Chapter 410

XENOIS

I put my arm around him, letting him lean against me.

"Taking life is hard," I said. "Even when it's justified, even when it's necessary, it still affects you. The fact that you're struggling with it means you're not a psychopath. It means you have empathy and conscience. That's good, Shawn. Hold onto that."

"Does it get easier?" he asked. "Killing to protect people?"

"In some ways," I admitted. "You learn to compartmentalize, to separate the immediate necessity from the emotional processing. But it never becomes easy. Not if you're doing it right. The moment it becomes easy is the moment you've lost something important."

That was...