Page 34 of Primal

Noa.

The very sweet thing I’ve been denying and downplaying my connection to for days.

She’s mine.

The perfect, inescapable truth slams into me with the force of a killing blow, tearing through the last threads of my denial like a blade to the gut.

She is my fated mate.

My scent match.

The one soul in existence designed to fit against mine in a way that no one else ever could. The one meant tobalance, anchor, and complete me.

And I have to reject her.

The knowledge is slow,merciless agony, bleeding through my veins with each painful beat of my heart. I fought so damn hard against this, convinced myself that my wolf was wrong, that everyone in my inner circle was wrong. I clung to the belief that if my destined mate was ever thrust into my path, I would recognize her in half a heartbeat. That there would be no room for doubt. The fact that I had known Noa for years before her mother stole her away, and still hadn’t recognized her as mine back then, only fueled my foolish denial.

And a part of me, a small, fragile sliver buried deep in my chest, had clung to something else, something just as damning. Hope. Hope that fate wouldn’t be so cruel. That it wouldn’t hand me myperfect matchonly to rip her from me. That it wouldn’t force me to stand here now, looking into the eyes of the one person I was meant to spend my life with, knowing I have to give her up.

But fate has never been kind. It plays its twisted games at our expense for its amusement.And now, it’s laughing at me.

I force my jaw to lock, my breath to steady, my expression to remain ice.She can’t see this.She can’t see the way my entire world is collapsing in on itself, how my wolf is thrashing beneath my skin, how every instinct in me is screaming to pull her into my arms and never let go. To mark her with my scent and my bite.

But I can’t because I can’t keep her.

I have to sacrifice her. For my pack. For my people. For the omegas I refuse to fail like I did Carly.

A frigid weight unlike anything I’ve ever known settles over me, pressing into my bones, wrapping around my ribs like iron restraints. She is meant to be my destiny, my perfect match. She is my heart living and beating beyond the confines of my chest.

And I have to break it.

To breakher.

Canaan was right, I don’t know how I’m going to survive this. And out of pure desperation, I send a silent prayer to the Goddess herself, pleading that Noa is able to bear it as well, and what I’m about to do won’t be in vain. Our sacrifice has to be worth the pain.

I fight against every instinct clawing its way to the surface and the near-feral beast inside me thrashing with raw desperation, trying to get to her, to his mate. His anguish and his absolute refusal to accept what I’m about to do nearly undo me.

Please forgive me.

My molars grind to the point I worry I’ve cracked them as I double down and force the ice back into place. I reach in desperation toward the mask of emotional indifference I’ve been working relentlessly to perfect over the last couple days. It’s better this way for everyone, especially for my sweet Noa. For her I will be the monster. I will be the villain in our painfullyshort-lived love story, the one who walked away. The one who picked duty over our shared destiny.

She will hate me for it and maybe that is for the best.

Tenuous grip back on my control—beast and man—I think of the reason I’m here. I conjure up the bloody images that have been seared into my brain. I think of Carly. I make myself see her as she was that night, a broken, mangled thing discarded like trash on our land, her life stolen long before her body had taken its final breath.

I see her mother’s face, twisted in grief and a pain no parent should be forced to suffer through. The visual of her having to be held back as I carried her only daughter away is one that will stick with me, so are the sounds of her broken wails that followed me as I wove through the snow-capped trees.

My enforcers had stood around, their usual unshakable strength gouged out by the sight of what had been done to one of our own. I remember the way they barely moved, the way their hands clenched into useless fists at their sides. How no amount of training had prepared them for the cruelty that was left for us to find.

I force myself to relive it, to remember every brutal detail as something colder clouds over the sorrow. Rage. The anger comes slow, spreading through my chest, numbing everything in its path. It settles in the space around my heart, pressing down on the part of me that wants to break at the sight of Noa.

The delicate female before me watches, her two-toned gaze more observant than I’d like. Her naturally pale skin has taken on a gray hue, the scent of her dread all but overpowers the addictingly sweet brown sugar fragrance I will spend the rest of my life pining for. She knows, or at the very least, a part of her knows what is coming.

“Ren…” Her soft voice is barely an octave above an exhale, but she might as well have screamed the nickname that,somehow, has always belonged to her alone. Based on the stabbing agony that follows, I’m almost sure if I were to look down, I’d find a knife in my sternum. My wolf’s mournful howl is equally as painful. “Why?”

The way she doesn’t elaborate further proves my theory. Noa, a smart girl, knows exactly why I’ve shown up here today.

“You claimed me, publicly, as your mate, Miss Alderwood.” I can’t bring myself to say her name aloud, so I do the only thing I can. I keep it impersonal and use her surname, cold and distant, and it lands exactly as I intended. She winces, as if I’d struck her. “Considering I already have an intended mate for myself, you can imagine how your little outburst has caused me problems.”

---