Fendros looked down at his hand. He did not grip Ahnasha's in return. "I don't doubt why you're doing all of this, Ahna. Don't think I don't appreciate that. You have changed, though. You might have been knowingly making sure that they pain wasn't permanent, but the way you treated the family back there was especially callous. And what you said about just wanting to kill everyone on the other side, that's chilling. You know as well as I do that most of the people that Vile recruits are there because they were desperate or tricked." He looked to one side and nodded. "There are the crazed zealots that deserve to die, just like that woman leading them, just like our torturer. But that man wasn't one of them, neither was his family. If anything, the family had less control in the matter than he did."

Meeting his eyes with Ahnasha's, Fendros took on a pleading look. "We have to choose to kill sometimes. And sometimes, we have to choose not to be monsters ourselves. Otherwise we're just as bad as them. Please, just...you still have sympathy for them, don't you?"

[hr]
For the first few moments of their embrace, Sabine simply pressed her face into Kaleeth's scales and tried not to sob. Kaleeth's question at least gave her enough focus to explain.

"There was a scream. After they interrogated the woman and her child, I was called in." Sabine said at a high pitch. Her voice was muffled against Kaleeth's body "They put a knife through the child's hand in front of them."

The pack had done interrogations before. Those interrogations had gotten physical before. They had never before involved children.