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🦋ALTHEAÂ
Measly thirty.
Thirty lives. Thirty people with names and families and dreams and fears and—
And he was calling them measly.
My heart seized, a scream building in my throat—raw and jagged and full of every ounce of horror flooding through me. This was the man holding me. This was my mate. The person the Moon Goddess had bound me to for eternity.
A man who could look at thirty innocent lives and dismiss them as acceptable losses.
As nothing.
The scream tore out of me, ragged and broken, more animal than human. It echoed across the clearing, bouncing off trees and stones and shocked faces.
But my hands—my traitorous, weak, compassionate hands—they were already moving.
I couldn't help it.
I couldn't let them die.
Even knowing Thorne was right—that hundreds more would die in the mines, that this was just a drop in an ocean of blood—I couldn't be the one to kill these thirty. Couldn't watch Thal's throat open. Couldn't see Yana fall.
