I stumbled back a step, barely catching myself on the edge of her desk.
The room felt colder now. Smaller. As if the walls themselves recoiled from what they had just revealed.
My mind struggled to piece it together, to justify, to categorize, to deny. But the images would not leave. Not the creatures I had burned through with rage. Not the stench of blood in that godforsaken forest. Not the eyes that had looked at me—feral, yes—but beneath it all, human. People. But I had refused to see them as anything other than monsters.
I had gutted them, the ones that managed to survive Eve's rescue of Elliot.
I had then burned them to ash and kept some for examination. It had been a mother or her child.
And I had done it with conviction, ordered it without thought. They had been completely innocent.
Cain remained quiet beside me, jaw set in granite. His eye twitched once, but he did not speak.
