Page 41 of Primal

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’mhome, 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?”

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