Page 24 of Primal

“Broken. Dirty, omega whore. That’s all I am anymore. Just like he promised I’d be.”

Like a scratched record stuck on the most painful part of a song, the words keep looping. I don’t know where they came from, only that they consume me. Drown me. Repeating, repeating. I lose myself in them.

The sterile gauze in my hand is long forgotten, my task momentarily neglected.

It’s the choked sob that pulls me back, snapping me out of the fog and anchoring me into my body once again.

Before me, the Nightingale presses her trembling hands to her ears, wincing slightly at the contact of broken fingers against her skull. Her knees pull tight to her chest, her whole body racked with shudders. She bites down on her lip, desperate to hold in the sobs, but it only lasts a second before the dam bursts.

She starts rocking, her movements uneven. Between the tears and gasping breaths, her lips move, whispering.Her voice is so quiet, I can barely make out the words.

But some cut through, clear as day.

“Dirty, omega whore.”

The same words rattling through my own mind.

Tossing the supplies cradled in my palm to the side, I rip off the gloves and scramble to my knees. Normally, I wait, watching for the signs an omega is ready for physical touch, but not this time. I can’t bring myself to summon that kind of patience for this one. She’s breaking before my eyes and the only thing I can think of to stop her from unraveling completely is to wrap her up in my arms and hold tight. She flinches at first, her body instinctually rejecting the contact, but then slowly she melts into me.

It's an awkward angle and my knees are screaming at me from being pressed into the stone floor, but I refuse to move until she’s ready to. She’s a wolf shifter, a pack animal, how longhas she gone without physical touch that offers comfort and not pain?

Bruised knees forgotten, I settle into the discomfort and hold her tight.

The string of self-deprecating thoughts gradually quiet in my mind until only a single one remains.

“I don’t know who I am anymore.”

Following a gut feeling, an instinct I didn’t think I had, I swallow down the emotion that’s bubbled up in my throat and whisper, “You are not who he tried to make you, omega. He didn’t win. You’re here. You’re safe. And I swear, I’ll hold your hand until you remember who you are. Untilyouremember who you’ve always been.”

She stiffens in my arms for just a moment before another choked sound slips from her. Then, slowly,almost shyly,she pulls back, just enough to look at me. The same mix ofwonderment and confusionswirling inside me is reflected in her eyes, because, yeah, holy shit, I’m pretty sure I just heard her thoughts.

And a twisting ache in my chest is gnawing away at the denial I’ve been clinging to since I woke up in the pack’s den. Whatever this is with the Nightingale, it isn’t the first time it’s happened today.

“Mate. Mate. Mate.”

That’s what his thoughts had said. The thoughts I’d repeated in a daze.

I may have unintentionally claimed Rennick aloud, but the voice in his head had claimed me first.

How is this possible? I’m not a charmer. I don’t have gifts. No wolf, no magic. Right?

Reaching inward to the place she’s locked away, I search for my wolf, hoping for answers, but she’s still and patient, like she’s waiting for something just out of my reach.

Chapter 10

Rennick

Ihaven’t been here before. This is all new, and, yet, I’d recognize the small, warm hands sliding up the hard planes of my back anywhere. In no world, waking or dreaming, would I be unable to identify the brown sugar and spiced fig scent that trickles from her pores and wraps around me like smooth silk, tugging tight to draw me in closer.

The room we stand in is dark and every wall is lined with large windows, each one wide open, allowing the silver light of the moon to flood the space and the misty night air to enter. The white fog that is a constant in every one of my dreams slowly drifts over the window ledges, snaking across the wooden planks of the floor. And with it comes a breeze that shifts and billows the sheer white curtains around the open panes of glass.

A warm, soft kiss is pressed to the center of my spine. My muscles slacken, utterly relaxed by the minimal contact, but my cock has the opposite reaction. It grows heavy, throbbing. Begging for her attention.

“Noa,” I whisper, her name a prayer on my lips.

Her fingers trace across my shoulder blades, her touch featherlight, and yet searing. It scorches into my skin,branding me. I want more. No, Icravemore of that blazing heat. I check in with my beastly side, curious to see what my wolf thinks of this, but I find him silent. At peace. Nothing more than a watching presence within me.

A trail of warmth follows her hands as they drift down the sensitive flesh of my sides. As she grazes my ribs, her body shifts, the front of her naked form gliding against mine. The top of her dark head reaches just shy of my collarbones, and as she stands before me, her delicate fingerstracethe defined muscles of my chest and abdomen, making my breath catch in my throat.

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