Page 19 of Primal (The Prey Drive #1)

Chapter 18

Noa

I ’m trapped.

Caught in the space between wakefulness and unconsciousness, pain is the only thing that exists. The only constant. My unwanted tour guide in this hellscape, its claw-like hand locked around me like an unswayable vise. It tears at me, gnawing on my bones with sharp, filed fangs. It singees my skin like a wildfire burning through a forest, and there’s nothing I can do to fight it off. Even when I slip into the dark void of oblivion, where in theory it should hurt less, I can’t escape it.

Instead, I’m stuck, forced to relive that moment over and over again.

“I, Rennick Fallamhain, reject you…”

The words reverberate through the newfound hollowness of my body. Of my soul. They fill the broken parts of me, leaking their poison as they play on repeat. They rip through my mind like shards of glass, shredding apart what little sense of self I have left. I’m trying so hard to protect those remaining pieces, shielding them with every ounce of strength hanging on within me.

Those fateful words continue to relentlessly loop until I can’t think past them. Can’t push them away, sure as hell can’t just ignore them. They demand to be heard, to be acknowledged. They dig deeper until they reach the empty space where the bond should be.

It’s gone.

Ripped away violently before I really knew it was there, before I had time to accept it as true. As real.

I didn’t want this. Didn’t ask for it. Up until five days ago, Rennick Fallamhain was nothing to me. A ghost from my hazy past. His name was one I barely remembered, his face something I’d long ago forgotten.

He was nothing. Until he wasn’t.

Until his scent wrapped around me.

Vetiver. Leather. Mint.

Mine.

Despite my game of denial and doubt, breathing in his addicting scent had been the catalyst. The thing that woke up something that’d been slumbering in my soul for Goddess knows how long. It unlocked hidden memories of our time shared together as pups, as angsty teenagers. Of a time before I was whisked away by my mother that fateful night. They were proof that we shared more than an undeniable connection, but history.

And he threw it all away.

He looked me in the eye, declared me unworthy, and ripped me apart.

The fire rages, searing through me as something within unravels. Grief crushes in from all sides. Heavy and relentless, stealing my breath, my thoughts. It takes everything until I can’t be sure I exist.

I want to wake up.

I want to slip into oblivion.

I want it to stop.

But I’m stranded in the wreckage of his making, tangled in the ruins of what was stolen from me and what will now never be.

Somewhere in the madness, something cool presses against my burning skin. A damp cloth, gentle and deliberate, dabs at my forehead and sweeps down my neck. The sensation is distant, barely cutting through the overwhelming haze, but it’s there.

I want to lean into it, to let the coolness soothe the fire licking beneath my skin, but at the same time,I want to shrink away.

It’s too much and yet somehow not enough.

Everything feels wrong, like my body doesn’t belong to me anymore. My reality and sense of self is fractured. Unraveling at the edges. And this small grounding touch is both an anchor and an intrusion on my grief. My chest tightens, the emptiness he’s left in there, in my soul, is still a fresh wound. Gaping and bleeding.

“I renounce any claim you have on me.”

Against my will, a sob claws its way up my throat, but I couldn’t tell you if it succeeds in making it past my lips. The spell the pain has cast over me makes it hard to know where my body ends and where it begins.

But the cool cloth remains. And the presence beside me, the one who wields it, is steady but soft. Their intent is clear, even through the disorienting mist. They are keeping me from sinking too deep, from fading too far into the nothingness of oblivion. I can’t focus on them. Can’t see them. Can’t hear them. But they’re here, and somehow, that’s all that matters.

I have no sense of time, no way to measure how long I drift in and out, consciousness warring with itself while my body remains exhausted from the torment, but at some point, I manage to crack my eyes open. The room is dark, familiar. I’m home, in my own bed. How I got here is a mystery to me. A mystery I don’t have the strength to worry about solving.

“Noa?”

Bleary, dry eyes that still ache with every torturously slow blink drag to the figure that sits next to me on my bed. It takes a moment for my vision to focus and when it does, I feel silly that in my muddled mind, I hadn’t immediately known who the steady presence with the cloth had been. There was only ever one possibility after all.

Seren.

For the first time in what feels like an eternity, I cling to consciousness for more than a few fleeting, agonizing seconds. I don’t know how long this reprieve will last, so while I can still pull air into my lungs without it feeling like fire and shift my body without it being akin to rolling over broken glass, I take in my best friend. The one remaining constant in my life.

The sight of her alone tells me I’ve been trapped in this state far longer than a few hours. The dark circles beneath her powder blue eyes are nearly purple, and the light that usually fills them is dull and weary. Her pale blonde hair, something she takes pride in keeping perfect, is greasy and tousled, half of it is twisted into a lazy knot atop her head. The stretched collar of her gray sweatshirt hangs loose over one shoulder, exposing the delicate edge of her collarbone. Her skin, which usually has a nice, healthy pink flush to it, is lacking all signs of color.

If I’m being honest, she looked more put together after giving birth to Ivey. Poor girl.

My throat is raw, painfully dry, and a voice whispers a heartbreaking truth—I must have been screaming. Though I don’t remember making a sound.

Swallowing against the sensation of razor blades, I force the words out. “You look like shit, Ser.”

She blinks at me, silent. Like she isn’t sure if she actually heard me or if the exhaustion is playing tricks on her. I watch as the realization settles, as the gears turn, slow and sluggish, before she finally chokes out a watery snort. “Yeah, well, hate to break it to you, babe, but you don’t look much better.”

I don’t have the strength to laugh, so I hum instead, hoping she understands the intention. My body already feels impossibly heavy again, my brief moment of clarity slipping.I won’t be awake much longer.

“Hurts…” I grit out, my voice barely more than a breath.

The cool cloth returns, gently gliding over my skin, soothing where it can. Seren’s free hand runs down the side of my head, smoothing strands of my hair in a slow, comforting motion. I don’t need a mirror to know I’m a mess. Between the sweating and the thrashing, my hair must be a tangled disaster. Just the thought of untangling it later exhausts me.

The idea of showering, of scrubbing this nightmare from my skin, should be a relief. Instead,a darker thought slithers in, whispering in the back of my mind.

What’s the point?

What’s the point of doing something so mundane, so ordinary as bathing, when nothing about me feels whole anymore? The pain has started to slowly loosen its hold on me, but the aching, hollow void where Rennick’s presence should be has taken its place. The bond that tied us together is gone, leaving behind nothing but a raw, cavernous absence. In my clouded, sluggish mind, it’s impossible to care aboutanythingoutside of this.

Seren’s thumb catches a hot tear as it falls down the side of my face. “I know,” she whispers. “I know it does.’

“Why does it have to hurt?” I choke on my words, half of them coming out like broken and weak sobs.

Seren exhales, a sound that in another moment might have passed as a laugh. Though, there’s not a trace of genuine humor in it now. “There are a lot of theories, and I think there’s a little bit of truth in all of them.” I can’t bring myself to say it aloud, but the way she speaks softly is something I’m endlessly grateful for right now. “I was always told it’s the Goddess’s way of punishing those who defy her divine plan, a price for breaking the bond shehandcraftedfor you. Some say rejecting a fated mate is the ultimate insult, like spitting in the Goddess’s face. You know I don’t put as much faith in the Goddess as you do, but when my bond was severed, I had felt more than inclined to beg for her mercy.”

It's not very often that Seren Pryce willingly talks about her broken bond or the man she left behind before she found her way to us.

My lip trembles as fragmented memories surface—the echoes of my own unanswered pleas, my desperate begging to the Goddess—clawing their way out of the mess of my fractured thoughts. More tears fall and Seren tries her best to catch them all, but it’s a losing battle for her. “What’s your theory? Why do you think it hurts so bad?”

Seren’s pale, chapped lips pull into a sad smile as she looks down at me. “A fated mate bond isn’t just a connection, Noa. It’swoven into who we are—stitched into the very fabric of our souls. You don’t choose it, and as we’ve learned, sometimes you don’t evenwantit. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a part of you. And when it’s severed, your body doesn’t know how to function without it.” She clears her throat, like she’s trying to steady herself, to push back whatever emotions are creeping in. “It hurts because avitalpiece of you was justripped away—like tearing out a part of your heart and expecting the rest to keep beating. We’re not meant to survive without it…and yet, somehow, we have to.”

“I didn’t want this,” I choke out. “I didn’t choose this. I wasn’t the one who spit in the Goddess’s face, but I’m the one who’s left… suffering .” If Rennick had felt even a fraction of the agony that tore through me like a tidal wave made of fire and blades, he would have fallen to his knees in that clearing just as I had. But he didn’t. He remained standing. Through the fog of my memory, I see the horror carved into his guilt-ridden face, the way he stared down at me. Like a murderer standing above his victim, waiting for them to bleed out. “It’s not fair. None of this is fucking fair.”

In my pain-riddled, disoriented mind, I can’t make sense of it. How Rennick did this to me, tore me apart, left me bare and desolate. And yet, he got to walk away.On his own two feet. Meanwhile, my body had crumpled beneath the torment, unable to withstand the agony. Ihadto be carried, unconscious, out of thatfuckingclearing.

Abandoning her cloth, Seren’s two hands cup either side of my clammy face. Her thumbs still tirelessly wiping away each tear that falls against my will. “I know, babe,” she whispers, her voice thick with emotion. “And I’m so fucking sorry.” She leans in, forehead resting against mine, grounding me. “I know saying it doesn’t fix anything, doesn’t take the pain away, but I need you to hear it anyway.I’m sorry, Noa.”

“How did you make it through that?” I ask. “How did you keep going after he rejected you?”

I know his name, but I don’t dare speak it aloud. She had let it slip during our huckleberry moonshine night. To this day, it’s still the one and only time Seren’s uttered his name. And I still don’t think she knows she did it.

My best friend pauses, pushing away the pieces of my bangs that stick to my forehead. The way her eyes flash with uncertainty catches my attention despite the darkness starting to creep back into the corners of my vision. “My situation was… different. It wasn’t just him rejecting me, I rejected him, too. We both severed our sides of the bond.” A shadow passes over her face. “Don’t get me wrong, it still hurt. If anyone understands even a fraction of what you’re feeling right now, it’s me, and I wish more than anything that you could have been spared from this.” Her thumbs still for just a second before continuing their slow back-and-forth over my skin. “It’s going to be hell for a while. You’re not going to feel like yourself. You’re going to have to fight for it, Noa.” Her grip tightens, not hard, butinsistent.“That empty ache weighing down on your soul? I know it.” Her voice trembles, but her conviction doesn’t waver. “But I swear to you, on everything I have and hold dear,it gets better.The pain will fade. It won’t disappear, but it will fade. It will always be there, just beneath your skin. Some days, you won’t notice it. Other days, it’ll demand that you remember. But you’ll adjust. You’ll learn to live with it just as I have. And until that happens, you have to fight like hell, because you can’t let it win, Noa.”

The inky blackness I’ve been battling since I first cracked my burning eyes open is creeping back in, dragging me under. My limbs feel like dead weight, my ears buzz with a dull, relentless hum, and when I finally manage to speak, my words come out slow, thick, almost slurred.

“I don’t know how to fight this.”

I certainly don’t know how to win this battle.

And deep down, I can’t be sure that I really want to.

What would be the point? Without him or our bond?

The room around me is one I’d recognize anywhere.

The wide-planked pine floors, scratched and scuffed from years of wear, stretch beneath my feet. The river rock fireplace dominates the living room, bundles of drying herbs hanging above the hearth, just as they always had. The scent in the air is familiar, a mix of sage, peppermint, and the countless other natural remedies my mother crafted by hand. It smells like home.It smells like her.

I don’t question why I’m here. I should, but I don’t. My heartsick soul is just thrilled to be surrounded by a space that holds so many warm memories.

My feet move of their own accord, guiding me toward the back window with the faded and sun-bleached, rust-colored curtains. Through the glass, the land slopes gently downward, opening into the valley where the creek winds its way through the Fallamhain territory, heading toward the lake that sits behind the Alpha’s house. The view is just as I remember it to be. It’s beautiful, peaceful, exactly as it was when I was a child.

The peace doesn’t last.

A presence stirs behind me, a prickle of awareness running down my spine. The air shifts, becoming almost electric as the energy surges.

Blind, deaf, or underwater—I’d still recognize that feeling.

I turn, andshe’s there.

Mom.

She stands in the middle of the room, watching me with soft eyes that always saw too much. But she doesn’t look the way she did eight months ago, before she passed. She’s younger. By the looks of it, almost a decade younger.Her dark hair, the same shade as mine, falls in loose waves over her shoulders, streaks of silver are just starting to frame her temples. The charms, hand-carved by a coven with ancient bloodlines, that were passed down to her, are braided into the hair near her ears, just as they always were. She always told me the symbols etched into the small metal medallions are ones of protection. They gave them to me with the rest of her belongings after the accident. They now sit in my jewelry box in my dresser at home.

She looks as she did overseven years ago, around the time we fled from the Fallamhain territory.

My stomach drops as my eyes flick to the dining room, where green and white balloons are still tied to the chair just as they had been the night everything went to shit.

My birthday had been that week.My eighteenth.

I know where I am and now, I know exactly when .

My pulse pounds in my ears. My fingers curl restlessly at my sides. I don’t know if I’m breathing.

“Mom?” My voice sounds wrong, too distant, too unsteady.

She smiles, a sad, knowing thing that twists my gut.

“Noa,” she says, and the way she says my name makes me feelsmall again, like I’m still that girl standing in this cabin, believing I belonged. Believing I was safe and wanted, that I had a future ahead of me here.

I try to take a step toward her, but the space between usstretches, like the room itself is pulling away from me. My throat tightens. The fireplace flickers, casting strange, elongated shadows against the walls. It’s disorienting and makes my stomach roll, almost as if I’m experiencing seasickness.

Forcing my feet to remain still, firmly planned where I stand, the room rights itself.

“I don’t understand why I’m here,” I tell her, voice floating, sounding almost disembodied, to where she stands across the space.

“I know, my girl.” Mom’s voice takes on the same, disjointed and ghostly quality as mine. “But you will. It’s time you start remembering, Noa.” My pulse kicks up, uneven and frantic, but I can’t speak, can’t move, can’t do anything butlisten. “What I did—the memories I stole—I never intended to keep them forever,” she continues, her face unreadable, even as something like sorrow flickers through her golden eyes. “I was always going to return them. But when I realized I wouldn’t be here to see this through, I had to find another way to make sure what I did was set right.”

My chest tightens. My mind scrambles, trying to piece together her meaning. His words from the clearing slamming to the forefront of my mind, the ones where he accused Mom of being the reason I am the way I am. Wolfless.

“What are you talking about?” My voice is hoarse.

She doesn’t answer right away, just watches me with a kind of patience that makes me feel small. Childlike. Then, continuing on with her frustratingly vague bullshit, she says, “Reuniting with him is the first step. He’s the key to opening the door."

My stomach plummets.

I don’t have to ask who she means.I already know.

Rennick .

My head begins to shake in denial instantly. “He rejected me, Mom. Ripped apart our bond. He’s not the key to anything. Not anymore.”

The slight tilt of her head sends a sharp pang of grief through my chest. It washermove, her signature tell, no matter the emotion. Happy, sad, mad, curious…Mom always did that and seeing it now, in a place I can’t be sure isn’t just a vivid creation of my subconscious, makes my heart ache.

“Your bond isn’t ripped apart, only frayed, Noa,” she insists. “You’ll see soon enough that a bond like yours isn’t something so easily destroyed. Trust me, my girl, I tried. The best I could do was delay it.”

An inky mixture of betrayal and hurt forms in my gut. “Why would you do that?”

Once again, sadness darkens Mom’s face. “Temporary heartache is a wound that heals. A lifetime of grief is one that never stops bleeding.”

I can’t commend her for her poignant words. Not now. Not when I’m drowning in confusion. “Were you always this fucking cryptic?”

The room once again starts to shift, but this time it’s starting to slowly slip away into nothingness.

Panicked that our time together is coming to an end, my attention shoots back to where Mom stands. She looks unfazed by the disintegrating walls around us and the floor beneath our feet. That’s when I see that she’s fading away too, the edges of her silhouette turning into a white mist.

“It’s time to remember, Noa,” she repeats one last time. “The threads have already started to unravel. The binds are starting to break. He will help with the rest.”

When I wake again, I’m alone.

My room is dark, the only light coming from the half-moon and stars outside thetoo big windows of my attic bedroom. Someone, I’m assuming Seren, has left the long white curtains open on all four, leaving me surrounded by the vast, endless night sky. There’s probably awitty analogyin that, some poetic bullshit about how the dark, empty space mirrors the vacant, gaping abyss inside me. Gotta hand it to the universe, it really hit the nail on the head with this cinematic, and slightly symbolic view.

Oh, look at that, your sarcasm is still firmly intact. Not all is lost. Maybe there is hope of survival, after all.

The pain is still there,humming beneath my skin, simmering in my blood, rooted so deep I’m almost positive it’s been carved into the very marrow of my bones. But it’s different now. It no longer steals the breath from my lungs or threatens to yank me into unconscious oblivion. It lingers, a cruel reminder of what was ripped from me— out of me.

My mind feels sluggish, like it’s wading through fog. The thoughts are there, but they’re slow to form, as if my neurons can’t quite remember how to spark with their usual fire. It takes me a solid minute to decide that I’m firmly in the present, that I haven’t found myself in another disorienting and cryptic dream.

That dream. Mom’s message. I want to pick it apart, find the meaning. But who’s to say it was anything more than grief? Maybe it wasn’t her at all and it was just my mind clinging to comfort in the middle of all this devastation.

I’ll talk to Seren about it, I still need her help to confront the words Rennick had used as his killing blow… “It was your own traitorous mother who bound your wolf and made you defective.”

My first instinct was to reject it completely, to fight against it with whatever scrap of internal strength I had left. But now, entwined with the lethargy and cloudiness, there’s a sliver—sharp and persistent—that whispers maybe he was right. Maybe it’s not impossible, after all.

I can’t tell what’s up or down anymore. My body feels foreign, like I’m just borrowing it, and the thoughts in my head don’t even sound like mine. So, really, what’s the harm in considering it? That everything I’ve believed—everything I’ve built myself around—might be a lie. That the one person I trusted above all else, the woman who gave me life and shaped who I am, might’ve taken my memories…and my wolf along with them. I’m broken enough right now that accepting this possibility doesn’t hurt like it should.

I look inward, checking in with the being I share my soul with. As expected, she’s curled up in her glass cage. Her heartbreak and misery mirroring mine just as intensely. She raises her heavy head and howls. The sound is raw, a cry of mourning meant for someone who won’t answer.

He chose someone else.

I push myself upright in bed, the movement slow, my body stiff from too many hours—or days?—spent floating in and out of the black abyss. Time feels irrelevant in the wake of his rejection. My dark jeans and high-neck thermal cling to my skin, stale with the sweat from my fevered sleep. I still don’t knowhow long I’ve been wearing them or how longit’s been since I stood across from Rennick and he tore my heart out with nothing but a handful of carefully executed words.

What I do know is that I need to pull myself together.

And I desperately need a shower.

My mind screams it’stoo much, too big of a task,but I think of Seren telling me I have to fight. That I have tochooseto keep going. So, I cling to that, hold on to it with everything I have left, and force myself to move. The second my feet hit the floor, my muscles protest. My legs threaten to buckle, my bones groaning under the weight of simply standing on my own. For a moment, I consider falling right back into bed, pulling the twisted blankets over my head, and giving in to the allure of nothingness.

Instead, I push forward. One step. Then another.

Until I make it to the bathroom and turn on the shower.

The Victorian manor’s old pipes takeforeverto warm the water. Eventually steam starts to billow up and over the glass shower stall. I peel off my clothes, movements stiff and clumsy, and catch sight of myself in the fogging mirror.

My next breath is held captive in my tight throat.

I expected to look different. Forever changed, somehow. To see some kind of physical proof of what I’ve endured. A scar. A mark. But I don’t. I still look like me, just faded . My skin is too pale, my eyes dull, lifeless. Haunted. I look…broken , like someone who’s been eviscerated and stitched back together wrong.

It’s a battle to force my gaze away and to step into the shower.

The hot water burns as it cascades over my skin, and for a fleeting second, Iwelcome it, pretending the scalding heat canerase everything he did to me.

The process is slow. Too slow. I have toforcemy heavy arms to lift and my hands to move, to scrub my hair, to wash the remnants of this nightmare from my body. Attoo many points, I considerjust giving up, sinking to the tile floor, curling my knees to my chest, and letting the boiling water drown me in its heat.

But I don’t.

By the skin of my teeth, I finish.

And by the time I step out, wrap myself in aplum-colored towel, and shut off the water, the cold air slams into me.I’m freezing. The kind of cold that cuts to the bone. Violentlyshivering, I hightail it out of the bathroom, making a beeline for my closet, already reaching for myheaviest sweatshirt and a pair of leggings.

I’m so lost in my own head, concentrating on the simplest movements, things that used to come without thought, like breathing or walking, that Idon’tnotice the figure seated near one of the windows.

Not until they say my name.

“Noa!”

The voice isn’t menacing or threatening, on the contrary, it’s bright with relief. Cheerful. But that doesn’t halt the embarrassingly theatrical yelp from escaping my throat or stop my feet from leaving the hardwood floor in a bone-jarring little jump.

“Fuck!” I shriek, my hands still clutching my clothes, pressing them to my chest, where I silently will the organ residing within to return to its regular scheduled beating. Whirling to the intruder, my jaw just about hits the ground. “ Rhosyn ?”