what he was seeing, all he could think was... was this the truth of what Harth had endured?

*****

~ HARTH ~

She could barely breathe. She stood outside the prison tree, staring blankly at its wall. There were guards nearby, but she barely saw them, because she could only see the images these males-both strong, both devastated-showed her.

Tarkyn’s memories were saturated in self-doubt and grief. And those moments in the dark by himself, by an aching, hollow loneliness that Harth recognized with such clarity she groaned.

She knew that feeling.

Her heart went to her mate and she wept, curling herself over her knees, hands in her hair, begging the Creator to save them both from that.

But then Zev snarled in her head that she would return the favor for him, and before she could even agree...

It was brutal.

The images of a dark, sterile lab laid over with the scents of her childhood-that horrific disinfectant that seemed to strip the lining from her nose and send her reeling. She shoved the images at Tarkyn desperate to get rid of them. But Zev had barely started.

Looming, dark humans gripping small limbs and tying them down when wriggling children threatened to shift. Tying them in exactly the way Zev had been bound here.

Harth almost vomited, but the memories rushed on in a blinding blur.

Pain-unexplained illness, torturous experiments, surgeries that left Zev barely able to move for weeks-and always watched by those humans in white coats, or Nick, Zev’s surrogate human “father”, standing over him, reassuring him that it would get better, that he was strong.

Then suddenly a jump to the time when Zev was an adult, or close to it. He stood in a human home, his heart warm and brimming with joy... suddenly turned cold as the man he’d called “Dad,” threatened his mate and forced Zev from her.

Years spent spinning between locked cages, and night-time hunts. Watching humans manipulate and deceive-forcing Zev to do as they wished, or they would harm the only one he loved. The threat of everything from death, to sexual assault thrown at her to keep him motivated.

The despair.

The training.

The darkness of human cities and a wolf’s senses easily able to follow, to track... scents of victims given to him, bodies torn apart by wolf-teeth and claws, and Zev, a young, rudderless male, applauded for them.

The sick, sick weight of dread and self-loathing.

And then Sasha was back in his life, and almost stolen from him, first by the humans, then by the Chimera who’d been manipulated, and then by the humans again.

The jangling fear that never left. The nights unable to sleep. The weight of any unnatural ceiling over his head pressing on him like a vice.

His mate. His precious mate. They’d taken her and he could do nothing. She was gone and could be dead and he wouldn’t know. She was weak and might be harmed. And then she was back and in his arms and her scent was wrong, all wrong, because she should have been a mother but she wasn’t-

The images cut off and Harth sagged, cheeks wet with tears, her chest heaving.

She could feel Tarkyn’s stunned silence, waiting for more. But there was no more. Zev had cut off the connection.

‘Harth... love, are you-?’ Tarkyn breathed in her head.

‘I never stopped being afraid,’ she sobbed back to him. ‘My whole life. Until that night with you. Never, Tarkyn. They stole everything. Please... don’t make them go through this anymore. Don’t make me do it... Peace, Tarkyn. We need peace.’

** POSTED 29 November 2022 AFTER publication so you aren’t charged for the words **

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