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Tarun was the best thing to ever happen to him. But to find her, his whole crew had to be threatened, and were involved in a battle—to save him. Which was the worst.
Maybe he didn’t have to choose between those two halves. Maybe it wasn’t a matter of deciding which emotion he should feel, or which took precedence.
Maybe it was about just being thankful that he was blessed with something—someone—so beautiful, even though it came out of such a fucked up situation.
He would never take Tarun for granted, and he would devote the rest of his life to loving her as completely as he could. He didn’t think it could ever be as much as she deserved—that he could ever be as much as she deserved.
But he was going to try his fucking best to make sure she never regretted her life with him.
There was still so much they hadn’t sorted out—things like where they’d live, what they’d do—but none of that was really important to him.
What was important was that good had triumphed over evil. That his Enforcer family was safe. And that he’d found his mate, and she was gorgeous, kind, fierce—the most amazing woman he knew. They loved each other, and no matter where they were or what they were doing, they had each other. And that was enough.
Everything else paled in comparison.
Tarun felt like her heart was going to burst as she watched Luke and Jameson. They were standing by her brother’s truck as the War Cats prepared to go home, and it was a completely different scene than it had been when they arrived.
Jameson laughed at something her mate said, and she watched as they each clapped a hand to the other’s shoulder, smiling. And, unbelievably, her heart swelled even more. It was all she could have hoped for when she started out on the journey to warn the Enforcers—and even more than that. Because she never imagined that she’d find her mate, that she’d end up so happy she thought she must surely glow with it. Her life had become enriched immeasurably.
And it was perfect.
The lion pride had been defeated and her mate was safe. Yeah, it’d gotten dicey for a moment, and there had been a terrifying hour the night before when she didn’t know if Luke was going to make it.
The fight had been pretty brutal, and there had been injuries sustained by both the Enforcers and the War Cats—though none as bad as Luke’s.
And she’d had to take a life. Something she never in a million years thought she’d do. Something, if she had thought about it, she’d have said would wreck her mentally and emotionally, and she wouldn’t be the same.
In a sense, that was true. She wasn’t the same. But it wasn’t because she was upset. On the contrary, she felt victorious.
Before the battle, before coming to the Enforcers with knowledge of the threat, she would have said no one deserved death. Despite the tribe she was born into, despite the constant wars, the evil tribe members, she’d grown up surprisingly naïve and optimistic.
They weren’t called the War Cats for nothing. They were a tribe of warriors, constantly battling others and themselves. The old Alpha had fostered a community of distrust, and the majority of the tribe had been corrupt. Somehow, it never affected her, though. Maybe it was because she’d grown up with Jameson—who was always so different than others in the tribe—but the evilness never touched her.
She never believed that anyone deserved to die, no matter what they did. Punishment, yes. Death, no. It was the shifter way, to put someone down if they were evil and had committed horrific acts. She’d never agreed with it, but it was a fact of shifter life.
But she understood now. There were some people who couldn’t be redeemed. And there were some acts that were unforgivable.
When the battle was clearly over and that lion went after Luke anyway, that was unforgivable. And someone who carried that kind of hate and evilness in his heart didn’t deserve the blessing of a life.
She felt zero guilt or remorse.
And believing as she did now, she hadn’t even thought for a second about talking Luke out of killing Jerry. Yeah, she thought it was one thing to kill in the heat of battle, when it was kill or be killed, like it was the night before.
It was a whole other thing to plan what to do to a person and then kill them when it wasn’t a life or death situation.
But the situation with Jerry was a horse of a different color. That was a man who, in cold blood, killed Luke’s whole family. Not because of a perceived slight, or because they’d done him wrong, or because they were bad people.
But because he wanted the power they held within the pride.
As if that wasn’t enough, he decided the
power he acquired wasn’t complete. And he set out to kill Luke, vowing to take out anyone who stood in the way, even if they were total innocents.
Luke was completely justified in taking Jerry’s life. Not only for the things he’d done to him, but because there was a very good probability that Luke wasn’t the only one Jerry hurt. Wasn’t the only one he’d tried to kill, or the only life he’d tried to ruin. And if he’d succeeded in killing Luke, he would have gone on to continue taking out anyone he thought stood in the way of what he wanted, whether they really did or not.
That was why, when they got up that morning and Luke kissed her goodbye with a grim look in his golden eyes, only to return an hour and a half later, his light blue gaze calm and at peace in a way she hadn’t seen before—she asked no questions.
She knew he’d taken care of Jerry in whatever way he’d decided was best, and she’d bet her life savings that he no longer tainted the Earth with his presence. But she wasn’t going to ask about it. If Luke wanted to talk to her, wanted to let her know what happened, she’d happily listen.
